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English Language Publications

The Third Testament
The Divine Teachings of the Third Era
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Humanity
Spiritual Topics From The Third Testament
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Spanish Language Publications

El Tercer Testamento
Compendio de las Comunicaciones Divinas del Tercer Tiempo
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El Precursor – Tomo I
Los Consejos de Elías, nuestro Pastor (1866-1950)
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Los Protectores – Tomo I
Consejos del Mundo Espiritual de Luz (1866-1950)
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El Mensaje de María – Tomo I
La Ternura Divina (1866-1950)
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La Misión de la Mujer
Desde la mirada Mariana
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María, el ejemplo a seguir    new
 
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French Language Publications

Le Troisième Testament
Enseignements, révélations et prophéties
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Marie
 
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Les Protecteurs
 
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Portuguese Language Publications

Terceiro Testamento
As lições divinas do Terceiro Tempo 1866-1950
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German Language Publications

Das Buch des Wahren Lebens
auszüge ausgewählter lehren
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Der Vorbote
die ratschläge des Elia, des propheten
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Die Wächter
die erklärung der Geistigen Welt des Lichts
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Eine Nachricht Von Maria
die Göttliche zärtlichkeit
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Russian Language Publications

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Latvian Language Publications

Tresais Laiks
Dievisko atklasmju sakopojums, sanemts Meksika no 1886. Iidz 1950. gadam.
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The Spiritual Prayer

WHAT IS THE SPIRITUAL PRAYER?

You ask Me what does the prayer consist of, and I say to you: It is permitting your spirit to elevate himself freely to the Father; it is surrounding yourself with full confidence and faith in that act; it is receiving in the heart and in the mind the sensations gathered by the spirit and accepting with true humility the will of the Father. Whoever prays in that manner rejoices in My presence at any moment of his life, and he never feels to be needy.

Prayer is the spiritual means which I have inspired in man to communicate with My Divinity. That is why it became manifested within you from the beginning, like a yearning, like a necessity for the spirit, like a refuge in the hours of trial.

Is the beginning of the communication from spirit to Spirit which, in times to come, will flourish and will give fruits among this Humanity. Today I have revealed all this to the people listening to Me, so that they will be the forerunners of the age of spirituality.

Is the means revealed to your spirit to reach Me with your interrogations, with your inquietudes and your yearning for light. Through that communication, you will be able to dispel your doubts and remove the veil which may conceal a mystery.

HOW TO PRAY?

During all eras you have been taught the prayer.

In the Second Era I taught you the Lord’s Prayer, so that inspired by it, you would turn to the Father in your needs, always keeping in mind the promise of the coming of His Kingdom; so that you would seek Him in quest of forgiveness, consulting your conscience as to whether you had forgiven your debtors in the same manner.

Now I teach you the spiritual prayer, which does not come from the lips, but from the deepness of your spirit who, with humility and confidence, says to Me: -Lord, Thy will be done upon us.-

This is the language that I listen to, the one that I understand, a language without words, the one with the truth and sincerity. That is the prayer that I have come to teach you in this Third Era.

Enter into prayer in the silence of your home. Elevate your thought toward the Father who knows every worry, and is aware of every suffering in your heart, without the need of pronouncing any word whatsoever, and thus communicate with Him from spirit to Spirit to feel life, as much in the spirit as in the body, and restore them with fortitude and light in this manner.

I do not ask that your prayer lasts long hours, but rather that it be brief and heartfelt, simple in form and profound in spirituality. Those instants will be enough for Me to grant you My charity.

Pray with a simple prayer which comes from the purity of your spirit, and with the help of your conscience, examine your deeds. Then, you will rejoice with My presence.

Pray for all, and your prayer will be light and peace which will be extending, minute by minute, upon the face of the Earth.

PRACTICING THE SPIRITUAL PRAYER

Go forth practicing the spiritual prayer, so that from now on, you verify its goodness and its truth; become accustomed to search for the inspiration and the development of your intuition through that form of prayer. Then you will experience, in your intellect, a torrent of light that struggles to be converted into human expressions and words, into noble feelings, and into good deeds.

Do not forsake the practice of prayer, even when it is a brief as only five minutes, but in it, know how to make a good examination with the light of your conscience, in order to observe your deeds and know what you have to correct.

SPIRITUAL PRAYER, MEAN FOR COMMUNICATING WITH OUR HEAVENLY FATHER

The spirit conserves the intuition of having departed from the bosom of the Father some time ago, and knows that he still has before him an extensive journey to go through, in order to return to the point of departure. He devotes himself to prayer because he knows that at least, for the moment, he is able to communicate with his Father.
The spirit knows that in prayer he finds comfort that caresses, invigorates and heals.

I bless those who pray; the more spiritual their prayer is, the greater is the peace I allow them to feel; this you can easily explain, for one who feels that in order to pray he must kneel before idols or other objects to feel the presence of the divine, will not be able to experience the spiritual sensation of the presence of the Father within his heart.

When will this Humanity cease to deprive their spirit of the joy of feeling Me in their heart, through direct prayer or, what is the same, through the prayer from spirit to Spirit? Until it is My light that will illuminate the life of men, when they recognize the truth and understand their errors.

I have taught you to pray, and in that prayer we have conversed. You have called for Me in your sufferings and in your hours of peace; also when you have sinned, you have sought My presence to weep your faults with Me, and thus calm your spirit. My love and My patience are infinite, and are manifested at every instant among you.
I have taught you to elevate the spirit through prayer, to consult your Father with humility and respect, because then the Arcanum will be standing ajar, to allow you to contemplate that which is reserved for your knowledge, and you will feel the Divine light of inspiration reach your mind.

This is the time to pray and meditate, but with a prayer free from fanaticisms and idolatry, and with a serene and profound meditation in My Divine word.

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER LISTENS TO ALL PRAYERS

Blessed are those who practice the spiritual prayer, because they feel My presence; but truly I say to you, that I receive all prayers, regardless of the manner in which you elevate them to Me. I am attentive to every calling and to every petition, without judging the form, mindful only of the need with which you seek Me.

Why should I not listen to those who pray in an imperfect manner, knowing that everyone will come to practice the true prayer?

Truly I say to you, that it is necessary for everyone to know the truth; and that truth, is that the worship of man toward God has had an extensive evolution and has suffered incessant transformations. Within that worship is prayer, and it also has suffered transformations. Throughout your evolution I have always made you feel My presence, My mercy, and My light.

Now you have before you, a period of spirituality which you may name The Period of Perfect Prayer, because I have come to teach you to communicate with Me from spirit to Spirit.

SPIRITUAL PRAYER AS A TOOL

Through prayer, peace can be achieved, wisdom may be acquired, health can be obtained, the profound is comprehended, the mind illuminated and the spirit fortified.

Ah! If men of this era could understand the power of the prayer, what superhuman deeds they would perform! But they live an age of materialism, in which they even try to materialize the divine in order to touch it and be able to see it.

How can man go wrong when, before he does his will, he interrogates his Father through prayer? The man who knows how to pray, lives in contact with God; he knows the value of the benefits he receives from the Father, and, at the same time, understands the meaning or the objective of the tests which he goes through.

My servants of past eras, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph or Moses, knew about the power of prayer and with that they gave unforgettable demonstrations to Mankind, leaving their manner of praying as an example for all generations.

He who does not know true prayer, does not know the delights that it contains; does not know the fountain of health and of good things that may be found within it.

Pray, the Master says to you; prayer gives luster and brilliance to the weapons of love, with which you must conquer the peace for humanity. It causes the faculties to awaken, the spirit to become sensitized, the eyes become more perceptive and the heart more sensitive.

Without the power of prayer you cannot come out ahead in the struggle, nor will you be able to resist the trials, much less will you be able to teach your brethren the perfect way to pray.

I have taught you to pray so you may be free from dangers and obstacles, from pitfalls and darkness. I have said that even the elements will hear your prayer when they are unleashed by My justice. They will pass over you without touching you for you were able to pray with faith and purity.

And it is necessary for you to give proof of the power of the spiritual prayer, similar to past eras when it was given by those men whom you remember as patriarchs, as guides and prophets.

the texts of this topic are excerpts taken from The Third Testament

True Worship

“I am the same Master who during the Second Era spoke to you about the way to the Kingdom of
Heaven. I am the same Christ manifesting the truth across the centuries; the eternal lessons
which are unchangeable, because they are revelations which emanate from My Spirit.”

From The Book of The True Life 9:47 (The Third Testament)



“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

“God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

John 4:23,24

The Worship in the Beginning

You are not more developed than the primitive men, who were able to discover in each element, and in each marvel of Nature, the Works of a Divine Being, superior, wise, just, and powerful, to whom they attributed all goodness, everything existent, and for that reason they worshipped Him.

Through a growing intelligence, they attempted to understand what their corporal senses received. What perfect worship could they offer Me? What full comprehension could they have of the truth? Nevertheless, their amazement, their faith, and their worship, were received by Me as the first fruits of an extensive field that My Spirit would cultivate throughout the times.

Since then until now, how many revelations My love has entrusted to Mankind! Nevertheless, when these men should have reached the pinnacle of comprehension, and when their worship should be perfect, it is then when their science, egotistical, arrogant, and inhuman, has risen to deny Me. And regarding the existing worships, they live in a lethargy of routine and traditions.

Love Me through everything created by Me and discard the idea that God can be limited in some form. Mankind has created My image under different forms to feel that I am with them.

Why do you not seek Me through My deeds? I have allowed that everyone may contemplate the wonders around you so that through them, you can behold My power, from the least perceptible up to the majestic sun king.

However, I do not say that I am Nature, nor that it is God. Neither do I say that the sun is the Divine Spirit, since they are merely atoms in the Work of the Creator.

