4.1 Joys and Sorrows in Earthly Life

Relative Happiness and Unhappiness

People cannot enjoy complete happiness on earth, because earthly life has been given as either a trial or an expiation. It is up to each person, however, to lessen personal misfortunes and to be as happy as possible while here.

Humanity as a whole will be happy on earth only when it has finally been transformed. Meanwhile, relative happiness is possible for individuals. Most often, people are the artisans of their own unhappiness. By practicing the law of God, they would spare themselves many misfortunes and enjoy as much happiness as existence on such a dense plane allows.

Those who understand their future destiny do not see corporeal existence as anything more than a brief journey. It is like a momentary stop at a dreadful inn. They easily console themselves for a few passing annoyances on a road that will lead them to a better condition, to the degree that they have prepared themselves for it.

In this life, we are punished through the infractions we commit against the laws of corporeal existence, through the misfortunes resulting from those infractions, and through our own excesses. If we trace what we call our earthly misfortunes back to their source, we will see that most of them result from an early deviation from the straight and true road. By entering the wrong path, we fall from one error into another until we finally come to disgrace.

Earthly happiness is relative to each person’s condition. What is enough for the happiness of one would be misfortune for another. Nevertheless, for material life, the common standard of happiness is possessing what is necessary. For moral life, it is a good conscience and faith in the future.

What is superfluous for one becomes necessary for another, and vice versa, according to social position and to materialistic ideas, prejudices, ambition, and all the absurd notions for which the future will demand justice when truth is finally understood. Obviously, those who once had an income of 50,000 and then saw it reduced to 10,000 would consider themselves most unfortunate because they could no longer maintain what they call the demands of their social position: keeping fine horses and servants, gratifying every passion, and so on. They would think themselves deprived of necessities. Yet, beside those who are dying of cold and hunger, with nowhere to lay their head, they are truly worthy of pity only in a very different sense. To be happy, the wise look downward, never upward; and when they do lift their gaze, it is to raise the soul toward the infinite. (See no. 715)

There are misfortunes that do not depend on our conduct and that strike even the most righteous. To progress, one must resign oneself to them and endure them without complaint. Yet one will always find consolation in one’s own conscience, which gives the hope of a better future, provided one does what is needed to attain it.

God grants the goods of wealth to certain individuals who do not seem to deserve them. This appears to be a favor to those who see no farther than the present; but wealth is a trial, and usually a more dangerous one than poverty. (See nos. 814 ff.)

Civilization, because it creates new necessities, is also the source of new afflictions. The misfortunes of this world result largely from the artificial needs people create for themselves. Those who know how to limit their desires, and who look without greed at what lies beyond their means, spare themselves many disappointments in this life. The wealthiest are truly those who have the fewest needs.

People envy the pleasures of those who seem fortunate in this world, but they do not know what is in store for them. If such people use their wealth only for themselves, they are selfish and will suffer reversal. They are to be pitied, not envied. God sometimes allows the wicked to prosper, but their prosperity is not to be envied, because they will pay for it with bitter tears. If the righteous are unfortunate, it is because they are undergoing a trial that will be credited to them if they bear it courageously. The words of Jesus should be remembered: “Blessed are those who suffer, for they shall be comforted.”

Superfluity is certainly not indispensable to happiness, but the same cannot be said of necessities. The misfortune of those who are deprived of necessities is real. They are truly unfortunate when they lack what is necessary for life and bodily health. Such deprivation may result from their own actions, in which case they can blame only themselves. If it results from the wrongdoing of another, the responsibility falls on the one who caused it.

Through natural aptitudes, God points out to each person a vocation in this world. Many misfortunes come from not following the right vocation. Parents, through pride or avarice, often lead their children away from the path nature has marked out for them, thereby compromising their happiness. They will be held responsible for it.

Still, it is not right to resort to exaggeration on this point. Civilization has its necessities. Why should the son of an upper-class man become a cobbler if he can do other things? People can always be useful according to their abilities, provided those abilities are not applied to work for which they are unsuited. Thus, instead of becoming a poor lawyer, someone might perhaps become a skilled mechanic.

