The physical sensations of hunger, pain, fear and thirst, or moral sensations, such as anger, envy or hurt that the Spirits say they feel, for Kardec, are very strong impressions that the soul keeps during bodily life and, therefore, in erraticism it preserves the more or less strong impression of these sensations.

In an analogy, these sensations are as a tattoo imprinted on the Spirit that, always or almost always, will remember that mark.

All of this, incidentally, meets Kardec's idea that the Spirit is the seat of feelings and emotions. Recent studies - already post Kardec - on the spontaneous memories that some children have of their past existences confirm that it is in the Spirit that the letters of the book of existences are written.

And these memories are so intense, they are so “tattooed” in the Spirit that, even wearing another physical body, the memory exists, with the most curious details and circumstances regarding the facts that were remarkable for the Spirit in that previous existence.

The researchers involved in this theme report that, in general, one of the strongest memories of these children are, precisely, the moments that involved their deaths, especially if these deaths were due to tragic causes.

The body is already another, however, beyond the body there is the memory that remains as a part of the soul's biography.

It is like a book, which we read constantly, mainly the most moving pages. The book is the Spirit, and the memories are the written pages that, when reread, give us the impression that we are experiencing those moments again.

Well then...

After receiving the invitation for a lecture and addressing the theme sensation and perception of the Spirits, we decided to check the sensations and perceptions not of the Spirits, but of the Mediums.

Do the Mediums feel the same sensations that the Spirits say they feel when establishing contact?

If, for example, the Spirit reports being cold, can this sensation be transmitted to the medium?

It is a very exciting subject to investigate what mediums feel. Therefore, we went into the field to ask the mediums about their sensations and perceptions in contact with the Spirits.

Are you happy? Sad? Do you feel distress? Do you feel pain?

We collected, in this research, with the participation of 66 mediums, interesting observations that could give rise to a little more robust and in-depth studies of this agenda.

The work included 7 questions for the mediums to answer.

The first question was to check, in general, what are the sensations that mediums feel in the mediumistic exchange.

At this stage, the mediums reported feeling the most diverse sensations. In all, 17 sensations were catalogued, with emphasis on tachycardia, present in 9 responses.

It seems that, despite the many answers, there are some common issues to at least most mediums.

Tachycardia - 9 quotes

Neck tension - 4 quotes

Cold - 4 quotes

Tingling - 3 quotes

Willingness to write – 3 quotes

Body grow – 3 quotes.

In the second question, we seek to know what mediums feel when they establish contact with Spirits in a situation of suffering.

Let us see below the most cited words:

Pains 14 times.

Anguish 9 times.

Fear 5 times

Anger 7 times.

Sadness 7 times

Willingness to cry 7 times.

We emphasize that the mediums, in their majority, mentioned feeling more than one sensation. Example: body aches, cold and anger. Or fear, anguish, anger and want to cry.

In the third question, we intend to know the sensations of the mediums when there is contact with a Spirit in a healthy condition in the Spirits' world.

The most mentioned words were:

Peace -13 quotes

Tranquility - 6 quotes

Lightness – 5 quotes

As in the previous question, the mediums did not say they only felt a sensation, but always a “combo” of sensations, such as peace, lightness, tranquility, or good feelings, balance, happiness.

Two mediums reported that they feel nothing, they just see the expansion of their visual field and then, from that, they make direct contact with these Spirits.

We divided the sensations into two groups and called them as follows:

Physical sensations and moral sensations.

Our intention is to identify which of these sensations causes the most impact for the medium. We naturally place hunger, thirst and pain in general, etc. as physical sensations.

As sensations of a moral order, we place: anger, hurt, jealousy, anguish, envy, and so on.

In question number 4, we address physical sensations. Do the mediums feel the physical sensations that the Spirits say they feel?

66.2% said they felt the sensations of hunger, thirst, pain and cold.

33.8% said they did not feel these sensations in the mediumistic exchange.

In question 5, we went to the moral sensations, which, as stated above, are anger, hurt, envy, jealousy, sadness, etc.

With the sensations that we conventionally call moral we have the following results:

81.5% of the mediums said they felt.

18.5% of the mediums reported feeling nothing.

In question 6, we seek to compare the vigor of physical and moral sensations. In case the medium feels them, which one would be the strongest one?

We obtained the following numbers:

78.5% reported being the strongest moral sensations.

21.5% believed that physical sensations are the most powerful.

We still leave question number 7 for the free expression of mediums.

We will bring, here, some reports in a much-summarized form and that may give rise to deeper studies.

A medium says that, in the mediumistic meeting, he was instructed to repress the aggressive behavior of a Spirit. However, when repressing the aggressive behavior of the Spirit, the medium fell into an unconscious trance on three occasions and, according to him, the Spirit manifested itself against his will. After the three events, the medium reported that his mediumship was suspended, and no Spirit, not even the aggressive one, communicated again through him over the course of a few months.

We commented that: In the process of mediumistic exchange, Kardec always puts the protagonist in the Spirit, leaving the medium as a supporting role, even because, if the Spirit does not want to manifest itself, nothing will happen, no matter how powerful the mediumistic faculty is. Perhaps this is the case above, the Spirits showing that they will be able to promote or not the communications with the mediums that best offer them conditions for this, and that they consider most opportune at that moment.

Other reports that caught our attention regard the medium’s feeling an expansion of his physical body: as if the hands, feet and head were assuming, in the mediumistic exchange, a size much larger than normal.

The opposite has also been reported, that is, the medium's hands, feet and entire body decrease to the point where things around him seem gigantic.

A hypothesis that we can raise for this question is the expansion property of the perispirit, whose medium, naturally, begins to feel in contact with the Spirits, having the sensation that their physical organs increase or decrease in size.

Some deductions from the answers given by the mediums:

1 – Spirits transmit their sensations to mediums and some feel them according to the more or less advanced degree of their mediumistic perception. This may perhaps explain the reason why some mediums do not feel these physical or moral effects felt by the Spirits, and the fact that these sensations are more or less potent for some mediums than for others.

2 – Moral sensations, such as anger, hurt; jealousy and sadness are stronger in most mediums than physical sensations, represented by hunger, thirst, cold and fear. Moral sensations are, for the Spirits, a more potent source of suffering and happiness, it is natural, and therefore that they keep this coherence when transmitted to the medium, and this, in turn, perceives them more clearly and intensely than the physical sensations.

3 – We also noticed a greater number of sensations found in the interchange with suffering Spirits compared to healthier Spirits. These last ones basically bring sensations very similar to the mediums and that can be summarized in a single word: peace.

In short, here are, in this text, some impressions about the questionnaire that we apply to mediums. Other annotations and perceptions of this work may appear, not least because it is a fertile theme and still little explored.

It may be, therefore, that this article gains more body, more observations, being, then, enriched, or, who knows, it may gain part 2 and 3.