If you limit your mind to those beliefs, you would be imitating your predecessors, those who worshipped Me through the sun. However, you should not judge your forefathers badly, because at that time, man was hardly able to conceive the power of God from that force, because there he found warmth, light and life. Keep in mind that they were not very far from the truth.

In the same manner that I have not come to judge your imperfections, neither do I want you to judge those of your brethren.

The Spiritual Worship


Today I come to spread My spirit among you, so that you may learn to render Me a spiritual and simple worship, free of materialism, of traditions, and fanaticism.

You, who have overthrown the false gods you worshipped in past eras, will be able to enter this sanctuary that today I am engraving in your spirit with My word.

In this period I came to liberate you from a new bondage: the temptations, the pleasures, the vices, which are like the cruel tyrant Pharaoh, who has burdened you with chains. Tomorrow this new freedom will be celebrated by mankind, not with feasts or traditions, but with a spiritual love for one another.

The victims whom you offered before the altar of Jehovah were received by Him, but it was not the most adequate form to elevate your spirit to the Father. It was then that I came to you as Jesus to teach you the Divine commandment which says: “Love one another.” I say to you today, that the lessons I taught you during the Second Era through the deeds of Jesus, have been altered sometimes and misinterpreted on others. That is why I have come as I announced, to clarify My truth.

My sacrifice of that period prevented the sacrifice of many victims, and I taught you a more perfect worship. My new manifestation of this period will allow mankind to understand that the symbolic forms should not be adopted without first analyzing their significance, since they are only a representation of My lessons.

One God, one worship


The moment of silence has come, the moment of your communion with Me, for in the same way that the ocean waves blend with one another, you will unite with My Divine Spirit; a silence not only in the lips, but also within the inner temple of man, because it is your spirit who speaks to Me, and it is a solemn moment.

Enter into silence and listen to Me, O travelers of many pathways who carry the dust of different roads; let Me be the light in your destiny.

All the religions will disappear and only the light of the Temple of God will remain shining within and outside of man, in which everyone will render only one worship of obedience, of love, of faith, and good will.

I have seen that your religions do not have the necessary strength to contain your wickedness, nor the sufficient light to touch the conscience and illuminate your reason. And that is because they have departed from the essence of My Doctrine, which is solely for the spirit.

The perfect worship

My pathway remains outlined within your conscience. Soon you will not have any pastor on Earth, nor ministers who celebrate rituals before your eyes, nor houses of prayer that symbolize the universal temple of God.

The universe will be your temple; before your spirit shall be the Lord, the Master, your sweet Christ, filled with wisdom and with love, always ready to listen to you. You shall have no altar but your heart, nor any other guide but your own conscience.

These lessons have been revealed to you and have taken form within your spirit. You cannot stray from the pathway because you have seen it very well.

When the world contemplates you walking along without material gods, without rituals, and without pastors, it will be amazed, it will judge you, and what will enable you to give testimony to them of My truth, that you are not alone, shall be your deeds, your virtue, your life, for you will not only spread My work through the instrument of your lips, you must live it, because one action in your existence is worth more than a thousand of your words, however convincing they may be. Love, gentleness, humility, sacrifice. In this manner, the world will recognize Me through you.

In that way, My people, in that manner, disciples, I want to take you to perfection; that is the way I want you to reach that great city that has been prepared since eternity, so you may be the dwellers, the eternal inhabitants within that peace and within that perfection.

All the texts of this topic are excerpts taken from The Book of the True Life.

Divine Gift Of Reincarnation

The reincarnation, a divine gift.

The world will learn the truth about the resurrection of the flesh, which is the reincarnation of the spirit.

Reincarnate: to return to the world to be born again; emerging of the spirit from a human body. That is the truth regarding the resurrection of the flesh, and not the so twisted, as well as absurd interpretation you have been told.

Reincarnation is a gift that God has granted your spirit so as not to be limited to the smallness of the flesh, and its fleeting existence on Earth; or to its natural weakness, but rather, proceeding from a superior nature, that spirit can take possession of many material bodies as may be necessary. However, in the beginning, the world will combat this revelation with fury, giving it the appearance of a strange and false doctrine, in order to make men of good faith distrustful.

Mankind creates legends, fantasies, and even among the most remote tribes, people hidden in the jungles, have a presentiment of the reincarnation of the spirit.

Who are you? What do you know about your past?

Tell Me: Who are you? Whom do you believe to be? Whom do you feel you are? What do you know about your past, and how far back is your origin? What do you know from whence you came, where you have passed through and where you are headed?Who were you before this life? Who are you at the present time, and who will you be in the future? Those are the mysteries that correspond only for the Divine judge to know. For now it should be sufficient for you to comprehend the true significance of the Law of Reincarnation which I have revealed to you as a supreme truth.

One single human life is not enough to give the spirit all the perfection that he needs in order tobe able to sit on the right-hand of the Father.

Reincarnation is the opportunity which God, in His loving justice, offers the spirit, in order that he may recover his purity and return to the pathway. That is the manner through which he can take advantage of the experience acquired during his pilgrimage.

Thus you will understand that one existence alone on Earth, for being so short compared with the spiritual life, cannot be decisive over the eternity of the spirit. In other words, it will not even be sufficient for any of you to reach perfection within that life that would take you directly to the Kingdom of the highest spiritually, which is what you call Heaven; nor will the faults in one lifetime on Earth be enough to determinate if a spirit will lose himself in darkness, or be in pain for an eternity. That is why I established the reincarnation of the spirit as one of My laws of love and justice; to grant him a more extensive field, that will offer him all the necessary opportunities to attain his perfection.

Each existence is a brief lesson, because through any other way the opportunity for man to grasp within it the fulfillment of all my Law, would be very short, but it is necessary for you to learn the meaning of this life.

Those who followed the Lord in the different eras.

Among humanity are beings who in another era crossed the wilderness in search of a Divine promise, who heard the voice of the Father on the mount. I also discover some others who lived during the time of Jesus, beheld His deeds and heard His word; those who followed Me in the wilderness and ate the bread and fish which I gave the multitude when they ascended the mount to hear that voice, and those who were among the mobs, shouting on the day of My crucifixion. I discover those spirits. Many of them come to hear My word, but only I know what spirit is concealed within each body.

Some listen to Me with coolness, others with doubt. But there are many who show their emotions with love and joy, and they feel My essence; while others are tormented with remorse, which their flesh ignores, because many of them at that time shouted to Pilate: Crucify Him! Crucify Him! And today they weep, and in their pain they would be ready to shout with tears in their eyes: Do not crucify Him! He is the Divine Master!

Well, then, if you are to return to the world, one or more times, let it be to gather pleasing fruits, cultivated by you previously, in order for your spirit to experience the satisfaction of having before him the opportunity to conclude some task already begun.

Only the one who purifies himself through love; who practices My Law, will cease to come and reincarnate in this planet. However, he who in his last reincarnation leaves a trace of blood or of evil, he will have to return to this Earth to make amends, to restore what has been destroyed, to give life to the lifeless he left behind, and to forgive. In one word: restitute.

Reincarnation, still a mistery for science and religions

Science, religions and theologians will be unable to discover at this point in time, how My justice works. Sometimes within the heart of a miserable person is concealed a spirit who in another era carried a crown upon his head, or, within a convict is hidden one who in another life deprived a nation of its freedom.

The time of controversies is coming when men will manifest their eloquence, to the point of boastfulness and vanity. My word of the Second Era will again be scrutinized, and there will also be arguments about the different interpretations which have been given. Truly I say to you : From that turmoil the light will surge, and many veils will be removed and hypocrisy will be overwhelmed by the truth.

All the people on Earth perceive the mystery surrounding the past, present and future of each spirit. To some it is a theory, for others a possibility; for others it is a fantasy, and others flatly deny it. Nevertheless, I find them pondering over that truth.

The great truth of reincarnation.

Reincarnation of the spirit is one of the great truths that humanity should know. Through intuition some have a presentiment and accept and believe in it as something which could not be missing in My loving justice toward humanity.

The flesh is of this world, and here it remains, while the spirit arises free and returns to the existence from whence he emerged. “What is born of the flesh, is flesh; What is born of the spirit is spirit.”

I speak the truth. I show you the way. I reveal the reincarnation, which is the Law, in order for the spirit to perfect himself and reaches the goal of his destiny. Do you doubt it? Truly I say to you that the truth is not altered in any way by your doubts, for it continues to be the same.

I say to you, that you should never doubt for the simple reason that you do not understand. Bear in mind that if truth were only what your limited mind comprehends, nothing would exist.

During this Third Era I have brought to you the confirmation of the reincarnation of the spirit. Humanity, throughout the times, has had that intuition, and the spirit has been revealing to it this mystery to the flesh.

Today as never before, there exists among mankind the presentiment and the certainty of these manifestations, although not all dare confess it, for fear of the world.

The gift of reincarnation, since the dawn of humankind.

Since the beginning of mankind the reincarnation of the spirit exists as a law of love and justice, and is one of the forms in which the Father has demonstratedHis infinite clemency. Reincarnation is not only of this period, but of all eras, and you should not believe that this mystery has just been revealed to you now.

Ever since the first eras, there existed in man the intuition regarding the reincarnation of the spirit, but this humanity, seeking material sciences and world riches, allowed itself to be dominated by the passions of the flesh, thus hardening those fibers with which the spiritual is perceived, and converting denying those fibers with which the spiritual is perceived, and turning themselves deaf and blind to everything which corresponds to the spirit. What is the use of posing their eyes on books that contain the Law and the Doctrine which I revealed to you during past times, if their mind is not able to penetrate in its significance, nor does their heart perceive the essence?

You must admit that sensibility and spiritual intuition are wasted in men, and that is why most of the time, while searching for My truth in those texts, they fall into erroneuos interpretations. They have the light before their eyes, but instead of penetrating deeply into the teachings, they linger on the words, that is, in their form. And so, they frequently become confused. But I am here to create light in the mysteries and darkness, as well as to deliver you from confusions and errors.

