Revista Espírita 
Revue Spirite 
Caracter of the spiritual revelation 
Mensajero Espirita 
The Spiritist Messenger 
Spiritism is what it is and needs no label
One of the greatest disservices that religious orthodoxy have rendered to mankind throughout millenniums, was the work to deface the purity of the messages imparted from the spiritual world, to satisfy their interests and frailties. The sole essence of these messages is the improvement of the humankind and they are constantly being delivered by superior spirits who know well our condition and our needs. Acting as true messengers of God and absolutely detached from the vain interests that still prevail in our world, these evolved beings, since immemorial times, have granted us with the guidance that we need in order to achieve peace and happiness.
Regardless the purity, the greatness and the benefit that this guidance would bring to the human race's amelioration, if well observed and followed, they have rather been subjected to continuous interpolation and deceit, in order to fit the interests of groups that are fighting for power, rather than for the spiritual progress of the human species. Due in part to the fact that these messages were delivered in an epoch where scientific progress was yet in its dawn, it has been a common and easy practice among the so-called safeguard of the moral values of humanity, the religious orthodoxy, to manage to misrepresent them by attaching their theologian sophistry. One will realize that this is an easy assumption to reach upon, solely by taking a critical and brief look into the history of the main religions.
In his acclaimed work entitled The Outline of History [Garden City Books, New York, 1961], H. G. Wells makes the following assertions in regard to Buddhism, for instance, and the continuous process of interpolations it suffered throughout times:
"The fundamental teaching of Gautama, as it is now being made plain to us by the study of original sources, is clear and simple and in the closest harmony with modern ideas. It is beyond all dispute the achievement of one of the most penetrating intelligences the world has ever known.
We have what are almost certainly the authentic heads of his discourse to the five disciples which embodies his essential doctrine. All the miseries and discontents of life he traces to insatiable selfishness. Suffering, he teaches, is due to the craving individuality, to the torment of greedy desire. Until a man has overcome every sort of personal craving his life is trouble and his end sorrow. [Excerpt from Chapter XXIV The Rise and Spread of Buddhism, Item 3, p. 315].
"In certain other respects this primitive Buddhism differed from any of the religious we have hitherto considered. It was primarily a religion of conduct, not a religion of observances and sacrifices. It had no temples; and, since it had no sacrifices, it had no sacred order of priests. Nor had it any theology. It neither asserted nor denied the reality of the innumerable and often grotesque gods who were worshiped in India at that time. It passed them by." [Excerpt from Chapter XXIV - The Rise and Spread of Buddhism, Volume I, Item 3, pp. 317-318].
"The cult and doctrine of Gautama, gathering corruptions and variations from Brahmanism and Hellenism alike, was spread throughout India by an increasing multitude of teachers in the fourth and third centuries B.C. For some generations at least it retained much of the moral beauty and something of the simplicity of the opening phase." [Excerpt from Chapter XXIV - The Rise and Spread of Buddhism, Volume I, Item 4, p. 320]
"The faith of Buddha, which in the days of Asoka, and even so late as Kanishka, was still pure enough to be a noble inspiration, we now discover absolutely lost in a wilderness of preposterous rubbish, a philosophy of endless Buddhas, tales of manifestations and marvels like a Christmas pantomime, miraculous conceptions by six-tusked elephants, charitable princes giving themselves up to be eaten by starving tigresses, temples built over a sacred nailparing, and the like." [Excerpt from Chapter XXIX - The History of Asia during the Decay of the Western and Byzantine Empires, Volume I, Item 10, p. 473].
In the aforementioned work we will find clear references to the same process of interpolations, to which the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were also subjected throughout different epochs.
"Jesus had called men and women to a giant undertaking, to the renunciation of self, to the new birth into the kingdom of love. The line of least resistance for the flagging convert was to intellectualize himself away from from this plain doctrine, this stark proposition, into complicated theories and ceremonies, that would leave his essential self alone. How much easier is it to sprinkle oneself with blood than to purge oneself from malice and competition; to eat bread and drink wine and pretend one had absorbed divinity; to give candles rather than the heart; to shave the head and retain the scheming privacy of the brain inside it! The world was full of such evasive philosophy and theological stuff in the opening centuries of the Christian era. [Excerpt from Chapter XXVIII - The Rise of Christianity and the Fall of the Western Empire, Volume I, Item 5, p. 432].
