Spiritism

"Three questions for the Dear Souls. There must now be some one or two thousand summoners in Hungary. Some are lucky enough to receive answers from the other world. I only wanted answers to three questions. But these three questions I always dared to ask only in my mind, and I did not get only a vague and imperfect answer to the first one. And this answer was written by no less a personage than Titus Tóvölgyi, the most authentic interpreter of souls. I. First question. The question of suffering. Why does man suffer on Earth? You can take comfort in not knowing where you came from, where you are and where you are going. Good: let the veil of God cover these secrets. But when a man sees that he begins with weeping and ends with weeping; that his whole life is an unbroken chain of sufferings, then the why? cries to heaven even from the most religious soul. The spirits dictate to the spiritist believer that suffering is the punishment of a previous life, and that the soul either undertakes to incarnate itself on earth or is compelled to do so by the powers that rule in the spirit world. However, it is also said that some live their first lives here, sparks from the Eternal, the souls say, from this central self-conscious lighthouse of the world. Do they not go through the agonies of conception, the long series of childhood diseases, and a life of all human suffering? Even if they are born into a family that is poverty-stricken or where children are raised with a stick? What if they have lived through wars, years of inhumanity, epidemics, or misfortunes such as those that abound in the diaries of the rescue services? But let us only talk of those who in a former life deserved to be punished by experiencing another life. Is it conceivable that all those who were set on fire by Nero, wrapped in pitch, trodden on by Atilla, dragged off to be slaves by the Tartars and Turks, crippled and blinded by war, all deserved this terrible torment for their sins, and that God then wrote those hundred thousand beggars and hundred thousand dead on the tablets of his justice? Who has read the history of America in the time of El Dorado? Who has read the things of the Spanish Inquisition? The documents of the trial of Elizabeth Báthory? Witch executions? The interrogations of Caraffa of Prešov? and the earthquake of Lisbon, which in one day gave sixty thousand souls back to heaven, and left perhaps as many orphans and beggars on earth. Where is absolute Goodness and Truth? asks the trembling heart, when, hearing, reading, and seeing these things, it looks to heaven. I am not a God-denier. I see the world as a creation and not an accident. It is only when there come from the other world statements which seem to the touchstone of the human mind to be brass instead of gold, that we desire proof, illumination, to accompany the statements, so that our souls may not be confused. For of the doctrine of reincarnation, those who have hitherto taught us divine things know nothing. This doctrine, being new in all religions, except the Swedenborgian denomination, and the statement of men not of this world, is shown to be more authentic than all other doctrines. Our intellect cannot accept this explanation of the sufferings with stupid immobility. The question arises in us involuntarily, whether it is identical with the concept of Truth? Is it compatible with our life being the punishment of one or more previous lives, without knowing the sins committed, the cause of our sufferings? Can we set improvement as the goal of our lives if we do not know why and in what we must improve? Can we continue to weave or correct the thread that the supreme power has judged to be wrong, if we do not know where and when we have gone wrong? Can a mason continue to build a building if the bottom is said to be faulty and he does not know what the top should be because he does not know the design? If I was born a cripple, and know not why I must bear the hatred of all, and a sorrow greater than all, can I bear my cross with peace, when my conscience says: - You are innocently condemned to this punishment! No. The explanation of suffering as given by souls rebels against God. It is the duty of souls to give reassuring light to it, for it cannot be their aim that man should misunderstand God and regard him as evil. II. Second question. According to the souls who have spoken to us, faith is the basis for survival beyond the grave. Religion is all the same, you just have to believe. In addition to this, the spiritualist must also believe that real otherworldly spirits are talking to him, otherwise any approach to them will fail. So what is faith? It is a gift from God, explains the religion I took up when I was a day old, and whose teachings I therefore know best. And so it continues to explain: - The virtue poured into us by God, by which we hold as true all that the patriarchs, prophets, Jesus and the apostles taught us, as well as those things which God declares to us through his Mother Church, that we may believe. Well, if faith is a gift from God, then if I believe, I have no merit, just luck. If I don't believe, it's not my fault, just my misfortune. Accordingly, the Roman Church's statement that "Faith is indispensable to salvation" - can be derived from God. One can be true. Both are not. The Church calls only faith a gift; neither life, nor the sun, nor bread, nor anything that is our common good, but faith. By this it says that faith is not a general gift of God: let him who has it rejoice, for his is the kingdom of heaven; he who has not, may know already here on earth what fate awaits him after the bell. When one reflects on this doctrine, he sees eternal Truth set before him like an old man, worried in his mind, giving gifts to children. Has the child bathed? He gets more. Has the child not had a bath? He gets nothing. And the concept of Eternal Goodness? Can we reconcile with it that the capacity to call is not born with us, like the senses, love, goodness, but is given to us separately, like a hat-lining, so that we can welcome the giver in due time. Perhaps the Church itself recognises that this dogma smells of earth. It points to the words of Scripture: 'He who believes will be saved, he who does not believe will be damned'. A terrible statement. Christ said. And the church puts it above all its dogmas, and begins all its teaching with it. But if faith is not from me, can it be claimed from me? Is it up to me, if I do not believe, am I damned? Is it my merit if I enter salvation? But let us think without the head of the church. Let us say, that faith is the seed of goodness, and of merit unto salvation, which is in my will. Let us say that faith is the acceptance, the holding to be true, of some notion, view, or assertion from another. For me to accept the conception, view, or assertion of another, it is necessary either that it should be in some way connected with my conception, and be capable of being incorporated into my