Special

por Guaraci de Lima Silveira

Do Spirits see God?

Man has always sought contact with God. He gave Him many names. It is said that this search is "the mark of the author in his work". Yes, we are the Creator’s work. However, most of humanity does not have this understanding. We identify ourselves as independent beings out of a crib and placed in the world to live adventures getting on well with them, or not. Thus, life becomes a dangerous game in which most of the time we search for evil pleasures that become our immediate proposals. It is obvious that we are still far from being perfectly in tune with the one who created us, but at least we must know that He created us.

When the Spirit reaches this level of understanding, several new proposals come to it. What was formerly limited by the mountains or the horizon line now becomes a breakthrough of hitherto impenetrable continents. The world is the same for all, yet individuality it is different, unlimited, barrier-free, only paths. The lower ego imprisons the being in its small niches where it feels comfortable, whereas the individuality represented by the superior ego awakens the being to its dignified and correct identity. The problem is to move from the niches of accommodation to the spiritual advances.

This search for the soul by itself constitutes an element of notorious plasticity. While stiff, obtuse and poorly identified with the whole, we feel like fish caught in a muddy lake, swearing that it is the sky of our existence there. The moment we want to let go and fly like free birds, the sky of existence becomes another one, much better, higher, beyond... The problem is that we do not know how to dialogue with ourselves. We act only like momentarily alcoholics, enforcing in us the law of survival, a law that was established for the beginnings of evolution and which is obsolete for a spiritual advancement.

Carl Gustav Jung described his quest for his soul like this: “On the second night, I called for my soul: - I’m tired, my soul”. “My walk already takes longer in my search outside myself”. “I went through things, discovered the miscellany”. But in my mistaken journey through things, I discovered humanity and the world. I met people. And I have rediscovered you, my soul, first in image in the person and then in yourself. I found you where I least expected it. You made me see truths of which I had no suspicion before. You led me through paths and their endless length would have frightened me, if the knowledge of them was not hidden in you”. I walked for many years, so many that I forgot that I had a soul. Where were you all this time? What beyond sheltered you and hosted you? Oh, that you have to speak through me, that my language and I be for you a symbol and expression! How should I decipher you? Who are you, child? As a child, as a little girl, my dreams represented you. I know nothing of your mystery. Forgive me, if I speak as in a dream, as a drunkard. You maintained my faith when I was alone and on the verge of despair. You made me believe in all the decisive moments in myself. Are you God?

This cry of Jung could well be the cry of all of us. We walk without the slightest desire to know who we really are. Those, who disincarnated, who do not know the spiritual truths and are not identified with themselves, arrive in the spiritual world in miserable conditions. They go from a surprising bang in the ears to despair in an insane vigil of their mortal remains or to a hallucinated search for the attention of those who remain. They do not know, they do not accept and do not see what happened to them, even though disincarnating is a natural act.

The naturalness of this act is unknown or denied and therefore, by its irreducible truths, the Spirit suffers as the world continues to spin and its notes in the unconscious do not cease. Later, recovered, they will see how many years lost in the spirituality thresholds because they did not prepare for life and took it the way they wanted or thought it was.

Spirits of magnanimous kindness come up to us and speak by trying to instruct us and even lead us. The bunch of demons or devils had taken over the collective unconscious, and when we talk about Spirits, we almost always hear: demons ... Devils! What a pity! They do not even know the etymology of such words and make them known as voracious preachers of destruction and eschatology. A real and dignified attitude towards the truth is not allowed! And I wonder what will become of those who announce such lies and wickedness. What do you really want? Who are they? They are ignorant or natural evils acting in a society that lacks God? Here, very close to us, is the spiritual world. We came from it and we will return to it. An incarnation is only a lapse of time in the full and real existence of the Spirit. This is well confirmed by Past Life Therapies or Near Death Experiences. Who doubts this, must prove otherwise.

We need to seek God within this tangle of speeches and postures. He and He alone knows how to chat with each one of us, since, for Him, we are single. Let us look in The Book of Spirits and we will see in issue 244 the question of Allan Kardec regarding if the Spirits see God. The answer is: "Only the Higher Spirits see and understand Him. The Lower Spirits feel Him and guess Him”. What strikes us in this answer is that it is possible to see God, within the exuberance of His Existence. The Superior Spirits are those who have already overcome the rudimentary stages of evolution and have advanced studying and serving, conditioning themselves to new phases. The preaching of death, of nihilism, of eternal punishments, of angels flying with their harps, etc. still occurs in our midst. They are blunt, childish, and illusive visions. The Universe is our home and it has all the elements we need and shall need in our path. We will all see God someday! So let us walk!

