4.2 Joys and Sorrows in the Life to Come
Nothingness and the Future Life
Human beings instinctively recoil from nothingness, because nothingness does not truly exist.
Our instinctive sense of a future life comes from the fact that, prior to incarnation, the spirit knows these realities, and the soul retains a vague memory of what it knew and saw in the spirit state. (See no. 393)
In all ages, people have concerned themselves with what lies beyond the grave. This is natural. However much importance they may give to the present life, they cannot help considering how brief—and especially how precarious—it is, since it may be cut short at any moment. No one can be sure of tomorrow. What becomes of us after the fatal instant? This is a serious question, for it concerns not a few years, but eternity. Those who must spend many years in a foreign land concern themselves with the conditions they will find there. In the same way, we concern ourselves with the state we will encounter when we leave this world behind, since that departure is forever.
The idea of nothingness is repugnant to reason. Even those who are most unconcerned during life ask themselves, at the final moment, what will become of them, and they await the answer in spite of themselves.
To believe in God without accepting a future life would be nonsense. The sense of a better life is found within every human being, and God did not place it there in vain.
The future life implies the preservation of our individuality after death. What good would it do to survive the body if our moral essence were to be lost in the ocean of the infinite? For us, the consequences would be the same as nothingness.
The Intuition of Future Joys and Sorrows
The belief in future rewards and punishments, found in all cultures, comes from a presentiment of reality imparted to human beings by the spirit. The inner voice does not speak uselessly; the mistake lies in not listening to it. If people thought well and often about these things, they would make themselves better.
At the moment of death, the dominant feeling in most people is doubt for the hardhearted skeptic, fear for the guilty, and hope for the good.
There are fewer skeptics than one might think. During life, many pretend boldness out of pride, but at the moment of death they cease to boast.
The consequences of the future life arise from responsibility for our actions. Regarding the distribution of the happiness to which all aspire, reason and justice tell us that the good and the wicked cannot be placed together indiscriminately. God cannot will that some enjoy good without effort while others obtain it only through labor and perseverance.
The idea that God exercises justice and goodness through the wisdom of the divine laws does not allow us to believe that the righteous and the wicked are equal in God’s sight. Nor can we doubt that one day the former will receive the reward of the good they have done, and the latter the punishment of the evil they have done. That is why our innate sense of justice gives us the intuition of future rewards and punishments.
God’s Intervention in Punishments and Rewards
God is concerned with all created beings, no matter how small. Nothing is too small for divine goodness.
God has established the divine laws that regulate all our actions. However unimportant some actions may seem to us, they may still violate those laws. If we violate them, the fault is ours. When people commit an excess, God does not pronounce sentence by saying, for example, “You are a glutton, and I am going to punish you.” Instead, God has set a limit: illness, and sometimes death, are the consequences of excess. Thus, punishment results from breaking a law. Everything happens in this way.
If we suffer the consequences of such violations, we have only ourselves to blame. We are thus the artisans of our own future happiness or unhappiness.
This truth is made evident in the following comparison: a father has given his son education and instruction—that is, the means of knowing how to conduct himself. He gives him a field to cultivate and says, “I have given you the rules to follow and all the necessary tools for making this field productive and ensuring your livelihood. I have taught you how to understand those rules. If you follow them, your field will yield abundantly and will provide you rest in your old age. If you do not follow them, it will yield nothing, and you will die of hunger.” Having said this, he leaves him free to act as he pleases.
The field will produce in proportion to the care given to its cultivation, and any negligence will harm the harvest. The son will therefore be happy or unhappy in his old age according to whether he has followed or neglected the rules laid down by his father. God is even more provident, because God warns us at every moment whether we are doing right or wrong by sending spirits to inspire us; however, we do not listen to them. There is also this further difference: God gives us recourse through new lives to repair our past errors, whereas the son in this example would not have the same opportunity if he misused his time.
The Nature of Future Joys and Sorrows
There can be nothing material in the joys and sorrows of the soul after death, since the soul is not matter. There is nothing bodily about future joys and sorrows, and for that reason they are a thousand times more vivid than those experienced on earth. Once freed from matter, the spirit is more impressionable; matter no longer dulls its sensitivity. (See nos. 237–257)
Human beings have formed crude and absurd ideas about the joys and sorrows of the future life because their intelligence is not yet sufficiently developed. The child does not understand as the adult does. It also depends on how people have been taught, and this is precisely where reform is most needed.
Human language is too incomplete to express what lies beyond human reach. Thus comparisons have been necessary, and these images and figures have too often been taken for reality itself. As people become more enlightened, they better understand the things their language cannot express.
The happiness of good spirits consists in knowing all things, in feeling no hatred, jealousy, envy, ambition, or any of the passions that make human beings unhappy. The love that unites them is a source of supreme happiness. They do not experience the needs, sufferings, or anxieties of material life. They are happy in the good they do. Moreover, the happiness of spirits is always in proportion to their progress. Only pure spirits enjoy supreme happiness; however, this does not mean that all others are unhappy. Between evil spirits and perfected spirits there is an infinity of gradations in which enjoyments are proportioned to the moral state. Those who are sufficiently advanced understand the happiness of those who have reached a higher condition before them, and they aspire to it. For them, this is a reason for emulation, not jealousy. They know that attaining it depends on their own efforts, and they work toward that end with the calmness of a pure conscience. They are happy no longer to suffer what evil spirits endure.
