Just a few people know the articles and chronicles written by dr. Bezerra de Menezes, signed Max (pseudonym,) to “O Paiz” (The Country), a newspaper widely read in Brazil in the late nineteenth century, Rio de Janeiro, with Quintino Bocaiúva as editor. By 1977, Freitas Nobre, founder of “Folha Espírita”, in São Paulo, Brazil, and known for his role in the political circles in São Paulo, researches, organizes and launches this work in the form of published books in three volumes.
Freitas Nobre explains that the first edition came out in books published in Portugal, and he focused on making his work more didactic, giving titles to the chapters according to the contents. Without pretensions of philosophical depth, as in another of his books "The Spiritist Doctrine", better known as "Bezerra’s Letter to his brother", since the target was focused to the population of Rio de Janeiro, Bezerra de Menezes, however, moves through the vast universe of philosophical knowledge to find aspects connected with the Spiritist Philosophy.
Since pre-Socratic period, going to Hellenism with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bezerra moves on the neo-Platonic, for Origen, to bring us the ideas about reincarnation, mediumship, cause and effect law, the situation of the Spirit after death, God, Spirit and matter, intellect and moral conditions that determine happiness or the conscious self-flagellation of humans. Ideas that permeated the thinking of ancient scholars, however, some covered in the mythological time in which they lived, are revisited by the doctrine of Spirits, bringing them stripped of Isis’ veils, that covered up the reality with the magic of mystery.
A great admirer of Léon Denis, and vice versa, they both exchanged mails, and on many occasions he was the eminent French thinker Brazil's representative, in the most important events to the process of strengthening of Spiritism in Europe. Honorary President of Brazilian Spiritist Federation, Léon Denis had a special affection for the Brazilian spiritists and in his work “After Death” refers to the development of Spiritism in Brazil, highlighting the efforts of its pioneers, with emphasis on Bezerra, expressing his feelings after his death saying: "When such a man disappears, it is a loss not only for Brazil but for the spiritists of the whole world."
Léon Denis and Bezerra de Menezes are Spiritist Philosophy legitimate thinkers. This philosophy unfolds naturally in Science and Religion, because this is the correct way the knowledge has been constructed: the phenomenon, its study and research that result in a philosophy and their ethical and moral ramifications are natural conductors to lead the spiritist knowledge which, sometime later, had had its natural sequence with the mission with Emmanuel, leader of the phalanx of Spirits dedicated to the development of the three aspects of doctrinal approach going by the romancing literature and poetry.
Absolute consistency; total harmony of purposes and selflessness in the cause of Jesus, which was re-established after almost 2000 years of wandering the world, after being dead in the temples that men has risen to their own and ephemeral purposes.
The alliance - mentioned in the Bible - between God and man, has been transformed, transfigured and demystified with Spiritism, which appears, brilliant, as a natural result of the achievements made by the noble Spirits of "heaven" and earth.
To guide the beginners of Spiritism, we mention the following authors and their approaches, although the ones who has been mentioned here also developed their studies on other aspects, but all under the legitimate foundations of the Spiritist Doctrine:
• Philosophy: Léon Denis, Bezerra de Menezes, Deolindo Amorim, José Herculano Pires.
• Science (here we mention researchers on mediumship, spiritist anthropology, cosmology, physics, medicine, reincarnation, etc.): Gabriel Dellane, Ernesto Bozzano, Cesar Lombroso, William Crookes, Alexander Aksakoff, Camille Flammarion, Albert de Rochas, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Russel Wallace, Hernani Guimarães Andrade, André Luiz (Spirit).
• Ethical and moral principles: Emmanuel (Spirit), Cairbar Schutel, Euripedes Barsanulfo, Herminio C. Miranda.
Based on the above authors, the knowledge is firmly structured on critical sense where accuracy and faithfulness to the legitimacy of the High Spirits’ teaching is the keynote.
Certainly today there are serious writers who follow the same paths of their predecessors, and therefore will be easily identifiable by the seriousness of their work and behaviour that guide their spiritist researches.
According to Gabriel Dellane in his message psychographed in 2004 in Paris: "If the knowledge we have had nowadays has not able to release us from the generalized shadow of reason, of feelings and moral, something has been misunderstood. Either that knowledge is not an expression of the truth, or we are not properly assimilating their contents. It is time to wake up (...). We are facing the overflow of madness without dimensions; (...) explosions of selfishness (...) serious fights caused by countless stunned souls. (...) Above all, however, the sun shines wonderfully in Spiritism, which shall heat our hearts and light up us to victory, for our spiritual freedom."
PS: THE SPIRITIST PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES PROJECT WAS INSPIRED BY DR. BEZERRA DE MENEZES.
Bibliography: Menezes, Bezerra, Philosophical Studies - Vols.,I II, III; ________, Spiritism; MACHADO, DJ, ed., org., Leon Denis and International Spiritist Congress, Paris 1925; Delanne, Gabriel (Spirit), TEIXEIRA, Raul (medium), Freedom to Spiritism - psychographed message on the occasion of the closing of the Fourth World Spiritist Congress on 10/05/2004 in Paris, France.