Will there be someone, after listening or reading this message, who will reject it as a useless, or false teaching? I say to them that only one who finds himself in a degree of extreme materialism, or blind fanaticism, could reject this light without his spirit being moved by it..

Parable

A spirit filled with light, purity and innocence, finding himself before God, asked: “Father, tell me what my mission is, for I wish to serve you.” The Father gently replied: “Wait, I will unite a man and a woman on Earth, and from that union a child will be born, in which you will incarnate. In that manner, by being the son of man, you will gather experience in the tribulations of the world and intimately feel the tenderness of a mother and the caress of a father.”

The spirit joyously waited. In the meantime the Father joined a man and woman with bonds of love and thus sent them along the path of life.

A new being was conceived within the womb of the woman; then God sent that spirit to incarnate in that body, and on the ninth month he saw the light of the world. The mother smiled with happiness, while the father was filled with pride. That child was a blessed event for both, for it was the fruit of their love. The woman felt strong, while the man felt somewhat like his Creator. Both dedicated themselves to the devotion of that tender heart.

The spirit who animated the child smiled as he beheld the sweet gaze of his mother and the severe, and at the same time, tender face of the father.

Time elapsed, and the father in his struggles of life, abandoned his nest of love. Taking sinuous paths, he went beyond himself untiel he became lost, leaving behind him shreds of his garments caught in the prickly shrubs. He took poisonous fruits and stripped the maidens of their virtue. Feeling himself sick and depressed, he remembered the two loved ones he had abandoned. He intended to return and search for them; however his strength failed him. Then, mustering enough courage by dragging himself and stumbling along the lengthy journey, he reached the doors of his home where his wife welcomed him with open arms and tears in her eyes, but the child was sick and in agony.

The father, seeing his dying child, implored the Divine charity for his recovery; then he desperately pulled his hair and blashpemed; however, that spirit separated from its body and proceeded toward the Beyond. The parents were desolate and made themselves responsible for the misfortune that afflicted them; he for having left, and she for not being able to detain him.

When that spirit found himself before the presence of the Creator he said: “Father, why have you separated me from the loving arms of that sweet mother, in which my absence has left her weeping and in despair?” To this the Father answered: “Be patient and await the moment in which you will return to that same bosom when they have acknowledged their sins and understood My Law.”

The man and the woman continued in unity, in solitude, and inwardly repentant of their faults, when again they were surprised by the announcing of a new child. God again directed the spirit to return to that bosom by saying: “Incarnate in that body which is preparing for a new existence, and be joyful to be within that bosom again..”

The parents who had regarded their first-born as lost, were not aware that he had returned to their bosom; however the emptiness left by the first was filled by the second. Happiness and peace returned to the bosom of that home. The mother smiled again and the father was in a joyful mood.

Now the man feared a separation from his family, and tried to sorround them with love by remaining near them, but in time he forgot his past experience, and influenced by bad friends, he yielded to vice and temptation. The woman complained and began to reject him. That home was converted into a battleground. Soon the man felt defeated, sick and weakened. Meanwhile the woman, leaving the child in the cradle, would arise in search for bread for the innocent and sustenance for her companion who did not love or cared for her. She suffered humiliations and blasphemy, endured dangers and challanged the instincts of men of bad faith. In that manner she managed to provide daily bread for her loved ones.

God had compassion for the innocent spirit, and before he could open his eyes to reason, He called him again. When the spirit was in the presence of the Father, he said with great grief: “Father, once again you have separated me from the arms of those whom I love. Behold, how difficult my destiny is! Today I implore you to either leave me in their bosom or in yours forever; however do not allow me to peregrinate anymore, for I am tired.”

When the man returned from his lethargy, he beheld a new scene of grief. His wife wept without consolation at the bedside of the second child who had died. Then the man attempted to take his own life, but his companion intervened and said: “Do not attempt against your life. Hold your hand and realize that we ourselves are the cause why God has taken our children.” The man regained his senses, realizing that there was truth in those words. As each day passed, calm slowly came to those hearts, who sorrowfully remembered the children who departed and had been the joy of that home which later became a place of desolation.

The spirit then asked the Father: “Father, are you going to send me to Earth again?” The Father answered: “Yes, again, and as many times as necessary, or until those hearts are cleansed.” When the spirit incarnated again, its body was sick and so were his mother and father. From his bedside that spirit elevated himself to the Father in demand of healing. This time he had not contemplated the light of the world. There were no smiles in the lips of his parents, only tears. The mother wept from morning till night near the cradle of the infant, while the repentant father felt his heart pierced from grief, seeing that the child had inherited his own ills.

The presence of that spirit within that sick body was brief, thus returning before the presence of the Father.

Once again the couple experienced solitude; however suffering had brought them together as never before. Their hearts showed devotion, and they promised to march in unity till the end. The man fulfilled his duties, and she in turn looked after her husband, and both were healed of their ills.

They regarded as difficult that God would again grant them another child, but behold! when the Father contemplated that the physical and spiritual health flourished within those beings, He sent them that spirit as their reward, for the abnegation of one and the correction of the other. Then from the bosom of that woman there came into being a tender little body, as fragant as a bud, who filled that home with happiness and peace.

The man and the woman, weeping with joy, kneeled and gave thanks to God, while that patient and obedient spirit smiled through the body of the infant and said to God: “Father, do not separate me again from my parents, for there is peace in my home, love in their hearts, warmth in my cradle, milk and honey in the bosom of My mother. There is bread on the table, there is affection in my father, and in his hands implements of work. Bless us.” And the Father, with great joy in His Spirit, blessed and left them united in a single body, a single heart and only one will.

All the texts of this topic are excerpts taken from The Book of the True Life.

Dr. Ian Stevenson Lecture – 1989


Some of My Journeys in Medicine

Dr. Ian Stevenson


The 1989 Flora Levy Lecture in
the Humanities

The University of Southwestern Louisiana

I noticed with some misgivings the announcement that this is the Levy Lecture in the Humanities. It may seem tactless therefore for me to state at the beginning of the lecture that after intending to study history and indeed doing so for several years, I abandoned history for medicine. History became for me Robert Frost’s “the road not taken.” Frost’s metaphor, however, does not fully suit my care because I have continued to have a strong interest in history and other humanities. If I shall later seem to have accomplished something original in science, I may owe this to my study of history. Let me explain.

I do not believe that what history teaches is that history teaches nothing. What it has taught me is the transience, not of our aspirations, but of our material accomplishments and, even more, of our ideas about the nature of man. In particular, the history of medicine shows a humbling succession of ideas about disease, each appearing inviolable for a short period only to prove degradable by the next idea that—at first also hailed an ultimate—is overthrown in its turn. Knowledge in science, as Whitehead said, keeps like fish. An awareness from my reading of history of the ephemeral nature of most concepts about the nature of things freed me to challenge received opinions in medicine. For me everything now believed by scientists is open to question, and I am always dismayed to find that many scientists accept current knowledge as forever fixed. They confuse the product with the process.

Reductionist Opinions

Early in my medical career I undertook some research in biochemistry. To this I brought some ideas, but the success of our experiments on aspects of the oxidation of the kidney tissue was largely due to the technical expertise of my collaborator, who later went on to become a distinguished biochemist. An unexpected result of our experiments was the destruction by our data of a dogma concerning oxidation that the great German chemist Otto
Warburg had pronounced. I thought little of that and was astonished one day when a German biochemist who learned of our results told me that it would have been impossible to publish them in Germany. He meant that the awe in which Warburg was held would have led to editorial rejection of our report. From this episode I may date my strong interest in all the obstacles that confront the conduct of original research and the communication of its results.

Sir Peter Medawar described reductionism as “the most successful research stratagem ever devised: it has been the making of science and technology.” Quite so, but science can study more than parts considered separately. While killing harmless rats (in order to use their kidneys in the experiments on oxidation mentioned earlier) I experienced a revulsion for this kind of scientific activity and decided that I wanted to devote myself to something more than the study of parts and to something closer to whole human beings.

Psychosomatic Pioneers

My mother had believed strongly in the influence of thoughts on physical well-being, and I may owe to her my initial interest in psychosomatic medicine. Even as a medical student I was keenly interested in the physical accompaniments of emotion. One of the first patients assigned to me had angina pectoris, the dreadful pain which comes when the heart, through blockage or spasm of the coronary arteries, receives insufficient oxygen. One day I was on this patient’s ward when he became angry at a nurse and instantly gripped his chest in the agony of this disease. I can still recall vividly the suffering in his face.

The impression from this and similar observations led me, when I abandoned reductionism, to take up research on the physical accompaniments of stress and the emotions it induces. The group with which I was associated in this at the New York Hospital in the late 1940s showed, for almost every organ of the body, that strong emotions inducted by life stresses, and even by talking about such stresses, included markedly altered physical functions, often to the point of experienced symptoms.

In these researches we thought of ourselves as pioneers, but we could not long sustain this view unless we stopped reading and also forgot what we had already read. Solomon had said in Proverbs: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” References to what we call psychosomatic medicine occur frequently in Shakespeare and in many other writers outside the medical profession. One can find reports of psychosomatic symptoms in Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, and Wesley’s Journal. This is to mention three authors only. However, what needs emphasis is not the frequency of references to the effect of the mind on the body, but the acceptance without question through centuries of this relationship. Doubts and neglect of this knowledge came later, at least within the medical profession, with the discovery of the role of microorganisms in disease. Louis Pasteur said as he was dying, “[Claude] Bernard was right. The terrain is everything.” He was wiser than many who built on his discoveries, and it was the middle of this century before physicians discovered again the power of the mind on the body.

