The following article, dealing with the principle of the non-retrogradation of the Spirit and eliminating the idea of reincarnation as a punishment, was obtained from the article “On the principle of the non-retrogradation of the Spirit”, from the Spiritist Magazine of June 1863. It contradicts what was included in the adulteration of Heaven and Hell, as we demonstrated “The strongest evidence of tampering with Allan Kardec's Heaven and Hell“.

Since questions have been raised several times about the principle of the non-retrogression of spirits, a principle that has been interpreted differently, we will try to resolve them. Spiritism wants to be clear to everyone and not leave its future followers any reason to argue about words, so all points susceptible to interpretation will be elucidated successively.

Spirits do not retrograde, in the sense that they lose nothing of the progress they have made. They may remain momentarily stationary, but they cannot become evil from being good, nor ignorant from being wise. This is the general principle, which only applies to the moral state and not to the material situation, which from good can become bad, if the Spirit has deserved it.

Let's make a comparison. Suppose a man of the world, educated, but guilty of a crime that leads him to Wales. Certainly there is for him a great decline as a social position and as a material well-being. Appreciation and consideration were followed by contempt and abjection. Meanwhile, he has lost nothing in terms of the development of intelligence. He will take his faculties, his talents, his knowledge to prison. He is a fallen man, and this is how fallen spirits must be understood. God can therefore, after a certain time of trial, withdraw from a world where they have not advanced morally, those who have not known him, who have rebelled against his laws, ordering them to atone for their errors and their hardening in a lower world, among even less advanced beings. There they will be as they were before, morally and intellectually, but in an infinitely more painful condition, by the very nature of the globe, and above all by the environment in which they are. In a word, you will be in the position of a civilized man forced to live among the savages, or a polite man condemned to the society of the forced. They have lost their position and their advantages, but have not regressed to the primitive state. From adults, they didn't become children. This is what you mean by regression. Al no have taken advantage of their time, it is up to them to start again. In his goodness, God does not want to leave them more time among the good, whose peace disturb, and therefore sends them to live among men whose mission will be to make them progress teaching them what they know. Through this work they will be able to advance and regenerate themselves, atoning for past faults, like the slave who saves little by little to buy a day of his freedom. But, like the slave, many only save money instead of accumulating virtues, the only ones that can pay for their ransom.

This has so far been the situation on our Earth, a world of atonement and trials, where the Adamic race, an intelligent race, was exiled among the inferior primitive races that inhabited it before it. That is why there is so much bitterness here, bitterness that is far from being felt to the same degree by savage peoples.

There is certainly a retrogression of the Spirit in the sense that it slows down its progress, but not from the point of view of its acquisitions, because of which and the development of its intelligence, its social degradation is more painful. This is why the man of the world suffers more in an abject environment than someone who has always lived in the mud.

According to a system that is somewhat specious at first glance, spirits were not created to incarnate and incarnation would only be the result of their lack. Such a system is undermined by the mere fact that if no spirit had failed, there would be no human beings on Earth or on other worlds. Now, since man's presence is necessary for the material improvement of the worlds; since he contributes by his intelligence and activity to the general work, he is one of the essential cogs in Creation. God could not subordinate the accomplishment of this part of his work to the eventual fall of his creatures, unless he counted on an ever-sufficient number of guilty people to provide laborers for the worlds created and yet to be created. Common sense rejects such an idea.

Incarnation is therefore a necessity for the Spirit who, in carrying out its providential mission, works for its own advancement through the activity and intelligence it must develop in order to provide for its life and well-being.

But incarnation becomes a punishment when, having not done what it should, the Spirit is forced to start again and multiplies its painful corporeal existences through its own fault. A student only graduates after having passed all the classes. Are these classes a punishment? No. They are a necessity, an indispensable condition for their progress. But if, due to laziness, you are forced to repeat them, then it is a punishment. Passing some of them is a merit. What is certain, therefore, is that incarnation on Earth is a punishment for many who inhabit it, because they could have avoided it, whereas they may have doubled, tripled, centupled it, through their own fault, thus delaying their entry into better worlds. What is wrong is to admit, in principle, the incarnation as a punishment.

Another question that is often discussed is this: Since the Spirit was created simple and ignorant, with the freedom to do good or evil, wouldn't it have a moral fall when it takes the wrong path, considering that it ends up doing evil that it didn't do before?

