The Spirits’ Teachings

The Law of Love

8. Love summarizes Jesus’ doctrine in its entirety because it is the sentiment par excellence, and sentiments are instincts raised to the height of the degree of progress accomplished. At their origin, humans have only instincts; more advanced and corrupted, they have only sensations; more educated and purified, they have sentiments. The exquisite apex of sentiment is love, not love in the ordinary sense of the term, but that inner sun that condenses and joins at its ardent focal point all supra-human aspirations and revelations. The law of love replaces the personality with the union of all beings and extinguishes societal misery. Happy are they who, overcoming their human nature, love with a great love their brothers and sisters in suffering! Happy are they who love, for they know the anguish neither of the soul nor of the body. Their feet are light and they live as though transported outside themselves. When Jesus spoke the divine word love, it made people tremble, and martyrs, filled with hope, descend into the arena.

Spiritism in turn has come to speak a second word of the divine alphabet. Pay attention, for that word lifts the headstones from the  empty graves: triumphing  over death, reincarnation reveals to astonished humans their intellectual heritage. This word no longer leads them to their deaths, but to the conquest of their own being, elevated and transfigured. Blood redeemed the spirit, and today the spirit must redeem humans from matter.

I stated that, at their origin, humans had only instincts; therefore, those in whom the instincts dominate are closer to their starting point than to their goal. In order to advance toward the goal, they must overcome the instincts for the sake of the sentiments, that is, perfect the sentiments while dominating the latent seeds of matter. The instincts are the germination and the embryos of sentiment; they bring with them progress, just as the acorn contains the oak, and less advanced individuals are those who, ridding themselves little by little of their cocoon, remain enslaved to their instincts. The spirit must be cultivated like a field. All future wealth depends on today’s labor, and much more besides earthly goods, labor will bring you glorious elevation. It is then that, comprehending the law of love that unites all beings, you shall find in it the sweet joys of the soul, which are preludes to the joys of heaven.

Lazare (Paris, 1862)