Helen Keller - the victory of spirit over matter

Helen dramatically overcame the feelings of self-pity and chronic unhappiness that characterise much of the Spirits when
they face their trials
 

Helen Keller (pictured) was born healthy in 1880 in Alabama (USA), but at 18 months of age she became suddenly blind and deaf-mute due to a cerebral congestion. She spent the first years of her childhood locked in a sensorial prison that kept her from communicating. At age 6, she was a very unquiet child with her endless loneliness, regarded as aggressive, tough and mentally retarded. In order to release the daughter from darkness and silence, her parents wrote a letter to Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone), who taught the deaf and who recommended Anne Sullivan, a 21-year-old Irish teacher. Annie (how the family addressed Anne, was

to live in Helen's house) studied at Perkins School for the Blind because, as a child, she was blind herself, but regained her sight after nine surgeries. "The most important day of my life was the arrival of my teacher, Sullivan. I am deeply moved when I think of the immeasurable contrast of the two lives that came together. She arrived on March 3, 1887, three months before I turned seven years old," says Helen Keller.

When Anne touched the girl for the first time, she had a tantrum. The teacher restrained her with force and then, after calming her down, she hugged her warmly and told the worried parents: "Children need limits." Anne took on the task of teaching Helen the mechanical techniques required to talk. She used to put two of the student's fingers (always hygienising them) in the teacher's mouth. She said a word, making her feel the movement of the tongue between the fingers, then she put the girl's fingers in her own mouth, who then remembered the movements in Anne's mouth and reproduced them. Another technique: she put an object in the student's hand; she put her lips on her arm and pronounced the name of the object; through the vibration the girl was able to repeat the sounds.                                                                     

In a testimony in 1927, Helen tells the culmination of her experiences from which has changed for her the meaning of life. Anne, her restless and devoted teacher, had been with her for just a month and had already taught her the names of various objects. She would put them in the girl's hands and spelled out in the fingers the corresponding word. Helen confesses, however, not having the slightest idea of what she was doing. In April 1887, Anne put Helen's hand in cold water and on the other hand spelled the word "water." Suddenly - she writes - I felt a strange stirring inside me, a misty consciousness, a sensation of something that I remembered. It was as if I had come back to life after having been dead!  I realized that what my teacher was doing with my fingers meant that cold thing that ran down my hand, and it was possible to make contact with other people through those signs. "

In a quick sequence she learned both the Braille and the manual alphabets

Those words (italicized above) seem to indicate vague sensations of remote living, before the current existence, i.e., of another life. The experience has assumed the proportions of a revelation. "I left eager to learn. Everything had a name and each name gave birth to a new thought. On the way home, every object I touched seemed to throb. It was because I saw everything with a strange sight, new, which had been revealed to me. On that day I learned many new words that would make the world blossom for me. It would have been difficult to find a child happier than when I lay in my bed at the end of that memorable day..."

In a quick sequence, she learned both the Braille and the manual alphabets, thus making the learning of writing and reading easier. In 1890 she asked the "Teacher" to learn how to speak. "I was ten when Annie took me to the 1st lesson of spoken language at the School of the Deaf. The few sounds that I then uttered were just dull sounds, almost always hoarse, due to the effort I made to produce them. At the end of the 11th lesson, I had a surprise to Annie: I pulled her by the arm; I did the tongue position and said clearly: "I am not dumb now!" "In a rare video, which the reader can see on the Internet by following the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdTUSignq7Y , you will be able to see and hear the two heroines telling us their story.

Under Anne's guidance, Helen enrolled at the Institute for the Deaf in Boston and later in the Oral School of New York where for two years, she was given lessons of spoken language and lip reading. Helen, along with learning to read, write and speak, has also demonstrated exceptional efficiency in the study of various areas of knowledge.

In the book Story of my life, Helen talks about her religiosity: "No one can know better than I what the pains of physical defects are like. It is not true that I never get sad, but I decided long ago not to complain. Here is what religion is for: to inspire us to fight to the end, strong of mind and with a smile on the face." "But I have an ambition: and it is not to be beaten. For that, I count on the blessing of work, the comfort of friendship and unwavering faith in the high designs of God."

How to reconcile "Karma" and Mercy? The visually impaired Chico Xavier replies: "When you have debt in the rear but working in the service of others, the Divine Mercy orders to postpone the sentence of redemption, until the merits of the debtor may be counted in his favour." But not all suffering is only due to one's own trespasses. Great missionaries like Francis of Assisi and Francisco Cândido Xavier bring "credit-pain," teaching us how to suffer with active resignation and setting examples of determination, perseverance, courage and patience; lessons that Helen Keller has also taught us. Therefore, we should not label people or make any judgments about their trials or atonement. They may be missions of spirits much more evolved than us.           

Helen said: "I am deaf in the flesh but I will
hear again someday"

One day, when examining a statue, Helen groped the folds of the robe, the cord which encircled the waist, the sandals. "A monk," she exclaimed. Always by touch, she noted that a wolf's head was resting against the man, a rabbit rested in his arms and that a bird was nestled in his hood. She slid her fingers through the man's face. It was raised to Heaven: "He loves God and is animal-friendly," she said. "I know! It's Francis of Assisi!" Like him, Helen Keller was convinced that the end of the road for which she was so patiently headed through groping was just the beginning of a more beautiful road.  

