THE FUTURE PENALTIES ACCORDING TO SPIRITISM.

The flesh is weak. — Principles of the Spiritist Doctrine on the future penalties.

— Penal code of the future life.

The flesh is weak.

— There are vicious tendencies that are evidently proper to the Spirit, because they cling more to the moral than to the physical; 2 others seem rather to depend on the organism, and for this reason those who possess them are judged less responsible: 3 considered as such are the dispositions to anger, to sloth, to sensuality, etc.

Today it is fully recognized by spiritualist philosophers that the cerebral organs corresponding to various aptitudes owe their development to the activity of the Spirit. Thus, this development is an effect and not a cause.

A man is not a musician because he has the bump of music, but he possesses that tendency because his Spirit is musical.

If the activity of the Spirit reacts upon the brain, it must also react upon the other parts of the organism.

The Spirit is, in this way, the artist of its own body, fashioned by it, so to speak, to the shape of its needs and to the manifestation of its tendencies.

In this way the corporeal perfection of the advanced races ceases to be the product of distinct creations to be the result of the spiritual labor, which perfects the material envelope as the faculties increase.

As a natural consequence of this principle, the moral dispositions of the Spirit must modify the qualities of the blood, give it greater or lesser activity, provoke a more or less abundant secretion of bile or of any other fluids. It is thus, for example, that the glutton's mouth fills with saliva before an appetizing dish.

It is certain that the dish cannot excite the organ of taste, since it has no contact with it; it is, then, the Spirit, whose sensibility is awakened, that acts upon that organ through thought, while another person will remain indifferent at the sight of the same delicacy.

It is also for this reason that the sensitive person easily sheds tears. It is not, however, the abundance of these that gives sensibility to the Spirit, but precisely the sensibility of the latter that provokes the abundant secretion of tears.

Under the dominion of sensibility, the organism has adapted itself to the normal disposition of the Spirit, in the same way that it adapted itself to the disposition of the gluttonous Spirit.

Following this order of ideas, it is understood that an irascible Spirit must tend to stimulate a bilious temperament, from which it results that a man is not choleric because bilious, but bilious because choleric.

The same occurs with respect to all the other instinctive dispositions: an indolent and weak Spirit will leave the organism in a state of atony relative to its character, whereas, being active and energetic, it will give to the blood as to the nerves perfectly opposite qualities.

The action of the Spirit upon the physical is so evident that not rarely do we see grave organic disorders supervene upon violent moral commotions.

The vulgar expression: — Emotion upset his blood — is not as devoid of meaning as one might suppose. Now, what could upset the blood but the moral dispositions of the Spirit?

It may therefore be admitted, at least in part, that the temperament is determined by the nature of the Spirit, which is cause and not effect.

And we say in part, because there are cases in which the physical evidently influences the moral, such as when a morbid or abnormal state is determined by an external, accidental cause, independent of the Spirit, such as temperature, climate, congenital physical defects, a passing illness, etc.

The moral of the Spirit may, in those cases, be affected in its manifestations by the pathological state, without its intrinsic nature being modified.

To excuse oneself from one's errors by weakness of the flesh is nothing but a sophism to escape responsibilities.

The flesh is only weak because the Spirit is weak, which reverses the question, leaving to the latter the responsibility for all its acts.

The flesh, devoid of thought and will, can never prevail over the Spirit, which is the thinking being with a will of its own; 23 it is the Spirit that gives to the flesh the qualities corresponding to its instinct, just as the artist who imprints upon the material work the stamp of his genius.

Freed from the instincts of bestiality, it elaborates a body that is no longer a tyrant of its aspiration, toward the spirituality of its being, 25 and it is then that man comes to eat to live and no longer lives to eat.

The moral responsibility for the acts of life therefore remains intact; but reason tells us that the consequences of that responsibility must be proportional to the intellectual development of the Spirit; 27 thus, the more enlightened the latter is, the less excusable it becomes, since with intelligence and the moral sense are born the notions of good and evil, of the just and the unjust.

This law explains the failure of Medicine in certain cases. Since the temperament is an effect and not a cause, every effort to modify it is nullified before the moral dispositions of the Spirit, opposing it an unconscious resistance that neutralizes the therapeutic action. Consequently, it is upon the primordial cause that one must act.

Hence, if you put courage into the coward, you will see at once the physiological effects of fear cease.

This proves once more the necessity, for the art of healing, of taking into account the spiritual influence upon organisms. (Spiritist Review, March 1869: The flesh is weak.)

Principles of the Spiritist Doctrine on the future penalties.