This proposition is no more tenable than the previous one. There is only a fall when passing from a relatively good state to a worse one. Now, created simple and ignorant, the Spirit is, in its origin, in a state of moral and intellectual nullity, like the child that has just been born. If it hasn't done evil, it hasn't done good either; it is neither happy nor unhappy; it acts without conscience and without responsibility. Since it has nothing, it can lose nothing and cannot retrograde. Its responsibility only begins when its free will develops. Its primitive state is therefore not one of intelligent, reasoned innocence. Consequently, the evil it does later on, by breaking God's laws and abusing the faculties it has been given, is not a return from good to evil, but the consequence of the bad path it entered on.

This brings us to another question. Could Nero, for example, while incarnated as Nero, have committed more evil than in his previous incarnation? To this we answer "yes", which does not imply that in the existence in which he had done less evil he would have been better. To begin with, evil can change form without being a greater or lesser evil. Nero's position as emperor, having put him in the spotlight, allowed his actions to be noticed more. In an obscure existence, he may have committed equally reprehensible acts, albeit on a smaller scale, which went unnoticed. As a ruler, he could have ordered the burning of a city. As an ordinary person, he could burn down a house and cause his family to perish. An ordinary murderer who kills a few travelers to dispossess them, if he were on the throne, would be a bloodthirsty tyrant, doing on a large scale what his position only allows him to do on a small scale.

Looking at the question from another point of view, we can say that a man can do more evil in one existence than in the previous one, show vices that he didn't have, without this implying moral degeneration. It is often the occasions that are lacking to do evil. When the principle exists in a latent state, the occasion comes and the bad instincts are revealed.

Ordinary life offers us numerous examples of this: A man who was thought to be good suddenly reveals vices that no one suspected, and which cause admiration. It's simply because he knew how to conceal it, or because a cause provoked the development of a bad germ. It is quite certain that those in whom good feelings are strongly rooted do not even have the thought of evil. When such a thought exists, the germ exists. Often all that is missing is the execution.

Then, as we said, evil, even in different forms, is still evil. The same vicious principle can be the source of many different acts stemming from the same cause. Pride, for example, can cause a great number of faults to be committed, to which one is exposed as long as the radical principle is not extirpated. A person can therefore have faults in one life which he would not have shown in another, and which are nothing more than the various consequences of the same vicious principle.

For us, Nero is a monster because he committed atrocities. But is it believable that these perfidious, hypocritical men, real vipers who sow the poison of slander, despoil families through cunning and abuse of trust, who cover their misdeeds with the mask of virtue in order to reach their ends more safely and receive praise when they only deserve execration, is it believable, we said, that they are better than Nero? Certainly not. Being reincarnated in a Nero would not be a regression for them, but an opportunity to show themselves in a new light. In this condition, they will display the vices they used to hide. They will dare to do by force what they used to do by cunning - that's all the difference. But this new trial will only make their punishment more terrible if, instead of taking advantage of the means given to them to make amends, they use them for evil. However, every existence, no matter how bad, is an opportunity for the Spirit to progress. It develops its intelligence and acquires experience and knowledge that will later help it to progress morally.

O artigo presente, “Deus não se vinga”, foi extraído textualmente de Revista espírita — Jornal de estudos psicológicos — 1865 > Maio > Dissertações espíritas.

I – Preconceived ideas

We have told you many times to examine the communications that are given to you, subjecting them to the analysis of reason, and not to take without examination the inspirations that come to stir your spirit, under the influence of causes that are sometimes very difficult to verify by the incarnated, subjected to countless distractions.

The pure ideas that, so to speak, float in space (according to the Platonic idea), carried by the Spirits, cannot always lodge alone and isolated in the brain of your mediums. They often find the place occupied by preconceived ideas that flow with the jet of inspiration, which disturb and transform it unconsciously, it is true, but sometimes profoundly enough for the spiritual idea to be thus entirely denatured. .

Inspiration contains two elements: thought and the fluidic heat destined to warm the spirit of the medium, giving him what you call the verve of the composition. If inspiration finds the place occupied by a preconceived idea, from which the medium cannot or does not want to detach himself, our thought is left without an interpreter, and the fluidic heat is wasted in heating a thought that is not ours. How many times, in your selfish and passionate world, have we seen the heat and the idea! You disdain the idea, which your conscience should make you recognize, and you seize the heat for the benefit of your earthly passions, thus at times squandering the good of God for the benefit of evil. Thus, how many accounts will one day have to pay all lawyers in lost causes!

