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.

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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.

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)

Mr Home had already been mentioned by Allan Kardec in the February edition of the Spiritist Magazine. Kardec seems to have a great affection for the mediumship and personal characteristics of Mr. man. In it, we see a man gifted with an amazing faculty. He is a young man of 24 years, of medium height, blond and whose melancholy face is anything but eccentric; he is of a very delicate complexion, of simple and gentle habits, of an affable and benevolent character, on which the contact of grandeur has neither cast arrogance nor ostentation. Endowed with excessive modesty, he never flaunts his wonderful faculty.

Read the Spiritist Magazine that addresses the first article about Mr. home clicking ON HERE!

Mr. Home is a medium with several faculties, with emphasis on physical phenomena and intelligent manifestations that, as he is not a scribe, the Spirits' answers are given by vibrating beats.

What catches the attention of Mr. Home, in spite of his mediumship, is that his faculty is exceptionally developed. Under the influence of Mr. At home the loudest noises can be heard and all the furniture in a room can be turned over and the furniture piled on top of each other. In addition, he himself gravitates without being aware of the fact.

Another notable gift of all his manifestations is that of the apparitions, which is why Kardec insisted on commenting on them, in view of the serious consequences arising therefrom and the light they shed on a number of other facts. The same is true of the sounds produced in the air; music instruments that play by themselves, etc.

Kardec ends the article saying that religion teaches us the existence of the soul and its immortality; Spiritism gives us its living and palpable proof, no longer through reasoning, but through facts and that the Spiritist Doctrine shows us happiness in the practice of evangelical virtues; it reminds man of his duties to God, to Society and to himself. 

In a new onslaught, Kardec concludes that:

“Helping in its propagation (of Spiritism) is to deal a mortal blow to the wound of skepticism that invades us like a contagious disease. Honor, therefore, those who employ in this work the goods with which God has favored them on earth!”

Allan Kardec was, above all, a scholar. At the beginning of the chapter of the Spirits' Book (Chapter II – General Elements of the Universe, 2. Spirit and Matter item 27.), new terms appear such as Universal Fluid, or UNIVERSAL COSMIC FLUID. It is about him that we intend to deal here.

Beforehand, we recommend that the reader study the work Mesmer: the denied science of animal magnetism, by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo.

O Universal Cosmic Fluid it is a hypothesis that explains much of the spiritual manifestations and phenomena, that is why its understanding is so important for the student of the Spiritist Doctrine. In your latest book, Genesis, Miracles and Predictions According to Spiritism , Allan Kardec concluded the entire Spiritist Doctrine. It has a whole chapter dedicated to the fluids, chapter XIV. I suggest the new edition of FEAL as it contains a more faithful translation of Kardec's first edition of January 1868. It is worth reading. (note: Editions currently published in Brazil are from A Genesis from the 5th French edition onwards, which have been tampered with by a former helper involved with other ideas.)

O Universal Cosmic Fluid was first described by Frans Anton Mesmer, in 1784. He was a German physician who lived between 1734 and 1815. He developed the Animal Magnetism Theory.

In 1775, after many experiences, Mesmer recognized that he could heal through the application of his hands. He declares: "Of all the bodies of Nature, it is man himself who most effectively acts upon man." The disease would just be disharmony in the creature's equilibrium, he believes. Mesmer, who charged nothing for treatments, preferred to treat disorders linked to the nervous system. In addition to the imposition of hands on the sick, to extend the benefit to a greater number of people, he magnetized water, dishes, bed, etc., whose contact subjected the sick.

FEB article

His theory is that all phenomena in nature originate from a single principle, The original matter of the entire universe: O Universal Cosmic Fluid, because? Because all phenomena are explained from it.
And how does he explain?

It will grant the hypothesis that nature works through vibration states. each state of Universal Cosmic Fluid, which is for where is the vibration, it would have degrees of subtlety. And the vibration of each of these degrees would result in different phenomena. He talked about electromagnetic waves, but in other words... The “little problem” is that there was still no study on electromagnetic waves, nor was it known if they existed... At the time, in the 18th century, they believed that there was nothing between molecules. The Fluid would be where the transmission takes place.

