Divaldo Franco and Rabindranath Tagore

This life is the crossing of a sea, 

where we meet in the same narrow ship. 

In death we reach the shore 

and go to different worlds. 

(R. Tagore, in Stray Birds, 1916 (4))

So I will sing and mine will be poems and songs of immortal kind. 

(R. Tagore, psychography Divaldo Franco, Pássaros Livres, 1990 (5)).

Certain things had happened to me 

when alone in my room which convinced me 

that there are spiritual intelligences 

which can warn us and advise us.  

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).

According to A. Kardec, mediumship, as the faculty of "people who can serve as intermediaries between the spirits and men" (1), is not simply a hability to communicate and exchange information. Psychography in particular is the ability that mediums have to lend their minds so that spirits can use them for writing including for manifesting artistic content. In this process, the spirit mentally induces ideas and concepts to the medium who can then either write with his own words what he perceives or use entire semantical expressions suggested by the spirit author. In this sense, we conceive the existence of a scale of mental transparency between the medium and the spirit author so that some mediums may faithfully replicate what the author intends to write while others only poorly transmit what they mentally listen or see. The use of poetic language, however, is a good indication of an efficient "channeling" process between the discarnate and the medium because subtle elements of identification may be transmitted. Automatic writing is the name given to a very specific kind of mediumship. The term "psychography" encompass a much broader kind of writing experience than automatic writing. Therefore the preference for this term by spiritists. 

An example of such phenomenon is Divaldo P. Franco (1927-) (2) collaboration with Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). According to Divaldo, he never heard about Tagore when he was first visited by his spirit in the year 1949. The episode is described by Divaldo himself as quoted in the book Semeador das Estrelas (3)  

In the year of the first psychographic works by Marco Prisco in 1949, I was lying on the bed a certain night when I heard a music of indefinable beauty played by a kind of zither. With the sound of such mournful and plangent music, I had a beautiful vision of grassy and flowered gardens severed by a brook of clear water on which a boat was sliding. On the boat a honorable entity dressing a white robe with a dark skin showed me a face with large, black and bright eyes and a blanched beard where silver threads could be seen. - "I'm Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet and wanted you to write some of my thoughts", said the spirit. I woke up immediately and got some material for the psychography, entering psychic trance after a while. I could still hear the beautiful and pervasive melody while I was writing. I confess that I never heard about that name before, nor had read anything on that spirit. From that night on, for a certain period, Tagore dictated several messages that were gathered in a book only published in 1965 entitled Filigranas de luz.

The author of "Stray Birds" (4) returned to sing new birds in books like Pássaros Livres ("Free Birds", 5) and Estesia ("Aesthesia"), after the first cited work Filigranas de Luz ("Watermarks of Light") in 1965. There are no English translations for the verses or texts (prose) in these books so I decided to provide rather sketchy versions from some excerpts below.   

It has been said that Tagore works in English do not faithfully represent their original beauty in Bengali (6). The famous Irish poet W. Butler Yeats (1865-1939) said "Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English" (6 and 7). Is it then possible that, by writing through Divaldo's mind, Tagore managed to convey his thoughts better than if he had used Bengali and then an English translator? Anyway, the original language here is Portuguese and is very probable that some noise exist in the Tagore-Franco "mental link" as in the poor translation that I provide. However, we can imagine the potential use of mediumship in the future when the great discarnate artist of the past could be back to transmit new works in the medium's own language.

For that aim, they need only a faithful medium instrument.

Free Birds

My singings are songs that the heart unfasten with rapture thrill.
My songs are melodies that tenderness liberates from my soul's depths and launches toward travelling winds to reach far distances.
My sensibility is sharpen by love and I release the sweet music of hope standing on the tiny window of my pettiness.
I spread through the air the scores of a pentagram chanted by life from the bottom of my being.
By searching my King and my Lord, I modulate my word, I call, I sing and implore.
Like free birds dressed in light they fly to reach open space toward the infinite.
During either the heavy monsoons or droughts, my birds in the same way sing in freedom, enhancing the landscape with sound and beauty.
My birds are living poems of love that liberate themselves from the narrow cage of emotion where they are born to earn the vastness, like birds of happiness.
Take my songs my Lord and convert them into peace carrying birds heralding the eternal springtime for all the unfortunate ones in the world.
So I will sing and mine will be poems and songs of immortal kind.