The absence of material needs is among the conditions of happiness for spirits. For human beings, satisfying such needs gratifies animal passions; when those needs cannot be met, it is torture.
The statement that pure spirits are gathered in the bosom of God and employed in singing praises to God is an allegory meant to convey an idea of the knowledge they possess of the divine perfections, because they see and comprehend God. Like all allegories, it must not be taken literally. Everything in nature sings, from the grain of sand upward, proclaiming the power, wisdom, and goodness of God. But blessed spirits are not absorbed in eternal contemplation. That would be a monotonous and dull happiness, and, moreover, a selfish one, because their existence would then be one of unending uselessness. They no longer suffer the tribulations of corporeal life, which in itself is already an enjoyment. They know and understand all things, and they use the intelligence they have acquired to aid the progress of other spirits. That is their occupation, and at the same time, their joy.
The sufferings of low-order spirits are as varied as the causes that produce them, and they are proportioned to the degree of impurity, just as enjoyments are proportioned to the degree of purity. They may be summed up as follows: to covet everything they lack in order to be happy, yet be unable to obtain it; to see happiness and be unable to attain it; regret, jealousy, rage, and despair arising from everything that keeps them from being happy; remorse and an indescribable moral anguish. They long for every kind of enjoyment, but cannot satisfy themselves. That is what tortures them.
The influence spirits exert over one another is always good on the part of good spirits. Perverse spirits, however, try to draw away from repentance and from the good those whom they think susceptible to being misled, and whom they often led into evil during earthly life.
Death does not deliver spirits from temptation, but the action of evil spirits is much less significant over other spirits than over human beings, because spirits are no longer sustained by material passions. (See no. 996)
Although the passions no longer exist in the material sense, they still exist mentally in little-evolved spirits. Evil spirits lure their victims to places where they can witness the spectacle of those passions and everything that arouses them.
These passions no longer have any real object, and that is precisely what makes up their torture: misers see gold they cannot possess; the debauched see orgies they cannot join; the proud see honors they envy but cannot enjoy.
The greatest sufferings evil spirits must endure are moral tortures, the punishment of certain crimes. It is impossible to describe them fully, and even the spirits who suffer them find it difficult to convey an idea of them. Assuredly, the most dreadful is the thought of being condemned forever.
People’s ideas about the joys and sorrows of the soul after death are more or less accurate according to their degree of intelligence. As they become more evolved, their thought becomes more refined and less material; they understand things more rationally and cease taking figurative language literally. The most enlightened reasoning teaches that the soul is an entirely spiritual being and therefore cannot be affected by impressions that act only on matter. However, it does not follow that the soul is free from suffering or that it is not punished for its wrongdoing. (See no. 237)
Spirit communications are meant to show us the future state of the soul no longer as a theory, but as a reality. They place before us all the vicissitudes of life beyond the grave, while also showing that these are the perfectly logical consequences of earthly life. Though stripped of the fantastical trappings created by human imagination, they are no less painful for those who have made bad use of their faculties. The diversity of these consequences is infinite, but they may generally be summed up in this way: each soul is punished for its particular faults. Some are punished by the incessant sight of the evil they committed; others by regret, fear, shame, doubt, loneliness, darkness, and separation from those who are dear to them, and so on.
The doctrine of eternal fire comes from taking an image as a reality, as with so many others.
The fear of eternal fire does not produce a durable or healthy result. If people are taught things that reason will later reject, the impression produced will be neither lasting nor wholesome.
Unable to translate the nature of such sufferings into their own language, human beings have found no more forceful comparison than fire, which represents the cruelest torture known to them and symbolizes the most intense action. This is why the belief in eternal fire can be traced back to earliest antiquity, and why modern cultures inherited it from their ancestors. It is also why, in figurative language, people speak of fiery passions, burning with love, burning with jealousy, and the like.
Low-order spirits understand the happiness of the morally upright, and this is one of their torments, because they know they are deprived of it by their own fault. That is why the spirit, once freed from matter, aspires to a new corporeal existence. It knows that each existence, if well used, will shorten the duration of its torment. With this in mind, it chooses the trials that will expiate its wrongs. The spirit suffers for all the wrong it has done or intentionally caused, for all the good it might have done but did not, and for all the evil that resulted from the good it failed to do.
The discarnate spirit is no longer veiled by matter. It is as though it had emerged from a fog and now sees what prevents its happiness. Hence it suffers more, because it understands the extent of its guilt. For the spirit, illusion no longer exists; it sees things as they truly are.
In the errant state, spirits, on the one hand, take in all their past existences at a glance; on the other, they foresee the promised future and understand what they still lack in order to reach it. Like a traveler who has reached a hilltop, they see both the road already traveled and the distance still to go before reaching the destination.
The sight of suffering spirits does not afflict good spirits, because they know such evil will end, and they help others improve by offering them a helping hand. That is their task, and their joy when they succeed.
