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The Spirit in Relation to Itself

 

The great thinker of antiquity, Pythagoras, rightly stated that Earth was the home of opinion. If in his time there was this acknowledgement, we can certainly say that today we are not far from this definition. It seems that we are getting closer and closer to it, and gradually distancing ourselves from the most important and suggestive process that has ever happened among us, also brought by a wise man, and which showed that development is

from within.

 This sage, Socrates, taught, or rather led his followers and listeners through the rough paths of opinion until the recognition that human beings knew much of others, but knew nothing of themselves.

 The Socratic concept and irony, applied in the development of the truest and deepest of all knowledge, knowing oneself, directed thought and reasoning, in a natural way, to another moment. Get to know yourself and then be sincere with what you discover. Not knowing yourself shows that there is a crucial difference between true self-awareness and the current superficial human existence.

We are in this process and that is where sometimes we deviate from the path. People become accustomed to reducing their understanding of things to the superficial perceptions of their own mind, because it is difficult to break with the structures of references already created and for the Spirit to make qualitative leaps into other dimensions of knowledge, transcending the limits imposed by successive lives of structured thinking.

 The moment of natural transition that we go through, although painful, mobilizes our attention to focus on the necessary inner cleansing. This is when we are faced with our most serious issues, in all aspects considered. By rehabilitating ourselves with the divine laws in our consciousness, we will reach higher levels where real perception of ourselves will lead us to one day be with the Father. Just as promised by Jesus, without disagreements, without fads or guesses. Then we will understand that all this is part of just one moment and, as such, can never be our true identity.

Sonia Theodoro da Silva

Philosopher

CEFE-Centro de Estudos Filosóficos Espíritas

SPSC - Spiritist Philosophy Studies Center

www.filosofiaespirita.org

Pubisher: The Journal of Psychological Studies, London, England

Translator: Cintia C. dos Santos  

COEXISTENCE IN TIME OF CRISIS

 

 

 

 It is said that living together is an art. Art demands sensitivity, perception, visual acuity, cognitive abilities and intuition. I refer to good Art, that which expresses and conveys well-being when viewed, heard and felt. That which invites us to return again, that rests the eyes, and radiates peace.     

Some scholars go further and claim that art cannot even be understood by rational discourse because words reduce the meaning. We live in a world surrounded by art and creativity, as they are present in music, drama, dance, architecture, literature and the visual arts.   

  Good coexistence is like good art. It radiates trust, well-being, spontaneity and, in some cases, makes us happy. Not that illusory happiness, created by consumerist minds, but agape, a full happiness, even if of short duration, for on the Earth of tests and atonements, we still cannot enjoy the happiness of the just.    

 Our life is made up of moments, like a building built on a base and foundations of bricks, concrete, and all the materials necessary for the building to become habitable and comfortable. If the base is flawed, the building will collapse. Like in the parable of Jesus, to live well is above all to respect others and at times to feel empathy for their pain and suffering. Without that, it would be better to isolate ourselves on a desert island. But then we would die of boredom, or of deep sorrow.

 

  Sonia Theodoro da Silva - Philosopher

The Journal of  Psychological Studies  -  Year XI l 61th

 Issue  l November and December l 2018  

Adversity and Failures

 In the existential moment in which we live, we focus too much on the appearance of failure, be they  professional, personal, and social. In accordance with the actualisation of the philosopher’s own words, found in the Spiritist Codification, for such a long time, we have been tied up to the sensible world, to everything that impresses our senses, to the detriment of the real world, the spirituality, the purest sentiments.   

        According to the dictionary definitions, adversity is an inopportune, inconvenient, unsuitable, inappropriate event. It is a destructive experience, a lack of luck, a misfortune, an unfortunate event.      It gives us the opportunity, however, to analyse whether misfortune brings with it the necessity for reflection on the values credited to it. What were the reasons for it? Were they preventable? What were the objectives behind an event that occurred on a personal level? What were the previous commitments and the reasons that they happened? It is still necessary to analyse if the misfortune would not be an invitation to analyse potential necessary changes, such as: ones vision of the world, ones relationships, and ones values.

The Spirit of Joanna de Angelis in a message entitled "Success and succes" defines the Success of material life as a consequence from human achievements, and emphasizes that there is another Success, which comes from the willpower and overcoming of humans tendencies, moral imperfection and everything else that prevents the human being from growing towards the real life.

     God manifests Itself in our lives in many ways. His answers to our afflictions arise in ways that benefit us, by keeping us in balance and self-preservation. Jesus of Nazareth, in order to do so, has brought to us the way, revealing the truth so sought after by human philosophies, and the Real Life, which is so clearly consigned by the Spiritist Philosophy, as pure as His message could be.      Therefore, following such teachings, even in the days of great disbelief as they are today, seeking the necessary and clear explanations from the Doctrine of Light, Spiritism,  will clearly bring the appropriate and coherent answers for the maintenance of inner peace and for the harmony within ones relationships.   

Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Philosopher

(Published and translated by The Journal of  Psychological Studies, London, England)


 

FREEDOM AND FRATERNITY

Étienne de La Boétie (15301563) was a French humanist and philosopher, contemporary and friend of Michel de Montaigne (15331592). La Boétie translated from Greek into French the works by Xenophon and Plutarch, and also wrote some original works. His most famous work is the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, written after the defeat of the French people against the army and the king's procurators, who established taxes on salt. The book shows itself as almost a hymn to freedom, with questions about the causes of the domination of many by the few, the indignation of oppression, and the ways to overcome it. Already in the title a contradiction of the term appears; voluntary servitude, because how can someone sacrifice his own freedom with spontaneous will? And La Boétie explains this sense of accommodation as a fundamental factor of this loss of conscious freedom, as a gift given on a tray to the oppressive government.  

In our daily lives, a similar phenomenon is increasing in all countries and is spreading like a contagious disease - the comfort zone,  where people settle, accommodate, enjoy the blessing offered by Technological progress, immerse themselves in their mobile phones and tablets and simply disconnect from the world around them, as if the virtual world is more fascinating and attractive.    

Gabriel Delanne (1857-1926), an engineer and one of the first spiritist researchers, says with emphasis, in a message from 2004, by the medium Raul Teixeira, that we live today a ferocious individualism that isolates us from other human beings, taking away the capacity of us to sensitise ourselves to the pain and suffering of others, becoming servants of technology.   

The question remains: is it that the collective dramas that we live with today be a way of awakening our dormant consciousness?  

The feeling of fraternity so intensely worked on by writers, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, could also be summed up in another feeling, compassion. This can be widely felt and experienced in the way that NGOs like Doctors Without Borders, WWF and many others operate, without the guarantee of the human losses that make us suffer so much.


Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Philosopher
The Journal of  Psychological Studies  -  Year X l 53rd Issue  l July and August l 2017

ALL IN GOD

 

In modern times, God is "out of fashion": in the academia, God is regarded as an anthropological phenomenon, creation of men, fragile and in need of support and protection; since the European existentialist movement from Kierkegaard, its apex with Nietzsche through his Zarathustra character, "God is dead", the god of the cross did not save himself, according to the philosopher.

The Nietzschenian thought, however, is one of the effects and not the cause of the current human drama, for much of this responsibility fell to religions, which were unable to accept God in Spirit and truth, Jesus of Nazareth, as its greatest representative among us, they were unable to present him and disclose him or to experience him as such because they were lost in mysticism, in the reconstructed myths and dissensions and venality.     

It is sad to see the current consequences of distortion - but Spiritism brought Jesus and God back to the hearts and reason, as it has decoded His message and fulfilled his promise in the Gospel of John.     

Is God in everything? Yes, God is in Nature and in the beings He created, and today, when human afflictions reach heights, we can say with Jesus: Do not let your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me...     

Jesus fulfilled his promise, returned in Spiritism, and it is with him that we will go through this phase. Therefore let us trust. 

(Published in The Journal of Spiritist Psychological Studies, Mar/Apr 2016)    

 Sonia Theodoro da Silva
 Bachelor in Philosophy

SÃO PAULO CITY FROM THE PAUL OF TARSUS' AND EMMANUEL'S HEARTS

(Fonte: internet - sem autoria)

CONGRATULATIONS, SÃO PAULO CITY !!!

Comemoramos nesta data 462 anos da fundação da nossa cidade.

E voltando atrás no tempo, lembramo-nos das palavras de Emmanuel, em A Caminho da Luz, dizendo que o acaso inexiste, quando mencionamos as fundações de cidades e Estados. Aliás, acaso, segundo Téophile Gautier, é o pseudônimo de Deus quando Ele não quer assinar a sua obra. Há uma união de intenções entre “terra” e “céu”, como se todos se reunissem para fazer cumprir propósitos superiores, preparando a primeira para o advento das populações que lá habitarão, com vistas ao desenvolvimento das leis de sociedade e progresso. É muito interessante esta análise, para a qual convidamos os nossos caros internautas. Vejamos a Lyon de Rivail e a Lugdunum de Ireneu, a Roma antiga e a atual, a Nova York de 200 anos atrás e a de agora, e assim sucessivamente. Há um planejamento realizado em outras esferas de existência e que muitas vezes escapa à nossa compreensão.

O mesmo livro citado, A Caminho da Luz, relata os bastidores da história, sob a análise crítica e lúcida de Emmanuel.

Mas vejamos a nossa querida São Paulo de Piratininga, inaugurada a partir de uma pequena vila onde índios, padres e sentenciados portugueses constituíam a sua população. Ainda hoje, na região da Sé, no Pátio do Colégio, a igreja de Anchieta guarda um museu de peças e imagens sacras dos séculos XVI a XVIII, seus objetos de uso pessoal bem como sua batina e terço, e a arquitetura da época também preservada e restaurada, onde é interessante notar uma parede do templo, antiquíssima, construída de barro, palha, areia, pedra e excremento de gado para dar a liga, preservada até os nossos dias, e resguardada entre duas outras paredes de vidro.

