Guaraci de Lima Silveira

Echoes of Apostasy

Far away there is someone walking. In one hand a lit candle and in the other a magnifying glass. A long beard because there was no time to trim it, clothes smelling of dust, because he comes from far. Tired, aching feet, knees paining, however, he goes on walking. Where does he come from? Where does he want to go? He comes from far searching for his maturity. He works like the wise men that leave behind their indolence, misdeeds, and the nails driven into crosses, which he raised with people on it. This is the man that is looking for, who seeks his meaning, his beneficent peace. Such men are rare. They almost never appear to drink the mug of water that the good old man keeps in his vat by the roadside. Almost always men prefer cliffs. They represent the rebellion of Adam and insist in eating the fruit of the good and evil knowledge even though they know that evil is not God’s creation, but their own, poor keepers of their chimeras. 

And here comes our man with the candle and the magnifying glass. Behind him stay the thousands of men unclean by their constant vices, and which are renewed every day. And why? Why are they not aware, still in this world where lights glow, of their immortal divinity? It is about this subject that we intend to focus this short essay. And we are going to begin it by mentioning the question 115 of the Book of Spirits, when Allan Kardec asks if at Creation, some Spirits were created good and others, evil. He got the following answer: "God created all Spirits, simple and ignorant, i.e. with no knowledge. He gave each one of them a mission, with the purpose of clarifying them and gradually guiding them to perfection by the knowledge of the truth and to bring them to Him…” It is an answer that already places us as the man with the lit candle and magnifying glass. And with the long beard and smelling of the road dust, since these details inform us that we are coming from very far away, in time and space.

The wise man does not feed his desires

We all come from God. We are all on the returning path that takes us back to Him. From the famous book Tao Te Ching, paragraph 64, we copy: "The wise man does not feed his desires, he does not maintain what is difficult to achieve, learns not to learn, leaves behind the crowd’s practices, and he works with the nature of men, but does not act on it. And why are these creatures wise? Let us try and analyze this statement: the crowd is almost always guided by late passions, which induce us to emotional practices not well decoded and which make us impulsive elements acting through instincts, which we bring from the past. Hence, when one self-determines a change to become aware of its fullness, the instinct phase needs to be stored and used only on the modes of the initial motor and sensory coordination. The one that seeks for wisdom is leaving behind a time of insecurity, uncertainty, far from the truth that enlightens and comforts. And he goes on: "the wise man works with the nature of men, but does not act on it”. Yes, we are human and we need this coexistence as established in the question 766 of The Book of Spirits, which teaches us that God created us to live in society. But this society is classified as the great multitude that is still far from the one that Jesus announced as the true one. Hence, obeying the rules of free will, it is not for anyone to interfere in private issues, which do not belong to him. I imagine a wise man walking on the top of a mountain, and those, who wish to follow him, in a multitude down the valley, fighting for a piece of this, or that, or whatever, according to their futile wishes. “When someone is afraid to govern in the same way he is afraid of his body, then we can trust him the world to govern”, as per Tao Te Ching, now in paragraph 13. 

How to leave the valley and walk to the top?

This is the body that spreads into multiple dimensions, from the somatic to the social, national, continental and planetary. Here on this planet few can see the bodies of the spiritual dimensions. Surely the author of that book was referring to the material bodies, which so powerfully imprison us to this world.

Today we know that the wave is a particle and the particle is a wave. Electrons revolve around the nucleus of an atom while circulating free through space as waves or particles. In the first case they contribute to the formation of molecules, substances, systems and bodies. But at some point, they return to the original powder and are free electrons. Amit Goswami, Ph.D. in Quantum Physics says in his book on the Self-conscious Universe: "... if I had known this, I would have not gotten myself into Quantum Physics!" Huberto Rohden, a Brazilian philosopher, in his book: Einstein - The Enigma of the Universe, tells us on page 86: "The more a man approaches God he becomes quieter, more anonymous, more amorphous, and more colorless". This may be the wise man with the lit candle and the magnifying glass, walking because he comes from far away and does not care about his body, and because of this he is a good governor of his own steps. "Our empirical ego only knows the relative facts in the illusory mirror of time and space – It knows nothing about the True Reality, continues Rohden. This is the man that is in the valley in search of his ephemeral territories. Following, he says: “Our cosmic I is aware of that Reality and savors it, but cannot think, or say it”.

