Since the principle of non-regression of the Spirit has been raised several times, a principle that is interpreted in multiple ways, we will try to resolve the issue. Spiritism wants to be clear to all and do not leave any point of discussion of words to its future followers hence all points susceptible of interpretation will be clarified successfully.
The Spirits do not retrograde in the sense that there is no loss of the already achieved progress. They can remain momentarily stationary but the good ones cannot become bad nor can the wise ones become ignorant. Such is the general principle that only applies to the moral condition and not to the material situation that from good may become bad if the Spirit deserve that.
Let us make a comparison. Let us take a man of the world, someone educated but that is guilty of a crime that leads him to jail. To him there is certainly a great fall with respect to his social condition and with respect to his material well-being. Neglect and abjection succeeded consideration and esteem. Regarding his intelligence, however, there is no loss. He will carry along his faculties, talents and knowledge to prison. It is a decayed man and that is how the decayed Spirits must be understood. Hence God can, after a certain time of atonement, subtract from a world where they did not progress morally, those who were indifferent to Him, those who have rebelled against His laws, sending them to atone their errors and their hard heart in an inferior world, among less advanced creatures. There they will be what they were before, morally and intellectually, but in an infinitely more painful condition given the nature of the globe itself and particularly given the environment where they find themselves. In a word, they will be in the position of a civilized person that is forced to live among the savages or of an educated person that is condemned to forced labor. They lost their position and privileges but did not retrograde to a primitive state. They did not become children after adulthood. That is how retrogress must be understood. Since did not use the time properly they have to restart the work. In His benevolence, God does not wish to keep them among the good ones any longer whose peace they disturb and that is why God sends them to live among people in a mission to make them progress, teaching them what they know. Through such a work they can advance themselves and regenerate through the atonement of previous faults like the slave that continuously save a bit of money to one day buy his freedom out. However, like the slave, many of them only save money instead of accumulating virtues the only way of paying for their redemption.
That has been, so far, the situation of our Earth, a planet of atonement and trials, where the Arian race, an intelligent race was exiled among primitive and inferior races that inhabited the planet before. That is the reason why there is so much suffering here, a suffering that the savage cannot feel in the same way. There is certainly regression of the Spirit in the sense that there is delay in the progress but not from the point of the view of the acquired values, the very reason why, together with the development of the intelligence, social degradation is so painful. That is why a man of the world suffers much more in an abject environment than someone that has always lived in the quagmire.
Following a system that has something of specious at first sight, the Spirits would not have been created to incarnate and incarnation would not be but the result of their fault. Such a system falls before the mere consideration that, if not a single Spirit had failed, there would not be anybody on Earth or in other worlds. Now, since the presence of mankind is necessary for the material betterment of the worlds; since mankind concurs towards the general work through people’s intelligence and activities; mankind is one of the essential gears of Creation. God could not have subordinated the partial realization of His work to the eventual regression of His creatures unless He always counted on a sufficient number of guilty souls to occupy the already created worlds and those to be created. Common sense rejects such idea.
Incarnation is then a necessity to the Spirit that by accomplishing its providential mission works towards its own betterment through work and intelligence that must be developed in order to provide for life and well-being. Incarnation becomes a punishment, though, when the Spirit does not do what it was supposed to be done, force to start the task again in a number of painful corporeal existences following one owns faults. A student only graduates after having passed through all classes. Are those classes a punishment? No. They are a necessity, an indispensable condition to advancement. But if due to laziness the Spirit is forced to repeat them it becomes a punishment. Hence it is certain that incarnation on Earth is a punishment to many that inhabit here because they could have avoided it whereas they could have multiplied it by two, three, a hundred, for their own faults and thus delaying their entry into better worlds. What is wrong is to admit in principle that incarnation is a punishment.
Here is another question that is frequently discussed: Since the Spirit was created simple and ignorant with the freedom of choice between good and bad wouldn’t it be a moral decay when the Spirit chooses the bad path, considering that the Spirit does evil things that were not done before? This proposition is not more sustainable than the previous one. There is only decay when there is a passage from a good to relatively worse. Now, created simple and ignorant, the Spirit is in a null state, morally and intellectually, like the child that has just been born. If no good is done there is no evil either; it is not happy or unhappy; it acts without conscience and without responsibility. Since it has nothing it cannot lose anything or regress. The Spirit’s responsibility only begins at the time when the free-will develops. Hence its primitive state is not a state of innocent and reasoned intelligence. Consequently, the bad deeds that the Spirit may do later on breaching the laws of God and abusing the God given faculties is not a regress from good to bad but the consequence of the path that was taken.
That leads us to another question. Nero, for example, while incarnate as Nero may have committed more bad actions than in his preceding incarnation? We respond that yes which does not imply that in his preceding life he was better. To begin with evil may change its form without being a greater or lesser evil. Nero’s position as an Emperor put him in evidence allowing his actions to become more noticeable. In an obscure life, he might have done equally reprehensible things although in a lesser scale and that went unnoticed. As a sovereign, he was able to set a whole city on fire. As a common person, he could have set a house on fire and killed the family. If a vulgar murderer that assaults and kill some travelers were sitting on a throne would be a bloodthirsty tyrant doing in larger proportion what his former position would only allow in a reduced scale.
Considering the question under another point of view I say that a person can do more evil in an existence than in a preceding one, show vices that were not there before without the implication of a moral regression. Often it is the occasion that is not there for the evil to take place. When there is the principle in a latent stage with the occasion the bad instincts reveal.
Common life gives us numerous examples of that order: A man that was considered good suddenly reveals vices that were unsuspected and that provoke astonishment. The reason is simply for the fact that he was able to dissimulate or because a cause provoked the development of a bad seed. It is true that someone in which the good feelings are well entrenched there isn’t even the bad thought. When such a thought does exist, it means that the germ is there. The only thing missing is frequently the execution.
Then, as we said, evil although under different forms is always evil. The same vicious principle may be the source of a number of diverse actions, all from the same cause. Pride, for example, may lead to a number of faults to which we are exposed while the radical principle is not eliminated. A person may then show defects in a given existence that were not present in a previous one and that are consequences of the same vicious principle.
To us Nero is a monster because he committed atrocities. But can we believe that those other treacherous people, hypocrites, true serpents that spread calumny, that spoil whole families through deception and abuse of confidence, that cover their turpitudes with the mask of virtue to achieve their aims with more security and be praised when they only deserved execration, can we believe, we were saying, that these are better than Nero? Certainly not. Incarnating in a Nero would not be a regression to them but an occasion to show a new face. In such a condition, they will exhibit the vices that they hid before. They will dare do through power what they did through deception that is the whole difference. But this new trial will not make their punishment more terrible unless instead of using the means of reparation he employs them to evil. Each existence, however, however bad it may be, is an occasion of progress to the Spirit that develops the intelligence and acquires experience and knowledge that later on will help with the moral progress.
