Spiritist Philosophy Is Incomplete

Spiritist Philosophy Is Incomplete

by | Aug 20, 2021 | Allan Kardec, Consciousness Studies, Life After Death, Near-Death Experiences, Spiritist knowledge | 1 comment

The Spiritist philosophy is conspicuously missing a “life-time review” as a common documented element of the death process.  The omission begs the question: Is the Spiritist Philosophy incomplete?

Our previous article noted that none of the works by Allan Kardec (or the vast automatic writing literature by Chico Xavier) described a single case of a life-time review, which is especially alarming in view of the frequency it occurs in a majority of Near-Death experiences that have been reported in the last 40 years.

Curious minds may wonder why this important phenomenon is lacking.  Was it due to the limitations of the mediums, an unconscious cultural constraint, or yet a decision by the mentors to defer it to the future?

 

Of course, many of our readers will be horrified by the idea that the body of ideas that define the Spiritist Philosophy is incomplete.  Others, may not bother about such an anomaly because they are satisfied with what they have learned. A few, however, will hopefully look at this anomaly with a critical mind and be willing to put in action Allan Kardec’s precept ‘the only unshakeable faith is that which can withstand reason, face to face, in every stage of humankind’s development.’

 

Here is an example of a life-time review that speaks so credibly to our beliefs.

“All of a sudden, my entire life flashed before my eyes, complete in every detail. Every event and scenario that had occurred during my life was there for me to examine, and I had the opportunity to scrutinize all or any part of it. It is impossible for me to say how long the life review actually lasted. The entire review appeared to last for only a split-second, because all the events of my entire life were shown to me simultaneously. Yet I was free to examine each and every part of my life, piece by piece, to the finest detail. Time was subjective and distance was non-existent, because I was in every place at the same time. When my attention was drawn to a particular situation or set of circumstances, there I was already experiencing the moment. In other words, I literally saw every last detail of my entire life, compressed into a split second.”

“Not only did I review my life from my own personal viewpoint, but also from the perspective of others with whom I had connected at various times and places. Now I knew precisely what people were thinking and feeling about me. Every time I hurt someone’s feelings, I felt their pain. Now I felt the results of all my hurtful words and deeds; I could literally sense their every thought and feeling in response to me, which felt downright awful. On the other side of the fence, every time I was kind, or whenever I had helped people or brought them happiness, I felt their joy and appreciation.

“But there was no injustice whatsoever in my life review, for I could see that I was the architect of all my actions and the master of all my virtues and vices, as we all are.[1]”

 

 

The Spiritist Philosophy is incomplete in the same sense that we refer to Newton, Einstein, and quantum mechanics as examples of the modification of an existing theory. Newton wasn’t wrong. He just didn’t have enough information. His ideas still hold up when we apply them to a falling apple. Likewise, Einstein’s work wasn’t overturned by the discovery of quantum mechanics. Each of these new ideas simply added to what we had already learned. The theories of Newton and Einstein aren’t wrong, but they do not apply to all situations. This is because the scientists didn’t have enough information to expand on the theory at the time it was formed.

The Spiritist Philosophy doesn’t have a centralized structure in the Catholic or Anglican mode that establishes rituals and beliefs. Spiritism has no hierarchy or formal leadership. It evolves with the people, the practitioners’ experiences, and with the culture that surrounds its centers of practice. It accepts evolution as a norm and transformation as part of its natural growth. However, while all these represent aspirations, the Spiritist Philosophy does depend on the initiative and courage of people to openly debate new ideas and with a disposition to rely on objective evidence.

Mediumship has been documented for over 150 years the primary tool for communication between dimensions. While there have been a few very reliable mediums, e.g. Francisco Xavier, Edgar Cayce, Divaldo Franco, the majority of mediums are tools of spiritual comfort rather than providers of unassailable evidences. The goal of the Spiritist Philosophy from its beginning was to provide proof of the continuity of life, and to demonstrate that human beings have a soul that exists, transcending the life of the body.

We are now seeing the development of a new tool to demonstrate the existence of the consciousness (spirit or soul) through the extensive data collected by medical scientists studying Near-Death Experiences (NDE’s). The possibility of bringing back a person, clinically dead for more than thirty minutes, has stretched the boundaries between life and death, and has changed how we approach life on Earth.

