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The idea first came up in the Brazilian city of Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, devised by a group of local volunteer Spiritists. It is a virtual Spiritist community created to provide a number of services, including study groups, courses, healing and fraternal assistance, or counselling. It is all done via the internet, on the website ESPIRITA.INFO
The aim of this website is not to compete with the traditional activities offered by Spiritist Centres, but to offer an alternative for those who may have problems attending those events in person. Urban mobility is a well-known problem in larger cities. You also have people who fall ill or are elderly or have young children and may not have the opportunity to physically attend a Spiritist Centre.
To explain the idea behind this project, we spoke to one of its organisers, Ely Matos (photo).
What exactly is ESPIRITA.INFO?
ESPIRITA.INFO is a virtual community aimed at promoting the practice and study of Spiritism. All our activities are planned, organised and developed online, as part of the CVDEE (Centro Virtual de Divulgação e Estudo do Espiritismo, or Virtual Centre for the Dissemination and Study of Spiritism – http://cvdee.org), which we founded with a group of friends in 1998. With the development of the technology, we felt the need to update our activities.
What will the website provide?
We intend to provide information that those studying Spiritism will be able to access: text books, books, online courses and videos. We will also keep virtual classrooms open and will have healing and counselling done on the website. All these resources are available on http://espirita.info and on your YouTube channel. To access it, please click here.
How does that type of healing work? Is it what Allan Kardec called mental magnetisation?
The healing will be done a simple, straightforward manner, as Spiritism teaches. Once people get together in a virtual room, those in charge of the healing will read a page from a good book, will make a brief comment and will say a prayer for those who are present. Kardec, mentions, indeed, this process, which he called mental magnetisation, on January 1863 edition of the Spiritist Review. He showed that through the power of thought we are able to form a health fluidic chain, without the need of having near us, physically, those we are praying for.
What about fraternal assistance, or counselling?
We are calling it “online fraternal assistance.” It is a private conversation between the person who came seeking help and one or two volunteers from ESPIRITA.INFO, who have experience in giving counselling. The conversion is pre-booked on the website and will last not more than 30 minutes. Many Spiritist Centres have adopted this practice, which we think can be very effective, despite the limitations of this type of technology.
Can anyone benefit from that? And how do they do to take part?
Yes, the “virtual healing” is open to the general public and it takes place at 7pm local time in Brasília, from Monday to Friday. The link for the healing can be found on the website. The Fraternal Assistance service can only be done if you pre-book it and the time slots available are also displayed on the website. The person will get a confirmation email. We also ask you to register and enrol previously if you want to join the online courses, as the number of places available is limited.
Is ESPIRITA.INFO free of charge? Is it already live online?
Yes, all activities provided by the ESPIRITA.INFO community are free of charge. And they went live yesterday, August 22nd. All you need to do is to access our website, http://espirita.info/ |
