One of the things that attract me most in literature is the introduction of the work that will unfold, made by its author, or its translator, or even by someone invited to make its presentation.

When I read The Book of Spirits (O Livro dos Espíritos) for the first time, I felt a great interest in the work when I read the considerations of Jose Herculano Pires, one of the most respected translators, alongside others as reputable as himself. In a synthetic and didactic way, he summarizes the greatness of the content and the importance it will have on the following days to its publication.

As he mentions in his first speeches, from April 18, 1857, the date of its publication, “the Spiritist era dawned on the world. In him the evangelical promise of the Consoler, the Paraclete or Spirit of Truth was fulfilled. To say this is equivalent to state that The Book of Spirits is the code of a new phase of human evolution”. Complementing, he said that “it would not be an ordinary book, which you can read overnight and then forget about it in a corner of the shelf. Our duty would be to study and meditate on it, constantly reading and rereading it.”

The desire is to fully transcribe what is recorded there, as we know that many in our own country have not yet read it and, if they did, it was superficially. Others consider its content “boring” or with an outdated language, suggesting more “current” readings. That is sad! If they only knew how many teachings and revelations are contained there...

Just to remember what is notorious, The Book of Spirits is the basis, the cornerstone of Spiritism, with which it emerged and spread, imposed and consolidated in the world. Before this book there was no Spiritism and not even this word existed. We know that it was Kardec who created specific words to differentiate the new revelation from all the spiritualist understandings then in force.

Another relevant aspect is the historical analysis made so that we could understand even more the importance of the emergence of the Doctrine of the Spirits, in a sequence of facts and moments of our civilization, which lead us to realize that everything follows a cosmic plan and that everything happens with a purpose so that progress and evolution can operate, independently of our will. At that point, we are filled with hope and our faith grows. To avoid that what is exposed in this paragraph is not left without a greater understanding, I copy Herculano's notes: 

“When the world was getting ready to leave the chaos of primitive civilizations, Moses appeared, as the leader of a people destined to trace the lines of a new world and from his hands came the Bible. It was not Moses who wrote it, but he was the central motive of this first codification of the new cycle of revelations: The Christian. Later, when the biblical influence had already shaped a people, and when this people was already dispersed throughout the gentile world, spreading the new law, Jesus appeared; and from His words, gathered by the disciples, came the Gospel. 

The Bible is the codification of the first Christian revelation, the Hebrew code in which the sacred principles and the great religious legends of ancient peoples were merged, the great synthesis of the efforts of Antiquity towards the spirit. It is no wonder that it is often frightening and contradictory to modern man. The Gospel is the codification of the second Christian revelation, the one that shines at the center of the triad of these revelations, having in the figure of Christ the sun that illuminates the two others, that sheds its light on the past and the future, establishing between them the necessary connection. But, just as the Gospel was already announced in the Bible, the prediction of a new code also appeared, that of the Spirit of Truth, as seen in John, 23. And the new code appeared at the hands of Allan Kardec, under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth, at the exact moment when the world was preparing to enter a superior phase of its development.” (*)

Thus, each phase of human evolution ends with a conceptual synthesis of all its achievements. The Bible is the synthesis of Antiquity, as the Gospel is the synthesis of the Greco-Roman-Jewish world, and The Book of Spirits is the synthesis of the modern world. But each synthesis does not only contain the results of the evolution carried out, because it also contains the seeds of the future. And in the evangelical synthesis we have to consider, above all, the presence of the Messiah, as an intervention from Above for the reorientation of earthly thinking, bringing the main beams of the construction of the new era.

I brought all this information that I thought was necessary for us to enter another no less important point, which is to treat, of course, in a very brief synthesis, the Spiritist Doctrine as an educator of our spirit.

Our purpose is not to talk about the history of education, which has a wonderful content, in all its aspects, but to bring some guidelines that the Superior Spirits gave us and that are worth remembering and bringing to our lives.

It is important to emphasize that Kardec was not a philosopher, but an educator, a specialist in pedagogy, a disciple of Pestalozzi. Although we can infer the philosophical content in The Book of Spirits, it was not written under the rigors of a detailed philosophical exposition, to the point of believing that a new philosophical school was born there. On this subject, I recommend reading the analysis that Herculano made in the introduction to the work.

Thus, Kardec, as an excellent educator, emphasized the importance of education for the progress and moral transformation of man. The Book of Spirits itself is filled with these teachings, which he wrote and published.

Allan Kardec saw education as an effective remedy for combating evil in general and the bad tendencies that the Spirit manifests from an early age and that must be observed by parents, who are the first educators of the child, a being who only displays “the appearances of innocence”, but deep down he is an individual in the process of improvement, who brings extensive baggage from the past to express himself according to his particular character.

In question 796 of the cited work, analyzing the rigor of penal laws, about being a necessity, the Superior Spirits answer that they, the laws, would always be insufficient to eliminate the root of evil. “Only education can reform men,” they then asserted. The aggravation of penalties, or the adoption of capital punishment, or death penalty, would be useless, since the education of the Spirit involves respect for life, individuality and dignity.

In question 685 of the same book, we find a concept of education developed by Kardec: “education is a set of acquired habits”. In this context, the Master of Lyon places education as an essential element for the solution of even the economic problems of Humanity. And he, so that there would be no doubt, clarified: “not intellectual education, but moral education, and not yet moral education through books, but that which consists in the art of forming characters, that which creates habits”.

These and many other guidelines are passed on to us and it is for this reason that we have the duty, as Spiritists that we say we are, to look into the works of the Pentateuch and carry forward, without distortion, with perseverance, the revealing content and, above all, educator of our Doctrine, which did not come into the world for a few, but for all Humanity.

Let's think about it!

(*) This introduction written by Jose Herculano Pires is part of the special edition of LAKE, commemorating the centenary of "The Book of Spirits", published on April 18, 1957.