Acting outside one’s proper intellectual sphere is one of the most frequent causes of disappointment. Inaptitude in a chosen career is an inexhaustible source of reversals. Pride then enters in and prevents a person from taking up a humbler profession, and suicide may come to be seen as the ultimate remedy for what is considered humiliation. If moral education had raised such persons above the prejudices of pride, they would never become destitute.

There are people who are destitute of every resource even amid abundance, and who see no other solution than death. They should never entertain the thought of letting themselves die of hunger. They could always find a way to feed themselves if pride did not place itself between need and work. It is often said that there are no dishonorable professions, and that dishonor lies not in the work itself. Unfortunately, such sayings are more often applied to others than to oneself.

Without the social prejudices that people allow to dominate them, they would always be able to find some kind of work that would let them earn a living, even if in a lower position. Among those who have no such prejudices, or who set them aside, some are nevertheless unable to provide for themselves because of illness or other causes beyond their will. In a society organized according to the law of Christ, no one should die of hunger.

With a wise and provident social organization, people would never lack what is necessary except through their own fault, which is often itself the result of their environment. But when they practice the law of God, a social order founded on justice and solidarity will arise, and they themselves will become better. (See no. 793)

The suffering social classes are more numerous than the fortunate ones because no one is perfectly happy. Those who are considered fortunate often hide poignant afflictions. Suffering is everywhere. The so-called suffering classes are more numerous because the earth is a place of expiation. When humanity has transformed it into the dwelling place of the good and of good spirits, men and women will no longer be unhappy here. It will be for them a terrestrial paradise.

The wicked usually exert great influence over the good because the good are not assertive. The wicked are scheming and daring, while the good are timid. The moment the latter truly will it, they will prevail.

If people are usually the artisans of their material sufferings, they are even more so the artisans of their moral sufferings. Material suffering is sometimes independent of the will; but wounded pride, frustrated ambition, avaricious anxieties, envy, jealousy, and every passion are torments of the soul.

Envy and jealousy are two voracious worms. Where they exist, there can be no calm and no rest. For those who suffer from them, the objects of desire, hatred, and spite appear like ghosts that give them no peace and pursue them even in sleep. Envious and jealous people live in a continual fever. Through such passions, people create punishments for themselves, and the earth becomes a true hell for them.

Many common expressions vividly symbolize the effects of different passions. We say: puffed up with pride, dying of envy, bursting with jealousy or spite. Such images are very true. Sometimes jealousy has no specific object. There are people whose nature makes them jealous of anyone who succeeds or rises above mediocrity, even when they have no direct interest in the matter. They are jealous simply because they cannot attain the same level. Everything above the common horizon offends them, and if they formed the majority, they would want everything brought down to their own level. In such cases, jealousy is allied with mediocrity.

People are usually unhappy because of the importance they attach to the things of this world. Vanity, frustrated ambition, and greed make them unhappy. If they rose above the narrow circle of material life, if they lifted their thoughts toward the infinite, which is their destiny, the vicissitudes of human existence would seem petty and childish, like the sorrow of a child over the loss of a toy that had seemed the height of happiness.

Those who seek happiness only in the satisfaction of pride and coarse material appetites are unhappy when they cannot satisfy them. By contrast, those who are frugal are happy with what others would call misfortune.

This applies to civilized people, for so-called primitive peoples have much more limited needs and therefore do not experience the same causes of envy and anxiety. Their way of looking at things is very different. In the civilized state, people reflect on and analyze their unhappiness, and are therefore more affected by it. Yet they can also reflect on and analyze the means of consolation found in Christian sentiment, which gives hope of a better future, and in Spiritism, which gives certainty of that future.