This is true even for those who were dear to them on earth. If they did not see earthly sufferings, it would mean they had become estranged after death. Souls continue to see the living, but they regard their afflictions from another point of view. They know such sufferings aid advancement if borne with resignation. They are more afflicted by the lack of courage that holds the living back than by sufferings they know are only temporary.
Since spirits cannot hide their thoughts from one another, and since all the acts of their lives are known, those who are guilty continually see their victims as present before them. Common sense says it cannot be otherwise.
This unveiling of all reprehensible actions and the perpetual sight of one’s victims is a punishment for the guilty spirit greater than might be supposed, but it lasts only until the wrongdoing has been expiated, whether in the spirit state or in new corporeal existences.
When we find ourselves in the world of spirits, our entire past will be laid open; the good and the evil we have done will both be known. Those who have done evil will try in vain to avoid the sight of their victims, and their unavoidable presence will be for them an incessant punishment and regret until they have expiated their wrongs. Moral individuals, on the contrary, will meet only friendly and benevolent eyes everywhere.
For evil persons, there is no greater torment on earth than the presence of their victims; that is why they always avoid them. Once stripped of the illusion of the passions, they will understand the evil they have done, see their most secret actions revealed, find their hypocrisy unmasked, and perceive that they cannot hide from the sight of those they have harmed. In the same measure that the soul of the wicked feels shame, regret, and remorse, the soul of the righteous enjoys perfect peace.
The memory of the wrongs committed by a soul while still imperfect does not disturb its happiness after it has purified itself, because it has atoned for those wrongs and emerged victorious from the trials to which it submitted itself for that very purpose.
The trials a soul still must undergo in order to complete its purification are, for the soul that remains tainted, a grave concern. That is why it cannot enjoy perfect happiness until it is entirely pure. Nevertheless, for the soul that has already advanced, the thought of the trials still to come contains nothing painful.
A soul that has reached a certain degree of purity enjoys happiness. A feeling of gentle satisfaction surrounds it, and it is happy in everything it sees and all that surrounds it. The veil is lifted, revealing the wonders and mysteries of creation, and the divine perfections appear in all their splendor.
The bond of affinity that unites spirits of the same order is a source of happiness for them. The unity of spirits attuned to one another through goodness is one of their greatest joys, because they do not have to fear seeing that unity disturbed by selfishness. On wholly spiritual worlds, they form families animated by the same sentiment, and from this they derive spiritual happiness, just as on earth people group themselves by shared sympathies and feel a certain pleasure in one another’s company. The pure and sincere affection they feel and receive is itself a source of happiness. Among them there are neither false friends nor hypocrites.
Human beings enjoy the first fruits of this happiness on earth when they meet souls with whom they can enter into a pure and holy unity. In a life of greater purity, such joy will be beyond words and without limit, because they will meet only sympathetic souls, whom selfishness has not rendered indifferent. In nature, everything is love; selfishness is what destroys it.
Regarding the future state of the spirit, there may be a great difference between those who have feared death and those who have looked upon it with indifference or even with joy, although this difference is often obscured by the causes that produce such fear or desire. Those who fear death and those who desire it may be moved by very different motives, and it is these motives that influence the spirit’s future state. Those who desire death only because it will end their troubles are, in reality, complaining against Providence and against the trials they must endure.
It is not necessary to profess Spiritism or to believe in manifestations in order to secure well-being in the next life. If that were so, then all who do not believe, or who have had no opportunity to learn of these things, would be disinherited, which is absurd. Only goodness ensures future well-being. The good is always the good, whatever path leads to it. (See nos. 165–799)
Belief in Spiritism helps self-improvement by clarifying certain points about the future. It hastens the advancement of individuals and of the masses because it enables us to know what we ourselves will one day be, making it a support and a light to guide us. Spiritism teaches us to bear our trials with patience and resignation, and turns us away from actions that might delay our future happiness. Through its teachings, Spiritism contributes to future joys, but it has never claimed that such happiness cannot be attained without it.
Temporary Punishments
A spirit that expiates its wrongs in a new life undergoes physical suffering, but it is only the body that suffers physically. The tribulations of life are sufferings for the reincarnated soul.
A dead person no longer suffers physical pain, but this is not always true in every respect. As a spirit, such a one may still suffer morally, depending on the wrongs committed, and in a new existence may be even more unhappy. Those who have wasted their wealth will in turn beg and endure the privations of poverty; the proud will undergo humiliations of every kind; those who abused authority and treated their subordinates with disdain and harshness will be forced to obey masters still harsher than they were. All the punishments and tribulations of life are expiations for wrongs from another life when they are not the consequence of wrongs committed in the present one. When you have left this present life, you will understand this better. (See nos. 273, 393, 399)
Those who believe themselves happy on earth because they can satisfy their passions are precisely those who make the least effort at self-improvement. Often they begin to expiate this fleeting happiness in the present life, but they will certainly atone for it in another existence as material as this one.
The troubles of life are not always punishment for present wrongs. They are often trials imposed by God or chosen by the spirit itself before reincarnation in order to expiate wrongs committed in a former life. No infraction of the laws of God, especially of the law of justice, ever goes unpunished. If punishment is not undergone in this life, it will certainly be in another. This is why persons whom you regard as morally upright often still experience the consequences of actions from past existences. (See no. 393)
The reincarnation of a soul on a less dense world is a consequence of its purification, for as spirits become purified, they reincarnate on increasingly better worlds until they have completely freed themselves from matter and moral imperfection, in order to enjoy eternally the bliss of pure spirits in the bosom of God.