note: Magnetism is the name given to the studies of phenomena related to the properties of magnets. The first magnetic phenomena were observed in ancient Greece, in a city called Magnesia. The first studies carried out in this area were carried out in the 6th century BC by Thales of Miletus, who observed the ability of some pebbles, which today are called magnetite, to attract each other and also to iron. The first practical application of magnetism was found by the Chinese: the compass, which is based on the interaction of the magnetic field of a magnet (the compass needle) with the earth's magnetic field. In the sixth century, the Chinese already dominated the manufacture of magnets. Studies on magnetism only gained strength from the 13th century onwards, when some work and observations were made on electricity and magnetism, which were still considered completely different phenomena. This theory was accepted until the 19th century. Experimental studies in the area were carried out by Europeans. Pierre Pelerin de Maricourt, in 1269, described a large number of experiments on magnetism. The names of the North Pole and South Pole to the ends of the magnet are due to him, as well as the discovery that the compass needle pointed exactly to the geographic north of the Earth. The great revolution in the study of magnetism was made by Oesterd in 1820. He discovered that electrical and magnetic phenomena are interrelated. According to this theory, called electromagnetism, moving electric charges generate a magnetic field, and a moving magnetic field generates an electric current. These studies were completed by Maxwell, who established solid theoretical foundations on the relationship between the electric and magnetic fields, that is, electromagnetic waves.

Dr. Mesmer believed that the ANIMAL MAGNETISM, that is, of vital principle, was an invisible natural force possessed by all living/animate beings (humans, animals, plants, etc.). He believed that such a force could have physical effects, including healing properties. This theory is known as MESMERISM.

He said that the denser matter is "vibrating" the waves materials through the fluid.

Let's exemplify, to illustrate: imagine the wind/pressure make water waves; then the waves of air, a little more subtle than those of water, would result in the phenomenon of sound; more subtle waves generate the phenomenon of light, which would be, for him, the vibration of matter in an even more subtle state. It's the most we can see.
So, Mesmer will grant a hypothesis: after the fluid of light, there would be something even more subtle, which would receive the vibration of our thoughts and our will. And these vibrations of thoughts and will, then, would extend throughout the Universe from a focus that is each one of us. and that the nervous system of other individuals could interpret that thought.

Note: Today it is known that the light it's a kind of wave visible electromagnetic field, formed by the joint propagation of an electric and a magnetic field. As is characteristic of electromagnetic radiation, the light it can propagate through different media and undergo changes in speed when passing from one propagation medium to another. Light can propagate in a vacuum with velocity of approximately 300 thousand km/s. The frequencies of light that are visible to the human eye are called visible spectrum, these waves have lengths between 400 no and 700 no. Electromagnetic waves that have frequencies lower than that of visible light are called infra-red, while those with higher frequencies are called ultraviolet. In Mesmer's time, there was no such understanding, yet... They believed that there was always a fluid, such as magnetic fluid, electric fluid, chloric fluid, etc. and the prevailing theory was mechanist, that is, everything was transmitted from one molecule to another.

Dr. Mesmer performed a series of experiments with applications of his hands to heal people. He realized that his patients, when awake, influenced perception at the time of healing. He then imagined the following: if I put this patient in a state of sleep, putting the body to sleep (this would be our hypnosis today), he would begin to perceive the subtlety of the vibration of the thoughts of others. This was his way of explaining somnambulistic lucidity by this method. It will grant the existence of a 6th. Sense, which, for him, would be in the our nervous system(I didn't think it was something spiritual). He will also perceive states of vibration above light, it would be a state of vibration of the universal cosmic fluid that would have thought waves. The Fluid is the medium through which the thought of the healing will reached the patient.

Mesmer says it like this: that's why, just thinking about the question, the sleepwalker, who is perceiving everything through the sixth sense, captures my thought.

quote from Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo in a lecture for the Spiritism For All Channel on 02/01/2021

Mesmer's hypothesis was that matter is the same in different states. And who acts on matter is the movement of this sixth Sense from our nervous system.
Mesmer spoke of conditions of matter veryuntessentialthe, most subtle, where thought can act. That would be the spirit world only he, at the time, didn't use the "spirit world" to explain...
He knew that at a certain point the matter was so subtle that it was possible for thought to act there.

When he did the healings he was talking to me out of matter. “He talked with the Spirit, by thought. Your proposal was very advanced.”

Kardec would say about Mesmer.

Around the 1850s, around 70 years later, Allan Kardec began his studies. He did not have access to all of Mesmer's work, but the Spirits knew, knew and talked with him about the Mesmer principle. The Spirits will explain that it is not an organ of the body's physiology that perceives the vibrations of thought, but our perispirit(which is a means by which the Spirit can communicate with the body). Kardec, then, developed the hypothesis that it is the Spirit who activates the fluid through thought-will and moves it. would be the smart principle.

