We continue with the methodical study of "The Gospel According to Spiritism" by Allan Kardec, the third of the works that make up the Pentateuch Kardecian, whose first edition was published in 1864. The answers to the questions suggested for discussion was the end of the text below.
Questions
A. How does the human being, taking regard to the spiritist viewpoint, look at things of this world?
B. In what constitutes the present life, according to Spiritism?
C. How to understand the words of Jesus: "There are are many mansions in my Father's house?"
D. The material worlds can be divided into how many categories? What are its main features.
Text for reading
61. The spirits who embody in a world he does not think the prisoners indefinitely, or cross it every stage of progress they are required to undertake to achieve perfection. When, in a world, attain the degree of progress that the world behaves, go to another earlier, and so on, until they reach the state of pure spirits. (Chapter III, item 5)
62. In worlds that reached a higher degree, the conditions of life are extremely moral and material different from life on Earth. As everywhere, the bodily form is always the human form, but enhanced, beautified and especially purified. The body has nothing earthly materiality and therefore is not subject to the needs and diseases or deterioration that causes the predominance of matter. (Chapter III, item 9)
63. More refined, the senses are able to perceptions that this world of matter prevents the rudeness. The lightness specific body movement allows quick and easy, instead of dragging the ground, slide over the surface, or flat in the atmosphere, no other effort than the one's own will. (Chapter III, item 9)
64. The low resistance that matter gives to most advanced Spirits, makes quick the development of bodies and short or almost null childhood. Free care and anguish, life is proportionally much longer than on Earth. Death does not involve the horrors of decomposition and, far from causing terror, is considered a happy transition, because these worlds there is no doubt about the future. (Chapter III, item 9)
65. In blissful worlds, relationships between people are always friendly. There are no wars, no masters nor slaves, nor privileged by birth. Only the moral and intellectual superiority establishes difference between conditions and gives supremacy. Nobody suffers because it lacks the necessary, since no one finds himself in atonement and evil, these worlds there. The man does not seek to rise above the man, but above himself, perfecting, because your goal is to climb the category of pure Spirit, does not constitute a torment that desire. (Chapter III, item 10)
66. The worlds are not happy, however, orbs privileged, since God is not partial to any of his children and gives all the same rights and the same facilities to get there, starting from the same point. (Chapter III, item 12)
67. Not all that incarnate on Earth comes here in atonement. The races which we call savages consist of spirits who just came out of childhood and who find themselves on Earth, so to speak, ongoing education, to develop through contact with more evolved. Then we have, semicivilized races, consisting of those on the way to progress. They are, in a sense, indigenous races of the earth, which then rose gradually during longer secular, some of which made it to the intellectual improvement of the people more enlightened. (Chapter III, Item 14, St. Augustine)
68. Spirits in atonement, if we can express in this way, are exotic on earth, have lived in other worlds, hence were excluded as a result of his obstinacy in evil and if they had made in such worlds, cause disruption to the good. That is why the spirits are on punishment within the most intelligent breeds. Therefore, for these races is that the more bitterness is lining the misfortunes of life. It is in them that there is more sensitivity and are thus more proven by setbacks and heartbreaks than the landraces, whose moral sense is found more blunt. (Chapter III, Item 14, St. Augustine)
69. The Earth offers not one of the types of worlds scapegoats, whose variety is endless, but revealing all as common character, serving as a place of exile for rebels to God's law. These are there to fight at the same time, with the wickedness of men and the mercilessness of Nature, double and hard work that simultaneously develops the qualities of heart and intelligence. (Chapter III, Item 15, St. Augustine)
70. Among the stars that twinkle in the blue dome, there are worlds of transition, called regenerators. Each vortex planetarium, to move in space around a common center, drags its primitive worlds of exile, evidence of regeneration and happiness. The worlds regenerators serve as transition between worlds and worlds of atonement happy. The penitent soul finds these worlds the calm and rest and ends up to purifying. (Chapter III, items 16 and 17, St. Augustine)
71. Progress is the law of nature, and all beings of creation, animate and inanimate, were submitted to it by the goodness of God, who wants everything to be great and prosper. The Earth, according to this law, was materially and morally inferior to a state in which we now find yourself and lift up under this double aspect, to a higher degree. Orb of atoning change will then in planet of regeneration, where men are fortunate, because it imperará God's law. (Chapter III, Item 19, St. Augustine)
Answers to questions
A. How does the human being, taking regard to the spiritist viewpoint, look at things of this world?
A clear and precise idea we have of the afterlife provides unshakable faith in the future, faith that brings enormous consequences for the moralization of men, because it completely changes the point of view under which they face life on earth. For those who live by the thought, in the spiritual life, bodily life becomes simple passage, a brief stay ungrateful country. The vicissitudes and tribulations of this life are but incidents which he supports with patience, knowing them for a short period, should follow them a more blissful state. Death is nothing more terrifying and must cease to be the door that opens to nothing and becomes that leads to the liberation, through which you enter the exiled, in a mansion of bliss and peace. Knowing temporary and not definitive their stay in the place where lives, pays less attention to the problems of life, leading him then a calm of spirit to that which draws much of its bitterness. This is what happens when you face life's earthly viewpoint spirit. Humanity, as the stars of the firmament, lost in the vastness. The person realizes that big and small are confused, like ants on a mound of earth, which proletarians and potentates are the same height, and regrets that these ephemeral creatures so many fatigues surrender to win a place so little that the rise and so briefly preserved. (The Gospel According to Spiritism, Chapter II, item 5.)
B. In what constitutes the present life, according to Spiritism?
As already mentioned in the previous question, bodily life, is a simple way, brief stay in a ungrateful country, and not just a link in a harmonious and magnificent whole of the work of the Creator. (Ibid., Chapter II, Item 7.)
C. How to understand the words of Jesus: "There are are many mansions in my Father's house?"
With these words, Jesus concerns the crowd of worlds which move in the infinite space and provide, to the spirits who embody them, housing corresponding to the degree of progress. Regardless of the diversity of worlds, these words may also refer to the state of Espírito happy or unhappy in erraticity. As we find this more or less debugged and given off from material ties, vary infinitely the environment in which he finds himself, the look of things, the sensations who experiences, the perceptions that have. (Ibid., Chapter III, items 1 to 3.)
D. The material worlds can be divided into how many categories? What are its main features.
Although we can not make an absolute classification of the different worlds, we may, however, due to the state in which they are made and the destination that they bring, divide them into five main categories: primitive worlds, meant for early incarnations of the human soul. Worlds of atonement and proofs where evil dominates. Worlds of regeneration, in which the souls who have yet to atone draw from the new forces, resting the fatigue of fighting. Worlds blissful where good overcomes evil. Heavenly or divine worlds, spirits purged housing, where only good prevails. (Ibid., Chapter III, items 3 and 4.)