No doubt it would be desirable for good inspirations to always be able to dominate preconceived ideas, but then we would impede the free will of man's will, and the latter would thus escape the responsibility that belongs to him. But if we are only Humanity's auxiliary advisors, how many times do we have to congratulate ourselves when our idea, knocking at the door of a straight conscience, triumphs over the preconceived idea and modifies the conviction of the inspired! However, it should not be believed that our misused help does not betray a little the misuse that can be made of it. Sincere conviction finds accents that, starting from the heart, reach the heart; the simulated conviction may satisfy passionate convictions, vibrating in unison with the first, but it carries a particular chill, which leaves the conscience unsatisfied and denotes a doubtful origin.

Do you want to know where the two elements of mediumistic inspiration come from? The answer is easy: the idea comes from the extraterrestrial world, it is the Spirit's own inspiration. As for the fluidic heat of inspiration, we found it and took it from you; it is the quintessential part of the emanating vital fluid. Sometimes we take it from the inspired person, when he is endowed with a certain fluidic power (or mediumistic, as you say); most of the time we take him in his environment, in the emanation of benevolence with which he is more or less surrounded. This is why it can rightly be said that sympathy makes eloquent.

If you carefully reflect on these causes, you will find the explanation of many facts that at first cause admiration, but of which everyone has a certain intuition. The idea alone would not be enough for man if he were not given the strength to express it. Heat is to the idea what the perispirit is to the Spirit, what your body is to the soul. Without the body, the soul would be powerless to stir up matter; without heat, the idea would be powerless to move hearts.

The conclusion of this communication is that you must never abdicate your reason, in the examination of the inspirations that are submitted to you. The more acquired ideas the medium has, the more he is susceptible to preconceived ideas; he must also make a clean slate of his own thoughts, deposit the influences that agitate him and give his conscience the necessary abnegation for good communication.

II – God does not take revenge

The foregoing is just a preamble intended to serve as an introduction to other ideas. I have spoken of preconceived ideas, but there are others besides those which come from the inclinations of the inspired; there are those that are the result of an erroneous instruction, of an interpretation believed over a more or less long time, which had their raison d'être at a time when human reason was insufficiently developed and which, passed into a chronic state, cannot be modified unless by heroic efforts, especially when they have the authority of religious teaching and reserved books. One such idea is this: God takes revenge. That a man, wounded in his pride, in his person or in his interests, takes revenge, this is conceivable. This revenge, although culpable, is within the limits of human imperfections, but a father who takes revenge on his children raises general indignation, because everyone feels that a father, with the task of forming his children, can redirect them in their mistakes. and correct his defects by all the means at his disposal, but that revenge is forbidden to him, under pain of becoming a stranger to all the rights of fatherhood.

Under the name of public revenge, the Society that is disappearing took revenge on the culprits; the punishment inflicted, often cruel, was the revenge she took on the wicked man. She had not the slightest concern for this man's rehabilitation and left it up to God to punish or forgive him. It was enough for him to strike with terror, which he thought salutary, the future culprits. The Society they came from no longer thinks like that; if she still does not act with a view to amending the culprit, she at least understands what hateful revenge contains in itself; safeguarding the Society against the attacks of a criminal is enough for him, aided by the fear of a miscarriage of justice. Capital punishment will soon disappear from your codes.

If today Society feels too great before a guilty party to let itself go into anger and take revenge on him, how do you want God, sharing your weaknesses, to become irascible and strike out of revenge a sinner called to repentance ? Believing in God's wrath is a pride of Humanity, which imagines having a great weight in the divine scales. If the plant in your garden does badly, if it goes astray, will you get angry and take revenge on it? No; you will straighten it out if you can, you will give it support, you will force its bad tendencies by obstacles, if necessary you will transplant it, but you will not take revenge. So does God.

God take revenge, what a blasphemy! What a diminution of divine greatness! What ignorance of the infinite distance that separates creation from its creature! What forgetfulness of his goodness and justice!

God would come, in an existence in which you have no memory of your past mistakes, to make you pay dearly for the faults you may have committed in an era erased in your being! No no! God doesn't act like that. It checks the impulse of a disastrous passion, it corrects innate pride by a forced humility, it straightens out the selfishness of the past by the urgency of a present need that leads to the desire for the existence of a feeling that man has neither known nor experienced. As a father, he corrects, but also as a father, God does not take revenge.

