ARTICLE

MATERIALITY IN THE CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SPIRITS
Andrei Melnikov

1) One of the most significant peculiarities of the Spiritist Doctrine, exposed in the Spirits's Book [1], Mediums' Book and  other  works  by Allan  Kardec,  is  a  special  comprehension  of  the  notions "matter","materiality" that differ from  those  proper to the human thought. As illustration we can point out the following dialogues between Allan Kardec and the Spirits:

23. What is spirit?

Answer: "The intelligent principle of the universe."

What is the essential nature of spirit?

"It is not possible to explain the nature of spirit in your  language. For you it is not a thing because it is not palpable; but for us it is a thing. You must know however: there will never be a thing  equal  to nothing and the nothing does not exist.

28. Since spirit itself is something, would it not be more correct and clearer to designate these two general elements  by  the  terms  inert matter and intelligent matter?

Answer: "Questions of words are unimportant for us. It is for  you  to formulate your definitions in such a  manner  as  to  make  yourselves intelligible to one another. Your disputes almost  always  arise  from the want of a common agreement in the use of  the  words  you  employ, owing to the incompleteness of your language in  regard  to  all  that does not strike your senses."

(The Spirits' Book,  First  Part:  On  the  Primary  Causes,  Chap.II: General Elements of the Universe, 2. Spirit and Matter)

Thus we may re-interpret  the opposition "matter":"spirit" or "flesh":"spirit" as  "inert   matter": "intelligent  matter".This operation obeys us to nothing unless the notion  "matter" extends to immense dimension.  However it is in accordance to the development of this notion in  the contemporaneous natural  history. We inherit the comprehension of the difference between "flesh" and "spirit" from  our ancestors who lived many centuries ago  and  did  not  know  that  our bodies and air  consist  of  identical  elements.  But  now it  is a well-established fact that  air, light  and even   vacuum are manifestations of the substance our bodies consist of. It allows us to suppose that whatever peculiar  qualities  spirit  has it  can be a material phenomenon  too.

2) The Bible bears another witnesses to this point of view:

"There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but  the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory  of  the  terrestrial  is another. ...It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there  is  also  a  spiritual  body."  (1 Corinthians 15:40, 44).

The expression "spiritual body" must  be  synonymous  with  the  sense 'spirit' as one opposed to "flesh":

"Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea,  though  we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we  him  no more." (2 Corinthians 5:16);

"And without controversy great is the mystery of  godliness:  God  was manifest in the flesh,  justified  in  the  Spirit,  seen  of  angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." (1Timothy 3:16).

3) The new interpretation of the  notion  "matter",  proposed  by  the Spirits, makes religion and science closer  to  each  other:  religion becomes an objective system (to the extent our knowledge   allow  it); science can start  to  regard  the  religious  and  occult  experience without being afraid  of the subjective idealism. The statement  of  a spirit mentioned in paragraph  1) was said in the  middle  of  the  19 century; however the notion "matter" in this passage is in  accordance with the sense it has got in the 20 century rather than  at  the  time when Allan Kardec lived. According to the idea of physicists  of  that time,

(1) matter is the "stuff" that things of our  world  consist  of;  (2) matter itself consist of molecules and/or atoms.

Definition (2) does not allow one to assume other kinds of matter that do not consist of  molecules/atoms  and  consequently  have  different properties. Thus, light was considered as non-matter,  namely  energy. However, in the 20 century after the discovery of Albert Einstein  who proved the interrelation of matter and energy in  his  famous  formula (E=mc*c), the notion of matter changed and such  phenomena  as  light, electro-magnetic  and  gravitation  fields  and   even   vacuum   were attributed to matter in spite of their non-atomic structure.

4) Not all the manifestations of matter are  investigated  completely, but we say even now that very different physical laws can act on them. Some of such manifestations have not be found yet but are supposed  to exist. Thus, a Soviet scholar N.I.Kobozev discovered that our thinking is impossible on molecular level  ("A  Research  into  the  Sphere  of
Thermodynamics of Mind  Processes.",  1971,  in  Russian).  The  author counted the characteristics of the particles that are supposed to make matter. According to N.I.Kobozev, this substance is  a  non-entropical one, unlike all the investigated  sorts  of  matter.  Entropy  can  be interpreted as a measure of the disorder  in  irreversible spontaneous process. This means that  the  certainty  to  find  a  molecule  of  a concrete system in a certain state diminish as the system approach the equilibrium state. According to Kobozev, this  virtually  undiscovered substance providing our thinking is  independent  of  entropy.  If  we regard Kobozev's propositions, we can assert  that  our  mind  can  be treated as a material structure without infringing laws of the natural history. Indeed, modern scholars  investigating    paranormal phenomena  and  simply  energetic  capacities  of   humans   postulate so-called "bio-fields" proper to the inner structure of our body.  The discovery of Kobozev allows to treat mind as such a bio-field as well. Another important consequence of his  work  is  that  it  changes  the scientific comprehension of death. It  is  evident  that  death  of  a system is an entropical process  that  leads  it  to  the  equilibrium state. But if our mind is supposed not to undergo such  a  process  it can mean at least that the traditional scientific notion of the  total death of mind with the death of the body become doubtful. It means that scholars denying life after death must find  a  special  evidence  for their point of view, otherwise one should admit  that  science  has  a good deal of facts to prove scientifically that mind does survive  the physical death.