Contudo, o que nos chama a atenção, da dupla Nóbrega-Anchieta, é a posição do primeiro como educador, que à época se caracterizava como um misto de professor e catequizador - lembremos que a Educação naqueles tempos estava a cargo da igreja católica, que enviava seus representantes às terras recém-descobertas. Muito criticado por seus meios rígidos e ortodoxos, mas que na verdade compunham normalmente o procedimento dos membros do clero, e mais do que isso, dos homens e mulheres do século em que viveram, Nóbrega, que não poderia fugir às circunstâncias evolutivas, culturais, religiosas, antropológicas e psicológicas de sua época, não deixou de cumprir a sua missão. A maior delas, a efetiva fundação de São Paulo de Piratininga. E aí é que analisamos as circunstâncias.

Nóbrega é considerado uma das reencarnações de Emmanuel, também Públio Lentulus Sura e posteriormente Públio Lentulus, o escravo grego Nestório (veja-se as obras Há Dois Mil Anos e 50 Anos Depois do autor espiritual) e ainda o padre Damiano, em Ávila (veja-se o romance Renúncia), além de sua vida como o pensador e escravo cristão Eusébio (não confundir com Eusébio de Cesaréa). Por que Nóbrega deu o nome do querido Apóstolo à cidade?

Uma mensagem íntima de Emmanuel recebida por Francisco Cândido Xavier, em Pedro Leopoldo, a 13 de março de 1940, nos relata um encontro do senador Lêntulus com Paulo em Roma. A mensagem é a seguinte:

“Lede as cartas de Paulo e meditai. O convertido de Damasco foi o agricultor humano que conseguiu aclimatar a flor divina do Evangelho sobre o mundo. Muitas vezes foi áspero. A terra não estava preparada e se em alguns pontos oferecia leiras brandas e férteis, na maioria, era regiões em espinheiro e pedregulho.

Paulo foi o lidador de sol a sol. Seu fervoroso amor foi a sua bússola divina. Sua paixão no mundo, iluminada pela sua dedicação ao Cristo, transformou-se na base onde deveria brilhar para sempre a claridade do Cristianismo. Conheci-o, em Roma, nos seus dias de trabalho mais rude e de provações mais acerbas. Vi-o uma vez unicamente, quando um carro de Estado transportava o senador Públio Lentulus, ao longo da Porta Ápia, mas foi o bastante para nunca mais esquecê-lo. Um incidente fortuito levara os cavalos a uma disparada perigosa, mas um jovem cristão, atirando-se ao caminho largo, conseguiu conjurar todas as ameaças. Avistamos, então, um pequeno grupo, onde se encontrava a sua figura inesquecível. Trocamos algumas palavras que me deram a conhecer a sua inteireza de caráter e a grandeza da sua fé. O fato ocorria pouco depois da trágica desencarnação de Lívia e eu trazia o espírito atormentado. As palavras de Paulo eram firmes e consoladoras. O grande convertido não conhecia a úlcera que me sangrava no coração, todavia as suas expressões indiretas foram, imediatamente, ao fundo de minha alma, provocando um dilúvio de emoções e esclarecimentos.

Luzeiro da fé viva, Paulo não pode ser esquecido em tempo algum. Seu vulto humano é o de todo homem sincero que se toque de amor divino por Jesus. Lede-o sempre e não vos arrependereis”. (O grifo é nosso)

Tudo se assemelha ao coração imenso da cidade de São Paulo - a cidade de Paulo.

Conta-nos o Espírito Cneio Lucius (50 Anos Depois), que Paulo, no plano espiritual, sempre se dedicou a auxiliar “as grandes inteligências afastadas do Cristo, compreendendo-lhes as íntimas aflições e o menosprezo de que se sentem objeto no mundo, ante os religiosos de todos os matizes, quase sempre especializados em regras de intolerância”. E foi com esse sentimento de compreensão e bondade que fez com que o grande Apóstolo da gentilidade estendesse as suas preces e auxílio ao culto senador romano, quando de sua desencarnação na tragédia de Pompéia, continuando a ampará-lo espiritualmente em suas posteriores existências terrenas.

Emmanuel nunca mais o esqueceu, e na personalidade de Nóbrega, adia a inauguração do Colégio de Piratininga, a que dá o nome de São Paulo, para o dia da comemoração da conversão do Apóstolo, fixada em 25 de janeiro. Essa afirmação não é somente de Cneio Lucio. É mencionada pelos biógrafos do padre Nóbrega, entre eles Serafim Leite, José Mariz de Morais, e Melo Pimenta.

