INCARNATION OF SPIRITS.

Object of incarnation. — 2. Of the soul. — 3. Materialism.

Object of incarnation.

What is the object of the incarnation of Spirits?

“God imposes incarnation upon them with the aim of leading them to perfection; 2 for some it is expiation, for others a mission.

But, in order to attain that perfection, they must undergo all the vicissitudes of corporeal existence: it is in this that the expiation lies.

Incarnation has yet another aim: that of placing the Spirit in a condition to bear the part that falls to it in the work of creation; 5 to carry it out, in each world the Spirit takes on an instrument in harmony with the essential matter of that world, in order to fulfill there, from that point of view, the orders of God; 6 it is thus that, contributing to the general work, it advances of itself.”

The action of corporeal beings is necessary to the progress of the Universe. God, however, in His wisdom, willed that in that very action they should find a means of progressing and of drawing nearer to Him.

In this way, by an admirable law of Providence, everything is linked together, everything is interdependent in Nature.

Do the Spirits who, from the beginning, followed the path of good have need of incarnation?

“All are created simple and ignorant and instruct themselves in the struggles and tribulations of corporeal life. God, who is just, could not make some happy without toil and labor, and consequently without merit.”

a — But, in that case, of what use is it to the Spirits to have followed the path of good, if this does not exempt them from the sufferings of corporeal life?

“They arrive at the goal more quickly; 2 moreover, the afflictions of life are often the consequence of the Spirit’s imperfection; 3 the fewer the imperfections, the fewer the torments; he who is neither envious, nor jealous, nor avaricious, nor ambitious will not suffer the torments that arise from those defects.”

Of the soul.

What is the soul?

“An incarnate Spirit.”

a — What was the soul before uniting with the body?

“Spirit.”

b — Are souls and Spirits, then, identical, the same thing?

“Yes, souls are nothing but Spirits.

Before uniting with the body, the soul is one of the intelligent beings that people the invisible world, which temporarily put on a fleshly envelope in order to purify and enlighten themselves.”

Is there in man anything besides the soul and the body?

“There is the bond that links the soul to the body.”

a — Of what nature is that bond?

“Semimaterial, that is, of a nature intermediate between the Spirit and the body.

It must be so, in order that the two may communicate with each other.

It is by means of that bond that the Spirit acts upon matter and reciprocally.”

Man is therefore formed of three essential parts:

1st — The body, or material being, analogous to that of the animals and animated by the same vital principle.

2nd — The soul, an incarnate Spirit having in the body its dwelling.

3rd — The intermediary principle, or perispirit, a semimaterial substance which serves as the first envelope of the Spirit and links the soul to the body. Such are, in a fruit, the germ, the perisperm, and the husk.

Is the soul independent of the vital principle?

“The body is no more than an envelope, we repeat this constantly.”

a — Can the body exist without the soul?

“It can; nevertheless, as soon as the life of the body ceases, the soul abandons it.

Before birth, there is not yet a definitive union between the soul and the body; whereas, after that union has been established, the death of the body breaks the bonds that hold it to the soul, and the latter abandons it.

Organic life can animate a body without a soul, but the soul cannot inhabit a body deprived of organic life.” b — What would our body be if it had no soul?

“A mere mass of flesh without intelligence, anything you wish, except a man.”

Can a Spirit incarnate at one time in two different bodies?

“No, the Spirit is indivisible and cannot simultaneously animate two distinct beings.” (See in The Mediums’ Book, the chapter: Bicorporeity and transfiguration.)

What should be thought of the opinion of those who regard the soul as the principle of material life?

“It is a question of words, with which we have nothing to do. Begin by understanding one another.”

Some Spirits and, before them, some philosophers have defined the soul as an animic spark emanated from the great Whole. Why this contradiction?

“There is no contradiction. Everything depends on the meanings of words. Why have you not a word for each thing?”

The term soul is used to express very different things. Some call soul the principle of life and, in this acceptation, one may rightly say, figuratively, that the soul is an animic spark emanated from the great Whole. These last words indicate the universal source of the vital principle, of which each being absorbs a portion and which, after death, returns to the mass from which it came. This idea in no way excludes that of a moral being, distinct, independent of matter, and which preserves its individuality. To this being, likewise, the name soul is given, and it is in this acceptation that one may say the soul is an incarnate Spirit.

