2.4 Reincarnation: Multiple Lives

Reincarnation

A soul that did not reach perfection during its corporeal life completes the work of its purification by submitting to the trial of a new existence.

To purify itself, the soul undergoes a transformation, but for this to occur it needs the trial of corporeal life.

The soul lives many corporeal existences. We all live many lives, and those who say otherwise wish to keep others in the ignorance in which they themselves dwell.

After leaving one body behind, the soul takes another; in other words, it reincarnates in a new body.

The purpose of reincarnation is expiation and humankind’s progressive improvement. Without reincarnation, there could be no justice.

The number of corporeal lives is not unlimited. In each new life, a spirit takes another step on the path of progress. When it has stripped itself of all impurities, it has no further need of the trials of corporeal life.

The number of incarnations is not generally the same for all spirits. Those who advance quickly spare themselves many trials. Nevertheless, since progress is almost infinite, a large number of incarnations is always required.

After its final incarnation, the spirit becomes a blessed spirit, a pure spirit.

The Justice of Reincarnation

The doctrine of reincarnation is based on the justice of God and revelation. A good father always leaves the door of repentance open to his children. It would be unjust to keep eternal bliss from those who have not enjoyed the opportunities needed to improve themselves. All people are God’s children. It is only among selfish human beings that iniquity, insatiable hatred, and unforgiving punishment are found.

All spirits are en route to perfection, and God furnishes them with the means of accomplishing it through the trials of corporeal life. In divine justice, God permits them to accomplish in new existences whatever they could not do or complete in a previous trial.

It would not be consistent with equity or with God’s goodness to punish forever those who, regardless of their will, encountered obstacles to their improvement within the surroundings in which they had been placed. If the fate of all human beings were irrevocably sealed after death, it would mean that God does not weigh the actions of all on the same scales and does not treat everyone impartially.

The doctrine of reincarnation, which consists in accepting that humans have many successive lives, is the only one in line with the idea of God’s justice toward those of lower moral condition. It is the only one that can explain our future and give us hope because it offers us the means of atoning for our errors through new trials. Reason confirms this, and it is what the Spirits have taught.

Those who are aware of how imperfect they are derive consoling hope from the doctrine of reincarnation. If they truly believe in the justice of God, they cannot expect to be equal for all eternity to those who have done better than they. The thought that such imperfection will not exclude them forever from the supreme good, and that they will be able to reach it through continued effort, supports them and renews their courage. At the end of one’s career, one may regret having acquired a particular experience too late to have profited from it. Yet this newly acquired experience will not be lost; it will be of benefit in a new existence.

Incarnation on Different Worlds

Not all of our corporeal existences are lived on Earth. They may be lived on other worlds as well. Those on this globe are neither the first nor the last, but they are among the most material and the farthest from perfection.

With each new corporeal existence, the soul does not necessarily pass from one world to another, for it may live many lives on the same world if it has not evolved sufficiently to go to a more advanced one.

We may reappear several times on Earth. We can also return to it after having lived on other worlds, and we may already have lived on worlds other than Earth.

It is not necessary to live again on Earth, but if one does not progress, one may go to another world that is no better, perhaps even worse.

There is no special advantage in coming back to live on Earth unless one comes on a mission. In that case, one will progress nonetheless, just as on any other world.

It would not be better to remain a spirit, because that would keep one at a standstill. What one seeks is to evolve toward God.

After having incarnated on other worlds, spirits can incarnate on this one without ever having come here before, just as one can incarnate on other globes. All worlds are in solidarity. What has not been accomplished on one may be accomplished on another.

There are many who are on Earth for the first time, and at various degrees. There is no useful indication by which to recognize a spirit who is on Earth for the first time.

To arrive at the perfection and supreme bliss that are humankind’s final aim, a spirit need not have lived on all the worlds in the universe, because there are many worlds of like degree where the spirit would learn nothing new.

The plurality of a spirit’s lives on the same globe is explained by the fact that it may find itself there each time in very different situations, which will provide many opportunities to acquire experience.

Spirits can be reborn corporeally on a world that is relatively less evolved than one on which they have already lived when they have a mission to fulfill that will aid their progress. In such a case, they joyfully accept the tribulations of this kind of existence because these furnish a means for further advancement.

