Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1865

Allan Kardec

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Spiritist Dissertations

Preconceived ideas

I


Lyon, November 1863 – Medium Mr. X…



We have asked you many times to examine the communications that are given to you, submitting them to the crucible of reason, and that you must not take the inspirations that agitate your minds without analysis, under the influence of causes that are sometimes difficult to verify by the incarnate, affected by all sorts of mockery.

Pure ideas that, say, float around (according to Plato’s thoughts) and carried by the Spirits are not always capable of locating themselves alone and isolated onto the minds of your mediums. They frequently find the places occupied by preconceived ideas that are modified by the streams of inspiration, that unconsciously disturb and modify them, that is certain, but sometimes in a very profound way so that the spiritual idea is completely altered.

Inspiration is formed by two elements: thought and the fluidic heat that is supposed to embrace the medium’s soul, providing what you call the verve of composition. If inspiration finds the place occupied by a preconceived idea that the medium cannot or does not wish to separate from then the thought remains without an interpreter and the fluidic warmth is worn out by trying to excite a thought that is not ours. How many times have we come to bring that warmth and the idea to this selfish and passionate world of yours? You neglect the idea that should be acknowledged by your conscience and you use that warmth to the benefit of your own terrestrial passions, sometimes dilapidating God’s benevolence in favor of evil. How accountable will one day be all the defenders of the lost causes!

I would be, no doubt, desirable that the good inspirations could always dominate the preconceived ideas but in that case we would preclude human free-will and people would then escape the responsibility that is theirs. Nonetheless, since we are only the auxiliary advisors of humanity, how many times shouldn’t we congratulate ourselves when our ideas knock on the door of righteous consciences, overcoming preconceived ideas and modifying the conviction of the inspired ones! Make no mistake, however, and rest assured that the bad use of our help may have positive effects. Serious belief establishes a heart to heart connection; simulated conviction may vibrate in sync with passions and have them satisfied but it still carries a particular coldness that leaves a blank in the mind, pointing out to a doubtful origin. Would you like to know where the mediumistic inspiration comes from? The answer is easy: the idea comes from the extra-terrestrial world, directly from the Spirit. As for the fluidic warmth of inspiration, we find and utilize it from you; it is the emanation of the quintessential element of the vital fluid. We sometimes take it from the inspired person herself, when a certain fluidic power (or mediumistic, as you say) is available; we more frequently take it from the environment that surrounds the medium. That is why one can correctly say that sympathy has power.

If you give serious thoughts to that you will find the explanation of many events that may cause surprise at first sight but from which you have a certain intuition. The idea itself would not suffice mankind if the power of expression was not employed. The warmth is to the idea what the perispirit is to the Spirit and what your body is to the soul. Without the body the soul would be powerless to act upon matter; without the warmth the idea would be powerless to touch the hearts.

The conclusion of this communication is that you must never resign to your reason in the examination of the inspirations that you may receive. The more a medium has acquired own ideas the more she is susceptible to preconceived ones; also, the more she must put aside her ideas making room for those that arrive to her and giving her the assurance of a good communication.

Pascal


God does not avenge

II

The preceding is just a preamble to the introduction of other ideas. I talked about preconceived ideas that there are others beyond those that come from the own inclinations of the inspired person; there are those that come from a bad learning, from an interpretation that was given more or less long ago and that were justified in times when human reason was insufficiently developed; those interpretations became chronic and can only be modified through enormous efforts, particularly when their only authority comes from religious teachings and hidden books. One of those ideas is this: God avenges. One may conceive the thought that a person that is attacked in her pride, in her interests avenges. Such vengeance, although wrong, it is within the limits of human imperfection; but a father that seeks vengeance against his own children causes general astonishment because everybody feels that his duty is that of educating his children and therefore guide them and move them away from mistakes and correct their actions by all possible means; vengeance, however, is not acceptable and would even be strange to paternity rights.

From the point of view of public vendetta the society that is disappearing revenges guilty persons; the frequently cruel punishment was its vengeance against a perverse person. There was no concern with rehabilitation of such person and forgiveness or punishment was left to God. It was enough to threaten future offenders with terror that was considered positive.

The oncoming society no longer believes that; it may not yet act in the correction of the criminal but it least it already sees that vengeance is hateful; it is now enough to be protected against the actions of the criminal and measures are taken to avoid legal mistakes. Capital punishment will soon disappear from our codes.

