An important point must be emphasized: The information conveyed by disincarnate spirits may vary because it depends on their degree of evolution.
Words of Jean-Bernard Mary-Lafon
22/6–12/06/1957 – BAUDINET:
In our last gathering, you mentioned several types of mediums. Could you share with us a classification of the various forms of mediumship?
J.B.M.L.:
Certainly, mediums may be grouped into distinct categories.
There are those gifted with an epoptic vision—a spiritual sight beyond the veil.
This gift belonged to the prophets and the ancient oracles.
There are audient mediums, such as the blessed Joan of Arc, who heard the voices of the invisible. Quite often we encounter what are called incorporating mediums, into whom an entity of the lower planes temporarily enters, seeking to relive gestures of a former existence; their speech accompanies these manifestations.
The great messengers of heaven may also be regarded as mediums, for a medium is, in essence, a mediator—a bridge between two worlds.
Even Jesus himself was a Mediator, for he united the individual with the universal, the human with the Divine.
Mediumship follows a sacred hierarchy: it may rise from the depths to the very heights of the spirit.
Do not let the word medium disturb you (some here have said that Jesus was far more than a medium).
Yet Jesus was already a medium when he healed through the simple laying on of hands.
Humble is the medium who links only the neighboring spheres of Earth and the lower astral planes; but great indeed is the one who can at once touch the fleeting earthbound realm and the sublime heights where all is exalted and divinized in ineffable splendor.
216/4–16/04/1971 – GUYOT:
Beloved Master, true mediumship seems exceedingly rare when it seeks to reach an entity dwelling in the higher planes of interplanetary Astrality.
There must surely be a psychic—perhaps even biochemical—affinity between the one who calls and the one who answers.
But are these affinities alone sufficient? For the spirits of the higher spheres to respond, must they not first receive the sanction of a higher Will that governs them?
J.B.M.L.:
Indeed, the evoked spirit and the medium exist in sacred interdependence.
Their communion requires not only physical and psychic harmonies, but above all the silent consent of the higher powers who permit a soul of the Beyond to respond to the summons of a soul still on Earth.
Nothing occurs—whether in this world or in the next—without an authorization granted by wills of greater preeminence within the luminous hierarchy of thinking Astrality.
Mediums, according to their inner constitution, are chosen for experiences suited to certain spiritual hierarchies.
The lower planes hold a conception of life beyond the veil quite unlike that of the radiant beings who inhabit the higher spheres.
The spirit does not create the medium; it is not the artisan of the gift. Yet through long communion it shapes, refines, and perfects the instrument, so that every word, every written line, every inspired thought may faithfully convey the wisdom of the higher realms.
For the medium, the supreme challenge is to ascend to the ultimate interplanetary plane, for there flows the living spring of Truth—not the fullness of Absolute Truth, which no human mind can yet contain, but that measure of light which may be made intelligible to mortal understanding.
Thus the spirit cannot create the medium, any more than the medium can subject the evoked spirit to his own reason, knowledge, or personal merit.
All unfolds from soul to soul, in harmony of thought and action with the Higher Powers who act in the very name of Destiny.
238/3, 4–15/12/1972 – PAUILLAC:
In response to Mr. Guyot in session 216/4, you said: “Mediums, according to their personal constitution, are designated for experiences destined for certain evocations.”
Dear Master, what is this physiological constitution that allows some rare beings to possess such extrasensory gifts? What do their brains contain that others lack? Where does mere metagnomy end and true mediumship begin?
J.B.M.L.:
A medium possesses no additional organ that science could name as the seat of this gift. We know that the disincarnate spirit who wishes to dwell for a time within a medium must find in that being certain psychophysical qualities, chief among them a perfect neutrality.
Without this sacred neutrality, the visiting soul cannot be truly expressed, and the dialogue is clouded by the unwanted imaginings of the medium.
Mediumship is a gift—and as such it is a privilege of the highest order. A gift may take the form of an art or a science, yet it must ever be weighed by the fidelity and strength of the instrument.
The incarnating soul takes as its anatomical seat the region of the diencephalon, thus aligning itself in form, action, and spirit with the medullo-neuro-cerebral pattern of the human being.
Sincerity must preside over every experiment; without it, there can be no truth, and the quality of the message is lost.
Alas, deceptive practices have hindered the progress of the sacred science of Spiritism.
I will add that the true interpreting medium possesses a particular sensitivity within the centers of the cerebral cortex, a permeability to the subtle radiations emitted by the visiting spirit.
This sensitivity grows with experience, through the silent exercise that attunes the living brain to the spiritual forces that bathe the soul.
This unfolding occurs naturally; the noumenon itself need not intervene. But destiny, eternal and sovereign, guides and moves all that lives and thinks.
We have said it many times: it is not so much a question of how one directs oneself, but of how one is directed by the eternal law of the preordained.
No one becomes a medium by mere will; this holy apprenticeship requires the slow perfection of the instrument.
Our friend Gaston Beau stands as a shining example of the true interpreting medium.
For seventy years he maintained communion with the Beyond—a record of steadfast service to the Light.