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MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD - A POINT OF VIEW - Joana dArc - 05 04 2016

Theme: a point of view
Source: the Gospel according to Spiritism, II: 5-7

MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD

A POINT OF VIEW
5. The clear and precise idea which can be formed of a future life provides an unshakable faith in what
is to come. This faith places enormous consequences upon the moralization of Man because it completely
changes the point of view as to how life on Earth is regarded. For those who place themselves by means of
thought in the spiritual life, which is undefined, bodily life becomes a mere temporary stay in an ungrateful
country. The vicissitudes and tribulations of this life become nothing more than incidents, which can be
supported with patience as they are known to be of short duration and will be followed by a more amenable
state. Death no longer has terror attached to it; it ceases to be a door opening on to nothingness and becornes
a door that opens to liberation, through which the exile enters into a well-blessed mansion, and there finds
peace. Knowing that the place where we find ourselves at the moment is only temporary and not
definite, makes us pay less attention to the preoccupations of life, resulting in less bitterness and a more
peaceful Spirit.
Simply by doubting the existence of a future life, Man directs all his thoughts to earthly existence.
Without any certainly of what is to come he gives everything to the present. With the mistaken idea that there
is nothing more precious than earthly things, Man behaves as a child who can see only us lays and is
prepared la go to any length to obtain the only possessions he judges to be solid. The loss of even the least of
these causes pungent hurt. A mistake, a deception, an unsatisfied ambition, an injustice to which the person
has fallen victim, hurt pride or vanity, to name but a few, are just some of the torments which turn existence
into an eternal agony, so in this manner causing self-inflicted torture at every step. From the point of view of
earthly life, in whose center we place ourselves, everything around us begins to assume vast proportions. The
harm that reaches us, as well as the good that touches others, takes on a great importance in our eyes. It is
like the man, who, when in the middle of a great city sees everything on a large scale, but who, when looking
down from a mountain top sees things in only minute form.
This is what happens when we look at life from the point of view of a future existence Humanity, just as
the stars in space, loses itself in the great immensity. We begin to see that great and small things are
confounded, as ants on top of an ant hill, that proletarians and potentates are the same stature. We lament
that so many short-lived creatures give themselves over to so much labor in order to conquer a place which
will do so little to elevate them, and which they will occupy for so short a time. From this it follows that the
value given to earthly things is completely in reverse to that which comes from a firm belief in a future life.
6. If everybody thought in that manner, it could be argued that everything on Earth would be
endangered because no one would bother about anything. But Man instinctively looks after his own well-being,
so even if he knew it was but for a short while, be would still do his best. There is no one who, when finding a
thorn in his hand, will not take it out so as not to suffer. Well then, the de sire for comfort forces Man to better
all things, seeing that be is impelled by the instinct of progress and conservation which are part of The Laws of
Nature. Therefore, be works not only through necessity but because he wants to, and because of a sense of
duty, so obeying the designs of Providence which placed him an Earth for that purpose. Only a person who
occupies themself more with the future can give relative importance to the present. This person is easily
consoled in all his failings and misfortunes by thinking of the destiny that awaits him.
Accordingly, God does not condemn all earthly pleasures and possessions, but only condemns the
abuse of these things in detriment to the soul. All those who take these words of Jesus for themselves: My
Kingdom is not of this world, are guarding against these abuses.

Those who identify themselves with a future life are as a rich person who loses a small sum without
emotion. Those whose thoughts are concentrated on earthly things are as the poor man who loses all be bas,
and so becomes desperate.
7. Spiritism opens up and broadens out the thought process, so offering new horizons. In place of a
short-sighted vision concentrated only on the present, which makes this fleeting moment passed on Earth the
unique and fragile axis of the eternal future; Spiritism shows us that this life is nothing more than a link in the
magnificent, harmonious assembly which is God's work. It also shows us the solidarity which joins together all
the different existences of one being, of all beings of the same world, and all the beings of all the worlds. It
offers the base and the reason for universal fraternity, whereas the doctrine of the creation of the soul at the
birth of the body, makes each creature a stranger one to the other. This solidarity between parts of a whole
explains what is inexplicable when only one of these parts is considered. This entirety would not have been
possible to understand at the time of Christ, and for this reason He waited till later to make this knowledge
known.
*****

