Spiritist Journal — Journal of Psychological Studies — 1858 > May > Theory of Physical Manifestations I

In this Spiritist Magazine, Allan Kardec states that it is easy to conceive of the moral influence of the Spirits and the relationships they may have with our soul, or with the Spirit incarnated in us. It is understandable that two beings of the same nature can communicate through thought, which is one of their attributes, without the aid of the organs of speech. It is, however, already more difficult to realize the material effects that they can produce, such as noises, the movement of solid bodies, apparitions and, above all, tangible apparitions.

The Theory of Manifestations defended by Kardec

The theory that Kardec defends is that the Spirit, being immaterial by definition, still has something of matter, because if it had nothing, it would be nothing.

Incarnated in the body, the Spirit constitutes the soul. When he leaves it, with death, he is not stripped of all the envelope. We are all told that they retain the form they had when they were alive; indeed, when they appear to us, it is usually in the form in which we knew them.

Let us observe them attentively as they leave life: they are in a state of disturbance; around you everything is confused; they see their own body, whole or mutilated, according to the type of death. On the other hand, they see and feel themselves alive; something tells them that this is their body, but they don't understand how they can be separate. The bond that united them is not yet completely broken.

After the moment of disturbance, the spirit sees itself free from the carnal envelope that served it as a cage, which it was divested of without regret, but continues to see itself in its primitive form. 

Certain manifestations produced by Mr. Home and by other mediums of the same kind occur with the appearance of hands that have all the properties of the living ones, which we touch, which hold us and which suddenly dissolve.

What are we to conclude from this? See the most outstanding concepts present in the Magazine:

The soul and the perispirit

The soul does not leave everything in the coffin: it takes something with it.

There are two kinds of matter in us: a gross one, which constitutes the outer envelope; the other subtle and indestructible. Death is the destruction, or rather the disintegration of the first, of that abandoned by the soul; the other stands out and follows the soul, which thus always continues to have an envelope.

We call this envelope perispirit. This subtle matter, as it were, extracted from all the parts of the body to which it was attached during life, retains its form. This is why all spirits are seen and why they appear to us as they were in life.

The perispirit does not have the tenacity or rigidity of the compact matter of the body: it is flexible and expansive. This is why the form it takes, even though it is based on that of the body, is not absolute: it bends to the will of the Spirit, which gives it, as it wishes, this or that appearance, while the solid envelope offers it an insurmountable resistance. .

Untangling itself from this obstacle that compressed it, the perispirit stretches or contracts; it transforms itself and, in a word, lends itself to all metamorphoses, according to the will that acts upon it.

Kardec points out that, through extensive studies, the subtle matter that constitutes the second envelope of the Spirit only gradually detaches itself from the body, and not instantly.

That said, experience still proves that the duration of this detachment varies with individuals. In some it takes three or four days, while in others it is not completed until after several months.

How does the separation of the Spirit occur after the death of the body?

In some people, separation begins before death: they are those who, in life, were elevated by thought and the purity of their feelings, above material things.

In them death finds only weak bonds between soul and body, which are broken almost instantly. The more materially man lived; the more his thoughts have been absorbed in the pleasures and worries of the personality, the more tenacious are those bonds. It seems that subtle matter is identified with compact matter and that a molecular cohesion is established between them. This is why they only separate slowly and with difficulty.

In the first moments after death, when there is still union between the body and the perispirit, the latter preserves much better the impression of the corporeal form, which, so to speak, reflects all the nuances and even all the accidents. This is why one of the victims told us, a few days after his execution: If you could see me, you would see me with my head separated from my torso. A man who had been murdered told us: Look at the wound they made in my heart. He thought we might see him.

Sensation of the Spirits

Let us imagine the Spirit clothed in its semi-material envelope, or perispirit, having the form or appearance that he had when he was alive. Some even use this expression to designate themselves: my appearance is in such a place. The matter of this envelope is subtle enough to escape our sight in its normal state, but it is not completely invisible. To begin with, we see it through the eyes of the soul, in the visions produced during dreams. But that's not what we want to deal with. In this etherealized matter there can be a modification; the Spirit itself can make it undergo a kind of condensation that makes it perceptible to the eyes of the body. This is what happens in vaporous apparitions. The subtlety of this matter allows it to pass through solid bodies, which is why such apparitions encounter no obstacles and why they so often disappear through walls.

Condensation can go so far as to produce resistance and tangibility. This is the case with hands that we can see and touch. But this condensation - and this is the only word we can use, to give an idea, albeit imperfect, of our thought - this condensation, we were saying, or even this solidification of ethereal matter, is only temporary or accidental, because this condensation it's not your normal state. This is why, at a given moment, tangible apparitions escape us like a shadow. Thus, in the same way that a body appears to us in a solid, liquid or gaseous state, depending on the degree of condensation, so the ethereal matter of the perispirit can appear to us in a solid, visible vapor or invisible vaporous state.

How does spiritual matter appear to us?

The apparent, tangible hand offers resistance: it exerts pressure, leaves impressions, operates a traction on the objects we hold. There is, therefore, a force in it. Now, these facts, which are not hypotheses, can lead us to the explanation of physical manifestations.

Let us note, first of all, that this hand obeys an intelligence, since it acts spontaneously; it gives unmistakable signs of a will and obeys a thought: it therefore belongs to a complete being, which only shows us that part of itself, and the proof is that it produces impressions with the invisible parts; teeth leave marks on the skin and produce pain.

Among the various manifestations, one of the most interesting is, without a doubt, the spontaneous playing of musical instruments. Pianos and accordions are apparently the instruments of choice. This phenomenon is explained very naturally by the foregoing. The hand that has the strength to pick up an object may also have the strength to press down on the keys and make them sound. In fact, on several occasions we saw the fingers in action, and when the hand is not seen, the keys are seen moving and the bellows stretching and closing. The keys can only be moved by an invisible hand, which shows intelligence, playing perfectly rhythmic arias and not incoherent sounds.

Since that hand can dig its nails into our flesh, pinch us, snatch what we have in our hand; since we see her pick up and carry an object, just as we would, she can also hit us, lift and knock down a table, ring a bell, pull a curtain, and even give us an invisible slap.

You will perhaps ask how this hand, in the vaporous invisible state, can have the same strength as in the tangible state. And why not? Do we see air topple buildings, gas launch projectiles, electricity transmit signals, magnet fluid lift masses? Why would the ethereal matter of the perispirit be less powerful? But we don't want to subject it to our laboratory experiments and our algebraic formulas. Mainly because we have taken gases as a term of comparison, we will not attribute identical properties to them, nor compute their strength in the same way as we calculate that of steam. So far it eludes all our instruments. It is a new order of ideas, outside the scope of the exact sciences. That is why these sciences do not offer us the special ability to appreciate them.

the movement of bodies

We give this theory of the movement of solid bodies under the influence of spirits only to show the matter in all its aspects and to prove that, without departing too far from received ideas, it is possible to realize the action of spirits on inert matter. There is, however, another, of high philosophical scope, given by the Spirits themselves, which sheds an entirely new light on this problem. It will be better understood after you have read it. In fact, it is useful to know all the systems in order to be able to compare them.

It remains now to explain how this modification of the ethereal substance of the perispirit takes place; by what process does the Spirit operate and, consequently, the role of mediums of physical influence in the production of these phenomena; what in such circumstances happens to them; the cause and nature of his faculties, &c.

This is what will be done in the next article.

Mr. Home III

Mr. Home was always mentioned by Allan Kardec as a medium with special and surprising abilities, but nothing was imposed on him about apparition phenomena. In this Spiritist Magazine, Kardec tells us a little more about other faculties and the phenomena arising from it in other mediums. To conclude, we will still cite extra facts that he called varieties.

Kardec asks himself: why are hands and not other parts of the body materialized? However, there are reports of mediums who make the whole body appear.

The hands

In general, the appearance of the hand is manifested under the tablecloth, by ripples produced when covering the entire surface. Then he shows himself to the edges of the towel, which she lifts; sometimes he comes to stand on the tablecloth, right in the middle of the table; other times he takes an object and takes it under the towel. This hand, visible to all, is neither vaporous nor translucent: it has a natural color and opacity; on the wrist, it ends indefinitely. If someone touches it without hostile ulterior motives, it offers resistance, solidity and the impression of a living hand; its warmth is mild, somewhat damp. It is not absolutely inert, because it acts, lends itself to the movements that are imprinted on it, or resists, caresses us, or squeezes us. If, on the contrary, we want to catch it abruptly and by surprise, we will only find emptiness.

