The Spiritist review — Journal of psychological studies — 1858

Allan Kardec

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Jupiter and a few other worlds

Before going into details about the revelations made to us by the spirits, with respect to the state of different worlds, let us see the logical consequence that we can reach by ourselves and simple reasoning. Let us refer to the spirits’ scale we gave in the previous issue.. Those willing to seriously dive into this new science, we recommend a careful in depth study of that scale, as it contain the key to many mysteries.

The spiritual world is composed of souls of all humans on this Earth and other spheres, released from the corporeal connections; by the same way, all humans are animated by incarnated spirits. There is therefore solidarity between these two worlds: men will have the same qualities and imperfections of the spirits to whom they are united; the spirits will be more or less good or bad, depending on the progress they have made during their corporeal existence. These few words summarize the whole Spirits Doctrine. As the acts of men are the product of their free will, they retain the stamp of perfection or imperfection of the spirit that animate them. It will be, therefore, easy for us to have an idea about the moral state of any given world, according to the nature of its inhabiting spirits; somehow we can describe its legislation, draw a picture of their customs, habits, and social relationships.

Let us then suppose a world solely inhabited by spirits of the ninth class, impure spirits, and let us travel there in our thoughts. We will see all passions unleashed and unrestrained; the moral state in its lowest degree of savageness; animal life in all its brutality; lack of social ties, as each person lives and acts only for themselves and to the satisfaction of their gross appetites; egotism reigns there as supreme and absolute, dragging in its wake hatred, envy, jealousy, envy and murder.

We turn now to another sphere where there are spirits of all classes of the third order: impure spirits, frivolous, pseudo-wise, neutral. We know that evil prevails in all classes of that order, but without having the idea of good, the idea of evil diminishes as they move away from the last class. Selfishness is always the leading cause of action, but customs are softer, intelligence more developed, evil presents itself somewhat disguised, dressed up, masked.

These same qualities engineer another defect ─ pride, as the higher classes are sufficiently educated to be aware of their superiority but not enough to understand what they lack. Hence their

tendency to enslave inferior or weaker races, maintained under their control. As they do not have the feeling of good, having only the instinct of the self, they put their intelligence at the service of satisfying their own passions. In such a society the impure element, if dominating, crushes the other; otherwise the least evil one will try to destroy their enemies; in any case there will be struggle, bloody fight of extermination, because these are two elements that have opposing interests. To protect property and people there will be the need for laws, but these will be dictated by personal interests and not by justice; they shall be made by the strong to the disadvantage of the weak.

Suppose now a world where, between the bad elements we have just seen, there is some of the second order. In this order, in the midst of evil, we shall see some emerging virtues. If the good ones are a minority, they will fall victims of the evil ones; however, as their dominance progressively prevails, legislation becomes more human, more equitable and Christian charity is no longer a dead letter for everyone. Out of this goodness another vice will rise. Despite the war that the bad ones incessantly declare to the good ones, they cannot help it but to intimately admire them. Observing the rise of virtue over vice and not having the strength or will to do so, they try to parody and hide it. Hence the large number of hypocrites in every society where civilization is still imperfect.

Let us continue our journey through the worlds to the one that will give us some rest from the sad spectacle we have just watched. It is only inhabited by spirits of the second order. What a difference! The degree of purification achieved among them excludes any evil thought and this is enough to give us an idea of its moral state. The legislation is very simple, as men do not need to defend themselves against each other; nobody wants to harm their neighbor; no one takes what does not belong to them; no one seeks to live at the expense of their fellow citizens. Everything breathes benevolence and love; men do not seek to mutually harm each other; there is absolutely no hatred; selfishness is unknown and hypocrisy would have no objective. Absolute equality does not reign there, as it would presume a perfect identity of intellectual and moral development. Well we see from the spirits’ scale that the second order comprises several degrees of development, thus there will be inequalities in this world, as some are more advanced than others, but as there is only good thoughts among them all, the most advanced will never conceive anything out of pride or the others out of envy. The inferior understands the ascendancy of the superior and submits to that since such an ascendency is purely moral and nobody uses that to oppress others.

The consequences we extracted from this picture, although presented in a hypothetical way, are not any less rational. Everyone can infer the social state of a world by the proportion of the moral elements that we suppose constitutes it.

We have seen, through the above abstraction made of the revelation of the spirits, the odds are in favor in the explanation of the plurality of worlds. Well, it is no less rational to think that not all of them are in the same degree of perfection and, therefore, our assumptions may well be the expression of reality.

In a positive way, we only know our own world. Which position does it occupy in this hierarchy? Behold! Just consider what takes place in this world to conclude that it is far from deserving the first class and we are convinced that by reading these lines you have already spotted its position.When the spirits say that, “if it is not the last; it is one of the last,” unfortunately, simple common sense says that they are not mistaken. We have much to do to elevate it to the category we last described, and we needed that Christ had come to show us the path.

With respect to the reference we can give as to our reasoning about the several globes of our planetary maelstrom, all we have is the teaching of the spirits. Now, for those who will only admit this existence from its tangible evidence, the fact is that, with that respect to their assertion, we do not have the stamp of direct experimentation. However, don’t we everyday accept with confidence other travelers’ descriptions of regions we have never seen? If we are only to believe in what we see, we will believe in a few things only. What in this case gives some value to what the spirits say is the agreement among them, at least on the capital points. For us who have witnessed such communications hundreds of times; who appreciated them in their minimum details; who probed their weak and strong points, who observed the similarities and contradictions, we find in them all the characters of the likelihood. However, we offer them as nothing more than information and teachings, to which everyone is free to attribute the importance that best suits their opinion.

