FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITIST PHILOSOPHY

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Spirits belong to different orders; likewise they are not equals in power, intelligence, knowledge, or ethical excellence.  Those in the highest order are distinguished by purity, knowledge, and love of goodness.  They are the so-called "angels" or "pure spirits."  The others are relatively more distant from this perfection.  Those in the lower orders are inclined to most of our human feelings and may still take pleasure in wrong-doing.  Among them are those who are neither very good nor very bad, but have malicious, mischievous or irksome natures.  These might be classed as giddy and foolish spirits.   Spirits do not belong perpetually to the same order.  They are destined to attain perfection and, as they do so, to progress up through the different orders.  This advancement is achieved through incarnations, which are undertaken either as special missions or as trials leading to purification.  Physical life is an experience sprits must undergo many times before reaching this goal.  These lives can be understood as cleansing exercises from each of which spirits generally emerge in a more purified state.

• On leaving the body, the soul returns to the spirit-world, where it exists as a free spirit (i.e., free from the limitations of the physical world) and where it will stay for an indeterminate time until it enters a new incarnation.

• Spirits have many incarnations.  From this we can conclude that we all have had many existences and will have many others on Earth and elsewhere.

• The incarnation of spirits only takes place in human beings.  Spirits do not incarnate in animal form.

• The chain of incarnations is always progressive.  The spirit's speed of progress depends on its efforts, but it cannot regress.

• The qualities of a person are a reflection of the incarnate spirit's qualities.  Consequently, a good person is the incarnation of a good spirit, and a bad person of a less advanced one.

• The soul possesses its individuality before incarnating and will preserve it after the death of the body.

• On returning to the spirit world, the soul meets those it has known on Earth.  In addition, it gradually recalls the actions, both good and harmful, of its former lives.

• An incarnate spirit is under the influence of matter.  Those who surmount this influence, through self-purification, raise themselves nearer to the higher spheres.  Those who give in to instinctual tendencies and pursue solely the gratification of physical desires are closer to the inferior realm.

• Incarnated spirits live on different worlds throughout the universe.

• Free (or not incarnated) spirits do not occupy a circumscribed space.  They are found everywhere, and they both perceive and regularly associate with human beings.  They constitute an invisible but active society that constantly interacts with our own.