Cases that involve them

case 1

He held a table bell between his fingers; hand, invisible at first, and shortly afterwards perfectly visible, came to take it, making efforts to snatch it away; having failed to do so, he proceeded to pull it over, in order to make it slip. The pulling effort was as sensitive as any human hand would have been. Having tried to grip that hand violently, his only found air; having opened his fingers, the bell remained suspended in the air and came slowly to rest on the floor.

case 2

Several people were gathered around one of those dining-room tables that split in two. Beats are heard; the table shakes, opens by itself, and through the crack appear three hands: one normal-sized, one very large, and a third very hairy. They touch them, feel them, they shake hands with the bystanders and then dissolve.

case 3

At the home of one of the friends who had lost a child at an early age, what appears is the hand of a newborn. Everyone can see and touch it. This child sits on the mother's lap, who distinctly feels the impression of her whole body on her knees.

the hands that write

The hand that appears can also write. Sometimes she stops in the middle of the table, takes a pencil and traces the letters on prepared paper. Most of the time, though, he takes the paper under the table and returns it all written down. If the hand becomes invisible, the writing seems to produce itself. In this way, answers to the various questions that can be asked are obtained.

Hands that play instruments

Another genre of manifestations, no less remarkable, but which can be explained by what we have just said, is that of musical instruments that play alone. They are usually pianos or accordions. In such circumstances, the keys are distinctly seen to move, as well as the bellows. The hand that touches is sometimes visible, sometimes invisible. The aria that is heard can be known and played on request. If the invisible artist is left to his own devices, he produces harmonious chords, the effect of which is reminiscent of the vague, soft melody of the Aeolian harp.

In a subscriber's house, where such phenomena occurred many times, the spirit that manifested itself was that of a young man who had died some time ago, a friend of the family who, when alive, revealed remarkable musical talent. The nature of the arias he preferred to play left no doubt as to his identity to all who had known him.

Conclusion

The most extraordinary fact in this genre of manifestations is not, in Kardec's opinion, the appearance. If it were always aeriform, it would be compatible with the ethereal nature that we attribute to spirits. Now, there is nothing to oppose this etherealized matter becoming perceptible to the eye, by a kind of condensation, without losing its vaporous property. The strangest thing is the solidification of this same matter, resistant enough to leave a visible impression on our organs. In the next issue we will explain this singular phenomenon, according to the teaching of the Spirits themselves. On that date, they limited themselves to deducing a consequence related to the spontaneous playing of musical instruments. In fact, since the occasional tangibility of this etherealized matter is an established fact, and since in such a state the hand, apparent or not, offers sufficient resistance to exert pressure on solid bodies, it is not surprising that it can exert pressure on solid bodies. enough to move the keys on an instrument. On the other hand, no less positive facts proved that this hand belongs to an intelligent being. No wonder, then, that this intelligence manifested itself through musical sounds, since it could do so through writing and drawing.

Once entered into this order of ideas, the vibrating beats, the movement of objects and all spiritist phenomena of a material order are explained very naturally.

varieties

Let's go to the second part of this post. Kardec shows dissatisfaction with the criticisms attributed to Mr. Home in the following terms:

Malice against Mr. home

In certain individuals malevolence knows no bounds. Slander always has poison against everyone who rises above the crowd. The opponents of Mr. Home thought that ridicule is a very fragile weapon: it should dent itself against the respectable names that surround it with their protection. Since they could not laugh at his expense, they sought to denigrate him. They spread the rumor, with the objective that we well understand and the bad tongues repeat it that Mr. Home had not left for Italy, as had been announced, but that he was in the prison of Mazas, under the weight of serious accusations, which are told as anecdotes, of which the idle and the friends of scandal are always avid.

We can say that there is nothing true in all these infernal machinations. We have several letters from Mr. Home, dating from Pisa, Rome, and Naples, where it now stands. We are therefore in a position to prove what we assert.

The spirits are right to say that the true demons are among men.

Are the turning tables alienating people?

It was read in a newspaper: according to the Gazette des Hôpitaux (Gazette of Hospitals)), naquele momento, contavam-se no hospital de “alienados” de Zurique 25 pessoas que perderam a razão graças às mesas girantes e aos Espíritos batedores.

To begin with, they asked whether it was well established that these 25 alienated all the loss of reason to the Beating Spirits, which is debatable, at least until there are authentic proofs. Assuming that these strange phenomena could have had a harmful effect on certain weak characters, we would ask whether, on the other hand, the fear of the devil did not make more madmen than the belief in spirits. Now, since the spirits are not prevented from knocking, the danger lies in the belief that all those who manifest themselves are demons. Get away from this idea, by making the truth known, and there will be no more fear than of fireflies. The idea that one is harassed by the devil is tailor-made to disturb reason.

On the other hand, they had another piece of news, from another newspaper, which said: there is a curious statistical document of the disastrous consequences to which, among the English, the habit of intemperance and strong drinks dragged. Of every 100 individuals admitted to Hamwel's insane hospital, there were 72 whose mental alienation must be attributed to drunkenness.

They received from subscribers numerous reports of very interesting facts that we will hurry to publish in our next editions, since the lack of space did not allow them to do so in this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NVwXDL3HdA

Allan Kardec starts the Magazine of the month of May 1858 bringing to light a reflection on the Manifestations Physics of the Spirits, which, for many, is somethingsupernatural” and even impossible.

This is due to the fact that we think that the Spirit is an abstraction. Says Kardec: Asked if they are immaterial, the Spirits replied: “Immaterial is not the right term, because the Spirit is something; otherwise it would be nothing. It is material, if you like, but of a matter so ethereal that for you it is as if it did not exist”. 

Thus, the Spirit is not an abstraction, as some think; it is a being, but whose intimate nature escapes our gross senses.

According to observations, and not a system, the Spirit recently freed from the body keeps its physical characteristics of the immediate incarnation, involved, almost always, in a disturbance that follows for more or less time, depending on each one. After this period, the body becomes for them like an “old clothes”, which they no longer want.

Let us return, then, to the various accounts of tangible apparitions, as mentioned in the case of Mr Home, in the April issue. Kardec takes up this fact to conclude the following: that the soul does not leave everything in the coffin: it takes something with it.

There would, therefore, be, in us, two kinds of matter besides the Spirit: the gross matter, which constitutes the body, and a more subtle matter, which constitutes what Kardec called perispirit.

This subtle matter, as it were, extracted from all the parts of the body to which it was attached during life, retains its form. This is why all spirits are seen and why they appear to us as they were in life.

O perispirit, however, is not something rigid and compact like the body: it is an expandable and flexible matter, and that is not limited to the body, as in a shell: it expands around it, at the rate of centimeters or meters, and that is what gives origin of what many call the aura. In reality, the aura is like a field of energies of the solid body and not the perispirit.

Disentangling himself from this obstacle that was compressing him, the perispirit stretches or contracts; turns and, in a word, it lends itself to all metamorphoses, according to the will that acts upon it.

Observation proves - and we insist on the word observation, because our whole theory is a consequence of the facts studied - that the subtle matter, which constitutes the second envelope of the Spirit, only gradually detaches itself from the body, and not instantly.

The bonds that unite soul and body are not suddenly broken by death. Now, the state of disturbance that we observe lasts as long as the detachment takes place. Only when this detachment is complete does the Spirit recover the complete freedom of its faculties and the clear consciousness of itself..

Experience also proves that the duration of this detachment varies with individuals. In some it takes three or four days, while in others it is not completed until after several months. Thus, the destruction of the body and putrid decomposition are not enough for the separation to take place. This is the reason why certain spirits say: I feel the worms gnawing at me.

And we asked ourselves: Is there an explanation for the supposed Spiritual Hospitals? Watch the video with our discussion about it.

In some people, separation begins before death: they are those who, in life, were elevated by thought and by the purity of their feelings, above material things. In them death finds only weak bonds between soul and body, which are broken almost instantly. The more materially man lived; the more his thoughts have been absorbed in the pleasures and worries of the personality, the more tenacious are those bonds. 