Beware of these preconceived ideas of heavenly vengeance, scattered remnants of an ancient error. Beware of those fatalistic tendencies, whose door is open to your new doctrines, and which would lead you directly to eastern quietism. Man's share of freedom is no longer large enough to dwarf it further by erroneous beliefs. The more you feel your freedom, the greater your responsibility will undoubtedly be, and the more the efforts of your will will lead you forward, on the path of progress.

Easter

Based on the video of the same title by weekly chat of the Study Group Spiritism for All

For to demonstrate (and not to test) reincarnation as a natural law, Kardec is based on the fundamental principles of Spiritism and Rational Spiritualism. Among them are the essential attributes of God ((Eternal, immutable, immaterial, unique, almighty, sovereignly just and good. See The Spirits' Book, Chapter I, item III – Attributes of Divinity)), which are perfect to an infinite degree, even though, if it were different, this would not be God himself, making it necessary, then, for there to be another above, in perfect condition.

It is through the observation and understanding of these essential conditions that understanding of divine creation is derived. As we will see later, its creation must also be perfect and its creatures – the Spirits – perfectible, which, otherwise, would not be consistent with infinite divine perfection.

Allan Kardec, at first, did not accept reincarnation. In fact, he did not even accept the possibility of our interaction with the Spirits, in his youth. He was an educator emeritus, fully linked to the concepts of morality in pedagogy, as well as a researcher in the sciences of the time. He said that, if the education of children was carried out well, they, when they grew up, would not believe in souls from the other world or in ghosts ((RIVAIL, H.- L.- D. Discurso pronounced at the Distribution of prizes. Paris, 1834 )). It was only after his first contacts with spiritist facts, where he understood the existence of a natural law, which he began to study, that, defeated by evidence and reason, accepted, as the most rational conclusion, the aforementioned facts.

About Spirits, says Kardec, in the introduction to The Spirits' Book: “As we noted above, the beings who communicate designate themselves by the name of spirits or jinn“.

As for reincarnation, we found an article of great interest in Spiritist Magazine of 1858, from the month of November, called “Plurality of Stocks“, from which we take the following excerpt:

[…] when the doctrine of reincarnation was taught to us by the spirits, she was so far from our thinking, that we had built a completely different system on the antecedents of the soul, system, incidentally shared by many people. On this point, the doctrine of the Spirits surprised us. We will say more: she antagonized us, because it overturned our own ideas. As you can see, it was far from a reflection of them.

This is not all. We we don't give in to the first shock. We fight; we defend our opinion; we raise objections and only surrender in the face of evidence and when we realize the inadequacy of our system to resolve all issues relating to this problem ((we already talked about how important this type of attitude is towards spiritist research. Far from constituting an act of arrogance or arrogance, it is necessary and instigated by the Spirits themselves – when superior)) .

KARDEC, Allan. The Spirits' Book, 2nd edition. Our emphasis.

Kardec, in that same article, whose reading we strongly recommend, gives some preliminary notions about the antiquity of the idea of transmigration of souls. We will cite them, to then present the difficulties encountered in the falsehoods on which they often rely – or have come to rely.

Of the various doctrines professed by Spiritism, the most controversial is, unquestionably, that of reincarnation or the plurality of corporeal existences. Although this opinion is presently shared by a great number of people, and has already been addressed by us on several occasions, we deem it our duty here to examine it more closely, in view of its extraordinary importance, and in order to answer several objections which have been raised.

Before delving into the matter in depth, we must make a few observations that seem to us to be indispensable.

For many people the dogma of reincarnation is not new: it is resurrected from Pythagoras. We have never said that the Spiritist Doctrine is a modern invention. As a result of a natural law, Spiritism must have existed since the beginning of time, and we have always endeavored to prove that its traces are found in the highest antiquity.

As is well known, Pythagoras is not the author of the metempsychosis system. He drank it from Indian philosophers and from among the Egyptians, where it had existed from time immemorial. Thus, the idea of the transmigration of souls was a common belief, admitted by the most eminent personalities.

Ibid.

It is interesting to note that, although this idea was admitted since antiquity, “by the most eminent personalities”, Kardec did not admit it. Perhaps there are two possible reasons for this: he did not think about it, because he did not admit the survival of the Spirit, or he did not find rationality in these ideas. It is on this point that we will enter below, to demonstrate that the absence of reason resides in false principles, taken in a dogmatic way by the clergy of religions and taught, from childhood, to their followers.

