Good Will
"Be very careful, then, how you live." Paul (Ephesians, 5:15)
Good will discovers work.
Work creates the renovation.
Renovation finds goodness.
Goodness reveals the spirit of service.
The spirit of service reaches understanding.
Understanding achieves humility.
Humility conquers love.
Love generates renunciation.
Renunciation reaches the light.
The light realizes self evolvement.
Self evolvement sanctifies the individual.
A sanctified individual converts the world toward God.
By walking prudently, for simple good will, the individual will reach the Divine Kingdom of the Light.
XAVIER, Francisco Cândido. Our Daily Bread. By the Spirit Emmanuel. Spititist Alliance for Books, 2003. Chapter 66.
Questions 4 to 9 - Proofs of the Existence of God
Spirits's replies to Allan Kardec
"In an axiom you apply to all your sciences: ‘There is no effect without a cause.’ If you would search for the cause of whatever is not the work of human beings, then reason will answer your question."
"That God exists; otherwise, where would such a sentiment come from if it were not based on something real? This is an application of the principle that there is no effect without a cause."
“If that were the case, why would members of your primitive cultures have this intuition?”
Allan Kardec's remarks:
If the sentiment of the existence of a Supreme Being were only the product of education, it would not be universal. Like all scientific ideas, it would only exist in the minds of those who received such education.
"Even if you could, what in turn would be the cause of those properties? There must always be a first cause."
Allan Kardec's remarks:
To attribute the first formation of things to the innermost properties of matter would be to mistake the effect for the cause since such properties are themselves an effect that must have had a prior cause.
"Another absurdity! How could anyone with any common sense believe that chance is an intelligent agent? Moreover, what is chance? Nothing."
Allan Kardec's remarks:
The harmony that governs the forces of the universe reveals certain set combinations and designs, and thus an intelligent power. To attribute the first formation of things to chance would be nonsense because chance is blind and cannot produce intelligent results. An intelligent chance would no longer be chance.
"You have a proverb that says, ‘The workman is known by his work.’ So, look at the work and you will find the ‘Workman’! Pride is what creates disbelief. Human pride believes in nothing above itself, and that is why people think they are so powerful. Poor beings! A mere breath from God could blow them over!"
Allan Kardec's remarks:
We judge the power of an intelligence by its works. Since no human being could create what nature produces, it is obvious that the first cause must be an intelligence superior to humankind.
Whatever may be the marvels accomplished by human intelligence, such intelligence itself must have a cause; the greater the results, the greater the first cause must have been. No matter what name you give it, that intelligence is the first cause of all things.
KARDEC, Allan. The Spirits’ Book. 3.ed. International Spiritist Council, 2011.
Let Us Have Peace
"Live in peace with each other." Paul (I Thessalonians, 5:13)
If it is impossible to breathe in a perfectly peaceful atmosphere among the human beings due to the ignorance and hostility so flagrant in the human path, it is logical for the student to seek his inner serenity in face of the conflicts that seek to involve him constantly.
Each incarnate mind constitutes an extensive nucleus of spiritual government, subordinated at this time to just limitations, served by various powers reflected in the senses and in the perceptions.
When all of the individual centers of power are self controlled by mankind with ample movement toward legitimate righteousness, then, wars shall be exiled from the Planet.
To achieve this, however, it is essential that the brothers and sisters in humanity, older in experience and in knowledge, learn to have inner peace.
To educate the vision, the hearing, the taste and the impulses, represents the primordial basis for edificating pacifism.
As a rule, we hear, we visualize and we feel according to our inclinations and not according to the essential reality. We register certain information differently from the good intentions initially based, and yes, according to our personal internal disturbance. We observe situations and scenery in the light or in the shadow that absorbs our intelligence. We perceive with the reflection or with the chaos that we install in our understanding.
This is the reason why we must, as much as possible, maintain serenity around us, as we face the conflicts encountered in the sphere in which we are situated.
Without calm it is impossible to observe and to work for righteousness.
Without inner peace, we shall never be able to reach the circles of true peace.
XAVIER, Francisco Cândido. Our Daily Bread. By the Spirit Emmanuel. Spititist Alliance for Books, 2003. Chapter 65.
Better to Suffer in Righteousness
"It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil." (I Peter, 3:17)
In order to economize financial resources that he will be compelled to abandon precipitously, the human being sometimes acquires deplorable illnesses that corrode the centers of force, causing undesirable death.
By purchasing short-lived sensations for his physical body, he commonly acquires dangerous infirmities, which accompany the vehicle in which he moves about, until his last days on Earth.
By getting extremely upset over insignificant lessons on the path, he poisons vital organs, thereby creating a fatal imbalance in his physical life.
By stuffing the stomach on certain occasions, a vicious vice is established affecting important organs of the physiological instrument, thus, impeding the perfect function of the carnal vessel for the simple pleasure of gluttony.
Why fear facing the obstacles of a clear path of love and wisdom if the dark road of hatred and ignorance remains replete with vengeful and disturbing forces?
How can we be afraid of fatigue and exhaustion, complications and incomprehension, conflicts and disappointments, which are the consequence of the blessed battle for the supreme victory of righteousness, when the combat for the provisional triumph of evil conduces the combatants to tributes of afflictions and sufferings?
Let us utilize our best possibilities in service to Jesus Christ by pledging our lives to Him.
The criminal weapon that breaks and the repugnant measures utilized always provoke curse and darkness; but, for the exhausted worker in his duty, and for the lamp that is extinguished in the illuminating service, a different destiny is reserved.
XAVIER, Francisco Cândido. Our Daily Bread. By the Spirit Emmanuel. Spititist Alliance for Books, 2003. Chapter 64.
Questions 1 to 3 - God and the Infinite
Spirits's replies to Allan Kardec
"God is the Supreme Intelligence, the First Cause of all things."
"That which has neither beginning nor end: the unknown. All which is unknown is infinite."
"That would be an incomplete definition. Human speech is too impoverished and insufficient to define that which transcends human intelligence."
Allan Kardec's remarks:
God is infinite in divine perfection, but the Infinite itself is an abstract concept. Thus, to say that God is the Infinite is to replace the thing itself with one of its attributes; it is to define something that is unknown by referring to something else that is equally unknown.
KARDEC, Allan. The Spirits’ Book. 3.ed. International Spiritist Council, 2011.
Allan Kardec's remarks:
To believe in God, we need only to behold the works of creation. The universe exists; therefore, it must have a cause. To doubt God’s existence would be to deny that every effect has a cause and to believe that something could have resulted from nothingness.