The Spirit self and the Tree of Good and Evil

A tree does not come fully grown. Its seed is planted in the soil and in the fullness of time, it grows to become a mighty adult tree, very much like the tree that produced the seed in the first place. So were we created perfect seeds.

God, being Spirit, created us spirits, in His image and likeness. However, we were, in the beginning, innocent and ignorant, but endowed with every potentiality to attain to perfection through our own efforts. And we are destined to attain perfection, in the end, after we undergo life after life after life (reincarnation), learning from our own personal experiences. Jesus knowing this affirmed, "You must be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. "We were taught early on, even in the Bible, that we are body and soul but we are not. Spirit is distinct and separate from any body. The body is only a tool, a machine, a robot, a protective covering or armor, a vehicle that we use in this world to avail of its special lessons. We are not our physical body made from earth. The body dies. We do not. The flesh body is just something expendable and disposable that we put on every time we are born and we take off when we transition to the Real World after a hard day's study.

Humanity is just one stage in early spirit evolution. To spirits, progression is infinite. And once we learn the lessons of the physical worlds (earth is just one of them), then we can pursue further development in the Higher Worlds. "In the Kingdom of God, there are many mansions."

We can read all these between the lines in Genesis. Do you really believe that God wants us to remain innocent and ignorant forever, never to grow up and become mature and responsible adult spirits? Is this what you really think?

Why then would He plant that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil right smack where Adam and Eve would find it and eat its fruit? What? Do you think that God was born yesterday? And who do you think sent the serpent? The knowledge is made available to everyone, but at a price. We will need to leave Paradise (the Spirit World), be born and study on earth or on a similar physical plane, experience pain and suffering in pursuit of our lessons and die there (here). But at the end of our schooling, it is our destiny to become perfect like the Father, attaining to His perfect knowledge and holy nature, as is His true desire, in the first place. Only after we graduate from the lessons of earth can we become true heirs to His kingdom, and inherit all the riches and glory He meant for us to enjoy for the rest of our eternal lives.

This is the Biblical parable that describes our real nature and clarifies the true meaning and purpose of life here on earth. This is who we really are and why we are here. Once we can come to realize this Truth, then even the mysteries will unravel. We can begin to understand.

Orders of Spirits

Before we can progress in our studies, it is of utmost importance that we realize who and where we are presently situated in the order of spirit evolution. Only then can we determine where we want to be and what we must do to get there.

Different Orders of Spirits

(From the ‘Spirits' Book’)

FIRST ORDER — PURE SPIRITS

First Class — Pure Spirits

General Characteristics — The influence of matter, null; a superiority, both intellectual and moral, so absolute as to constitute what, in comparison with the spirits of all the other orders, may be termed perfection.

Spirits of this order have passed through every degree of the scale of progress and have freed themselves from all the impurities of materiality. Having attained the sum of perfection of which created beings are susceptible, they no longer have to undergo either trials or expiations. Being no longer subject to reincarnation in perishable bodies, they enter on the life of eternity in the immediate presence of God. They are in the enjoyment of a beatitude which is unalterable, because they are no longer subject to the wants and vicissitudes of material life; but this beatitude is not the monotonous idleness of perpetual contemplation. They are the messengers and ministers of God, the executors of His orders in the maintenance of universal harmony. They exercise a sovereign command over all spirits inferior to themselves, aid them in accomplishing the work of their purification, and assign to each of them a mission proportioned to the progress already made by them. To assist men in their distresses, to excite them to the love of good or to the expiation of the faults which keep them back on the road to the supreme felicity, are for them congenial occupations. They are sometimes spoken of as angels, archangels or seraphim. They can, when they choose to do so, enter into communication with men.

SECOND ORDER — GOOD SPIRITS

Second Class — High Spirits

These unite, in a very high degree, scientific knowledge, wisdom and goodness. Their language, inspired only by the purest benevolence, is always noble and elevated, often sublime. Their superiority renders them more apt than any others to impart to us just and true ideas in relation to the incorporeal world, within the limits of the knowledge permitted to mankind. They willingly enter into communication with those who seek for truth in simplicity and sincerity, and who are sufficiently freed from the bonds of materiality to be capable of understanding it; but they turn from those whose inquiries are prompted only by curiosity, or who are drawn away from the path of rectitude by the attractions of materiality.

When, under exceptional circumstances, they incarnate themselves in this earth, it is always for the accomplishment of a mission of progress; and they thus show us the highest type of perfection to which we can aspire in the present world.

