The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1864

Allan Kardec

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Universal control of the teachings of the Spirits[1]


We have already discussed this subject in the last issue of the Review regarding a special article (The perfection of the created beings) but that is so important and has consequences of such a magnitude for the future of Spiritism that we find appropriate to analyze it in a more comprehensive way.

If the Spiritist Doctrine were a purely human conception its only guarantee would be the enlightenment of the person that had conceived it. Now, nobody here could have the founded pretension of knowing the absolute truth by themselves. If the Spirits that revealed it had manifested to a single person nothing could guarantee its origin and everyone would have to believe in the word of that person that would have received their teachings. Admitting a total honesty from the part of the person that would have received it the most it could do would be to convince those that lived in the same environment. That person could find followers but never attract everybody.

God wanted the revelation to get to us through the fastest and most authentic path. That is why the Spirits were assigned with the mission of taking it from one pole to the next, manifesting everywhere, not given anybody in particular the exclusive privilege of hearing their words. A person may be mistaken, may deceive others but that could happen when millions of people see and hear the same thing. That is a guarantee to each and every one.

Besides, people can get rid of a single person but cannot do that to the crowds; books can be burnt but the Spirits cannot. Even if all books were destroyed the source of the Doctrine would not be extinguished because it is not on Earth, it shoots everywhere and everybody can enjoy it. In the absence of people to spread it there will be Spirits that reach everyone and that cannot be reached themselves.

In actual fact it is the Spirits that make the propaganda supported by a large number of mediums that are solicited everywhere. I they had a single interpreter, however skilled that medium might be, Spiritism would be hardly known.


That single interpreter, irrespective of the social class, would have felt prevention from all sides and from many people. That medium would not have been accepted by all nations, whereas communicating to all peoples and everywhere, to all sects and parties, the Spirits are accepted by all.

Spiritism has no nationality. It is indifferent to any particular cult; it is not imposed by any social class since everybody may receive communications from relatives and friends from beyond the grave. That was necessary so that Spiritism would invite humanity to fraternity. If not placed in a neutral ground it would have created dissention rather than peace.

Such universality of the teaching of the Spirits constitutes the strength of Spiritism. That is also the cause of its fast propagation while the voice of a single person, even with the support of the press, would have taken centuries to get to everyone’s ears and there we have thousands of voices that are simultaneously heard in all corners of the globe, proclaiming the same principles, transmitting them to the most ignorant as to the wisest person so that nobody may be left behind. It is an advantage not enjoyed by any doctrine so far. If then Spiritism is a truth it fears no bad will of people nor the moral revolutions or the physical cataclysms of the world because none of these things can affect the Spirits.

But that is not the only advantage that results from such an exceptional position. Spiritism finds in that a powerful guarantee against the schisms that could result from the ambition of certain persons or the contradictions of certain Spirits. Such contradictions are undoubtedly an embarrassment but that carries in itself the very remedy to the disease.

It is well-known that the Spirits, by force of the differences in their capacities, are individually far from holding the whole truth; that not all of them are given the right to have access to certain mysteries; that their knowledge is proportional to their depuration; that vulgar Spirits don’t know better than people on Earth and even less than certain persons; that among them as with ourselves there are presumptuous and pseudo-wise Spirits that believe to know what they actually don’t; systematic one that take their ideas by the truth; finally that the Spirits of a more elevated order, those that are completely dematerialized are the only ones that are free from the earthly prejudices.

But it is also well-known that deceiving Spirits have no scrupulous in hiding under borrowed names to have their utopias accepted. From that it follows that anything that is beyond exclusively moral teachings the revelations that anyone can receive have an individual character, without authenticity; that they must be considered as personal opinion from this or that Spirit, and that it would be unwise to accept them and lightheartedly promote them as absolute truths.

The first control is undoubtedly that of reason to which one has to submit, without exception, everything that comes from the Spirits. Any theory that is manifestly in contradiction with common sense, with a rigorous logic and with positive facts that are available, however respectable the signature may be, must be rejected. However such a control is incomplete in many cases due to the lack of knowledge of certain persons and the tendency that many have of making their own judgement as the only referee of truth. In such cases what do the people that do not have much confidence in themselves? Follow the opinion of the majority and that opinion is their guide. That is how it must be with respect to the teaching of the Spirits, and these means we are taught by the Spirits themselves.


Therefore the best control is the agreement in the teaching of the Spirits but that still does need to occur in certain conditions. The least safe is when a medium questions several Spirits about a doubtful point. It is obvious that if the medium is enduring a case of obsession and dealing with the same deceiving Spirit that Spirit can tell her the same thing with different names.

Also the conformity obtained by multiple mediums of the same center is not enough because they may be suffering the same influence. The only serious guarantee that there exist is in the agreement between spontaneous revelations made through mediums of a large number of mediums that are strange to one another and in several regions.

It must be understood that we are not talking about communications of secondary interest here but those that attain to the principles of the Spiritist Doctrine. Experience demonstrates that when a new principle must be learned it is taught spontaneously and in several points at the same time and in identical conditions if not in its form at least in its meaning. Hence if a Spirit wishes to propose an eccentric, based on his own ideas and not necessarily true, we can rest assured that such a system will remain inside a limited circle and will fall down before the unanimous instructions given everywhere, as we have already seen in several examples. It is that unanimity that knocked down all partial systems that were born at the origin of Spiritism when each one explained the phenomena their own way and before the laws that govern the relationships between the visible and invisible world were known.