The Loss of Loved Ones

The loss of loved ones causes suffering and sorrow, and this sorrow strikes both rich and poor. It is a trial or expiation and a law common to all. Yet it is a consolation to be able to communicate with those we love by the means now available while awaiting others that are more direct and more accessible to the senses.

There is no sacrilege in communication with those beyond the grave when it is carried out reverently, and when evocation is made with respect and propriety. The proof is that spirits who love you take pleasure in coming; they rejoice in being remembered and in being able to converse with you. There would be sacrilege only if evocations were made frivolously.

The possibility of communicating with spirits is a deeply consoling one, for it gives us the means of conversing with relatives and friends who have left the earth before us. By evocation, they draw near, remain beside us, hear us, and answer us. There is, so to speak, no longer any separation between them and us. They help us with their counsels and give witness to their affection and to the contentment they feel at our remembrance of them. It is a satisfaction for us to know that they are happy, to learn from them personally the details of their new existence, and to gain the certainty that one day we will rejoin them in our turn.

A spirit is sensitive to the memory and grief of those it has loved. But persistent and unreasonable sorrow affects it painfully, because in such excess it sees a lack of faith in the future and a lack of trust in God, and therefore an obstacle to progress and perhaps to reunion in the spirit world.

When a spirit is happier than it was on earth, regretting that it has left this life is to regret its happiness. Imagine two friends imprisoned in the same jail. Both are to be freed one day, but one is released first. It would not be right for the one who remains to be saddened that the friend was freed sooner. There would be more selfishness than affection in wishing the friend to remain in captivity and suffering as long as oneself. The same is true of two persons who love each other on earth. The one who departs first is the first to be freed, and the one who remains should rejoice, while patiently waiting for the moment when he or she will also be liberated.

Consider another comparison. You have a friend living nearby. She finds herself in a difficult situation, and her health or interests require her to go to another country, where she will be better off in every respect. She will no longer be nearby for some time, but you will still be able to remain in contact by correspondence. The separation will be only physical. You would not grieve her departure if it were for her good.

The Spiritist Doctrine, through the evident proofs it gives of future life, of the presence around us of the beings we have loved, of the continuation of their affection and kindness, and of the relationships that make communication with them possible, offers supreme consolation in the face of one of the most legitimate causes of sorrow. With Spiritism, there is no abandonment. Even the most isolated person is always surrounded by friends with whom communication remains possible.

We endure life’s tribulations impatiently. They seem so intolerable that we think we cannot bear them. Yet if we do bear them with courage, if we know how to silence our complaints, we will rejoice when we are released from this earthly prison, just as patients who have long suffered rejoice in being healed after patiently enduring painful treatment.

Disappointments, Ingratitude, and Broken Affections

Disappointments caused by ingratitude and by the fragility of the ties of friendship are a source of bitterness for the human heart.

Ungrateful and disloyal friends should be pitied. They will be unhappier than those they have wronged. Ingratitude is the child of selfishness, and selfish people will sooner or later encounter hearts as hard as their own. Many have done more good than you, have been more worthy than you, and yet have been repaid with ingratitude. Jesus himself, during his life, was mocked, despised, and treated as a villain and an impostor. There should therefore be no surprise if the same happens to you. Let the good you have done be your reward in this world, and do not concern yourself with what those who benefited from it may say. Ingratitude serves to test perseverance in doing good. It will be credited to you, and those who have been thoughtless toward you will be punished in proportion to their ingratitude.

Disappointments caused by ingratitude can harden the heart and make it insensitive. That would be unfortunate, because people of feeling, as they are often called, will always be happy for the good they have done. They know that if the good they did is not remembered in the present life, it will be remembered in another, and that the ungrateful will then feel shame and remorse.

This knowledge does not prevent the heart from feeling wounded, and one might think that it would be happier if it were less sensitive. That would be true only if one preferred a selfish happiness, a very sad kind of happiness. If people know that the ungrateful friends who abandon them are unworthy of their friendship, and that they were mistaken about them, they will no longer regret losing them. Later, they will find friends who are more understanding. Those who treat you in a way you do not deserve should be pitied, for they will suffer a sad recompense. Do not let yourselves be afflicted by them; this is one means of rising above them.

