The word sky is used, in general, to describe the indefinite space that surrounds Earth, and in particular the part that is above the horizon. It originates from the Latin
coelum, formed from the Greek
coilos, hollow, concave, because to our eyes the sky is like an immense concavity. Old peoples belived in the existence of multiple, superimposed skies, made of solid and transparent, forming concentric spheres in which Earth would be in the center. These turning spheres would carrying the globes along its circles.
Due to the insufficiency of knowedge regarding astronomy this idea was adopted by all teogonies that turned the escalonated skies into the several levels of beatification. The last was the dwelling of supreme happiness. According to the most common opinion there were seven and hence the utilization of the expression “to be in the seventh sky” to express perfect happiness. The Muslims admit nine and each one increases the happiness of the believer.
Ptolomy,
[2] the astronomer, considered the existence of eleven, the last of which was called Empireo
[3] due to the extreme light that shines there. It is even today the name given to the place of beatitude. Christian teology recognizes three skies: the first is the region of air and clouds; the second is the space where the globes move around; the third, beyond the region of the globes, is the dwelling of the Almighty, the home of the elected that contemplate God face to face. That is the reason why St. Paul was taken to the third sky.
The multiple doctrines related to the dwelling of the blessed ones are all based on the double error of considering Earth as the center of the universe and the region of the globes limited. They all placed the happy home of the Almigty beyond that imaginary limit. Singular anomaly that places the author of all things at the end of creation instead of being placed at the center from where the radiated thoughts could reach everything. With the inexorable logic of facts and observation, science took its lights up to the depth of space showing the emptiness of those theories. Earth is no longer the pivot of the universe but one of the smallest globes moving in the infinite. The Sun itself is only the center of a planetary maelstrom. The stars are uncountable Suns around which countless planets orbit, separated by distances only conceived by thoughts although seemingly touching one another. In such a system, governed by eternal laws that reveal the omnipotence and wisdom of the Creator, Earth is not but an imperceptible point and one of the least favored to be inhabited. Given that we ask why would God have turned Earth the only place capable of entertaining life and to that place he would have sent his favorite creatures? Everything, on the contrary, indicates that life is everywhere and that humanity is infinite like the universe. Science reveals planets like Earth and God could not have created them without an objective. God must have populated them with creatures capable of governing them.
Peoples’s ideas are in proportion to their knowledge. Like every important discovery the one about the constitution of the globes must have given them another course. Under the empire of these new knowledge their belief must have changed. Sky was displaced and the region of the stars, having no boundaries, isn’t of any use anymore. Where is he? All religions go quiet before such a question. Spiritism comes to resolve it by demonstrating the true destiny of mankind. Starting from the nature of men and the attributes of God the conclusion is the consequence.
Man is composed of body and Spirit. The Spirit is the principal, rational and intelligent being; the body is the material envelope that momentarily covers the Spirit for the execution of their mission on Earth and for the necessary work of development. Once worn the body is destroyed and the Spirit outlives the destruction. Without the Spirit the body is only inert matter like an instrument without the managing arm; without the body the Spirit is everything: life and intelligence. Leaving the body the Spirit returns to the spiritual world from where he had come before incarnating.
There is, however, the corporeal world composed of incarnate Spirits, and the spiritual world, formed by the discarnate Spirits. The beings of the corporeal world, as a consequence of its material envelope, are detained on Earth or any other planet. The spiritual world is everywhere, around us and in space. It is boundless. Given the fluid nature of its envelope, the beings that constitute it transpose distances with the speed of thought, instead of painfully dragging their bodies on the ground. The death of the body is the rupture of the links that maintain the Spirit captive.
The Spirits are created simple and ignorant but with aptitude to acquire everything and advance as a result of its free-will. Through progress they acquire new knowledge, new facutlites, new perceptions, and consequently new pleasures that are unknown to inferior Spirits. They see, hear, feel and understand what inferior Spirits cannot see, hear or understand. Happiness is proportional to the achieved progress, so that given two Spirits one may not be as happy as the other simply because one may not be as much advanced intellectual and morally with no need to have them placed in different places. Athought they may be close to one another it is possible that one may be in darkness whereas the other is surrounded by light, exactly like a person of normal sight walked hand in hand with a blind person: one sees the light has no effect on the neighbor. Happiness to the Spirits is inherent to their qualities. Therefore they enjoy it wherever they are, on the surface of Earth among the incarnate or in space.