This may also occur as expiation, in the sense that God may leave rebellious spirits on less evolved worlds. Spirits may remain at a standstill, but they never regress. Thus, their punishment consists in not advancing and in having to recommence badly used lives in an environment more suited to their nature.

Those who must recommence the same existence are those who have failed in their mission or trials.

The beings who inhabit each world are not all at the same degree of purification. As on Earth, some are more advanced and some are less advanced.

In passing from this world to another, a spirit retains the intelligence it possessed here, because intelligence is never lost. Such a spirit may not have the same means of expressing it, however. This depends both on its degree of purity and on the state of the body it acquires.

The beings who inhabit different worlds have bodies, because the spirit must be clothed with matter in order to act upon matter. This envelope, however, is more or less material according to the degree of purity the spirit has reached. This determines the differences among the worlds through which we must pass, for there are many dwellings in God’s house, and therefore many degrees. Some recognize this and are conscious of it here on Earth, but others know nothing of it.

The physical and moral state of different worlds cannot be accurately known by all, because Spirits can reply only according to the degree of evolution of those to whom they speak. These things must not be revealed to everybody, because not all are in the same position to comprehend them, and such revelations would be troubling to them.

As spirits purify themselves, the bodies that clothe them also approach the spirit nature. Their matter becomes less dense, and they no longer painfully drag themselves around on the ground. The needs of their physical bodies are less coarse, and they no longer have to destroy other living beings in order to feed themselves. They are freer and have perceptions unknown to us, enabling them to see things far away; in other words, they can see through the eyes of the body what we can see only through thought.

The purification of spirits is reflected in the moral perfection of the beings in whom they are incarnated. Animal passions become weaker, and selfishness gives way to a fraternal sentiment. Thus, on worlds more highly evolved than our own, wars are unknown, and there are no motives for hatred and discord, because no one would dream of harming a fellow being. Their intuition concerning the future, which is the assurance given by a conscience free of remorse, makes death no longer a cause for apprehension. Instead, they look upon it without fear, as a simple transformation.

The lifespan on different worlds appears to be proportionate to the spirit’s degree of moral and physical advancement, and this is perfectly logical. The less material the body, the less it is subject to the torments that disorganize it. The purer the spirit, the less it is subject to the passions that undermine it. This is another design of Providence, who desires suffering to be shortened as much as possible.

In passing from one world to another, a spirit must experience a new childhood. Childhood is a necessary transition on all worlds, but it is not always as obtuse as it is on ours.

Spirits cannot always choose the new world they will inhabit, but they may ask for and receive what they desire if they deserve it, because spirits gain access to worlds only according to their degree of purification. If a spirit does not make a request, its degree of purification determines the world on which it will reincarnate.

The physical and moral state of living beings on each globe is not perpetually the same. All worlds are subject to the law of progress. All began like ours, in an inferior state. Earth will undergo a transformation and will become a terrestrial paradise when all humankind chooses good over evil.

Thus, the race that populates Earth today will someday disappear and be replaced gradually by more highly evolved beings. Such races will succeed the current one, just as the current one succeeded others that were even less evolved.

There are worlds on which the spirit no longer lives in a material body and has only the perispirit as its envelope. That envelope itself becomes so etherealized that to us it is as if it did not exist at all. This is the state of pure spirits.

There is no precise line separating the state of the final incarnations from that of a pure spirit. The difference diminishes little by little, finally becoming imperceptible, like night fading at the first light of day.

The perispirit’s substance is not the same on all globes. It is more etherealized on some than on others. When it goes from one world to another, a spirit clothes itself with the matter proper to each world at a speed faster than lightning.

Pure spirits inhabit certain worlds, but they are not confined to them as people are to Earth. More than all others, they possess the power of ubiquity.

According to some spirits, of all the globes that comprise our solar system, Earth is one of those whose inhabitants are the least physically and morally advanced. Mars, as a planet per se, is even less advanced, whereas Jupiter is far superior in every respect. The sun is not inhabited by corporeal beings, but is a meeting place for high-order spirits, who radiate their thought from there to other worlds, which they govern with the aid of low-order spirits by communicating with them through the universal fluid. Regarding its physical constitution, the sun could be a focus of electricity. It appears that all suns operate in the same way.