If our group at the New York Hospital has a rightful claim to originality, it may lie in our having asked (and provisionally tried to answer) the question: “Why during stress does one person develop asthma, another high blood pressure, and a third a peptic ulcer?” W.B.Cannon had already shown that many of the physiological accompaniments of fear and rage correspond to those that occur during strenuous physical exertion; the body
reacts as if the person is going to respond to the provocation by fighting or running away. This rarely happens in civilized society, but the atavistic physical changes occur anyway. Some of my colleagues extended Cannon’s hypothesis with conjectures about the symbolic meaning of various localized psychosomatic symptoms. For example, a woman who reacted to her stresses with a running nose was said to be trying to wash away her troubles; the man whose bronchi closed in the spasms of asthma was trying to shut out the truth of some unpleasant aspect of his situation. This kind of thinking led to even wilder surmises, from the more ridiculous examples of which I shall spare you.

None of these interpretations seemed satisfying to me. The organ whose psychosomatic relationship I investigated was the heart, and I published numerous papers about our observations. However, I could never believe that arrhythmias have any purposeful function for those afflicted by them.

My discontent with the interpretations by some of my colleagues of psychosomatic phenomena increased when I became aware that not infrequently the same physical symptoms occurred in a person not only when he was angry or frightened, but also when he was unusually happy or joyful. I began to collect instances of physical symptoms that had occurred during pleasurable emotional states. Here my habit of reading outside medicine brought me some useful examples. I learned that both Beethoven and Goya could be fairly described as having died of joy. They had been ill, to be sure, but their final relapses occurred just after they had received news that made them excitedly happy. Other examples occurred among the appallingly emaciated prisoners held in German concentration camps at the end of World War II. Some of them literally died of joy when they saw the Red Cross buses approach the camps to bring them food and liberty.

In trying to publish these and similar reports I encountered another instance of the resistance to deviant ideas on the part of otherwise first rate scientists.1 I owe more to H. G. Wolff than I can take time here adequately to acknowledge. He has had few equals in the standards of rigorous investigation and clarity in the presentation of results that he demonstrated himself and demanded of his associates. However, he was much attached to the teleological interpretation of psychosomatic symptoms. He believed they must have some meaning, some protective purpose in the economy of persons manifesting them. Not surprisingly he reacted with noticeable coolness to my data on the occurrence of physical symptoms during pleasurable emotional states. A crisis was avoided, because it was time for me to move to another position, and I published my results in two papers after I left the New York Hospital.

Although our studies at the New York Hospital failed to answer the question of why a person develops one particular disease instead of another, I have never lost interest in this problem. If my professional work has a recurring theme, this is it, and I shall have more to say about the subject later.

Unscientific Freudian Psychoanalysts

In the 1950s there seemed some prospect that a medical specialty or subspecialty of psychosomatic medicine would develop. This did not happen, and eventually all physicians who had been active in this field had to move decisively toward either internal medicine or psychiatry. Psychiatry then seemed to offer a better opportunity than internal medicine for the further study of the effects of mental states on bodily ones. So I chose psychiatry and accepted an appointment in a Department of Psychiatry. However, I had had comparatively little training in psychiatry; and it was partly to remedy this deficiency that I enrolled in a psychoanalytic institute and in due course graduated from it. Some of this training was beneficial, but the atmosphere of a psychoanalytic institute was
foreign to my eclecticism.

The Arabs have a proverb: “Beware of the man with a single book.” I enlarge the proverb to say “Beware of those who read only the works of a single man.” In the psychoanalytic institutes the works of Freud and a few of his disciples were treated as having the authority of an oracle. The works of other authors were not read, let alone discussed. “Where all men think alike, few men think at all.”

Having left the reductionism of the biochemistry laboratory, I found psychoanalysis to be equally uncongenial. Given the concepts of Freud, it might follow that art and religion could be reduced to expressions of infantile cravings and frustrations. But what was the factual basis for his concepts? A reading of Malinowski’s Sex
and Repression in Savage Society
in which Malinowski reported his failure to find the allegedly universal Oedipus complex among the matrilineal Trobrianders stimulated me to look more closely at psychoanalytic evidence. The psychoanalysts’ inability to accept Malinowski’s evidence, if only as an exception to a generalization, made me realize that psychoanalysis had lost its right to reduce religion because it had itself taken on the negative attributes of a religion: the uncritical acceptance of what its founder says.

There are other means of attaining knowledge besides the scientific method. Art, music, poetry, and other types of literature give us knowledge. I can also believe that in mystical experiences we may have direct access to important
truths or, more specifically, to the most important truth of all, which is that we ourselves are part of a Great All. I do not know whether you would call William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience a work of the humanities
or one of science. It partakes of the best of both, and for me is one of the greatest books ever written; I know no better defense of the value of mystical experiences. But inspirational and mystical experiences are, as experiences,
incommunicable, whereas scientific observations are and must be communicable: there is no science without public demonstrability. This means independent verification of a patient’s (or informant’s) statements. But in psychoanalysis, independent verification has been almost entirely lacking. Thus for me, Freud’s greatest mistake was in not attempting to inquire into the truth of his patients’ claims about sexual seduction in childhood. To say that there is no difference between being sexually abused and imagining that you have been sexually abused is to
take oneself out of science.

As if the foregoing were not enough to turn me away from psychoanalysis, I found unconvincing its assertion that a person’s later character depends almost exclusively on the events of infancy. This seems to me like smuggling in predestination; for what infant can avail against the follies of his parents? But then these wicked parents must have been mistreated during their infancies by their parents, and so on back to Adam. One of my earliest papers in psychiatry questioned whether human personality is more plastic in infancy and childhood than it is in the later years of life. This provoked much annoyance among psychoanalysts; and because they were then the dominant force in American psychiatry, Sir Aubrey Lewis, who was professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, asked me (soon after the paper’s publication) whether I could go about on the streets unarmed.

In sum, Freud now appears to me to have been an emperor without clothes, and I am less surprised that he developed the concepts he espoused than that he succeeded in persuading so many persons to accept them.

We must leave to the historians of science the task of explaining why, of the several concepts of unconscious mental processes current in the early twentieth century (including those of Pierre Janet, Morton Prince, William James, C. G. Jung, and F. W. H. Myers), Freud’s attained such popular acceptance and almost crushed the others into oblivion. The concepts of the unconscious mind developed by the other thinkers I have named, especially James, Jung, and Myers, allowed for unconscious mental processes to be the sources or the conduits of man’s higher creative achievements (as well as some of his pathological aberrations); they allowed also for the experiences we call paranormal and even for a soul. How the facts on which they based their larger concepts of the unconscious mind
became overlooked during the Freudian period remains a mystery. Perhaps the very extravagance of Freud’s claims to be able to explain psychopathology, art, war, and religion made his ideas attractive to uncritical thinkers craving for certitude. Be that as it may, the widespread acceptance of psychoanalytic ideas among psychiatrists and anthropologists shows that the social sciences cannot yet claim to be obtaining cumulative knowledge as physics, chemistry, and biology are doing. I do not mean to be querimonious about Freud, but it is necessary to learn from mistakes in scientific method if we are to progress.

Freud’s psychoanalysis has recently been in decline, and not only because its inherent weaknesses were exposed to damaging criticism. It received challenges as well from new observations about the nature and treatment of mental disease in psychology, genetics, and neurobiology. I regard these replacements as mixed blessings. Psychoanalysis, despite its taint of determinism from infantile experiences, had preserved an awareness of the importance of mental processes in human disease. This element is minimized or openly denied by most investigators in psychology,
genetics, and neurobiology. For them mind is a by product of cerebral processes and free will an illusion.

 A Role for Psychedelics

While I was still involved with psychoanalysis, I began experimenting with hallucinogenic (perhaps better called psychedelic) drugs. I have taken or had administered to me a number of drugs and anesthetics as part of a search for
drugs that would assist psychiatrists in interviewing or in psychotherapy. However, here I shall speak only of the effects on me of mescaline and LSD.

The sensory apparatus of my body is defective: I have had poor eye-sight since youth, my hearing is imperfect, and my sense of smell extremely dull. My first wife was a gifted amateur artist and also a lover of natural beauty, especially that of forests and jungles. Her senses were extraordinarily acute, and I was often aware that she could perceive aspects of the world that I did not. Mescaline could not improve my vision, but it vastly bettered my appreciation of what I saw. The beauty of the colors that I inwardly saw under the influence of mescaline made me ever afterward far more sensitive to color both in nature and in art than I had been before. From my experience with mescaline I also became more aware than I had been of the subjective element in our sense of the passage
of time.

With LSD I had less experience of beautiful colors and much more of memories of my early life. With one of my experiences with LSD I also had a mystical experience by which I mean a sense of unity with all beings, all things. After the second of my LSD experiences I passed three days in perfect serenity. I believe that many persons could benefit as much as I did through taking psychedelic drugs under proper medical supervision, which is the only sensible way to take them.

I have mentioned these experiences here to say that they increased my conviction of the dual nature of mind and body. This may seem paradoxical, because if a small amount of a drug acting on the brain can markedly alter our mental experiences does this not prove that our thoughts are only our subjective awareness of our brain’s activity? For me it does not. I admit certainly that the chemical changes in my brain that the drugs induced released the extraordinary images and feelings that entered my consciousness. However, this does not account for the images
themselves, which (apart from those that I could identify as memories) had no correspondence to anything that I had earlier experienced. Here I need to add that my experiences included nothing that I could prove to have originated outside my mind and, if you like, my brain. I had no verifiable extrasensory experience when under the influence of drugs. My interest in extrasensory perception did not derive from my experiences with drugs, although they enhanced it.