False principle of soul degradation

In the article “Doctrine of reincarnation among the Hindus”, from the Spiritist Magazine of December 1859, Allan Kardec takes up the subject of reincarnation in depth, presenting the following:

According to the Hindus, souls had been created happy and perfect and yours decadence resulted from a rebellion; its incarnation in the body of animals is a punishment. According to the Spiritist Doctrine, souls were and still are created simple and ignorant; it is through successive incarnations that, thanks to their efforts and divine mercy, they arrive at the perfection that will provide them with eternal happiness. Having to progress, the soul can remain stationary for a more or less long period, but not retrograde. What he has acquired in knowledge and morality is not lost. If it doesn't advance, it doesn't retreat either: that's why it can't animate beings inferior to Humanity.

Thus, the metempsychosis of the Hindus is founded on the principle of the degradation of souls. Reincarnation, according to the Spirits, is based on the principle of continuous progression..

According to the Hindus, the soul began with perfection to reach abjection.; perfection is the beginning and abjection the result. According to the Spirits, ignorance is the beginning; perfection, goal and result. It would be superfluous to try to show which of these two doctrines is more rational and gives a higher idea of the justice and goodness of God.

It is, therefore, through complete ignorance of their principles that some people confuse them.

KARDEC, Allan. Spiritist Magazine of 1859.

The Hindu belief in the fall into sin is shared by many other currents of thought, including the Roman Church. According to this belief, it would be necessary to suppose that God would not be so perfect, because, after a mistake of his son, created perfect, therefore, without experience, he submits him to a punishment in the flesh.

In the article “On the principle of non-retrogradation of spirits”, in the RE of June 1863, Kardec highlights that:

According to a system, the spirits would not have been created to be incarnated, reincarnating only when they commit faults. Common sense repels such a thought.

The incarnation is a need for the Spirit who, to fulfill his providential mission, works on his own advancement through activity and intelligence, which he must develop in order to provide for his life and well-being. But the incarnation becomes a punishment when, having not done what it should, the Spirit is constrained ((This constraint, of course, occurs as a result of natural, divine law, and not by the direct and arbitrary action of God) ) to resume his task and multiply his painful corporeal existences through his own fault.

A student only graduates after passing all classes. Are these classes a punishment? No: they are a necessity, an indispensable condition for their advancement. ((This is completely in line with Kardec's pedagogical thinking, aligned with Pestalozzi's pedagogy, totally focused on autonomy and away from the concepts of punishment or punishment, which, says Rivail, in his “Proposed Plan for the Improvement of Public Education” (Paris, 1828), “they irritate children instead of convincing them”)). But if, due to laziness, you are forced to repeat them, then it is a punishment ((Remembering that the word “punishment”, for Spiritism and Rational Spiritualism, has the meaning of being the result of an action, and not of a divine imposition (see This one article). Thus, it is possible to understand that repeating a year, for the student, would be a consequence of their actions, and not a punishment inflicted by them.)). Being approved in some is a merit.

What is false is to admit in principle the incarnation as a punishment.

KARDEC, Allan. Spiritist Magazine of 1863. Emphasis ours.

Incredible as it may seem, this false principle dominated the Spiritist Movement, after Kardec. Today, without studies, in the spiritist world, people talk about karma, the law of return and the law of action and reaction, imputing this arbitrarily punitive characteristic, of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, to reincarnation. . It is complete nonsense, which only exists, as we said, due to the absence of study.

In the Spiritist Magazine of February 1864, in the article “Spiritist Dissertations – Necessity of Incarnation”, Kardec presents the communication of a Spirit, assisted by another, named Pascal:

God wanted the Spirit of man to be linked to matter in order to suffer the vicissitudes of the body. ((After all, reincarnation is a law. As Kardec would say in the first article cited, “God does not ask us for permission; he does not consult our taste. Either he is, or he is not.”)), with which he identifies himself to the point of deluding himself and taking it for himself, when it is no more than its temporary prison; it is as if a prisoner is confused with the walls of the cell...

If God wanted his spirit creatures to be momentarily united to matter, it is, I repeat, to make them feel and, in fact, so that they suffer the necessities that matter demands of their bodies, with regard to their sustenance and conservation..

From these needs arise the vicissitudes that make you feel the suffering and understand the pity you must have for your brothers in the same position.. That transient state it is therefore necessary for the advancement of your Spirit, which, without this, would be stagnant.