— The Spiritist Doctrine, as regards the future penalties, is not based on a preconceived theory; it is not a system substituting another system: in everything it rests upon observations, and it is these that give it full authority.

No one ever imagined that souls, after death, would find themselves in such or such conditions; it is they, those very souls, departed from the Earth, who today come to initiate us into the mysteries of the future life, to describe to us their happy or unhappy situation, the impressions, the transformation through the death of the body, completing, in a word, the teachings of the Christ on this point.

It must be affirmed that in this case it is not a matter of the revelations of a single Spirit, who might see things from his own point of view, under a single aspect, still dominated by earthly prejudices.

Nor is it a matter of a revelation made exclusively to an individual who might let himself be carried away by appearances, 5 or of an ecstatic vision ⁿ susceptible to illusions, and often being nothing but the reflection of an exalted imagination; 6 it is, rather, a matter of innumerable examples furnished by Spirits of all categories, from the most elevated to the most inferior of the scale, through the intermediary of as many helpers (mediums) disseminated throughout the world, so that the revelation ceases to be the privilege of someone, for all can prove it, observing it, without being obliged to belief by the belief of another. Penal code of the future life.

— Spiritism does not come, then, with its private authority, to formulate a code of fantasy; its law, as regards the future of the soul, deduced from the observations of fact, may be summed up in the following points:

1st The soul or Spirit suffers in the spiritual life the consequences of all the imperfections that it did not manage to correct in the corporeal life.

Its state, happy or unhappy, is inherent to its degree of purity or impurity.

2nd Complete happiness is bound to perfection, that is, to the complete purification of the Spirit.

Every imperfection is, in its turn, a cause of suffering and of privation of enjoyment, in the same way that every perfection acquired is a source of enjoyment and a mitigation of sufferings.

3rd There is not a single imperfection of the soul that does not entail fatal and inevitable consequences, as there is not a single good quality that is not the source of an enjoyment.

The sum of the penalties is thus proportioned to the sum of the imperfections, as that of the enjoyments to that of the qualities.

The soul that has ten imperfections, for example, suffers more than the one that has three or four; and when of those ten imperfections there remains to it no more than half or a quarter, it will suffer less; once all extinct, then the soul will be perfectly happy.

Also on the Earth, the one who has many ailments suffers more than the one who has only one or none.

For the same reason, the soul that possesses ten perfections has more enjoyments than another less rich in good qualities. 4th By virtue of the law of progress that gives to every soul the possibility of acquiring the good that it lacks, as of stripping itself of what it has that is evil, according to its own effort and will, we have that the future is open to all creatures.

God repudiates none of His children, but rather receives them into His bosom as they attain perfection, leaving to each one the merit of its works.

5th Since suffering depends on imperfection, as enjoyment on perfection, the soul carries with it its own chastisement or reward, wherever it may be, without need of a circumscribed place.

Hell is everywhere there are suffering souls, and Heaven likewise where there are happy souls.

6th The good and the evil we do flow from the qualities we possess.

Not to do good when we can is, therefore, the result of an imperfection.

If every imperfection is a source of suffering, the Spirit must suffer not only for the evil it did but also for the good it failed to do in the terrestrial life.

7th The Spirit suffers for the evil it did, in such a way that, its attention being constantly directed toward the consequences of that evil, it better understands the drawbacks of it and seeks to correct itself.

8th The justice of God being infinite, good and evil are rigorously considered, 2 there being not a single action, a single evil thought that does not have fatal consequences, 3 as there is not a single meritorious action, a single good movement of the soul that is lost, 4 even for the most perverse, inasmuch as such actions constitute a beginning of progress.

9th Every fault committed, every evil performed is a debt contracted that must be paid; 2 if it is not in one existence, it will be in the following one or ones, 3 because all existences are jointly bound together.

He who acquits himself in one existence will not have need to pay a second time.

10th The Spirit suffers, whether in the corporeal world or in the spiritual, the consequence of its imperfections.

The miseries, the vicissitudes endured in the corporeal life, arise from our imperfections, are expiations of faults committed in the present or in preceding existences.

By the nature of the sufferings and vicissitudes of the corporeal life, one may judge the nature of the faults committed in a previous existence, and of the imperfections that originated them.

11th The expiation varies according to the nature and gravity of the fault, the same fault being able, therefore, to determine diverse expiations, according to the circumstances, mitigating or aggravating, in which it was committed.

12th There is no absolute nor uniform rule as to the nature and duration of the chastisement: — the only general law is that every fault will have punishment, and every meritorious act will have reward, according to its value.

