The Spirits' Book

Allan Kardec

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393. How can human beings be held accountable for their actions and atone for their faults when they have absolutely no recollection of them? How can they proft from the experience acquired in lives that they have forgotten? The trials and tribulations of life could teach them some sort of lesson if they remembered the behavior that has brought them upon them. If they forget everything, each new existence is like the frst, and they must start from scratch. How can this be reconciled with the justice of God?
“With each new existence human beings become more intelligent, and better able to distinguish between good and bad. If they remembered their entire past, where would their merit be? When spirits reenter their original life, the spirit life, their entire past unfurls before them. They see the faults that they have committed, the cause of all their suffering, and they also see what would have prevented these faults. They understand the justice of their situation, and they seek a new existence to repair the mistakes of their most recent life. They ask for new trials equivalent to those in which they have failed, or that they feel will likely aid their advancement. They ask superior spirits to support them in the new task that they are about to undertake, because they know that their guides will strive to help them shed their faults by giving them a sort of intuition of those they have committed in the past. This intuition is the foul thought that often tempts you and that you instinctively resist.


While you attribute this resistance to the principles you have learned from your parents, it is actually due to your conscience. That voice is the recollection of your past, warning you not to be ensnared by the same traps into which you have already fallen. Those who undergo the trials of a new existence with strength and courage, and resist the temptation to do wrong, rise in the spirit hierarchy to a higher ranking, which they will assume upon their return.” While we do not precisely recall who we have been, and the good or bad that we have done in our past lives, we have the intuition of our past in the instinctive predispositions that our conscience warns us to resist. Our conscience is the desire we have conceived to avoid repeating our past faults in the future.

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