According to the spirits, Mars would be even less advanced than Earth. Spirits incarnated there seem to belong almost exclusively to the ninth class, of the impure spirits, so that the first picture given above would be a description of that world. Several other smaller globes are, with some nuances, in the same category. Earth would come next. The majority of its inhabitants belong undeniably to all classes of the third order and an insignificant proportion to the last classes of the second order. The superior spirits, from the second and third classes, here sometimes execute missions of civilization and progress, but these are exceptions. Mercury and Saturn come after Earth. The numerical superiority of the good spirits gives them predominance over the inferior spirits, resulting in a more perfect social order, less selfish relationships and therefore happier living conditions. The Moon and Venus are more or less at the same level, and in all aspects, more advanced than Mercury and Saturn. Uranus and Neptune would be even above the latter ones. It is supposed that the moral elements of these two planets are formed by the first class of the third order and the great majority by spirits of the second order. Men are infinitely happier there than on Earth, since they do not have to sustain the same struggles nor suffer the same tribulations, as they are not exposed to the same physical and moral vicissitudes either.

Of all planets, the most advanced by all means is Jupiter. It is the exclusive realm of goodness and justice, since it only has good spirits. One can have an idea of the happy state of its inhabitants by the description we gave of a world inhabited by spirits of the second order.

The superiority of Jupiter is not only in the moral state of its inhabitants; it is also in its physical structure. Here is the description we were given about this privileged world, where the majority of the good men who have honored our Earth with their virtue and talent live.

The conformation of the body is more or less the same as those of Earth’s inhabitants, but it is less material, less dense and with a very low specific weight. While we painfully crawl on Earth, the inhabitants of Jupiter transport themselves from one place to another by sliding on the surface of the soil, almost tirelessly, like the bird in the air or the fish in the water. As the matter that forms the body is more refined, it dissipates after death, without being subjected to putrid decomposition. Most of the diseases that afflict us are unknown there, especially those originating from the excesses of all kinds and the debauchery of passions. Subsistance is in concert with that ethereal organization; it would not be sufficient enough for our coarse stomachs, and ours would be too heavy for them. It consists of fruits and plants which, in fact, they somehow harvest, for the most part, from the environment, whose nutritious emanations they inhale. Life span is proportionally much longer than that on earth. The average is equivalent to about five of our centuries. The development is also very fast and childhood lasts only a few of our months.

Under this light covering, the spirits easily unleash and communicate with each other only through their thoughts, which do not exclude the articulated language. Second sight is a permanent faculty to them. Their normal state can be compared to our lucid somnambulists. That is why they manifest to us more easily than those incarnated in grosser and more material worlds. The intuition they have of their future; the security given by a conscience exempt of remorse, are the reasons why death does not cause them any concern. They see its arrival without fear and as a simple transformation.

The animals are not excluded from this progressive state, although not similar to that of man, even relatively to the physical. Their body, more materialized, is attached to the ground, like ours on Earth. Their intelligence is more developed than that of our animals. The structure of their limbs adapts to all requirements of the work. They are responsible for the execution of manual jobs. They are the servants and foremen. Men’s occupations are purely intellectual. For them man is a god, but a protective deity, who never abuses his power to oppress them.

The spirits, who inhabit Jupiter, when they want to communicate with us, are usually delighted to describe their planet. When asked why, they reply that they do it in order to inspire the love of good in us, with the hope that we will get there one day. It was with that purpose that one of them, who lived on earth with the name of Bernard Palissy, the famous potter of the XVI century, spontaneously tried, without any request, a series of drawings, remarkable for its originality as for the talent of execution, intended to let us know, in their smallest details, this world so strange and so new to us. Some of them portray characters, animals, scenes of the private life; the most admirable, however, are those that represent houses, true masterpieces that nothing on Earth could give us an idea as they do not resemble anything we know.

It is an indescribable kind of architecture, so original and yet so harmonious, ornamentation so rich and so graceful, that it challenges the most fertile imagination. Victorien Sardou, a young scholar of our circle of friends, full of talent and future, but with no drawing skills, served him as an intermediary. Palissy promised us a series which somehow will be an illustrated essay about this wonderful world. We hope that this original and interesting collection which we will talk about in a special article devoted to drawing mediums, can one day be delivered to the public.

Planet Jupiter, despite the invitive picture given to us, is not, however, the most perfect of the worlds. There are others, unknown to us, which are far superior, both physically and morally, and whose inhabitants enjoy even more perfect happiness: they are the resting place of the superior spirits, whose ethereal covering has nothing else of the known properties of matter.

We have been asked, many times, if we think that man's condition here would be an absolute obstacle for him to pass, without an intermediary, from Earth to Jupiter. To all questions regarding the Spiritist Doctrine we have never answered with our own ideas, against which we are always on guard. We simply pass the teachings given to us, which we do not accept lightheartedly and with a thoughtless enthusiasm. We clearly answer the above question as this is the formal sense of our instructions and the result of our own observations: YES, on leaving Earth, man can immediately go to Jupiter, or an analogous world, because it is not unique in its category. There can be certainty about this? NO. However, he can go, as there are on Earth, though in a very small number, very good spirits and quite dematerialized not to feel awkward in a world where evil has no access. However, he cannot be sure about this, as he can be deceived regarding his personal merit and, moreover, may have another mission to accomplish elsewhere. Those who can expect this favor are certainly neither the selfish nor the ambitious, nor the greedy, nor the ungrateful, nor the envious, nor the proud, nor the futile, nor the hypocrites, nor the sensual, nor any of those dominated by their attachment to Earthly things.

To those, long and tough trials may still be necessary. That depends on their will.

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