On worlds where existence is less material than on this earth, needs are less coarse and all physical suffering is less acute. Their inhabitants no longer know the evil passions that, on less evolved worlds, make beings enemies to one another. Having no motive for hatred or jealousy, they live in peace, practicing the law of justice, love, and charity. They do not know the worries and anguish born of envy, pride, and selfishness, which make up the torment of earthly existence. (See nos. 172, 182)
Spirits who have progressed during their earthly existence can sometimes reincarnate on the same world if they have not been able to fulfill their mission and if they ask to complete it in a new existence; however, in that case it is no longer an expiation for them. (See no. 173)
Those who, without doing evil, nevertheless do nothing to shake off the influence of matter, having made no progress toward perfection, must begin a new existence similar to the one they have left behind. They remain at a standstill, and thus may prolong the suffering of their expiation.
There are people whose lives seem to flow in perfect serenity and who appear entirely free of care. Such a happy existence is not proof that they have nothing to expiate from a former existence. Usually, such serenity is only apparent.
They may have chosen such an existence, but when they leave it behind, they perceive that it has not helped them progress. Then, like those who have been idle, they regret the time they wasted. Spirits can acquire knowledge and evolve only through activity. If they choose to rest in a life free from care, they do not advance. They are like those who, according to your customs, ought to work but instead go for a walk or go to sleep to avoid it. Each of you will have to answer for any intentional inactivity during life, and such uselessness is always fatal to future happiness. The sum of future happiness is always in exact proportion to the sum of the good done. In the same way, unhappiness is always in proportion to the evil done and to the number of persons made unhappy.
There are persons who, though not positively wicked, make everyone around them unhappy because of their character. Such persons are certainly not good. They will expiate this fault by the sight of those whom they made unhappy, and this will be a constant reproach to them. Then, in another existence, they will endure all that they caused others to endure.
Expiation and Repentance
Repentance takes place in the spirit state. It may also take place in the corporeal state when the difference between good and evil is clearly understood.
The consequence of repentance in the spirit state is the spirit’s desire for a new incarnation in order to purify itself. It understands the imperfections that have kept it from being happy and aspires to a new existence in which it may expiate its wrongs. (See nos. 332, 975)
The consequence of repentance in the corporeal state is advancement during the present bodily life, if there is still time to amend one’s wrongs. Whenever conscience reproaches or reveals an imperfection, improvement is always possible.
There are no individuals who have only an instinct for evil and are incapable of repenting. The spirit must progress without ceasing. Those who in this life possess only an instinct for evil will possess an instinct for good in another; that is why they are reborn many times. All must advance and reach the goal at their own pace, more quickly or more slowly, according to their desire. Those who possess only an instinct for good are already purified, because they may well have possessed an instinct for evil in a former existence. (See no. 894)
Wicked individuals who did not recognize their wrongs during life always recognize them after death. They then suffer all the more because they regret all the evil they did or intentionally caused. Repentance, however, is not always immediate. There are spirits who obstinately persist in wrongdoing despite their suffering; but sooner or later they will see that they have taken a false path, and repentance will follow. It is for their enlightenment that good spirits work, and toward that same end human beings should also work.
There are spirits who, though not wicked, are nevertheless indifferent to their fate. They busy themselves with nothing useful and remain in a state of expectancy. They suffer in proportion to their inactivity, and since everything must lead to progress, such progress is brought about through suffering.
They no doubt desire to shorten their suffering, but they lack the will to do what is necessary to relieve it. How many human beings would rather die in poverty than work?
Although spirits see the harm that results from their wrongs, some worsen their condition and prolong their imperfection by doing evil as spirits and turning people away from the path of good. Thus some spirits delay their repentance. Moreover, a spirit that has repented may afterward still allow itself to be drawn back onto an immoral path by spirits even less evolved. (See no. 971)
Some spirits who are notoriously imperfect are open to good sentiments and to prayers offered on their behalf, while others who might be thought more enlightened display a hardness and cynicism that nothing can overcome, because prayer is effective only for spirits who repent. Those who, driven by pride, rebel against God and persist in wrongdoing, increasing it still further, as unhappy spirits do, cannot and never will receive the benefit of prayer until the day the light of repentance dawns in them. (See no. 664)
After the death of the body, spirits are not suddenly transformed. If their life was blameworthy, it was because they were imperfect. Death does not change that by suddenly making them perfect. They may persist in their errors, their false ideas, and their prejudices until they are enlightened by study, reflection, and suffering.
Expiation is accomplished in corporeal existence through the trials the spirit must undergo, and in the spirit life through the moral sufferings arising from its state of imperfection.
Sincere repentance during life is not enough to erase a spirit’s wrongs and entitle it to divine grace. Repentance helps improve the spirit, but the past must still be expiated.
If a criminal were to say that, since he was expiating his past, there was no reason for him to repent, the consequence would be that, if he persisted in evil thought, his expiation would only become longer and more painful.