The needs that the body makes you experience stimulate your spirits and force them to seek the means to provide them; from this forced labor is born the development of thought. Constrained to preside over the body's movements to direct them, aiming at their conservation, the Spirit is led to material work and from there to intellectual work, necessary to each other, because the realization of the conceptions of the Spirit requires the work of the body and this can only be done under the direction and impulse of the Spirit.

KARDEC, Allan. Spiritist Magazine, 1864. Our emphasis.

To what Kardec observes:

To these remarks, which are perfectly fair, we will add that, working for himself, the incarnate Spirit works for the improvement of the world he inhabits, thus helping his transformation and his material progress., which are in the designs of God, whose intelligent instrument it is. In your farsighted wisdom, Providence wanted everything to be linked in Nature; that all, men and things, would be in solidarity ((This fundamental principle of natural law, demonstrated by Spiritism, goes against the false principle of the Spirit isolated in itself. Let us see that, even without knowing or wanting, the Spirit works for the whole, since always. If it had been created perfect ( which is also nonsense), there would be no need.)).

Reincarnation is necessary while matter dominates Spirit. But since the incarnate Spirit came to dominate matter and annul the effects of your reaction on morale, the reincarnation it has no more use nor reason to be.

In fact, the body is necessary to the Spirit for progressive work until, having managed to handle this instrument at will, to impress its will on it, the work is done..

Ibid. Idem.

I don't think further explanation is needed. The principle of successive progress, through multiple incarnations, is shown to be the only one capable of giving reason to all the questions raised to date about divine justice.

In a next article we will continue the subject.

Dear reader, the topic of abortion is on the rise... And how many absurd opinions, issued as a “spiritist view of abortion”, have we seen, on this subject, in the Spiritist Movement (which, today, does not represent Spiritism)! “Women who are infertile are paying for abortions in past lives” is just one of them. We always remember: there is no karma, no law of return, no payment of debts, none of that.

These days, the theme has returned to full activity, due to the case of the girl from Santa Catarina, who became pregnant at the age of 11, and which divided society between opinions, and it did not happen less in the Spiritist milieu. Many, guided by false ideas implanted in the Movement, speak of sin, karma, debts... Anyway, as we have already pointed out, none of this really exists, and Spiritism explains it very well.

Let's go back to The Spirits' Book, checking what there is in it on the subject:

357. What consequences does abortion have for the Spirit?
“It is a nullified existence and he will have to start over.”

358. Is it a crime to provoke abortion at any period of pregnancy?

“There is crime whenever you transgress the law of God. A mother, or whoever,
will commit a crime whenever he takes the life of a child before birth, which is why
prevents a soul from passing through the tests to which the body that
was forming.”

359. In the event that the birth of the child endangered the mother's life
her, is there a crime in sacrificing the first to save the second?

"It is preferable to sacrifice the being that does not yet exist than to sacrifice what already exists.”

KARDEC, Allan. My italics.

In the study of Spiritism, an isolated passage can never be taken as a general rule. It is necessary to understand the whole, as the superior spirits often respond objectively to a question, complementing it or clarifying other points at another time. By not carrying out the study in this way, we would see contradictions that, in fact, do not exist.

The Spirits, in Kardec's time, often used the word “crime” to highlight any act we took against Natural Law. However, Spiritism is not a doctrine of dogmas, but rather a scientific and rational doctrine. Now, given that the fact of pregnancy can put the mother at risk, isn't it fairer to preserve the mother's life, who, perhaps, could even attempt a new pregnancy? It is important to remember that the Spirit's progress is uninterrupted and, if that existence is not possible, he will need to choose another.

There is, however, the materialist thinking that currently prevails regarding abortion, and which, by making the human being a mere biological machine, wants to transform the practice into something banal. This is a mistake, of course, but let's say that the fact happens, and that it becomes legal to carry out an abortion by the simple will of the mother. What will be the consequences, then, for those involved, before the law of God?

We have already seen that, for the Spirit of the fetus, there will be a need to restart the incarnation planning, which is never easy. But what about the mother, who practices the act? She, as we read above, would be committing a crime against the divine law. Will there therefore be condemnation?

It must be remembered, dear reader, that there is no condemnation, and that punishment is always an effect of consciousness of the Spirit on the act performed. By making a mistake many times, the Spirit can acquire an imperfection, which will make it suffer and, eventually, repent and seek reparation (in itself). On this subject, we recommend the reader to watch the studies carried out in this video, with Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo. But what if the individual is not aware what do you do?