13th The duration of the chastisement depends on the improvement of the guilty Spirit.

No condemnation for a determined time is prescribed for it.

What God requires as the term of the sufferings is a serious, effective, sincere improvement, a return to good.

In this way the Spirit is always the arbiter of its own lot, being able to prolong the sufferings by persistence in evil, or to soften and annul them by the practice of good.

A condemnation for a predetermined time would have the double drawback of continuing the martyrdom of the renegade Spirit, or of freeing it from suffering while it still remained in evil.

Now, God, who is just, only punishes evil while it exists, ⁿ and ceases to punish it when it exists no more; 7 furthermore, moral evil, being in itself a cause of suffering, will make this last as long as the former subsists, or will diminish in intensity as it decreases. 14th The duration of the chastisement depending on the improvement of the Spirit, the guilty one who never improved would suffer always, and, for it, the penalty would be eternal.

15th A condition inherent to the inferiority of Spirits is that they do not descry the term of the probation, believing it eternal, as eternal seems to them such a chastisement must be. ⁿ 16th Repentance, although it is the first step toward regeneration, does not suffice by itself; expiation and reparation are needed.

Repentance, expiation, and reparation constitute, therefore, the three necessary conditions for effacing the traces of a fault and its consequences.

Repentance softens the bitterness of expiation, opening through hope the path of rehabilitation; 4 only reparation, however, can annul the effect by destroying its cause.

Otherwise, pardon would be a grace, not an annulment.

17th Repentance can occur everywhere and at any time; if it is late, however, the guilty one suffers for a longer time.

Until the last vestiges of the fault disappear, expiation consists in the physical and moral sufferings that are consequent to it, whether in the present life, whether in the spiritual life after death, or yet in a new corporeal existence.

Reparation consists in doing good to those to whom one had done evil.

He who does not repair his errors in one existence, through weakness or ill will, will find himself in a later existence in contact with the same persons who have grievances against him, and in conditions voluntarily chosen, so as to demonstrate to them gratitude and to do them as much good as evil he may have done them.

Not all faults entail direct and effective harm; 6 in such cases reparation is operated by doing what one ought to have done and neglected; 7 by fulfilling the duties despised, the missions not accomplished; 8 by practicing good in compensation for the evil practiced, 9 that is, becoming humble if one has been proud, 10 amiable if one was austere, 11 charitable if one has been selfish, 12 benign if one has been perverse, 13 laborious if one has been lazy, 14 useful if one has been useless, 15 temperate if one has been dissolute, 16 exchanging, in short, for good the evil examples perpetrated.

And in that way the Spirit progresses, profiting from its own past. ⁿ 18th Imperfect Spirits are excluded from the happy worlds, whose harmony they would disturb; 2 they remain in the inferior worlds expiating their faults through the tribulations of life, and purifying themselves of their imperfections until they merit incarnation in more elevated worlds, more advanced morally and physically.

If one can conceive of a circumscribed place of chastisement, such a place is, without doubt, in those worlds of expiation, around which swarm imperfect Spirits, disincarnated awaiting new existences that allow them to repair the evil, helping them in their progress.

19th As the Spirit always has free will, progress sometimes becomes slow for it, and its obstinacy in evil tenacious.

In this state it may persist for years and centuries, there coming at last a moment in which its contumacy is modified by suffering, and, in spite of its boastfulness, it recognizes the superior power that dominates it.

Then, as soon as the first glimmers of repentance manifest, God lets it glimpse hope.

There exists no Spirit incapable of ever progressing, doomed to eternal inferiority, which would be the negation of the law of progress, which providentially governs all creatures.

20th Whatever may be the inferiority and perversity of the Spirits, God never abandons them.

All have their guardian angel who watches over them, with the aim of arousing in them good thoughts, desires to progress, and likewise of watching for the movements of the soul, whereby they strive to repair in a new existence the evil they practiced.

However, this interference of the protecting guide is made almost always hiddenly and in such a way that there is no pressure, for the Spirit must progress by the impulse of its own will, never by any constraint.

Good and evil are practiced by virtue of free will, and, consequently, without the Spirit being fatally impelled toward one or the other direction.

Persisting in evil, it will suffer the consequences for as long as the persistence lasts, in the same way that, taking a step toward good, it immediately feels beneficial effects. OBSERVATION. It would be an error to suppose that, by effect of the law of progress, the certainty of attaining sooner or later perfection and happiness may stimulate perseverance in evil, on the condition of later repentance: 2 first, because the inferior Spirit does not perceive the term of its situation; 3 and second, because, being the author of its own unhappiness, it ends by understanding that it depends on itself to make it cease; 4 that for as long as it perseveres in evil it will be unhappy; 5 finally, that the suffering will be unending if it does not itself put an end to it.