When we acknowledge Near-Death Experiences as fact, it follows that Spiritist Philosophy is incomplete.  It is important that we accept this fact and not reject it.

Highly specific and detailed NDE’s and resuscitation medicine provide unquestionable evidence of consciousness survival, and by extension the continuity of life beyond death.

As science and technology evolve, other tools will become available, revealing even more about the death experience, and we must be open to the fact of them all. We cannot keep on relying on classic mediumship alone when other powerful instruments provide more and advancing evidence.

Spiritist Philosophy is incomplete, and that fact aligns perfectly with the design and workings of the Universe.  After all, isn’t this the whole purpose of the spiritual enterprise that has Jesus at the helm, to help us to awaken to our intrinsic reality as souls who happen to be temporarily inhabiting a body of flesh in our eternal journey of evolution toward God?

 

[1] Miller, Malcom, The Impossible Dream: An Extraordinary Brush With Death, IANDS

Life-Review: An Spiritist Omission?

Life-Review: An Spiritist Omission?

by | Jun 27, 2021 | Allan Kardec, Andre Luiz, Life After Death, Near-Death Experiences, Spiritist knowledge

“Somewhere in my unconscious is a non-judgmental Recorder that notices and understands with love, even when I (consciously) don’t.”

Charlotte Guest

Nowadays this is a puzzling observation. Neither Psychology nor Psychiatry nor Neurology ever referred to the existence of such a retrievable memory unit in the human subconscious. This quote appeared as a catchphrase in a published report of a non-near-death experience. It refers to the experience of a rapid life review of the memories and events of a person’s life. The review is sometimes chronological, but most often is a panoramic or 3-D unfolding of images archived in the subconscious. Reports of a life time review are a common element of the Near-Death Experiences reported by thousands of people all over the world.

Surprisingly, this phenomenon has not been reported in the fundamental works of the Spiritist thought, and this is especially confounding because of their intense focus on the life of the spirit both while in and without matter. That’s sure to beg the question why that happened.

One of the earliest persons to report such an experience, when he nearly drowned, was Admiral Francis Beaufort of the British Navy. He wrote, “The whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic view.”

Here is an example of a lifetime review reported by Dr. Jeffrey Long in a recent book: 

I went into a dark place with nothing around me, but I wasn’t scared. It was really peaceful there. I then began to see my whole life unfolding before me like a film projected on a screen, from babyhood to adult life. It was so real! I was looking at myself, but better than a 3-D movie as I was also capable of sensing the feelings of the persons I had interacted with through the years. I could feel the good and bad emotions I made them go through.”

A second interesting example was reported by Camille Flammarion (1922), the same man of science who delivered the eulogy at Allan Kardec’s memorial service in 1869:

 

During this fall, which could hardly have lasted two or three seconds, his entire life, from his childhood up to his career in the army, unrolled clearly and slowly in his mind, his game as a boy, his classes, his first communion, his vacations, his different studies, his examinations, his entry into Saint-Cyr [military academy] in 1848, his life with the dragoons [regiment], in the war in Italy [1857], with the lancers of the Imperial guards, with the Spahis [cavalry], with the riflemen at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, the balls of the Empress [Eugenie; wife of Napoleon III] at the Tuileries, etc. All this slow panorama was unrolled before his eyes in less than four seconds, for he recovered consciousness immediately

Of the five works by Allan Kardec, Heaven and Hell (1865) is the book that brings the more complete review of mediumistic messages related to the passing of a large number of individuals, from the highly spiritual to the more ignoble. In every case they were encouraged to describe the experience of dying and what they encountered in the hereafter. None of them reported anything close to a life-review.

Similarly, in the large collection of works authored by Andre Luiz over more than twenty years, most of them dealing with the experiences of the return to the spirit world, none reported a case of a life-review.

Chico Xavier, through whom Andre Luiz dictated his books, however, shared in a television interview in the mid-1960s, that he experienced a life-review when the airplane he was on had a mechanical problem and lost altitude quickly. Most of the viewers and the Spiritist community took it just an interesting event caused by panic, a physical event and nothing else.