5) In spite of the fact that these considerations  do  not  prove  the materiality of spirit it allows us to assert that its  very  important property - mind - is a material structure and can  be  explored  using the scientific method. All the above-mentioned  shows well that  Allan Kardec predicted in his books what has started becoming the scientific explanation only nowadays, i.e. a whole century  after  the  death  of this outstanding figure. The genius of Allan Kardec consisted  not  in the fact that he discovered every principle by himself but rather that he served as  a  perfect  compilator  and  interpreter  of  the  ideas descending from above. The main advantage  of  the  classic Spiritist conception invented by Allan Kardec was a highly-developped techniques of  the  analysis  of medium messages. No wonder that many  statements from  this conception  are getting their scientific interpretation nowadays  what  also was predicted by the great French scholar. So our task is to study the ideas expressed in his books more substantially and try to find illustrations demonstrating their importance for the development of  the  contemporaneous  scientific and philosophical thought.

In the text above Melnikov discusses an extremely  hard  question  not only for the Spiritist Doctrine but also to  the  whole  community  of philosophers. Reading the Spirits' Book (SB) in its  original  version we see that Kardec (after the analysis of the answers provided by  the spirits) used the word "spirit" in two different senses. In  order  to emphasize this difference the word "spirit" was typed differently:

1) The form "[s]pirit" with initial  non-capital  letter,  meaning the spiritual element.

2) The form "[S]pirit" with initial capital letter, meaning the spirit entity itself, the being.

This difference in spelling is far from being a matter of style  or  a subtlety. It is in fact vital to understand the passages of  questions 23 and 28 cited by Melnikov. Accordingly, the following sentences have undoubted meanings:

I) We are incarnated Spirits.

II) The spirit principle in us is responsible for our state  of  being incarnated Spirits.

III) Matter and spirit are two different principles of the Universe.

Some modern translations of the SB (not only in English [*]  but  also in other languages,  including  Portuguese)  simply  wiped  out   this difference in spelling, once they have not paid  sufficient  attention to the difference in meaning implied by it. It is true that  the  word "spirit" in English is typed with initial non-capital  letter  in  the general usage. However, in  specific  passages  (scientific  articles, texts etc) we are fully authorized to change its representation mainly if there are good reasons to do it. In this case,  the  reader  should pay attention to the meaning implied by the word.

The controversy treated by  Melnikov  represented  by  the  opposition between <matter> X <spirit> should be understood in the context of the meaning (1), spirit with initial "s". Also, in English, one  can  take the word "spirit" in the same sense of the  word  "mind".  One  infers (mainly by reading the initial parts of the  SB)  that  the  Spiritist Doctrine has adopted the so-called "ontological idealism", the  thesis that admit the existence of two fundamental elements in the  Universe, matter and spirit (and above them God, the creator, see question 27 of the SB). From the material "stuff", material manifestations arise (the sense of colors, sounds, forms etc) while from the spiritual  "stuff", spirit manifestations are born (feelings, thoughts, passions etc). The perception of the existence of such different manifestations led us to proposed two different principles as their cause (two different things can not have the same cause, since cause and effect are linked). There is here no novelty added to the debate, and the Spiritist Doctrine has not  pronounce itself about any possible definitive answer to the  old puzzle. After the answer of question 28, Allan Kardec makes clear  the current point-of-view:

"One fact, evident to everyone, dominates all our hypotheses.  We  see matter that is not intelligent; we see the action  of  an  intelligent principle that is independent of matter. The origin of and  connection between these two things are unknown to us. We don't  know  if  matter and the intelligent principle have a common,  preordained  source  and thus points in contact. We don't  know  whether  intelligence  has  an independent existence of its own or if it is only an effect. We  don't even know if intelligence is, as some believe,  an  emanation  of  the Divine. Matter and intelligence appear to us to be  distinct,  and  we therefore speak of them as  being  two  constituent  elements  of  the Universe. We do see, above these, a higher intelligence  that  governs all things, and that is distinguished from them by essential qualities peculiar to itself. We call this Supreme Intelligence God."

This implies that the debate continues in the after-life as far as our current spirit stage is concerned. Curiously, this  seems  to  be  the point of view of Paul, as the passage  quoted  by  Melnikov  shows  (I Corinthians, 15 40:44). Paul  explicitly  admitted  the  existence  of celestial (spirit) and terrestrial (matter) bodies and  said  that the glory of one is different from the other.

During the compilation of several following questions of the  SB,  the Spirits, however, have clearly indicated the existence of  a  material component in the structure  of  the  spirit-being,  the  Spirit.  Such opinion put forward by the Spirits are mostly found in the Second Part of the SB. In this part, question are  addressed  to  unveil  specific properties of the Spirit world as well as  the  state  of  the  Spirit before and after the incarnation.