R. Tagore (Divaldo Franco's psychography. Original in Portuguese, Pássaros Livres, in Pássaros Livres, 5)

Place of love

In everyone there is
A bare, unfathomed
Soundless, deep
Spotless hedge.

In every being there remains
A holly and ignored
Never encroached,
Enriched of tenderness,
Watchful world.

In the abyss of every soul there is
A rock,
A place, an isle,
A paradise
A corner of wonder
To be discovered.

In every heart
Dawn takes an open space,
A wide field
To be worked on,
Land of God,
Place of dream,
A haven for the future.

In every life
There is place for more lives,
As on every happiness,
A sweet gloom hovers
Presaging distress.

There is a place in me however,
In the isle of my undisclosed feelings,
An abyss of longing,
An ocean of hapiness,
A cosmos of fantasy,
To offer you
My Lord!

Come my beloved
King and Lord
Master my mistress,
Lead me on the way
Of redemption.

And take this odd and lone land,
To reign and cast your heavenly lights upon it
And happily will I move forward
Until the end of my forces
Bound to your redeeming duty.

Come my King
Into my nook
And make my life
A hymn of service
And for you an everlasting
Song of love.

R. Tagore (Divaldo Franco psychography. Original in Portuguese, Lugar de Amor, in Pássaros Livres, 5)

Birds of recollections

My recollections reach the depth that my memory allows. 

They are like migrating birds which often run away from past winter, searching for the pleasant heat of current summer and hovering on greyish landscapes so difficult to be rebuilt. 

In the time of the ever fleeting today, they become the hallmark of permanence, covering the distances created by the relentless passage of time. 

Your presence shade me either with the sadness of commited mistakes or with the lights of ennobled actions like a magic kaleidoscope of returns and evasions. 

Tears of regret run down my eyes that a hot kiss of happiness wipes out when the birds of my recollections arrive. 

Yet, your presence reaches me up as much as the cage of my memories permits, setting them free.   

R. Tagore (Divaldo Franco's psychography. Original in Portuguese, Os pássaros das recordações, in Pássaros Livres)

Far away reality

I dreamed of a dream...

Where all was cheerfull and sweet fascination

Where pain, suffering, sadness and evil were diluted

like soap bubbles in the air of a singing spring.

Cascading rivers were coloured by rays of a long lasting light

and men, in chattering groups, 

Celebrated love.

Unsuspected communion was everywhere

and the work was voluntary.

The poetry of the good declaimed touching verses

that creatures used to better understand and complete themselves.

I recalled war and hate, plagues and punishments. 

But nobody answered me, 

when I asked the happy citizens of the paradise.

Young and wise they were all at their conquered ages,

beyond conquered times...

Neither shadows nor stains could I find

and I realized that the pervading and flickering glare

was born here and there,

never extinguished in a night of lying victory.

I dreamed about a dream of a future,

when the carriage of the King of Youth and Peace

will tear a road in the infinite toward the never end.

Beloved king, whom I wish so much, I always dream of you,

However, today I dreamed about a dream...

Reality came and woke me up,

and told me a song of hope:

Love and wait!

Tomorrow you will no longer dream

because your dream will ever be.

R. Tagore (Divaldo Franco's psychography. Original in Portuguese, Realidade distante, in Estesia)

When I left

When I left wishing to earn the world but never loosing peace, you said: "Go my son, I will be with you".
I was then very young. I strived to conquer everything...
At the door of a lodge adorned with orange blossoms I asked you: "Will you write me, my mother?"
And you replied: "I will send you my news, because I will always be with you".
I took infinite routes of time and waited for your letter that never arrived.
My hands became callous.
My feet bleeded.
My body bent down with the weight of time but your words never reached me.

Pouring monsoons came dozens of times and the burning of land killed the orchad dozen occasions.

