“An education,
based on an exact concept of life, would transform the world. Suppose each
family initiated in spiritualists beliefs corroborated by facts and having
these spiritualists beliefs taught to children (...): a rapid social
transformation would happen under the strength of this double influence.”
(Here
and Hereafter, Leon Dennis, chapter 54)
The eminent spiritist thinker, educator by excellence,
faithful follower of the teachings of the Superior Spirits and participator of
a profound social reform, resumes, in few words, the ideal of a whole
generation: experience and applicability of Jesus’ teachings with coherence
and logic of a doctrine which would make men, not mere followers of yet another
religious dissident sect, or adepts of another philosophic system based on
existentialist fundaments, but bearers of a real and lived knowledge that has
brought them enlightenment and consolation. In another book (Socialism and
Spiritism, chapter I), Dennis affirms: “To us socialism is the study, the
research and application of the laws and susceptible means to improve the
material, intellectual and moral situation of Humanity.”
Yet the purpose of Spiritist Doctrine is not another:
its thesis, the philosophy which proposes, clarifies, elucidates, as it is
intrinsically united to proven facts by its investigative method in scientific
basis; its antithesis, the apparent impossibility of reconciling its ethical
and moral contents, without slipping into sentimentalism or into the dogmatism
of the religions; its synthesis, Jesus, as He, complete Spirit in basis
unimaginable by the human beings, comes to the evolutionary levels of Earth,
and brings to men, personally, His message, through metaphors and parables,
absolutely comprehensible by all cultures and races of all times. He becomes
man, and close to men he suffers with and as them, leaving a legacy of
consolation through knowledge of the causes of human sufferings; he elucidates
that true religiosity does not take place at the expense of material goods or
of sacrifice of human lives, but through donation of oneself, in a constant
exercise of fraternity and of peace, representation of the Divine Laws,
presence of God in ourselves. And, on leaving, he leaves on testi-mony his
inheritance: the coming of a Comforter, which will accompany already matured
men through time, in the transition of their moral scale.
Exactly 158 years ago, one of the faithful servants of
His Cause retakes the carnal clothing, and, participator of the Phalanx of the
Spirit of Truth comes to support the teachings of Jesus, in this phase of human
evolution. However this time with the direct attendance of several Spirits,
reincarnated or not, but all of them conductors of the completion of an
educational project. The very self, Rivail or Allan Kardec, educator, who would
elucidate in firm and unquestionable basis, the aspects of human existence
relegated to the mystical-religious approach of all times, and absolutely
separated from the scientific development executed by man, in his eternal
search for knowledge.
Themes as God, nature, immortality of the soul, life
after death, the reason for human existence, of sufferings and pains, the
inequality of the distribution of material goods, punishment and the
existential emptiness, and, in today’s times, the religious fundamentalism that
stimulates wars in the name of a vindictive god that thinks in making up the
intrinsic need of fair justice in human relations, inducing to suicide as an
alternative of solution of these questions, spectacular escapes through means
of slow self-destruction through alcohol and drugs which benumbs reasoning and
emotion, were always segmented and divided into departments themes by the
religions and philosophies, in an attempt to answering or guide human being to
conceivable answers. However, religions closed themselves to teaching which
they most know how to do: religion. They do no guide the human being to his
spirituality, but to the repetitive and exhaustive perpetuity of sects or
rituals that, meaningless, silence reasoning, creating obstacles to the
fulfilment of the human longings. On the other hand, the philosophies closed
themselves into the existentialist nihilism and the sciences into the
materialist positivism.
But then arises, according to Arnold Toynbee’s saying,
the creative mino-rity, and, the Spiritism which elucidates, proclaiming them
prepared for the advent of the New Education with basis in the knowledge of the
real identity of the Spirit, immortal and inter-existent in apparently opposite
dimensions, but, which complement each other, as both are part of the School of
the Spirit. These minorities are spread around the planet, and illuminate
Science with the necessary dose of ethics and spirituality, the Philosophy for
the elucidation of questions referent to the inter-existent metaphysical being,
the Religion which guides the Being to love of oneself and of his neighbour,
through the Love of God which is latent in both and in Nature.
The Spirits’ Books is the Philosophy which brings
re-meaning for human existence, placing the Spirit in its true importance, as
the Being that, in the timeline, educates itself, develops its latent
potentialities, learns with Life and with sufferings, which are instruments of
awakening for the fulfilment of that desideratum.
The Spirits’ Books is the Science that decodes the
phenomena under the light of reasoning, of the intellectual effort which looks
for the origin of all things, and discovers, the Intelligent Principle of the
Universe, present behind a material veil that cloisters it in the prison of the
senses.
The Spirits’ Books is the Religion in spirit and
truth, which demystifies and demystifies Jesus as divinity of an unachievable
mythological pantheon because it is inexistent, and it reflects him as the
greatest example of Life and Love. It introduces him to those who will follow
His steps, for our living experience, for our reasoning and for our feelings,
granting us the kind of faith that thinks, that reasons, that is indestructible,
because it is built on wisdom.
The Spirits’ Books, therefore, is the Education par
excellence, because it re-conducts the Being to the self-knowledge, without
meta-languages, without systems, remoulding according to the light of
discernment, making us aware of the great responsibility It has before Life, of
his own existence, of someo-ne else’s existence, of his fellow neighbour, and
his brother.
Sonia
Theodoro da Silva is executive director of
CEFE-Centro de Estudos Filosóficos Espíritas (Center of Spiritist Philosophical
Studies) in São Paulo, Brasil (www.filosofiaespirita.org ), translator and graduated in Philosophy. She
lives in São Paulo, Brazil, collaborates in Centro Espírita Noso Lar Casas
Andre Luis and writes articles for spiritist magazines and newspapers.