So there is a difference between Mesmer, who conceived a Hypothesis, and Spiritism, which works from the observation of the Spirits of the reality of the spiritual world.

Mesmer never thought of perispirit. He couldn't "invent" something that far. He imagined that it was the nervous system that perceived the vibrations of thought. would never be a perispiritual fluid of a spiritual principle not belonging to the material world. Kardec, then, explained the phenomena from these hypotheses of Mesmer regarding matter. And the Spirits will explain to Kardec that no, “our thoughts really vibrate matter, but that matter does not belong to our universe”. This matter is spiritual.

This is very important for every spiritist to understand: the vibrations of our thoughts are not of our observable world. No device will be able to capture it. It is above the light. And light is our limit. Light and electromagnetic waves are at the limit of our observable universe. Thought vibrates above that. In other words, it belongs to another universe. And the Spirits explain this, they say: This is the spiritual universe. And there in the spiritual universe there is the “matter” that they will call perispiritual fluid and he who makes the matter of thought vibrate. And they go even further: that in the spiritual universe matter has various stages of subtlety, that as Spirit evolves, both Spirit and thought will vibrate in this higher range. That's why we're going to have a difference between the more evolved Spirits and less evolved Spirits.

So, the Spirits explained it like this: we have 3 things in the Universe: God, matter and Spirit. Matter is inert, and would be represented by the Universal Cosmic Fluid, because it is inert, it has no form. For a form to emerge, someone has to think. So the Spirit, in its simplest condition, when it thinks (or has a will), the form that appears in matter is the simplest particle.

And what is this unity of the Universal Fluid? She is like the thought of God. But as God created in all times, there are Spirits of all evolutionary scale: there are beings who live in the vegetable kingdom, in the animal kingdom, there are human spirits that range from the simple ignorant to the pure Spirit, all of this concomitant. And among us, Spirits in an evolutionary process, none is equal to the other. If an individual, with his characteristics, will reflect what he is, which is different than another form of another incarnate, with other virtues, other abilities, and so on. Each one completely different from the others, due to the choices and knowledge they made. In such a way that we present the most absolute variety. and everything inside Universal Cosmic Fluid.

Observation: We have to understand that Never does a Spirit manifest with a physical effect alone.. There has to be a medium, there has to be someone alive to mediate with a vital principle. There is no action in the world of the disembodied for the material world. The disembodied spirit acts in the intelligent principle of atoms, which is physical, that from there it effects motion. He acts in the THOUGHT of the incarnate. It is necessary that there be one or more mediums for this interference in the material world to happen. Spirit alone cannot transfer energy to us. You have to understand this very clearly. It is a animalized principle donated by the medium, human being. It can be conscious or unconscious. The spirit that wants the cure uses the vital principle of the medium. But that part is for another article… (coming soon)

So, the spiritual world is invisible, obscure, imponderable (we cannot measure).
We do not possess the foundations of the invisible and spiritual world… We do not know how it is made…

O The future holds for us the knowledge of new laws, which will allow us to understand what remains a mystery.
It may be that the Electromagnetism explain a lot of what mesmer theorized and then Allan Kardec explained with your hypothesis?

YEA!!!

But it may be that the future tells us that this mechanism is all different from that…

Source: Kardec, Allan, GENESIS – Miracles and Predictions According to Spiritism, chapter XIV – Fluids, chapter III, chapter I; Kardec, Allan Book of Spirits question 223 and following; Lecture given by Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo on 02/01/2021; Channel Spiritism for All, Study of Genesis by Allan Kardec; FEB – https://www.feeb.org.br/index.php/institucional/artigos/372-biografia-de-mesmer ; Figueiredo, Paulo Henrique Mesmer. The denied science of animal magnetism ; https://kardecpedia.com/roteiro-de-estudos/2/o-livro-dos-espiritos/64/parte-primeira-das-causas-primarias/capitulo-ii-dos-elementos-gerais-do-universo

Karma and Spiritism are like oil and water: they do not mix. Be careful with people who preach the doctrine of karma within the spiritist environment, as the understanding of Spiritist Doctrine goes in the opposite direction: we are not incarnated to pay anything to anyone, because we owe nothing to anyone, much less to God!

We incarnate to experience our choices and learn from them, through trials and difficulties, but also through blessed opportunities, which is to have contact with Spiritism, which leverages our progress in many steps, when well understood and experienced.