This is the wise man, who with a lit candle, is in search of his heart from the intimacy with Nature, rich in lessons.

Then we ask: how do we leave the valley and walk to the top? There is a determination, a will between them. Both must be carried by the Spirit who is tired of being valley, and therefore walks and acts like the wise man, and seeks for other more mature men, who are more distant from the beginning point and closer to the true light. 

There are three Suns in the world

The neon light delights, but it is a light of the night, for the caves, brothels, and exciting games that numb the conscience. There are three Suns in the world. The first one appeared on the first day of Creation: the Christ. The second Sun appeared on the sixth day as a bright star, and the third one is asleep inside the heart of the overwhelming majority of men, who walk by other men, with no candles, magnifying glasses, and with brocade and sequins adorning their poor, mortal bodies. Their lips show the sensuality that invites the banned sex for sex. Their eyes show greed, and in their hands are the claws that purify. And let us ask Einstein to help us. In one of his lapidary sentences, he says: "The knowledge of the mechanism is not logical and intellectual – it is a sudden enlightenment, almost an ecstasy. Then, of course, the intelligence analyzes and the experience confirms the intuition. In addition there is a connection to the imagination."

Now we can begin to understand why the candle and the magnifier, the neglect of the body and the dust that accumulates during the walking, since it is only dust, powder! The wise man is not built when the Sun sets on one day to return on the following day. The wise man is built over the centuries, from severe questioning, persistence and loyalty to himself. And this is consistently the path of all of us, because it is traced by God, as Tao of the Liberation proposed by Mark Hathaway, and Leonardo Boff in a book with the same name. And they tell us in chapter one: "If we avoid a deep transformation we may fall into a future full of misery, poverty and ecological degradation. But we can awaken to the urgency and to the radical nature of the needed changes and search for the Tao of Liberation. If we choose this second alternative, then we have an opportunity to awaken the collective spirituality of mankind". And we can replace the name Tao of Liberation by Path of Liberation, as this is the sense of the proposal. 

To evangelize oneself: what does it mean?

It is simple, common men. Wise men, who wear the pilgrim's tunic, here are the options, the metamorphic frames, and the principles of survival and of ambivalence. With which one shall we stay? There are the echoes of apostasy ⁽¹⁾ that call us, inviting us. There is an expanding Universe, and there are symmetrical and asymmetrical worlds that attract us even without us noticing it. There is a new cycle, which will gradually be deployed on Earth. Am I a spectator or an actor? Good and necessary question. The consolidated wise men have already left us their blessed lessons. The outcasts remain on the sidelines and the mandarins and scribes write, write, talk, talk and say little. Legal performers walk slowly in a time that goes by fast. The governors hardly know how to rule their own body. There is a basic fundament: to evangelize oneself. 

But what is this? Is it to be religious, a priest, a ritualistic, or a cultivator of idols? Almost always we make this connection when we talk about evangelizing. They are the fools unaccustomed to Jesus’ dynamics.  This is characterized for many centuries after the epic period of the first followers of the Master. Those yes, knew what were the deep, sublime and comforting lessons, and an indicative that they came from Palestine under the mantle of humility and charity, showing us that only with these criteria could one become initiated in the necessary changes to spiritual progress. Earth is a great workshop of work and evolution from its core to the higher spheres where the direct assistants of Christ work. It is part of a planetary system, the center of which is the Sun that keeps the order and the dynamics of this set of actions, carrying with it billions of Spirits in search of perfection. Therefore, to seek the teachings of Jesus is to qualify to enter the higher realms of consciousness by understanding the laws that govern the Universe. 

Does the Spirit reincarnate forever?

Let us recall here what John wrote down in chapter eight, verse twelve of his Gospel: "And Jesus said I am the light of the world. Whoever does not follow me will not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life". Thinking about these words takes us far back to the beginning, when the Earth was formed. Emmanuel in his book The Path of Light tells us of Jesus from the beginning, controlling the telluric forces shaping the orb, forming its soil, raising mountains, creating lakes, seas and oceans. Under His strict and wise baton the world was taking shape leaving the abyss of the start to the beauty of the cosmos organized and shown in the grass, trees, valleys, slopes, peaks, flowers, fruit... So how can we understand the Gospel as a concept of ritualistic rules that resemble the sacrifices offered to God from immemorial time and further from the time of the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon?