I eagerly stood before the gate of hope, waiting for your news.

Now when the snow of the years decorates my head and my sight fades away with the glazing light, I came to realize that I am the letter and message you delivered to the world, my mother, so that hope and beauty never miss in the hearts.

R. Tagore (Divaldo Franco's psychography. In Pássaros Livres)

References

(1) A. Kardec (1861) "The Medium's book", Spiritist Vocabulary. Chapter 32.

(2) http://www.divaldofranco.net/

(3) S. C. Schubert (1989). O Semeador de Estrelas, "The Sower of Stars", 4th Ed., Published by Livraria Espírita Alvorada.

(4) http://www.kkoworld.com/kitablar/Rabindranat_Taqor_Kocheri_qushlar_eng.pdf (access May 2015)

(5) D. Franco (1990). Pássaros Livres. 2nd Edition. Ed. Livraria Espírita Alvorada.

(6) See Amartya Sen opinion cited in Wikipedia: "anyone who knows Tagore's poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations (made with or without Yeats's help). Even the translations of his prose works suffer, to some extent, from distortion." Originaly cited work: Sen, A. (1997), "Tagore and His India", The New York Review of Books.

(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore.

Academic study about the mediumship of Chico Xavier

The journal Explore (1) has recently published an article by Alexandre Caroli Rocha, Denise Paraná, Elizabeth Schmitt Freire, Francisco Lotufo Neto and Alexander Moreira-Almeida containing an interesting study about the mediumship of Chico Xavier.

Entitled "Investigating the Fit and Accuracy of Alleged Mediumistic Writing: A Case Study of Chico Xavier’s Letters", the work performed an analysis of 13 psychographic letters and searched for the degree of information accuracy in each of them against the chance of "normal" access by the medium to that information. The article abstract reads:

We identified 99 items of verifiable information conveyed in these 13 letters; 98% of these items were rated as “Clear and Precise Fit” and no item was rated as “no Fit.” We concluded that normal explanations for accuracy of the information (i.e., fraud, chance, information leakage, and cold reading) were only remotely plausible. These results seem to provide empirical support for non-reductionist theories of consciousness.

The complete article can be reached here: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(14)00108-6/abstract. The work was supported by FAPESP (see 2, process #2010/11047-0).

References

(1) http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(14)00108-6/abstract
(2) São Paulo Research Foundation: http://www.fapesp.br/en/

Spirit Message: Rebirth (by Urbain Grandier)

"Stop weeping, for she has not died, but is asleep." (Luke, VIII, 52)

Humankind, to you I address these words! To you, who say lost, those who try to read you future! To you, annihilated by unbelief, frozen by skeptical selfishness, befogged by doubt! On you, poor daughter of Jairus, many exclaim: "No use calling, the girl is dead !!!"

But the Master gets in the house and moving closer says: "Stop weeping, for she has not died, but is asleep!"

Humankind, near this deathbed, where passions bind you, the Master has deigned to approach and, followed by some of his dear ones, has extended to you his divine hands and said: "My child, get up and walk! Leave this lethargy, this apathy so common to those approaching death, get up and walk!"

Get up Humankind and leave this deathbed of agony, the cause of your sufferings! Leave selfshness that restricts and smothers your noble passions; leave your pride, the thirst of gold erasing the generous pulsation of your heart! Renounce hatred, the desire that binds you, get up! Shake the shroud that keeps you captive, ignorance and lack of faith!

Get up and awake with the mighty blow, the divine blow, and hey you are reborn, you are rewarmed, you are saved again. Now, is the material life far from you, because you are a soul, you are an intelligence that was brough back to life?

You are indeed so surprised with the aspirations you feel within, your amazed glance search for help and for a new pathway.

Here my daughter, here is the new path, the path of love, of hope and faith! Walk, the truth will be your guide, science will be your torch, compassion your support, perfection your goal!

Walk toward this light, the sunshine of a homeland, now reaching you. The light will lead you to this homeland where one lives by love, work and justice!