What should we make from this striking omission? The NDE reports cannot be discounted, after all they are supported by strong evidences and a growing body of research? So, we are left to ponder the possible reasons.

  • Was the bringing life-reviews to light a decision by the spiritual mentors?
  • Or was it blocked by the subconscious of the mediums, all of them hailing from a heavy Catholic culture?
  • Or was it considered irrelevant at the time and therefore reserved for future times?
  • Or, if we look at those works from a different vantage, the information conveyed was just the core of an edifice that is to rise gradually as intellectual conditions of humankind allow? And, if that is the case, are we, those who appreciate its lights, willing to recognize the proposition that the Spiritist body of thought is incomplete?

After all the questions for such a complex subject, it may be our capability to ponder that is to be loved, even if it’s not the understanding. This is a tall order of ideas and we shall return to this issue in our next post.

The Life Review Experience

Dr. Kenneth Ring

Bibliography:

Holden J. M., Guest C, (1990). Life-Review in a non NDE Episode, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1990, Vol. 22, No. 1

Stevenson I., William E. (1995) Involuntary Memories During Severe Physical Illness or Injury, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, vol. 183, No. 7.

Long J. and Perry P. (2010) Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, Harper & Collins, p 98

Flammarion, C. Death and Its Mystery, 1922

New Heights For The Human Consciousness

New Heights For The Human Consciousness

by | May 21, 2021 | Allan Kardec, Andre Luiz, Consciousness Studies, Life After Death, Near-Death Experiences, Spiritist knowledge

Ellen was in awe of the light, the intensity and beauty of the colors, and the lightness of the space where she found herself. Love was all pervading, and she felt that she had become the love that enveloped her. Almost simultaneously she felt a deep awareness that we are all perfect, and that everyone has a purpose for their lives on Earth. She was welcomed in that journey by a being of light, and felt from him the most serene reassurance that all was OK.

As far as clinical death goes, Ellen’s story is not unique. Similar stories have been part of our history, and have been observed in most cultures of the world. What makes it different now is the fact that Ellen’s story is one of many thousands that scientists have documented, and supported with extensive medical data, in the last 40 years.

This story is another example. It was published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, in 1991, as part of a large study conducted in Holland. Having suffered a heart attack, a patient was brought to a hospital in Holland. He was clinically dead. During the resuscitation procedures a nurse removed his dentures and put them away. The resuscitation was successful, and after recovering the patient made an inquiry to the team on duty about his dentures.

Days later, in the hallway, he saw and recognized the nurse who assisted in his resuscitation. The patient told the nurse that he was the staff person who had taken his dentures and described the drawer where they had been placed. The nurse, who had forgotten all about it, went to the room and found the dentures, exactly where he was told by the patient.

In thousands of cases or cardiac resuscitation like this, the medical facts are consistent. The patient was connected to all the machinery of an Emergency Room, and was deemed to be clinically dead for several minutes, without a heartbeat or any indication of brain activity.  Still, many patients are resuscitated and recount similar stories about “what is on the other side”.  Such examples are abundant and comprehensive.

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have been studied for more than 40 years by researchers from a variety of disciplines including neuroscience, psychiatry, medicine, physics, and nursing.

The body of knowledge has become highly respectable and the advancements have the potential to transform how human beings see themselves and their lives on Earth.

This is a new frontier for scientists to explore the duality of body and mind. The scientific community has chosen the word consciousness as an alternative to the words soul or spirit, given their heavy religious connotations. It is important to be aware that words such as psyche, soul, spirit, mind, or consciousness communicate very much the same idea, that is, the non-physical essence of a human being.

Allan Kardec was adamant about the importance of maintaining the evolution of Spiritist thought current with scientific knowledge. It is therefore with this reference that we want to take this space to share some personal observations about the currency of our conceptions on the transitioning of the soul to the spiritual sphere.

If we take a dispassionate stance it’s clear that there are solid parallels between the new findings and the ideas espoused by Allan Kardec in Heaven and Hell, and in the Andre Luiz’s series about the after-life. At the same time, we must evaluate some of the new ideas that expand what we know, or help refocus the discrepant ones. This will be a series of seven blogposts, starting with the feeling of elation reported by most NDE’s experiencers, in our next issue.

