Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in Kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.
In the meantime, the Spiritists and the Spiritualists remained bitterly divided. Traditional spiritualists vociferously denied the doctrine of reincarnation. Theosophists and Spiritists defended it.
Those who denied the reality of reincarnation pointed out that the spirits of their relatives, even those who had been in Spirit for years, never spoke of reincarnation, and when queried about it, denied that reincarnation took place. They also noted that the only spirits who spoke of reincarnation at that time claimed to come from the “higher spheres.” Unfortunately, the provenance of those spirits was seriously in question.
Lower spirits were always claiming to be God or Satan or important people like a dead Pope. How were Spiritualists to know if these exalted spirits weren’t just intellectual impostors making claims to feed their own egos? This remains an important point because low spirits are not necessarily ignorant. They may be the spirits of well-educated conmen, narcissists and sociopaths pretending to be exalted spirits from higher realms. Lower spirits are always looking for ways to relieve their boredom and the negativity that surrounds them, and finding someone willing to believe their lies elevates their status, even if it is only temporarily. The subject of spiritual lies and tall tales was explained more thoroughly in Chapter 19.
Also, remember that channeled messages concerning doctrinal issues such as reincarnation and hotly contested moral issues tend to take on the overtones of the “political correctness” of the age in which they were channeled, meaning that celestial opinions about these types of matters tend to “evolve” over time. As we learned in previous chapters, the spiritual realm is concerned with the evolution of souls, not the spiritual laws under which they evolve. The spiritual laws themselves are invariant (never changing). It is partly for this reason that most spiritualists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rejected the council of these self-proclaimed higher spirits.
Those who chose to believe in reincarnation pointed out the erudition of the spirits making the claims, as well as the intricacies of their theories and how well all the component parts seemed to fit together.
Traditional spiritualists shot back that intelligence, erudition, good vocabulary and intricate theories don’t necessarily imply that a spirit is, in fact, more advanced than others that are more honest, but less articulate. Just look at all the tyrants in history; Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez…the list goes on and on.. They were all charismatic and gave rousing speeches, and the doctrines they preached were intellectual marvels. They all looked great…on paper.
The theory of socialism still appeals to the young and naïve, and it keeps cropping up in academia. But socialism, and its offspring, have been responsible for over a hundred million deaths during the twentieth century alone. Just because a highly educated person can speak and write well, and can expound on theories that seem to make a lot of sense, those facilities do not make him or her an advanced soul incarnate. Nor are his theories necessarily anything more than erudite bluster. The same can be said of that person when death releases the soul from the body.
Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in Kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.