In giving diverse definitions of the soul, the Spirits spoke according to the way in which they applied the word and to the earthly ideas with which they were still more or less imbued. This results from the deficiency of human language, which has not a word for each idea, whence an immensity of misunderstandings and disputes. This is why the superior Spirits tell us first to come to an understanding about words. (See in the Introduction, § II, the explanation of the term soul.)

What should be thought of the theory of the soul subdivided into as many parts as there are muscles and thus presiding over each of the body’s functions?

“This too depends on the sense given to the word soul. If by it you mean the vital fluid, this theory has its reason for being; if you refer to the incarnate Spirit, it is erroneous.

We have already said that the Spirit is indivisible. It imparts movement to the organs, making use of the intermediary fluid, without dividing itself for that.”

a — Yet some Spirits have given that definition.

“Ignorant Spirits may take the effect for the cause.”

The soul acts through the intermediary of the organs, and the organs are animated by the vital fluid, which is distributed among them, existing in greater abundance in those that are centers or focuses of movement.

This explanation, however, does not hold, once the soul is regarded as the Spirit that inhabits the body during life and leaves it at the moment of death.

Is there anything true in the opinion of those who claim that the soul is exterior to the body and surrounds it?

“The soul is not enclosed in the body like a bird in a cage. It radiates and manifests itself outwardly, like light through a globe of glass, or like sound around a center of sonority; 2 in this sense one may say that it is exterior, without its therefore constituting the envelope of the body.

The soul has two envelopes: one, subtle and light: it is the first, which you call the perispirit; the other, coarse, material, and heavy, the body.

The soul is the center of all the envelopes, like the germ in a kernel, as we have already said.”

What do you say of that other theory according to which the soul, in a child, goes on completing itself at each period of life?

“The Spirit is one and is wholly present in the child as in the adult. It is the organs, or instruments of the soul’s manifestations, that develop and complete themselves. Here again they take the effect for the cause.”

Why do not all Spirits define the soul in the same way?

“The Spirits are not all equally enlightened on these subjects; 2 there are Spirits of still limited intelligence, who do not understand abstract things; they are like children among you; 3 there are also pseudo-learned Spirits, who make a parade of words in order to impose themselves, just as happens among you.

Then, the enlightened Spirits themselves may express themselves in different terms, whose value, nevertheless, is substantially the same, especially when it is a matter of things that your language shows itself powerless to render with clarity. They then resort to figures, to comparisons, which you take for reality.”

What is to be understood by the soul of the world?

“The universal principle of life and intelligence, from which individualities are born.

But those who make use of this expression most often do not understand one another.

The term soul is so elastic that each one interprets it according to his fancies.

The Earth too has been credited with a soul. By the soul of the Earth is to be understood the assembly of devoted Spirits, who direct your actions toward good, when you listen to them, and who, in a certain way, are the lieutenants of God in relation to your planet.”

How is it to be explained that so many philosophers, ancient and modern, have for so long a time argued about the science of psychology and yet have not arrived at the knowledge of the truth?

“Those men were the precursors of the eternal Spiritist Doctrine. They prepared the ways. They were men and, as such, deceived themselves, taking their own ideas for the light. Nevertheless, even their errors serve to bring out the truth, by showing the pro and the con. Moreover, among those errors are found great truths, which a comparative study renders apprehensible.”

Has the soul, in the body, a determined and circumscribed seat?

“No; but in great geniuses, in all who think much, it resides more particularly in the head, while it occupies chiefly the heart in those who feel much and whose actions all have Humanity for their object.”

a — What should be thought of the opinion of those who place the soul in a vital center?

“This means that the Spirit dwells by preference in that part of your organism, because it is there the point of convergence of all the sensations.

Those who place it in what they regard as the center of vitality confuse it with the vital fluid or principle.

One may nevertheless say that the seat of the soul is found especially in the organs that serve for the intellectual and moral manifestations.” Materialism.

Why is it that anatomists, physiologists, and, in general, those who delve deeply into the science of Nature are so frequently led to materialism?

“The physiologist refers everything to what he sees. The pride of men, who think they know everything and do not admit that there is anything above their understanding. The very science they cultivate fills them with presumption. They think that nature can keep nothing hidden from them.”

Is it not to be deplored that materialism should be a consequence of studies which ought, on the contrary, to show man the superiority of the intelligence that governs the world? Should one conclude from this that they are dangerous?