It seems that subtle matter is identified with compact matter and that a molecular cohesion is established between them. This is why they only separate slowly and with difficulty.

the matter of perispirit is something subtle enough to escape our sight and pass through solid objects, but, according to the will of the Spirit, it can be condense enough, however momentarily, to become solid as rock. We have an example of this in Mr. Home of April, where hands are mentioned that came out of the middle of the table, but that became tangible. Bozzano also cites this in Spiritism and the Supernormal Manifestations.

THE an apparent, tangible hand offers resistance: it exerts pressure, leaves impressions, operates a traction on the objects we hold. There is, therefore, a force in it. Now, these facts, which are not hypotheses, can lead us to the explanation of physical manifestations.

Kardec continues, stating that these hands (or other bodily ones), when condensed, has sufficient strength, just as we would, he can also hit us, lift and knock down a table, touch a bell, pull a curtain and even give us an invisible slap.

Where could there be the capacity for such subtle matter to be capable of such material force?

But Kardec asserts: we don't want to test the Spirit with our laboratory instruments, especially after we've taken steam as a basis for comparison: It is a new order of ideas, outside the scope of the exact sciences. That is why these sciences do not offer us the special ability to appreciate them.

Kardec takes these comparisons just to be able to show others that the facts of physical manifestations are not something so inconceivable, nor so far from what we already know (or knew at that time).

At the Book of Spirits, there is an explanation about:

257. The body is the instrument of pain. If it is not the primary cause of this, it is at least the immediate cause. The soul has the perception of pain: this perception is the effect. The memory that the soul retains of pain can be very painful, but it cannot have physical action. In fact, neither cold nor heat is capable of disorganizing the tissues of the soul, which is not susceptible to freezing or burning. Do we not see every day the memory or apprehension of a physical illness producing the effect of that illness, as if it were real? Do we not see them until they cause death? Everyone knows that those who have had a limb amputated often feel pain in the missing limb. Of course, there is not the thirst, or even the starting point of pain. The only thing is that the brain has kept this impression. It will therefore be lawful to admit that something analogous occurs in the sufferings of the Spirit after death. An in-depth study of the perispirit, which plays such an important role in all spiritist phenomena; in vaporous or tangible apparitions; in the state in which the Spirit finds itself at death; in the idea, which he so often manifests, that he is still alive; in the very moving situations of the suicides, the tortured, those who let themselves be absorbed by material pleasures; and countless other facts, shed light on this question, giving rise to explanations that we now summarize. 

The perispirit is the bond that unites the Spirit to the matter of the body; it is taken from the environment, from the universal fluid. It participates at the same time in electricity, in the magnetic fluid and, to a certain extent, in inert matter. One could say that it is the quintessence of matter. It is the principle of organic life, but not of intellectual life, which resides in the Spirit. It is, moreover, the agent of external sensations. In the body, the organs, serving as conduits, locate these sensations. When the body is destroyed, they become general. Hence the Spirit does not say that it suffers more from the head than from the feet, or vice versa. However, do not confuse the sensations of the perispirit, which has become independent, with those of the body. The latter can only be taken as a term of comparison and not by identity. Freed from the body, spirits can suffer, but this suffering is not corporeal, although it is not exclusively moral, like remorse, since they complain of cold and heat. Nor do they suffer more in winter than in summer: we have seen them go through flames without experiencing any pain. Consequently, the temperature does not make any impression on them. The pain they feel is not, therefore, a physical pain properly speaking: it is a vague intimate feeling, which the Spirit itself does not always understand well, precisely because the pain is not located and because external agents do not produce it; it is more reminiscence than reality, reminiscence but equally painful. Sometimes, however, there is more to it than that, as we shall see.

Experience teaches us that, at death, the perispirit detaches more or less slowly from the body; that, during the first minutes after disincarnation, the Spirit finds no explanation for the situation in which it finds itself. He believes he is not dead, because he feels alive; he sees the body to one side, he knows that it belongs to him, but he does not understand that he is separated from it. This situation lasts as long as there is any connection between the body and the perispirit. A suicidal man once told us, "No, I'm not dead." And he added: However, I feel the worms gnawing at me. Now, undoubtedly, the worms did not gnaw at his perispirit and even less at the Spirit; they only gnawed at his body. As, however, the separation of the body and the perispirit was not complete, a kind of moral repercussion was produced, transmitting to the Spirit what was happening in the body. Repercussion is perhaps not the proper term, because it can lead to the assumption of a very material effect. It was rather the vision of what was happening to the body, to which the perispirit still kept it connected, which caused him the illusion, which he took for reality. So, then, there would be no reminiscence in the case, since he had not been gnawed by worms in life: there was the feeling of a fact of the present. This shows what deductions can be drawn from the facts, when carefully observed. During life, the body receives external impressions and transmits them to the Spirit through the perispirit, which probably constitutes what is called nervous fluid. Once dead, the body feels nothing, because there is no Spirit or perispirit in it. The latter, detached from the body, experiences the sensation, however, as it no longer reaches him through a limited channel, it becomes general to him. Now, since the perispirit is not really more than a simple agent of transmission, since the consciousness is in the Spirit, it is logical to deduce that, if a perispirit could exist without a Spirit, that one would feel nothing, exactly like a body that he died. Likewise, if the Spirit did not have a perispirit, it would be inaccessible to any painful sensation. This is what happens with completely purified spirits. We know that the more they purify themselves, the more ethereal the essence of the perispirit becomes, whence it follows that the material influence decreases as the Spirit progresses, that is, as the perispirit itself becomes less coarse.

But, it will be said, since it is through the perispirit that pleasant sensations, as well as unpleasant ones, are transmitted to the Spirit, since the pure Spirit is inaccessible to some, it must be equally inaccessible to others. So it is, in fact, with regard to those that come solely from the influence of matter that we know. The sound of our instruments, the perfume of our flowers make no impression on you. However, he experiences intimate sensations, of an indefinable charm, of which we can form no idea, because in this respect we are like born blind before the light. We know this is real; but by what means is it produced? This point eludes knowledge. We know that in the Spirit there is perception, feeling, hearing, seeing; that these faculties are attributes of the whole being and not, as in man, of a part of the being alone; but how does he have them? We ignore it. The spirits themselves cannot inform us about this, because our language is inadequate to express ideas that we do not have, precisely as the savages, for lack of proper terms, are used to translate ideas referring to our arts, sciences and philosophical doctrines.

In saying that spirits are inaccessible to the impressions of matter that we know, we are referring to very high spirits, whose ethereal envelope finds no analogy in this world. The same is not true of those with a denser perispirit, who perceive our sounds and odors, not, however, only through a limited part of their individualities, as happened to them when they were alive. It can be said that, in them, the molecular vibrations are felt throughout the being and thus reach the sensorium commune, which is the Spirit itself, although in a different way and perhaps also giving a different impression, which modifies the perception. They hear the sound of our voice, yet they understand us without the aid of the word, only through the transmission of thought. In support of what we say is the fact that this penetration is so much easier, the more dematerialized the Spirit is. As far as sight is concerned, this, for the Spirit, is independent of the light, which we have. The faculty of seeing is an essential attribute of the soul, for whom obscurity does not exist. It is, however, more extensive, more penetrating in the most purified. The soul, or the Spirit, therefore, has in itself the faculty of all perceptions. These, in bodily life, are obliterated by the grossness of the bodily organs; in out-of-body life, they unwind, as the semi-material envelope becomes ethereal.

Hauled from the environment, this wrap varies according to the nature of the worlds. When passing from one world to another, the spirits change their envelope, as we change clothes, when we pass from winter to summer, or from the pole to the equator. When they come to visit us, the higher ones take on the terrestrial perispirit and then their perceptions are produced as in the common spirits of our world. All, however, inferior as well as superior, do not hear or feel, but what they want to hear or feel. Having no sense organs, they can freely make their perceptions active or null. They are obliged to listen to only one thing: the advice of good spirits. The view, this is always active; but, they can make themselves invisible to each other. Depending on the category they occupy, they can hide from those who are inferior to them, but not from those who are superior to them. In the first moments that follow death, the vision of the Spirit is always troubled and confused. It clarifies as it comes off, and can achieve the clarity it had during earthly life, regardless of the possibility of penetrating through bodies that are opaque to us. As for its extension through indefinite space, future and past, it depends on the degree of purity and elevation of the Spirit.