Nature has given human beings the need to love and be loved. One of the greatest joys granted on earth is the meeting of mutually attuned hearts. In this way, nature grants a foretaste of the happiness awaiting them in the world of perfected spirits, where all is love and benevolence—a happiness denied to the selfish.

Antipathetic Unions

Since sympathetic spirits are drawn to one another, affection among incarnate spirits is often one-sided, and sincere love may be met with indifference or even repulsion. The liveliest affection between two persons can turn into dislike and sometimes hatred.

This may be a punishment, though a temporary one. Many think themselves deeply in love because they judge only by outward appearance, but when they are obliged to live together, they soon discover that their judgment was based only on physical passion. It is not enough to be enamored of someone who pleases you and whom you imagine to possess fine qualities. Only by living together can people truly appreciate one another. On the other hand, many unions that at first seem incompatible are, in time, transformed into tender and lasting love, because they come to rest on mutual esteem. It is the spirit that loves, not the body; and once physical illusion is dissipated, the spirit sees reality.

There are two kinds of affection: that of the body and that of the soul, and these are often mistaken for each other. When pure and sympathetic, the affection of the soul is lasting; the affection of the body is perishable. That is why those who believed they loved each other eternally often end by detesting each other once the illusion vanishes.

The lack of sympathy between persons destined to live together is also a source of suffering, all the more bitter because it poisons their whole existence.

This is indeed a bitter trial. Yet it is usually one of those misfortunes for which human beings themselves are chiefly responsible. First, because laws are often at fault, one should not believe that God obliges anyone to live with a person they dislike. Moreover, in such unions, people almost always seek to satisfy pride and ambition more than to enjoy the happiness of mutual affection. They then suffer the natural consequences of their prejudices.

In such cases, there is almost always an innocent victim. For that person, it is a heavy expiation; but the responsibility for such unhappiness will fall on the one who caused it. If the light of truth has reached the soul of the victim, faith in the future will bring consolation. Besides, as prejudices weaken, the causes of these private misfortunes will disappear.

The Fear of Death

The fear of death is highly distressing to many people. Such apprehension is misplaced, but it is understandable, because from childhood many have been taught that there is a heaven and a hell, and that they are more likely to go to hell, having also been taught that everything belonging to nature is a mortal sin for the soul. Thus, when they grow up, if they have any reason at all, they can no longer accept such beliefs and become atheists or materialists. In this way they are led to think that nothing exists beyond the present life. As for those who persist in the beliefs of childhood, they fear the eternal fire that would burn them without destroying them.

Death inspires no fear in the righteous, because faith gives them certainty regarding the future. Hope shows them a better life, and because they have practiced the law of charity, they have the assurance that in the world they are entering, they will meet no one whose gaze they must fear.

Sensual persons are more attached to corporeal life than to spiritual life, and while on earth they experience only its physical pains and pleasures. Their happiness consists in the fleeting satisfaction of all their desires. Their soul is constantly occupied with, and troubled by, the vicissitudes of life, remaining anxious and in continual torment. Death terrifies them because they doubt the future and because they think they must leave behind all their affections and hopes.

By contrast, moral persons, who have raised themselves above the artificial needs created by the passions, experience even in this world pleasures unknown to materialistic persons. The moderation of their desires gives calm and serenity to the spirit. Happy in the good they do, they know no bitter disappointment, and vexations pass lightly over their soul without leaving painful marks.

Some people think these counsels about happiness are rather banal. They say they are mere commonplaces or platitudes, and that the whole secret of happiness is simply knowing how to bear misfortune.

Many say so, and there are many of them. But many are like sick people to whom the doctor has prescribed a diet: they would like to be cured without medicine and while continuing to indulge in what makes them ill.

