The path of life.

The question of the plurality of existences has long preoccupied philosophers, and more than one has recognized in the anteriority of the soul the only possible solution to the most important problems of psychology. Without this principle, they found themselves halted at every step, cornered in a dead end, from which they could escape only with the help of the plurality of existences.

The greatest objection that can be made to this theory is that of the absence of remembrance of previous existences. Indeed, a succession of existences unconscious of one another; leaving one body to take another without the memory of the past would be equivalent to nothingness, since it would be nothingness as regards thought; it would be a multiplicity of new points of departure, with no connection among them; it would be the incessant rupture of all the affections that make the charm of present life, the sweetest and most consoling hope of the future; it would be, in short, the negation of all moral responsibility. Such a doctrine would be as inadmissible and as incompatible with divine justice as that of a single existence with the prospect of an eternity of penalties for some temporary faults. One understands, then, that those who form such an idea of reincarnation reject it; but it is not thus that Spiritism presents it to us.

The spiritual existence of the soul, it says, is its normal existence, with indefinite retrospective remembrance. The corporeal existences are merely intervals, brief stops in the spiritual existence, the sum of all the stops being merely a minimal portion of normal existence, absolutely as if, on a journey of many years, the traveler stopped from time to time for a few hours. Although it seems that, during the corporeal existences, there is a break of continuity, through the absence of remembrance, the connection is effectively established in the course of spiritual life, which suffers no interruption. The break of continuity, in reality, exists only for the corporeal and relational life, and the absence, there, of remembrance proves the wisdom of Providence that thus prevented man from being too greatly diverted from real life, where he has duties to fulfill; but when the body is at rest, during sleep, the soul partially takes flight and there is then reestablished the chain interrupted only during waking.

To this an objection may still be opposed, asking what profit man can draw from his previous existences, in order to improve himself, given that he does not remember the faults he may have committed. Spiritism answers, first, that the remembrance of wretched existences, added to the miseries of present life, would render the latter still more painful. In this way, God spared His creatures an increase of sufferings. Were it not so, what would not be our humiliation, when thinking of what we had once been! For our improvement, that recollection would be useless. During each existence, we always take some steps forward, we acquire some qualities and we strip ourselves of some imperfections. Each of such existences is, therefore, a new point of departure, in which we are what we shall have made ourselves, in which we take ourselves for what we are, without concerning ourselves with what we may have been. If, in a previous existence, we were cannibals, what does that matter, since we no longer are? If we had some defect of which we no longer retain a trace, there is an account settled, with which it no longer behooves us to be concerned. Let us suppose that, on the contrary, it is a matter of a defect only half corrected: the remainder will be left for the following life, and to correct it is what we must attend to in this one. Let us take an example: a man was a murderer and a thief and was punished, whether in corporeal life or in spiritual life; he repents and corrects himself of the first inclination, but not of the second. In the following existence, he will be only a thief, perhaps a great thief, but no longer a murderer. One more step forward and he will be no more than an obscure thief; a little later he will no longer steal, but he may have the impulse to steal, which his conscience will neutralize. Then, a final effort and, every trace of the moral infirmity having disappeared, he will be a model of probity. What does it matter to him then what he was? Would the remembrance of having ended on the scaffold not be a constant torture and humiliation?

Apply this reasoning to all vices, to all deviations, and you will be able to see how the soul improves itself, passing and passing again through the crucibles of incarnation. Will God not have been more just in making man the arbiter of his own fate, through the efforts he employs to improve himself, than if He had caused his soul to be born at the same time as his body and condemned it to perpetual torments for passing errors, without granting it the means of purifying itself of its imperfections? Through the plurality of existences, his future is in his own hands. If he spends a long time in improving himself, he suffers the consequences of that manner of proceeding: it is supreme justice; hope, however, is never forbidden him.

The following comparison may help to render comprehensible the vicissitudes of the soul's life:

Let us suppose a long road, along whose extent there are found, from place to place, but at unequal intervals, forests that one must cross and, at the entrance of each, the road, broad and magnificent, breaks off, only to continue at the exit. The traveler follows this road and enters the first forest. There, however, he does not come upon an open path; on the contrary, there confronts him an inextricable labyrinth in which he loses himself. The light of the Sun has disappeared beneath the thick foliage of the trees. He wanders, not knowing where he is going. At last, after unheard-of fatigues, he reaches the bounds of the forest, but exhausted, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boulders. There, he discovers the road again and continues his journey, seeking to heal himself of his wounds.