CONSIDERATIONS:
He whole humanity has points of view in accordance with its culture its progress its evolution and
individually accordingly to the mixture of cultures and progress of the societies there will be as many points of
view as many individuals that there may be, howbeit in the practice and convenience some with others each
one comes to have his own opinion, in that manner for the societies to live some with others there are
agreements, rules, religions and standards of living.
Man to be in the present day he went through thousands of apprenticeships, he went through the
instinct of preservation, by the periods of knowledge of who he was and of his place in Earth and in the
Cosmos, as much as he discovered that he had a soul and the science of the existence of God, hence
interpreting from the so many effects to accept the god of thunder. the god of fire, the god of agriculture and
hundreds of other gods and after much spiritual aiding to understand the existence of a solely God, (uniquely
God) angels, and after that, of saints, and hencefore accepting in blind faith mysteries and miracles in
everything that one did not understand, and henceforth with made religions and dogmas and religious
monopolies and manipulations of the teachings of Jesus who came to reveal that God is Love and that we are
His Handy work, His Creation, His Children, that God loves us, therewith man entered in fanaticisms and
owners of the truth killing each other and so it was for many years in the middle age.
Time having passed came Spiritism which brought rational faith and that now with all information of
revelations of the beyond and information of the laws of nature man has better than ever condition of to have
rational faith instead of blind one, hence modern opinions to have much more tolerance, to be more
comprehensible in rationing, other opinions of other people are not debated as of other gods, but of the same
God Father, Father of all, there is no more the God of the Egyptians and the God of the Hebrews, the general
comprehension it is that we are all created by the same God, because if there were several gods there would
be disharmony in the whole Universe, but we do see that there is a wholly harmony and peace in the Universe
in accord to the Laws designated by God; the sun does illuminate and warms us, the Earth rotates around the
sun, the cosmos rotates in its trajectory with its galaxies and so it goes and so it will continue.
Amidst the comprehension of the facts, with the spiritist point of view explained in this study of the
gospel according to Spiritism, the point of view in the future of the spirit in immortality changes everything,
since the man knows that to be a reality decreed by God our Father, which in our spiritual progress we acquire
from stage to stage from degree to degree the ascending steps to God as order of life decreed by God in His
Laws, truly that many will take more time than others, but that does not mean to say that God may come to
have privileged ones, and so much as Jesus said: that the sick are the ones who need a doctor, also the
spirits more backslidden will have help to continue their ascension, in affinities and sodalities in which other
spirits will help them, even because in general we ascend in groups and those who might be holding back the
flow of the group will be helped by the very group as much as a teacher helps the more awkward pupils of the
teachings, the laws of love fraternity and solidarity are universal. They are spiritual, they are in the whole
universe because in short God is Love and the wholly creation and Law one finds in essence partly of Gods
expression which is Love, and we also know that God is Kindness; God is Justice, the one who misadjusts

himself to those laws is pulled by gravitational spiritual laws to amend himself because one cannot go against
Gods Laws for much time and he who does not go by love will go by pain. (Will go through suffering).
*****

For our spiritual comprehension let us appreciate the five alternatives in the Allans Kardec
book Posthumous Works, (in syntheses):
I MATERIALIST DOCTRINE
The intelligence of man is propriety of matter; it is born and dies with the organs. A man is nothing
before, nor after of the corporal life.
Consequences, being the man only matter, the material pleasures are the only real things and
desirable: moral affections need future: the moral ties death does break them without remission and for the life
miseries there is no compensation: suicide comes to be the rational ending and logic of the existence, when
one cannot expect attention for sufferings: unuseful any constrangiment to overcome the bad ponders: to live
each one for himself the best possible, while one may be here: it is stupidity to exhaust oneself and sacrifice
ones resting, of being comfortable for the sake of others , this is , because of beings who in their turn will be
annihilated and that no one will ever see again, social duties without foundation, good and evil merely
conventions: for social breakage of extravagances just the force of the material civil law.
** *****
II PANTEST DOCTRINE
The intelligent principle, or soul, independent of matter is extracted on being born from the whole
universe: individuals itself in each being during its life and returns by effect of death, to the common matter, as
the drops of rain into the ocean.
Consequences. Without individuality and without conscious of itself a being is as if it did not exist.
The moral consequences of this doctrine are exactly the same of the ones of the material doctrine. ()
*******
III - DEIST DOCTRINE
Deism issues two categories well distinct of believers, the ones independent deists and the
providential deists.
The first ones believe in God, they admit all the attributes to God as creator. God they say has
established the general laws which rules the Universe, but once established those laws they function by
themselves and He who has promoted them no more occupies Himself. The creatures do whatever they want
or what they can without being disquieted. There is no providence, God not being occupied with us; one has
nothing to thank Him for nor to ask Him. ().
*******
IV DOGMATIC DOCTRINE
The soul, independent of the matter, it is created by occasion of the being's birth; he/she survives and
preserve the individuality after the death; since that moment, he/she has certain irrevocably determined fate;
null it is any further progresses; he/she will be, therefore, for all the eternity, intellectual and morally, what was
during the life. Being the badly condemned to perpetual and irremissible punishments in the hell, completely
useless results to them any of every regret; so it seems that God refuses to grant them the possibility of them
to repair the evil that they may have caused. The good ones are rewarded with the vision of God and the
perennial contemplation in heaven. The cases that may deserve heaven or the hell, for all the eternity, they are
left to the decision and the fallible men's judgment, to whom the faculty is given of to absolve or to condemn
them.
(NOTE - If to this final proposition objected that God judges ultimately, one could wonder that value
has the decision uttered by the men, once that it can be infirmed.)
The convicts' definitive and absolute separation and of the elect ones. Uselessness of the moral helps
and of the consolations for the convicts. Angels' creation or privileged souls, exempt of every work to arrive to
their perfection, etc., etc.

