Milton Medran Moreira
Opinião Editorial. Periodical publication
that expresses the ideological position and guidelines of the Spiritist
Cultural Center of Porto Alegre, Brazil. April 2020
There is a fundamental distinction between mystical and
rational spiritualism. The former is linked to magical thinking, inasmuch as
the latter has its solid supports in reason.
Matured fruit of the Enlightenment that preceded it,
spiritualism illuminated with the brilliance of reason issues that religious
mysticism had imprisoned in the dark room of mystery.
Magical thought and action thrive on and survive through
mystery. You can, if you wish, interpret matters such as the existence of God,
of the spirit, of its survival after death and its communicability with the
material world, from the callings of mystery. Religions chose to wrap each of
these questions in dogmas that do not depend on rational interpretation or are
not susceptible to their analysis.
Spiritism, historical extension and doctrinal
condensation of modern rational spiritualism, already found in reason itself
and in the human sciences, elements of experimental demonstration and
consequent philosophical conviction.
All of us who declare ourselves spiritists are urged, in
each episode of our individual or social life, to certify whether the values
held by us as spiritists are effectively linked to the realm of reason or if we
still tend, through atavistic religious influences, to interpret them through
magical thinking.
We are currently experiencing a serious worldwide episode
in the field of public health that can, like many other phenomena in life, be
interpreted and combated from both magical and rational thought.
We will be linking it to magical thinking, for example,
if we attribute its origin to the initiative and action of an angelic being,
agent of the corrective justice of a repressive god, who is tired of human
evils, but, at the same time, merciful for safeguarding humanity from a drastic
and painful destruction. We will also be giving possibilities to magical
atavism if we seek the solution of physical ills caused by a virus, which is a
product of nature, resorting to superhuman healing processes and excluded from
science and the natural world.
There is, in the rational and free-thinking spiritists
interpretation, no contempt for spiritual causes of human ills or for the
possibility of the intervention of spirits in the therapeutic field. In the
meantime, we cannot lose sight of the fact that:
a) Man is a biological / spiritual / social composite in
whose intimacy all these components must be harmonized, which always need to be
observed and managed together;
b) The most efficient expression of the communicability
between the material and spiritual dimensions does not take place by processes
impregnated with mysticism and mysteries, but tends to be perfected through the
fine harmony between the incarnated and the disincarnated, holders in their
respective planes, of knowledge capable of alleviating or ending human
suffering.
However, if, in the spiritual world, a disembodied entity
and, indeed, possessor of knowledge capable of bringing about the cure of some
pathology still incurable here, its preferential effort must be directed
precisely to the embodied minds applied to that same objective. It is from this
process, mind to mind, between incarnate and disembodied humanity, that great
discoveries, scientific advances and advances in human thought are produced.
In this order of ideas, it is always the duty of the spirits
to search in human nature itself — in which error, success, successful or
mistaken experiences coexist — the path to the physical, intellectual and moral
improvement of humanity. At that point science assumes capital importance for
the correct and rational resolution of great human problems.
Science is understood as all areas of knowledge, from
biology to law, from chemistry to pedagogy, from medicine to psychology,
instances all subject to an ethic of universal validity. The spiritual
exchange, a specific area developed by Spiritism, must have as its objective
the search for a synthesis of all this knowledge, in a perspective centered on
the reality of the existence of the spirit and on the communicability between
incarnate and disembodied humanity, in actions where love and rationality are
present, distanced from mysticisms and superstitions.
Science, seen from an immortalist and progressive
perspective, must be the center for which the efforts of the spiritists
converge, thus discouraging beliefs, mythological visions about God and the
universe, miraculous cures, replacing thought and magical acts for the
incentive to rational knowledge, built by the natural and healthy exchange
between the material and spiritual dimensions.
TRANSLATOR:
Iraida E. Albino