Em outro momento, já como o grande pensador cristão encarregado das diretrizes ético-morais do Espiritismo em terras brasileiras, como continuidade ao trabalho que ajudou a realizar há centenas de anos, surge, através da psicografia do não menos ilustre missionário da Bondade e da Humildade, Chico Xavier, a grandiosa obra “Paulo e Estêvão”.

E compreendemos a grande destinação desta que é considerada a maior cidade da América Latina. Hoje, no século 21, uma megalópole que abriga em seu coração, centenas de “gentios” oriundos de todas as terras, brasileiras ou estrangeiras. Tal como Paulo, que abrigou em seu imenso coração amoroso, os corações da gentilidade em sua época. Foi através deles que o cristianismo do Cristo cresceu e se espalhou pelo mundo.

E é em São Paulo hoje, que brasileiros e estrangeiros tomam um primeiro contato com a Doutrina da Paz, da Concórdia, do Conhecimento Transcendente e a levam em suas atitudes e consciências tornadas espíritas.

Cumpriu-se a grande missão compartilhada.

Sonia Theodoro da Silva

(texto revisado pela autora - 25 de janeiro de 2016).

COMPARTILHE, DIVULGUE !

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Confidence in Life

The Portuguese word confidence comes from the Latin CONFIDENTIA of CONFIDERE, "to fully and firmly believe," formed by COM that intensifies, plus FIDERE, "believe, trow," which derives from FIDES, "faith". The same etymology is found in English, CONFIDENCE, which also derives from Latin; in French, CONFIANCE; in Italian, FIDUCIA of FIDERE, same translation as above; CONFIANZA in Spanish, and so on. This way we can understand that the word reminds us of the universal posture of certainty, conviction, determination, strength, safety, and more, hope, faith, optimism, and still, liveliness and resilience. There is no doubt that the words have influence on our lives and serve as a stimulus to our behaviour in the face of adversity.      However, words and the stimuli raised by words should not be taken only as pills of optimism, as if they were miracle drugs that give us the solution to our problems. Words are the result of the elaboration of thought and, as such, should express the good feelings that we bring with us. When we say this, we do not claim that self-help would be effective as an immediate therapy because, as such, it only leads to analgesia, not curing the diseases of the soul.  

In the documentary Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, based on the book The Consolations of Philosophy, by the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton, he highlights six great thinkers on important topics of our daily lives, and highlights the confidence with Socrates: "Socrates walked through the market addressing people and questioning about the meaning of life in a very interesting way, but also in a very annoying way. If you ask for the explanations of people's beliefs, they often react aggressively. Socrates had no such inhibitions. He would rather be considered forceful than to allow his compatriots to carry on their lives without thinking. His intention was to make everyone reevaluate their beliefs, he believed that everyone had the duty to reflect on their lives, and that we all have the capacity to do it."              Socrates paid a high price for helping people to think, to assess the inconsistency of their existences, and for encouraging the change of their poor goals (when they had them), poor because they focused only on the here and now.     

Confidence comes at the moment when we know, through philosophical deduction, who we are, what we are doing here and where we will go. When we deepen these deductions with the help of the Spiritist Philosophy, this universe expands. We are not only citizens of a country, we are citizens of the Universe. Our lives are not confined to the present moment; we discover that we are heirs of the conquests of past reincarnations on route to a future full of achievable promises; we learn that everything is temporary in the words of the Spirit Emmanuel (even the missed opportunities). So we know that personal dramas have their duration and the achievements, in turn, should expand in the proportion that we conduct ourselves with absolute moral tranquillity.  

We live today in a world full of conflicts that reproduce individual psychopathologies. Of course it is difficult to trust on this construction, however, we have eternity ahead of us and the present moment to build, as best as we can, knowing we can count on the support and encouragement of the Spirits who love us. 

 Sonia Theodoro da Silva - Bachelor in Philosophy

The Journal of  Psychological Studies  -  Year  VII l Issue N° 37 l November and December l 2014 
Maria Novelli - English Translation ; Cricieli Zanesco - English Translation

Self -denial

In our vocabulary self-denial has some meanings, but among all, one stands out and was similarly applied by a French philosopher, Jean Grenier: we must deny the world in order to understand. Born amid the industrial revolution and having experienced two world wars, Grenier was able to distance himself mentally and spiritually from his time in order to analyze and understand it in its tragic issues, cry for justice and the mistakes of its actions.   

In our time there is also the need for emotional detachment so that reason may occupy the space necessary to the understanding and to the analysis without thoughtless impulses, and this reasoning shall be directed not only to the global issues that affect us and interfere directly in the economy of the country in which we live in, but mainly to personal and individual issues.      To deny implies carrying over into a mental sphere different from the majority, leaving behind immediacies grown by the pragmatic view of life and seeking eternal existential values that lie dormant in our consciousness obscured by the frantic search for momentary pleasures - to deny a banal existence in order to exist in full life, although this implies revaluating behaviours, thoughts and choices. 

The Gospel of Jesus revisited by Spiritism assures us of this process - the difference between it and the proposals that life offers us is that we can walk safely and with elevated feelings, towards a more lasting feeling of happiness.      

