Questions
A. To release a child from a possession, Jesus said that two conditions were necessary. What are they?
B. How did Jesus heal Jairus’ daughter?
C. How can we explain the resurrections operated by Jesus?
Text for reading
1015. It is the degree of the extension of the spirit’s faculties that during incarnation renders it more able or less so to understand spiritual matters. This aptitude, however, is not the necessary consequence of the development of intelligence. Ordinary knowledge does not confer it, which is why we see persons of great knowledge who are as blind to spiritual matters as others are to material ones. The former are resistant to spiritual matters because they do not understand them due to the fact that their progress has not yet been completed in that sense, whereas persons of ordinary education and intelligence may be seen to grasp them more easily, showing that they possess a pre-formed intuition of such matters. For them, it is a retrospective memory of what they have seen and known, whether in the errant state or during previous lifetimes, just as some persons have an intuition about the languages and sciences that they knew previously.
1016. As for the future of Spiritism, we know that the Spirits are unanimous in affirming that its triumph is close at hand in spite of the obstacles put up against it. Such foreknowledge is easy for them, first of all because its spread is their personal work. By directly taking part in the movement or by guiding it, they consequently know what they must do. Second, it is enough for them to consider a period of short duration, and in this period they can see the powerful helpers that God furnishes and who will not be long in manifesting.
1017. The ordinary incidents of private life are most often the result of the way that each person acts. Some people will succeed according to their capacity, skill, perseverance, prudence and energy, while others will fail because of their ineptitude; thus, one can say that each of us is the artisan of his or her own future, a future that is never subject to blind fatalism independent of the individual.
1018. By knowing an individual’s character, one can easily predict the fate that awaits him or her on the path her or she has taken.
1019. The events that touch upon the overall interests of humankind are governed by Providence. When something is in God’s designs, it must be accomplished one way or another. Men and women contribute to its execution, but no one is indispensable; otherwise, God would be at the mercy of God’s creatures. If those entrusted with a mission fail to fulfill it, someone else will be assigned to it. No mission is unavoidable; individuals are always free to fulfill that which has been entrusted to them and which they have voluntarily accepted. If they do not fulfill it, they lose the benefit and assume the responsibility for the delays that might result from their negligence or ill will. If they become an obstacle to its fulfillment, God can snap them with one breath.
1020. Thus, the final result of an event may be certain because it lies within God’s designs; however, since the details and method of execution are most frequently dependent on the circumstances and human free will, the ways and means may be contingent. Spirits can give us a sense of the whole if it is useful for us to be forewarned, but in order to foresee the actual place and date they would have to know beforehand the decision that such and such individual will make. Therefore, if this decision is not yet in that individual’s mind, then whatever it turns out to be may speed up or delay the accomplishment of the event or modify the secondary means of carrying it out, although everything will still lead to the same result.
1021. Thus it is, for example, that by means of the whole of the circumstances, spirits can foresee that an unavoidable war is close at hand or not, but without being able to foresee the exact day on which it will begin or the detailed incidents that may be modified by human will. In order to determine the time of future events, it will also be necessary to take into account a characteristic inherent to the very nature of spirits.
1022. Time, like space, cannot be determined except with the help of points of comparison or reference that divide it into measurable periods. On earth, the natural division of time into days and years is marked out according to the rising and setting of the sun and how long it takes for the earth to travel around it.
1023. The units of time measurement necessarily vary on different worlds since their astronomical periods are different. Thus, for each world there is a different way for measuring time according to the nature of the sidereal revolutions involved. However, apart from worlds per se, there are no such means for determining time. For a spirit in space, there is neither a sunrise nor a sunset to mark the days, nor periodic revolutions to mark the years; for such a spirit, there is only the duration of infinite space.
1024. When a spirit who is foreign to the earth comes to it to manifest itself, it cannot assign dates to events unless it identifies with our usages, which is undoubtedly within its abilities, but which, most often, it does not deem useful.
1025. Spirits, who comprise the invisible population of our globe, where they have already lived and where they continue to live in our midst, naturally identify with our habits and they continue to retain a memory of them in the errant state. Consequently, they can very easily set dates for future events when they know them; but apart from the fact that it is not always permitted, they are also prevented from doing so because every time in which the details of the circumstances are dependent on free will and contingent human decision-making, a precise date does not actually exist except after the event is carried out.
1026. That is why circumstantial predictions cannot offer any certainty and should be accepted only as probabilities, even when they do not bear a seal of legitimate suspicion. Also, truly knowledgeable spirits never make predictions for set times; they limit themselves to telling us beforehand about the result of matters that may be useful for us to know about. To insist on obtaining precise details is to expose oneself to deception by frivolous spirits, who, without any regard for the truth.