Further on, a second forest confronts him, where the same difficulties await him. But he already possesses a little experience and emerges from it less bruised. In another, he comes upon a woodcutter who indicates to him the direction he must follow so as not to go astray. With each new crossing, his skill increases, so that he surmounts the obstacles ever more easily. Certain that at the exit he will again find the good road, he settles into that certainty; then, he already knows how to orient himself to find it more easily. The road ends at the summit of a very high mountain, from which he descries the whole path he traversed from the point of departure. He also sees the different forests he crossed and remembers the vicissitudes through which he passed, but that remembrance is not painful to him, because he has reached the end of the journey. He is like an old soldier who, in the calm of his home, recalls the battles he attended. Those forests that dotted the road are to him like black points upon a white ribbon, and he says to himself: “When I was in those forests, the first ones especially, how long they seemed to me to cross! It seemed to me that I would never reach the end; everything around me seemed to me gigantic and insurmountable. And when I think that, without that kind woodcutter who set me on the right path, perhaps I would still be there! Now that I contemplate those same forests from the point where I am, how small they appear to me! It seems to me that with one step I could have crossed them; what is more, my sight penetrates them and I distinguish in them the smallest details; I perceive even the false steps I took.” An old man then says to him: – “My son, here you have reached the end of the journey; but an indefinite repose will cause you a mortal tedium and you would come to long for the vicissitudes you experienced and that gave activity to your limbs and to your spirit. You see from here a great number of travelers on the road you traversed and who, like you, run the risk of going astray; you have experience, fear nothing more: go to meet them and seek with your counsels to guide them, so that they may arrive more quickly.”

– I will go gladly, replies our man; meanwhile, I ask: why is there not a direct road from the point of departure to here? That would spare the travelers having to cross those abominable forests.

– My son, retorts the old man, observe well and you will see that many avoid the crossing of some of them: they are those who, having more promptly acquired the necessary experience, know how to take a more direct and shorter road to arrive here. That experience, however, is the fruit of the labor that the first crossings imposed upon them, so that they land here by virtue of their own merit. What would you know, if you had not passed through there? The activity you had to develop, the resources of imagination you needed to employ to open a path increased your knowledge and developed your intelligence. Had that not occurred, you would be as much a novice as you were at the departure. Moreover, in seeking to extricate yourself from the obstacles, you contributed to the improvement of the forests you crossed. What you did was little, imperceptible even; think, however, of the thousands of travelers who do as much and who, laboring for themselves, labor, without perceiving it, for the common good. Is it not just that they receive the wages of their toils in the repose they enjoy here? What right would they have to that repose, if they had done nothing? – My father, answers the traveler, in one of the forests, I met a man who said: “At the edge there is an immense abyss to be crossed at a leap; but of a thousand, only one succeeds; all the others fall into the bottom of it, into a burning furnace, and remain lost without remission. That abyss I did not see.”

– My son, it is because it does not exist, for, otherwise, it would be an abominable snare, set for all those who make their way there. I know well that it falls to them to overcome difficulties, but I know equally that sooner or later they will overcome them. Had I created impossibilities for even a single one, knowing that this one would succumb, I would have committed a cruelty, which would loom immense, if it struck the majority of the travelers. That abyss is an allegory, whose explanation you are about to receive. Look at the road and observe the intervals between the forests. Among the travelers, you see some who walk with slow step and jovial countenance; see those friends, who had lost sight of one another in the labyrinths of the forest, how happy they feel, at having found one another again upon leaving it. But alongside them, there are others who drag themselves painfully; they are crippled and implore the compassion of those who pass, for they suffer atrociously from the wounds with which, through their own fault, they covered themselves, crossing the thornbushes. They will heal, nevertheless, and that will constitute for them a lesson from which they will draw profit in the following forest, from which they will emerge less bruised. The abyss symbolizes the evils they experience and, in saying that of a thousand only one crosses it, that man was right, for enormous is the number of the imprudent; he erred, however, when he said that the one who falls there will emerge no more. To reach me, the one who has fallen always finds an exit. Go, my son, go show that exit to those who are at the bottom of the abyss; go support the wounded who drag themselves along the road and show the path to those who have plunged into the forests. The road is the image of the spiritual life of the soul and in whose course it is more or less happy. The forests are the corporeal existences, in which it labors for its advancement, at the same time as in the general work. The wayfarer who reaches the end and who returns to help those who come behind figures the guardian angels, the missionaries of God, who feel blessed in seeing it, as, also, in unfolding their activities to do good and obey the supreme Lord.

Allan Kardec.

[1] Translator's note: Posthumous Works, 1st part.