Dissatisfaction with Life and Suicide

Dissatisfaction with life, which takes hold of some individuals without any plausible cause, is the effect of idleness, lack of faith, and, usually, satiety. For those who employ their faculties toward a useful end and according to their natural aptitudes, labor has nothing barren about it, and life passes more quickly. They bear its tribulations with patience and resignation because they look ahead to the more solid and lasting happiness that awaits them.

Human beings do not have the right to take their own life. That right belongs to God alone. Those who intentionally commit suicide transgress this law.

Suicide is not always intentional. Insane persons who kill themselves do not know what they are doing.

Those who commit suicide because they are dissatisfied with life show folly. They should have worked; life would then not have seemed so heavy.

Those who resort to suicide to escape the troubles and disappointments of this world are poor spirits who lack the courage to bear life’s misfortunes. God helps those who suffer, but not those who have neither strength nor courage. Life’s tribulations are meant as trials or expiations. Happy are those who bear them without complaint, for they shall be rewarded. But woe to those who in their impiety expect salvation from chance. Chance, or luck, to use their own language, may indeed favor them for a moment, but only so that they may later feel, more cruelly, the emptiness of such words.

Those who have driven an unhappy person to this act of despair will suffer the consequences of their action. They will answer for it as for a murder.

Those who become disheartened by necessity and allow themselves to die of despair do commit suicide, but those who caused it, or who could have prevented it, are more guilty than the victim, for whom clemency still awaits. Yet the latter are not entirely absolved if they lacked firmness and perseverance, or failed to make the best use of their intelligence to escape their difficulties. They are still more unfortunate if their despair arose from pride—that is, if they were among those whose pride paralyzes intelligence, who would be ashamed to earn their living by manual labor, and who would rather die of starvation than descend from what they call their social position. There is a hundred times more greatness and dignity in struggling against adversity, in braving the criticism of a vain and selfish society that shows goodwill only to those who need nothing and turns its back on those in distress. To throw away one’s life for the opinion of such a society is foolish, for society will not care in the least.

Suicide committed to escape the shame of an evil act is as blameworthy as suicide born of despair. Suicide does not erase wrongdoing; on the contrary, it adds a second wrong to the first. Those who had the courage to do evil should also have the courage to bear its consequences. God is the judge, and according to the cause, God may sometimes lessen the punishment.

Suicide is not excusable when committed to spare one’s children or family from shame. Those who act from this belief do no real good, though they think they do, and God takes their intention into account, for in such a case the suicide is a self-imposed expiation. The wrong is mitigated by the intention, but it remains a wrong. Besides, if social prejudices and abuses were removed, such suicides would no longer occur.

Those who take their own life to escape the shame of an evil act show that they value human opinion more than God’s judgment, because they will return to spirit life still burdened with their iniquities and will have deprived themselves of the means of making reparation during earthly life. God is often less unforgiving than human beings. God pardons those who sincerely repent and considers efforts at reparation; suicide repairs nothing.

Those who take their own life in the hope of arriving sooner at a better life commit another folly. Let them do good, and they will be more certain to reach it. Their suicide will only delay their entrance into a better world, and they themselves will ask to return in order to complete the life they cut short through a false idea. A wrongdoing, whatever it may be, never opens the sanctuary of the elect.

The sacrifice of one’s life is sometimes meritorious when it is made to save the lives of others or to be useful to one’s neighbor. In such a case, according to the intention, it is sublime, and such a sacrifice of life is not suicide. But God opposes useless sacrifice and cannot look on it with pleasure if it is stained by pride. A sacrifice is not meritorious unless it is selfless. Unfortunately, some who make such a sacrifice have hidden motives, and these diminish its value in God’s sight.

Every sacrifice made at the cost of personal happiness is supremely meritorious in God’s sight, because it is the practice of the law of charity. And since life is the earthly possession most valued, those who renounce it for the good of a neighbor do not commit a crime: they make a sacrifice. Nevertheless, before doing so, they should consider whether their life might not be more useful than their death.

