Corporeal Kinship and Spirit Kinship

Blood ties do not necessarily establish ties among spirits. The body proceeds from the body, but the spirit does not proceed from the  spirit, because the  spirit already existed before the formation of the body. Parents do not create the spirit of their children; they do nothing except furnish them with their corporeal envelope, but it is their duty to aid in their intellectual and moral development in order to help them progress.

Spirits who incarnate in the same family – especially among close relatives – are most often sympathetic spirits, connected by previous relationships that  are expressed  by their mutual affection during earthly life. Nevertheless, it may also happen that such spirits are complete strangers to one another, divided by past-life antipathies that are now expressed as animosity to serve as a trial. True family ties are not therefore blood ties, but ties of sympathy and similarity of ideas that connect spirits before, during and after their incarnations. It thus follows that two individuals born from different parents may be more like brothers through their spirits than if they were brothers through blood. They may attract each other, search for each other and feel happy together, whereas two brothers related by blood may repel each other – a fact attested to every day. This moral problem is one that only Spiritism can resolve by means of the plurality of existences.

Consequently, there  are two  types of  families: families through spirit ties and families  through  corporeal ties. The former are permanent, are strengthened through purification and are perpetuated in the spirit world through the many migrations of the soul. The latter are fragile like matter itself, are extinguished over time and often dissolve morally even in the current lifetime. This is what Jesus wanted to make understood  by saying to his disciples, “Here are my mother and my brothers”; that is, my family through the ties of the spirit, because “all who do the will of my Father who is in heaven are my brother, my sister, and my mother.”

His brothers’ hostility is clearly expressed in Mark’s narrative, which states that their purpose was to take charge of him under the pretext that he had lost his mind. Upon being informed of their arrival, and knowing their sentiments toward him, it was natural that Jesus, speaking from a spiritual standpoint, would refer to his disciples as “these are my true brothers.” His mother was with his brothers and thus Jesus generalizes his lesson, which in no way implies that he meant that his mother according to the body was nothing to him according to the spirit, and that he felt nothing but indifference toward her; his behavior on many other occasions proved quite the contrary.