We lack a bolder knowledge about the lessons of Jesus. We need to understand them and comply with them, not for the glory of others but for our own glory in the assemblage of process values ​​that enable us to move beyond, leaving the jokes, the dungeons and illusions of the past. We are incarnate in pursuance of a determination of our evolutionary process. In question 168 of The Book of Spirits, Allan Kardec asks: "Is the number of physical existences limited or does the Spirit reincarnate continuously and forever?" "With each new existence the Spirit takes a step on the path of progress; when stripped of all impurities, it no longer needs to live a bodily life". This is the answer of the Spirits. This answer comforts us and gives us the premise of a gradual perfection that we reach. Then, if anyone is progressing towards perfection, it is clear that he needs to understand the Laws and regulations that govern the fields of perfection. 

Here is an old invitation: to approach God.

Here is the need to study, understand and follow the Gospel of Jesus, which represents His knowledge, His truth, His will, and the purpose of those, who God has placed under His protection on this planet.

Approach God! How many over the millennia and centuries have made us this invitation, which stayed in apostasy, but re-emerges as echoes of the Father in search of His beloved children, many of them still lost in the valleys of evil, especially regarding themselves. "Everything in the world has a source, that source is the 'supreme mother'. To know the mother is to know the child. Who knows the child goes back to the mother. No longer will he be in danger. "To which son does the author of the Tao Te Ching refers in its paragraph 57? Certainly, he refers to Jesus, the Planetarium Christ. All the Old Testament prophets, in their psychic visions, recorded the calls of the spiritual planes to man, still linked to matter, seeking for something beyond, seeking for Malkuta, as they said. And what is Malkuta? Simple: it is The Kingdom of Heaven. It turns out that Malkuta is in us as a tiny seed that needs to grow.  

"Stand up on your feet! Get up and shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of Yahweh shines on you". (Isaiah 60-1). "Wake up, you that sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you". (Paul to the Ephesians 5-14). "If ye oppress not the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt, I will make you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers since the old times and forever". (Jeremiah 7: 6-7). "Repent, and turn away your faces from all your abominations." (Ezekiel 14:6). And Zarathustra warns us since ancient Persia in the mid-century BC: "He who says an unjust word can trick his similar, but shall not deceive God." 

Happiness is a state of consciousness

How many messages that came from the spiritual planes are forgotten among us! The prophets began their preaching nearly a thousand years before Jesus and since then sought to involve us in a better time, without wars, conflicts and deaths.

Here is this reflection, here we leave those memories to return to our conscious because, surely, we were all invited earlier to walk the righteous path of the Divine and Universal Laws, but we prefer to create our own and we are fully faithful to them until the day of pain. But we do not need more of the atonement pain.

Allan Kardec in his book Heaven and Hell tells us of repentance, atonement and reparation of mistakes we did. Failure to make these recommendations is what has caused many social and psychological disorders in individuals of this time. Let us always remember that we are children created and blessed by God and not outcasts on the fringes of glorious civilizations living in happy orbs. It may also be because happiness is a conquered state of consciousness. Let us raise so and take action. There is much to do, learn, grow and live. Matter and the goods it produces will become dust that will produce other goods. Power and greed will be reversed in the power of co-creating with God, according to the divine purpose so that we may reach the divinity that is latent in us. Sensuality is transformed into virtuous creating mutual benefits. Vices will disappear and the different habits will lead us to the Sanctuary we all have in us as a place where God stays. Wars, dissensions, wane and crumbs will not survive the man himself, hero of the future. And as the German philosopher Hegel stated: "In himself - out of himself, and the return to himself". And, at each return he brings the blessed cup full of new blessings and achievements. And who knows, it is not the man with a long beard, clothes smelling of dust and holding a lit candle and a magnifying glass?

(1) Apostasy means separation or desertion of the constituted body (of an institution, a party, a corporation) to which it belonged; abandonment of faith in a church, especially a Christian; abandonment of the religious or priestly state.