Sonia Theodoro da Silva -  Bachelor in Philosophy

The Journal of  Psychological Studies  -  Year VII l Issue N° 36 l September and October l 2014

Maria Novelli - English Translation  Cricieli Zanesco - English Translation

The Science of Faith

Sonia Theodoro da Silva - Bachelor in Philosophy

Since the emergence of science, or more precisely the sciences, beginning with Aristotle and later with René Descartes, religiosity was separated from the development of scientific research. Aristotle's philosophy dominated European thought from the twelfth century but the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changes this situation, inserting changes in the scientific methods. No doubt that Science is one of the voices of human culture however, in not admitting the strength of faith, especially in the medical field and specifically in treatments for restoring human health, science fails to partake in one of the most beautiful forms of integration of man with life. In the U.S., researchers in Neurobiology say they have located at the brain's limbic system the triggering of religious experiences. This brain region links experiences in our emotional world, and the tests performed on Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns showed intense brain activity when in a state of meditation and prayer.    

In Brazil, the neuroscientist Ricardo Leme, MD, associated to the Spiritist Medical Association of Brazil, calls for the development of feelings of gratitude to life, what he calls the ultimate gift (of God), he calls for love exemplified by Jesus, for the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, because these states of mind act on neurotransmitters and endorphins facilitating the maintenance of health and even the cure of diseases. According to him, the study of the neurobiology of faith might be the extra tool when searching for something lacking in humanity for its more harmonious functioning as a whole. 

Jesus of Nazareth in his journey of peace on Earth used to say to the sick healed by his love, "your faith has healed you". However he added: "but do not sin again" as a warning to the great responsibility we have towards the gift of Life and the opportunity of reincarnating, granted to us by the immense love of God. Let us work to deserve them - today and forever.

The Journal of  Psychological Studies  -  Year VII l Issue N° 35 l July and August l 2014 

Maria Novelli - English Translation  Cricieli Zanesco - English Translation

The Autonomy of the Awakened Consciousness

Sonia Theodoro da Silva -  Bachelor in Philosophy (São Paulo - SP)

 The word autonomy comes from the Greek autonomous, from autos, "himself", and nomos, "law", "who governs itself by its own laws." The philosopher Immanuel Kant says that autonomy is to be "citizen and legislator" simultaneously.   

Autonomy is the  self determinat ion ability. Any agent can only be considered autonomous when one’s actions are truly one’s and not motivated by external influences or factors. Kant then found that the will also have the ability to put itself in accordance with its own law, which is the law of reason. In this sense, the opposite of autonomy is heteronomy, in which the will is dictated by the objects of desire and no longer by reason.     

According to the Spirit’s Book, the Spirit, created simple and ignorant, the infinite traveller according to Plotinus, experiences evolutionary stages in which it goes assimilating impressions and developing all the elements that make up its nature. The consciousness will bloom over time positioning itself according to the divine laws that lie in the depths of its Being.      The journey of the Spirit, therefore, is in this development with the natural conquest of the responsibilities that belong to the Spirit. Will and free are the drivers of this process.   

Reincarnation and life in realms of physical and extra physical dimensions (physical here means the molecular consistency of dense matter) will provide the necessary experience that is needed for the definitive acquisition of the Spirit’s own development.           

Having yet to consider the freedom inherent to the individual, manifested according to the individual’s integration into the societies in which the being is conducted to live: the sociological freedom, related to the individual’s autonomy before society, with guarantees of civil or political liberty; the psychological freedom, in which the individual feels like "ones own master"; and the moral freedom, as the capacity that the individual has of deciding to act according to reason without being dominated by the impulses and the spontaneous inclinations of sensitivity.   

Spiritism emphasizes the powers of the third freedom, mentioned above, as the driver of the gradual awakening of consciousness, which gives the Spirit the right conditions for the necessary,  essential and eternal ascent to

even higher evolutionary patterns.  

When the Spirit stagnates in the illusions of matter, the mechanisms of this awakening start to appear, and then the pains, the sufferings of greater or lesser intensity will take care of making the Spirit resume its walk.  

If our model is Jesus of Nazareth, as confirmed by the higher spirits to Allan Kardec, let us follow his examples, his teachings, his virtues, his life.   

There is no other way – we live moments of moral transition; we bring within ourselves the atavisms of the ancient past with the predominance of the stored conflicts that require a revision. Therefore there is nothing to complain about as the current dramas have been planted by society in 6,000 years of civilization, with less than 100 years of peace. It is for us today to live the spiritual-Christian life, as hundreds already do, planting new seeds of compassion and brotherhood so that our near or distant future brings us the so desired kingdom of heaven in our consciousness.

Published in The Journal of  Psychological Studies  -  Year  VII l Issue N° 34 l May and June l 2014

Translation: M. Novelli/ C. Zanesco

Revision: Sonia Theodoro da Silva 

Spirit´s Book and Education

 “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.

