• We live, think, act - for us it is beyond doubt; no less certain is the fact that someday we will die. But, having left earthly life, where do we go, what will become of us? Are we getting better or worse? Will we or won't we exist? "To be or not to be?" - that's the question. To live forever or not to live at all; will we live forever or will everything disappear forever? This is worth thinking about.
Every person strives to live, enjoy life, love, be happy. Tell the person who is on his deathbed that he will still live, that the hour of his death has not yet come; most importantly, tell him that he will be happier than he was, and his heart will beat with joy; but what will this joy, this hope of happiness serve, if one breath is enough to make everything scatter to dust?
Is there anything more depressing than thoughts of absolute annihilation? The sacred object of attachments, reason, progress, knowledge acquired through labor - everything will be broken, everything will be lost. Why then take care of your perfection, restrain your passions, get tired, developing your mind, if you are not destined to see the fruits of these efforts, especially when you think that tomorrow you may no longer need anything? If this were so, then the fate of a person would be a hundred times more terrible than the fate of an animal living in the present moment, in meeting their material needs, without hope and hope for the future. However, the gut feeling tells us that this cannot be.
• Believing in nothingness, a person involuntarily concentrates all his thoughts on the present. And how do you really care for the future you don't expect? This exclusive concern for today naturally leads to selfishness, and the unbeliever is quite consistent, coming to the following conclusion: it is necessary to enjoy life, because with death everything will end; we need to enjoy more and faster, because we do not know how long we can live; or to a conclusion even more dangerous for society: let us enjoy and think only of ourselves, since happiness on earth goes to the most courageous people.
If the conscience stops someone, then there is no bridle for those who are not afraid of anything. They believe that human laws punish only people who are inexperienced and narrow-minded, which is why they apply all their abilities to circumvent them. This teaching is unhealthy and antisocial; doctrine preaching destruction.
• Imagine, for example, that a whole nation for some reason comes to the conviction that in a week, a month or even a year later it will be destroyed, that not a single person will survive and that no trace or memories and eternal life do not exist. What will he do during this time? Will he begin to work on his improvement and enlightenment? Will he start working? Will he respect the rights, life and property of his fellow man? Will he want to obey the laws and respect authorities, even the most respected, such as the authority of his parents? Will she accept any responsibilities? Of course not. And if we do not see massive examples of this, then isolated cases, as a result of the doctrine of non-being, occur daily.
If the consequences of negative teachings are not as destructive as they could be, then this is, firstly, because most unbelievers have more ostentatious art than real disbelief, more doubts than beliefs, and that they are more afraid of nothingness than they want to. to show, since the title of a free-thinker flatters their pride. Secondly, the truly and completely unbelievers constitute an insignificant minority, they unwittingly submit to the influence of opinions opposite to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and are supported by the dominant materialism. However, if absolute disbelief is once made common property, then society falls apart. This is where the doctrine of total annihilation will lead.
• In this state of affairs, spiritualism is an obstacle to the spread of unbelief, refuting it not only with reasoning or indications of the dangers that it entails, but with material facts, making it possible to visually verify the existence of the soul and future eternal life.
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Everyone is free, of course, in his convictions: he can believe in something or not believe in anything; but those who try to sow in the minds of the masses, or, especially, in the minds of youth, the denial of eternal life, relying on the authority of their scholarship and their position, spread the germs of confusion and destruction and take on a heavy responsibility.
• There is one more teaching that renounces materialism because it recognizes the existence of a rational principle outside matter. This is the doctrine of the fusion of each individual individual with the universal whole. According to this teaching, each individual at the time of birth receives a piece of this beginning, which makes up his soul and gives him life, reason and feeling. After death, the soul returns to its original source and is lost in infinity, like a drop of water in the ocean.
This doctrine, which admits at least something, is undoubtedly somewhat higher than pure materialism, but the results of both are the same. Whether a person plunges into oblivion after death or is lost in the general mass is all the same for him. If in the first case he is destroyed, then in the second he loses his individuality, which for him is tantamount to destruction. The most important thing for him is the preservation of his personality, his own "I", and without this he does not care whether there is eternal life or nothingness! The future for him is still indifferent, and as before he will only be occupied with the present. From the standpoint of moral consequences, such a teaching is as unhealthy, as hopeless, as selfish as materialism.
• In addition, the following can be objected to him: all drops in the ocean are the same and have the same properties, as parts of one whole; why, then, the souls extracted from the common ocean of the universal mind are so little alike? Why does genius appear next to stupidity, the highest virtues next to terrifying vices? Kindness, meekness, philanthropy, and next to it - anger, cruelty and barbarity? How can the parts of a homogeneous whole be so different? It will be said, perhaps, that their upbringing changes. But where do the natural qualities, early development, good or evil instincts that do not depend on upbringing and often diverge from the environment and the society in which they manifest themselves, come from.
Education, naturally, changes the natural qualities of the soul - mental and moral, but here a new difficulty appears. Who gives education to these souls and encourages them to improve? Souls, according to their common origin from one and the same source, cannot differ from each other in their development. On the other hand, the soul, returning to the universal whole from which it emerged, brings into it a more perfected element acquired by it during its earthly life; as a consequence, the whole must ultimately be profoundly changed and improved. Why is it that the souls of the ignorant and the wicked are constantly being born from it?