thought, or that I should hold his conception to be more perfect than mine, and that he should say what he will, and I should nod my assent to it. In the first case, in weighing up my merits, it falls into the balance of how I have been brought up by home, by life, by school, and whether chance brings me together with the word of someone who should resonate in my soul. The second case also brings me to faith not of my own merit and separates me from it not of my own guilt if I do not accept it. This is purely a matter of weakness of brain, and therefore a carnal matter. For if my intellect is dark, it respects the firefly as the sun. And if it is clear: you do not need to accept every blue-green ray. Well, whose intellect is so formed as to accept nothing just because someone says so? Our understanding, after all, evolves like the coral of the sea. It is built every day by our five senses and guided every day by the waves of our thought. Which branches will be the most muscular, and whether they will point to the right or to the left, or straight to the sky, we cannot determine for ourselves. There is no saint who could not have been a robber-murderer, if his upbringing had moulded his character to that end. Nor is there a man of the gallows who would not be a saint, if his tree of life had grown in a soil and climate suited to it. Let us not speak of blind faith. If all the good souls of the world who have moved away flock to my desk and tell me that I can only be saved if I believe that I write not with ink but with wine from Tokaj, I must be damned. The more childlike a man is, the more he is willing to believe anything. The more mature the mind, the more he is inclined to consider and examine everything before accepting it. The child-man, and the people with child-intelligence, - one. They believe all tales. The mature-minded multitude, however, requires a logical basis for every assertion. In the order of the world, reason rules. Reason cannot come from nothing. The world is therefore a creation: the expression of some intelligent creative power. This is faith. But it is also mathematics. It is not merit. Adam was forbidden by God to eat of the apple. Adam and Eve ate. For this God condemned mankind to a life of suffering and death. That's also faith, to believe that. Why this merit is greater than that, I cannot understand. The human brain is like a photographic machine. Whatever images the sensitive plates record in it, that's what makes up its knowledge. If his surroundings are evil, his soul is filled with images of evil, his will is evil, his knowledge is evil, his world view is black. How can he become a man surrounded by saints and angels? Tell him to believe! But who is the man to believe. Jesus? Buddha? Jesus says: There is a God: love him! For man's way is heavenly salvation. Buddha says: There may be a God. If there is, he is mortal. Man's goal is nirvana. And both say that he is the truth. What do souls say about religions, when they come to them for advice? It is said that no religion is the truth, but all religions are close to the truth. No matter which religion a man is a believer in, he should believe what the religion teaches. But here is Gautama the Buddha teaching that you don't need faith for salvation. Gautama the Buddha has 450 million followers, Jesus has only 240 million. Well, if the majority of Buddhas believe that they don't need faith, if their faith is unbelief, what do their souls advise them? But we have nothing to do with Buddha. Our faith is the Roman faith. We must accept what it dictates. Now, if I decide to believe what I have not believed, am I a believer? Am I worthy of eternal reward? No. I cannot do violence to my soul. 2 times 2 will not ne six, even if I say that I will lay down all my understanding as a sacrifice on the altar of the Lord. In vain do I deceive myself, in vain do I suggest to myself the number which authority has set before me, or say against it, or accept it with a mad brain. Why then do you, good souls who are in touch with us, tell us to believe? Why do you urge me to do so, when faith is a gift, and a man cannot get it of his own will. III. Third question. The French soul summoner Allan Kardec received answers from souls to 1019 questions. I could not believe any of them, for I did not know him, and I did not witness that the answers were indeed given by souls. But I cannot say that the book is a lie, for I have no proof of that either. I read it with much delight, and find all its statements possible. I do not even say that the points of the new incarnation are impossible, although the spiritualists have abandoned them. They said: - If a man can be reborn on earth after death, he can again be the child of his own son, and the grandmother the grandchild of her grandson, or even his wife, and thus man's most beautiful emotions and most sacred earthly relations are intermingled in the other world. Souls have since made up for the missing link in Kardec's philosophy. They said: - Reincarnation can never happen soon after death, but only centuries later. Well, I say, I think all this is possible, and if I were an illiterate peasant, and somebody read this philosophy to me, I would swear by it that it is holy truth. But what I see in this philosophy is an even greater emptiness, and to which I have not yet received an answer from the venerable souls: the question, why do souls talk to us? Either because it is ordained by the author of the laws of nature that man should remain in obscurity as to the other world, and then it is a crime against prohibition for them to report, a sin for some living men to gossip about the world of the dead. Or else: it is ordained of the Lord of all that we should all have a share in the knowledge of secrets, and then it is a sin not to give public revelation and evidence. And how do we explain that the deceased mother does not come to the aid of the cries and screams of a starving, destitute, burning, attacked by a wild animal or subjected to brutality, but is happy to appear after tea in the drawing-room and push furniture, lift tables, dodonize, ring bells, play music, plaster her feet and perform other stunts for the so-called believers. And if only ordinary souls would do this! Homer, Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Kant, Petőfi, Viktor Hugo, Lajos Kossuth, the bright legions of saints, the apostles, evangelists, popes, kings, sages, and other men of great intellect, are all serious men in their lives. They hold no torch to the mind that searches the mysteries of existence. They do not help to clarify the intricacies of history. They give no prescriptions for incurable diseases. They do not unchain the innocently convicted. They have no words to alleviate human misery: they do not comfort the desperate at the coffin... but when a group of believers gather somewhere, they readily lift the table, play the guitar, write, phosphoresce and unveil the maps and state secrets of the afterlife."