Wrongs can be redeemed in the present life by making reparation for them. They cannot be redeemed by a few childish privations or by donations made after death, when possessions are no longer needed. God does not value sterile repentance, which is always easy and costs no more than beating one’s breast. The loss of a finger while rendering service erases more wrongs than years of mortifying the flesh for no purpose beyond one’s own interest. (See no. 726)
Evil can be atoned for only through good, and reparation has no merit if it does not affect human pride or material interest.
It does no good on one’s own behalf after death to restore property wrongly acquired and fully enjoyed during life, when it is now of no further use.
It does no good to deprive oneself of a few useless and superfluous pleasures if the evil done to another remains unrepaired.
Lastly, it does no good to humble oneself before God while maintaining pride in one’s dealings with others. (See nos. 720, 721)
There is some merit in providing that the property one leaves behind be put to good use after death, but this is always less than doing the good oneself. Unfortunately, those who give only after death are usually more selfish than generous: they want the honor of charity without having to practice it. Those who deprive themselves during life enjoy a double benefit: the merit of sacrifice and the pleasure of seeing the happiness of those they have helped. But selfishness is always ready to whisper that whatever is given away diminishes one’s own enjoyment, and since selfishness speaks more loudly than selflessness and charity, people cling to their possessions under the pretext that they are needed for their own wants and social standing. Pity those who do not know the pleasure of giving, for they have truly deprived themselves of one of the purest and sweetest joys of humankind. In subjecting them to the trial of wealth—so slippery and dangerous for the future—God has wished to give them, by way of compensation, the happiness of generosity, which they may enjoy already in this world. (See no. 814)
When, at death, individuals recognize their wrongs but no longer have time to make amends, repentance hastens their rehabilitation but does not absolve them. They still have the whole future before them, and that future is never closed.
The Duration of Future Punishments
The duration of the sufferings of the guilty in the future life is not arbitrary, but subordinate to law, for God never acts capriciously. Everything in the universe is ruled by laws that reveal divine wisdom and goodness.
The duration of the sufferings of the guilty is determined by the time required for their improvement. Since the state of suffering or happiness is in proportion to a spirit’s degree of purification, the duration and nature of its sufferings depend on the time it takes to improve itself. As the spirit progresses and its sentiments become purer, its sufferings diminish and change accordingly.
St. Louis
For a suffering spirit, time seems longer than when it was incarnate, because sleep does not exist. Only for spirits who have reached a certain degree of purification is time, so to speak, effaced in the face of the infinite.
If a spirit were to remain eternally evil—that is, if it were never to repent or improve—then it would suffer eternally. But God has not created beings eternally devoted to evil. They were created only simple and ignorant, and all must progress over a longer or shorter time according to their free will. This will may manifest itself later in some than in others, just as some children are precocious and others are not. Yet sooner or later it will appear through the irresistible need the spirit feels to leave its state of imperfection and become happy. The law governing the duration of suffering is therefore eminently wise and beneficent. It makes that duration depend on the spirit’s own efforts, never depriving it of free will. If it makes bad use of that freedom, it must bear the consequences.
St. Louis
There are spirits who delay repentance, but to suppose they will never improve is to deny the law of progress and to say that the child will never become an adult.
St. Louis
There are punishments that may be imposed on a spirit for a specific period, but God, who wills only the good of divine creatures, always welcomes repentance. The spirit’s desire to improve is never fruitless.
St. Louis
Punishments are never eternal. Common sense and reason show that eternal condemnation for a few moments of error would be a denial of the goodness of God. In fact, the duration of a life, even if it lasted a hundred years, is nothing compared with eternity. Eternity means suffering and torture without end and without hope for only a few faults. Reason rejects such an idea. That the ancients saw in the Sovereign of the Universe a terrible, jealous, and vindictive God is understandable. In their ignorance, they attributed human passions to the Deity. But that is not the God of Christians, who exalts love, charity, mercy, and forgiveness as the highest virtues. God cannot lack the qualities that God makes a duty for human beings. It is contradictory to attribute to God both infinite goodness and infinite vengeance. God is above all just, but human beings do not understand divine justice. Justice, however, does not exclude kindness, and God would not be kind if most creatures were condemned to a horrible and everlasting punishment. God could not make justice obligatory for all if all had not been given the means to understand it. Justice is sublime when, united with goodness, it makes the duration of punishment depend on the efforts of the guilty to improve themselves. There lies the truth of the precept, “to each according to his deeds.”
St. Augustine
By every possible means, the idea of eternal punishment is to be opposed and eradicated, for it is a blasphemous notion against the justice and goodness of God, and the most abundant source of the incredulity, materialism, and indifference that have spread among the masses as soon as their intelligence began to develop. A spirit that has just left the state of ignorance, or is on the verge of enlightenment, quickly understands this monstrous injustice. Its reason rejects it, and then, more often than not, it confounds the eternal punishment it rejects with the God to whom it attributes such condemnation. From this arise the countless evils that have fallen upon humanity and for which the remedy has now come. The task is easier because the authorities upon whom defenders of this belief have relied have avoided a formal pronouncement on this point. Neither the Councils nor the Church Fathers resolved this grave question. Following the Evangelists themselves and taking Christ’s allegorical words literally, if Christ did in fact threaten the guilty with unquenchable, eternal fire, there is absolutely nothing in those words that proves they are condemned for all eternity.
