Special

por Leonardo Marmo Moreira

Would Andre Luiz be in opposition to Allan Kardec?

The appreciation of the work of Allan Kardec is something valuable, deserving on the part of all true Spiritists an extensive support. The issue that arises in this topic is to find out the most effective way of supporting the work of Allan Kardec and, especially, his relation with the subsidiary works that present high quality. This is because the appreciation of Kardec's work does not exclude the evolutionary character of Spiritist thought or the need to study data and information that may contribute to our understanding of the whole spiritual reality.

In this sense, the work of Andre Luiz, latterly, has motivated several doctrinal debates, becoming a reference in these discussions, either to support or to oppose. In fact, Andre Luiz has been harshly fought by some groups of confreres who claim to defend the work of Allan Kardec.

In order to devalue the contribution of Andre Luiz, the confreres who reject the books of this spiritual author use several arguments. Let us look at some of them:

1 - Some criticize Andre Luiz, because they say that it is a romance.

This is a very poor argument, since it seeks to devalue the content of a work by rejecting the form in which it is presented. However, the way in which the text is presented does not demerit its intrinsic content. Of course, there are strategies in terms of didactics that can be considered more or less efficient and there are also styles of writing that can be considered more or less attractive. However, to claim that a work is worthless because it is presented in a narrative form does not seem to be a reasonable argument. It sounds like a subtle strategy to level Andre Luiz with several overly emotional works that are presented in that format. But Andre Luiz cannot be blamed for the superficiality of other works that use narratives to convey their content.  Moreover, it is evident that one of the main objectives of Andre Luiz’ work (but not the only one) is to show as much as possible the day-to-day life of a disembodied Spirit at vibratory levels close to those experienced by an earthly Spirit of an average evolution. Therefore, for this purpose, presentation in the form of narrative is fundamental to one of the intrinsic goals of the work itself: to provide a minimal notion of how one lives in the spiritual world. A question-and-answer book or a conceptual dissertation would not achieve this goal. It is worth noting that even Allan Kardec changed his didactic strategy of presenting spiritual information from The Book of Spiritsfrom its first edition to the second edition. The form may have its importance, but the content is the essential. A similar criticism that the so-called "Our Home series" suffers, would be the fact that Andre Luiz is associated with works that follow his style, but which present an inferior content. Again, we should study works that have a good content regardless of the writing style. If a given spiritual author and the medium which psychographs is or is not valuable in the work, the analysis must be developed independently. Andre Luiz cannot be held responsible for all that is written in works that supposedly narrate the daily life in the spiritual world as he did. This work of critical analysis of content is not easy due to the ever increasing volume of the so-called “mediumistic literature”, but in a sense it is an effort inherent in the study of mediumistic work. There is no way in which the Spiritist movement, growing in numbers of followers and in literary production, cannot escape the task of studying what is being published in its name.

2 - Another criticism that Andre Luiz suffers is that he went through the "purgatory" stages of suffering and was considered an unconscious or indirect suicide.

Now, this is another weak argument, because, as Divaldo Franco would say, "the thing is worth by its content and not by who says it". Andre Luiz's work must be evaluated by its content, that is, by its information, data and analyzes and not by the specific spiritual situation of the communicating entity, even more being the characterization self-attributed. Of course, the more evolved the Spirit is, in principle, the more evolved will be his message (especially if he is discussing subjects he dominates). However, in the evaluation of the mediumistic message, the use of famous and celebrated names is a strategy widely used by fascinators and pseudo-sages, which was several times denounced by the Encoder himself, Allan Kardec. In fact, Kardec values ​​the informational contribution of many Spirits of average evolution and often rejects information from spiritually higher a priori Spirits.  Also, Andre Luiz tells about his experience - in the majority of his works - in the first person singular and normally it is not nice to make self-compliments, because this type of attitude does not provide additional quality to any work. So we must be restrained in the application of an alleged rejection of Andre Luiz's work because of this. Argument similar to this one, which could be included in this same topic, is to affirm that Andre Luiz was not a Spiritist when incarnate. If we are to take this into account, we will reject many new workers who are of a doctrinal quality because they have no "time of service". In fact, many Spirits of Codification defended ideas completely different from the Spiritist ideas when they were incarnated with the respective names used in the work of Allan Kardec to identify the respective entity. According to Allan Kardec, the moral character of the medium comes ahead, as a criterion for evaluating the message. In this sense, the apostolic life of Chico Xavier should provide at least an exemption of morale for the analysis of the content of the message of Andre Luiz.

3 - Probably what most shocks and foments an opposition to the work of Andre Luiz are the details of the daily life in the spiritual world.

Some claim that the information is surprising, as they are not found in Allan Kardec's work. However, not being in Kardec’s works does not mean being in opposition to Kardec. If Spiritism is science, and as science evolves, as the Encoder taught us, we cannot expect all the books to repeat what Kardec revealed, without adding anything new.

Kardec is a conceptual work and the dialogues with the Spirits focus on the general moral and sentimental details that the communicating usually perceived in relatively short dialogues. No work of Kardec or spiritual author of the Codification volunteered to tell more of his daily life, for at that moment Kardec and the Spirits were outlining the conceptual framework of the Spiritist Doctrine. However, Kardec’s works defend that we will only completely overcome the fear of death, and other related problems, by elaborating a notion of the spiritual world, as accurate as possible.

