A. What is revelation in the special sense of religious faith?
B. Are there direct revelations from God to humans?
C. What is the characteristic of Spiritist revelation?
Text for reading
26. The mediumistic communications contain nothing strange to whomever is familiar with spiritual phenomena and the way in which relations occur between incarnates and discarnates. Teachings may be transmitted in several different ways: through pure and simple inspiration, through the auditory word, or through the seeing of instructor spirits in visions and apparitions, whether in dreams or in the waking state, many examples of which may be seen in the Bible, the Gospels and the sacred books of all cultures.
27. It is strictly precise to say that almost all revelators are inspired hearing or seeing mediums, from which, however, it does not follow that all mediums are revelators, much less direct intermediaries from the Divinity or its messengers.
28. Only pure spirits receive the word of God with the mission of transmitting it, but nowadays we know that all spirits are far from being perfect, and that there are those who present themselves under false appearances; this is what led John to state: “Do not believe in every spirit, but first, see if the spirits are from God.” (I Jn. 4: 4)
29. Hence, it is just as possible to have authentic and true revelations, as it is to have apocryphal and deceitful ones. The fundamental character of divine revelation is that of eternal truthfulness. Every revelation tainted with error or subject to change cannot have emanated from God. Thus it is that the law of the Decalogue displays all the characteristics of its origin, whereas the other Mosaic laws, essentially transitory and frequently contradicting the law of Sinai are the personal and political work of the Hebrew Lawgiver.
30. Lawgiver. As the customs of the people tamed down, these laws fell into disuse by themselves, whereas the Decalogue continued to remain standing as a beacon for humankind. Christ himself made it the foundation of his building, whereas he abolished the other laws.
31. Christ and Moses are the two great revelators who changed the face of the world, and therein lies the proof of their divine mission. A purely human work would not have had such power.
32. An important revelation is being fulfilled at the present time: that which shows us the possibility of communicating with the beings of the spirit world. Such knowledge is not new, of course; however, until now it had remained more or less disregarded, that is, without any benefit to humankind. Ignorance of the laws that govern such relations had smothered them under superstition; humans were incapable of deriving any sound conclusion from them.
33. It was reserved for our own era to disentangle them from their nonsensical accessories, to comprehend their scope and to set free the light that must illuminate the course of the future.
34. By enabling us to know the invisible world, which surrounds us and in the midst of which we live without suspecting it, the laws that govern it, its relations with the visible world, the nature and state of the beings who inhabit it, and, consequently, the destiny of the human being after death, Spiritism is a true revelation in the scientific meaning of the word.
35. As a means of development, Spiritism proceeds exactly in the same way as the positive sciences; i.e., it applies the experimental method. When phenomena of a new order occur that cannot be explained by known laws, Spiritism observes, compares and analyzes them, and tracing the effects back to the causes, it arrives at the law governing them. Afterward, it deduces their consequences and searches for their useful applications. It establishes no preconceived theory; thus, it sets forth as a hypothesis neither the existence or intervention of spirits, the perispirit, reincarnation, nor any of the Spiritism principles. It concluded that spirits exist when such existence was deduced from the evidence derived from observing the phenomena, and it proceeded likewise regarding the other principles.
36. It was not the phenomena that came as an afterthought to confirm the theory, but the theory that came subsequently to explain and summarize the phenomena. Thus, it is entirely correct to state that Spiritism is a science of observation and not a product of the imagination.
37. The sciences have made no serious progress except when their studies have been based on the experimental method. However, to this day it is believed that this method is applicable only to matter; nonetheless, it is equally applicable to things metaphysical. Let us cite an example. In the world of spirits a very odd occurrence may be observed, which certainly no one would have suspected: there are some spirits who do not believe they are actually dead. Well then! Highly evolved spirits, who know this fact perfectly well, did not come to say beforehand, “There are spirits who believe they are still living the earthly life, who have retained their tastes, habits and instincts”; rather, they caused spirits of this category to manifest themselves so that we could observe them.
38. Having observed spirits who were uncertain of their state, or who stated that they were still in this world and believed they were attending to their normal occupations, from the example was derived the rule. The great number of such phenomena showed us that this was no exception, but one of the phases of spirit life. It enabled us to study all the varieties and causes of this odd illusion, to realize that this situation is principally characteristic of spirits who are only slightly advanced morally, that it is peculiar to certain kinds of death, and that it is only temporary, although it can last for days, months or years. It was thus that the theory was born from the observation. The same has occurred with all the other principles of Spiritism.
39. In the same way that science per se has as its object the study of the laws of the material principle, the special object of Spiritism is the knowledge of the laws of the spiritual principle. Now, since the latter is one of the forces of nature, which reacts incessantly and reciprocally upon the material principle, it follows that knowledge of one cannot be complete without knowledge of the other.
40. Spiritism and science complete each other: science without Spiritism is completely unable to explain certain phenomena solely by means of the laws of matter; Spiritism without science would lack support and control. The study of the laws of matter had to precede the study of spirituality because it is matter that first strikes the senses. If Spiritism had come before scientific discoveries, it would have been an aborted endeavor, like everything else that arrives before its time.
41. All the sciences are linked together and have succeeded one another in a rational order; they were born one from the other as they found a point of support in previous ideas and knowledge. Astronomy, one of the first sciences to be cultivated, remained in the errors of childhood until the moment when physics arrived on the scene to reveal the law of the forces of natural agents. Chemistry, unable to do anything without physics, had to follow it closely so that afterward the two could proceed in agreement, one supported by the other. Anatomy, physiology, zoology, botany and mineralogy did not become genuine sciences except with the help of the insights brought by physics and chemistry. Geology, born just yesterday, without astronomy, physics, chemistry and all the others, would have lacked its true elements of vitality; hence, it could only have come along later.