Poor lost sheep are to behold the Good Shepherd approaching them, and far from wishing to banish them forever from his presence, he comes to find them and lead them back to the fold. Prodigal children are to leave their willful exile and turn back toward the Father, who opens his arms to them and is always ready to celebrate their return to the family.
Lamennais
Wars of words have lasted long enough. Enough blood has been shed, and the fires of persecution are not to be rekindled. The dispute over expressions such as “eternal suffering” and “eternal punishment” overlooks the fact that what is understood today by eternity was not understood in the same way by the ancients. Let theologians consult the sources, and they will discover that the Hebrew text does not give the word the same meaning that Greek, Latin, and modern translations have rendered as everlasting and unpardonable punishment. The eternity of punishment corresponds to the persistence of evil. So long as evil exists among human beings, punishments will continue. It is in this relative sense that the sacred texts should be interpreted. Eternal punishment is therefore relative, not absolute. A day will come when all human beings, through repentance, will put on the garments of innocence, and on that day there will be no more groaning or gnashing of teeth. Human intelligence is limited, but even so it is a gift from God, and with the help of reason there is not one person of good faith who can understand eternal punishment in any other way. Eternal punishment could exist only if evil were also eternal; but only God is eternal, and God could not have created eternal evil. If that were so, one of the most beautiful divine attributes—supreme power—would have to be denied, for God would cease to be supremely powerful the moment a destructive element was introduced into creation. Humanity is not to fix its somber gaze on the depths of the earth in search of these punishments. It is to weep, hope, expiate, and take comfort in the thought of a God who is infinitely good, absolutely powerful, and essentially just.
Plato
The goal of humankind is to gravitate toward divine unity. For that unity to be realized, three things are necessary: justice, love, and knowledge. Three things oppose it: ignorance, hatred, and injustice. These fundamental principles are denied when the idea of God is compromised by exaggerating divine severity. It is doubly compromised when the spirit of the creature is led to believe that it possesses more clemency, gentleness, love, and true justice than are attributed to the Infinite Being. The very idea of hell is destroyed when it is made as ridiculous and inadmissible as the horrendous spectacles of executions, burnings, and tortures of the Middle Ages are to the human heart. The notion of hell cannot be sustained at a time when blind reprisals have been banished from human laws. Brothers and sisters in God and in Jesus Christ are either to resign themselves to seeing all the dogmas they deem unalterable perish in their hands, or to breathe new life into them by opening them to the benevolent explanations that good spirits now give concerning them. The idea of a hell with glowing furnaces and boiling cauldrons may have been tolerated in a mythological age. In the nineteenth century, it is no more than an empty phantom, fit only to frighten little children, who cease believing in it once they have grown up. Persistence in such a terrifying mythology produces disbelief, which is the source of every kind of social upheaval. There is fear at the thought of an entire social order shaken to its foundations for lack of a penal sanction. Men and women of ardent and living faith, vanguards of the day of light, are to join their efforts not in preserving old fables now discredited, but in reviving the true penal sanction in forms that correspond to the customs, sentiments, and enlightenment of the age.
The guilty are those who, through transgression and through a misdirected impulse of the soul, have departed from the purpose of their creation, which consists in the desire for goodness and beauty as embodied in human perfection, the divine model: Jesus Christ.
Punishment is the natural consequence of that false impulse; it is the amount of pain necessary for the guilty, through trials of suffering arising from transgression. Punishment is the spur that rouses the soul through affliction to return to itself and to the path of salvation. The purpose of punishment is nothing other than rehabilitation and redemption. To want punishment to be eternal for a fault that is not eternal is to deprive punishment of its reason for being.
Eternity in relation to the good, which is the essence of the Creator, is not to be compared with evil, which is the condition of the creature, for such a comparison ends by creating unjustifiable penalties. Rather, the gradual diminution of punishments through successive reincarnations is to be affirmed, and thus divine unity is consecrated by reason and feeling.
Paul, the Apostle
Human beings are stimulated toward morality and turned away from evil by the hope of reward and the fear of punishment; but if punishment is represented in a manner that defies reason, it will have no effect. It will instead be rejected entirely, along with both its form and its foundation. If, however, the future is presented in a logical way, it will not be rejected. Spiritism provides that explanation.
The doctrine of eternal punishment in the absolute sense makes the Supreme Being an implacable God. It would be illogical to say that a king is very good, very benevolent, and very indulgent, that he desires only the happiness of all around him, and yet that he is at the same time jealous, vindictive, inflexibly severe, and punishes three-quarters of his subjects with the maximum penalty for every offense or infraction of his laws, even when they violated them unknowingly. That would be a contradiction. God cannot be less than a human being.
Another contradiction appears here. Since God knows everything, God knew, in creating a soul, that it would fail, and that from its formation it would be destined to eternal unhappiness. This is neither possible nor rational. With the doctrine of relative punishment, everything is restored to order. God undoubtedly knew that the soul would fail, but gave it the means of enlightening itself through its own experience and even through its own errors. It would need to expiate those errors in order to establish itself in the good, but the door of hope would never be closed against it. God made the moment of liberation depend on the efforts the soul itself makes to reach it. This is something all can understand and the most rigorous logic can accept. If future punishment had been presented in this way, there would be far fewer skeptics.