Confidence in Life

The Portuguese word confidence comes from the Latin CONFIDENTIA of CONFIDERE, "to fully and firmly believe," formed by COM that intensifies, plus FIDERE, "believe, trow," which derives from FIDES, "faith". The same etymology is found in English, CONFIDENCE, which also derives from Latin; in French, CONFIANCE; in Italian, FIDUCIA of FIDERE, same translation as above; CONFIANZA in Spanish, and so on. This way we can understand that the word reminds us of the universal posture of certainty, conviction, dete-mination, strength, safety, and more, hope, faith, optimism, and still, liveliness and resilience. There is no doubt that the words have influence on our lives and serve as a stimulus to our behav-iour in the face of adversity.

However, words and the stimuli raised by words should not be taken only as pills of optimism, as if they were miracle drugs that give us the solution to our prob-lems. Words are the result of the elaboration of thought and, as such, should express the good feelings that we bring with us. When we say this, we do not claim that self-help would be effective as an immediate therapy because, as such, it only leads to analgesia, not curing the diseases of the soul.

In the documentary Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, based on the book The Consolations of Philosophy, by the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton, he highlights six great thinkers on important topics of our daily lives, and high-lights the confidence with Socra-tes: "Socrates walked through the market addressing people and questioning about the meaning of life in a very interesting way, but also in a very annoying way. If you ask for the explanations of people's beliefs, they often react ag-gressively. Socrates had no such inhibitions. He would rather be considered forceful than to allow his compatriots to carry on their lives without thinking. His intention was to make everyone reevaluate their beliefs, he believed that everyone had the duty to reflect on their lives, and that we all have the capacity to do it."

Socrates paid a high price for helping people to think, to assess the inconsistency of their existences, and for en-couraging the change of their poor goals (when they had them), poor because they focused only on the here and now.
Confidence comes at the moment when we know, through philosophical deduction, who we are, what we are doing here and where we will go. When we deepen these deductions with the help of the Spiritist Philosophy, this universe expands. We are not only citizens of a country, we are citizens of the Universe. Our lives are not con-fined to the present moment; we discover that we are heirs of the conquests of past reincarnations on route to a future full of achieva-ble promises; we learn that every-thing is temporary in the words of the Spirit Emmanuel (even the missed opportunities).

So we know that personal dramas have their duration and the achievements, in turn, should expand in the proportion that we conduct ourselves with absolute moral tranquillity.
We live today in a world full of conflicts that reproduce individual psychopathologies. Of course it is
difficult to trust on this construction, however, we have eternity ahead of us and the present moment to build, as best as we can, knowing we can count on the support and encouragement of the Spirits who love us.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Bachelor in Philosophy

MEETING HERCULANO PIRES - Conference Sonia Theodoro da Silva:Vampirism from the perspective of Spiritist Philosophy

BASED ON MICHEL FOUCAULT, PATRICK VIGNOLES, JOSÉ HERCULANO PIRES PHILOSOPHERS

The Autonomy of the Awakened Consciousness

The word autonomy comes from the Greek autonomous, from autos, "himself", and nomos, "law", "who governs itself by its own laws." The philosopher Immanuel Kant says that autonomy is to be "citizen and legislator" simultaneously.
Autonomy is the self-determination ability. Any agent can only be considered auton-mous when one’s actions are truly one’s and not motivated by external influences or factors. Kant then found that the will also have the ability to put itself in accordance with its own law, which is the law of reason. In this sense, the opposite of autono-my is heteronomy, in which the will is dictated by the objects of desire and no longer by reason.
Created simple and ignorant, the Spirit, the infinite traveller according to Plotinus, experiences evolutionary stages in which it goes assimilating impressions and developing all the elements that make up its nature. The consciousness will bloom over time positioning itself according to the divine laws that lie in the depths of its Being.
The journey of the Spirit, therefore, is in this development with the natural conquest of the responsibilities that belong to the Spirit. Will and free will are the drivers of this process.
Reincarnation and life in realms of physical and extra physical dimensions (physical here means the molecu-lar consistency of dense matter) will provide the necessary experience that is needed for the definitive acquisition of the Spirit’s own development.
Having yet to consider the freedom inherent to the individual, manifested according to the individual’s integration into the societies in which the being is conducted to live: the sociological freedom, related to the individual’s autonomy before society, with guarantees of civil or political liberty; the psychological freedom, in which the individual feels like "ones own master"; and the moral freedom, as the capacity that the individual has of deciding to act according to reason without being dominated by the impulses and the spontaneous inclinations of sensitivity.
Spiritism emphasizes the powers of the third freedom, mentioned above, as the driver of the gradual awakening of consciousness, which gives the Spirit the right conditions for the necessary, essential and eternal ascento to even higher evolutionary patterns.
When the Spirit stagnates in the illusions of matter, the mechanisms of this awakening start to appear, and then the pains, the sufferings of greater or lesser intensity will take care of making the Spirit resume its walk.
If our model is Jesus of Nazareth, as confirmed by the higher spirits to Allan Kardec, let us follow his examples, his teachings, his virtues, his life.
There is no other way – we live moments of moral transition; we bring within ourselves the atavisms of the ancient past with the predominance of the stored conflicts that require a revision. Therefore there is nothing to complain about as the current dramas have been planted by society in 6,000 years of civilization, with less than 100 years of peace. It is for us today to live the spiritual-Christian life, as hundreds already do, planting new seeds of compassion and brotherhood so that our near or distant future brings us the so desired kingdom of heaven in our consciousness.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Bachelor in Philosophy
(The Spiritist Psychological Society, May-June 2014)