If society today is great enough to avoid vengeance against a criminal, avoiding to be carried away by rage, how come you wish to see God sharing your own weaknesses and hurting a guilty person out of pure wrath? The belief in God’s fury comes from human pride that believes to have a great saying in God’s judgment. If the plant in your garden does not develop well will you become angry and seek vengeance? No; you will do what you can to have it fixed, giving it the necessary support to develop and to avoid deviations, even transplanting it to another location if needed so. But you will not avenge. That is what God does. God’s vengeance, what a blasphemy! What a minimization of God’s greatness! What ignorance about the infinite distance between creation and creature! How can you forget God’s benevolence and justice?

Would God claim a high price from you to be paid for your previous faults in an existence in which you have no memory of the past? No, no. God does not act like that. God precludes the impulse of a bad passion, corrects the inherent pride through a forced humility, fixes the egotism of the past by a present need, leading to the development of a feeling that mankind has not experienced yet. God corrects like a father does and also like a father God does not seek vengeance.

Stay away from these preconceived ideas of heavenly vengeance, disparate remains of an old mistake. Stay away from those fatalist tendencies that abounds amongst new doctrines and that would take you directly to the oriental Quietism. Human freedom is not great enough yet to have it diminished even further by wrong beliefs. The more you feel free the greater your responsibility and the more you shall move forward dragged by the efforts of your own will, on the path of progress.

Pascal


Truth



Truth, my friend, is one of those abstractions to which the human mind moves towards all the time but never reaching the target. Such tendency is a necessity for it is one of the pre conditions of progress but the imperfect human nature cannot achieve it. Mankind follows the providential path by moving in the direction of truth but its term cannot be seen.

You shall understand me better when you learn that truth is like time, divided in two parts by the inappreciable moment called present, that is: past and future. There are also two truths, the relative and the absolute. Relative truth is what it is; absolute truth is what it should be. Since what it should be steps up onto levels up to the absolute perfection, that is God, it follows that the creatures only see relative truths in the ascending march of progress. But because a relative truth is not immutable it does not follow that it is less sacred to the creature.

Your laws, your customs and institutions are essentially perfectible and hence they are imperfect for that very reason, but such imperfections do not exempt you from the respect that is due to them. One must not move ahead in time and create laws that are outside of the social organization. Humanity is a collective being that must march at least in groups, if not as a whole, towards future progress. The one that separates from earthly society to walk like a stray child towards new truths always suffer the backlash of impatience.

Let the initiators, inspired by the Spirit of Truth, work to proclaim the laws of the future by submitting you to those of the present. Let God judge when the time is right for a new transition, measuring you by your own efforts to become better, but never breach any law until it is withdrawn.

Do not expect a cataclysm of social institutions just because Spiritism has been revealed to you; up until now it has being working underground and unconsciously to those that are its instruments. Today it blossoms out and sees daylight but the march of progress will still nonetheless be slow and steady.

Be suspicious of impatient Spirits that throw you into the dangerous avenues of the unknown. Your promised eternity must guide you to have pity for the ephemeral ambitions of life. Be always analytical before the voice of the manifesting Spirits. Remember this: mankind always moves under the influence of three factors: thoughts, inspiration and revelation. Your thoughts are the richness of your memories that you voluntarily produce. People find there what is strictly necessary to satisfy the needs of their current stationary position. Inspiration comes from the extraterrestrial minds that are more of less mixed with your own reflections, pushing you to move forward as the better complement given the insufficiency of the present; it is a now force, joining the existing and acquired force, to take you further away from the present; it is the irrefutable proof of a hidden cause that helps you to move ahead and without which you would stay put because that is the moral and physical rule that the effect cannot be greater than its own cause; that is what happens in social progress when an unknown cause adds up to your own efforts.

Revelation is the most elevated of the forces that agitates the human spirit because it comes from God and cannot manifest out of God’s express will; it is rare and sometimes even unnoticed, sometimes obvious to the ones that experience it to the point of involuntarily be taken by a sacred reverence. I repeat, this is rare and ordinarily given as a reward to the sincere faith and devout heart but I repeat do not take by revelation everything that comes to your heart. Humanity brags about the friendship of the great; the Spirits exhibit a special permission from God that they many times lack. Sometimes the Spirits make promises that are not ratified by God because it is only God that knows what needs to be.

That is, my friend, all I can tell you about truth. Humble yourself before the great Being by whom everything lives and moves in the infinity of the worlds that are governed by his power. Believe that if every wisdom, every justice and every power are in God then it is also in God every truth.

Pascal

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