The evil that hurts us

On Chapter 10 of Allan Kardec's work, "The Gospel according to Spiritism", we learn that: 

"Death, as we know, does not relieve us from our enemies. The vengeful spirits maintain their hatred and often pursue those against whom they hold grudges, even beyond the grave. This shows us that the popular saying "Dead animal, dead poison", does not apply to the human being. The evil spirit waits for the other, whom he wishes to harm. He takes advantage because the spirit he wants to harm is still in his body and thus in minor conditions to fight him back. Then, he can easily harass, harm his interests, and hurt him in his cherished affections. This is the cause of most cases of obsession, especially of the more serious ones, such as subjugation and possession. The obsessed and possessed are therefore often victims of revenge and this is caused by his behavior in a previous life, and most probably the one who now suffers was previously the offender". (The Gospel according to Spiritism, Chapter X, item 6). 

Let us consider the following example.

A person lives most of his life having to deal with a staunch enemy that harms him in all ways. The person decides to kill him. As the saying: "Dead animal, dead poison".

However, since only the body dies, the Spirit of the one who was killed will come back for his revenge as soon as possible, because that is his evil nature. And the person who ordered his death will now suffer the harmful consequences of his persistent revenge. The treatment regarding this specific case becomes very difficult, as already shown in this magazine frequently.

Let us see another example.

Let's say a nation, or part of it, suffers the evils of a dangerous extremist group, as it happens nowadays in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria. The supporters of the extremist group come to the point of even kidnapping children. They depredate, burn down, and kill without mercy. The nation then seeks the help of other nations and after lots of fighting and bloody battles they will finally put an end to this group. 

As we said before, only the body dies. So, this group meets again in the spiritual world and has a thirst of revenge and they plan and return to torment, undermine, and obsess whole communities, as recorded in the Bible and in many other publications. And thus the evil over that area or region seems to have no end, because there are conditions that also feed this revenge.

Records prove what we say.

In the August issue, 1864, of the Revue Spirite, Kardec reported the return of the Morzine phenomena, which had been the subject of Revue issues in the months of December 1862, January, February, March and May 1863. According to the report, the demonic epidemic - the name used by the newspapers of the time - which had begun in 1857, reappeared with great intensity. 

Morzine is the name of a community, located in the Haute-Savoie, 8 leagues from Thonon, near the Swiss Alps. Its population of about 2,500 people, besides the main village, comprised several others scattered in the region.

According to St. Louis, spiritual guide of the Spiritist Society of Paris, the possessed of Morzine were actually under the influence of spirits attracted to the region for reasons that will one day be known. "If all men were good - said St. Louis - their evil spirits would turn away because they could not induce them to evil. The presence of the good men makes them run away. The presence of vicious men attracts them, while the opposite occurs with good Spirits". (Revue Spirite, 1863, page 140). 

Commenting on the issue, Kardec said, it appeared that those phenomena were the result of a collective obsession, the same as the one that happened at the time of Jesus. Each nation provides the invisible world with similar Spirits who, from space influence the people, which, due to their inferiority, still maintain the same habits, inclinations and prejudices. The barbarians were thus surrounded by a mass of spirits equally barbarous, until the progress led them to incarnate within a more advanced level. (Revue Spirite, 1865, pages 54 and 55).

However useless, it is common in our planet to fight back violence and evil with actions of the same type. We need to find out what causes this violence, because answering back with the same type of action will not lead our world to the condition described by Jesus when He refers to the end of the "old world", and states that the Gospel would be taught everywhere. 

There is a principle, which the Spiritists know very well and which is frequently repeated by scholars, such as the well known speaker, Divaldo Franco: "The evil that hurts us is not the evil that is done to us, but the evil that we ourselves practice".

In other words: let us be the one who is "attacked", and never the "attacker".

Since life does not end in the grave, those who kill, attack and harm will have to account for what they did and then they will certainly remember what Jesus taught the Apostle Peter: "Put your sword back, for all those who use their swords, shall die by the sword". (Matthew 26:52).