Walk, the spark of transformation has just fallen upon you, daughter of Jairus, poor humankind, and has made this obscure world a sun of truth, life and love!

Your day has come! In vain passions of despair fight to keep you captive, we extended our hands to you and neutrilized the effect, you can now shake the yoke!

This divine breath, this spark of life, this powerful hand extended to the Earth, you can now recognize my friends, it is Spiritism! This young, powerful and sound grafting coming out of the old trunk diverted; it is the sublime belief, such an enlightened and wise philosophy that will give devotion to the strong, help to the weak and happiness and piece to all!

Urbain Grandier (1, 2) 

August, 1874

References

(1) On the Spirit author: Urbain Grandier (1590-1634) was a French Catholic priest burned at the stake in the famous witchcraft case of the "Loudun Possessions". In fact he was a victim of the political turmoin in France at his time. His process was a fraud enacted  by Ursuline's nouns. More about Grandier can be read here. 240 years after his death, his spirit is back through Mrs. Krell as one of the authors in many Spiritualist articles about the future of Humankind and the new era of Spiritualism/Spiritism.

(2) Spirit communicaton by Mrs. W. Krell, "Rayonnements de la vie spirituelle". Original source and text in French:

http://spirite.free.fr/ouvrages/rayonnements/rayon.htm

Renaissance

Août 1874 « Cette fille n’est pas morte, elle n’est qu’endormie.» (St Luc).  

Humanité, c’est à toi que j’adresse ces paroles ! A toi, que disent perdue ceux qui essayent de lire dans ton avenir ! A toi, anéantie par l’incrédulité, glacée par le sceptique égoïsme, engourdie par le doute ! A toi, pauvre fille de Jaïre de laquelle chacun crie : « il n’est plus temps d’appeler, cette fille est morte !!! » 

Mais le maître entre dans la maison et s’approchant il dit : « non, cette fille n’est pas morte, elle n’est qu’endormie ! »  

Humanité, près de ce lit de mort où te retiennent les passions, le maître a daigné s’approcher, et suivi de quelques-uns des siens, il a étendu vers toi sa main divine en te disant : « ma fille, lève-toi et marche ! Sors de cette léthargie, de cette torpeur que tous prennent pour la mort, lève-toi et marche ! »  

Lève-toi, humanité, et laisse sur ce lit d’agonie les causes de ta souffrance ! Laisse l’égoïsme qui t’étreint et étouffe tes nobles aspirations ; laisse l’orgueil, la soif de l’or qui éteignent les palpitations généreuses de ton cœur ! Rejette la haine, l’envie qui te tiennent ; lève-toi ! Secoue le suaire qui te retient captive, c’est l’ignorance, c’est le manque de foi !  

Lève-toi, je t’ai éveillée par un souffle puissant, un souffle divin et te voilà vivifiée, te voilà réchauffée, te voilà sauvée. Loin de toi maintenant la seule vie matérielle, car c’est une âme, c’est une intelligence que je viens de rendre à la vie ?  

En effet, tu es surprise des aspirations que tu sens au-dedans de toi-même et ton regard, étonné, cherche un appui et un chemin.  

Voici ma fille, voici la voie nouvelle pour toi, la voie d’amour, d’espoir et de foi ! Marche, la vérité sera ton guide, la science ton flambeau, la charité ton soutien, la perfection ton but !  

Marche vers cette lumière, rayon du soleil de la patrie, qui arrive aujourd’hui jusqu’à toi, elle te reconduira vers cette même patrie où l’on vit d’amour, de travail et de justice !  

Marche, l’étincelle qui doit te transformer vient de tomber sur toi, ô fille de Jaïre, pauvre humanité, et faire de ce monde obscur un soleil de vérité, de vie et d’amour !  

Ton jour est venu ! C’est en vain que les passions luttent avec la rage du désespoir pour te retenir, en étendant la main vers toi j’ai neutralisé leur effet mortel et dès maintenant tu pourras secouer le joug !  