The Beyond and the Survival of the Being

The dynamics of our current existences transferred to religions the questions about the nature of the Being, its origin, its destination and the reason for the dichotomy between the spiritual being and the public or real life being. If technology has brought us closer to each other, via smart phones, computers etc.., if the internet connects us with the world in real time, although this is a monitored and conditioned world, there has never been greater ignorance about the issues surrounding death and the possibility of the continuity of life in other dimensions.

In first world countries, where universities develop the knowledge, it is rare to find academic chairs of study in the survival of the Spirit; the Spirit is treated pejo-ratively as "ghost" or as an evil being who terrorizes the living, causing them self-destructive and pathological pro-cesses, mainly by the films and the TV Series.

There is the pioneer case of Duke University in the United States, where the paranor-mal is serious business. In Brazil, there are pertaining studies of the near-death experiences by re-searchers from the Federal Univer-sity of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Also in the U.S., Doctor Raymond Moody Jr. investigates the possible relationships between the "dead" and their living relatives. His work has demonstrated, from research about the oracles  in ancient Greece, where communications were constant and real, that intra-worlds contacts have always been part of our civilization.

Without a shadow of doubt that Spiritism, with its mystical and mythical stripping, brought us another scenario of life after death: we continue to exist and compose (composed here are all the files of our past experiences recorded in our unconscious), we continue to draw the course of our destinations and we continue to exercise free will increasingly more freely as we become directly re-sponsible for Life. And our greatest example that life continues after death still is, and will always be, Jesus, stripped of the mythology established around him which has been consumed for centuries be-cause of the mixed Greek hero with the Jewish prophet. And He who is back in all its fullness, to demonstrate that there is no death, it is a mere human inven-tion, a product of existential emp-tiness that inhabits this moral plane of existence, back through the Spiritist vision that is not religious in the ritulistic sense, liturgical and theological, but liberating, awareness waken-ing, revealing.

Léon Denis, the consolidator of Spiritism in France after the death of Allan Kardec, brings extremely current reflections on his extensive work of which we highlight the great little book bearing the title of our article, which features a list of evidence to confirm the opinion of anyone who wants to investigate the supposed afterlife. And to finish our thoughts in his words, leaving a question up in the air: would human relations change to a better state should we identify ourselves as immortal beings?

"Isn’t it a touching sight to see those that accompany a funeral? To those I would say: the beyond is just what our senses do not reach. "
Sonia Theodoro da Silva

FELIZ NATAL!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

JESUS WAS BORN AMONG US... SINCE THEN THE WORLD WAS NOT THE SAME... THE MEN WERE NOT THE SAME ... HE HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING, HE HAS CHANGED EVERYONE... JESUS IS IN OUR SOUL AS THE BREATH  IN OUR LIFE - PAY ATTENTION ON HIM, ON HIS PRESENCE, HIS WORDS, HIS LOOK IS UPON US - SEE AND FEEL HIM, HE HAS JUST ARRIVED AGAIN !!

 KING S COLLEGE  

SÃO PAULO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 

The Spiritist Teachings

Joy of living

The present moment hardly leads us to believe in optimism in face of the challenges that the world presents us. To consider life only by its favourable outcomes would be to desire the Utopia by Morus to our daily lives: sweet dreams, since the dream of civilization from the author was a mere neologism to define unattainable goals – it would not be reasonable for us to fixate in such world views, since the big and small dramas that take place guarantee our feet on the ground.

If in the Americas, formal religion is still an alternative form of console (or would it be escape?) for most of its inhabitants, in Europe and Asia the atheist existen-tialism opens dangerous loopholes in the mind and the hearts, creating obstacles to its spiritualization. The Middle East with its constant wars and Africa with its ethnical conflicts demonstrate in a forceful manner what is a planet of trials and expiations in infinite degrees of manifestation, as the Spirits demonstrated to Allan Kardec.

If reincarnation was accepted as a biological law and as a principle of reason and never fideistic, because to believe implies reasoning in secure foundations of understanding, beyond the concerning research (such as the ones accom-plished by Doctor Hernani G. Andrade, in Brazil, Doctor Ian Stevenson in the USA, Doctor H. Banerjee, in India) we would conclude that there is not “history repeating itself”, but that we re-peat history through successive reincarnations, in which the intellectual and moral learning hasn’t been completed (or it has paused). This would change the current paradigms and would lead us to a new society, more fair and fraternal.