Size and distance from the sun have no necessary bearing on the degree of the other planets’ development, because it appears that Venus is more evolved than Earth, and Saturn less so than Jupiter.

Many spirits who animated well-known personalities on Earth are said to have reincarnated on Jupiter, one of the worlds nearest to perfection. It may seem surprising that on a globe so advanced, persons may be found who might not have been considered so very evolved when they lived on Earth. However, this is less astonishing if one considers, first, that certain spirits who inhabit that planet could have been sent to Earth to fulfill missions that did not place them in prominent positions, at least by earthly standards; second, that between their earthly existence and their life on Jupiter they may have had intermediate ones in which they evolved further; and third, that on that world as on this one there are different degrees of development, and between those degrees there may be as much difference as that separating the primitive from the civilized individual on Earth. Thus, the fact that they inhabit Jupiter does not mean they are at the level of the most evolved beings, just as all persons are not on the same level as scholars at the Institute simply because they happen to live in Paris.

The conditions of longevity are not everywhere the same as they are on Earth; thus, an age-based comparison is not possible. A person who had died some years earlier was evoked through a medium and stated that he had reincarnated just six months earlier on a world whose name he withheld. When questioned about his age there, he replied that he could not calculate it, because time is not counted there as it is here; moreover, their way of life is not the same. They develop much more quickly, so that although only six of our months had passed since he arrived there, in intelligence he was already about thirty Earth years old.

Many similar replies have been given by other spirits, and these statements contain nothing implausible. On Earth, animals reach full maturity in only a few months. Why it should not be the same with human beings on other spheres is not evident. On the other hand, the development acquired by a thirty-year-old person on Earth may be only a type of infancy compared with what could be reached elsewhere. It would be very shortsighted to consider ourselves the prototypes of creation, and it would be demeaning to the Divinity to believe that nothing else could have been created besides us.

Progressive Transmigration

From the time it is first formed, a spirit does not enjoy the fullness of its faculties. Like a human being, a spirit has its infancy. When they first come into being, spirits have no more than an instinctive existence, possessing only consciousness of themselves and their actions. Their intelligence develops only little by little.

During its first incarnation, the soul resembles the state of infancy in corporeal life. Its intelligence is only beginning to unfold, and it tries its hand at life.

The souls of primitive peoples are in a relative state of spiritual infancy, though they are already developed souls endowed with passions. Passions indicate development, but not perfection. They are a sign of activity and an awareness of the self. In the very young soul, intelligence and life exist only in a seedlike state.

The life of spirits as a whole follows the same phases as corporeal life. A spirit passes gradually from the embryonic state to that of childhood. Over a succession of periods, it arrives at the adult state, which is that of perfection, with the difference that there is no decline or decrepitude as in corporeal life. Even though its life had a beginning, it will have no end, and from our point of view it needs an enormous amount of time to pass from spirit infancy to complete development. Furthermore, its progress does not all occur on one globe only, but on several. The life of the spirit is thus composed of a series of corporeal existences, each providing an opportunity for progress, just as each corporeal existence is composed of a series of days over which the individual acquires greater experience and knowledge. Nevertheless, just as in human life there are fruitless days, likewise in the life of a spirit there are corporeal existences that yield no improvement because the spirit did not know how to live them productively.

Through perfect conduct in this life, no one can leap over all the degrees and become a pure spirit without having passed through the intermediate ones, because what humans imagine as perfection is actually very far from it. There are qualities they neither know nor comprehend. They may be as perfect as their nature permits, but it is not absolute perfection. It is like certain children who, no matter how precocious they may be, must still pass through youth before arriving at maturity, or like ailing individuals who must go through convalescence before recovering their health. Furthermore, spirits must advance in knowledge as well as in morality, and if they have progressed in one sense only, they must do so in the other in order to reach the top of the ladder. Nevertheless, the more individuals advance in their present life, the shorter and less painful their subsequent trials will be.

Humans in this life can assure themselves of a less bitter future existence. They can reduce the length and difficulties of the path. Only the negligent remain at a standstill.