The word eternal is almost always used figuratively in common language to designate something of very long duration whose end is not foreseen, though it is well known that it will in fact end. People speak of the eternal snows of high mountains and the poles, though they know, on the one hand, that the physical world itself may end, and on the other, that the condition of those regions may be altered by a shift in the earth’s axis or some other cataclysm. In such a case, the word eternal does not mean infinite duration. When people suffer from a long illness, they say it feels eternal. It is therefore not surprising that spirits who have suffered for many years, centuries, and even thousands of years speak of it as eternal. Above all, it must not be forgotten that their imperfection does not allow them to see the end of their afflictions; they believe they will suffer forever, and this belief is itself part of their punishment.
Furthermore, the doctrine of physical fire, furnaces, and tortures borrowed from the Tartarus of paganism has now been completely abandoned by liberal theology. Only in certain schools are these terrifying allegorical images still presented as literal truths by some who are more fanatical than enlightened. This is deeply unfortunate, because young imaginations, once past the age of terror, are likely to become skeptical. Today theology recognizes that the word fire is used figuratively and should be understood as moral suffering. Those who have followed the events of life beyond the grave through Spiritist communications have become convinced that, though such sufferings are not physical, they are no less intense. Even regarding their duration, some theologians are beginning to accept the restricted meaning indicated above, and in fact think that the word eternal may refer to penalties in themselves, as consequences of an immutable law, and not to their application to each individual. On the day religion accepts this interpretation, as well as others that also result from the progress of enlightenment, it will bring many lost sheep back into the fold.
The Resurrection of the Flesh
The doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh refers to reincarnation as taught by the Spirits. This expression is like many others that seem nonsensical only to those who take them literally and are therefore led into unbelief. Yet, given a logical interpretation, those whom you call freethinkers will accept it without difficulty, precisely because they are capable of reasoning. Make no mistake: such freethinkers ask nothing better than to believe. Like everyone else—perhaps even more than others—they long for the future, but they cannot accept what is absurd to reason. The doctrine of the plurality of existences conforms to the justice of God, and it alone can explain what otherwise remains inexplicable. This principle is found in religion itself.
In the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh, the Church teaches the doctrine of reincarnation. This doctrine follows from many things that have gone unnoticed and that will soon be understood properly. Before long, the Church will recognize that Spiritism is related at every step to the very text of Holy Scripture. Therefore, the Spirits have not come to subvert Christianity, as some claim; on the contrary, they have come to confirm and sanction it by irrefutable proofs. And since the time has come to replace figurative language, they speak without allegory and give things a clear and precise meaning that cannot be subjected to mistaken interpretation. That is why it is only a matter of time before there are more sincerely religious and believing persons than there are today.
St. Louis
Science has demonstrated the impossibility of resurrection according to the common idea. If the remains of the human body remained homogeneous, even when dispersed and reduced to dust, their reunion at a given time might be conceivable. But such is not the case. The body is composed of diverse elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and so on. Through decomposition, these elements are dispersed and go on to form new bodies, such that the same molecule of carbon, for example, may have entered into the composition of thousands of different bodies, speaking only of human bodies and leaving out those of animals. Consequently, an individual may have in his or her body molecules that belonged to human beings of earlier times. The same organic molecules absorbed through food may have come from the body of someone known to you. Since matter exists in a definite quantity and its transformations are indefinitely numerous, none of those bodies could be reconstituted with the very same elements. This presents a material impossibility. The resurrection of the flesh cannot therefore be rationally accepted except as a figure symbolizing the phenomenon of reincarnation; and understood in that sense, there is nothing to shock reason, nothing contrary to the data of science.
According to dogma, the resurrection will occur only at the end of time; according to the Spiritist doctrine, it occurs every day. The image of the final judgment contains a great and beautiful metaphor, which under the veil of allegory hides one of those immutable truths that skeptics will no longer reject once its true meaning is brought to light. If one reflects carefully on the Spiritist explanation of the future of souls and the destiny resulting from the many trials they must undergo, it becomes evident that, except for the idea of simultaneity, the judgment in which their faults are condemned or absolved is not a fiction, as unbelievers suppose. This theory is the natural consequence of the plurality of worlds—nowadays fully accepted—whereas according to the doctrine of the final judgment, the earth would be the only inhabited world.
Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory
There are no circumscribed places in the universe reserved for the punishments and rewards of spirits according to their merits. Punishments and joys are inherent in the degree of a spirit’s perfection. Each spirit carries within itself the source of its own happiness or unhappiness, and since spirits are everywhere, there is no enclosed or bounded place for one condition or the other. As for incarnate spirits, the degree of their happiness or unhappiness depends on the level of the world they inhabit.
Heaven and hell do not exist as human beings have represented them. They are only figures of speech: happy and unhappy spirits are everywhere. Nevertheless, spirits of the same order gather together by mutual sympathy. When perfected, they may meet wherever they wish.
The idea of fixed places of reward and punishment exists only in human imagination. It arises from the tendency to materialize and localize things whose infinite nature cannot be comprehended.