Everything is part of our choices, including, most of the time, our way of dying. But in that there is no Karma. “But Paulo, so-and-so said that people burned to death at the Kiss nightclub because they killed others by burning other lives!”

Sorry to say, but so-and-so is almost completely wrong. What God would that be, who punishes ignorance in the same coin, in the fashion of Talion, in a way that teaches nothing to anyone? That said, I want to say: yes, there are Spirits that CHOOSE punishment, whether during life or in the way of dying, for BELIEVING in karma and not knowing how to deal with the guilt over their mistakes. We shall see this in Heaven and Hell, Part Two, Chapter VIII: having killed his walled-in wife in the preceding life, even though he had been forgiven by her, he PLANNED a horrible death in order to try to rid himself of this guilt. Look: planned! And needed? No, because in his current life, he was a good man, that is, he sought to LEARN to be a better person.

He understands? We are not here to pay debts, but to learn to be happier Spirits, through the smothering of our imperfections through learning! And this is often done through harsh penalties, including difficult contact with a person to whom, in the past, we have done some harm, and who, still suffering its effects, we try to help in a new incarnation. But, you see: it is a matter of conscious choice.

It is in this sense that the Earth is no longer a planet of trials and atonements to be a planet of regeneration, since the atonement consists precisely in the type of choice made by Antonio B, or by the murderer Lemaire (chapter VI), while better enlightened Spirits they choose not only to suffer in their skin, but rather better opportunities to learn. And, along with that, we come to the topic of education proposed by Pestalozzi, which is increasingly so necessary and important every day.

So, enough blaming yourself. It is clear: if we have done an evil that still exists at the moment our consciousness awakens about it, let us seek, yes, to repair it, but through work, and not through self-flagellation. And that goes for any moment, whether in the flesh or in erraticity. What really matters is learning, developing better habits, developing humility and charity. This does interrupt the cycle of evil and pain.

Earlier today I came across exactly this opinion, in a discussion in a certain Youtube group. It is understandable that many people have it, because they do not understand what Spiritism is, but it is unquestionable that only those who have not dedicated themselves to reading the introduction of The Spirits' Book can issue it - let alone Allan Kardec's other works. . But, before entering these paths, let's make an explanatory introduction to the subject here.

The Bible

First, it is necessary to understand what the Bible really is: a doctrinal compendium made up of man's stories, statements and opinions about divinity and Spirituality. We cannot object, however, that it has not been tampered with at various points by personal interests and by different groups, as the Roman Catholic Church did in historically known episodes. So, in short, it is a work full of a lot of morality, but also permeated with human errors everywhere, including introduced by an anachronistic interpretation of both history, culture and the original language. We know today that, especially in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament, the language was full of neologisms and figures that, for that people, at that time, made perfect sense.

There is also an enormous difference between the two books that make up the Bible – The Old Testament and The New Testament – since, between them, there is a space of centuries that introduced a new mentality in humanity. At first, the "sacred texts" are full of even more backward ideas and permeated with laws and human statements, unacceptable today, which, at that time, had the purpose of legislating with divine powers over a people who had no ability to understand concepts that would later be acceptable. The New Testament, on the other hand, carries an enormous moral content, unassailable in its essence, taught and exemplified by a Pure Spirit, known to us as Jesus. Kardec, in The Gospel According to Spiritism, deals only with the New Testament, due to its degree of elevation, leaving the Old Testament aside.

The big question is that, through the ages, with or without adulterations, the Bible, as a whole, has always been used as a “word of salvation”, which should be obeyed blindly. Precisely there, religions found a wide field to disseminate their own ideas, introducing the various dogmas that, in fact, were not there, in order to command their faithful according to their particular political and material interests.

Spiritism

Unlike the Bible, which was born from the reports and stories of a few men, the spiritist theory, which constitutes a Philosophical Science, was born from the rational observation of facts spread over the entire globe and throughout all times. It is precisely under this authority that Kardec sees space and the need to seek to bring to the spiritist understanding the facts or stories narrated in the Bible. The in-depth study of Spiritism shows us, as always, that Allan Kardec cannot be considered the “father” or “prophet” of Spiritism, as no other could, because his quality was only that of a researcher, like so many others, who, to a “new” discovery, he begins to analyze it with patience, persistence and method, putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to compose an image that, in its separate pieces, cannot be understood or that does not make any sense.

The Spirits' Book was the first work completed by him, born of a vast study of the various spiritual messages obtained before and after the beginning of his studies. Even so, there are huge differences between the first and second editions, especially in concepts that were later investigated further and complemented or corrected. But how did Kardec carry out such a study?