A woman can, for example, without planning, become pregnant. being away from understanding of divine laws, and not wanting to have that child, then practices abortion, at any stage of pregnancy. She doesn't even think about it, because for her it's something simple and without implications. Technically, he committed a “crime”, but what will be his suffering in the face of it? Perhaps none, at least until, through understanding, your thinking changes. But in that case, perhaps, when she understand the mistake he made, and never made again, is so far gone that there will only be regret, but it will not necessarily generate suffering. It is a mistake. We make mistakes in our progress. The problem is knowingly repeating the mistake.

Another case would be that of a woman who, given over to her emotions, often, through an inconsequential act, becomes pregnant and who, every time she becomes pregnant, miscarries. She will, every time, be aborting the planning of a Spirit, but the picture demonstrates that what she does arises from a lack of knowledge and also from a sinking into the pleasures of matter. Do you see the path she will need to take, until she reaches the understanding that what she does is wrong? Will she need to “pay” for what she does? No, of course, because, at present, she already suffers from the effects of her way of thinking and acting, which keep her away from good — even if she is not aware of it. It may be that, when you become aware and understand your error, you will choose a way of life that leads you to fight directly against your imperfections, or it may be that, depending on your beliefs, you will feel so guilty that you choose to reincarnate without the possibility of having children, which can be more or less useful in their atonement, that is, in the process of overcoming those imperfections.

And what about the Spirit of the aborted fetus? Will you be sad, angry? Will you hate the ex-mother? Will you want revenge? Of course, all this depends on your degrees of understanding and evolution, all depending on your choices.

In everything, as far as transgressions of divine or natural law are concerned, the effects and possibilities are infinite, because they depend on the individual's level of consciousness about what he does. It is a fact that thoughtless and widespread abortion is a profound mistake for the Holy Spirit., but this happens, I think, much less because of the act itself, and much more because of the context that leads the error to exist, and which is always the result of a complete lack of knowledge of spiritualist morals. Those who practice abortion inconsequentially almost always demonstrate a materialistic thinking that, for sure, in various aspects of life, makes the individual suffer.

Much better than trying to guess, from the present vision of suffering, the infinity of past possibilities that gave rise to it, is to seek to study Spiritism, in Kardec, and spread the knowledge. If most of the world knew the Spiritist Doctrine and evaluated it rationally, we wouldn't be here talking about it. But as long as humanity is immersed in materialism or dogma, which leads to materialism, the same mistakes and their painful consequences will continue to be perpetrated.

It is clear that Spiritism cannot be in favor of facilitated abortion. In a way, we cannot be in favor of legalizing this practice. But then, we fall into the old discussion: to what extent can the State interfere in individual decisions that, at least from a materialist point of view, affect only the individual himself? We see, once again, that the political struggle will not change society through imposition. The transformation has to come from the base, from childhood, through education, embracing morality and rationality.

It is not necessary.

The veil of oblivion has its reason for being and, many times, knowing about the other life brings more trouble than solution. É algo que jamais uma pessoa séria fará, mas, infelizmente, existem os indivíduos mais interessados em ganhos e que, de forma irresponsável, se lançam a esse tipo de “trabalho”.

By observing ourselves with a very critical and honest look, verifying our own imperfections, we can easily identify what puts us in difficulties in the face of life situations, understanding, then, that these difficult situations are precisely opportunities, often planned by us. ourselves, in order to overcome these imperfections and move towards true happiness.

Por fim, destaco que, segundo a Doutrina Espírita, não existe “resgate”, não existe pagamento de dívidas, não existe, nesse sentido, o “carma”: the Spirit, conscious and free, choose trials and atonements (and opportunities) with the purpose set out above – overcoming imperfections and acquiring virtues – never, ever, the difficulties of life being the result of a divine mechanics, a concept linked to the dogma of the fall for sin. The only Spirit that does not choose its proofs is the Spirit in a state of denial., who still reincarnates, but who just lives a life that, by itself, in the face of the contents of this individual, will bring difficulties and moral pain, which one day will make him leave denial and go back to seeking to face these imperfections through conscious choices.

Portanto, ao enfrentar uma prova difícil, não pense “estou pagando por algo ou resgatando algo do passado”, mas sim “é uma difícil mas importante oportunidade de aprendizado. Vou tirar dela o máximo possível”. E, para tanto, understanding Spiritism in depth is substantial!

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