The difficulty in accepting the spiritual reality described by Andre Luiz could be attributed to two factors:

1st - The difficulty in understanding the magnificent vibrational versatility of the perispirit and its implications regarding the evolutionary phases in the spiritual world;

The perispirit, in fact, is still a matter of great intellectual challenge, for its experimental probing is still crawling. This ends up limiting the advances in the understanding of its properties. In practice, we are predominantly focused on information from mediumistic works, which again leads us to the problem of assessing the content of the mediumistic message.

In any case, some questions are very clear and need to be answered with the best that we can at present achieve with our doctrinal knowledge:

How would a Spirit live in the spiritual world?

For example, if a materialistic individual is surprised by a sudden heart attack, how would he live in the spiritual world when he awakens there?

The great materiality of thought, followed by the materiality of the perispirit, would not generate a vibrational reality with a greater level of materiality in the spiritual world that more immediately involves the actions of this newly disembodied entity?

Kardec's work and common sense seem to suggest that yes. Thus, as individual vibratory levels generate countless different vibratory groups, we would have multivariate levels of materiality in the "many addresses of the Father’s House". Therefore, Andre Luiz's information would be comprehensible, as one or some possible vibratory phases for the disembodied Spirit.

2nd. Our Catholic-Protestant heritage, which makes it difficult to assimilate any more concrete notion about what the "semi-material" reality of the spiritual world would be like.

In Catholicism and Protestantism in general, that is, in the majority currents of Christian thought, there is no concrete idea about a daily life of procedures within the "living" in the World of Spirits. Rejecting mediumship, this scenario does not seem to have any solution in the short or medium term.

This cultural scenario has a great impact on the Spiritist Movement. Centuries and centuries of brainwashing and blocking the study, and even the inability to question what awaits us in the hours, days and months after death, make any more objective notion sound strange, bizarre, or fictional. The total ignorance about the spiritual life associated with mythological ideas about life after death makes any news seem weird and anti-doctrinal.

In this sense, for some confreres, the only doctrinal attitude would be, paradoxically, to have no idea whatsoever, for Kardec did not describe anything detailed on this subject. But the search for Truth through Reasoned Faith cannot support such behavior. In fact, since Kardec did not leave more information about "life in the Spiritual World" is a limitation, no doubt. However, we cannot stay on the level of understanding of the spiritual world simply because our Master of Lyon did not have time to provide more information. From May 1855, when he first witnessed the Spiritist phenomena, until March, 1869, when he disincarnated, little less than 14 years passed.

Isolated comments about life in "inter-worlds" realities or "contacts with incarnated beings" not only do not solve the problem, but also are not in opposition to what Andre Luiz narrates.

4 - Andre Luiz does not quote Allan Kardec.

An interesting detail is that Andre Luiz does not usually cite passages directly from the Kardec’s Codification in his 13 books of the so-called series "Life in the Spiritual World". This characteristic may seem, for some confreres, something negative in relation to the content of the work. However, this would be a questionable perception, if we analyze the context in which the work of Andre Luiz was psychically received. If the author quoted Kardec directly, many critics of Andre Luiz’ work and of Chico Xavier’s mediumship, (mainly non-Spiritists) would claim that this was a psychic work of the medium of the city Pedro Leopoldo. It is possible to suppose that there was a concern - of Andre Luiz, Emmanuel and other Spirits responsible for the work - regarding the principles of the Codification so that they not be explicitly mentioned, and this would lead us the incarnated ones to do the work and jointly study to identify in the everyday life of the spiritual world the natural occurrence of the principles explained in the work of Allan Kardec. In fact, several Kardecian concepts are naturally shown within the passages of Andre Luiz. However, in a superficial reading, readers do not always identify such correlations.

Implications of the rejection of Andre Luiz's work as a whole

In rejecting the work of Andre Luiz as a whole (we do not refer to understandable disagreements on specific issues), we reject the more objective information about the spiritual world of which we are aware after Allan Kardec's work. This attitude must be analyzed very carefully. Actually, in rejecting the work of Andre Luiz, we discard the most concrete about the spiritual world obtained through the mediumship of Chico Xavier (with the support of the spiritual mentor Emmanuel) and Waldo Vieira. Also, we end up rejecting information obtained through the mediumship of Yvonne A. Pereira and Divaldo P. Franco, who are in agreement with the reports of Andre Luiz. Consequently, we inevitably end up questioning how we are dealing with mediumship, if we reject all the work of the spiritual world of the most qualified psychographics. Curiously, some reject such mediums and accept psychographics of beginner psychics.

About specific disagreements, the situation is totally different and much more natural and acceptable. In fact, the inflexible requirement of infallibility of any authors denotes a kind of dogmatic expectation, which should not be backed up within our movement. All authors are liable to make mistakes. The Encoder himself changed his mind on some issues, such as the problem of possession, among others. Moreover, our understanding of the concrete reality of the spiritual world is still small in order to motivate a priori postures of rejection of the totality of a work in function of some occurrence or information considered as surprising.


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

 
 

     
     

O Consolador
 Revista Semanal de Divulgação Espírita