Where is the umbral? And Nosso Lar? Do these places exist?

Paulo Degering R Jr
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Do umbral and “Nosso Lar” exist? Where it is? Short answer: they do not exist as people believe, due to lack of knowledge of Spiritism. But, as this is a study group, you should not simply accept this answer, without reasoning, in the same way that you should not accept the isolated ideas of any Spirits, regardless of the medium.

Why is it that many spirits, before Spiritism or under other religions, say that, after death, they found themselves in Hell? Why, in Roman times, did the Spirits claim to be in Tartarus? Why do Spirits who have known Spiritism (that distorted one) say that they found themselves on the umbral or in the valley of suicides, and not in hell? It is very clear that this is due to their own conceptions, because, if one or the other were a reality, there would always be a uniformity in the ideas presented by the Spirits, at all times and everywhere.

Therefore, it is easy to see that these are conceptions of the imaginary. Are they an abomination? Of course not: they are part of our evolution. However, Spiritualism did not come to continue these ideas, in a more pleasant way: it came to present reality, helping human beings to get rid of these limiting conceptions that delay their step. Now, it is a fact that Spiritism has this purpose of leveraging progress, like all science, because, if it were not so, and since the Spirit is immortal, could God, in his Laws, let each one reach progress through infinite incarnations, learning by trial and error, only, and without any support. But He, being all goodness, gives us the tools, the greatest of which is intelligence and reason; it is up to us to use them or not, according to our will.

Contents hide
1 The role of the medium
2 What is in Spiritism?
3 General teaching and reason
4 “But I saw it on astral travel”
5 Where is the key to understanding all this, then?
6 Explanatory video, with Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo
7 Conclusion
8 Reading Recommendations (Books)

The role of the medium

The role of the medium is not to interfere in the communication of a Spirit and, through him, any type of Spirits can communicate, depending on the circumstance and the purpose, either of the medium or of the superior Spirits. The role of the scholar is to analyze and to judge these communications, based on the science already acquired and the riddle of reason((Read the article “The role of the researcher and the medium in communications with the Spirits“)).

After Kardec's death and with all the deviation that the Spiritist Movement took, mainly with the true plantation of tares that were Roustaing's ideas, the Spiritists, away from studies, they stopped reasoning and began to allow different ideas, without doctrinal basis, began to flood the imagination of the adepts of the Doctrine. Thus, fantastic and superstitious concepts began to slowly and progressively transform the Movement, which today presents itself as a religion, full of dogmas and false concepts.

What is in Spiritism?

Now, dear reader, there is in The Spirits' Book the following conclusion, presented in question 1012 of The Spirits' Book:

1012((Reviewers' Note: It should be noted that, in the numbering of the book's items, Kardec skipped no. 1011. Despite the obvious oversight, the text was kept that way in the fourteen editions that followed until Allan Kardec's death. To avoid confusion, this edition did not attempt to “correct” the numbering.)). Will there be limited places in the universe for the pains and enjoyments of spirits, according to their merit? 

“We have already answered that question. Pains and pleasures are inherent to the spirits' degree of perfection. Each one takes from himself the principle of his happiness or his misfortune. And as they are everywhere, no circumscribed or closed place exists especially intended for one thing or another. As for the incarnates, they are more or less happy or unhappy, depending on whether the world they inhabit is more or less advanced.”

The) - In accordance, then, with what you come to say, do not hell and paradise exist, such as man imagines them?

“They are simple allegories: there are happy and unhappy spirits everywhere. However, as we have already said, spirits of the same order gather together out of sympathy; but they can meet wherever they like, when they are perfect.”

The absolute location of the regions of penalties and rewards exists only in man's imagination. It stems from their tendency to materialize and circumscribe things, whose infinite essence it is not possible for him to understand.

KARDEC, Allan. The Spirits' Book. 1860

It is very clear that the places, in the world of spirits, do not exist by themselves. They are mere allegories and, above all, states of consciousness. The happy Spirit is "in heaven," while the unhappy, suffering Spirit is "in the hell" of his own consciousness.

