WHAT ARE SPIRITS?

Introduction | Definition | Origin | Physical Nature | Perispirit

Physical Nature

Part 2 of 2

Question 82 of "The Spirit's Book" asks "Are spirits immaterial?" The spirits answered, "Human language has no exact words to describe the essence of spirit, as a person who is born blind has no conception of how to define light. Immaterial is not quite the term; incorporeal would be a better word. After all, once a spirit is created, it must be "something," but your senses can't grasp the essence of spirit any more than your language can satisfactorily define it."  So, while we say that the spirit's fluidic envelope or body, the perispirit, is semi-material, we say that the actual spirit or soul itself is incorporeal.  When we call the latter immaterial, it is, as Kardec noted, "because its essence differs from everything we know under the name of matter" and "we can only define it by means of comparisons that are imperfect, that is to say, by an effort of the imagination."

What about the spirits' form? Question 88 of "The Spirit's Book" asks, "Do spirits have a well-defined and consistent form?" The spirits answered, "Not for human eyes. You imagine them only vaguely as a flame, a gleam, an ethereal spark. But for us they have a form." When asked if that flame or spark is of any color", they replied, "If you could see it, it would appear to you to vary from dull gray to a perfect brilliance, according to the degree of the spirit's purity." When discarnate spirits or human mediums are able to see spirits, the form that they are seeing is that of the perispirit. The perispirit assumes the definite form that the spirit wishes to give it, which is why we see spirits in human form, and most generally in a form that mirrors the physical body of its most recent incarnation.