"It is necessary that we should recall the reader's attention to the profound differences between this fully developed Christianity of Nicæa and the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. All Christians hold that the latter is completely contained in the former, but that is a quest5ion outside our province. What is clearly apparent is that the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth was a prophetic teaching of the new type that began with the Hebrew prophets. It was not priestly, it had no consecrated temple, and no altar. It had no rites and ceremonies. Its sacrifice was 'a broken and a contrite heart.' Its only organization was an organization of preachers, and its chief function was the sermon. But the fully fledged Christianity of the fourth century, though it preserved as its nucleus the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, was mainly a priestly religion, of a type already familiar to the world for thousands of years. The centre of its elaborate ritual was an altar, and the essential act of worship the sacrifice, by a consecrated priest, or the Mass. And it had a rapidly developing organization of deacons, priests, and bishops." [Excerpt from Chapter XXVIII - The Rise of Christianity and the Fall of the Western Empire, Volume I, Item 8, pp. 438-439].
These evidences should serve us as a great warning and help us to avoid falling prey to these orthodox systems. Allan Kardec, the codifier of the Spiritist Doctrine, was absolutely aware of the possibility that Spiritism would be subjected in the future to the same type of subtle additions. However, as he was intellectual and spiritual well prepared for the task, he bravely strove to face the prevailing materialistic ideas of his times, as well as the prejudices and the strong opposition of the religious orthodoxy, to bestow us with a well set, clearly defined and rational doctrine.
Amongst the primary and essential characteristics of this doctrine, one that clearly reaches out due to its intrinsic universal approach, is that it cannot be considered as a religion. Although many in the spiritist movement nowadays struggle to prove the contrary, Allan Kardec himself made this matter very clear, especially in his writings in the Revue Spirite. It is intriguing to note that it was exactly the members of the Roman Church, the ones who firstly stepped forward and tried to label spiritism as a religion. In the beginning, because they saw spiritism as a new sect that would eventually compete with them, and later when they ran out on their ridiculous argument that spiritism was a devil thing. The following assertion by Allan Kardec, answering to the arguments in an article authored by the Abode Chesnel of Paris and published on the L'Univers, would be enough to disprove the unreasonable affirmation that spiritism is a religion.
"Spiritism is then not a religion. On the contrary it would have its cult, its temples, its ministries. Undoubtedly anyone may convert their opinions in a religion or interpret at their will the known religion; but from this to the constitution of a new Church we would be far from and I think that it would be not prudent to follow this idea. In summary, Spiritism is concerned with the observation of the facts and not with the particularity of this or that faith; with the research of the causes, with the explanation that the facts can give to the known phenomena, either in its moral order as much as in the physical order and it does not impose cultism to its partisans, in the same manner that astronomy does not impose the cult of the stars, neither pyrotechnics the cult of fire. (...) What does this prove? That we are not atheists. But in no manner does it imply that we are followers of one religion." [Revue Spirite - May 1859 - Resposta a um Artigo de L'univers - pp. 149 e 150 - Translation from Portuguese by the Editorial's author].
Unlike the previous messages imparted from the spiritual world, which have the sole purpose of helping us to reach the possible and relative truth and achieve peace and happiness, the Spiritist Doctrine reached us in an epoch where the scientific progress had already been rooted in our world. It is a doctrine devoid from all the sophistry and subtleties which are entangled with the orthodox religions. Consequently, in order to take advantage of these beneficial teachings and set ourselves free from this constant circle of manipulations, it is solely required that we wake from our childish dream of salvation without work and dedicate ourselves to a serious and persistent study of the matters related with our own existential queries. The Spiritist Doctrine is one option, but it needs no label and here we think it is opportune to quote one of its greatest writers, J. Herculano Pires, who says: "Spiritism is a doctrine that exists in the books and needs to be studied".
It is also opportune to remember the great spiritist philosopher Leon Denis, when he says:
"What mankind needs now is no more a belief, a faith drawn from some particular system of religion, and inspired by texts which though worthy of respect, are of very doubtful authenticity, and in which truth and error are inextricable mixed. What is needed is a belief founded on proofs, on facts, a certitude based on study and experience, from which will come an ideal of justice, a true understanding of destiny, an incentive to perfection, which will regenerate the nations and link together men of all races and all religions." [Christianity and Spiritualism, Chapter VI - The Alteration of Christian Dogmas, p. 117].
Source: The Spiritist Messenger, 16th Year, Number 91, January 2008