Let us note, however, an important detail, in question 1012-a: “However, as we have already said, spirits of the same order gather together in sympathy.“. This means that, according to their ideas and their states of evolution, the Spirits can come together. Now, knowing that less evolved Spirits are attached to the concepts of matter and knowing that, through the action of the will, the Spirit can act on fluidic matter, coming from the Universal Cosmic Fluid, it is easy to conceive that, together, the suffering Spirits gathered together can create veritable hellish or purgatorial landscapes, which, however, exist only as long as these Spirits shape them, that is, they are not places that precede them, but that exist only as creations of these groupings of intelligences.

Nor can we forget that we, mentally, are capable of creating true illusions, due to our ideas, beliefs, fears, etc. Therefore, it is easy to understand when a suffering Spirit says he is hurt, hungry, thirsty or even tired.

Important: the Spirits, in Spiritism, were categorical in this regard: there are no circumscribed places. On the other hand, about other concepts, they said: “calm down. This cannot be understood yet. Wait for the development of the Doctrine”. This demonstrates that it is false the idea that such concepts could not be taught at that time (which doesn't even make sense).

Let's not stop here, however. In July 1858, in the article “Berezina's Drum“, Kardec asks the following questions, after carrying out a series of inquiries trying to understand the moral and rational state of that Spirit, who was a soldier in his last incarnation:

28. ─ Do you see other spirits around you? ─ Yes, many.

29. ─ How do you know they are spirits? ─ Among us, we see ourselves as we are.

30. ─ How do you see them? ─ As spirits can be seen, but not through the eyes.

31. ─ And you, in what form are you here? ─ Under what I had when I was alive, that is, as a drum.

32. ─ And do you see the other spirits with the forms they had in life? ─ No. We don't take on an appearance until we are evoked. Other than that, we are formless.

The last answer was quite interesting, but so far it was just the opinion of a Spirit. Worthy of note, Kardec's methodology, probing matters of interest, instead of asking direct questions that could be answered in a biased way. Then, in September of the same year, in the article “Lectures from beyond the grave — Mrs. Schwabenhaus. Ecstatic Lethargy“, Kardec asks the following questions, getting the following answers. Please note:

29. ─ In what form are you among us? ─ Under my last female form.

30. ─ Do you see us as distinctly as if you were alive? ─ Yes.

31. Since you have been here with the form you had on Earth, is it through the eyes that you see us? ─ No, the Spirit has no eyes. I only find myself in my last form to satisfy the laws that govern spirits when evoked and forced to resume what you call perispirit.

Let's see, then: there are already two Spirits, of different elevations, besides the one who answered OLE's questions, saying the same thing: for the Spirit freed from matter, there is no form, like the one we understand. They assume the perispirit, attending to a natural law, only when they need to act materially, when, for example, they approach us to communicate (with materially I mean: they need to assume the perispirit to be able to put themselves in communication with us, which, above all, happens through this “clothes”).

General teaching and reason

Kardec always highlighted, as an indispensable method for the formation of spirit science, the double control of reason and the general teaching of the Spirits. But that's not all: the teaching, emphasizes Kardec, when it must be spread, it is given simultaneously over various points of the globe. The concepts presented here, however, were not established in this way: they were brought by a Spirit or medium, at a time, and, over time, began to be accepted by other individuals, who began to reproduce them. It is as if it were an inverted pyramid, in time: currently, from a construction of illusory theories of the past, a series of others were developed, contrary to the Spiritist Doctrine itself and recovering several concepts of the old religions.

“But I saw it on astral travel”

For the scholar of the Doctrine, it is very clear that the individual's ideas play a fundamental role in what he sees and how his physical mind interprets these "visions".