• According to this teaching, the world source of reason, which gives rise to human souls, does not depend on the Divine. This, in fact, is not even pantheism, the teaching of which is not entirely similar to this. Pantheism recognizes that the universal source of life and intelligence is Deity. God is both spirit and matter; all beings, all bodies of nature constitute the Divine: these are its constituent elements, its molecules. God is the union of all intelligences, and each person who is part of the whole is God Himself; no supreme independent being governs the whole; the world is a huge republic without a head, or, better to say, everyone here is a head with absolute power.
• Such a system can be opposed by many objections, of which the main ones will be: how to explain that the Divine is infinitely perfect (otherwise it is impossible to comprehend) can consist of parts to such a degree imperfect and in need of improvement?
Each particle of the whole is subject to the law of perfection, which means that God must be perfected; and if He is constantly improving, it turns out that there was a time when He was very imperfect.
How could an imperfect being, composed of such diverse trends and ideas, be able to create laws so harmonious, so wonderful by unity, wisdom and foresight, by which the world is governed? If all souls are separate parts of the Divine, then they all contributed to the compilation of the laws of nature; why do they constantly murmur against them, against their own works? No theory can be recognized as true if it does not satisfy the requirements of reason and does not explain all the facts related to it; if at least one case cannot be explained by it, then it turns out that the theory is not absolutely correct.
• Morally, the consequences are also illogical. First of all, the soul remains the same as in the previous teaching, merging with the common whole and the loss of individuality. If we assume, according to the opinion of some pantheists, that they retain their individuality, then God no longer has the unity of will: then He is a union of myriads of heterogeneous directions. In addition, each soul, being an integral part of the Divine, not a single one obeys the highest power and, therefore, does not bear any responsibility for its actions, good or bad; nothing prompts her to do good, and she can do evil with impunity, since for her the highest power lies in herself.
• These theories not only do not satisfy the mind and aspirations of a person, but they run into insurmountable difficulties, because they are unable to resolve all the questions raised by them.
So, a person is left to choose one of three beliefs: in non-existence, in merging with the universal whole, or in the preservation of the individuality of the soul before and after physical death (eternal life). Logic brings us to that last belief on which all religions have been based since the time the world existed.
If logical thinking leads us to the recognition of the individuality of the soul, it also leads to another consequence, namely, that the fate of any soul must depend on its personal properties. Because it is impossible to allow the underdeveloped soul of a savage or a vicious person to be on a par with the soul of a learned and virtuous husband. Souls are justly bound to be held accountable for their actions; but in order to be responsible, they need the freedom to choose between good and evil; and without such freedom it is simply fatalism, in which there can be no responsibility.
• All religions equally recognize the principle of a happy or unhappy fate of the soul after death, in other words, punishment or rewards in the future life, expressed in the doctrine of heaven and hell, which we find among all nations. The essential difference between them lies in the definition of these awards and punishments, and especially those conditions that facilitate the award of one or another. From here came contradictory provisions that gave rise to different cults with specific rituals established by each of them: for the glorification of God, for reaching heaven and for avoiding hell.
• When they appeared, all religions had to correspond to the degree of moral and mental development of mankind; and people in the beginning were still to such a degree material that they did not understand much of the spiritual side of the cult and therefore limited all their religious duties to the performance of external rituals. For some time, these rituals satisfied the mind of man, but later, with the development of enlightenment, they became unsatisfactory for him. And if religions do not fill this gap, then people turn to philosophy.
• If religion, which at first corresponded only to limited concepts of a person, always followed the progressive development of his mind, there would be no unbelievers at all. The need to believe is in human nature, and he will believe if only he is given spiritual food that satisfies his mental needs. He wants to know where he is from and where he is going; but if he is shown a goal that does not correspond to his aspirations, his idea of God and the data of science; if, in addition, in order to achieve this goal, they put demands on him, with which his mind cannot reconcile, then he rejects everything. Pantheism and materialism seem to him more rational because they allow research and reasoning. Suppose people reason incorrectly, but nevertheless they prefer to reason, even if erroneously, than not to reason at all.
But let a person imagine the future in logical conditions, really worthy of greatness, justice and infinite goodness of God, and he will leave materialism and pantheism, the emptiness of which he realizes in the depths of his conscience and which he accepted only for lack of better.
• Man instinctively believes in the future, but, still not finding any solid basis for its definition, he left his imagination to create systems that gave rise to disagreements in beliefs. For example, the spiritualistic doctrine of the future is not a fantastic doctrine, more or less ingeniously conceived, but the result of observations of material factors available to our senses; it will unite, as is already seen now, all contradictory opinions and gradually lead, by the power of things, to the unity of belief in eternal life, built no longer on hypotheses, but on indisputable facts. The unification of concepts about the future fate of souls will be the first step towards the rapprochement of various religions, a huge step towards religious tolerance, and later towards the complete merger of religions.
Allan Kardek