They will perhaps object: “This whole theory is not at all reassuring. We thought that, once we were freed from our gross envelope, instrument of our pains, we would no longer suffer, and here we are informed that we will still suffer. One way or another, it will always be suffering.” Yea! it may happen that we continue to suffer, and a lot, and for a long time, but also that we stop suffering, even from the moment that our bodily life ends.

The sufferings of this world are sometimes independent of us; many, however, are due to our will. Trace each one back to their origin and you will see that most of such sufferings are the effects of causes which it would have been possible for you to avoid. How many evils, how many infirmities does man owe to his excesses, to his ambition, in a word: to his passions? He who always lived soberly, who abused nothing, who was always simple in tastes and modest in desires, would be covered for many tribulations. The same is true of the Spirit. The sufferings you go through are always the consequence of the way you lived on Earth. Sure, you will no longer suffer from gout or rheumatism; however, he will experience other sufferings that have nothing to do with them. We have seen that his suffering results from the bonds that still tie him to matter; that the more free you are from its influence, or, on the other hand, the more dematerialized you are, the less painful sensations you will experience. Now, it is in your hands to free yourself from such influence from the present life. He has free will, he has, therefore, the faculty of choosing between doing and not doing. Tame your animal passions; do not harbor hatred, nor envy, nor jealousy, nor pride; do not allow yourself to be dominated by selfishness; purify yourself, nourishing good feelings; do good; do not attach importance to the things of this world that they do not deserve; and then, although coated with the body wrap, it will already be purified, it will already be freed from the yoke of matter and, when it leaves this wrapping, it will no longer be influenced by it. No painful memory will come to him of the physical sufferings he has suffered; they will leave no unpleasant impression, because they will only have hit the body and not the Spirit. He will be happy to have freed himself from them, and the peace of his conscience will free him from any moral suffering. We questioned, by the thousands, Spirits who on Earth belonged to all classes of society, occupied all social positions; we study them in all periods of the spiritist life, from the moment they left the body; We followed them step by step in the life beyond the grave, to observe the changes that took place in them, in their ideas, in their sensations and, in this respect, it was not those who were here counted among the most common men who provided less precious elements of study. Now, we always notice that the sufferings were related to the course they had and whose consequences they experienced; that the afterlife is a source of ineffable happiness for those who have followed the good path. It follows that, to those who suffer, it happens because they wanted to; who, therefore, must complain of themselves alone, whether in the other world or in this.

There is, however, another [theory], of high philosophical scope, given by the Spirits themselves, which sheds an entirely new light on this problem. It will be better understood after you have read it. In fact, it is useful to know all the systems in order to be able to compare them.

It remains now to explain how this modification of the ethereal substance of the perispirit; by what process does the Spirit operate and, consequently, the role of mediums of physical influence in the production of these phenomena; what in such circumstances happens to them; the cause and nature of his faculties, &c.

That's what we'll do in the next article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR8ZR94D9lA&t=4207s

Mehmet-Ali, or Mohammed Ali, 1769 to 1849, was Viceroy of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, as Governor of the Ottoman Empire on behalf of the Sultan.

Considered as the founder of modern Egypt, he introduced major reforms in the country, among them: the construction of irrigation canals to better distribute the waters of the Nile River, construction of buildings, institution of new laws, taxes, modernization of the army, etc. It achieved considerable autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and also considerably extended its borders. More on Mehmet-Ali's life Click here.

Pasha Mehmet-Ali had died about 10 years before this evocation, at the request of Kardec and his colleagues. He said he had come to instruct them. They asked for proofs that he was really the disembodied Spirit of Pachá, in which he replied saying that the Spirit reveals itself by his words, always.

He said he was close to the medium Ermance Dufaux. Ele se “acomodou” em uma cadeira vazia. Ninguém o via.

The Pasha said that he was unhappy (he used the term that he was disgraced), that he was in the condition of a wanderer, that he did not clearly remember his former existence as Mehmet-Ali…

10. ─ Do you remember what you were in the existence before this one?

─ I was poor on Earth. I envied earthly grandeurs and went up to suffer.

11. ─ If you can be reborn on Earth, which condition will you prefer?

─ The obscure: the duties are smaller.

12. ─ What do you think now of the position you have occupied lately on Earth?

─ Pure vanity! I wanted to lead the men. Did I know how to lead myself?

14. Public opinion appreciates what you have done for the civilization of Egypt and that is why it places you among the great princes. Are you satisfied with that?

─ What do I care? The opinion of men is the desert wind that lifts the dust

15. ─ Do you see your descendants with pleasure following the same path? Do your efforts interest you?

─ Yes, because they aim at the common good.

16. – However, you are accused of acts of great cruelty. Do you regret them now?

─ I atone for them.

17. ─ Do you see those whom you ordered to be massacred?

─ Yes.

18. ─ How do they feel about you?

─ Hatred and pity.

Spiritist Magazine April/1858

The Spirit continues to give its opinions regarding the Muslim and Christian religions. In the view of this Spirit, the first was still very materialistic, while the second was higher. He even says that he considered that Mohammed distorted his mission, because he wanted to reign.

In Mehmet-ali's opinion, polygamy was one of the ties that still hold people back in barbarism; he also says that he understands that the slavery of women was not justifiable; he says that slavery only brutalizes man; 

He says that the Spiritist Doctrine was the Doctrine of the priests of ancient Egypt, that they received manifestations, had the same source as those received by Moses, as they were initiated by them. He went on to say that Moses wanted to reveal, while the Egyptian Priests only wanted to hide them. Still talking about religions, he added that all mother religions are linked together by almost invisible ties. They come from the same source, being sisters.

This Spirit had memories of other very distant existences, claiming to have lived in the time of the pharaohs three times: as a priest (at the time of Sesostris, according to his memory), as a beggar and as a prince, the first being approximately 1900 years before Christ. He had said he had progressed slowly.

48. Is it because you were a priest in those times that you were able to speak to us with knowledge of the ancient religion of the Egyptians?

─ Yes, but I'm not perfect enough to know everything. Others read the past like an open book.

Spiritist Magazine April/1858

And so, apparently, Pachá dodges Kardec's last questions, one about the reason for the construction of the pyramids and another that is not mentioned.

This evocation expresses a lot the sorrow of the Spirit who made an incarnation not very fruitful for his moral elevation.

Through previous evocations, it was known that Bernard Palissy, a celebrated 16th-century potter, inhabits the planet Jupiter. When evoked, Allan Kardec, as was his custom, asked him questions whose answers were, for ease of reading, condensed in the text of what was said about this planet, on several occasions, by other Spirits and through different mediums. Let's see the dialog by topics:

Overview of the Spirit of Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy it took a while to leave the planet's surface. She confessed to having been in the guise of a loving and devoted woman, on a mission that lasted thirty years. He said it was obscure to name the woman.

The Spirit traced, by the hand of Mr. Victorien Sardou, the admirable drawings about the planet Jupiter in order to inspire us with the desire to become better. He said he didn't care about the material works of the sketches, but about the suffering that raised him.

Finally, he argued that he often comes to this Earth that he has inhabited several times. About her physical and moral state, she made a comparison between her and Jupiter saying that she came to our globe only as a Spirit and that he no longer has material sensations.

physical state of the globe

Jupiter's temperature cannot be compared to one of our latitudes, for it is mild and temperate; is always the same, while ours varies.

The Sun appears to the inhabitants of Jupiter in very small size and, consequently, gives very little light. Thus, Jupiter is surrounded by a kind of spiritual light, in relation to the essence of its inhabitants. The coarse light of our Sun was not made for them. Jupiter's atmosphere is not made up of the same elements as Earth's atmosphere, for men are not the same. Your needs have changed.

There is water and seas there. The water is more ethereal than ours.