“It is not exact that materialism is a consequence of those studies. It is man who draws a false consequence from them, for the reason that it is given to him to abuse everything, even the best things. Add to this that nothingness frightens them more than they would wish to appear, and the strong-minded are almost always braggarts rather than brave. The majority of them are materialists only because they have nothing with which to fill the void of the abyss that opens before them. Show them an anchor of salvation and they will eagerly grasp it.”

By an aberration of the intelligence, there are persons who see in organic beings only the action of matter and attribute to it all our acts. In the human body they see only the electric machine; they have studied the mechanism of life solely by the functioning of the organs, whose repeated extinction they have observed as the effect of the rupture of a thread, and they have seen nothing beyond that thread. They sought to know whether anything remained and, as they found nothing but matter, which had become inert, since they did not see the soul escape, since they could not seize it, they concluded that everything was contained in the properties of matter and that, therefore, annihilation of thought followed death; 3 a sad consequence, were it real, for then good and evil would mean nothing, man would have reason to think only of himself and to set above all else the satisfaction of his material appetites; the social bonds would be broken and the holiest affections would be sundered forever.

Fortunately, such ideas are far from being general, and may even be held to be very circumscribed, constituting merely individual opinions, since nowhere have they yet formed a doctrine.

A society founded upon such bases would carry within itself the germ of its dissolution, and its members would devour one another like ferocious animals.

Man has, instinctively, the conviction that not all ends for him with life. Nothingness fills him with horror. It is in vain that he sets himself obstinately against the idea of a future life. When the supreme moment sounds, few are those who do not inquire what is to become of them, for the idea of leaving life forever offers something poignant. Who, in fact, could regard with indifference an absolute, eternal separation from all that has been the object of his love? Who could see, without terror, the immeasurable abyss of nothingness opening before him, where all his faculties, all his hopes would be buried forever, and say to himself: What! after me, nothing, nothing more but the void, everything definitively ended; a few more days and my remembrance will have been effaced from the memory of those who survive me; soon no trace will remain of my passage upon the Earth; even the good I did will be forgotten by the ungrateful whom I benefited. And nothing to compensate for all this, no other prospect than that of my body gnawed by worms!

Has not this picture something horrible, something glacial, about it? Religion teaches that it cannot be so, and reason confirms it for us. But a future existence, vague and indefinite, presents nothing that satisfies our desire for the positive. This is, in many, the origin of doubt.

We possess a soul, very well; but what is our soul? Has it form, some appearance or other? Is it a limited being, or an indefinite one? Some say it is a breath of God, others a spark, others a portion of the great Whole, the principle of life and of intelligence. But what do we come to know of all this? What does it matter to us to have a soul, if, when our life is extinguished, it disappears into immensity, like drops of water in the Ocean? Is not the loss of our individuality equivalent, for us, to nothingness?

It is also said that the soul is immaterial. Now, an immaterial thing lacks determined proportions. Thenceforth, it is nothing, for us.

Religion further teaches us that we shall be happy or unhappy, according to the good or the evil we shall have done. But what is this happiness that awaits us in the bosom of God? Will it be a beatitude, an eternal contemplation, with no other occupation than to chant praises to the Creator?

Will the flames of hell be a reality or a symbol? The Church itself gives them this latter signification; but then, what are those sufferings? Where is that place of torment?

In a word, what is one to do, what is one to see, in that other world which awaits us all? It is said that no one has ever returned from there to give us information. It is an error to say so, and the mission of Spiritism consists precisely in enlightening us about that future, in causing us, to a certain point, to touch it with the finger and penetrate it with the gaze, no longer by reasoning alone, but by facts.

Thanks to the spirit communications, it is no longer a matter of a mere presumption, of a probability about which each one conjectures at will, which the poets embellish with their fictions, or load with deceptive allegorical images. It is reality that appears to us, since it is the very beings from beyond the tomb who come to describe to us the situation in which they find themselves, to relate what they do, allowing us to witness, so to speak, all the vicissitudes of the new life they live there, and showing us, by this means, the inevitable lot that is reserved for us, in accordance with our merits and demerits.

Is there anything anti-religious in this? Quite the contrary, for the unbelievers find faith there, and the lukewarm the renewal of fervor and confidence.

Spiritism is, then, the most powerful auxiliary of religion. If it is here, it is because God permits it, and He permits it so that our wavering hopes may be reinvigorated and so that we may be led back to the path of good by the prospect of the future.