Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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ALLAN KARDEC
and into the future and the past, that depends entirely on his degree of purity and of
consequent elevation.
"This theory," it will be said, "is anything but encouraging. We had thought that, once freed
from our gross bodily envelope, the instrument of all our sufferings, we should suffer no
more; and now you tell us that we shall still suffer in the other life, although not in the same
way as we do here. But suffering is none the less painful, whatever its nature; and this
prospect is by no means an agreeable one." Alas, yes! We may still have to suffer, -to suffer
much, and for a long time; but we may also have no more to suffer, even from the very
moment of quitting the corporeal life.
The sufferings of our present existence are sometimes independent of ourselves; but they are
often the consequences of our own volition. If we trace our sufferings back to their source, we
see that the greater number of them are due to causes which we might have avoided. How
many ills, how many infirmities, does man owe to his excesses, his ambition-in a word, to the
indulgence of his various passions! He who should live soberly in all respects, who should
never run into excesses of any kind, who should be always simple in his tastes, modest in his
desires, would escape a large proportion of the tribulations of human life. It is the same with
regard to spirit-life, the sufferings of which are always the consequence of the manner in
which a spirit has lived upon the earth. In that life undoubtedly he will no longer suffer from
gout or rheumatism; but his wrong-doing down here will cause him to experience other
sufferings no less painful. We have seen that those sufferings are the result of the links which
exist between a spirit and matter; that the more completely he is freed from the influence of
matter-in other words, the more dematerialised he is-the fewer are the painful sensations
experienced by him. It depends, therefore, on each of us to free ourselves from the influence
of matter by our action in this present life. Man possesses free-will, and, consequently, the
power of electing to do or not to do. Let him conquer his animal passions; let him rid himself
of hatred, envy, jealousy, pride; let him throw off the yoke of selfishness; let him purify his
soul by cultivating noble sentiments; let him do good; let him attach to the things of this
world only the degree of importance which they deserve,-and he will, even under his present
corporeal envelope, have effected his purification, and achieved his deliverance from