Kardec, in A Genesis, cap. XIV, highlights that:

27. Spiritual vision is necessarily incomplete and imperfect among incarnate spirits and, consequently, subject to aberrations. Having its seat in the soul itself, its state must influence the perceptions. According to the degree of its development, the circumstances and the moral state of the individual, it can give, whether in sleep or in the waking state: 1st) the perception of certain real material facts, such as the knowledge of occurrences that happen at a distance, the descriptive details of a locality, the causes of an illness and the convenient remedies; 2) the perception of equally real things in the spiritual world, such as the vision of spirits; 3rd) fantastic images created by the imagination, analogous to the fluidic creations of thought (see above, no. 14). These creations are always in relation to the moral dispositions of the Spirit who creates them. This is how the thinking of people strongly imbued and preoccupied with certain religious beliefs presents them with hell, its boilers, its tortures and its demons, in the way they themselves imagine: it is sometimes an entire epic; pagans seeing Olympus and Tartarus, as Christians see hell and paradise. If, upon awakening or coming out of ecstasy, these people retain an accurate memory of their visions, they regard them as reality and confirmation of their belief, even though they are only the product of their own thoughts. A very strict distinction must be made from static views before accepting them. In this sense, the remedy for excessive credulity is the study of the laws that govern the spiritual world.

28. Dreams themselves present the three natures of visions described above. To the first two belong dreams of prediction, presentiments and warnings. In the third, that is, in the fluidic creations of thought, one can find the cause of certain fantastic images, which have nothing real in relation to material life, but which, for the Spirit, have such a reality that the body suffers an impact. , as hair has been seen to whiten under the impression of a dream. These creations can be provoked by exalted beliefs, memories, tastes, desires, passions, fear, remorse, habitual worries, bodily needs or malaise related to the organism's functions; finally, by other spirits, with a benevolent or malevolent objective, according to their nature.

That is to say, dear reader, that, according to spiritist science, places in the world of spirits are nothing more than false concepts. Unfortunately, falling into novel curiosity and absent from these foundations, the Spiritists began to admit the fruits of the isolated ideas of certain Spirits as if they were the full truth.

It remains to say, therefore, that there is no umbral, there is no valley of suicides and there are no spiritual colonies. as we believe: there are spirits that get together, according to their ideas, and that, the more distracted from the purpose of the interval between incarnations, which should be to reflect and learn, reinforcing their will to overcome their imperfections in the next incarnation, they create “material” scenarios. , replicating terrestrial habits, which constitutes, for them, a real delay towards happiness.

Teaching the false concepts of umbral, suicide valleys, spiritual hospitals, etc., which are the external representation of moral suffering, is failing to teach what really matters: the analysis of one's mistakes and successes, the understanding that everything depends on the own will and the necessary action for one's own evolution. For a Spirit that suffers, and for ourselves, let's say: any suffering or physiological need, in the spiritual world, are FALSE sensations, a kind of moral repercussion ((see The Spirits' Book, second part, chap. VI, item 257)) . Now, it is Kardec's conclusion that the death of the body causes the Spirit to leave, disconnecting the perispirit, cell by cell ((see Genesis, chapter XI)). Since all the cells are dead and the perispirit is “released” (which will not take more than 24 hours after brain death) there is no repercussion from the body to the Spirit, other than through an externalization of moral suffering!

Therefore, you will not go “over the umbral”, but you will have to face your own conscience, at one time or another, and your conscience, depending on how you are and the concepts you carry, can very clearly indicate the path of readjustment. , or else it may set you in time-wasting states. Heaven or hell will be on your own conscience. Therefore, take care to learn Spiritism and draw from it the moral consequences in support of your own will. In this way, you will reach, sooner, the desired happiness, which is not living in a cozy little house in a spiritual colony where the Spirits are concerned with working to earn money in exchange, but the possibility of acting for good, through infinite space, making their part in divine creation.

And make no mistake: the Spirit is transported by thought, wherever he projects that thought. No need for a flying bus.

Where is the key to understanding all this, then?

It's in A Genesis, by Allan Kardec. Read with attention:

14. Spirits act on spiritual fluids, not manipulating them as men manipulate gases, but with the help of thought and will, which are for the Spirit what the hand is for man. Through thought, they imprint this or that direction on the fluid; they agglomerate, combine or disperse them and form sets with an appearance, a shape, a certain color; they change their properties, as a chemist changes those of a gas or other bodies, combining them according to certain laws. It is the great workshop or laboratory of the spiritual life.

