The Different Categories of Inhabited Worlds

3. From the teaching given by the Spirits, one comes to understand that the various worlds are in conditions very different from one another as to the degree of advancement or the lower order status of their inhabitants. Among them are those whose inhabitants are physically  and morally even less evolved than those of earth; others’ inhabitants are of the same level, whereas others’  are more highly evolved to  differing degrees in every respect. On lower order worlds, existence is completely material, the passions reign supreme and moral life is almost non existent. To the degree that moral life is developed, the influence of matter diminishes in such a way that, on more advanced worlds, life is entirely spiritual, so to speak.

4. On intermediate worlds, there is a mixture of good and evil, with the predominance of one or the other, according to the degree of advancement. Although it is not possible to make an absolute classification of the various worlds, one can, nevertheless, due to their status and destiny, and based on the more accentuated differences, divide them in a general way as follows: primitive worlds, intended for the first incarnations of the human soul; worlds of trial and expiation, where evil dominates;  regenerative worlds, where souls who still have something to expiate may absorb new strength by resting from the fatigue of struggle; happy worlds, where the good outweighs evil; and heavenly or divine worlds, the habitations of purified spirits, where the good reigns completely. Earth belongs to the trial and expiation category, and that is why humans on it are the target of so many miseries.

5. Spirits who incarnate on any one world are not connected to it forever, nor do they complete on it all the progressive phases they must traverse in order to attain to perfection. When on one particular world they have reached the degree of advancement it offers, they go to a more advanced one, and so on until they have reached the state of pure spirits. These various worlds are the stations on which they find elements of progress proportional to their advancement. It is a recompense for them to go to a world of a higher order, just as it is a punishment to prolong their stay on an unhappy world or to be relegated to one that is even unhappier than the one they are forced to leave if they have been obstinate in evil.