Consequences. This doctrine leaves without solution the serious following problems:
1st where the innate dispositions come from, intellectuals and moral, do with what make the men what
they are born good or bad, intelligent or idiots?

2nd what is the fate of the children which die in tender age? Why do they go to a blessed life, without
the work the one which others are subject during long years? Why are they rewarded without been unable to
do good, or are deprived of a perfect happiness, without having caused any bad?
3rd Which is the fate of the cretin ones and of the idiots that are not aware of their actions?
4th Where the justice of the poverty and of the illnesses by birth, once they don't result of any action of
the present life?
(5th Which is the savages' fate and of all the ones and of those that unavoidably die in the state of
moral inferiority in which were put by the same nature, if it is not given to them to progress later on?
6th why God creates some souls more favored than others?
7th why He calls to himself prematurely the ones which could have improved themselves, if they had
lived more time, because it is not allowed them to have progress after their death?
8th why created God angels in perfection state without work, while other creatures are submitted to
the harsh probations in which may they have many more probabilities of succumbing, than of leaving
victorious, etc. etc.?
******
5th - SPIRITUALIST.DOCTRINE
The intelligent principle does not depend on the matter. The individual soul preexists and survives the
body. The starting point or of origin it is the same for all souls, without exception; all are created simple and
ignorant and subject to indefinite progress. Nothing of privileged creatures and more favored than others. The
angels are beings that arrived to their perfection, after they had passed, as all the other creatures, through all
of the degrees of the inferiority. The souls or Spirits progress more or less quickly, by the use of their free will,
by their work and by their good will.
The spiritual life is the normal life; the corporal life is a temporary phase of the life of the Spirit who is
covered of a material wrapper during its life, which it undresses on the occasion of its death.
The Spirit progresses in the corporal state and in the spiritual state. The corporal state is necessary to
the Spirit, until that it has jumped over a certain perfection degree. He there develops itself through the work
that he is submitted by his own needs and he/she acquires special practical knowledge. Being insufficient only
one corporal existence so that he/she may acquire all of the perfections, it retakes a body so many times as
are necessary and of every time it embodies with the progress that which he has accomplished in his
precedent existences and in the spiritual life. When, in a world, it reaches everything that there can obtain,
he/she leaves it to go to other worlds, intellectual and morally more advanced, less and less material, and so
on, to the perfection that it is susceptible to the creature. The blissful state or undesirable of the Spirits is
inherent to their moral progress; the punishment that one may suffer is consequence of ones hardening in the
evil, due to their perseverance in the evil state, they are punished themselves; but, the door of regret never
closes itself to them and they can, should they want go back to the way of the good and effectuate, with the
time, all the progresses.
The children that die in a tender age can be Spirits more or less advanced, since they already had
other existences in which they practiced the good or they committed bad actions. Death doesn't liberate them
of the proofs that they must suffer and, in opportune time, they return to a new existence in the Earth, or in
superior worlds, according to the elevation degree that they may have reached.
The soul of the cretin ones and of the idiots it is of the same nature that the one of any other
incarnated; they possess, a lot of times, great intelligence; they suffer for the deficiency of the means that they
dispose to enter in relationship with their companions of existence, as the mute persons suffer for not been
able to speak. It is because they might have abused the intelligence in their past existences and they accepted
the impotence situation voluntarily to use of it, in order to expiate the evil that they may have practiced, etc.,
etc." ""
*********
Concluding, we are all children of God, each one of us with his own light, his own understanding, his
own point of view, and we all are subjected to the Will of God and it is demanded of us to love each other and
that we should treat others as we want that we should be treated, let there be fraternity, let there be solidarity.

If Jesus asked that we should be perfect as our Father, let us therefore make effort to be better people and to
have transformation for the good with virtues worthy of raising the head to the heavens with humility and no
superiority to our neighbors, because we all are under the same conditions before God.
May God be with us, as formerly, today and forever?