Integrative Medicine + Spirit

Integrative Medicine + Spirit

by | Jan 3, 2021 | Allan Kardec, Healing Therapies, Religion vs Spirituality, Spiritual Evolution

Has the future finally come? Are we entering the era of medicine when the consciousness inhabiting the flesh is addressed by medical science? This “prophecy”, if I may use this word as a non-religious anticipation of the future, has been announced for the last fifty years in the Spiritist literature, especially in the works of Andre Luiz. Pronounced as a harbinger of a new future for the treatment of human diseases, the new medical practitioners would reach into the realities of the soul in order to understand the causes of many diseases that afflict the individual living in the flesh.

But, of course, we are not there yet and the medical sciences may have a long way to go. However, the first glimpses of this ideal are beginning to take shape in the field of Integrative Medicine and Integrative Mental Health. This new vision starts from the premise that the body has an innate ability to heal, and focuses on the treatment of the patient as a whole – body, mind, and spirit. It represents a movement towards a broader definition of health, and a fresh way of fostering a deeper understanding of self. It expands the conventional allopathic practice, by accepting a variety of non-traditional techniques such as: yoga, acupuncture, hypnosis, chiropractic, t’ai chi, meditation, and breathing exercises. The spirit becomes an essential part of medical care.

The need for an integrated approach is even more valuable in the area of mental health, where the dysfunctions of the spirit intervene in many forms of mental health disease. The obstacles for the acceptance of the existence of a spirit inhabiting a human body are still enormous, specially the implication that the spirit has existed before the body and has a history of experiences. However, this is a possibility worthy of consideration as we pursue a broader understanding of mental diseases. Though still in an exploratory stage, many psychiatric hospitals in Brazil have started practicing and researching spiritual techniques for the treatment of some types of psychotic disorders.

Psychosis is a generic term that characterizes disruptions to a person’s thoughts and perceptions, resulting in strange thinking, behaviors and emotions. Hearing voices and seeing things that aren’t there are common examples. Psychosis can also be present in bipolar disorders and depression.

In this video, the leading psychiatrist of a hospital where an integrated mental health approach is utilized describes how the treatment plan is applied including healing work, trance communication, deep prayer, and meditation.

Emma Bragdon, PhD.: What's Unique and Extraordinary about Spiritist Treatment from Emma Bragdon on Vimeo.

SEARCH FOR MEANING WITH KARDEC

SEARCH FOR MEANING WITH KARDEC

by | Dec 13, 2020 | Allan Kardec, Books, Spiritist knowledge

The world has never seemed so surreal for us. Over 40 million affected by the Coronavirus and over one million people dead. Almost every country struggling to protect their populations and unable to stop the spread of an insidious enemy. The fear of death has become a tangible specter in our human reality. People are forced to live alone when mortally ill, perhaps even dying, and to grieve alone. The fear of the end, of extinction, is a source of inescapable anxiety, and deep torment for most. 

Faith in the continuity of life, or the promises of a religion, help us to reconcile with and accept the fear. For the people who recovered from the disease what they experienced in the silent conversations at the border of an unknown future may never be forgotten. And, for them those were days of awakening and reconnection with the Spirit.

And for those who lost the battle, their suffering and the grief of separation from their loved ones, we Spiritists, know is a new beginning. The fear and trauma, the tears and longing, are not erased by miracle, but these souls will gradually learn to live with themselves in another reality.

In these dire times, the message of The Spirits’ Book grows inside us lifting from our soul the existential anxiety, restoring our courage to affirm life, and reconnecting ourselves with our purpose.

SES is proud to launch the third edition of The Spirits’ Book, a timeless classic that has been a source of comfort, of courage, and resilience to millions through the many crises and wars humanity has faced in the last 150 years. A very special opportunity for you, too, to rebuild your courage and faith to get through these difficult times.