Such is the foundation on which we base ourselves when formulating a principle of the Doctrine. We do not promote it as true because it is in agreement with our own ideas; we do not put ourselves in place of absolute judges of the supreme truth and we do not tell anyway: “Believe in this because we say so.” Our opinion, before our own eyes, is nothing more than a personal opinion that can be either right or wrong and by the simple fact that we are not more infallible than anybody else. In addition it is not because a principle was taught to us that we believe it to be true but because it received the endorsement of the general agreement. That universal agreement is a guarantee to the future unity of Spiritism and it will nullify all contradictory theories. That is where the criteria of truth will be sought in the future.

The success achieved by both The Spirits’ Book and The Mediums’ Book is that every person may receive directly from the Spirits the confirmation of their teachings. If they were contradicted by the Spirits from all sides they would have found long ago the same destiny of the fantastic ideas. Even the support of press would not have saved the wreckage whilst they propagated rapidly without that very support because they counted on the Spirits and they compensated by far the bad will of people. That is how it is going to be with every idea that may come from the Spirits or from mankind that cannot endure the trial of that control that is not in anyone’s hands.

Let us then suppose that certain Spirits decide to dictate a book with a given title and whose principles are contrary to those. Let us even imagine that with the objective of discrediting the Doctrine apocryphal messages were produced by malevolence. What would be the influence of such texts if they are disproved by the Spirits everywhere? One should count on the adhesion of the latter ones before releasing a system in their name. The distance between a system of a single Spirit and that of all Spirits is like the distance between the unity and infinite.


What can all the arguments of the detractors about the general opinion do when millions of friendly voices from space and in all corners of the globe and within the cell of each family come to contradict them? Hasn’t experience already confirmed the theory about that? What happened to all publications that pretended to have come to annihilate Spiritism? Which one has even precluded its march? Up until now this subject had not been faced by that viewpoint, undoubtedly one of the most serious. Each one of them counted on themselves but not on the Spirits.

A capital truth stems from that: Any person that wanted to oppose the flow of the established and endorsed ideas could well cause a small local and momentarily disturbance but never dominate the whole both in the present as well as in the future. It also points out the fact that instructions given by the Spirits about issues that are not clarified yet could not become law while isolated ideas and that consequently must be only accepted with the highest reservation and as informational.

Hence the need to be very careful when publishing them and if judged appropriate their publication then show them as individual opinions more or less likely but that still require confirmation. That is the confirmation that must be expected before a principle is presented as an absolute truth if one does not wish to be accused of light-heartedness or unthoughtful belief. The superior Spirits proceed with extreme wisdom in their revelations. They only gradually touch the great questions of the Doctrine as the intelligence becomes more capable of understanding the truths of a more elevated order and also the circumstances are adequate to a new idea. That is why they have not said everything from the beginning and even today they did not say everything, never yielding to the impatience of hasty persons that are ready to harvest the fruit before its maturation. It would then be useless to try to precipitate the time scheduled by the Providence for each thing because the really serious Spirits would refuse to help. The lighthearted Spirits though give little importance to the truth and respond to everything. That is why there are always contradictory answers to all premature questions. The principles above are not the result of a personal opinion but a forceful consequence of the conditions in which the Spirits manifest. It is clear that if a Spirit says something on one side while millions of others say the opposite elsewhere the presumption of truth cannot be on the side of only one or only a few. The pretension of being the only one to be right from the part of the Spirits is as much illogical as it is to a person. When the truly wise Spirits don’t feel sufficiently clarified about an issue they never resolve it in absolute terms; the openly indicate to be responding according to their personal opinion and even advise to wait for the confirmation.

However beautiful, fair and great an idea may be it is impossible to have the opinion of everybody behind it since the beginning. The resulting conflicts are an inevitable consequence of the general movement that takes place; these are even necessary to highlight the truth and it is useful that they take place in the beginning so that the false ideas be promptly discarded. The Spiritists that have some concern must rest assured. All of the isolated pretenses will fall by the force of things before the great and powerful criteria of the universal control. It is not the opinion of a person that they will follow but the unanimous voice of the Spirits. It is not a man and more importantly not us more than others that will found the Spiritist orthodoxy; it is not a Spirit that will impose upon anybody either; it is the universality of the Spirits, communicating all over Earth and commanded by God. That is the essential character of the Spiritist Doctrine, its strength and authority. God wanted His law to be founded on an unbreakable basis and that is why it was not laid upon the fragile mind of a single person.


It is before such a powerful engine that does not know little groups or envious rivalries nor sects or nations that every opposition will break, as all the ambitions and pretensions to individual supremacy; that we would ourselves be shattered if we wanted to replace the sovereign designs by our own ideas. It is the only one that will solve all the disputes; that will break the dissidences and will give or not give reason to the one that deserves it.

Before such power agreement between all voices of heavens what can the opinion of a single person or Spirit do? Less than the drop of water in the whole ocean. Less than the voice of a child muffled by the storm. The universal opinion that is the supreme judge, the one that has the last word. It is formed by all individual opinions; if one is true it will only have its relative weight on the scale; if it is false it will not be able to succeed against all others. Individuals fade away in that immense assembly and that is a new drawback to human pride.

Such a harmonious horizon is already forming. This century shall not be over before its full resplendence shines out reassuring uncertainties for until then powerful voices would have been assigned the mission of being heard to rank mankind under the same flag as long as the field is sufficiently prepared.

While wait, the one that floats between two opposing systems can observe the direction of the general opinion. That is the correct indication given by the majority of the Spirits about the several points in their communications. It is not a less certain signal about which system will succeed.





[1] This text is item II of the introduction of The Gospel According to Spiritism (TN)


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