1027. Contemporary humankind also has its prophets. More than one writer, poet, literary person, historian or philosopher has sensed in his or her writings the future march of things that are coming into being today. Undoubtedly, this aptitude often results from a correct judgment that deduces the logical consequences of the present; but frequently it is also the result of a special unconscious clairvoyance or an inspiration coming from the outside.
1028. What such individuals did while living they can more ably and precisely do in the spirit state, when their spirit sight is no longer obscured by matter.
1029. No one is a prophet in his hometown - And having come to his hometown, he taught in the synagogue in such a way that the people were amazed and said, “Where have this wisdom and these miracles come from? Is this not the son of the carpenter? Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Are not all his sisters among us?” And they thus made of him an object of scandal. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is dishonored only in his home town and in his own home.” And he did not perform many miracles there because of their disbelief. (Mt. 13:54-58)
1030. Here, Jesus enunciates a truth that became a proverb, which is for all time and which could be extended further by saying that no one is a prophet while still alive. In usual language, this maxim applies to the credibility some persons enjoy amongst their own and those in the midst of whom they live, and to the trust that they inspire through the superiority of their wisdom and intelligence. If there are exceptions to this maxim, they are rare, and are never absolute in any case.
1031. The principle of this truth is a natural consequence of human weakness, and can be explained as follows: The habit of being seen from infancy in the ordinary circumstances of life establishes among people a sort of material equality, which quite often makes them refuse to acknowledge the moral ascendancy of someone who has been a companion or dinner guest, someone who has been one of them, and whose earlier weaknesses used to be witnessed.
1032. Pride suffers at the ascendancy that it is obliged to bear. Those who raise themselves above the ordinary are always the target of jealousy and envy; those who feel incapable of reaching the same level make an effort to bring them down by means of defamation, slander and libel; the smaller they feel, the louder they yell, thinking they make themselves bigger and that they can eclipse such individuals by the noise they make. 1033. Such has been and always will be the history of humankind as long as people do not understand their spiritual nature or broaden their moral horizon. This prejudice is also characteristic of narrow-minded and commonplace spirits, who compare everything to their own personalities.
Answer Key
A. To release a child from a possession, Jesus said that two conditions were necessary. What are they?
Referring to this child, the disciples asked Jesus, "Why could we not we cast out this Spirit?" Jesus replied: That kind of spirit can be cast out only through prayer and fasting. (Mark 9:13-28). This fasting is interpreted spiritist authors as fasting from the passions and not the abstinence from food, such as we can see in Isaiah 58: 5, 6: “Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord? Is this not the fast, which I choose? Says God: it is to loosen the bonds of wickedness and to undo the bands of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke." (Genesis, Ch. XV, paragraphs 31 to 33.)
B. How did Jesus heal Jairus’ daughter?
Having arrived at the home of the head of the synagogue, he saw a distraught group of people who were crying and wailing. Entering the home, he said to them, “Why are you making so much noise and why are you crying? The girl is not dead; she is only sleeping.” They scoffed at him. Having made everyone leave, he took the child’s father and mother and those who had come with him, and he went into the place where the girl was lying. He took her hand and said, “Talitha cumi,” that is, “My child, I order you to get up.” At that instant the girl got up and began walking. She was twelve years old and they were marvelously astonished. (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43). (Genesis, Ch. XV, items 37 and 38.)
C. How can we explain the resurrections operated by Jesus?
It is at all likely that in cases of resurrection mentioned in the Gospels were only an apparent death, syncope, lethargy or catalepsy phenomenon, and not the actual bodily death. “Jesus himself obviously said this about Jairus’ daughter: “The girl is not dead but is only asleep.”
As a consequence of the fluidic power that Jesus possessed, there is nothing surprising that this vivifying fluid, directed by a powerful will, had reanimated numbed senses; that he had even been able to call back to the body – as long as the perispiritual tie was not definitely broken – the spirit that was ready to abandon it.
For people at that time, who believed a person was dead as soon as the breath stopped, there was a resurrection, and they could affirm it in good faith; however, in reality there was a healing and not a resurrection in the true meaning of the word. No matter what may be said, the resurrection of Lazarus in no way invalidates this principle.
By the way, just as in the case of Jairus' daughter, John informs that referring to the supposedly dead friend, the Master said: "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” (John 11:11) (Genesis, Ch. XV, items 37 to 40.)