A common comparison may be even better to explain this situation. Consider two persons in a concert; one of them is a good musician with an educated ear whereas the other has no musical knowledge and poor ears skills for music; the first one feels pleasure whereas the second remains insensible because what one understands and feels causes no impression on the other. That is what happens to all sensations of the Spirits that are in proportion to their aptitude to feel them. The spiritual world has splendors everywhere, harmonies and sensations that the inferior Spirits, still under the influence of matter, cannot even foresee for they are only accessible to depurated Spirits.
The progress of the Spirits is the result of their own work. However, since they are free they work with more or less intenstity or neglect, according to their will. Therefore they speed up or delay their progress, and for that same reason, their happiness. While some advace quickly others drag their feet for centuries in inferior categories. Hence they are the own artifices of their condition, happy or unhappy, according to these words of Jesus Christ: “
everyone rewarded according to their work”. Every Spirit that falls behind cannot complain but of oneself by the same way that the one that advances has the whole merit of their own effort. A conquered happiness is worth more to our eyes.
Supreme happiness is only enjoyed by perfect Spirits, that is, pure Spirits. They only achieve that after progressing in intelligence and morality. Intelectual and moral progress rarely march together but what is done by the Spirit in one period will be done in another so that both progresses end up by reaching the same level. That is why we sometimes see persons that are intelligent and educated but little advanced morally, and vice-versa. The incarnation is necessary to the double progress of the Spirit, moral and intellectual: the intellectual progress by the activity that the Spirit is forced with work; moral progress by the need that people have of each other. Social life is the touchstone of the good as well as bad qualities. Goodness, badness, kindness, violence, benevolence, charity, selfishness, greed, pride, humility, sincerity, honesty, loyalty, bad faith, hypocrisy, in a word, everything that constitute a good or a perverse person, whose drive and objective is the relationship between man and his fellow human beings. For that reason someone that lived alone would not have vices or virtues. Such a person is preserved from evil by the isolation as she is precluded from doing good as well.
A single corporeal existence is positively insufficient so that the Spirit may acquire everything that is lacked in good and to remove everything that is bad. Could the savage, for example, achieve in only one existence the moral and intellectual level of the most advanced European? That is physically impossible. Should that savage remain eternally in barbarism, deprived from the pleasures that only the development of the faculties allow? Simple commonsense refutes such hypothesis that would be at the same time the denial of God’s justice and goodness, as well as the progressive law of nature. That is why the sovereignly good and just God provides the Spirit with as many incarnations as necessary so that the objective of perfection is achieved.
In each new existence the Spirit brings what was acquired in the preceding one in aptitude, intuitive knowledge, intelligence and morality. Each existence is like that, one step forward on the path of progress, unless the Spirit does not take advantage of that out of laziness, carelessness or obstination in evilness, in which case a reestart is needed. Hence it is up to the Spirit to reduce or increase the number of required incarnations, always more or less painful and laborious.
In the interval of the physical existences the Spirit returns to the spiritual world, for a more or less lengthy period of time, where the Spirit is happy or unhappy according to the good or bad that had been done. The spiritual state is the normal state of the Spirit since this must be its definite state considering that the spiritual body does not die. The corporeal state is just fleeting and transient. It is particularly in the spiritual state that the Spirit picks the fruits of the realized progress for the work done in the incarnation. It is also in this state that the Spirit prepares for the new endeavors and make the resolutions that struggles to carry out on returning to humanity.
Reincarnation can take place on Earth or in other worlds. Among the worlds there are some more advanced than others and there the existence takes place in less painful conditions than on Earth, physically and morally, but where only the Spirits that have attained a compatible level of perfection with those worlds are accepted. Life in the superior worlds is already a reward because there the Spirit is exempt from the diseases and vicissitudes found here. There the less material bodies, almost fluidic, are not subjected to illnesses and needs. Since the bad Spirits are excluded, people live in peace there with the only concern of their own advancement by work and intelligence. True fraternity reigns there since there is no selfishness; there is true freedom since there is no disturbance to restrain or ambitious persons trying to oppress the weak.
