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Can man enjoy complete happiness on Earth? [Question 920.]

“No, for life was given to him as a trial or expiation. But it depends on him to soften his evils and to be as happy as possible on Earth.”

It is conceivable that man will be happy on Earth when Humanity is transformed. But, while this does not come about, can he attain a relative happiness? [Question 921.]

“Man is almost always the artificer of his own unhappiness. Through the practice of the Law of God, he can spare himself many evils and attain a happiness as great as his coarse existence allows.”

The man who is well imbued with his future destiny sees in corporeal life no more than a temporary stop, like a momentary halt at an inn of poor quality. He easily consoles himself for a few annoyances of a journey that will lead him to a position all the better, the better he has attended to the preparations for accomplishing it.

We are punished already in this life for the infractions we commit against the laws that govern corporeal existence, by means of the evils arising from those very infractions and from our own excesses. If we trace back little by little to the origin of what we call our earthly misfortunes, we shall see that, in the majority of cases, they are the consequence of a first departure from the straight path. By virtue of that deviation, we entered upon another, an evil one, and, from consequence to consequence, we fell into misfortune.

Earthly happiness is relative to the position of each one. What suffices for the happiness of one constitutes the misfortune of another. Will there be, nevertheless, some criterion of happiness common to all men? [Question 922.]

“For material life, it is the possession of what is necessary; with respect to moral life, it is the tranquil conscience and faith in the future.”

a. Yet, will not that which is superfluous for one represent, for another, what is necessary, and vice versa, according to their respective positions? [Question 923.]

“Yes, according to your material ideas, your prejudice, your ambition, and all your ridiculous whims, to which the future will do justice when you understand the truth. Without doubt, he who had fifty thousand pounds of income and sees it reduced to ten thousand considers himself very unhappy, because he can no longer cut the same figure, maintain what he calls his position, have horses, lackeys, hold his orgies, etc. He judges that he lacks what is necessary. But, frankly, do you think he is worthy of pity, when, beside him, there are many people who die of hunger and of cold, without a shelter where they may rest their head? The sensible man, in order to be happy, looks downward, and never upward, except to elevate his soul to the infinite.”

There are evils that are independent of one's manner of acting and that strike the most just man. Will there be any means of preserving oneself from them? [Question 924.]

“No; man must resign himself and suffer them without murmuring, if he wishes to progress. Nevertheless, he always finds consolation in his own conscience, which gives him the hope of a better future, provided he does what is needful to obtain it.”

Are the vicissitudes of life always the punishment of present faults? [Question 984.]

“No; as we have already said, they are trials imposed by God or that you yourselves chose as Spirits, before incarnating, for the expiation of faults committed in another existence, because the infraction of the laws of God, and above all of the law of justice, never goes unpunished. If it is not in this existence, it will necessarily be in another. This is why he who seems to you just often suffers. It is the past that punishes him.”

By creating new needs, does not civilization constitute a source of new afflictions? [Question 926.]

“Yes, the evils of this world bear relation to the artificial needs you create for yourselves. He who knows how to limit his desires and looks without envy upon what is above him spares himself many disappointments in this life.”

Often man is unhappy only because of the importance he attributes to the things of this world. Vanity, ambition, and cupidity, when frustrated, make him unhappy. If he places himself above the narrow circle of material life, if he elevates his thoughts toward the infinite, which is his destiny, the vicissitudes of Humanity will seem to him petty and puerile, like the sadness of the child who grieves over the loss of a toy that would have been its supreme happiness. He who sees happiness only in the satisfaction of pride, of vanity, and of coarse appetites is unhappy when he cannot satisfy them, whereas he who asks nothing of the superfluous is happy with that which others regard as calamities.

Without doubt the superfluous is not indispensable to happiness, but the same is not so with the necessary. Now, will not the unhappiness of those who lack the necessary be real? [Question 927.]

“Yes; man is truly unhappy only when he suffers the lack of what is necessary for the life and health of the body. That privation is perhaps due to his own fault, in which case he has only himself to complain of. If the fault be another's, the responsibility will fall upon whoever has given cause for it.”

