Happiness Is Not of This World

20.  “I’m not  happy! Happiness wasn’t  made for  me!” people of every social position generally exclaim. This, my dear children, proves better than  any possible reason the truth  of this maxim from Ecclesiastes: “Happiness is not of this world.” Indeed, neither wealth, power nor even the flower of youth are the essential conditions for happiness. I would say more: not even the combining of these three much-desired conditions are, since we constantly hear persons of all ages amongst the most privileged classes bitterly complaining  about their situation.

Faced with such a fact, it is inconceivable that the working and militant classes envy with such avarice the position of those whom fortune seems to have favored. No matter what they may do in this world, all have their share of work and misery, their lot of suffering and disappointment, from which it is easy to draw the conclusion that the earth is a place of trial and expiation.

So then, those who preach that the earth is humans’ only home and that it is only there and in only one lifetime that they are permitted to reach the highest degree of happiness that their nature will allow are deluding themselves and are deceiving those who listen to them, since it has been demonstrated through many centuries of experience that this globe entails only in exceptional cases the conditions needed for an individual’s complete happiness.

In general terms, one can affirm that happiness is a utopia, the search for which successive generations have set out without ever having been able to reach it, for if a wise individual  is a rarity in this world, an absolutely happy one is not any easier to find.

That in which happiness on earth consists is something so ephemeral for those who do not  act wisely that,  despite one year, one month or one week of complete contentment, the rest of their lifetime slips away in a series of afflictions and disappointments. And note, my dear children, that I am speaking of those who are the fortunate ones of the earth, those who are envied by the masses.

Consequently, if the earthly dwelling place is meant for trial and expiation, one must accept the fact that there are more favorable homes elsewhere,  where the human spirit, although still imprisoned in physical flesh, possesses the fullness of the joys connected with human life. That is why God has planted in your solar system those beautiful higher order planets, toward which your efforts and tendencies will someday enable you to gravitate, once you have become sufficiently purified and perfected.

Nevertheless, do not deduce from my words that the earth is dedicated forever to the fate of being a penitentiary. Certainly not! Because from the progress already accomplished you can easily infer future progress, and from the social improvements that have been gained, new and more fertile improvements.  Such is the immense task that must be accomplished by the new doctrine that the Spirits have revealed to you.

So then, my dear children, may a saintly emulation animate you, and may each one of you vigorously shed the old ways. You must all dedicate yourselves to spreading this Spiritism that has already begun your own regeneration. It is your duty to enable your brothers and sisters to share in the rays of the sacred light. Therefore, get to work, my beloved children! Within this solemn assembly, may all your hearts aspire to  the great objective of preparing for future generations a world on which happiness is no longer a meaningless word.

François-Nicolas-Madeleine, Cardinal Morlot (Paris, 1863)