Is a presentiment always a warning from the spirit guardian? you may ask. A presentiment is a counsel privately addressed to you by a spirit who wishes you well. The same may be said of the intuition which decides the choice of his next existence by a spirit about to reincarnate himself; the voice of instinct is of the same nature. A spirit, before incarnating himself, is aware of the principal phases of his new existence, that is to say, of the kind of trials to which he is about to subject himself. When these are of a marked character he preserves, in his inner consciousness, a sort of impression respecting them, and this impression, which is the voice of instinct, becoming more vivid as the critical moment draws near, becomes presentiment. Whenever presentiments or impressions are somewhat vague or you are not in doubt always invoke your Astral Guides or spirit protectors or beseech and implore the Almighty God, who is our common Master, to send to you a spirit guide or messenger. I will teach you how to do this further on in these writings of Spiritism. Warnings from Spirit Life are not given solely for your moral guidance alone, but they are given in reference to everything that concerns you.

Your spirit guardians endeavor to lead you to take, in regard to everything that you have to do, the best possible course; but you often close your ears to their friendly counsels and thus get yourselves into trouble through your own fault. Our protecting spirits aid us by their counsels and by awakening the voice of our conscience; but as we do not always attach sufficient importance to these hints, they give us more direct warnings through the persons about us. Let a man reflect upon the various circumstances of his life, fortunate or unfortunate, and he will see that, on many occasions, he received advice which, had he followed it, would have spared him a good deal of annoyance. You erroneously imagine that the action of spirits can only be manifested by extraordinary phenomena; you would have spirits come to your aid by means of miracles, and you imagine them to be always armed with a sort of magic wand. Such is not the case; all that is done though usually takes place without your being aware of it. Thus, for instance, they bring about the meeting of two persons who seem to have been brought together by chance; they suggest to the mind of some one the idea of going in a particular direction.

They call your attention to some special point, if the action on your part thus led up to it by their suggestion, unperceived by you, and will bring about the result they seek to obtain. In this way, each man supposes himself to be obeying only his own impulse and thus always preserves the freedom of his will. Spirits possess the power of acting upon matter and they can bring about incidents that will insure the accomplishment of a given event. As an illustration, a person is destined to die in a certain way, at a certain time. He gets into a boat and is drowned. Spirits do not really upset the boat in order to accomplish the destiny previously accepted or imposed upon this man. For while spirits have the power of acting upon matter and causing what is termed in India "objective change" but only for the carrying out of the laws of nature, and not for derogating from them by causing the production at a given moment of some unforeseen event, in opposition to these laws. In the case which I have cited, the boat upturns because the waves are too rough for it or the man within it is ignorant of the science of handling it.

But as it was the destiny of this man to be killed in this way, the spirits about him will have put into his mind the idea of getting into a boat that will sink down under his weight and his death will thus have taken place naturally and without any miracle having been required to bring it about. Let us take another illustration; one in which the ordinary conditions of matter would seem to be insufficient to account for the occurrence of a given event A man is destined to be killed by lightning. He is overtaken by a storm, and seeks refuge under a tree; the lightning strikes the tree, and he is killed. Is it by spirits that the thunderbolt has been made to fall, and to fall upon this particular man?

The explanation of this case is the same as that of the former one. The lightning has fallen on the tree at this particular moment, because it was in accordance with the laws of nature that it should do so. The lightning was not made to fall upon the tree because the man was under it, but the man was inspired with the idea of taking refuge under a tree upon which the lightning was about to fall; for the tree would have been struck all the same, whether the man had been under it or not. An ill-intentioned person hurls against some one a projectile which passes close by him but does not touch him. The missile, in such a case, has been turned aside by some friendly spirit, for if the individual aimed at were not destined to be struck, a friendly spirit would have suggested to him the thought of turning aside from the path of the missile, or would have acted on his enemy's sight in such a way as to make him take a bad aim; for a projectile, when once impelled on its way, necessarily follows the line of its projection.

Many evil spirits take pleasure in causing vexations which serve as trials for the exercise of your patience; but they tire of this game when they see that they do not succeed in ruffling you. But it would neither be just or correct to charge them with all your disappointments, the greater number of which are caused by your own heedlessness. When your crockery is broken, the breakage is much more likely to have been caused by your own awkwardness than by spirit-action. There are some evil spirits who annoy an individual and torment him from pure personal animosity. There are others who vex a person without their having any particular reason or aim simply to gratify their malice. In some cases these spirits are enemies whom an individual has made during his present earth life and who pursue him accordingly; others act without any fixed motive. Those spirits or souls whom a man has harmed while they lived in the body usually revenge the wrong he has done them and in many cases they continue to pursue him with their animosity, if God permits them to do so, as a continuation of his trial, and the only way for him to escape their persecution is by praying for them, because by thus rendering them good for evil, you gradually bring them to see that they are in the wrong.