Sometimes these transformations are the result of an intention, but often they are the product of an unconscious thought, because the Spirit just thinks about something for it to be done.

This is how, for example, a spirit appears to an incarnate spirit, endowed with spiritual vision, under the appearance he had when he was alive, at the time he met him, although he has already had several other incarnations. He presents himself with clothes, external signs, diseases, scars, amputated limbs, etc. who had; a beheaded one will present himself without his head. I do not say that they preserved such appearances; no, certainly, because, as a Spirit, he is neither lame nor one-armed, nor one-eyed nor decapitated. But his thought, referring to the time when it was like that, his perispirit instantly takes on this appearance, which also changes instantly. If he had been once black and once white, he will present himself as either black or white, according to which of the two incarnations he is evoked and where his thoughts go.

By an analogous effect, the Spirit's thought fluidly creates the objects it was used to using. A miser will handle gold; a soldier will have his weapons and his uniform; a smoker, his pipe; a workman, his plow and his oxen; an old woman, her distaff. These fluidic objects are as real to the Spirit as they would be in the material state to the incarnate man. But because they are created by thought, their existence is as ephemeral as it [thought].

It is therefore very easy to understand what we said: “why does it exist? Because they believe”. We need to recognize, therefore, the need understanding and separating what is false from what is true, because, as soon as someone says that, in the world of spirits, there are bogeymen who eat children, or spirits that vampirize the perispiritual fluid of the incarnate (the what no can happen, knowing the principle of universal laws that govern matter and Spirit), and that people start to, without thinking, believe, without reasoning, in these concepts, themselves, after they die, depending on their state of consciousness, will manufacture their own hauntings, that is, by the action of thought, will create such images and, then, in their mediumistic communications, they will reproduce the same ideas, probably increased here and there, after all, “whoever tells a tale, increases one point”.

Do you understand the problem, dear reader?

Explanatory video, with Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo

Conclusion

With all this, are we saying that Chico Xavier was wrong? NO, by the principle of Chico Xavier being just the medium. However, André Luiz, who was not even a spiritualist person, on Earth, presented his truth of things, according to his conceptions. And, since this opinion has no doctrinal and rational basis, it cannot be part of Spiritism.

It is important to note, however, that if such creations exist, it is because God allows them. In fact, this is something linked to the divine benevolence itself, which guarantees, to each one, a gradual and shock-free development. In the article “About the Spirits who believe they are still alive”, from the Spiritist Magazine of 1864, there is an important spiritual communication, from which we take the following excerpt:

Not everything is proof in existence; the life of the Spirit continues, as you have been told, from its birth to infinity; for some, death is nothing more than a simple accident that has no influence on the fate of the person who dies. A fallen tile, an attack of apoplexy, a violent death, very often, do nothing but separate the Spirit from its material envelope; but the perispiritual envelope retains, at least in part, the properties of the body that has just succumbed. On a day of battle, if I could open your eyes which you have, but which you cannot make use of, you would see many fights continue, many soldiers still rising to the assault, defending and attacking the redoubts; you would even hear them utter their hurrays! and their battle cries, in the midst of the silence and under the dismal veil that follows a day of carnage; the fight is over, they return to their homes to embrace their old fathers, their old mothers who are waiting for them. Sometimes this state lasts a long time for some; it is a continuation of terrestrial life, a mixed state between corporeal and spiritual life. Why, if they were simple and wise, would they feel the cold of the grave? Why would they pass abruptly from life to death, from daylight to night? God is not unjust, and He leaves this joy to the poor in spirit, hoping that they will see their state through the development of their own faculties, and that they may pass calmly from the material life to the real life of the Spirit.

We see, therefore, that the existence of such “places” is a fact, permitted by divine benevolence, to those who are not yet developed to understand something above and outside of matter and material needs.

We end by remembering what is printed on our homepage:

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
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