Third Class — Wise Spirits

The most elevated moral qualities form their distinctive characteristics. Without having arrived at the possession of unlimited knowledge, they have reached a development of intellectual capacity that enables them to judge correctly of men and of things.

Fourth Class — Learned Spirits

They are specially distinguished by the extent of their knowledge. They are less interested in moral questions than in scientific investigation, for which they have a greater aptitude; but their scientific studies are always prosecuted with a view to practical utility, and they are entirely free from the base passions common to spirits of the lower degrees of advancement.

Fifth Class — Benevolent Spirits

Their dominant quality is kindness. They take pleasure in rendering service to men and in protecting them, but their knowledge is somewhat narrow. They have progressed in morality rather than in intelligence.

THIRD ORDER — IMPERFECT SPIRITS

Sixth Class — Noisy and Boisterous Spirits

Spirits of this kind do not, strictly speaking, form a distinct class in virtue of their personal qualities; they may belong to all the classes of the third order. They often manifest their presence by the production of phenomena perceptible by the senses, such as raps, the movement and abnormal displacing of solid bodies, the agitation of the air, etc. They appear to be, more than any other class of spirits, attached to matter; they seem to be the principal agents in determining the vicissitudes of the elements of the globe, and to act upon the air, water, fire and the various bodies in the entrails of the earth. Whenever these phenomena present a character of intention and intelligence, it is impossible to attribute them to a mere fortuitous and physical cause. All spirits are able to produce physical phenomena; but spirits of elevated degree usually leave them to those of a lower order, more apt for action upon matter than for the things of intelligence, and when they judge it to be useful to produce physical manifestations, employ spirits of subaltern degree as their auxiliaries.

Seventh Class — Neutral Spirits

They are not sufficiently advanced to take an active part in doing good, nor are they bad enough to be active in doing wrong. They incline sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other; and do not rise above the ordinary level of humanity, either in point of morality or of intelligence. They are strongly attached to the things of this world, whose gross satisfactions they regret.

Eight Class — Spirits Who Pretend to More Science than They Possess

Their knowledge is often considerable, but they imagine themselves to know a good deal more than they know in reality. Having made a certain amount of progress from various points of view, their language has an air of gravity that may easily give a false impression as to their capacities and enlightenment; but their ideas are generally nothing more than the reflection of the prejudices and false reasoning of the terrestrial life. Their statements contain a mixture of truths and absurdities, in the midst of which, traces of presumption, pride, jealousy and obstinacy, from which they have not yet freed themselves, are abundantly perceptible.

Ninth Class — Frivolous Spirits

They are ignorant, mischievous, unreasonable and addicted to mockery. They meddle with everything and reply to every question without paying any attention to truth. They delight in causing petty annoyances, in raising false hopes of petty joys, in misleading people by mystifications and trickery. The spirits vulgarly called hobgoblins, will-o'-the-wisps, gnomes, etc. belong to this class. They are under the orders of spirits of a higher category, who make use of them as we do of servants.

Tenth Class — Impure Spirits

They are inclined to evil, and make it an object of all their thoughts and activities. As spirits, they give to men perfidious counsels, stir up discord and distrust, and assume every sort of mask in order the more effectually to deceive. They beset those whose character is weak enough to lead them to yield to their suggestions, and whom they thus draw aside from the path of progress, rejoicing when they are to retard their advancement by causing them to succumb under the appointed trials of the corporeal life. Spirits of this class may be recognized by their language, for the employment of coarse or trivial expressions by spirits, as by men, is always an indication of moral, if not of intellectual, inferiority. Their communications show the baseness of their inclinations; and though they may try to impose upon us by speaking with an appearance of reason and propriety, they are unable to keep up that false appearance, and end by betraying their real quality. Certain nations have made of them infernal deities; others designate them by the name of demons, evil genii or evil spirits.

The human beings in whom they are incarnated are addicted to all the vices engendered by vile and degrading passions — sensuality, cruelty, roguery, hypocrisy, cupidity, avarice. They do evil for its own sake, without any definite motive; and, from hatred to all that is good, they generally choose their victims from among honest and worthy people. They are the pests of humanity, to whatever rank of society they belong; and the varnish of a civilized education is ineffectual to cure or to hide their degrading defects.

Our life, our choice

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Far too many Spiritists look with envy at other religions and schools. They see progress in terms of greater prosperity, higher education, superior organization, orderliness, magnificent churches and other facilities, social acceptance and abundant material comforts of their members. Okay, I agree with you. We should have all of that, too. But are these temporal considerations the true gauge of spiritual success and advancement?

Does it not seem natural to make choice of such trials as are least painful?