It would be, then, a negative calculation, whose consequences the Spirit would be the first to recognize.

It is with the dogma of irremissible penalties that, precisely, such a hypothesis is verified, seeing that any idea of hope is forever forbidden, man therefore having no interest in converting to good, for him without profit.

In the face of this law, the objection drawn from divine prescience also falls, 9 for God, in creating a soul, effectively knows whether, by virtue of its free will, it will take the good or the evil road;

He knows that it will be punished if it does evil; but He also knows that such temporary chastisement is a means of making it understand the error, sooner or later entering the good path.

By the doctrine of eternal penalties one concludes that God knows that this soul will fail and, therefore, that it is beforehand condemned to infinite tortures. 21st The responsibility for the faults is wholly personal, 2 no one suffers for the errors of others, save if he gave rise to them, whether provoking them by example, whether not preventing them when he could have done so.

Thus, the suicide is always punished; but he who out of malice impels another to commit it, he suffers a still greater penalty.

22nd Although the diversity of punishments is infinite, there are some inherent to the inferiority of Spirits, and whose consequences, save for details, are more or less identical.

The most immediate punishment, especially among those who find themselves bound to the material life to the detriment of spiritual progress, makes itself felt by the slowness of the detachment of the soul; 3 in the anguishes that accompany death and the awakening in the other life, 4 in the consequent perturbation that may extend itself over months and years.

In those who, on the contrary, have a pure conscience and in the material life are already identified with the spiritual life, the passing is rapid, without shocks, the disturbance of a peaceful awakening almost null. 23rd A phenomenon very frequent among Spirits of a certain moral inferiority is their believing themselves still alive, this illusion being able to prolong itself for many years, during which they will experience all the needs, all the torments and perplexities of life.

24th For the criminal, the incessant presence of the victims and of the circumstances of the crime is a cruel torment.

25th There are Spirits plunged in dense darkness; 2 others find themselves in absolute isolation in Space, tormented by ignorance of their own position, as of the lot that awaits them.

The most guilty endure tortures much more poignant by not glimpsing a term to them.

Some are deprived of seeing their loved ones.

All, generally, pass with relative intensity through the evils, the pains, and the privations that they occasioned to others.

This situation endures until the desire for reparation through repentance brings them the calm to glimpse the possibility of, by themselves, putting a term to their situation. 26th For the proud one relegated to the inferior classes, it is a torment to see placed above him, full of glory and well-being, those whom on the Earth he had despised.

The hypocrite sees his most secret thoughts unveiled, penetrated, and read by everyone, without being able to hide or dissimulate them; 3 the satyr, in the impotence to satiate them, has in the exaltation of the bestial desires the most atrocious torment; 4 the miser sees the inevitable squandering of his treasure, 5 while the egoist, forsaken by all, suffers the consequences of his earthly attitude; neither thirst nor hunger will be mitigated for him, nor will friendly hands extend to his suppliant hands; and since in life he cared only for himself, no one will take pity on him in death. 27th The only means of avoiding or attenuating the future consequences of a fault lies in repairing it, undoing it in the present; 2 the more we delay in the reparation of a fault, the more painful and rigorous, in the future, will be its consequences.

28th The situation of the Spirit, in the spiritual world, is none other than the one prepared by itself in the corporeal life.

Later, another incarnation is granted to it for the expiation and the reparation through new trials, with greater or lesser profit, depending on its free will; 3 and if it does not correct itself, it will always have a mission to recommence, ever and ever more bitter, so that it may be said that he who much suffers on the Earth had much to expiate; 4 and those who enjoy an apparent happiness, in spite of their vices and uselessnesses, will pay very dearly for it in a later existence.

It was in this sense that Jesus said:

“Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be consoled.” (The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter V.)

29th Certainly, the mercy of God is infinite, but it is not blind.

The guilty one whom it reaches is not exonerated, and, while he has not satisfied justice, he suffers the consequence of his errors.

By infinite mercy, we must hold that God is not inexorable, always leaving viable the path of redemption.

30th Subordinated to the repentance and reparation dependent on the human will, the penalties, being temporary, constitute concomitantly chastisements and remedies auxiliary to the cure of the evil.

The Spirits, under trial, are not, then, like convicts condemned for a certain time, but like patients in a hospital suffering from ailments resulting from their own carelessness, submitting to more or less painful curative means that the ailment requires, awaiting a discharge all the prompter the more strictly the prescriptions of the solicitous attending physician are observed.