There are no volcanoes. The globe is not tormented like ours. Nature did not have its great crises there. It is the abode of the blessed. In it, matter almost does not exist. Plants are similar to ours, but they are more beautiful.

physical state of the inhabitants

The conformation of the body of its inhabitants is related, being considered the same. Their stature, compared with that of Earth's inhabitants, is that of large and well-proportioned beings. Bigger than our biggest men. Man's body is like the mold of his spirit: beautiful where he is good. The wrap is worthy of it: it is no longer a prison. The specific density of the human body allows man to transport himself from one point to another, without being, as here, tied to the ground.

There the inert bodies are opaque, diaphanous and translucent. Some have this property, others have another, according to their purpose.

In relation to human bodies, the body envelops the Spirit without hiding it, like a thin veil thrown over a statue. In the lower worlds, the gross envelope hides the Spirit from its fellows, but the good ones have nothing more to hide: each one can read the hearts of others. The body of the inhabitants of Jupiter being less dense than ours, it is formed of compact and condensed or vaporous matter which is compact for them but not for us. It is less condensed and impenetrable.

There is a sex difference there. Sex is everywhere where matter exists.

The basis of the inhabitants' diet is purely vegetable, as man is the protector of animals. Part of their food is extracted from the environment, whose emanations they aspire to.

Compared to ours, the life span is longer. They live about five centuries. In childhood, man retains his superiority: childhood does not compress intelligence nor does old age extinguish it.

Men are not subject to disease.

Life is not divided between sleep and wakefulness, but between action and rest.

Concerning the various occupations of the men they have there, it was said that they would have much to say. Its main occupation is the encouragement of the Spirits that inhabit the lower worlds, so that they persevere in the right way. If there are no misfortunes among them to be alleviated, they will look for them where they exist: they are the good Spirits who support you and attract you to the right path.

There the arts are considered useless. For them, our arts are toys that distract from our pain.

There is no boredom and distaste for life there. Disgust in life originates in self-contempt.

The inhabitants do not have, like us, an articulated language. Among them there is communication through thought. The second sight is, as we have been informed, a normal faculty and remains among them. The Spirit knows no obstacles. Nothing is hidden from you. They communicate always and more easily than we do with other spirits. There is no longer matter between them and us.

The knowledge of the future depends on the degree of perfection of the Spirit: this has less inconvenience to them than to us; it is even necessary for them, to a certain extent, to carry out the missions with which they are entrusted, but to say that they know the future without restrictions would be to level them with God. The prediction of the future is on merit.

Death does not inspire the same horror and dread as it does among us, for evil no longer exists among them. Only the bad are terrified at their last moment. He fears his judge. The inhabitants of Jupiter after death always grow in perfection, without undergoing further tests. There are no spirits in Jupiter who submit to tests in order to fulfill a mission, because only the love of good leads them to suffering. They cannot fail in their mission because they are good. There is only weakness where there are defects.

Asked if he could name some of the Spirits inhabiting Jupiter who have performed a great mission on Earth, São Luís was listed. I didn't want to name others, because there are unknown missions, whose objective is the happiness of only one. Sometimes they are the biggest and most painful.

Of the animals

The body of animals is more material than that of men, for man is the king, the planetary god. Animals do not tear each other apart. They all live subject to man and love one another. However, there are no animals that escape the action of man, as well as insects, fish and birds. All are useful to you.

Animals are the workers and foremen who carry out material work, build houses, etc. Man no longer lowers himself to serve his fellow man. Servant animals are linked to a particular family, under the state of submission, without remuneration.

The faculties of animals are developed by themselves. Their language is more precise and characterized than that of earthly animals.

moral state of the inhabitants

The dwellings he showed in your drawings are grouped together in cities like here. Those who love each other get together. Only passions establish solitude around man. He said that if a man who is still evil seeks his fellow man, who is for him an instrument of pain, a pure and virtuous man should not run away from his brother.

Spirits are of different degrees, but of the same order. Asked if he could refer especially to the spiritist scale that we gave in the second issue of the Magazine and that he would tell us what order the spirits incarnate in Jupiter belong to, he said that they are all good, all superior. Sometimes good descends to evil; however, evil never mixes with good.

The inhabitants form different peoples as here on Earth, but all united by the bonds of love. Wars are unknown.

He argued that man could reach such a degree of perfection on Earth that war would be unnecessary. War will disappear with the selfishness of peoples and as fraternity is better understood.

Peoples are ruled by chiefs. The authority of chiefs is in its highest degree of perfection. The superiority and inferiority of the Spirits in Jupiter, since they are all good, is measured by the greater or lesser amount of knowledge and experience; purify themselves as they become clearer.

Unlike Earth, there are no more or less advanced peoples there, but among peoples there are different degrees. If the most advanced people on Earth were transported to Jupiter, they would fill the role that apes have among us.

Peoples are governed by laws and there are no criminal laws, because there are no more crimes. Who makes the laws is God.

There are no rich and poor, no men who live in abundance and superfluous and others who lack the necessary, because they are all brothers. If one possessed more than the other, he would share with him; he wouldn't be happy when his brother was in need. No one lacks what is necessary; nobody has the superfluous. In other words, everyone's fortune is in relation to their condition. He who has less is not unhappy with him who has more. He cannot be unhappy if he is not envious or jealous. Envy and jealousy produce more unhappy people than misery.

He didn't want to answer what wealth on Jupiter consists of, but he confirmed that there are social inequalities in the laws of society. Some are more advanced than others in perfection. Superiors have a kind of authority over others, like a father over his children.

Man's faculties are developed by education. Man may acquire enough perfection on Earth to deserve to pass immediately to Jupiter, but on Earth man is subjected to imperfections in order to be in relationship with his fellow men. When a Spirit leaves the Earth and must reincarnate in Jupiter, it wanders for some time, until it finds the body to which it must be united in order to get rid of earthly imperfections.

There are not several religions, because all profess good and all worship one God. There are no temples and no cult, since by temple there is the heart of man; by worship, the good he does.

The Ethiopian Empire, also known as Abyssinia, was an empire that occupied the present territories of Ethiopia and Eritrea, existing from approximately the year 1270 (beginning of the Solomonic dynasty) until 1974, when the monarchy was deposed by a coup d'état. Therefore, it still existed at the time of Allan Kardec.

Kardec opens the article by citing a narration by James Bruce (1730 – 1794), a Scottish explorer and writer, in his work Voyage aux sources du Nil, in which he says he is appalled by the practices of witchcraft and evocation of the Devil practiced by the king of Gingiro, a small kingdom in the southern part of Abyssinia.

Kardec points out that, had Bruce known Spiritism, he would have seen that there was nothing absurd there (in terms of evocations). In addition, it would be a people that, for sure, kept a large number of Jewish traditions and some rudimentary ideas of Christianity in which, for lack of knowledge, they absorbed the idea of the Devil, not understanding that they were for inferior spirits who made their sacrifices.

Two ambassadors that Socinius, to the king of Abyssinia, sent to the pope, around 1625, and who had to cross the Gingiro. It was then necessary that the king be asked for an audience for the caravan to cross his territory. The king happened to be in ceremonial, and he ordered the ambassador and his attendant to wait eight days for the audience with him. After the deadline, the delegation was received.

What Kardec thinks is that at such a short distance there was still degradation and ignorance in doing everything through consultations with Spirits being so close to the main intellectual centers. It merges this idea with the local temperature, which, being hot, could be potentiated in cold climates. He compares the Ethiopians, who cover almost the whole of Abyssinia, with the Gingerans, who neither worship the devil, nor pretend to have any communication with him; nor do they sacrifice men on their altars; in short, there was no trace of this revolting atrocity among them.

Our encoder continues the censorship by stating that the king of Gingiro sacrificed to Devil, at that time of the slave trade, the poor people who would have the destiny of being exiled, given the proximity of that kingdom to the sea, because, away from the coast, their safety was guaranteed.

As we have seen, Mr. Bruce is the narrator of the story, and if he had seen what we are witnessing today, he would have found nothing astonishing in the practice of the evocations used in Gingiro. He only saw in them a superstitious belief, while we find its cause in the fact of falsely interpreted manifestations, which could take place there as in other documented places.

To end the article, when sacrificing human beings, Kardec concludes, with complete confidence in the light of Spiritism, that they could not attract superior Spirits to their midst. It is attributed to credulity the fact that the barbarian peoples worshiped an evil power the phenomena that they could not explain, because it was a very backward people morally and spiritually.