Purgatory consists in physical and moral suffering; it is a period of expiation. It is almost always on earth that you make your own purgatory, and it is here that God enables you to expiate your wrongs.
What is called purgatory is also a figure of speech and should not be understood as some definite place, but rather as the state of imperfect spirits who are undergoing expiation until complete purification raises them to the rank of blessed spirits. Since this purification is accomplished through successive incarnations, purgatory consists in the trials of corporeal life.
Spirits who are known to be highly evolved from the language they use have given serious questioners answers about hell and purgatory that accord with commonly accepted ideas, because they speak a language their listeners can understand. When people are deeply attached to certain ideas, those spirits do not wish to shock them too suddenly and thereby harm their convictions. If a spirit were to ignore such precautions and tell a Muslim that Muhammad was not a prophet, it would be very badly received.
When spirits are of low order and not yet fully dematerialized, they retain part of their earthly ideas and translate their impressions into familiar terms. They find themselves in surroundings that do not allow them to probe the future except imperfectly. This is why errant or recently discarnate spirits often speak just as they would have spoken while incarnate. Hell may be taken to mean a life of extremely painful trials, with uncertainty as to whether it will ever end. Purgatory may likewise mean a life of trials, but with the awareness of a better future. When you are suffering greatly, you say that you are “going through hell.” These, too, are only figures of speech.
A tormented soul is an errant and suffering soul, uncertain of its future and able to receive the solace it often begs for when it comes to communicate with you.
Heaven is not a place like the Elysian Fields of the ancients, where all good spirits are crowded together indiscriminately, with nothing to do but enjoy an eternity of passive bliss. It is universal space: the planets, the stars, and all the highly evolved worlds where spirits enjoy the fullness of their faculties without the tribulations of material life or the anguish inherent in less evolved conditions.
When some spirits have said that they inhabit the fourth, fifth, or higher heaven, they were answering in the language of those who questioned them, because such questioners imagine many superimposed heavens like the stories of a house. For spirits, the words fourth or fifth heaven express different degrees of purification and, consequently, of happiness. The same applies when a spirit is asked whether it is in hell. If it is unhappy, it will answer yes, because for it hell is synonymous with suffering, although it knows very well that it is not a furnace. A pagan spirit would say it is in Tartarus.
The same applies to other analogous expressions, such as the city of flowers, the city of the elect, the first, second, or third sphere, and so on. These are no more than allegories used by certain spirits, either as figures of speech or through ignorance of the reality of things, or even of the simplest scientific concepts.
According to the old, narrow idea of fixed places of punishment and reward—and especially according to the belief that the earth was the center of the universe and the sky a vault beyond which lay the region of the stars—heaven was placed above and hell below. Hence the expressions to ascend into heaven, to be in the highest heaven, and to be cast down into hell. Now that science has shown that the earth is only one of the smallest worlds among millions of others, with no special importance; that it has traced the earth’s formation and described its constitution; that it has proven space to be infinite, so that there is neither above nor below in the universe, it has become necessary to reject the placing of heaven above the clouds and hell in the lower regions. As for purgatory, no fixed location had ever been assigned to it. It was reserved for Spiritism to give humankind the most rational, most grounded, and at the same time most consoling explanation of these matters. Thus we may say that we carry our hell and our heaven within us, and that our purgatory is found in incarnation, in corporeal or physical life.
Christ’s words, “My kingdom is not of this world,” are to be understood figuratively. He meant to say that he reigns only over pure and unselfish hearts. He is wherever love and goodness reign; but human beings, greedy for the things of this world, cling to earthly things rather than to him.
The reign of the good will be realized on earth when, among the spirits who come to inhabit it, the good outnumber the evil. Then they will cause love and justice—the source of goodness and happiness—to reign on earth. It is through moral progress and the practice of God’s laws that human beings will attract good spirits to the earth and repel evil ones. But evil spirits will leave only when human beings have banished pride and selfishness from the planet.
The transformation of humankind has been foretold, and the time has come for all progressive individuals to hasten it. It will be brought about through the incarnation of more evolved spirits, who will make up a new generation on earth. Then the spirits of evil—who are daily gathered in by death—and all those who seek to obstruct the forward movement of things will be excluded, because they would be out of place among people of high morality, whose happiness they would disturb. They will go to newer, less advanced worlds to carry out painful missions, where they may work for their own progress while also helping the progress of brothers and sisters even less advanced than themselves. In this exclusion from a transformed earth appears the sublime image of Paradise Lost. In the human beings who come to earth under similar conditions, bringing within themselves the seeds of their passions and the traces of their primitive inferiority, appears the no less sublime image of original sin. Considered in this way, original sin refers to the still imperfect nature of human beings, who are responsible only for themselves and for their own wrongs, not for those of their parents.
All of you, then, men and women of faith and goodwill, work with zeal and courage for the great labor of regeneration, for you will reap a hundredfold the grain you have sown. Unhappy are those who close their eyes to the light, for they are preparing for themselves long centuries of darkness and sorrow. Unhappy are those who place all their joys in the things of this world, for they will suffer more privations than pleasures. And above all, unhappy are the selfish, for they will find no one to help them bear the burden of their miseries.