Compared to Earth these worlds are true paradises. They are the stages of the route of progress that leads to the definite dwelling. Since Earth is an inferior world destined to the depuration of imperfect Spirits, that is the reason why evil dominates here until God wishes to make it the residence of more advanced Spirits.
That is how the Spirit, by progressing gradually, reaches the apogee of happiness. However, before achieving the summit of perfection, the Spirit enjoys a level of happiness that is relative to the actual advancement, like the child that likes the pleasures of the first infancy, later on ejoying those of the youth and finally the more solid ones of maturity.
Happiness to the blessed Spirits is not in the contemplative idleness that would be, as said many times, an eternal and boring inutility. At all levels the spiritual life is, on the contrary, constant activity and free from fatigue. Supreme happiness consists on the enjoyment of all splendors of creations, that no human language could depict and that the most prolific imagination cannot conceive; on the knowledge and understanding of everything; on the absence of any physical and mental fatigue; on an intimate satisfaction, an unalterable serenity of the soul; on the love that unites all creatures in the absence of any friction with evil, and above all consists on the vision of God and the comprehension of the mysteries that are revealed to the more worthy ones. That happiness is also on the functions that are assigned to them and make them happy. The pure Spirits are the Messiah or the messengers of God for the transmission and execution of God’s wills. The carry out the great missions, preside the formation of the worlds and the general harmony of the universe, a glorious task only achieved by perfection. Only those in a more elevated order understand the secrets of God and are inspired by God’s thoughts from which they are the direct representatives.
The tribulations of the Spirits are proportional to their advancement, their enlightenment, to their capacity, their experience and the degree of confidence inspired on the sovereign Teacher. For that there is no privilege or favor that is not sponsored by merit. Everything is measured by the criteria of strict justice. The most important missions are assigned only to those that are knowingly capable of accomplishing them, incapable of failure or of compromising them. While the more worthy ones compose the supreme council, superior leaders are assigned with the direction of a planetary maelstrom; others are assigned with a special world. Next in the order of advancement and hierarchical subordination, the more restricted assignments to the representatives to the march of peoples, families and individuals, to the impulse to each branch of progress, the multiple operations of nature, up to the minimal details of creation. In that vast and harmonious setting there are activities to every capacity, every aptitude, every good-will, occupations that are accepted with pleasure, eagerly requested because these are means of advancement to the requesting Spirits that aspire for their elevation.
Reincarnation is inherent to the inferiority of the Spirits. It is no longer necessary to those that have transposed its limit and that progress in the spiritual world or in corporeal existences in superior worlds that do not keep the materiality of Earth. To them reincarnation is voluntary, aiming at the exercise of a direct action upon the incarnate for the accomplishment of the missions that they were assigned with respect to them. Out of devotion they accept the vicissitudes and sufferings.
Side by side with the great missions assigned to superior Spirits there others of every level of importance, assigned to Spirits of all orders, from which one can say that every incarnate soul has their own, that is, they have their duties with respect to the well-being of their fellow human beings, from the father whose duty is to ensure the progress of his children up to the genius that casts upon society the new embryos of progress. It is in these secondary missions that many times we find failures, evasions and resignations that only harm the individual and not the group.
Therefore all intelligences concur to the general work, irrespective of the level that they may have achieved, and each one according to their forces, some in the incarnate state and some as Spirit. It is activity all over the place, from the bottom to the top of the scale, everybody learning, helping one another, giving mutual help, hand in hand to get to the top.
That is how the solidarity between the spiritual and corporeal worlds is established, that is, among humans and the Spirits, among free and captive Spirits. That is how true sympathies and sacred affections perpetuate and consolidate through the depuration and continuity of the relationships.
Hence there is life and movement everywhere. There isn’t a single corner of the infinite space that is not inhabited; not a single region that is not incessantly visited by uncountable legions of radiant beings, invisible to the crude senses of the incarnate but whose sight dazzles with joy and admiration the souls that are detached from matter. Finally, there is a relative happiness everywhere, according to the progress and duties that are carried out. Each one carrying along the elements of their own happiness, in proportion to the category in which they are placed by their own advancement.