If the patients, through their own carelessness of themselves, prolong the infirmity, the physician has nothing to do with that. 31st To the penalties that the Spirit experiences in the spiritual life are joined those of the corporeal life, which are consequent to the imperfections of man, to his passions, to the bad use of his faculties, and to the expiation of present and past faults.

It is in the corporeal life that the Spirit repairs the evil of anterior existences, putting into practice resolutions taken in the spiritual life.

Thus are explained the worldly miseries and vicissitudes that, at first sight, seem to have no reason for being.

They are just, however, as the spoils of the past — an inheritance that serves our pilgrimage toward perfectibility. ⁿ 32nd God, it is said, would He not give a greater proof of love to His creatures, by creating them infallible and, consequently, exempt from the vices inherent to imperfection?

For that it would be necessary that He create perfect beings, having nothing more to acquire, whether in knowledge, whether in morality.

Certainly, however, God could do it, and if He did not do it, it is that in His wisdom He willed that progress constitute the general law.

Men are imperfect, and, as such, subject to more or less painful vicissitudes; and since the fact exists, we must accept it.

To infer from it that God is neither good nor just would be a senseless revolt against the law.

Injustice there would be, indeed, in the creation of privileged beings, more or less favored, enjoying delights that others perchance attain only through labor, or that they could never attain.

On the contrary, the divine justice is made manifest in the absolute equality that presides over the creation of the Spirits; 8 all have the same point of departure and none is distinguished in its formation by being better endowed; 9 none whose progressive march is facilitated by exception: 10 those who arrive at the end have passed, like any others, through the phases of inferiority and the respective trials.

This being so, nothing is more just than the liberty of action granted to each one.

The path of happiness opens broad to all, as to all the same conditions for attaining it; 13 the law, engraved on all consciences, is taught to all.

God made happiness the reward of labor and not of favoritism, so that each one might have his merit; 15 we are all free in the labor of our own progress, and he who works much and quickly receives the recompense sooner; 16 the pilgrim who strays, or loses time on the way, delays the march and can complain only of himself.

Good as well as evil are voluntary and optional: free, man is not fatally impelled toward one or the other. 33rd In spite of the diversity of kinds and degrees of sufferings of the imperfect Spirits, the penal code of the future life may be summed up in these three principles:

Suffering is inherent to imperfection.

Every imperfection, as well as every fault emanating from it, carries with it its own chastisement in the natural and inevitable consequences: 4 thus, ailment punishes excesses and from idleness is born tedium, without there being need of a special condemnation for each fault or individual.

Since every man can free himself from his imperfections by effect of the will, he can equally annul the consecutive evils and assure his future happiness.

To each one according to his works, in Heaven as on the Earth: such is the law of Divine Justice.

[1] See chapter VI, no. 7; and The Spirits' Book nos. 443 and 444.

[2] See chapter VI, no. 25, citation of Ezekiel.

[3] Perpetual is synonymous with eternal. One says the limit of the perpetual snows; the eternal ice of the poles; one also says the perpetual secretary of the Academy, which does not mean that he is so ad perpetuam, but solely for an unlimited time. Eternal and perpetual are employed, then, in the sense of indeterminate. In this acceptation it may be said that the penalties are eternal, to express that they do not have a limited duration; eternal, therefore, for the Spirit that does not see the term of them. [4] The necessity of reparation is a principle of rigorous justice, which may be considered a true law of moral rehabilitation of the Spirits. Meanwhile, this doctrine no religion has yet proclaimed. Some persons repel it because they find it more comfortable to be able to acquit themselves of bad actions through a simple repentance, which costs no more than words, by means of a few formulas; nevertheless, believing themselves thus acquitted, they will see later whether that sufficed them. We could ask whether this principle is not consecrated by human law, and whether the divine justice can be inferior to that of men? And further, whether those laws would consider themselves satisfied as soon as the individual who transgressed them, through abuse of confidence, limited himself to saying that he respects them infinitely. Why should such persons waver before an obligation that every honest man imposes on himself as a duty, according to the degree of his strength?

When this perspective of reparation is inculcated in the belief of the masses, it will be another check on their excesses, and far more powerful than hell and its respective eternal penalties, seeing that it concerns life in its full actuality, man being able to understand the origin of the circumstances that make it painful, or his true situation.

[5] See Part I, chapter V, Purgatory, no. 3 and following; and, afterward, Part II, chapter VIII, Terrestrial Expiations. See, also, The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter V: Blessed are the afflicted.