This article was inspired by the article “The Genesis case“, presented on the Portal Luz Espírita. In this article, which is quite extensive, several details are presented, step by step, which finally lead the author, Ery Lopes, and his collaborators — Adair Ribeiro, Adriano Calsone, Carlos Luiz, Carlos Seth Bastos, Jorge Hessen and Wanderlei dos Santos — to assume that, no, the Genesis was not adulterated and that we can be completely confident that the 5th edition, according to them edited and printed in 1869, was indeed a version printed by Allan Kardec.

I must recognize that the article has the merit of having tried to remain impartial, including the works of Simoni Privato, in The Legacy of Allan Kardec, where he presents a huge collection of evidence and evidence of adulterations.

At what point, then, does the article move on to assuming that such tampering does not exist and that all the evidence is wrong? Mainly from item 37 — “Clues from the Rational Catalog — which I reproduce below:

In this context, some clues are presented, obtained through the analysis of the work Catálogo Racional, which would have had its first edition distributed on April 1, 1869, the day after the death of Allan Kardec:

1. There is a quote from the work La clef de la vie (The key to life), by Michel de Figagnères, on which Kardec would have made a comment referring to items 4 to 7 of chapter VIII of A Genesis. Item 7, however, The Soul of the Earth, only came into existence from the 5th edition of this work.
2. Next, there is evidence that the work the four gospels, by Roustaing, would have already been cited by Professor Rivail himself in this first edition of the Catalog, unlike what some people would have said, supposing that such a citation would only have been due to adulteration. 

There is, however, a very important piece of information that was left out at this point: Kardec's reference to items 64 to 68 of chapter XV of A Genesis. It turns out that item 68 only existed until the 4th edition of this work, transformed into item 67 from the 5th edition, when the original item 67 was withdrawn. This item was very important, because it dealt with the question that the disappearance of the body of Jesus, until then, would be an unsolvable issue, due to the absence, until then, of the sanction of the double control of confirmation by rigorous logic and by the general teaching of the Spirits, and its withdrawal seems very strategic, if we consider that the contrary ideas, coming from Roustaing, could not be sustained, due to the absence of this double control.

Now, why this contradiction in Kardec's references? Why would he have simultaneously referred, at one point, to an item that would still be inserted in A Genesis, in the 5th edition, while, at another, he referred to an item that would be removed from it, in the same edition?

Logic takes me down the following path:

• Kardec had already prepared the printing of the Rational Catalogue, but he was still in the process of finishing the printing of A Genesis, which was still, apparently, in the final stages of reprinting for corrections and editions.
• In the Catalog, Kardec refers to an item that did not yet exist in The Genesis (Chap. VIII, item 7) and another that, from the 5th known edition, ceased to exist (item 68). This may demonstrate that Kardec, in the Catalog, would refer to an item from the new edition of A Gênese, and that would keep the reference to item 68, cited above. A would-be adulterer, determined to remove the all-important principle of double-checking sanction, missed the problem.
• The Catalog had already been ordered and printed with Kardec's knowledge, but that does not mean that it would be readily distributed. Most likely, by the logic of the facts, he would expect the printing of the new version of The Genesis.

I also suppose, by the logic of the facts, that the 5th edition of A Genesis, known to us, was based on changes to Allan Kardec's own clichés, since, in this edition, item 7 of chapter VIII presents content in accordance with with his own style and thinking (in my opinion). Thus, the alterations that we know, I suppose, are not all tampering, but the tampering hypothesis is very evident by all the evidence and evidence already presented, until today, and by the simple analysis of some altered or suppressed points, which are out of line with the thought, of Kardec's style and purposes and, above all, of the teaching of the Spirits during the entire first phase of Spiritism.

I add that I see no reason why Kardec has not cited Roustaing's work in his Catalogue, since he himself suggests, just below the recommendation, that the reader seek better clarifications in A Genesis, in the items mentioned. In fact, in the 5th edition of A Gênese, there is a reference to the Spiritist Magazine of September 1868, p. 261, which refers to the same theme contained in item 7 of the first work: A Alma do Mundo.

One more evidence that shows that the alterations in the 5th edition of A Gênese are not totally the result of adulterations, although, even on this item, I cannot say whether it would have been, in addition to being introduced, also adulterated, since the passage that in the 5th edition of A Gênese, he ends item 7 of chap. VIII, continues, in the Spiritist Magazine, in a very important way: “Spiritism would, with good reason, be ridiculed by its opponents if it made the editor responsible for utopias that do not stand up to scrutiny. If the ridiculous didn't kill you, it's because it only kills what is ridiculous.“

About the very common statement that some letters confirm the printing of the 5th edition of the work by the hands of Kardec himself, I have already addressed the case in the article “The adulterations in Kardec's works and the "CSI of Spiritism” (click here to read).

What I want to say with all this is that, yes, it is a very deep and complex subject, with a lot of cross information to be analyzed under a very rational, logical and truly impartial methodology. Unfortunately, it seems that many people desperately try to cling to any evidence that the tampering did not occur, and in doing so, fail to analyze the facts with all the care the matter deserves.

I always repeat: the content presented in the works “The Legacy of Allan Kardec” and “Neither Heaven nor Hell” is complete and too profound to be taken as if it were just any error, based on incomplete or false information. Even so, if there is room for doubt, let the other information be analyzed with the utmost scientific criteria, as Kardec himself taught us and, while they cannot be remedied, let us remain safe with the works undoubtedly printed by his own hand and pocket.

Finally, I would like to highlight the following: one of the most used proofs to affirm that the 5th edition was fully authored by Kardec himself, the 5th edition of 1869, presents on its cover, as a printing address, the new address of the headquarters from the Parisian Spiritist Society: “Librairie Spirite et des Sciences Psychologiques”, at “7, rue de Lille”.

We know that Kardec died before of the Company's establishment at the new address, which proves that this edition was only printed after your death. Read more by clicking on here.

We live in a world hitherto dominated by the concepts of heteronomy. To understand this concept well, we need to analyze the etymology of the word: heteronomy is formed from the Greek radical “hetero” which means “different”, and “nomos” which means “law”, therefore, it is the acceptance of norms that are not ours, but that we recognize as valid to guide our conscience that will discern the moral value of our actions. This understanding is fundamental.

the heteronomous world

In the heteronomous world, we attribute everything to something external: the fault lies with the devil or the obsessor, the effect lies with divine wrath, and reparation lies with the imposition. karma. Everything, absolutely everything in the heteronomous world comes as an external imposition, through laws that we respect out of obligation and not out of understanding. And in the absence of her or her actors, we find ourselves without limits and even without self-love.

Heteronomy is something inherent and perhaps even necessary to a condition of little spiritual advancement, when, without a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of life and evolution, we are forced to attend, out of fear, to the impositions of divine laws, humanized, or even human laws, divinized. Unfortunately, as we already know, it is also widely used by religions to maintain control over their faithful. But this is something that, as we can see, changes as the human spirit advances, both in science and in morality.

A big problem with the concept of heteronomy, or, rather, with the belief in it, is that for a certain time the evolution of the Spirit was involved: well, if the individual believes that his difficulties in life are a punishment imposed by God, he only accepts his submissively (which, yes, is important), but without doing anything to change it. He just waits for the end of his trials. Not even charity can really be understood and practiced in a heteronomous context, as the individual practices charity expecting a return, without understanding that it is a moral and natural obligation of the thinking being.

Another very problematic point is that when the individual believes in divine punishment - and, even worse, in eternal punishment - it is very common for him to lose any limit after making a mistake. Surely, the reader has heard the statement countless times: “I'm already going to hell, so one more sin, whatever”.

But we are wrong if we think that the heteronomous concept is found only in religions. Unfortunately, even in the spiritist milieu, this concept has also infiltrated, especially with the adulteration of the works O Céu e o Inferno and A Genesis, by Allan Kardec. If today we constantly hear, from the mouths of spiritists, the words “karma”, “law of action and reaction”, “rescue”, this is largely due to these adulterations, passed from generation to generation and that today make many of us , spiritists, we still believe that “karma” makes me reborn in this life to “rescue” a past mistake.