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The Spirits’ Book – More Cutting Edge Today Than Ever

The Spirits’ Book – More Cutting Edge Today Than Ever

by | Sep 12, 2020 | Allan Kardec, Spiritist knowledge

In the morning of April 18, 1857, a print master delivered 1200 copies of the book to the Dentu bookstore in the heart of Paris. The precious freight had traveled quite a distance to its destination; from Saint-Germain-en-Laye to Paris by horse-drawn carriage, a journey of 20 kilometers to be exact. The book was born with a mission, one that transcended the estimates of every one of its craftsmen, including its author, Allan Kardec. The volumes, leather bound with shining gold lettering, represented the fruition of a great project.

Livrerie Dantu, 1857.

Paris, city of lights, was the intellectual and artistic capital of the Western world in the 19th century. It served as the birth for most important literary movements of the times. It was the century of Victor Hugo, Madame de Stael, Alexandre Dumas (father), Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, and Emile Zola.

In the arts, France teemed with the genius of Edouard Manet, Gustave Dore, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. In philosophy, the century was marked by the scientific positivism of August Comte, which established that authentic knowledge comes only from the confirmation of theories through scientific methods. However, the ferment of an even greater revolution was spreading through Europe. An intellectual revolution that was linked to France through Lamarck, but also strongly rooted in the United Kingdom. In the early years of the century, discoveries in geology and paleontology had set the terrain for the science of evolution. By 1844, the general concept of evolution was widely accepted. In 1851, Herbert Spencer, coined the term of ‘survival of the fittest.’ In 1855, Darwin exchanged ideas and papers with colleagues about the mechanisms of evolution.

“The only unshakeable faith is that which can withstand reason, face to face, in every stage of humankind’s progress.”

Allan Kardec

The Tree of Life.

Humanity lived a moment of great anticipation and transition. The scientific views on evolution that dominated the academic debate had the potential to unsettle the monolith of religious theology. Evolution, if confirmed, would disprove the biblical concepts of creation, and the role of God in the creation of earth. The very foundation of the Judeo-Christian civilization was at great risk.

It was at this very bewildering moment of the human history that The Spirits’ Book was released in France, almost two years before the publication of the On The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, in England. We can only assume that, based on current spiritual knowledge, that this was not an accident. The extensive research work conducted by Allan Kardec interviewing mediums, compiling, sorting, and classifying the material they received had started ten years earlier. With the assistance of a small number of collaborators Allan Kardec articulated the philosophy that became known as the Spiritist Doctrine. The work was not however a simple compilation of scattered ideas generated by mediums in different countries. Allan Kardec applied the principles of a rigorous positivist methodology to this body of knowledge. The importance of this fact must not be overlooked since positivism represented at the time the most advanced proposal in an area that came to be known in the 20th Century as philosophy of science.

The second and possibly most notable aspect of Allan Kardec’s stance is the affirmation of the concept of evolution, not only in the context of biological species, but in the more complex context of the transformation of the human soul. In one single stroke, The Spirits’ Book, destroyed the concept of hell as a place for the wretched—since every soul would have continuous progress as their destiny–, and showed how the spirit, by incarnating in the flesh, becomes a driver (and beneficiary) of the evolution of the human species. 

 

Charles Darwin

Today, we reflect on the controversy which still rages in the United States about the theory of evolution and creationism. More than 50% of the American population today still finds considerable difficulty in reevaluating the notion that God created human beings as they currently are. The debates and polemics that have taken hold of school systems in America are clear indications of the magnitude of Allan Kardec’s task. The Spiritist Doctrine was ahead of its time then, and is still ahead of its time today. The consciousness of the masses is only occasionally permeable to the ideas that the enlightened intelligences conveyed in The Spirits’ Book. The ideas advanced in The Spirit’ Book are not and were not in any sense new or revolutionary. According to Allan Kardec, the book is just a repository of the timeless wisdom of humankind.

More than fifty million copies have been sold. We celebrate a work that shredded the veils of the dogmas that had eclipsed human reasoning for centuries. Appropriately, we salute in this book, all the heroes whose words found their way into the text, all the heroes whose efforts sustained Allan Kardec in his mission, and all the heroes who (from the spirit realm) have continued to sustain its wisdom. What’s more important, we thankfully salute the Creator whose breath gave us life, and whose love gave us The Spirits’ Book.

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