Ce souffle divin, cette étincelle de vie, cette main puissante étendue sur le monde terrestre, vous l’avez compris, ô mes amis, c’est le spiritisme ! C’est cette jeune greffe saine et vigoureuse, sortant du vieux tronc dévié, c’est cette croyance sublime, cette philosophie éclairée et sage qui donnera aux forts le dévouement, aux faibles l’appui, à tous, le bonheur et la paix !  

Urbain Grandier. 

New article about Rosemary Brown in SKL (by Érico Bomfim)

Physical effect are really able to impress the senses, but intelligent effects carry the traces that help to reconstruct the underlying author's personality with much more clarity. (E. Bomfim)

A new article by Erico Bomfim, "Rosemary Brown and psychic art" has been posted in the SKL repository. The article briefly reviews the history of the remarkable British medium composer Rosemary Brown and analyses, from an initial musicologist point of view, her work.

Article content.

1. Introduction.
2. Rosemary Brown versus Fritz Kreisler.
3. Stories of the subconsious mind.
4. Psychic art as evidence of survival.
5. References.

Some excerpts of Bomfim's manuscript are reproduced below.

"Rosemary Brown was the greatest musical medium ever. In a time span of only six years, Rosemary Brown composed more than 400 music pieces. And not only music for piano, but also songs and parts of other quartets, concerts and symphonies, besides the beginning of an opera."

"To elaborate the musical material that Rosemary Brown brought to the world, it would be necessary a deep knowledge about a variety of different styles, in all their subtleties that distinguish them. The domination of composition techniques would also be required in order to build a well structured work from the formal point of view, what would probably be equally - or even more - difficult than simply knowing the styles. In short, to compose all Brown's musical pieces, knowledge from distinct musicologists plus the ability of a mature composer would be mandatory. But Rosemary Brown was not neither one person nor group of persons. Therefore the strength of her case."

"Psychic art, as a proof of survival, has a very peculiar value depending of the degree of sophistication and content. Since the spirit is the intelligent principle and true source, an intelligent effect (the very artwork) is an evidence of survival stronger than physical effects such as raps and other material phenomena. Physical effect are really able to impress the senses, but intelligent effects carry the traces that help to reconstruct the underlying author's personality with much more clarity. Those who read an automatic letter or enjoy a work of art have the clear impression that the true author has survived and is doing well."

People cited in the article:

Fritz Kreisler (1865-1972)

Otto Maria Carpeaux (1900-1978)

See reference below for the full article.

Reference

SKL#05 E. Bomfim. Rosemary Brown and psychic art.(2013)

Related materials

Two compositions inspired by F. Chopin through Rosemary Brown (performed by Erico Bomfim).

Performance of a lost fragment of psychic sonata attributed to the spirit of W. A.Mozart (by Érico Bomfim).

Spiritist Knowldege Letters.

First study on the statistics of Chico Xavier automatic writing messages

Fig. 1 Brazilian postage stamp released in 2010 in commemoration to Xavier´s birthday.  

Read more about Chico Xavier mediumship by clicking here (access to SKL repository).

Introduction

Brazil has a spiritualist tradition that dates back to the beginning of Spiritualism. The Spiritualist movement in Brazil is known as Spiritism and started after several works on psychic phenomena that flourish around Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804-1869) in the third quarter of the XIX century in France. Allan Kardec, as Rivail was to be known later, introduced a set of Spiritualist principles (Kardec, 1985) encompassing not only the basic precepts of Spiritualism such as life after death, the possibility of communication between the material and the ‘invisible’ worlds, but alto the belief in reincarnation. Granted the stable existence of many Spiritist groups in Brazil, many mediums found a highly favorable environment for the development of their faculties starting with physical manifestations (Ana Prado (Faria, 1921), Peixotinho (Palhano, 1997), Mirabelli (Palhano, 1994)) to mental mediumship. Automatic writing or psychography (Braude, 2003; Oxon, 1878; Piper, 1929) can be described as the most prominent feature of many Brazilian Spiritist mental mediums, resulting in the publication of many ‘channeled’ books and works.  