With a judicious and provident social organization, it is only through man's fault that he can lack the necessary. Often, however, his own faults result from the milieu in which he is placed. When man practices the Law of God, he will have a social order founded on justice and on solidarity, and he himself will also be better. The Earth will be the earthly paradise when men are good. [Question 930.]

Evidently, through the characteristics of our natural aptitudes, God indicates our vocation in this world. Do not many evils arise from the fact of our not following that vocation? [Question 928.]

“Yes, and often it is the parents who, through pride or avarice, turn their children aside from the path that Nature traced for them, thereby compromising their happiness. They will be held responsible for this.”

a. Then do you consider it just that the son of a man highly placed in the world should make clogs, for example, provided he has aptitude for it? [Question 928 a.]

“One need not fall into the absurd, nor exaggerate anything: civilization has its needs. Why should the son of a man highly placed, as you say, make clogs, if he has no need of it to live? This, however, does not prevent him from making himself useful in the measure of his faculties, provided he does not apply them the wrong way. Thus, for example, instead of a bad lawyer, he might perhaps be an excellent mechanic, etc.” The departure of men from their intellectual sphere is, surely, one of the most frequent causes of disappointment. The lack of aptitude for the career embraced is an inexhaustible source of reverses. Then, self-love, allying itself with all this, prevents the man who has failed from seeking resources in a more humble profession, showing him suicide as an extreme remedy to escape what he judges to be humiliation. Had a moral education placed him above the foolish prejudices of pride, he would never have been caught off guard.

Whence comes the weariness of life that takes hold of certain individuals, without plausible motives? [Question 943.]

“Effect of idleness, of the lack of faith, and, often, of satiety.”

For him who exercises his faculties with a useful aim and in accordance with his natural aptitudes, work has nothing arid about it and life flows by more rapidly. He bears its vicissitudes with all the more patience and resignation, the more he acts with a view to the more solid and more durable happiness that awaits him.

Besides the material pains of life, man is exposed to moral pains, which are no less intense. Does not the loss of the beings who are dear to us cause us a grief all the more legitimate because it is irreparable and independent of our will? [Question 934.]

“Yes, and it strikes the rich as much as the poor: it is a trial or an expiation, and constitutes a law for all. But it is already a consolation that you can communicate with your friends by the means within your reach, which spread more and more, while you do not have at your disposal others more direct and more accessible to your senses.”

a. What should one think of the opinion of those who consider these kinds of evocation a profanation? [Question 935.]

“There can be no profanation when there is recollection and when the evocation is practiced with respect and propriety. What proves it is that the Spirits who hold affection for you attend your call with pleasure. They feel happy that you remember them and that they communicate with you.”

The possibility of putting ourselves in communication with the Spirits is a most sweet consolation, for it affords us a means of conversing with our relatives and friends who left the Earth before us. Through evocation, they draw near to us; they come to place themselves at our side, they hear us and respond. In this way, all separation between them and us ceases, so to speak. They aid us with their counsels and give us proofs of the affection they hold for us and of the joy they experience at our remembering them. For us it is a satisfaction to know them happy and to learn, through themselves, the details of their new existence, acquiring the certainty that one day, when our turn comes, we shall go to join them.

Do not the disappointments arising from ingratitude and from the fragility of the bonds of friendship also constitute, for the man of heart, a source of bitterness? [Question 937.]

“Yes, but we have also already taught you to pity the ungrateful and the unfaithful friends: they will be more unhappy than you. Ingratitude is the daughter of egoism, and the egoist will later find hearts as insensible as he himself was.”

a. Do not such disappointments contribute to harden the heart and close it to sensibility? [Question 938.]

“It would be an error, for, as you say, the man of heart always feels happy for the good he does. He knows that if this good is not remembered in this life it will be in another, and that the ungrateful one will be ashamed and will have remorse for his ingratitude.”

b. But such reasoning does not prevent his heart from being ulcerated. Now, may there not arise from this the idea that he would be happier if he were less sensible? [Question 938 a.]