What were her religious beliefs? "I am blind in the body but one day I'll come out and will see again. I'm deaf in the flesh but I will hear again someday. Because I believe in life after death! I am Swedenborgian! "

Helen learned of Emanuel Swedenborg's (picture)ideas through her stepfather, Mr John Hitz. She read them in Braille, so intensely that her fingers bled. The book My Religion (1953) is a tribute to the theological writings of Swedenborg, in which she witnesses, touchingly, how the message of the work of the Swedish "genius" changed her life, taking her out of another kind of darkness and bringing her into the light of the spiritual reality. For her, Swedenborg was "an eye among the blind, an ear among the deaf" and "one of the noblest of men the Christian world has ever known." In the book, she does not dive deep into

the intricacies of the doctrine of the Swedish scholar; she merely reports about her personal experience with it. She always had difficulties with traditional concepts about God and the mysteries of life. I thought the personal story of Christ was touching, always dedicated to healing the sick, comfort the afflicted, restoring light to blind eyes (like her own...), but "how could I worship three persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost? Was it not that kind of false worship so severely punished in the days of the Old Testament? "

Swedenborg offered her the image of a sky that was not a "mere collection of radiant ideas, but a practical world where one could live." The great message found by Helen Keller in the Swedish medium's books was about the survival of the being, i.e., that "death is not the end of life, but only one of its most important experiences." That was enough for her. Life had meaning; it was continuity more than mere hope. As a true Swedenborgian, she was convinced that, after death, she would truly be able to see. And so- she said - "with firm determination, I cast my eyes beyond where the eye can see, until my soul rises in the spiritual light and exclaims: life and death are one thing!" She confesses that she owes much to the Swedish writer, but, in fact, her creed is a blend of all religions, "where is love, there is God and where God is, there is peace."

By the mere contact, she could distinguish
people's character

But who was Emanuel Swedenborg? Swedish polymath and spiritualist (1688-1772), his life had remarkable episodes, like the fire in Stockholm, which was witnessed and described in detail by him, who was 300 English miles from the place... A clairvoyance phenomenon! Immanuel Kant proved the authenticity of various facts narrated by his paranormality. He influenced other people such as Abraham Lincoln and his writings were studied by Goethe, Voltaire and Rousseau. Swedenborg's works have great historical value for its narratives about life in the spiritual world, as if they were a precursor to the series by Andre Luiz. In Prolegomena to The Spirits' Book, Swedenborg is one of the names from the phalanx of Superior Spirits who enlightened the Codification.

Allan Kardec, in the Spiritist Magazine of November 1859, dedicates an extensive article to him acknowledging: "The unquestionable merit of Swedenborg, his deep knowledge, his high reputation for wisdom had a great weight on the spread of the belief in the possibility of communicating with beings from beyond the grave." "Despite his system errors, Swedenborg does not cease to be one of those great figures, whose memory will be linked to the history of Spiritism of which he was an early and zealous promoter." Through a medium, Kardec talks to Swedenborg (Spirit), which recognizes that he committed some errors in life.

Léon Denis in The Issue of Being, of Fate and of Pain, says that Helen Keller "does not have, apparently, but the sense of touch to communicate with the outside world. And yet, she can communicate in three languages ​​with her visitors; her intellectual baggage is considerable; she possesses an aesthetic sense that allows her to appreciate artworks and the harmonies of nature." "By the simple touch of the hand, she distinguishes the character and the state of mind of the people she meets. With her fingertips she reaps the word on the lips and reads in books touching the raised characters specially printed for her. She elevates to a more abstract conception of things and her awareness lights itself up with clarities that she fetches in the depths of her soul." In the chapter "The Powers of the Soul", the disciple of Kardec believes that "obviously, we are in presence of an evolutionary being, returning to the world scene with all the acquisition of ages travelled."

With a gifted intelligence, Helen wrote notable books

"The Helen case - Denis said - proves that, behind momentarily stunted bodies, there is a consciousness that has been for a long time very much familiar with the notions of the outside world. There is, there, at the same time, a demonstration of previous lives of the soul and the existence of its own senses, independent of matter, which dominates and survives the whole disaggregation of the corporeal organism." Mrs Maeterlinck, who visited her, says that Helen is a superior being with deep knowledge of Mathematics, Astronomy, Latin and Greek; who speaks English, French and German and writes as a philosopher, psychologist and poet.               

A morally evolved spirit, Helen was a social activist in defending the rights of the disabled, women, the poor and the rehabilitation and reintegration of victims of World War 2, whom she loved and visited in hospitals, homes and factories. With a gifted intelligence, she wrote notable books, gave hundreds of lectures in 35 countries, where she was honoured by famous figures. When her teacher got married, Helen went to live with her and always helped with the daily housework. She had learned well the lesson of the Gospel that says that those who are faithful in small things will always be so in big things. And she did everything with joy, saying: "Let us not ask for tasks equal to our strength. But strength equal to our tasks. "

Andre Luiz, through the mediumship of Chico Xavier, reminds us that many "Messengers" come to Earth with specific tasks. They vow to win but most return to the Spiritual Homeland beaten, embarrassed by the failures, frustrated by the message not sent. Little Helen began to develop her message at the age of 18 months, when the most important sensory faculties locked themselves up in her body and closed her in on the inside. The spirit then woke up! The inner reality overcame obstacles and Helen dramatically outperformed the feelings of self-pity and chronic unhappiness that characterise many of the spirits when they face their trials, proving that the power of will represents an almost unlimited strength. Thus, she fully conveyed the message of hope, the lesson of courage and the confidence in the victory of tenacity, when the direction is progress and the goal is the Good

Helen Adams Keller died in Westport, in June 1st, 1968.