 Psychical Research

For many years I had had a keen interest in extrasensory experiences and kindred phenomena. My dissatisfaction with prevailing theories of human personality led me to extend this interest, and in the 1950s I began to read systematically in the literatures of theosophy and psychical research. These had both arisen in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but their methods were altogether different. Theosophists presented a potted version of Buddhism to the Western world, but they combined this with the teachings of alleged Masters channeled through the imperfect minds of frail humans. Like psychoanalysts, theosophists eschewed verifications of their claims, and however valuable the moral teachings of theosophy are, it forms no part of science.

Psychical research, on the other hand, does. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 in London, and within a few years a sister society, the American Society for Psychical Research, was established in New York. They exist “to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis.” In simpler words, the Societies study evidence of communication without the known sensory organs and of movements occurring without the usual motor forces. Implicit in their programs is the possibility of obtaining evidence that human personality survives bodily death. However, the societies hold no views as a group, and a belief in mind/body dualism or even a belief in extrasensory perception is not a requirement for membership in them. A member need only believe that the question of paranormal phenomena is worthy of inquiry and amenable to scientific investigation.

Investigators of these phenomena use two different methods. One group of researchers seeks to produce or observe the phenomena in laboratories, which provide conditions for excluding normal means of communication and which also, at times, permit varying the conditions in order to learn more about the requirements for the occurrence of the phenomena and their processes. There have been important successes with the experimental method, and I could list for anyone interested a dozen experiments for which I am satisfied that normal explanations fail to explain the observations. However, it must be admitted that experimental results in psychical research are unpredictable. Although experiments have been successfully repeated, they are not voluntarily repeatable as are most experiments in the more developed branches of science. A further weakness of laboratory experiments
is that (with rare exceptions) the positive effects are meager and only detectable by statistical methods. A large number of trials is required in order to show an effect, but then one cannot say which successes are due to chance and which to paranormal processes. This necessarily limits what one can learn about processes from experiments. Hopes once held that laboratory experiments in extrasensory perception would convince the majority of scientists to take the phenomena seriously have not been fulfilled.

Nevertheless, an appreciable number of scientists (thirty percent in one recent survey) do believe that something like extrasensory perception is either an undoubted fact or a likely possibility. However, it seems that most of them
have reached this judgment through personal experiences instead of from reading reports of laboratory experiment. The study of such experiences—those that occur spontaneously in everyday life—forms the second division of psychical research, and it is the one to which I have given nearly all my attention for the past twenty years.

The study of spontaneous cases of extrasensory perception sometimes needs defending against the disapproval of those who have come to equate science with the controlled conditions that laboratories can offer and naturalistic situations cannot. Here the first point to make is that some important phenomena, such as the weather, volcanoes, fossils, earthquakes, and meteorites, do not occur in laboratories under controlled conditions, and yet wt study them with scientific methods. We do this because science is not a physical location where we obtain evidence, but instead a process for appraising evidence where ever we find it.

In the study of spontaneous paranormal phenomena we must usually interview and cross-question informants about events that have happened before we arrive on the scene. In principle, the methods are those that lawyers use in reconstructing a crime and historians use in understanding the past. Once we have the best account possible of the events in question, we consider one by one the alternative explanations and to try to eliminate them until only the single most probable one remains. Then we try with further observations to confirm or reject the initially preferred explanation. In addition, we search through series of apparently similar phenomena for recurrent features that may provide clues to causative conditions and processes of occurrence.

The investigators of paranormal phenomena have tried to find a middle way between the gullible and the skeptical, the former saying (usually from the perspective of a religion) that everything relevant is already known, the latter that there are no genuine phenomena to be investigated. Nevertheless, although psychical researchers have never been more than a handful in number and never possessed of adequate resources, they have managed somehow to survive. They have now passed on a tradition of systematic inquiry through four generations. With quiet persistence they adhere to Bacon’s assertion that “rarities and reports that seem incredible are not to be suppressed or denied to the memory of men.” In my library the publications of the British and American Societies for Psychical Research almost fill one large bookcase. What distinguishes the work of these societies is an almost ruthless insistence on corroboration of an experiment’s statements and equal insistence on independent verification of the correspondence between these statements and the apparently related event of which the percipient claimed paranormal knowledge. “Were I asked” William James wrote “to point to a scientific journal where hard-headedness and never-sleeping suspicion of sources of error might be seen in their full bloom, I think I should have
to fall back on the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. The common run of papers, say on physiological subjects, are apt to show a far lower level of critical consciousness.”

Evidence for Survival After Death

I have had some interest in nearly all the phenomena subsumed under the term “psychical research.” However, I have concentrated most of my effort in examining the evidence for the survival of human personality after death.
I have studied and written reports on apparitions, the visions of dying persons and of persons recovered from near death, and certain types of mediumistic communications. The evidence that I have found most promising has been that provided by children who claim to remember previous lives. I have studied their cases more than those of any other group in this field.

From my childhood reading I had become familiar with the idea of reincarnation. The concept made sense to me, but I never thought until many years later that there could ever be any evidence to support a belief in it. Certainly the theosophists had offered none. Here again, my habit of wide reading proved useful. In the course of this reading I came across accounts of persons who actually claimed to remember the details of previous lives. These accounts mostly appeared as individual case histories or in small groups of case reports. Moreover, I found most of them in newspapers and magazines or in books for general readers. Still, there seemed to be more than a few of them, and I decided to tabulate and analyze them for recurrent features. They had some. For example, the great majority of the persons who claimed to remember previous lives were very young children when they first spoke about these lives; and in most instances the children stopped speaking about the previous lives when they were still young children
of between five and eight years. I could tell also that, although some of the reports I had collected were of low quality and little more than journalistic anecdotes, this was not true of all. In several cases cautious adults had inquired searchingly into the claims of the children, and in three instances someone had made a written record of what the child had been saying before its statements had been verified.

In 1960 I published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research an essay reporting these observations. My report discussed the various interpretations of the cases and recommended accepting reincarnation only after excluding all others. My main conclusion was that if more cases of the same general type could be found and investigated carefully, we might obtain better evidence of survival after death. I added that “in mediumistic communications we have the problem of proving that someone clearly dead still lives. In evaluating
apparent memories of former incarnations, the problem consists in judging whether someone clearly living once died. This may prove the easier task.”

India

I do not think that it occurred to me then that I would be the person to undertake the task.2 Although the American Society for Psychical Research awarded a prize to me for the essay, its journal was (and still is) one of the most
obscure journals in the whole of science. Nevertheless, the essay attracted some attention, and within a few months I received a telephone call from Eileen Garrett, who had (about ten years before) established the Parapsychology Foundation. She had learned of a case in India that seemed to resemble the ones whose reports I had reviewed, and she asked me whether I would be interested in going to India to investigate it. I was indeed interested, and the following summer (August 1961) I made my first visit to India, where I spent about five weeks before going on to Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then called) for another week. Before leaving for India I had learned of some other cases of fairly recent origin, and I also had the addresses of some subjects figuring in cases I had reviewed in my essay. I thought they might still be alive, and I wanted to meet them if I could.

On reaching India I underwent considerable culture shock; yet this was less than the shock of learning how little I knew about India and Sri Lanka. I have subsequently thought that if I had known how ignorant I was of Asia I should
never have had the nerve to begin these investigations. However, shielded by this ignorance I pushed on with them. I soon found that the cases were much more numerous than I had been led to expect from the scattered reports I had summarized for my essay. (Altogether, during this first trip, I learned about and studied—not all with the same thoroughness—about twenty cases in India and five in Sri .Lanka.)

Also unexpected by me were the informants’ often lively reports of the unusual behavior that most of the subjects showed-behavior that harmonized with the child’s statements about the previous life it claimed to remember. I had expected that the cases would consist exclusively of statements the subjects would express neutrally about the previous lives. Instead, I found that the children often talked with strong emotions about the previous lives, and they sometimes behaved as if still living in the past life. For them it seemed still present, not past. For example, a child of low-caste parents who said that he remembered the life of a Brahmin would show snobbish behavior toward his own family and might even refuse to eat their food: from his perspective it was polluted. A child remembering a previous life as a person of the opposite sex might dress for that sex and play its games. One who remembered being shot would show a fear of guns and loud noises. As I mentioned, many of the reports I had used for my essay had appeared in newspapers or other popular publications, and one expects that journalistic accounts will exaggerate the basic facts of an event; however, this example shows that such accounts may also miss important details.

Back in Virginia after this first trip to Asia I tried to assimilate a mass of information about the cases that far exceeded my initial expectations. I wrote and had accepted for publication in 1964 a monograph about some of the cases that I had investigated. At this point doubts were publicly expressed about the honesty of the man who had been my interpreter for several of the stronger cases in India. Learning of these suspicions, the publisher halted the publication of my monograph. Although the man in question undoubtedly had been dishonest in some matters—something I did not know during my first journey to Asia—I did not think he had deceived me as an interpreter. However, rather than lose the extensive work involved in the cases in which this man had helped me, I decided to return to India and study again these cases (and some others) with new interpreters.

The happy side of this misfortune was that the cases I investigated again proved to be even stronger than they had earlier seemed to be. Moreover, I learned the value of repeated interviews. From this experience I date my habit of trying to return to cases for second and third interviews whenever possible. Too often after leaving the site of a case I think of questions that I should have asked when I was there; I can ask them on a second or later visit.

After my second visit to India I revised my monograph, and it was published, in 1966, without further difficulty. If I were inclined to equate market success with scientific worth, I should be more than satisfied with this book. It had
been translated into seven foreign languages, has sold about 50,000 copies since 1966, and is still in print. However, I am well aware that these sales figures reflect public interest in the subject of reincarnation and little else. In 1977 I achieved what was for me a more gratifying success. In that year I published in a scientific journal an article entitled “The Explanatory Value of the Idea of Reincarnation.” For this I had more than 1,000 requests for reprints from scientists all over the world, This was far more than I had ever had for any of my numerous articles derived from what I call orthodox research. In this paper I drew attention to reincarnation as a hypothesis of explanatory value for a wide variety of unsolved problems in psychology and medicine. The interest it evoked among other scientists assured me that I was not alone in my discontent with psychoanalytic and other current theories of human personality.