“Yes, if he prefers the happiness of the egoist. A sad happiness, that! Let him know, then, that the ungrateful friends who abandon him are not worthy of his friendship, and that he was mistaken about them; therefore, he should not lament them. Later he will find other friends who will know how to understand him better.”

Nature gave man the need to love and to be loved. One of the greatest pleasures granted to him on Earth is to find hearts that sympathize with his own; she thus gives him the first fruits of the happiness reserved for him in the world of the perfect Spirits, where all is love and benevolence. Such bliss is unknown to the egoist.

Since sympathetic Spirits are led to unite, how is it that, among the incarnate, affection often exists only on one side and the most sincere love is received with indifference and even with repulsion? How is it, moreover, that the most lively affection between two beings can transform itself into antipathy and, sometimes, even into hatred? [Question 939.] “Do you not understand, then, that it is a matter of punishment, though a passing one? Then, how many are there who believe they love madly, because they judge only by appearances, but who, when obliged to live with the persons, are not slow to recognize that it was nothing but a material enthusiasm! It is not enough for a person to be enamored of another who pleases him and in whom he supposes fine qualities; it is by really living with that person that he will be able to appreciate her. On the other hand, how many unions, which at first seem destined to antipathy, end by transforming themselves into a tender and lasting love, because based on esteem, when the couple comes to know each other better and to examine each other more closely! One must not forget that it is the Spirit who loves, and not the body, so that, once the material illusion is dissipated, the Spirit sees the reality.”

Does not the lack of sympathy between beings destined to live together likewise constitute a source of vexations, all the more bitter because they poison the whole of existence? [Question 940.]

“Very bitter, indeed. It is, however, one of those unhappinesses of which you are, in most cases, the principal cause. In the first place, it is your laws that are mistaken; do you perchance believe that God obliges you to remain beside those who displease you? Then, in those unions, you generally seek the satisfaction of pride and of ambition, more than the happiness of a mutual affection. So you suffer the consequences of your prejudices.”

a. But, in that case, is there not almost always an innocent victim? [Question 940 a.]

“Yes, and for that one it constitutes a hard expiation. But the responsibility for his misfortune will fall upon those who caused it. If the light of truth has already penetrated his soul, the victim will seek consolation in his faith in the future. Moreover, as prejudices diminish, the causes of these intimate misfortunes will also disappear.”

For many people the fear of death is a cause of perplexity. Whence comes to them this fear, since they have the future before them? [Question 941.]

“Yes, it is an error for them to nourish such a fear. But, what would you! From childhood they seek to convince them that there is a hell and a paradise, and that it is more certain they will go to hell, seeing that they have also told them that what is in Nature constitutes a mortal sin for the soul. Thus, when these people become adults, if they have a little discernment they cannot admit such things and they become atheists and materialists. It is in this manner that they are led to believe that nothing more exists beyond the present life. As for those who persisted in their childhood beliefs, these fear the eternal fire that will burn them without consuming them. “Death inspires in the just man no fear, because, with faith, he has the certainty of the future; hope makes him await a better life; and charity, to whose law he has obeyed, gives him the assurance that he will not find, in the world to which he must go, any being whose gaze he need fear.”

The carnal man, more attached to corporeal life than to spiritual life, has, on Earth, material pains and pleasures. His happiness consists in the fleeting satisfaction of all his desires. His soul, constantly preoccupied and anguished by the vicissitudes of life, keeps itself in a state of perpetual anxiety and torture. Death frightens him, because he doubts the future and has to leave in the world all his affections and hopes. The moral man who has placed himself above the artificial needs created by the passions experiences, already in this world, pleasures that the material man knows not. The moderation of his desires gives calm and serenity to his Spirit. Happy in the good he does, there are no disappointments for him, and the vexations glide over his soul without leaving any painful impression.

Will not some people find these counsels for being happy on Earth somewhat banal? May they see in them what they consider commonplaces, old truths? And may they say, after all, that the secret of happiness consists in each one knowing how to bear his misfortune? [Question 942.]

“Yes, there are those who say this, and in great number. But, what would you! Many behave like certain sick people to whom the physician prescribes a diet: they would like to be cured without remedies and while continuing to be subject to catching indigestions.”