152. What proof do we have of the individuality of the soul after death?
“Has spirit communication not provided the necessary proof? If you are not blind, you will see; if you are not deaf you will hear. A voice often speaks to you revealing the existence of a being outside yourself.”
People who think that the soul returns to the universal whole after death are wrong if they think that, it loses its individuality like a drop of water in the ocean. They are right if by universal whole they are referring to all incorporeal beings, of which each soul or spirit is a component.
If souls were mixed together into one large mass, they would only possess qualities common to the entire mass, and they would have no special intellectual or moral qualities of their own that would distinguish them from the others. In the communications that we have obtained, the spirits clearly demonstrate the possession of self-awareness, in addition to a distinct personal will. Their infnite diversity of characteristics is the result of and testament to their personal individuality. If there were nothing but the “Great Whole” swallowing all individualities after death, this whole would be uniform and all the communications received from the invisible world would be identical. The proofs of distinct personalities lie in the fact that we meet spirits who are good, bad, educated, ignorant, happy, melancholy, lighthearted and serious, and so on. This individuality is further substantiated when they are able to undeniably prove their identity by providing personal details relating to their human life, which may be verifed. When they reveal themselves in the form of apparitions, their identity obviously cannot be questioned. We learned about the individuality of the soul in theory as an article of faith. Spiritism simply makes it a material fact.