At about the time of my first visit to India, Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, (encouraged by his wife, Dorris) began to offer me funds with which to expand my investigations. I remember being at first conscientiously
unable to accept as much money as Chester Carlson offered, because I was then heavily involved in administrative and teaching duties as Chairman of the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychiatry. However, I was able gradually to change my situation, and Chester Carlson then offered matching funds for an endowed chair that would enable me to devote myself full-time to psychical research. The risks of giving up the secure position I then had were obvious; but the unique opportunity offered warranted the risks, and I have never regretted my decision to engage full-time in this research.

I am sometimes asked what my colleagues at the University of Virginia think about my research. It has had a mixed reception among them. A few have openly disapproved of having such research at the University, but the majority (at least of those whose opinions have reached me) adhere to the maxim of the University’s founder, Thomas Jefferson: “Here we are not afraid to follow truth whereever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it,”)

Evidence for Reincarnation

Since 1967 I have widened and deepened the research as much as available time and financial resources have permitted. I have published some sixty-five detailed case reports, mostly in books. And I have published each year three or four articles about various aspects of these cases and about other types of cases that I have studied. In late 1987 I published a book written for general readers in which I described my methods of investigation and summarized the results and my present conclusions about children who say they remember previous lives. Before telling you about these conclusions I should briefly describe for you the scope of the research.

Between my first visit to India and the publication, finally, of my monograph reporting, as its title says, twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation, I had extended my investigations to the tribal peoples of northwest North America, and to Lebanon, Brazil, Turkey, and Thailand, In the 1970’s I began investigating cases in Burma and West Africa. I have also investigated whatever cases came to my attention in Europe and in North and South America.3 The number of cases now available for our analysis has gradually increased to about 2,500; but I wish to stress that the cases are of varying quality and we have not investigated all of them with the same thoroughness.

Adults sometimes claim to remember previous lives, but with rare exceptions their cases have much less value than those of young children and most, in my view, are worthless. This is because in the case of a young child of only two or three years of age one can reach reasonably satisfactory conclusions concerning the information to which the child might have been normally exposed. In contrast, the mind of an adult and even that of an older child has been filled with a large amount of information that becomes available for the ingredients of an imagined previous life. Accordingly, I have concentrated my efforts increasingly on the cases of young children.

I mentioned earlier that in the cases I first reported in 1960 I had discerned some recurrent features. We have since found other recurrent features. One of these is a high incidence of violent death in the persons whose lives the children remember. This feature occurs in the cases of all ten cultures for which we have examined groups of cases; although the incidence of violent death in the cases varies from one culture to another, it is far higher among the cases than in the general populations from which they are drawn. Other recurrent features also vary from culture to culture. These include the occurrence of dreams in which a deceased person seems to announce to the dreamer the intention of being reborn (usually in the family of the dreamer), the incidence of claims to have been a person of the opposite sex in the previous life, and the interval between the concerned deceased person’s death and the subject’s birth.

These and other variations in the cases tell us that culture—by which I mean here the beliefs of a group of people-powerfully influences the features of the cases. This being so, it may fairly be asked whether beliefs are not the sufficient causes of the cases. We do not know the actual prevalence of cases (except from one survey in India), but we do know that the cases can be found much more readily in cultures having a belief in reincarnation than in ones not having this belief.4 Critics of the cases have therefore suggested that a child’s fantasies, perhaps of an imaginary playmate, may become shaped by its parents and peers, through their questions and suggestions, until the child assumes an identification with a deceased person. In this way the child becomes the subject of a factitious case suggestive of reincarnation.

This argument has considerable force, and its cogency can hardly be denied when we consider the numerous cases in which the subject of a case and the deceased person with whom he or she identifies belong to the same family or same village. However, it will not suffice to explain the smaller, but not negligible number of cases in which the two families live widely separated and, from all the evidence, have had no acquaintance with each other before the case developed. Moreover, in the stronger of such cases the child has furnished specific details (sometimes written down before verification) about the deceased person; there can be no question in such cases of imaginings, confused memories, and pseudo-identification. In examining the cases of this group we are almost forced to believe that the child has somehow acquired knowledge about a deceased person by other than normal means. If this be granted, one has still a choice among several explanations all of which suppose some paranormal process; and reincarnation is only one of these.

Journalists have sometimes incorrectly (and unjustly) described me as trying to prove that reincarnation occurs. This allegation is wrong as a description both of my motive and of science. Outside of mathematics there is no proof in science; scientists make judgments about probabilities, and they rarely express themselves in statements of certainty. It is true that I search for stronger evidence than we now have for paranormal processes in the cases I study, and if that evidence points toward reincarnation I am not displeased. I have never hidden my interest in the results of my research. William James pointed out that “if you want an absolute duffer in an investigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no interest in its results…the most useful investigator…is always he whose eager interest in one side of a question is balanced by an equally keen nervousness lest he become deceived.”

The search for stronger evidence is therefore not with an aim at developing some coercive proof. Instead, it recognizes that different persons require different amounts and qualities of evidence before they alter their opinions. Although most educated Westerners have some acquaintance with the idea of reincarnation from at least a slight knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism, few are familiar with concrete instances of children’s claims to remember a previous life. It is not surprising that the truth of the claims seems to them antecedently improbable. As Charles Richet, a great French physiologist (and psychical researcher) observed: “Pour croire complètement à un phénomène il faut y etre habitué.” Perhaps my main contribution will be that of making Western persons familiar, not with the idea of reincarnation—it must be one of the oldest ideas in the world—but with evidence tending to support a belief in reincarnation.

I am frequently asked whether I myself believe in reincarnation. I decline to answer this question because my beliefs should make no difference to anyone asking such a question. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.” Everyone should examine the evidence and judge it for himself. As I have just said, the evidence that my colleagues and I have obtained gives some support to a belief in reincarnation. Before the modern investigations a belief in reincarnation had to rest on the basis of faith, usually inculcated by the scriptures or oral teachings of a traditional religion. Now, one may, if one wishes, believe in reincarnation on the basis of evidence. However, the evidence is not flawless and it certainly does not compel such a belief. Even the best of it is open to alternative interpretations, and one can only censure those who say there is no evidence whatever.

Birthmarks and Birth Defects

Has then an impasse been reached without a way forward? I do not think so, because I believe we will advance further with the publication of cases of subjects who have birth marks or birth defects that seem to derive from previous lives. These marks and defects correspond closely in size and location to wounds (occasionally other marks) on the deceased person whose life the child later claims to remember.

Apart from their relevance to medicine, the cases with birthmarks and birth defects raise the standard of evidence for the cases in which most of them occur: the birthmarks (or defects) can be photographed, and for many of the corresponding wound, we have obtained medical records, such as autopsy reports. These are important steps toward greater objectivity in the research. You can readily understand how these cases have brought me back to my principal interest in medicine: psychosomatic relationships. However, now we are tailing about a mind’s influence on a body across the gap of death.

Most of the marks and defects of these cases are on the skin or extremities. However, in a small number of cases the subject has had some internal disease similar or identical to one which the person whose life the child remembers had had. For such a case to be significant the disease must be one from which the subject alone of all members of his family has suffered. We have a few such cases, and they have returned me to that topic in which I have never lost interest: Why does a person acquire one particular disease instead of another?

I think that for most scientists today this last question is absurd. They believe that there is no person apart from a body. For them, any disease a person acquires derives from the combination of the genes he draws in the lottery of parenthood modified by the environment into which he is born and in which he later lives. No one is more aware than I of how subversive it is to talk in the West todayof a soul that may survive the death of one physical body and later become associated with a second body which it influences, at least to some extent, in form and function. Nevertheless, the accumulated evidence, which I shall be publishing in detail next year, warrants conjectures of this kind.

Here I need to add and to emphasize that the evidence suggestive of reincarnation imperils no present knowledge. I do not question the findings of genetics or even that environments have some effect on us (although I do deny any primacy for the events of infancy among all environmental influences). I am suggesting that instead of a single line of evolution—the one of our physical bodies—we also participate in a second line of evolution—that of our minds or, if you prefer, our souls.

The claim to have evidence of a second line of evolution is, I need hardly say, a large one, and if it does not challenge any substantial knowledge it certainly does throw into question many common assumptions about the nature of man, especially those concerning the relationship between mind and brain. To this I add the heterodox idea that certain birth defects and even some internal diseases may have mental causes anteceding the conception of a person’s body. In presuming to doubt the ideas about the nature of man that most Western scientists hold, I can take comfort in an aphorism of the great French neurologist Charcot: “La théorie, c’est bon, mais¸ a n’empeche pas d’exister.” Those who would judge my conclusions should first examine the evidence that has led me to them.

It is tempting to conclude this lecture by invoking the names of the many great philosophers and poets who have believed in reincarnation and thereby obliquely exhort you to believe in it yourself. I have already said that such a path is closed to me; authority has no place in science. Yet science acknowledges leaders, and it particularly pleases me to remember that some of the greatest encouragement for the scientific methods of psychical research has come from humanists like William James and Henri Bergson. Each of these great men accepted the Presidency of the Society for Psychical Research, and James was for many years at least a part-time investigator of psychical phenomena. I venerate them less for the particular views they held than for their endorsement of the scientific method applied to paranormal experiences as a means of attaining important new knowledge of man’s nature.

Such are some of my journeys in medicine with occasional wanderings in the humanities. I do not agree with a great writer who said that “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” Certainly those who do not travel hopefully may never arrive, but hope alone cannot long sustain a journey in science. Accordingly, I have tried to describe for you some of the choices that I made of roads to take during my journeys.