During new existences, humans can regress in social position, but as spirits they cannot. During a new incarnation, the soul of a moral individual cannot animate the body of a scoundrel, because a spirit cannot regress. The soul of a wicked individual may become the soul of a moral one. If it repents, that would be a reward.

The evolution of spirits is progressive and never regressive. They raise themselves gradually through the hierarchy and do not descend from the level they have reached. In their different corporeal lives, they may descend as individuals but not as spirits. Thus, the soul of a powerful person may later animate a humble artisan, and vice versa, because positions among individuals are frequently the inverse of the elevation of their morality. Herod was a king; Jesus was a carpenter.

The possibility of improving oneself in another existence does not justify persevering in the path of evil with the thought that one can always correct oneself later. Those who think that way do not truly believe. The idea of eternal punishment no longer restrains them because their reason rejects it; instead, it leads them to question everything. If only reasonable means were used to guide humans, there would be no such skeptics. During corporeal life, an imperfect spirit may indeed think in that way, but once released from matter it thinks very differently. It soon perceives that it has calculated badly, and to make up for it, it will carry an opposite sentiment into its new existence. Progress is accomplished in this way, which is why on Earth some are more advanced than others. Some have already had the experiences that others have yet to go through; the latter acquire such experiences little by little. It depends on each individual to hasten progress or to delay it indefinitely.

Persons who find themselves in a dreadful situation desire to change it as quickly as possible. Those who have convinced themselves that the tribulations of this life are the consequence of their own imperfections will seek to ensure a new existence that is less painful. This thought will draw them away from the path of evil much more readily than the thought of eternal fire, which they regard as nonsense.

Since spirits can improve only by undergoing the sufferings and tribulations of corporeal existence, material life may be seen as a type of sieve or filter through which the beings of the spirit world must pass in order to arrive at perfection. They improve during such trials by avoiding evil and practicing the good. However, it is only after many incarnations or successive purifications, and after a longer or shorter lapse of time according to their own efforts, that they reach the goal meant for them.

The spirit influences the body. Your spirit is everything. Your body is a garment that rots; that is all.

There is a material image of the various degrees of the soul’s purification in the juice of the vine. It contains the liquor called spirits or alcohol, but it is weakened by the large quantity of foreign elements that alter its essence. It reaches absolute purity only after several distillations, each removing a portion of the impurities. The alembic represents the body into which the soul must enter to purify itself; the foreign elements are like the perispirit, which is more and more purified as the spirit approaches perfection.

The Fate of Children After Death

The spirit of a child who dies very young is sometimes much more advanced than that of an adult, because the child may have had more existences and may therefore have acquired more experience, especially if it has progressed. The spirit of a child can very frequently be more evolved than that of its parent.

The spirit of a child who dies very young without having done any evil does not, for that reason, belong to the higher degrees. If such a child has done nothing evil, it has also done nothing good. God does not relieve such a spirit of the trials it must undergo. If it is pure, it is not because it was a child, but because it was already advanced.

Life is so often cut short in childhood because the length of a child’s life can be, for its spirit, the remainder of a former life that had been cut short before its due term. Moreover, the death of a child is often a trial or an expiation for the parents.

The spirit of a child who dies very young begins a new existence.

If humans had only one life to live, and if afterward their fate were sealed for all eternity, half the human species, who die very young, would enjoy eternal bliss without having lived a full life of effort, and they would be exempt from the often painful conditions imposed on the other half. Such an order of things could not accord with the justice of God. Through reincarnation, absolute justice is the same for all. The future belongs to all, without exception and without favoritism, and those who arrive last will have only themselves to blame. Individuals must have the merit of their actions, for which they are justly responsible.

Moreover, it is unreasonable to consider childhood a state of innocence. Children are seen endowed with the worst instincts at an age at which education could not yet have exerted its influence. Some seem to be born cunning, deceitful, and treacherous, and even harbor instincts for theft and murder, in spite of the good examples surrounding them. Criminal law absolves them when they commit misdeeds by considering them to have acted without discernment, driven more by instinct than deliberate intent. Such instincts, which differ so widely among children of the same age, reared under the same conditions and subject to the same influences, come from the imperfect nature of the spirit, since education has nothing to do with it. Those who are truly wicked have progressed less and must therefore suffer the consequences, not of their acts during their present childhood, but of their previous lives. Thus, the law is the same for all, and the justice of God extends to all.