   

Roughly speaking, this material can be divided in two groups: texts covering the principles of Spiritualism from its inception in Brazil to the present date and a vast collection of psychic or ‘channeled’ works that describe the relationship between the Spiritist movement and the afterlife. If we focus on material of paranormal origin, one figure must be distinguished: that of Francisco Cândido Xavier (1910-2002, Fig. 1). His works still remain to be carefully scrutinized and better understood not only as an anthropological phenomenon but also as notorious evidence in favor of the survival of consciousness.  The aim of this short summary is to present one of the first attempts to analyzed a very small set of his works that were published in several grief counseling books (Arantes, 2007; Barbosa, 1982, 1998, 1998b, 2008; Xavier, 1981, 1983) and that contain a peculiar period of his life. During this phase he produced many correspondences addressed to relatives on Earth from recently departed personalities. Texts attributed to such authors contain a large amount of information that cannot be easily explained by alternative hypothesis (i.e., that deny consciousness survival) and that shows the high degree of development that mental mediumship can achieve in a well-trained metal medium.

  

Xavier´s short biography

The first name ‘Francisco’ has a short form, ‘Chico’. Chico Xavier, as he was later known (Playfair, 2010; Leite, 2002; Grumbach, 2010; Filho, 2010), wrote more than 400 books and virtually thousands letters or communications attributed to recently deceased persons through automatic writing. Xavier mediumship started very early when he was about 5 and described to his relatives frequent visits of his deceased mother Maria João de Deus. Public notoriety came in 1932 with the book ‘Parnassus from beyond the grave’ in which Xavier (then at the age 22) presented a vast repertoire of poems attributed to Brazilian and Portuguese authors obtained through automatic writing (Rocha, 2001). By the late 60´s Xavier dedicated a considerable amount of his time to private correspondences as we explain below.

Statistics and psychography in other languages

TAble 1.

In a recent paper (Xavier, 2011), we analyzed the pragmatic and intentional content of these ‘private correspondences’ attributed to a large number of authors (Grumbach, 2010). Grief counseling was the aim of these paranormal compositions from the perspective of parents and relatives who sought the medium after a recent loss.  Using some basic elements of linguistic analysis, we showed how pragmatics and intention are present in those writings and how they contribute to build a convincing image of the possibility of communication with discarnate personalities. In fact, several hierarchical aspects (Rigotti, 2006) are present in a written communications in general (morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and intention), but in automatic writings, such aspects become especially relevant in face of our complete ignorance on regard to the mechanism involved (Beischel, 2009). Thus, if in a message, many names of living relatives are found, such names must be taken into account as instances of morphological importance. If the medium uses words and sentences similar to those attributed to the diseased author, these are examples of private semantic content. Moreover, if the medium communicates intentional messages in the form of sentences of pragmatic value, a high level of interaction is probably taking place that is most easily explained in the context of survivalist hypothesis. Therefore, these correspondences build a dramatic case in favor of survival, given the large number of Xavier´s documented reports, which are however a tiny fraction of what was produced during a period of almost 40 years.

Fig. 2 (a) Distribution of number of words; (b) Distribution of author's age.

