In this issue, we continue the study of the book, What is Spiritism, launched in Paris in July 1859. This study will be divided into 19 parts. The pages cited in the text and suggested for reading refer to the 20th edition published by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation (Federação Espírita Brasileira). The answers to the questions suggested for discussion can be found at the end of this text.
Questions for discussion
A. What does Spiritism teach about the different worlds in Space? Are they inhabited?
B. When and how does the soul join the body?
C. Where does the parents’ love for their children come from? And why are there bad parents and bad children?
Reading Text
163. The soul is not located in a particular point of the body; it forms with the perispirit a fluid set, penetrating and assimilating the entire body, with which it forms a complex being; and death is not but a spiritual unfolding. During life, the soul acts more specifically on the organs of thought and feeling, but radiates outwardly and can be isolated from the body, moving to the far and from there manifesting its presence. (Chapter III, Item 108, pages 194 and 195).
164. The previous progress of the soul - before its union with the body - is simultaneously demonstrated by the observation of facts and the teaching of the Spirits. (Chapter III, Item 111, page 196).
165. The souls are created simple and ignorant, that is, without science and without the knowledge of good and evil, but with equal aptitude for everything. At first, they are in a kind of childhood, without free will and without being fully aware of their existence. Little by little free will develops. The difference between the souls in their origin would be a denial of God's justice. (Chapter III, Items 112 and 114, page 196).
166. The most advanced souls in intelligence and morality are those who have lived more and achieved greater progress. (Chapter III, Item 113, page 196).
167. The teaching of the Spirits and the study of the different degrees of human advance prove that the previous progress of the soul was made up of a series of corporeal existences, more or less numerous. (Chapter III, Item 115, pages 196 and 197).
168. At the time of birth, the intellectual and moral state of the reincarnating Spirit is what it had been before joining the body; but due to the disruption that accompanies the change of state, his ideas are momentarily dormant. (Chapter III, Item 117, page 197).
169. The innate ideas are the result of knowledge acquired in previous lives, which have been preserved in an intuition state, and serve as a basis for the acquisition of new ideas. (Chapter III, Item 118, page 198).
170. The man of genius is the embodiment of an early Spirit that has already reached a great progress. Education can provide the lacking education, but not the genius, when it does not exist. (Chapter III, Item 119, page 198).
171. Consciousness is an intuitive memory of the progress made in previous existences and of the resolutions taken by the Spirit before incarnating, resolutions he often forgets as a man. (Chapter III, Item 127, page 200).
172. God did not create evil. He established laws and these are always good, because he is supremely good. The one who faithfully observed them would be perfectly happy, but the Spirits – in the use of their free will - do not always observe them and it is from this violation that evil is originated. (Chapter III, Item 129, page 201).
Answers to the proposed questions
A. What does Spiritism teach about the different worlds in Space? Are they inhabited?
Yes. Spiritism teaches that all the worlds in the Space are inhabited and reason says so it must be. (What is Spiritism, Chapter III, Items 105-107, pages 193 and 194).
B. When and how does the soul join the body?
The union of the soul and the body begins with conception. From this moment onwards, the reincarnating Spirit is attached by a fluidic cord to the body it must join and that bond becomes deeper as the body develops. (Ibid, Chapter III, Item 116, page 197).
C. Where does the parents’ love for their children come from? And why are there bad parents and bad children?
The birth in such and such a family is not the result of chance, but it results from the choice made by the Spirit that usually joins those he loved in the spiritual world, or in previous lives. Bad parents and bad children are Spirits, who were not bound in the same family by sympathy, but with the purpose of serving as instrument to test each other, and often as a punishment for what they did in the past. (Ibid, Chapter III, Items 122 and 123, page 199).