The Methodological Study of Spiritism

The world of spirits cannot be glimpsed as we see our world. It does not produce the effects that in our senses produce the dense matter that constitute our world: the air, invisible to the eye, through the wind is felt by touch; the taste is felt by the taste buds; light is captured by the eyes and processed by the brain. However, the world of spirits can only be perceived by the senses. specials, which constitute what we call mediumship.

In mediumship there are different types of sense – to make an approximation with the world that we understand – and that give, to their “carriers”, the capacities to feel and communicate, or to give communication, to the beings that constitute this world, and these beings are the Spirits, more or less freed from matter and more advanced and superior or rather backward and inferior. Through mediumship, we can verify the existence of something above the material world, of an intelligence that survives matter, and some of them, like several researchers, in addition to Kardec himself, are only questionable due to the worst of pride, such as are mediumship of physical effects and somnambulism. The first obtains physical effects without great moral extension, while, in the second, the moral content is often vast, totally outside the capacities and knowledge of the medium who transmit it. But we will reserve that subject for another article.

It is important to say that it was mainly in the mediums sleepwalkers it is us mechanical psychographers that Kardec most sought out communications, as he perceived them to be richer and less susceptible to his own content. Even so, as a researcher, Kardec knew very well that he could not rely only on the opinion of one or another medium or one or another Spirit: he needed to seek in the generality and agreement of the Spirits' teachings the unshakable basis of the Spiritist Doctrine:

General concordance in teaching is the doctrine’s essential character, the condition even of its existence. It is evident that all principles which have not received the consecration of general agreement can only be considered as a fractional part of this same doctrine, merely as a simple, isolated opinion for which Spiritism cannot assume the responsibility.

It is the concordant, collective teaching of the spirits who have passed beyond which constitutes the logical criterion, giving strength to the spiritual doctrine and assuring to it perpetuity.

Allan Kardec – Genesis

And it couldn't be otherwise, after all, from the researcher's point of view, the world of Spirits is unattainable and impossible to probe and analyze. Let's make a brief effort of imagination: let's say that, wanting to move to another country, without knowing it, we want to gather as much information about that place and its people. Let's say we don't have access to the Internet and we only have the telephone. We got a number from an inhabitant of that country and called him – of course, we think they both speak one same language--in order to get an account of that place: what are the people like there? Are they good or bad? Is there violence or not? Will I be able to count on support or not? Well, it's easy to assume that this single person's account will be in line with their cultural, political, educational, historical, social and even their own perceptions. Tendencies and own concepts. It could be, moreover, that we have inadvertently called a criminal, without knowing it. Shall we, then, sway our decision or our conception of that people by a single account? Of course not: we need, in this context, to call many other people, analyze bibliographic and artistic works produced by its inhabitants, etc.

It is exactly the same as what Allan Kardec did, analyzing countless communications obtained from all sides, by countless mediums and by countless Spirits, drawing, from all this, rational and logical conclusions, postulates and, sometimes, scientific theories, which only future studies could sanction or derogate.

Conclusion

We could truly spend hours and hours talking much more about Allan Kardec's studies, but the fact is that there is already a lot of material about it, especially in Kardec's own work, which, as he always demonstrated, did not have a content born of his own ideas. We leave this necessary search to the reader. We limit ourselves to closing this article, after all this previous approach, demonstrating that Spiritism is not a religion and that, as Science is a Doctrine that presents its studies and its conclusions, in a rational and logical way, and leaves to each one the task to reason for yourself about all the content presented. Now, as even the Modern Sciences, so well established, find their dissidents with their most absurd ideas, Spiritism could not expect less. Still, it's a question of everyone's freedom.

We spiritualists we believe in Spiritism not out of fear or imposition, but because we naturally understand the rationality contained in this Scientific Doctrine. We believe in reincarnation not because of inconclusive evidence, but because of an inconclusive rationality; we believe in the existence of spirits and in their communication with us also for reason, but also for the seriousness of researchers who have already set out to study the manifestations with great care and who, by themselves, have found irrefutable evidence of such existence; but we do not believe blindly in the teachings of the Spirits, much less in any supposed phenomenon. Kardec himself asserted: Spiritism must go hand in hand with Science. If, one day, it denies some postulates of its Doctrine, we must abandon them and stay with Science. On the contrary, Modern Science is getting closer and closer and confirming the spiritist postulates, just as the Science of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century did.