Gender in Spirits

Spirits are not male and female as you understand it, because sex depends on organic composition. Love and sympathy exist among spirits, but they are based on affinity of sentiment.

A spirit who has animated the body of a man can animate the body of a woman in a new existence, and vice versa, since the same spirit can animate both male and female bodies.

When we are spirits, it matters little whether we will incarnate in a male or a female body; it depends on the trials we must undergo.

Because they are sexless, spirits can incarnate as either men or women. Since they must progress in every way, each sex, like each social position, offers special trials, duties, and new opportunities to acquire experience. One who always incarnated as a man would know only what men know.

Kinship and Affiliation

Parents transmit only animal life to their children, since the soul is indivisible. Foolish parents may have intelligent children, and vice versa.

Since we have had many existences, kinship reaches back to previous ones. It could not be otherwise. The succession of corporeal lives establishes ties among spirits dating from former existences. This often gives rise to the affinity between you and certain spirits whom you might think are strangers.

According to some, the doctrine of reincarnation appears to destroy family ties by carrying them back to previous lives. Instead of destroying them, it extends them. Since kinships may be based on previous affections, the ties that unite members of the same family are less precarious. Moreover, reincarnation broadens the duties of fraternity because your neighbor or your servant may be a spirit who was formerly related to you by blood.

It does, however, diminish the importance some attach to familial affiliation, because one’s father may be a spirit who had previously belonged to a different race or occupied a very different social position. That is true, but such importance is founded on pride. What most people honor in their ancestors are title, class, and fortune. They would blush at having had an honest shoemaker for a grandfather, but boast if they had descended from a debauchee of noble birth. No matter what people say or do, they will not prevent things from being what they are, for God does not regulate the laws of nature according to their vanity.

Since there may be no actual affiliation among the spirits of a particular family’s descendants, it would not be foolish for family members to honor their ancestors, because they should feel happy to belong to a family in which more highly evolved spirits have incarnated. Although spirits do not proceed from one another, they have no less affection for those who are linked to them by family ties, for they are often attracted to this or that family because of affinities or previous connections. You may be very sure that the spirits of your ancestors do not feel honored by respect rendered out of pride. Their merits do not benefit you except insofar as you strive to follow their moral example. Only in that way can your memories be not only pleasant but also useful to them.

Physical and Moral Likeness

Parents almost always transmit a physical likeness to their children, but they do not transmit a moral likeness, because their souls or spirits are different. The body proceeds from the body, but the spirit does not proceed from the spirit. There is no other link than blood kinship among descendants.

The moral likeness that sometimes exists between parents and children comes from sympathetic spirits, attracted by similarity of inclination.

The spirits of the parents exert a very great influence on their children after birth because, as has already been said, spirits should aid one another’s progress. The spirits of the parents have the mission of developing their children through education. This is their task; if they fail in it, they are at fault.

Good and virtuous parents sometimes have wicked children because wicked spirits may ask for good parents in the hope that their counsels will guide them along a better path. God often grants their wish.

Through their thoughts and prayers, parents cannot attract a good spirit instead of an imperfect one to indwell the body of their child. They can, however, improve the spirit of the child to whom they have given birth and who has been entrusted to them; it is their duty. Ill-natured children are a trial for their parents.

The likeness of character that so often exists among siblings, especially between twins, comes from their being sympathetic spirits who are attracted by similar sentiments and who are happy to be together.

In children whose bodies were born joined and who have some of their organs in common, there are two spirits, that is, two souls, but their resemblance often makes them seem as though there were only one.

The Plurality of Existences

If spirits incarnate as twins out of sympathy, the aversion that may sometimes be noted between them does not disprove this, because it is not a rule that twins must be sympathetic spirits. Evil spirits may desire to struggle together on the stage of life.

Stories of children fighting in their mother’s womb are a figure of speech. To portray hatred as ingrained, it is figuratively set before birth. Humans usually do not make sufficient allowance for images that are intended to be merely poetic.