Copyright ©1990, The Levy Humanities Series


Notes

I am grateful to Margaret Petzoff Stevenson and Emily Williams Cook for improving this Lecture with their helpful comments.

1. This is a subject in which I have never lost interest, and I later published two papers about it.

2. In 1925 an Indian (R. B. Sunderhl), who had studied four of the cases that I later included in my 1960 Essay, offered reports of them for publication by the American Society for Psychical Research. The Research Officer (W. F. Prince) sent a polite note of rejection in which he said “it is difficult to see how, unless such cases could be multiplied, and attested by various evidences, such a claim .., could be proved true.” Another member of the Society’s staff commented in a memorandum that the cases were “worthy of following up by some Western scientific methods and investigators.” Sunderlal published his report in India and also, in 1924, in the French journal of psychical research Revue Metapsychique.

3. I have published detailed reports or analyses of cases from all these regions, except Western Europe.

4. I am not halting here to discuss why the cases are found more readily in some parts of the world than in others. The question is certainly an extremely important one, and I have made a beginning attempt to consider the factors involved in my book for general readers.

5. If heretics were burned alive today, the successors in science of the theologians who, in the sixteenth century, burned anyone who denied the existence of souls would today burn those who affirm their existence.

Dr. Stevenson’s Bibliography as referred to in his Lecture

“The Influence of Oxygen Tension upon the Respiration of Rat Kidney Slices.” Archives

of Biochemistry. 17 (1948): 61-75 (with Lucile Smith).

“Life Situations, Emotions, and Extrasystoles.” Psychosomatic Medicine.
11 (1949): 257-72 (with C. H. Duncan, S. Wolf, H. S, Ripley, and H. G. Wolff).

“Circulatory Dynamics before and after Exercise in Subjects with and without
Structural Heart Disease during Anxiety and Relaxation,” Journal of Clinical
Investigation
. 28 ( 1949): 1534- 1543 (with C, H, Duncan and H. G. Wolff).

“Physical Symptoms During Pleasurable Emotional States.” Psychosomatic
Medicine
, 12 (1950): 98-102.

“Physical Symptoms Occurring with Pleasurable Emotional States.” American
Journal of Psychiatry
. 127(1970): 175~79.

“Scientists with Half-Closed Minds.” Harper’s Magazine. 217 (1958): 64-71.

“On the Irrational among the Rational: Incredulity in Scientists.” Virginia
Quarterly Review
, 41 (1965): 40-57.

“Is the Human Personality More Plastic in Infancy and Childhood?” American
Journal of Psychiatry
. 114(1957): 152-161.

“The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations.” Journal
of the American Society for Psychical Research
. 54 (1960): 51-71 and 95-117.

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Second edition, revised. Charlottesville:
Univ. Press of Virginia, 1974. First published as Proceedings of the American
Society for Psychical Research, 26 (1966): 1-362.

“The Explanatory value of the Idea of Reincarnation.” Journal of Nervous
and Mental Disease
. 164 (1977): 305-26,

“American Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives.” Journal of
Nervous and Mental Disease
, 171 (1983): 742-48.

Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1987.

Fulfilled Prophecies – Part II

This entry it's part of the The Fulfilled Prophecies series. Part [part not set] of 2

In the first section we saw the prophecies from Jesus and Joel, in relation to the opening of the
Sixth Seal and
the Third Era, that have come to pass.

We will now see the prophecies from John related to the same topic and which appear in the
Book of Revelation or
Apocalypse, and which real name is the Book of the Seven Seals.

Apocalyptic prophecies about the opening of the Sixth Seal.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal,
and, lo, there was a great earthquake;
and the sun became black as
sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
Apocalypse/Revelation 6:12

So far John’s prophecy repeats the prophecies delivered by Jesus to His apostles before the crucifixion and that we have seen in the first part of this work.

But further ahead, even when it takes the allegoric view of the star shower that is part of the material signs that Joel had anticipated, the context seems to refer to something else: The beginning of the communications with the spiritual world, which prelude became Spiritism, so popular in Europe and some American countries in the middle of the last century.

One warning: In some Bibles, especially the catholic ones, a verse was added in Deuteronomy or Leviticus, depending on the version, against Spiritism, quoted even by its name, and this verse does not even appear in any of the original biblical texts. We can easily deduce that it was simply a reaction from the religious hierarchies of that time towards the attention that the Spiritism movement was getting from the beginning.

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even
as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs,
when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is
rolled together; and every mountain and island
were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men,
and the rich men, and the chief captains,
and the mighty men, and every bondman,
and every free man
, hid themselves in the dens
and in the rocks of the mountains;
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us,
and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne,
and from the wrath of the Lamb:
For the great day of his wrath is come;
and who shall be able to stand?
Rev. 6:13-17

Here the scatological prophecy of John gets into a more abstract and metaphoric terrain, anticipating the beginning of the communication with spiritual entities which descend from on high to humanity. The appearance of new philosophies and thought currents are commonly spread after the fall of the monarchies.

The Stars of Heaven Fell

1840 Germany. Jacob Lorber receives messages through automatic writing which he called “the New Revelation”.
1849. Paris and all of Europe is in commotion because of the phenomenon known as “levitating tables”.
These would inexplicably elevate without apparent physical cause.
1850. Leon Rivail “Allan Kardec” takes notes of communications from what he calls superior intelligences, which manifests through two young ladies or “mediums”. He took notes during a period of two years and published them in the book “The Book of Spirits”, fundamental work for Spiritism.
1862. Roque Rojas, Mexican ex-seminarist has a vision that announces the imminent opening of the Sixth Seal.
1866. In Mexico, the beginning of the Third Era opens with the manifestation of the Prophet Elijah’s spirit through the human understanding of Roque Rojas.
1871. In Scotland, Daniel Dunglas-Hume shows manifestations that he assures come from the spiritual world, reaching to the point of materializing some of them in plain daylight. His works were never able to be refuted.
1884. Damiana Oviedo becomes the first spokesman of the Holy Spirit and begins the delivery of
the Third Testament, taking place in Mexico City.
1887. In Mexico City, the beginning of the manifestations of the spiritual world of light through human understanding takes place. This continues until December 1950. During all this time there are multiple healings. Time-Life has published a book that covers part of these astonishing events.

Heaven Departed as a scroll when it is rolled together…Rev. 6:14

This allegory is clear when it refers to the disappearance of the old order of ideas, being
replaced by a new one.
1762. Rousseau writes “Social Contract”, a master piece that has a decisive influence over the freedom movements all over the world.
1776. Adam Smith publishes “Wealth of Nations” and establishes the basis of capitalism.
1776. Proclamation of the Bill of Rights in the American Colonies from England.
1776. Declaration of Independence of these Colonies, establishing the United States of
America.
1781. Kant publishes his master work “Critique of Pure Reason”, and proposes rationalism as a theory.
1786. The Taking of the Bastille in France. The beginning of the French Revolution.
1789. Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen by the French Assembly.
1810. Mexico and the South American countries initiate independence movements.
1848. Marx and Engels deliver “The Communist Manifesto”
1866. The First International meets in Geneva. Socialism is born.

The kings and great men hide themselves…

The fall of the monarchies is anticipated in this verse. And in fact, by the end of the 19th century,
absolutism practically disappears as a governing system; there are some countries with kings and queens that have no ruling power and their position is merely symbolic.
1649. Charles II from England is executed.
1793. Louis XVI, deposed King of France, goes under the guillotine.
1832. England’s Great Reform Act transfers power to the common man, above the royal power.

…and every bond man and every free man….

Not only human power was moved; every social class felt the arrival of that new era.
1793. Robespierre restores the “Kingdom of Terror”, the guillotine colors with blood all of France.
1861. The opposition of the southern American states, abolition of slavery, the bloody Civil War breaks.

The opening of the Sixth Seal.

This is the period that Jesus describes as “the beginning of birth pains” (Matthew 24:7). As you will see, humanity entered a phase so turbulent as history has never recorded before.

And after these things I saw four angels standing on
the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth,
that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any
tree.
And I saw another angel ascending from the east,
having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to
the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea,
Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the
trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
And I heard the number of them which were sealed:
and there were sealed a hundred and forty and four thousand of
all the tribes of the children of Israel.
Rev 7: 1-4

And I saw another angel ascending from the east…

Since the times of Augustine, theologians and analyzers of the Bible agree that here, John is speaking about the Prophet Elijah, agreeing with the words from Luke 1:78 and 2 Kings 2:11. There is a hypothesis that the Greek myth of Helios came from this last verse.
1866. The spirit of Prophet Elijah manifests through the human understanding of Roque Rojas; he declares that it is the opening of the Sixth Seal as well as the beginning of the Third Era. The first “signs” are delivered to men and women who subsequently would bring forth the communications from “the stars in the sky”, the spiritual world of light.

After the sign, John’s report about his vision of the Sixth Seal seems to jump to Rev. 9:13, where the sixth angel represents the same seal.

And the sixth angel sounded,
and I heard a voice from the four horns of
the golden altar which is before God,
Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet,
Loose the four angels which are bound
in the great river Euphrates
.
And the four angels were loosed,
which were prepared for an hour, and a day,
and a month, and a year, for to slay the
third part of men.
And the number of the army of the horsemen
were two hundred thousand:
and I heard the number of them.
And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and
them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire,
and of jacinth, and brimstone:
and the heads of the horses were as
the heads of lions;
and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke
and brimstone.
By these three was the third part of men killed,
by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone,
which issued out of their mouths.
Rev. 9:13-18

Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates…

1981. Iraq and Iran, on each side of the river Euphrates, begin to war.

Fire, smoke and sulfur….