Let's see: it is precisely one of the most serious adulterations in O Céu e o Inferno that instilled this heteronomous thought, which delays the advance of the Spirit, in the heart of a Doctrine that was totally focused on the autonomy of being. In chapter VII, item 9 of the cited work, we read: “Every fault committed, every wrong done is a debt that must be paid; if not in one lifetime, it will be in the next one or more.” This item did not exist until Kardec's death, and only appeared in new editions made more than two years after the Professor's death.

No — I insist on saying: in Spiritism there is no karma, nor "law of action and reaction” and, much less, “rescue”. These are concepts that, deep down, have the same effect as the belief in divine punishment.

Autonomy

Opposed to the concept of heteronomy, autonomy (self — of oneself) places the individual at the center of its evolution. It depends on your will, solely and exclusively, both your actions and your thoughts and the spirits attracted or repelled by them.

In the concept of autonomy, which was not born with Spiritism, but which was expanded by this Doctrine — and demonstrated — the Spirit is master of itself and of its choices from the moment it develops consciousness and, with that, comes to have the free will. Thus, he chooses between good and bad, or rather, he chooses ways to act in the face of situations and whether or not he congratulates himself on its effects. However, when the effect is negative, it does not mean that you are being effectively punished by a punishing God, but that you are suffering the moral consequences of your actions. And these moral consequences only exist for the Spirit who is already aware of their existence, which is why animals, for example, do not have them.

This is how, evaluating the consequences of our actions and, when more conscious, the moral imperfections that lead us to make mistakes, we impose on ourselves lives full of evidence and atonements, in order to try to get rid of these imperfections, by learning:

“Some, therefore, impose upon themselves a life of miseries and privations, aiming to bear them with courage”, when they wish to acquire patience, resignation or know how to act with few resources. Others wish to test whether they have already overcome inferior passions and then “prefer to experience the temptations of wealth and power, which are far more dangerous, through the abuses and misapplications to which they can give rise”. Those who struggle with the abuse they have committed, “decide to test their strength in the struggles they will have to sustain in contact with addiction” (The Book of Spirits, p.220).

It is clear: when doing evil against Inferior Spirits, we will have an almost guaranteed chance of receiving, in return, revenge; but this revenge, if any, is the effect of choice of the other Spirit, and not of a “karmatic” reaction of a supposed “law of action and reaction” — which, by the way, is a law of Newtonian Physics, and not a divine one. When practicing revenge, the other Spirit also errs, as it gives rise to the habit of its imperfections and, therefore, it can enter a circle of error and revenge with the other that can last centuries. When this does not occur - and this is the key point - the effect is only the Spirit who errs to remain longer away from the happiness of good Spirits, due to his own imperfections.

There is no “law of action and reaction” in Spiritism

Many people, attached to old concepts of the past, feel perplexed by such a statement, but anyone who has dedicated themselves to studying Spiritism can perceive that autonomous morality, in everything, is made very clear to our eyes, through the agreement universal teachings of the Spirits. What do we gain by doing good? We will move faster. And what will we suffer for doing evil? We will be longer held back by spiritual inferiority and around successive incarnations in lower worlds.

Spiritism shows us that, when we enter the circle of consciousness, we start to talk about our own destinies, and the trials and atonements that we face in the current incarnation are due to our own choices, made before incarnating, although very difficult, since, in a state of wandering spirit (freed from the body), we evaluate our imperfections much more clearly and, thus, choose opportunities, even if suffered, to learn and rise. Spiritism, by the way, when well understood, favors us to make better choices, because we stop only wishing for atonement past mistakes, in a mechanics of sin and punishment, and we start to choose opportunities that take us deeper to learn and develop better habits, hiding the imperfections that we have turned into habits.

We have already addressed a very typical case, extracted from the Spiritist Magazine, which deals with the question of the Spirit's choices regarding its tests, treated by Kardec in Evocation of the assassin Lemaire, in the March 1858 issue.

Another very interesting case is that of Antonio B, who, having walled up his wife alive in the previous life, not knowing how to deal with this guilt, planned an incarnation where he ended up buried alive, after being thought dead. He woke up in his coffin and inside he suffered horribly until his death, as if he had “paid” that debt with his own conscience. What really matters in this case is that, effectively, in life, he was a worthy and good man, and he wouldn't need this tragic end to “require” anything.

A rational proof that there is no such “law”: if an inferior Spirit does evil against a superior Spirit, what will he receive in return? Nothing but understanding and love. The example of the murderer Lemaire demonstrates this. So where would the return be? In another Spirit that God would designate for his "vengeance", to "collect a debt", thus making him also a Spirit in debt to the Law?

No, dear brother: there is no return except in the realization, sooner or later, on the part of the Spirit itself, that he is not happy as long as he is imperfect. Of course, we also need to remember: the Spirit is in the environment where it likes, and it attracts Spirits of the same vibration to itself. Therefore, he may even feel happy, but the Spirit will never be happy, which, due to its predispositions, only attracts inferior Spirits to itself. In this also consists a kind of punishment.

Reason explains, guides and comforts

The greatest characteristic of Spiritism is to be a rational scientific Doctrine, whose theory was born from the logical observation of the facts and the teachings of the Spirits. Now, when it comes to God, what would be the reason for him to punish us with punishments, since he created us and knows that our mistakes are born of our imperfections? There is no rationality in that. It's as if we punish our children for getting math wrong or putting their finger in the socket: in either case, the pain or feeling of being left behind is the punishment itself, and by adding an additional punishment to that, we are only conditioning the being not to think and only to be afraid of making mistakes - and therefore, to be afraid to try.

We were talking about reason: because it is mainly through reason that Spiritism leads us to better evolutionary choices. By deeply understanding the Doctrine, we stop making choices because of impositions or external expectations, either because “God wants”, because “Jesus waits”, or because “the devil haunts”. We start to make better choices, with a more active will, when we understand that the more time we allow for our imperfections or our materiality, the longer it will take to get out of this painful and brutish “wheel of incarnations”.

This understanding is also great remedy against suicide: we no longer see it with the concepts of sin and punishment - which are still disseminated and defended even in the spiritist environment - but, with a rational understanding: if I am an inferior Spirit, full of imperfections, it means that life is a rich opportunity for apprenticeship. Shortening it by my choice, in addition to being a huge missed opportunity, will just be a waste of time, because I will see myself, in Spirit, imperfect as I am, maybe even more wide open, and I will have to go back and start a new existence to be able to learn and get rid of imperfections that make it impossible for me to become happier.

The atonement explained in the light of the Spiritist Doctrine

Kardec defines it like this, in Practical Instructions on Spiritist Manifestations, from 1858:

ATONEMENT — penalty suffered by Spirits in punishment of faults committed during corporeal life. As moral suffering, the atonement it is found in the errant state; as physical suffering, in the incarnate state. The vicissitudes and torments of bodily life are, at the same time, tests for the future and atonement to the past.

It seems, from this text, that Kardec then defended that, yes, we pay in the present life for past mistakes? Not exactly. We cannot forget that, for the Spiritist Doctrine, autonomy, or the Spirit as the central actor of everything, is the key piece of everything. Therefore, even in the case of atonement, is something that consists in the choice of the Spirit itself, in order to seek to overcome an acquired imperfection:

The duration of the punishment is subject to the improvement of the guilty spirit. No condemnation for a fixed time is pronounced against him. What God requires to put an end to suffering is the repentance, expiation and reparation – in short: a serious, effective improvement, as well as a sincere return to the good.

KARDEC, Allan. Heaven and hell. Translation by Emanuel G. Dutra, Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo and Lucas Sampaio. FEAL Publisher, 2021.

And, to better understand the use of the terms punishment and punishment, by Allan Kardec, it is necessary to understand the philosophical context of Rational Spiritualism, in which it was inserted. We already talked about this in the article “Punishment and reward: you need to study Paul Janet to understand Allan Kardec“.

However, we are well aware that “the times have come” and that the planet Earth will slowly cease to be a planet of trials and atonements to be a world of regeneration, where there should be incarnations a little happier than the current ones. Let us use, for a moment, reason to evaluate all that we have exposed so far:

If the Spiritist Doctrine, teaching us autonomous morality, outlines better paths and better choices, let's think: what does it teach the individual more? A suffering of the same kind and degree, as in the case of Antônio B, above, or, understanding the imperfections that led us to do evil, in the first place, a life full of opportunities, often quite challenging and laborious, to exercise learning and doing good?