Those who die as victims of the abuse of their own passions, which they know will hasten their end, but which they can no longer resist because habit has made those passions into real physical needs, commit a moral suicide. They are doubly guilty. In such a case, there is lack of courage and surrender to brutishness, together with forgetfulness of God.

They are more guilty than those who shorten their life in despair, because they had time to reflect upon their suicide. In those who kill themselves on the spur of the moment, there is sometimes a kind of delirium bordering on insanity. The former will be punished much more severely than the latter, for punishments are always proportional to awareness of the wrongdoing.

When someone sees an inevitable and terrible death before them, it is still wrong intentionally to shorten suffering by a few moments through voluntary death. It is always wrong not to wait for the term set by God. Besides, who can say with certainty that the final moment has truly come, despite appearances, or that unexpected help might not arrive at the last instant?

Even in a case where death is inevitable and life is shortened only by a few moments, such an act still shows a lack of resignation and submission to the will of the Creator.

In such a case, the consequences are, as always, an expiation proportioned to the gravity of the wrong and to the circumstances.

An imprudent act that compromises life without necessity is not blameworthy when there is no deliberate intention or awareness of doing wrong.

Women who, in some countries, intentionally burn themselves to death on the body of their husband should be regarded as obeying prejudice and usually acting more under coercion than by their own will. They believe they are fulfilling a duty, and this is not what characterizes suicide. Their excuse lies in ignorance and in a lack of moral development. Such barbarous and foolish customs will disappear with civilization.

Those who cannot bear the loss of loved ones and kill themselves in the hope of rejoining them do not achieve their aim. The result is very different from what they expect. Instead of being reunited with those they love, they remain separated from them even longer, because God cannot reward an act of cowardice or an insult that shows distrust in divine providence. They will pay for that moment of madness with afflictions greater than those they sought to shorten, and they will not receive the compensation they hoped for. (See nos. 934 ff.)

In general, the consequences of suicide for the state of the spirit vary greatly. There are no fixed penalties; in every case they are relative to the causes that produced the act. One consequence, however, from which no suicide can escape, is disappointment. Beyond that, the fate is not the same for all, but depends on the circumstances. Some expiate their wrong immediately, while others do so in a new life worse than the one whose course they interrupted.

Observation has indeed confirmed that the consequences of suicide are not always identical. Yet some effects are common to all violent deaths and to the abrupt interruption of life. Chief among them is the persistence of the link that binds the spirit to the body, a link that is almost always at full strength when it is broken prematurely, whereas in natural death it gradually weakens and is often undone before life is completely extinguished. The consequences of this state are prolonged spiritual confusion, followed by the illusion that, for a longer or shorter period, causes the spirit to believe itself still among the living. (See nos. 155, 165)

In some suicides, the affinity that persists between spirit and body produces a kind of repercussion of the body’s condition upon the spirit, so that the spirit is compelled to witness the effects of decomposition and experiences a sensation full of anguish and horror. This state may continue as long as the life that was interrupted should naturally have lasted. This consequence is not universal. In no case, however, are those who committed suicide freed from the results of their lack of courage; sooner or later they will expiate that wrong in one way or another. Thus certain spirits, once very unhappy on earth, have stated that they committed suicide in a previous existence and voluntarily submitted to new trials in order to try to bear them with greater resignation. For some, the consequence is a kind of bond to matter from which they vainly seek to free themselves in order to ascend to happier worlds, access to which is denied them. For most, it is regret for having done something useless and having reaped only disappointment from it.

Religion, morality, and philosophy all condemn suicide as contrary to the law of nature. All teach, in principle, that we have no right intentionally to shorten our life. The Spiritist Doctrine shows why we do not have that right and why we are not free to put an end to our own sufferings. Through real examples of those who have succumbed to it, Spiritism shows that suicide is not only a wrong that violates moral law—a consideration of little weight for some—but also a reckless act that brings no benefit; in fact, the result is quite the opposite. This is not mere theory. Spiritism places the facts themselves before our eyes.