PDF version - Geae

But the truth must be accepted before all; we are not here to consult our personal conveniences. The law,
whether it pleases or not, is the law! It is for us to adapt ourselves to it, not for the law to bend itself to our
wishes. Death cannot transform an inferior spirit into a superior one! We are in the Beyond what we are here,
intellectually and morally. All spiritual manifestations demonstrate this. Although we are told that only
perfected souls enter the highest celestial realms, on the other hand we are told that we reserve our means of
perfecting ourselves here on earth. But could we do so vast a work in one short life? If some have succeeded,
how vast is the crown of the ignorant and vicious who still people this planet! Is it reasonable to believe that
their evolution stops with this life? Those who live an existence of crime here - where will they find conditions
for reparation if not in reincarnation? Without that we must fall back on the idea of Hell, and eternal Hell is as
impossible as an eternal Paradise. There is no act so worthy, or so frightful, that it merits an eternal
recompense or punishment.
We need only consider the works of nature since the beginning of time to observe everywhere the
slow and tranquil evolution of beings and things, which proclaims with all the voices of the universe, the
wonders of eternal power. The human soul does not escape from this sovereign rule. It is the crown of this
prodigious effort, the last link in the chain which has unrolled since the beginning of life, and which encircles
the whole globe. It is not in man that the sacred principle of perfection, the sum of all evolution from inferior
states, is to be found? This principle is the very essence of man, in truth, the divine seal placed upon him. And
being what he is, how can he be outside the laws emanating from the source of all intelligence? The principle
of progress is written everywhere in nature and history. Man cannot escape from this law of progress: our
existence is not isolated, the drama of life is not composed of one act. It must be followed by other acts, which
explain the incoherence and obscurities of the present. There must be a chain of existences to illustrate the
economy which presides over the destinies of human beings. Does it result, then, that we are condemned to
powerful and incessant labor? No, at the issue of each terrestrial life the soul harvests the fruit of acquired
experiences. It gathers its forces and its faculties for an interior and subjective life, and proceeds to make an
inventory of its earthly work, to assimilate the parts, and reject the sterile. That is the first occupation of the
soul after death - the work of recapitulation and analysis. This contemplative period between active earth lives
is necessary. Each being who lives a normal life will benefit by it in his turn. The spirit in its free state does
not know much repose - activity is its nature. Do we not see this in sleep? The material organs only feel
fatigue, and in the life of space these obstacles are unknown. There the spirit can consecrate itself, without
fatigue or restraint, until the very hour of the next incarnation, to the missions which devolve upon it.
At each rebirth the soul reconstructs a sort of virginity. The forgetfulness of the past comes like a
healing lethe, benefiting and repairing and creating a new being who recommences the vital ascension with
new ardor. Each life means progress - each progress augments the power of the soul, and brings closer its
estate of completion. This law shows us eternal life in all its amplitude. We all have an ideal to realize -
supreme beauty and supreme happiness. We climb toward this ideal more or less rapidly, following the
intensity of our desires. There is no predestination: our will and our consciences are our arbiters. Each human
existence indicates the following one. Their ensemble constitutes the fullness of destiny - the communion with
infinity.
We are often asked, how can a soul expiate faults when, unconscious of the causes which oppress him,
he is ignorant of the result and the reason of his trials.
We have seen that all suffering is not expiation. All nature suffers: all which lives - the plant, the
animal, the man, are submitted to pain. Suffering is a means of evolution, of education. But a distinction must
be established between actual unconsciousness and the virtual consciousness of destiny in the reincarnated
soul.
When a spirit has comprehended, in the intense light of the Beyond, that a life of earthly trials was
absolutely necessary to efface the faults of preceding existences, this same spirit, in a moment of full
intelligence and full liberty, spontaneously chose or accepted future reincarnation with all its consequences,
comprising forgetfulness of the past, which follows the act of reincarnation. This initial view, clear and total,
of its destiny at the precise moment when the spirit accepted rebirth, sufficed to establish the consciousness,
the responsibility, and the merit of this new life. In veiled intuitions it guards all these, and the least
reminiscence, the least dream suffices to awaken them to life. It is by this invisible tie, yet real and powerful,
that the present life attaches itself to the anterior life of the same being, and constitutes the moral verity and
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