From the Spirits' Book page 167, No. 260

“From your point of view, it would seem to be so, but not from that of the spirit; when he is freed from materiality, his illusions cease, and he thinks differently.

"Man, while upon the earth, and subjected to the influence of carnal ideas, sees only the painful aspect of the trials he is called upon to undergo; and it therefore appears to him to be natural to choose the trials that are allied to material enjoyments. But when he has returned to spirit-life, he compares those gross and fugitive enjoyments with the unchangeable felicity of which he obtains occasional glimpses, and judges that such felicity will be cheaply purchased by a little temporary suffering. A spirit may therefore, make choice of the hardest trial, and consequently of the most painful existence, in the hope of thereby attaining more rapidly to a happier state, just as a sick man often chooses the most unpalatable medicine in the hope of obtaining a more rapid cure. He who aspires to immortalise his name by the discovery of an unknown country does not seek a flowery road. He takes the road which will bring him most surely to the aim he has in view, and he is not deterred from following it even by the dangers it may offer. On the contrary, he braves those dangers for the sake of the glory he will win if he succeeds.

"The doctrine of our freedom in the choice of our successive existences and of the trials which we have to undergo ceases to appear strange when we consider that spirits, being freed from matter, judge of things differently from men. They perceive the ends which these trials are intended to work out – ends far more important for them than the fugitive enjoyments of earth. After each existence, they see the steps they have already accomplished, and comprehend what they still lack for the attainment of the purity which alone enable them to reach the goal; and they willingly submit to the vicissitudes of corporeal life, demanding of their own accord to be allowed to undergo those which will aid them to advance most rapidly. There is, therefore, nothing surprising in a spirit making choice of a hard or painful life. He knows that he cannot, in his present state of imperfection enjoy the perfect happiness to which he aspires; but he obtains glimpses of that happiness, and he seeks to effect his own improvement, as the sole means to its attainment.

"Do we not, every day, witness examples of a similar choice? What is the action of the man who labours, without cessation or repose, to amass the property which will enable him eventually to live in comfort, but the discharge of a task which he has voluntarily assumed as the means of insuring for himself a more prosperous future? The soldier who offers himself for the accomplishment of a perilous mission, the traveller who braves dangers no less formidable in the interest of science or of his own fortune, are examples of the voluntary incurring of hardships for the sake of the honour or profit that will result from their successful endurance. What will not men undergo for gain or for glory? Is not every sort of competitive examination a trial to which men voluntarily submit in the hope of obtaining advancement in the career they have chosen? He who would gain a high position in science, art, industry, is obliged to pass through all the lower degrees which lead up to it, and which constitute so many trials. Human life is thus seen to be modelled on spirit-life, presenting the same vicissitudes on a smaller scale. And as in the earthly life, we often make choice of the hardest conditions as means to the attainment of the highest ends, why should not a disincarnate spirit, who sees farther than he saw when incarnated in an earthly body, and for whom the bodily life is only a fugitive incident, make choice of a laborious or painful existence, if it may lead him on towards an eternal felicity? Those who say that, since spirits have the power choosing their existences, they will demand to be princes and millionaires, are like the purblind, who only see what they touch, or like greedy children, who, when asked what occupation they would prefer to follow, reply that they would like to be pastry-cooks of confectioners.

"It is with a spirit as with a traveller, who, in the depths of a valley obscured by fog, sees neither the length nor the extremities of his road. When he has reached the top of the hill, and the fog has cleared away, his view takes in both the road along which he has come and that by which he has still to go. He sees the point which he has to reach, and the obstacles he has to overcome in reaching it, and he is thus able to take his measures for successfully accomplishing his journey. A spirit, while incarnated, is like the traveller at the foot of the hill; when freed from terrestrial trammels, he is like the traveller who has reached the top of the hill. The aim of the traveller is to obtain rest after fatigue; the aim of the spirit is to attain to perfect happiness after tribulations and trials.

"Spirits say that, in the state of erraticity, they seek, study, observe, in order to make their choice wisely. Have we not examples of analogous action in corporeal life? Do we not often spend years in deciding on the career upon which, at length, we freely fix our choice, because we consider it to be the one in which we are most likely to succeed? If, after all, we fall in the one we have chosen, we seek out another; and each career thus embraced by us constitutes a phase, a period, of our life. Is not each day employed by us in deciding what we shall do on the morrow? And what, for a spirit, are his different corporeal existences, but so many phases, periods, days, in comparison with his spirit life, which, as we know is his normal life, the corporeal life being only a transitional passage?"

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