Returning to The Book of Spirits and question 244-a, Allan Kardec asks: "When an inferior Spirit says that God forbids or permits one thing, how do you know that order comes from God? This is a smart inquiry. For we put the name of God in our daily readings without at least identifying ourselves with Him. Here is the answer: "He does not see God, but feels His sovereignty, and when a thing is not to be done or a word should not be told, he receives an intuition, an invisible warning, which inhibits him from doing so. You yourself have forebodings which are for you as secret warnings, whether or not to do something. The same is true for us, but in a higher degree; you understand that, being the Spirits’ essence more subtle than yours, we may receive the divine warnings more easily".

This answer is very clear. God leads us to return to Him. The great problem is that, being still inferior, we almost always do not desire this conduction, preferring to do it ourselves. And so we deceive ourselves that we are followers of Him, while following only our purposes almost always moved by untimely passions. We note in the previous answer that the Higher Spirits are warned in their journeys through Spirituality and accept these warnings as a reallocation to the right path. And what do we do? In Spiritist Centers when someone is warned by some behavior that is not aligned with the proposals of the Gospel, there are almost always sensitivity and the unhappy one leaves. Or rather, when a director is warned, he usually closes the doors of growth opportunities to the one who did it. We really need to read and study Kardec as Bezerra de Menezes warns us, because to preach Kardec is the Now Key.

"Is the order transmitted directly by God, or through other Spirits?" - asks Kardec in question 244-b. The answer is overwhelming and needs to be analyzed: "It does not come directly from God, because to communicate with Him you have to deserve it. God transmits His orders to the Spirits who are higher in perfection and instruction. "Now we understand better question 625 of the same book when Jesus is presented to us as a Guide and Model. In His words we always find allusions to the Father who sent him to save the sheep still transgressed from the immense flock. The question is: - Do we want to be saved from ourselves to envision the divine presence in us? In question 245 Allan Kardec asks if "Seeing the Spirits is limited, as in bodily beings". The answer is no. It's a general faculty".

This set of information leads us to reflect on the sovereign need to take a different stand in the life given to us by God. Saint Augustine, in Chapter III of The Gospel According to Spiritism - item 19, tells us: "At the same time that all living beings progress morally, the worlds in which they inhabit progress materially. Anyone who could follow a world in its different phases, from the moment the first atoms were destined to constitute it, would see it go through an incessantly progressive scale, but of imperceptible steps for each generation, and to offer its inhabitants an ever more pleasant abode, as they themselves advance on the path of progress. "Thus, everything is created by God for His children. He needs us just as we need Him. Let us think about it.

To grow spiritually is to detach oneself from the primary phases of evolution. Once we are aware of a fact, we must increasingly seek for other knowledge and experiences. Joanna de Angelis informs us that intelligence is the result of experience and its apprehension in us. Hence, being intelligent is what experiences new moments becoming their master. Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst of the last century, tells us that the unconscious is established by lines. We can then conclude that in these lines are written the set of learning and experiences that make us intelligent. And even more we can deduce that the more harmful experiences we experience, the more crooked lines we put in our unconscious that will fatally disturb the conscious. A disturbed conscience is the same as a ship drifting through the storms. Moreover, the experience of good moments, spiritualizing and enriching, is the correct measure for one who really wants to see God.

Jesus told us and Mark remarked in his Gospel, Chapter 1, v. 15: "The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is coming; repent and believe the Gospel". And to this day, more than 2,000 years have passed. Hence we conclude that the Kingdom of God is even closer. The Earth is closing one more of its glorious cycles and in the next the repentance of the errors and the practice of the Gospel will be cornerstones for the one who wishes to remain here. And what most charms us is that everything is told to us. God finds means and people to tell us these great truths and we cannot be unrelated to them.

Can anyone still ask, "Where can we find proof of God's existence?" Kardec did so and received the answer in question 4 of The Book of Spirits: "In an axiom that you apply to your sciences: there is no effect without a cause. Seek the cause of all that is not the work of man, and your reason will answer you”. We are surrounded by these proofs of God's existence in every place and in all persons. Let us take a look at ourselves and what we do we need to give ourselves definitively to the personal search of God. We need to feel God so that one day, as Higher Spirits, we can see Him in essence and glory. Thus, our days will be softened by the certainty that it is worthwhile to overcome the hardships of the present without wavering against the sting that propels us to future times. Love is the essence of life and we should attach ourselves to it and thus be empowering for the moment to see God.


Translation:
Eleni Frangatos - eleni.moreira@uol.com.br

 
 

     
     

O Consolador
 Revista Semanal de Divulgação Espírita