Necessity of incarnation

The following question was put apropos of an old communication, in which it had been said that certain Spirits had had no carnal incarnations, but only a perispiritual body. This is what was wrongly called spiritual incarnation, which would be a contradiction in terms, considering that the word incarnation implies the idea of a carnal substance. It would have been more exact to say that certain Spirits had nothing but spiritual life.

Question. – Are there Spirits who are not subject to material incarnation? Is it possible, without submitting to the trials of ordinary life, to acquire certain knowledge and to attain perfection? What is one to think of the communications given in this sense?

Answer. – No; purely spiritual incarnation or, to speak more exactly, perispiritual incarnation, incorporeal existence, is not sufficient for the conquest of all the knowledge necessary to a certain state of moral and intellectual advancement. Since Spirits are destined, in the measure that they progress further, to participate ever more actively in the mechanism of creation, and since they must direct the action of the material elements, preside over the laws that set the fluids in vibration and determine all natural phenomena, they cannot arrive at such a result except by the knowledge of these laws, and they will not be able to know them and to learn to direct them without first being subject to them. Despite the somewhat paradoxical appearance of the beginning, I have no doubt that I shall prove to you that it is indeed so, because it is the truth, and not a personal theory.

First of all, let us establish that it is not man who is subject to physical laws, but rather the physical elements that constitute him. He undergoes them, insofar as he is ignorant of them, but he dominates and directs them in the measure that he learns to know them. The humble passenger of a steamship is subject to the law of the force that directs the ship; the mechanic dominates and directs the machine; he retains the force and makes the laws he has discovered serve the realization of his wills. It is the same with all the laws of Nature. Unknown to man and thwarted by him, they strike and wound him; but what he discovers, what he acquires becomes submissive to him. He controls the velocity of watercourses, transforms them into force, and uses them in his machines; steam transports him and electricity becomes an organ of transmission of his thought. But how did force come to him? From his contact with that force; from the sufferings and the benefits it brought him! He wished to diminish the one and increase the others and, by experience and observation, each day to come to obtain that result more fully. But how would he have acquired, if he had not had the desire to acquire? Who would have instilled that desire in his heart, if not necessity? What do you do so as not to be constrained and forced?… The need to know is the consequence of the need to enjoy; you have aspirations because happiness is lacking to you and because it is in the nature of every being to seek the good when it is unwell and the better when it is well. Why should it not be so with other beings? Why should the desire to work come to some, without necessity impelling them, while so many others work with so little ardor, even when the instinct of self-preservation demands it of them? And besides, would God be just and sensible if He raised such a dilemma for man? If incarnation is useless, why would He have created it? If it is necessary and just, how could other creatures dispense with it?… No; it is a theory that nothing justifies, but which it was useful to establish, were it only to demonstrate its impossibility. Truth will only triumph when all systems are recognized as false. The Spirit who spoke to you thus was in good faith; he believed what he said and, if others did not disabuse you, it is because the time had not come to tell you more. The truth would have seemed improbable to you! Today you see better, because your knowledge is more vast. Tomorrow, that which you know today will be but a tiny part of the knowledge you will have acquired, and so on throughout all eternity.

Clélie Duplantier. n [1]

[Observation: This communication was received on March 11, 1869, therefore 20 days before the disincarnation of Allan Kardec, which occurred on March 31, 1869.]

[2] [v. Clélie Duplantier.]