The distinctive character observed in each culture comes from the fact that, like humans, spirits also form families through similarity in tendencies. The purity of such tendencies depends on how evolved the spirits are. Additionally, cultures are large families where sympathetic spirits congregate, and the tendency that leads members of these families to gather is the source of the individual likenesses that exist within the distinctive character of each culture. Good and humane spirits would not seek to live among unrefined and cruel people. Spirits are attracted to like-minded cultures, just as they are attracted to like-minded individuals. They look for their own group.

In their new lives, individuals may retain traces of their moral character from former ones. However, as spirits evolve, they change, and their social position may change as well. If a master becomes a slave, his tastes will be very different and it will be difficult to recognize him. Since a spirit is the same spirit in its various incarnations, its manifestations can have certain likenesses from one incarnation to another. However, these are modified by the customs of its new position until notable improvement has completely changed its character. Thus, one who was proud and cruel can become humble and humane if it has repented.

During their different incarnations, individuals do not retain vestiges of their physical character from previous lives. The body is destroyed, and the new one has no connection with the old. Nevertheless, the spirit is reflected in the body. Although the body is only matter, it is molded by the spirit’s qualities, which impress it with a certain character, mainly visible in the face. For this reason, the eyes have rightly been described as the mirror of the soul, meaning that the face most particularly reflects the soul. Thus, individuals who are extremely unattractive physically can nevertheless project something pleasant if they are good, thoughtful, and humane spirits. On the other hand, there are very attractive faces that awaken nothing and may even seem repulsive. One cannot believe that only perfect bodies house high-order spirits, when every day morally upright individuals with deformed bodies are encountered. Although there may be no pronounced physical likeness, a similarity of tastes and tendencies can still pass on what is called an air of familiarity.

The body that clothes a soul in a new incarnation does not necessarily have any relation to the previous one, since it can proceed from a very different origin. It would therefore be absurd to conclude that a succession of lives is connected by a likeness that is strictly fortuitous. Nevertheless, a spirit’s qualities almost always modify the organs that serve for its manifestation, impressing a distinctive stamp on the face and even on the general manner. Thus, inside the humblest envelope one might find expressions of greatness and nobility of spirit, while under the garment of a wealthy person one can often find vulgarity and dishonor. Some persons who have risen from the lowest positions acquire the habits and manners of high society with hardly any effort; they seem to have returned to their rightful element. Others, in spite of their birth and education, always feel out of place there. This fact can be explained only as a reflection of what the spirit was in former lives.

Innate Ideas

An incarnate spirit preserves a trace of the perceptions it had and the knowledge it acquired in previous lives. A vague memory remains, giving the incarnate spirit what are called innate ideas.

The theory of innate ideas is not a myth, because the knowledge acquired in each existence is not lost. When a spirit is free of matter, it always recalls such knowledge. While incarnate, it may forget it partially and temporarily, but the intuition that remains helps it advance. Without it, it would always have to start over. Instead, with each new existence the spirit starts from the point at which it finished the preceding one.

The connection between two successive existences is not always as close as one might think, because the conditions of the two lives are often very different; also, the spirit may have progressed in the interval between them.

The origin of the extraordinary abilities of those who, without any previous learning, seem to have an intuition for certain areas of knowledge such as languages, mathematics, and so on, is a memory of the past and the soul’s previous progress, of which it now has no awareness. Bodies change, but the spirit does not; it merely changes its garment.

In changing bodies, spirits can lose certain intellectual faculties if they dishonored that faculty or made bad use of it. Moreover, a faculty may remain dormant throughout an entire existence because the spirit wishes to exercise an unrelated one. In that case, it remains latent but reappears later.

The instinctive sense of the existence of God and the presentiment of future life are due to a retrospective memory that humans have even in the primitive state. They retain a memory of what they knew as spirits before incarnating, but pride often stifles this sentiment.

Certain beliefs related to Spiritist doctrine and found in all cultures are owed to that same memory. This doctrine is as old as the world. That is why it is found everywhere, which is proof of its truth. Since it preserves an intuition of its spirit state, the incarnate spirit possesses an instinctive awareness of the invisible world. This awareness, however, is frequently distorted by prejudice, as well as by superstitions arising from ignorance.