Someone has already said that the present humanity, stuck to utilitarianism, refuses to grow up, remaining in the adolescent stage. No doubt that the behavioral manifestations demonstrate such idea, it is noticeable the “intellectual sedentariness”, in which everyone seeks for pleasures in unbridled and immediate consumption.

However, optimism is a permanent state of soul that generates joy of living, it is recognized that it rests in small as in great things and causes: looking others with compassionate eyes, recognizing the human as the most beautiful form of divine representation which lies latent in all of us. But also in the simple things: to observe nature, follow the development of a child, recognize the miracle of life in a pregnancy process, follow the heartbeats of our own heart, that keeps us alive, look at the waves that wind provokes in the waters of a river, stretch out, read a good book, talk, smile, dedicating life to a worthy cause…

Therefore, to live optimistically does not mean to wait infinitely for the best, but to understand that we are agents of this process for everything that surrounds us.

Living is for everyone, but to live well and well living is for the wise who understood that the reincarnation opportunity is unique. The ancient philosophers knew this. The current philosophers need to relearn with those. And Spiritism assure us that, if today we are focused on serious commitments, nothing prevents us to make of them the necessary means for achieving our own happiness, which is to Live.

Sonia Theodoro da Silva

www.filosofiaespirita.org

 Columnist,  The Journal of Psychological Studies, The Spiritist Psychological Society 

(http://www.spiritistps.org/The-Journal-of-Psychological-Studies-29-Ed.-English.pdf) 

Psychological, Physiological and Spiritual Dreams

The cause of dreams and their meaning have always been a source of great curiosity and concern. In The Mediums’ Book, Allan Kardec emphasizes that the Science of his time never explained the origins of such phenomena. The current explanations, still incomplete, which consider only the psychophysiological reasons – illness, psychological disorders, professional and economical life conditions, influences relating to modern life habits, such as the use of licit and illicit drugs, sexuality as a disposable product, anxieties and stress generated by this whole process, plus the political and worldwide conditions that bring us expectations about the future – actually generate symptoms, the most diverse, reflecting in the quality of sleep.

However, what Science insists on ignoring are the spiritual reasons – compelling experiences related to past lifetimes that interfere with relationships and behaviour of the actual experience, the influences of the minds and feelings of discarnate spirits on individuals, whether or not they are directly related to their past actions, besides intimate conflicts relating to one’s own genetic inheritance.

With The Book of Spirits, questions 400 to 412, we conclude: we are heirs of ourselves, in other words, our history repeats itself because we insist on playing the same charac-ters. The current time is for reflection and changes in the way of acting and thinking and, without fear, to develop values and virtues. This is the way.

Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Translation SPS

(Published in nov/dec 2012: The Journal of Psychological Studies - Science, Philosophy and Religion;Journal Psychologischer Studien - Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion; Periódico de Estudios Psicológicos - Ciencia, Filosofía y Religión; Giornale di Studi Psicologici - Scienza, Filosofia e Religione; Journal d´études psychologiques - Science, philosophie et religion).


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Extrasensory Faculty

History records the actions of those who dared to transgress existing systems, whether it was of a political, religious or academic nature. Carl Gustav Jung was one of those divine transgressors; for him, life was not restricted to the period from the cradle to the grave, “the human, rational being, was endowed with extrasensory faculties that allowed one to exceed the ordinary limits of space and time, uncovering the distant past and having premonitions of the future”. (Bulletin SEI, No. 1963/2005).

The extrasensory faculties were present in the Greek and Babylonian oracles (the most famous of all was the oracle of Apollo, in Delphi), in the Jewish world with the college of mediums chaired by Moses, and before, in Egypt, where the leader of the He-brew nation learned, with the wise and initiated of his time, to prophesy, and other extrasensory modalities which were combined to his effective mediumship. More recently, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Swedish clairvoyant, was investigated and studied by the eminent philosopher Immanuel Kant, impressed by the accuracy of the information about a fire seen by him at a distance, in a nearby town.

Although the traditional philosophy, nowadays, has little interest in the paranormal, it is reserved for Science, to prove what Spiritism has judiciously studied, through Allan Kardec and supported by facts, the greatest discovery of all times: the human Spirit survives death. Such evidence certainly entails serious consequences to the nihilistic materialism.

Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Translation SPS

(Published in sept/oct 2012: The Journal of Psychological Studies - Science, Philosophy and Religion;Journal Psychologischer Studien - Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion; Periódico de Estudios Psicológicos - Ciencia, Filosofía y Religión; Giornale di Studi Psicologici - Scienza, Filosofia e Religione; Journal d´études psychologiques - Science, philosophie et religion).

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MERRY CHRISTMAS! FELIZ NATAL!

Mensagem de NATAL 2012

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Message of christmas 2012

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