We present here a study of statistical content where we have analyzed the content of 113 letters attributed to 87 different authors (Barbosa, 1982, 1998, 1998b, 2008; Xavier, 1981, 1983). Almost all messages were written in the native language of the medium (Portuguese), with exception of 2 cases written in Italian. Table 1 contains general statistical figures extracted from the sample. The total number of words in each letter is approximated by a numerical estimation based on the word density (length and width of each text). The table has two parts. The general statistics lists the total number of analyzed letters, the total number of authors and average and standard deviations for the average number of words per letter as well as the expected distribution of author´s age at the time of their death. A large variation in the letter´s length and author age was found. Maximum letter length in the sample was 1467 words and the minimum was 26. Maximum author age was 85 while the minimum was 3. In the case of very young children, two aspects must be regarded: a) the annotated age is the author’s age at the time of death, while the automatic writing communication was obtained several months or years later; b) in many communication of young children the signed name is only an alias of the true author who is often quoted in the letters as a close relative; c) In the vast majority of letters, grandmothers and grandfathers (and also grand-grand mothers and fathers) from both family sides are the diseased ‘contacts’ or ‘hosts’ in the spirit world. Authorship inference comes from the context (also from the presence of known relative names) and pragmatic content of each letter that was later validated by the families. Another interesting statistics is presented in the second part of Table 1, which brings the average number of citations of ‘living’ and ‘deceased’ people in the letters together with their corresponding standard deviations. The total number of citations of ‘living’ relatives in the analyzed sample is 526 and names of diseased ones are 414. An interesting aspect of our analysis is the large number of nicknames (both belonging to the ‘living’ and ‘deceased’ counterparts), 151. So, at least one nickname per letter is found in the sample. Many old family first names (and most certainly nicknames) were not on the minds of those to whom the letters were addressed. Moreover, given the environment where these correspondences were obtained, almost none previous knowledge on the part of the medium can be assumed which would involve an impossible network of information acquisition as many skeptics have suggested.  Rather, they demonstrate the degree of information and detail a well-trained medium in automatic writing can provide.

Fig.3 Distribution of causes of death encountered in the sample.

Fig 2(a) is the distribution histogram of letter´s length where each bin in the abscissa is the maximum number of words found (thus 20% of the letters have more than 314.2 and less than 458.3 words). Fig.2(b) is the age distribution of attributed authors. Therefore, 5% of the letters are attributed to authors under 11 years old. Fig. 3 is the distribution of author´s causes of death. The large frequency of car crash causes is directly related to high frequency of authors between 20 and 30 years old.

Fig. 4 Automatic writing in Italian attributed to Alberto Corradi.

To give an example of automatic writing in a different language (therefore in completely distinct linguistic framework), we regard in the following a letter attributed to Alberto Corradi (1958-1978) (Barbosa, 2008). The original text is in Italian (see Fig. 4), includes the attributed author signature and was obtained in a sitting at Uberaba/MG, Brazil, on March 16 1979, almost 10 month after Corradi death in a motorcycle accident in Italy, on May 1978. A version of this message in English (parts 1-4) is as follows:

 “My mother, dear beloved mommy Ebe. I ask you not to cry any more. Your tears are like flames of pain in my heart. I stay here with my beloved grand-grandma Tina and my grand-grandpa Amadei . Keep calm. God is with us. A kiss of your son to you and my dad. Alberto Corradi.” 

Alberto’s parents lived in Torino, Italy and came to Brazil to try a message from Alberto. The relatives quoted in the message are Alberto’s father grandparents, Mr. Vittorio Amadei  and Mrs. Tina Amadei (bisnono and bisnona as stated in the message, respectively).

Final Remarks

   

Many researchers in the past relied upon evidences coming from physical phenomena in favor of survival and the possibility of communication with the afterlife. However, given the preeminent communication aspect of many mental mediumship manifestations exhibiting a rich pragmatic and intentional content, it is probably more correct to say that mental mediumship provides today the best evidences for the survivalist idea. Xavier´s prolific automatic writing works contain a large amount of information gathered through paranormal ways that is best explained under the assumption of an unseen world that can be put in contact with the physical world. Such material is still little known outside a very narrow domain of the Spiritist community in Brazil and includes a private correspondences or letters that contain a large amount of family specific information. The aim of this paper is to call attention to the existence of this material, which may represent one of the best registered cases of confirmed paranormal acquisition of information in favor of the survival idea.

 
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Alexandre Caroli Rocha for useful discussions and references.

References

Arantes H. M. (2007), Vozes da Outra Margem, 7th edition, Araras: Instituto de Difusão Espírita;

Barbosa E. (1982), Quem São, 7th edition, Araras: Instituto de Difusão Espírita;

Barbosa E. (1998), Estamos no Além, 11th edition, Araras: Instituto de Difusão Espírita;

___1998b, Horas de Luz, 5th edition, Araras: Instituto de Difusão Espírita;

Barbosa E. (2008), Claramente Vivos, 9th edition, Araras: Instituto de Difusão Espírita;

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