The Petrópolis disaster from the point of view of Spiritism: collective rescue?
Recently, the mountain region of Rio de Janeiro suffered another shock, resulting in a few dozen deaths. At the outset, I wish to express my feelings and those of the Group towards all the victims of this scourge and towards their loved ones.
I need, however, to position myself in the face of some comments that, at these moments, with great misfortune, some so-called “spiritists” end up making, almost always supported by supposed mediumistic communications. In no way do I want to say that my observations represent the sum of the teachings of the Spiritist Doctrine, which I have just begun to study, but I just want to rely on the logic of facts and on reasoning based on what this same study gives us.
lack of charity
It is enough for any disaster, of any proportion, to occur for someone, claiming to bring a mediumistic communication, to attribute it to a supposed action of “karma”, the “law of action and reaction”, the “redeeming of past debts”, without, first, reflecting on the complete lack of charity with which they act when they say so.
In the Kiss Nightclub disaster, unfortunately, several “spiritist” media outlets spoke out, linking those sad deaths to the Nazi Holocaust, stating that those people were “soldiers who killed Jews by burning them or asphyxiating them with cyanide” (see here a little more about it).
About the Gol plane crash in São Paulo, at Congonhas airport, in 2007, a book, called “O Voo da Esperança”, was produced, supposedly attributed to a Spirit, through the medium WF. This work, a true disservice to Spiritism, is enough to mention the following, as highlighted in Folha:
“It is the law of action and reaction […] Divine providence, in its infinite wisdom, did not place innocent spirits on this plane, but souls seriously committed to a past of errors […]”
“This group, of more than two hundred people, committed to the past of lack of compassion towards others […]”
This work resulted in at least one lawsuit against the publisher and the medium (see more).
And, in the case of the recent disaster in Petrópolis, there are already people publishing mediumistic communications claiming that it is a “collective rescue”.
The spiritist movement is crumbling from the inside out
My brothers, let us reflect! It's errors about errors, causing enormous damage to Spiritualism, committed by people who stopped being guided by the necessary rational method in the analysis of mediumistic communications and who began to allow any kind of concept, transmitted in this way, to be taken as true and doctrinal! Now, Kardec always called everyone's attention to the fact that imposter, deceiver or pseudo-wise spirits communicate everywhere, even in serious mediumistic groups, and that, because of this, we cannot accept the communication of any Spirit, under any name that presents itself, as an expression of the truth (read more by clicking here)!
You, who are reading, can put yourself in the position of that mother, who turned the mud in search of his daughter, 17 years old, hearing from someone who declares themselves a spiritualist the words “your daughter died like this because she is paying for past mistakes”? It achieves? Well done! If you succeed, it is for this reason – for charity – in the first place, and for the following reasons, that never we must express that kind of thinking!
Not everything is atonement for past mistakes
Anyone who studies Kardec – a study that is largely absent nowadays – knows very well that individual tragedies can occur for four main reasons: atonement, when the Spirit choose go through a certain test, with a view to overcoming an imperfection; test, which is when the Spirit goes through any difficulty, planned or not, and that promotes learning and progress; mission, when the Spirit chooses to perform a task in order to promote good for others; and force of nature, when, for example, an inevitable natural scourge affects thousands or millions of people simultaneously. Therefore, how can we give ourselves the right to point to a situation like these above, collective or individual, to infer, wrong and ruthlessly, that it occurs due to a “recovery” of past mistakes? That’s definitely not up to us!
Let's think about the following: imagine that you, as a Spirit, before incarnating, choose a type of evidence and, maybe, of atonements. Your incarnation takes place under this plan, until you move to any city, summoned by a job opportunity. You live there for some time when, by a fortuitous action of nature, a meteorite falls on this city, killing you and thousands of others around. See: it is an inevitable scourge of nature, to which we are subject by the simple fact of being incarnate. We will die and restart another incarnation, continuing our evolution.
Another example: in the case of Nightclub Kiss, could it be that everything happened due to someone else's irresponsibility? Well, we know that everything happened because they used combustible materials in a closed environment, with difficult exit (several exits were locked) and without an efficient fire extinguishing system. That is, there was negligence, which is the result of other people's choices. Many of those who were there, at that moment, were victimized by this chain of events – or can we suppose that the band that played was intuited to use the pyrotechnic materials (fire) in order to fulfill a “collective karma”? This is irrational!
Many do not know, but, geologically, the mountainous region of Serra da Mata Atlântica, which passes through SP and Rio, is very old, formed by the deposit of lighter matter (earth) on rocky elevations. Over the millions of years, this surface layer is getting more fragile and, when heavy rains occur, they cause landslides and disasters like these. The human being, being incarnated in the same dense matter, is subject to these occurrences, as he is part of a world whose nature is quite unstable, renewing itself day after day. Such scourges are not the result of God's impiety: they are actually necessary to accelerate our scientific and moral advancement (see The Spirits' Book, Part Three, Chapter 5 - Destroying Scourges - Click here).
Planetary Transition?
Much is said that such scourges are accelerating because of the so-called "planetary transition", where the Earth will cease to be a world of trials and atonement for a world of regeneration. In essence, this transition is still true, but we need to be very careful, once again, with the implication of what we say, as many attribute to such scourges, including pandemics, the effect of “separating the wheat from the chaff”, as if they were taking from here the Spirits that will no longer be able to be part of this planet in its new phase. This is yet another wrong and merciless thought.
We need to remember that scourges have always existed. Since before the time of the pharaohs, the globe has been plagued by immense tragedies, which demonstrates that they are not linked to such a transition. They have always occurred and always will occur, in this phase of materiality, in order to make us advance scientifically and morally. The transition will take place through the modification of ideas, from the individual to society, and not through the simple separation of Spirits who still have a lot to learn and contribute on this planet.
No benevolent spirit publicly accuses others of wrongdoing
We live a sad moment in the spiritist environment, where Kardec is relegated to the past, as if he had been overcome (everything that is the basis of a doctrine cannot be overcome, because it is a basis) and his method and all the rationality that he demonstrated to be necessary in communication with the Spirits, they are forgotten and buried as if they were unnecessary. The current “Spiritist Movement” (which has almost nothing of true Spiritism, and it is necessary to separate the Doctrine from what its adherents do) started to accept practically any and all mediumistic communication as an expression of wisdom and truth and, in this way, it is allowing anti-doctrinal concepts to be crumbling, little by little, the movement, on their bases.
Let us observe: when we see, in Kardec, the cases of atonement of the same kind, as in the case of Antonio B, we need to remember that it is an evocation, where the Spirit itself reports its choice to go through that. It is very clear that it is never an external imposition of a supposed law of sin and rescue, and it is also very clear that no minimally benevolent Spirit uses communication to point out the faults of others and link the present sufferings as a way of “redeeming them”. them.”
Spread the information and come study with us
Once again I come to ask you, who reads this article, to, as a Spiritist, inform everyone who can that It is not our place to point the finger and say that someone goes through certain suffering to pay off past “debts”. This distances people from the Doctrine and, especially when it starts with the blind acceptance of spiritual communications, it has been destroying the spiritist movement from the inside out.
And, finally, regarding the role of the medium and the researcher in mediumistic communications, as well as “animism”, we will address all of this in the next live, on 02/24/2022, about the article “Impostor Spirits – The False Father Ambrósio”, in the Revista Espírita of July 1858. read the article and do not forget to present your considerations, in our facebook group, so that we can enrich our study.
Spiritism does not need to be defended, and the time has come for us to do our part.