This material component allows the spirit  to  act  upon  matter.  One could imagine that, since both the spirit and material principles  are different things, there would be a continuous gradation of density  of such intermediary state, from spirit down to matter, but this  remains a mystery. All the  considerations  made  by  Melnikov  are  valid  if applied to this special kind of intermediary  spirit-like  matter. In particular, the thermodynamics of non-spontaneous  processes,  also called irreversible processes, (such as those happening inside  living tissues) is still under  development  and  one  can  only  hope  for interesting findings in the future.  The  concept  of  entropy  is  of difficult generalization to  non-spontaneous  processes,  but  several studies have been already done in order to apply generalization of the second law (the change in entropy is always greater than zero in every spontaneous physical  processes)  to  the  domain  of  non-spontaneous phenomena.

An important physicist who has  firstly  discussed  this  question  is Erwin Schrodinger (one of the fathers of  Quantum  Mechanics). In  his famous book "What is Life ?" [2], first published in 1944, Schrodinger treats the physical fundamentals of the living  organizations  and  in his Tarner Lectures "Mind and Matter", he  specifically  presents  his view on the old  philosophical  debate.  Particularly  interesting  is Chapter 6, "Order, disorder and Entropy". This chapter starts  with  a quotation by Spinoza (emphasizing dualism and  the  need  of  a  third uniting element, the perispirit?):

"Nec corpus mentem ad cogitandum, nec mens corpus ad motum,  neque  ad quietem, nec ad aliquid (si quid est) aliud determinare potest"

or, in English:

'Neither can the body determine  the  mind  to  think,  nor  the  mind determine the body to motion or rest or anything else (if  such  there be).'

In the following sections of Chapter 6, we see Schrodinger to  propose that "living matter evades the decay to equilibrium".  We  transcribed below some interesting passages of  his  little  book.  After defining entropy by the relation

Entropy = k log (D),

with k the so called Boltzmann's constant and D the "the  quantitative measure  of  the  atomistic  disorder  of  the  body   in   question", Schrodinger proceeds to explain "how we would express in term  of  the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of  a  living  organism,  by which it delays the decay into thermodynamically equilibrium (death)":

"We said before: 'It feeds upon negative entropy', attracting,  as  it were, a stream of negative entropy  upon  itself,  to  compensate  the entropy increase it produces by living and thus to maintain itself  on a stationary and fairly low entropy level.

If D is a measure of disorder, its reciprocal, 1/D, can be regarded as a direct measure of order. Since the logarithm of 1/D  is  just  minus the logarithm of D, we can write Boltzmann's equation thus:

-Entropy = k log (1/D).

Hence the awkward expression 'negative entropy' can be replaced  by  a better one: entropy, taken with the negative sign, is itself a measure of order. Thus  the  device  by  which  an  organism  maintain  itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly  low  level of entropy) really consists in continually  sucking  orderliness  from its environment. This conclusion is less paradoxical than  it  appears at first sight. Rather could it be blamed for triviality.  Indeed,  in the case of higher animals we know the kind of orderliness  they  feed upon well enough, viz., the extremely well-ordered state of matter  in more or less  complicated  organic  compounds,  which  serve  them  as foodstuffs. After utilizing it, they return it in a very much degraded form - not entirely degraded, however, for plants can still  make  use of it. (These, of course, have their most powerful supply of 'negative energy' in the sunlight)"

Therefore, one concludes that "death" occurs  when  the  mechanism  of continual feeding of orderliness is broken by some external influence. The very fact of living  organisms  not  obeying  the  second  law  of thermodynamics is considered by Schrodinger as evidence that the  kind of matter they are formed by is  subjected to possibly  new  types  of physical laws (Chapter 7, "Is Life based on  the  laws of  Physics?"). Then  Schrodinger  proposes  that  Quantum  Mechanics  might  play  an important role in the understanding of such new laws.

As the reader can see, the subject is very new  and  still  opened  to refined analysis.

References

[1] A Kardec, "The Spirits' Book".
[2] E Schrodinger,  "What  is  Life  with Mind and Matter & Autobiographical Sketches", Cambridge University Press 1967.

"If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am,  there  shall
also my servant be; if any man serve me, him will my Father honour"
Jesus (John, 12:26)
The conflicts of our times show failing in our hearts.

Evolution has actually become a tragedy today. It looks as if  mankind were crossing a tunnel of darkness.  Everywhere  we  are  involved  in anguish and confusion.

What is the trouble?, inquires a neighbor.

What do I care?, answers another.

What should we do? Let us get on with our work because Christ's  wordshave not changed. In spite of all difficulties,  the  Gospel  has  the answer to every spiritual problem.

We do not serve for our sake, but for Him.

Jesus is the heart of the Gospel. The best of everything in the way to God revolves around Him. In fact, what we  can  realize  is  always  a small thing. However, we should not forget that a  great  city  starts with a small stone. We are in the Christian life  in  the  Kingdom  of God. We can stop, to walk slowly or go a little faster.

In spite of our failings, it is important to our interest now that, as Christians, we do not hesitate to take our  stand  with  Jesus.  After all, the question is grave and this is the most important  problem  of the Christian  life.  Christ  measures  our  lives  not  in  terms  of intelligence or fortune, but through service to all people.