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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