42. Modern science demonstrated the truth regarding the four primitive elements of the ancients, and, observation by observation, arrived at the concept of only one generating element for all the transformations of matter; however, matter per se is inert; it has neither life, thought nor feeling; it must be joined with the spiritual principle.
43. Spiritism neither discovered nor invented this principle, but it was the first to demonstrate it through irrefutable proofs; it studied it, analyzed it and rendered its action obvious. To the material element it added the spiritual element. The material element and the spiritual element: these are the two principles, the two living forces of nature. Through the indissoluble union of these two elements one can easily explain a multitude of phenomena unexplainable till now. [1]
44. Having the study of one of the two constituent elements of the universe as its object, Spiritism inevitably comes in contact with the majority of the sciences; it could not have appeared except after their development, and through the force of things it was born from the impossibility of everything being explained solely with the aid of the laws of matter.
45. Spiritism has been accused of kinship with magic and sorcery; however, it has been forgotten that astronomy has judicial astrology [2] as its older kin, and which is still not too far removed from our day; that chemistry is the daughter of alchemy, which no sensible person would dare take up nowadays. Based on this, no one would deny that the seed of the truths from which these current sciences arose were to be found in astrology and alchemy.
46. The same has occurred with Spiritism regarding magic and sorcery; these also rested on the manifestation of spirits, just as astrology rested on the movement of the heavenly bodies. However, ignorant of the laws that govern the spirit world, they combined with these relations’ practices and beliefs to which modern Spiritism, the fruit of experimentation and observation, has put an end. Of course, the distance that separates Spiritism from magic and sorcery is much greater than that which exists between astronomy and astrology, and between chemistry and alchemy; to want to confuse them is to demonstrate the fact that one does not know the first thing about them.
47. The sole fact of the possibility of communicating with the beings of the spirit world has incalculable consequences of the highest import; a whole new world has been revealed to us, one that is all the more important because it concerns all humankind, without exception. As it becomes more widespread, this knowledge cannot help but bring a profound change in the customs, character, habits and beliefs that have such a big influence on societal relations.
48. It is a whole revolution that operates on ideas, a revolution all the greater and more powerful in that it is not limited to one particular culture or caste, but simultaneously reaches the heart all classes, nationalities and religious belief systems.
49. It is, therefore, with good reason that Spiritism is considered to be the third of the great revelations. Let us see how these revelations differ and what bond links them together.
[1] The word element is not used here in the sense of a simple, elemental body, or of primitive molecules, but in the sense of a constituent part of a whole. In this sense, one could say that the spiritual element takes an active part in the economy of the universe, just as one says that the civil element and the military element make up a figure in the total sum of a population; that the religious element has bearing upon education; that in Algeria there is the Arab element and the European element. – Auth.
[2] Judicial astrology is the art of forecasting future events by calculation of the planetary and stellar bodies and their relationship to the Earth. The term “Judicial astrology ” was mainly used in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance to distinguish between the type of astrology that was considered to be heretical by the Catholic church, versus the “natural astrology” such as Medical astrology and Meteorological astrology which were seen as acceptable because they were a part of the natural sciences of the time. Today this distinction is largely obsolete. (Wikipedia contributors, “Judicial astrology,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http:// en.wikipedia.org/ w/ index.php? title = Judicial_astrology& oldid =230524294). – Tr.
Answers to Proposed Questions
A. What is revelation in the special sense of religious faith?
In the special sense of religious faith, revelation applies more particularly to spiritual matters, which humans cannot know by themselves, and which they cannot discover by means of their senses, the understanding of which is given to them by God or God’s messengers, whether by direct word or inspiration. In this case, revelation is always given to qualified individuals designated as prophets or messiahs; that is, messengers or missionaries on a mission to transmit revelation to humankind. (Genesis, Ch. I, items 7 and 8)
B. Are there direct revelations from God to humans?
Given the proposed question, Kardec says he would not dare answer either affirmatively or negatively in an absolute manner. There is nothing radically impossible about it, but there is nothing to prove it with certainty. What cannot be doubted, however, is that the spirits closest to God in perfection grasp God’s thought and can transmit it. As for incarnate revelators, according to the hierarchical order to which they belong and the degree of their own personal knowledge, they can draw their teaching from their own knowledge, or they can receive it from more highly evolved spirits, and even from messengers straight from God. The latter, speaking in God’s name, might at times have been taken for God per se. (Genesis, Ch. I, items 9 and 10)
C. What is the characteristic of Spiritist revelation?
Spiritist revelation has a dual characteristic: it derives simultaneously from a divine and a scientific revelation. It derives from the former the fact that its advent was providential and not the result of the initiative and premeditated desire of any one human being in particular; that the fundamental points of Spiritist come from the teachings given by the Spirits, appointed by God to enlighten humans about matters of which they were ignorant and could not learn by themselves, but which they must now know, now that they are mature enough to understand them. It derives from the latter in that such teachings are not the privilege of any one individual, but were given to the whole world through the same means; that those who transmit them and those who receive them are not passive subjects excused from the work of observation and research; that they are not called to renounce their own reason and free will; that scrutinizing them is not prohibited but, on the contrary, recommended; and finally, that the Spiritist Faith has not been dictated in its entirety nor imposed upon a blind faith, but rather, that it is deduced through human endeavor, from the observation of the phenomena that the Spirits place right before our eyes, and from the teachings they give, teachings that people can study, comment on and compare, and from which they themselves draw conclusions and applications. In other words, what characterize Spiritist revelation is that its source is divine, that its initiative belongs to the Spirits, and that its development is the result of the work of men and women. (Genesis, Ch. I, items 12 and 13)
