Science and Spiritism: matters in opposite dimensions?
We recently obtained the following observation from a correspondent of ours, Ms. A…:
Science today does not confirm much of what we believe to be the spirit world and the intervention on our plane. The turntable itself has already been accused of being just the result of the ideomotor effect and not messages from the spirits. We don't have scientific proof of many things and yet we believe them. Science at the time of Kardec evolved and did not confirm everything. Spiritism, as much as it has used the scientific method, is not proven by science, perhaps in the future it will be. But it's still not science. We can call philosophy, religion based on the scientific method. There are things that we know are not real like the name of the person who gave certain messages in psychographs and we are told to just consider the content of the message given and ignore the supposed false identity. There are things we prefer not to know or accept to be weird. But when we see these same things in other doctrines and in other groups, we accuse them of lack of common sense and scientific method.
We summarize our response to these observations below:
Dear Miss. A... well said: TODAY's science and, we add, since always, materialistic, dogmatic science, do not accept the findings that the Spirits came to demonstrate. However, even before Kardec, many honest scientists even found the existence of something beyond the material body. Says Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo, in "Mesmer: the denied science of animal magnetism":
“The magnetizers proved very early on the relationships of somnambulists with invisible beings. Deleuze, a disciple of Mesmer, in his correspondence maintained with doctor GP Billot for more than four years, from March 1829 to August 1833, was initially reluctant, but finally affirmed: “Magnetism demonstrates the spirituality of the soul and its immortality; it proves the possibility of communication between intelligences separated from matter and those still connected to them.” (BILLOT, 1839)”
In turn, Deleuze stated: “I see no reason to deny the possibility of the appearance of people who, having left this life, take care of those they loved here and come to manifest themselves to them, to give them salutary advice. I just had an example of this.” (Ibid.)
“Years later, the magnetizer Louis Alphonse Cahagnet (1809-1885), with courage and determination, talked to the spirits through his somnambulists in ecstasy, mainly Adèle Maginot, recording in his work more than one hundred and fifty letters signed by witnesses who recognized the identity of the communicating spirits. Cahagnet anticipated this research instrument of Spiritist science by more than ten years.”
We then see Rivail, educator emeritus, years before, saying, regarding the education of children that, if it were done well, it would prevent them from believing in souls from the other world or in ghosts; that they would not take will-o'-the-wisps for Spirits ((RIVAIL, H.- L.- D. Speech given at the Distribution of prizes. Paris, 1834)). See the incredible change that took place in his ideas – not without resistance, as we can see in the article “Plurality of stocks“, from the Revista Espírita of November 1858 – to then, like Kardec, say that “in general, a very false idea is given about the state of Spirits. They are not, as some think, vague and indefinite beings, nor flames, like will-o'-the-wisps, nor ghosts, as in apparition tales. They are beings similar to us, having a body like ours, but fluid and invisible in a normal state ((Spiritist Magazine — Journal of Psychological Studies — 1864 > April > Summary of the law of Spiritist phenomena))”.
We would produce an endless text, seeking to reaffirm the countless points that demonstrate the strength of the formation of Spiritism as a science – science, which, in fact, was developed on Rational Spiritualism ((see “Autonomy: the never told story of Spiritism”, by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo)) – a task that can only be well performed and achieved by those who, freely, decide to leave their preconceptions and STUDYING Spiritism, in all its formation, which is easily found in the Spiritist Magazine and, later, deeply established in anthology, philosophy and morals in the works O Céu e o Inferno and A Genesis (in their original, unadulterated versions).
It can be seen that the path is long and can only be followed by those who are really interested in leaving heteronomy, which freezes the pace, towards autonomy, which puts us in charge of the helm of our own ship.
See, just to complement, that Spiritism was born like every science we know: by methodological and rational observation of facts of nature. If it has not yet reached the status of a recognized science, it is not its fault, but due to the great deviation that the spiritualist philosophical sciences took at the end of the 19th century, which turned off the lights of reasoning supported by morality to leave us in the shadows of Aristotelian materialism, which contaminates and defines our society until today. We reached the height of seeing Psychology forgetting its own definition – the study of the soul – to look at man only from a behaviorist, materialist point of view. Do you see the gap between the current point of view and the philosophical, moral, psychological and rational sciences of the past?
The big mistake is wanting to define science by current understanding, as if it were just what is done in the laboratory, forgetting that, even today, inference and the elaboration of ideas through hypotheses are still part of the scientific method. It is incredible, then, to see that Kardec, corroborating Mesmer and supported by spiritualist research, had already, at that time, arrived at the concepts of field and wave, approaching Modern Physics ((See A Gênesis, publisher FEAL)). We see, finally, that natural science is one, subdivided, however, by the specialties of men.
Kardec would say, in the Spiritist Magazine of January 1858:
Perhaps we are challenged by the name of science that we give to Spiritism. It would, without a doubt and in no case, have the characteristics of an exact science and precisely in this lies the error of those who try to judge and experiment with it as a chemical analysis or a mathematical problem; it is enough that it be a philosophical science. All science must be based on facts, but facts alone do not constitute science. It is born from the coordination and logical deduction of facts: it is the set of laws that govern them. Has Spiritism reached the state of science? If it is a question of a finished science, it will undoubtedly be premature to answer in the affirmative, but the observations are already numerous enough to allow at least to deduce the general principles, where science begins.
When Miss A… says that “there are things we prefer not to know or we accept that they are really strange”, she is only speaking from her point of view, which does not include our ideas. We don't act that way. We just don't accept it. We search, we seek answers. If, really, there are no answers, we are waiting for the day when we will be able to obtain them, through the scientific method necessary to establish communication with beings that we cannot judge otherwise than by reason. If, today, the Spiritist Movement does not excel in this method, once again, the fault is not Spiritism, but the misrepresentations made in the doctrinal core, but which, for those who are willing to study, are being quickly corrected and annulled, with the consequent restoration of true Spiritism.