We can study the Spirits' reincarnation didactically. We have to examine the following five questions: What is the purpose of reincarnation? Why do we reincarnate? When do we reincarnate? Where do we reincarnate? How do we reincarnate?

1 - What is the purpose of reincarnation?

Emmanuel, through the psychic Chico Xavier, considers reincarnation a natural imposing, [i] i.e., a condition from which the Spirit cannot escape, an evolutionary determinism, established by specific laws. For the intelligent principle, created simple and ignorant, to reach the inherent condition of perfectibility, it must submit to the reincarnation law for a long period of its existence. This is a natural, cosmic, spiritual and biological law, inherent to all beings, the purpose of which is to improve its spiritual development.

In the opinion of Kardec, [...] Reincarnation comes as an absolute must, as a condition inherent to humanity; in a word, a law of Nature. [ii]  

And the Encoder goes on:

The Spirits have to experience bodily life, so they can accomplish, through physical actions, God's designs. It is necessary for their own good, because the activity they are required to practice helps them to develop their intelligence. [iii]

Kardec also says:

For the wild Spirit, which is just at the beginning of his spiritual life, incarnation is a way for him to develop his intelligence [...] the one that actively works for his moral progress, besides shortening the time of his material incarnation, since he can also overpass at once the intermediate steps that separate him from the upper worlds. [iv]

2 - Why do we reincarnate?

Psychic literature shows us that evolution is found in the spiritual world too. Then, why must we go through all these experiences in the physical world? Could not the intelligent principle develop its full potential only in the spiritual world? This is not possible, and can be explained due to certain characteristics of the physical world. These specific particularities allow the Spirit to develop its potential in the physical world.

Physical world and spiritual world are different:

1- There is a life cycle that is a characteristic of the reincarnation biology: we are born, grow, reproduce, raise children, have diseases. All this is specific of physical life.

2- The struggle for life: the Spirit living in the physical world has to work and work is considered a duty. The one that does not work, starves, and becomes ill and dies. This does not exist in the spiritual world.

3- During the period of childhood it becomes easier for the Spirit to have his character molded through education and the good examples given by his parents, teachers and others, who help in his moral improvement. In the spiritual world there is no childhood as we know it here.

4- Forgetting the past allows the entity to live with his enemies, without remembering the mutually committed faults. Such memories could promote animosities, creating embarrassment and being an obstacle to peaceful and harmonized relationships.

5- Living with people of different levels of spiritual development. In the spiritual world, the law of harmony is absolute. Spirits with the same likes and level, search for one another in the immensity of space and end up by living together. In the physical dimension, this does not happen in our dimension and there is a lot of hustle and fuss. To live with beings of different levels of spiritual development stimulates progress. Those who are in a lower level of evolution have in those above them, the example and the stimulus to self-improvement. This situation teaches the practice of tolerance, patience and perseverance.

3 - When do we reincarnate?

Considering that entities live in the spiritual world, what determines the time of their return to the physical world?

The Book of Spirits says:

[...] Fate only exists in two moments: when you appear and when you disappear from this world. [v]

Spiritual Benefactors determine the moment when we are going to come into this world and this is subject to clear principles. Reincarnation is a condition of the spiritual life. Death is a condition of the bodily life. Thus, the Spirits can sense the moment when they will reincarnate in the same way the blind feels the nearness of fire. However, not all worry about it, for there are those who do not even think about it and who do not understand it. Sooner or later the Spirit feels the need of progressing, because his condition of disembodied cannot last forever.
 

Jorge Andrea, a psychiatrist and Spiritist writer, believes that the "energy structure of the Spirit", over the years in the spiritual world, will have greater difficulty in "recharging", making it impossible for the entity to stay disembodied in the spiritual dimension for a period of time exceeding his capacity to renew the fluid. The more primitive the evolutionary condition of the spiritual entity, sooner shall he return to the physical dimension. According to him, a progressive wear of the "energy units" takes place, and they "vibrate more slowly." The less developed Spirits, with a greater need of returning to their homeland, reincarnate at shorter intervals. The more developed, reincarnate at longer periods of time, due to the possibility of an easier acquisition of the matter necessary for the metabolism of the psycho soma and because they potentially have the energetic qualities that allow them to "live" longer in the dimensional stage they are in. [vi]

The period of time the Spirits stays in the spiritual world varies according, in the words of Andre Luiz, to his development:

Creatures of an average level of evolution stay in the spiritual world for a period which is determined in accordance with the good use they made of their time when living in the physical world. The more knowledge and virtues the Spirits acquire, the longer is the period they live in the Superior World to be able to obtain the finest resources for a higher spiritual development. [vii]

Jorge Andrea says that as the spiritual vibrations become "weaker" as a result of a kind of "spiritual weakening" there is a progressive reduction of the activities of the Spirit. This condition leads him to a state of torpor and progressive weakness. The Law of Cause and Effect, by means of unknown mechanisms, drives him to the womb of a woman of childbearing age, with whom the Spirit is related to through spiritual affinity. In this manner the mechanism of reincarnation is triggered automatically since the spiritual entity has the need to return to the physical world, due to total lack of physic and psychic conditions to maintain away from material vibrations.

Leon Denis explains, in After Death:

When the time comes to reincarnate, the Spirit feels drawn by an irresistible force, a mysterious affinity, to the environment that suits him.

And Denis goes on:

Reincarnation is decided by the inflexible laws of nature, or rather the effects of the past. The lower Spirit, ignorant of these laws, little concerned about his future, suffers his fate automatically and takes his place on Earth under the impulse of a force, which he does not even try to learn about.

The hypothesis presented by Jorge Andrea, according to the interpretation given to some of Kardec and Andre Luiz quotes, allows us to draw a parallel between the need for renewal of the physical body that occurs with physical death and the equivalent need for renewal of the spiritual body with reincarnation. The physical clothing, which the Spirit uses while embodied, deteriorates with aging and disease, causing what is called the disembodiment. Similarly, the spiritual body, unable to renew itself indefinitely in the spiritual dimension, needs to remodel itself, through the return to the material dimension.

It is important to consider that, on many occasions the reincarnation process takes place well before the draining of the physic and psychic resources, since the lucid, limpid, and more developed Spirits are able to guide the ones they protect, making them return to the planetary area, in previously organized incarnations, managing the entire process.

4 - Where do we reincarnate?

Spirits form spiritual families. They come together due to the same likings and characteristics. The need to be together causes them to seek, driven by unconscious forces. Kardec, examining the relationships between entities, asked the High Spirits if the coming together of these Spirits, which are commonly attributed to chance, are not caused by a relation of affection. They also said that between thinking beings there is a link that we have not yet became aware of, and that magnetism is what commands this science, which later on we will understand better. [viii] Magnetic relations, ignored by us, bind the Spirits to one another, and the Spirit reincarnating will tend to attach to "friendly" Spirits living in this Earth and in a condition to receive him as a son.

(To be continued in the next issue).