Happiness depends on the own qualities of the individuals and not on the material state of the environment where they are placed; it is then everywhere where there are Spirits capbale of being happy; they have no circumscribed space in the universe. The pure Spirits may contemplate the divine majesty everywhere because God is everywhere.
Happiness, however, is not personal. It it were only in ourselves and if we could not share it with others it would be selfish and sad. It is also in the communion of thoughts that unite sympathetic beings. Happy Spirits, attracted to one another by the similarity of ideas, tastes and feelings form vast homogeneous groups or families, in which each individual irradiates their own qualities and receives the serene and beneficient breaths that emanate from the whole whose members both disperse to carry out their own missions and get together in a given region in space to share the results of their work, or even meet around a Spirit of even an more elevated order to receive instructions and advices.
Although the Spirits are everywhere they preferably meet in planets given the similarity between them and the ones that inhabit thaose planets. The superior Spirits gravitate around advanced worlds; the inferior ones around delayed planets. Earth is still one of these. Hence, each globe in a certain way has its own kind of population of incarnate and discarnate Spirits that feed one another in its majority through the incarnation and discarnation of the same Spirits. That population is more stable in inferior worlds in which the Spirits are more attached to matter; it is more variable in superior worlds. But Spirits from globes that are the focus of light and happiness are detached to inferior worlds to disseminate the seeds of progress, and to deliver consolation and hope; to lift up the abated courage after the trials of life. They sometimes incarnate in these planets to better accomplish their missions. In such a boundless space then where are the skies? Everywhere. There is no wall limiting them. Happy worlds are their final stations. Virtues open up the avenues to them where vices block them. Before such a magnificent image that populates all corners of the universe, that provides every oject of creation with an objective and a reason for being, how petty is the doctrine that circumscribe humanity to an imperceptible place in space; that shows it to us as beginning at a given time to equally end on a day with the world that carries it, not embracing therefore a single minute in eternity! How sad, cold and glacial when it shows us the universe before, during and after our earthly humanity, lifeless, motionless, like an immense desert surrounded by silence!
How desperate it is, with the image of a small number of elected ones devoted to eternal contemplation, while the vast majority is condemned to the endless suffering! How pungent it is to the loving hearts, for the barrier that is interposed between the dead and the living ones! They say that the happy souls only care about their own happiness and the unhappy ones about their pains. Should we be surprised by the kingdom of egotism on Earth when we are presented with the skies? How narrow, therefore, is the idea that it gives of the greatness, the power and the goodness of our Creator!
The one presented by Spiritism, on the contrary, how sublime that is! How its doctrine amplifies the ideas and broadens the thought! But, who can tell it is true? First reason, then the revelation and finally the agreement with the progress of science! From two doctrines from which one diminishes and the other auguments the attributes of God; from which one is in disagreement and the other in harmony with progress; from which one remains behind and the other advances, common sense points to the side of truth. Given the presence of both may each person internally question their own aspirations and an intimate voice will respond. The aspirations are the voice of God that cannot deceive mankind. But then, why hasn’t God revealed the truth from the beginning? For the same reason that a child is not taught what she will learn at a mature age. A restrict revelation was enough during a certain period of humanity. God provides it according to the forces of the Spirit. Those that today receive a more complete revelations are the same Spirits that on other times received just a fraction, but that later on grew in intelligence. Before science had revealed to them the lively forces of nature, the constitution of the globes, the true role and the formation of Earth, would they have understood the infinite space and the plurality of the worlds? Could they have identified with a spiritual life? Could they have conceived a happy or unfortunate life after death, unless restricted to a place and with a material form? No. Understanding more by the senses than thoughts the universe was too much to their brains. It was necessary to have it reduced to smaller proportions appropriate to their point of view, having the possibility of amplifying it later on. A partial revelation had its utility then. It was wise. Today it is insufficient. The mistake is with those that do not take into account the progress of the ideas and believe to be able to govern mankind with baby walkers.
Allan Kardec
Note: This article, as well as the one from the preceding issue about the fear of death, were extracted from the new book to be soon published by Mr. Allan Kardec. The two following events come to confirm such an image of the skies.
[1] See the book Heavens and Hell, Part I, Chap. III
[2]Ptolomy lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century of the Christian era
[3]From the Greek pur, pyr = fire