Do you understand where we are going? everything, absolutely everything, depends on our choices in face of our ability to consciously understand ourselves, and, in this, the study of Spiritism leverages us in several steps.

This is why the world will cease to be a world of trials and expiations: because the Spirits who incarnate here will begin to choose their incarnations better, ceasing to apply the law of talion (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) to themselves in order to then take care to develop healthier moral habits. Even in this we contact that everything comes from the individual to the outside, and not the other way around.

Conclusion

Therefore, brothers, onward: let us study Spiritism in depth and, today knowing the adulterations in O Céu e o Inferno and A Genesis, let us study the original versions (already made available by FEAL) so that we no longer waste time with heteronomous concepts and, above all, so that we no longer repeat, in the Spiritist environment, the pitiful statements like those who say that “so and so was born with mental problems because he is paying for a mistake in his past life”. This, in addition to being an absurd mistake, keeps people away from Spiritism.

See an example:

Let's be amazed: this sentence is not from Kardec. Nor does it appear to be yours, nor can it be found in ANY of your works. This is one more proof of how much Spiritism was invaded by false ideas, almost always anti-doctrinal.

Our tests are rich opportunities, almost always chosen by ourselves, being imposed only in cases in which we do not have consciential conditions for such choices and, even so, they are given by action of benevolence of superior Spirits, and not as divine punishment.

The soul or Spirit suffers in the spiritual life the consequences of all the imperfections that it has not been able to correct in the corporeal life. Your state, happy or unhappy, is inherent in your degree of purity or impurity. (Heaven and hell).

The greatest punishment is that we continue for countless ages dragging ourselves in the mud of our imperfections. That's enough.

Note: the name of the article comes from the text of the same title, which served as inspiration for this one, from the book Autonomia: a história sem contada do Espiritismo, by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo.

study suggestions

We suggest to the reader the following additional content:

• Autonomy: the never-told story of Spiritism, by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo.
• Article "The true law that governs our life!“, by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo
• Article "For spiritism there is no karma or cause and effect.“, by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo
• Heaven and Hell, by Allan Kardec (search for recent FEAL publications, based on the first French edition)
• Channel Spiritism for All

Magnetism was already a phenomenon studied before Spiritism emerged as a doctrine, philosophy and science.

Allan Kardec says: in fact, basing both on the existence and manifestation of the soul, far from fighting each other, they can and should provide mutual support, as they complement and explain each other mutually. However, their respective adepts disagree on some points: certain magnetists still do not admit the existence or, at least, the manifestation of Spirits.

Kardec emphasizes that, at the beginning of a science that is still so new, it is very easy for everyone, looking at things from their point of view, to form a different idea. The most positive sciences have always had, and still have, their schools, which ardently support contrary theories. The sages have raised school against school, flag against flag, and often, for their dignity, polemics have become irritating and aggressive for offended self-love and have gone beyond the limits of a wise discussion.

Magnetists are based on the fact that they can explain everything by the action of fluids. On the contrary, the adepts of Spiritism are all in agreement with magnetism through somnambulistic phenomena.

Pass: one of the ways of transferring animal and spiritual magnetism.

Magnetism prepared the way for Spiritism, and the rapid progress of the latter doctrine is undoubtedly due to the popularization of ideas about the former. Their connection is such that, so to speak, it is impossible to speak of one without speaking of the other. If we have to stay outside the Science of Magnetism, our picture will be incomplete. Through induced magnetism, according to The Spirits' Book, there is a relationship between natural somnambulism and dreams, that is, according to this pioneering work of the Spiritist Doctrine, during somnambulism, the soul can flow freely, causing the body reacts according to what the soul sees. 

He hopes that the sectarians of magnetism and Spiritism, better inspired, will not give the world the scandal of discussions that are not very edifying and always fatal to the propagation of the truth, whichever side it may be on.

Kardec is very faithful to his readers and, talking about the enemies of Spiritism, says: we owed this profession of faith, which we end with a fair tribute to the men of conviction who, facing ridicule, sarcasm and unpleasantness, courageously dedicated themselves to the defense of such a humanitarian cause.

At the end of the text, the coder concludes that, thanks to the persevering efforts of many contemporaries of the Parisian elite, magnetism, popularized, took root in official Science, where it is already talked about in whispers. This word has passed into common language: it no longer scares away, and when someone calls themselves a magnetizer, they no longer laugh in their face.

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Kardec brings to light the fact that Spiritism entered, after the initial moments of purely material manifestations, in the Psychological Period.

He disagrees, however, that human science would be closed: far from that, it would still have a lot to develop in the future.  

To better understand the article, we need to understand the meaning of psychology in the context of Allan Kardec and in the current context.

Current Psychology

Psychology, nowadays, with a materialistic therapeutic characteristic, has 3 aspects:

Psychology in the context of Kardec

In Kardec's context, Psychology did not have the materialistic therapeutic characteristic of today: it was a moral science, spiritualist, inserted in the context of Rational Spiritualism, and its main objective was to investigate and analyze the natural laws that govern human nature, including experimentally.

In this context, Psychology understood the human being as a being constituted of body and soul. The soul, which would survive the body, was the primary cause of the psyche, which was not just a material effect of chemistry and stimuli.

Before Allan Kardec, or before Rational Spiritualism, traditional philosophy dealt with the soul in a speculative way, through systems created by thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant. The advent of experimental psychology opened a new path: that of the philosophical sciences, which Spiritism complementary. In the words of Allan Kardec:

Spiritism, in its turn, comes to give its theory. It relies on experimental psychology; he studies the soul, not only during life, but after death; he watches her in a state of isolation; he sees it acting in freedom, whereas ordinary philosophy sees it only in union with the body, subject to the constraints of matter, which is why it often confuses cause and effect.

 Allan Kardec – RE – May 1864

Psychology is the science that studies mental processes (feelings, thoughts, reason) and human behavior. It derives from the Greek words: psique, which means “soul” and logia, which means “the study of”.

And how does Spiritism study the soul? Through the spiritist phenomena that, however, are no longer studied just for entertainment or curiosity, but precisely with the aim of investigating the natural laws that govern human nature!

And why did it all end?

The end of the psychological period, or rather, the twilight of the Philosophical Sciences, according to Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo, was due to the union of the power of the Church with the Dictatorial State, which were hostile to the enlightenment of society and against the liberal doctrine defended by Rational Spiritualism.

It is important to say: liberalism in this context does not refer to unbridled freedom, the fruit of selfishness, but to a freedom guided by reason and enlightened by conscience.

Allied to this, a strong materialist movement begins to rise in Germany, around 1860, and ends up invading France, where it removes the Moral Sciences from the official chair.

It's in Brazil? Rational Spiritualism, which formed the first philosophical school established in the country and which came to be implanted in the teaching curricular structure, also faced

 […] adverse conditions that the first individuals aware of the original theory faced when they intended to create a Brazilian spiritist movement. A combative Church, struggling to maintain its privileges and the power that had been ebbing away since the Second Empire. And a materialist scientific current, rocked by the retrograde thoughts of Comte and German physiologists, such as Vogt, Moleschott, Virchow and Büchner. The rational spiritualist current, bravely defended by the leadership of Gonçalves de Magalhães and Porto-Alegre, who became disseminators of animal magnetism and later of Spiritism, despite infecting teachers and students of their time, was soon silenced and forgotten. In fact, it was not possible to establish in our lands the favorable scenario that Kardec found in France

Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo – Autonomy: the untold story of Spiritism

The result of all this is what we see today: a totally materialistic society, focused on the pleasures of the flesh and forgetful of spirituality, afraid of life and desperate before the grave!

What to expect for the future?

Only the best, because, in the same way that Rational Spiritualism was born in opposition to the materialism of the time, we are now experiencing a swarm of initiatives like ours and even better ones, which will certainly produce, in a few years, very important fruits for this time. of changes we are going through!

Remember Kardec, with which we end the article:

These excesses, however, have their utility, their reason for being. They frighten society, and good always comes out of bad; it takes the excess of evil to make the need for the best feel, without this man would not get out of his inertia.

(KARDEC, [RE] 1868, p. 201)