1981-1991. During a conflict where more than a million people died and more than two million are hurt, there were land to land missiles, land to air and air to land, as well as millions of rockets and mortars that were used by tanks with metallic armors on both sides, they truly looked like they were throwing fire and sulfur over the war zone, and the smoke columns are visible for several miles.

Questions and Answers about the Third Testament


Q: I understand that there are only two testaments in the Bible, the Old and the New. Where did a Third Testament come from?

Q: In John’s Book of Revelation 22:18 says “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book”. How do you explain this?

Q: When and where was The Third Testament delivered?

Q: In my religion nobody told me about any Third Testament. Why?

Q: Who wrote The Third Testament?

Q: Could we then expect also a fourth or fifth Testament?

Q: Where is it written that God would manifest Himself not two but three times?

Q: Couldn’t this be the work of Satan?

Q: We have heard of men alleging they are the Christ or saying they are envoys of God. Do they have something in common with The Third Testament?

Q: Why was The Third Testament delivered in Mexico? Why in Spanish? Would it not be more appropriate that God should have delivered His revelations in a more developed country?

Q: In recent times there has been a lot of speculation about “contactees”, persons that supposedly are receiving messages from superior beings, extraterrestrials, aliens or UFOS, etc. Is The Third Testament part of this frenzy? And what about the New Age movement? Is the Third Testament related with any of this in any way

Q: Does The Third Testament belong to any religion or sect?

Q: I am very interested in cooperating to the spreading of the teachings of The Third Testament. Can I freely distribute copies of the texts or should I request for prior authorization?

Q: I understand that there are only two testaments in the Bible, the Old and the New. Where did a Third Testament come from?

Certainly, the Bible, as we know it in the present time only contains two Testaments, the Old and the New, but just as it happened before the arrival of Jesus Christ -when there only existed what we now know as the Old Testament, the first of the legacy of the Lord- as the divine inspiration followed through Jesus himself and His apostles, the new revelations became the second legacy of the Lord , which we now know as the New Testament. If we keep in mind that God is eternal, eternal also is His word and in this time of tribulation, is only natural that more divine revelations were to reach us. And the source of The Third Testament is the same as the other two: God’s inspiration.

Q: In John’s Book of Revelation 22:18 says “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book”. How do you explain this?

The Third Testament is NOT an addendum to the Book of Revelation. First, Revelation’s verse refers only to the Book of Revelation itself, not to the whole body of revelations known as The New Testament. Secondly, the divine teachings of The Third Testament are not men’s work, they come from God Himself. And third, if John’s warning were in reference to new revelations, how then the promise of Jesus in John 14:26 and 16:13 could be fulfilled?

Furthermore, in the very same Book of Revelation comes the prophecy of yet another book! Please read Revelation 20:12.

And last but not least, if you think that the Bible contains already all of the divine wisdom, please remember the words of our Lord Jesus: “I have yet many things, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth…and he will shew you things to come”. (John 16:12,13) This time, promised by our Lord is now. And the Spirit of Truth came in a whole fulfillment of the promises of Jesus.


Q: When and where was The Third Testament delivered?

From 1866 a new stage to humanity was opened, an era foreseen by John and known as The Book of Revelation or The Apocalypse; 1866 marked the prelude for the beginning of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit through the human understanding of many men and women -“spokesmen” they were called- and these manifestations took place between 1866 and 1950, in different parts of the Mexican Republic mainly, but also in other parts of the world as well.

Q: In my religion nobody told me about any Third Testament. Why?

Even at this very moment, when the Gospel has reached all the corners of our planet fulfilling the prophecy that Jesus Himself spoke, still there are many religions that do not accept that divine teaching. Furthermore, the Jewish people still refuse to accept the Gospels and the New Testament as a part of their bible. It is not unusual then, that a new revelation from God would not be accepted by the established religions, which in the past refused to see or accept evidence pertaining to ideas that sound strange to them and prefer to hold to their traditions and history, denying that such revelations could come from the Divinity.

Q: Who wrote The Third Testament?

If you look carefully to both the First (Old) and Second (New) Testament, you can clearly see that God uses whatever means necessary to deliver His divine teachings to man. For instance, in the OT you would find not only the books attributed to Moses but also those writings of the prophets, the psalms of David and the advice of Salomon, etc. The NT contains not only the words and acts of Jesus but includes also the teachings received by His disciples, and actually, the most quoted part of the NT is that of Paul, who was not even one of the Twelve chosen disciples of the Lord. And the Book of Revelation was written at the end of the first century, very far in time and distance from the events that took place in Palestine, when Jesus walked on the face of the earth. Likewise, The Third Testament was received over a long period of time by many persons of the most different social and cultural backgrounds.

Q: Could we then expect also a fourth or fifth Testament?

No. First, it was the time of the Father, then continued the time of the Son and now, we are living in the time of the Holy Spirit. Three different manifestations of the same God, in accordance with the evolution and development of the spirit of man.

Q: Where is it written that God would manifest Himself not two but three times?

It is a widely known fact that God teaches us through prophecies, parables and metaphors. It is this superior form of communication that He took to make us aware of all the things that were to happen in this Third Era of His manifestations as Holy Spirit and Spirit of Truth, which has become to be known as The Advent, or the Second Coming of the Lord. The following are brief excerpts of different parts of the Bible related to this.


  • Gen. 18:1-2 “And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mam’re…and, lo, three men stood by him…and bowed himself toward the ground”.. It is in this passage that the metaphoric figure of the Holy Trinity appears for the first time, because Abraham, whom is referred by God as His friend, sees the Lord in the figure of three men.

  • Ex. 19:11 “And be ready against the third day; for the third day the Lord will come in the sight of all the people…” This is the first of several similar allusions to the three eras of divine manifestations.

  • Luk. 20:12 “And again he send a third: and they wounded him…” The allusion to the three envoys is very clear, although no names are mentioned…even the prophecy that neither the third envoy would be believed is also very clear.

  • Mtw. 17:3-4 And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and E-li’as talking with him (Jesus)…” Another reference to the envoys of the three different eras and here it is very clear whom those are. Please note also the presence of Elijah, who was prophesized by Jesus Christ himself to return in the time of restoration.(Mtw. 17:11)

  • Jhn. 16:13 “How be it when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth…and he will show you things to come…” This is probably the most important prophecy regarding a new era of manifestations, anticipated by Jesus for the time of the end, which is this one in which we live in.

Q: Couldn’t this be the work of Satan?

Each and every time that a new manifestation of God descends unto men, they feel disturbed and historically, the priests of all eras have attributed those surprising manifestations to the forces of evil, because of their lack of understanding of them. Just as it happened to Moses before Him, Jesus was charged of being taken by demons as is narrated in the NT. And it is precisely Jesus Christ who answers that question that had arisen when a new manifestation of the Lord came: “And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?” (Mtw. 12:26). God is God and all good flourishes from Him. And if a teaching talks us of good, then this teaching comes from God. Could good come from evil?

And yes, as the prophecies are fulfilled, those who follow this third manifestation of the Lord will be accused of being deceived by Satan, demons or whatever name man gives to the force of evil. This also was prophesized by the Master himself when he said: “If they have called the master of the house, Be-el’ze-bub, how much more shall they call them of his household?” (Mtw. 10:25)

Q: We have heard of men alleging they are the Christ or saying they are envoys of God. Do they have something in common with The Third Testament?

No. We must be very aware because of these dangerous claims not only can confuse many, but also could possibly cause that the true divine revelations to be mistakenly mixed together with this falsehood. Jesus warned us about this: “And many false prophets shall raise, and shall deceive many…Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not”.

The true manifestation of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with this false messianism. Many scholars, priests and ministers wrongfully believe that they will see Jesus in the flesh walking again over the soil of the Earth. A simple reading of the mentioned verse would show that to be misguided. On the other hand, Jesus is very clear when He explains how we shall expect that manifestation to be: “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be…and then they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory”. (Mtw. 24:27,30″.

The true meaning of this word could not be more precise: it is the lightning, not thunder, that symbolizes the light of above shining through the darkness, and the symbol that the new coming of the Lord was not to take place in the east, but in the west, through the spiritual communication of the Lord with the mind of man, which has the power to elevate to “the clouds of heaven” in order to be able to receive the divine inspiration.

Q: Why was The Third Testament delivered in Mexico? Why in Spanish? Would not it be more appropriate that God delivered His revelations in a more developed country?

It was prophesized since the beginning that in the end of time (this one) God would take other people as His rather than the Jewish people. Read the following: “…and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people, and they shall say, Thou art my God” (Hos. 2:23/Rom. 9:25) and with remarkable forcefulness, God reveals through Isaiah: “I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name”. (Isa. 65:1) Reading and understanding this is easy to deduct that the Jewish people would be no longer the treasurer of God’s new revelations. And that the Lord’s manifestations in this era were not to be in Judea is very clear when the following verse is studied: “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be…”. (Mtw. 24:27″

But, does this necessarily mean that Mexico, a little and underdeveloped country, is the chosen place for the Second Coming of the Lord? Let’s see. When Jesus explains to His disciples where is the Advent to take place, he said to them: “For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together”.(Mtw 24:28) The national symbol of Mexico has always been, even before the arrival of the Spaniards, an eagle devouring a serpent -itself, a very spiritual metaphor: the high devouring the low- and considering, besides, that in the Mexican Valley there is a great variety of this magnificent bird. And in the OT we find another prophetic verse in which the Lord warns the Jewish people that because of its defiance, He will chose another people, and in this prophecy appears, again, the symbol of the eagle: “The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth as swift as the eagle fleth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand.(Dut. 28:49).

“…a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand”. In this verse not only the Lord anticipates that in the time of the end He shall take another nation as His people, but also that that other people would speak a language totally unknown to the Jewish people. And not only that, in the following verse the use of another different language is clearly implied: “…for with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people…” (Isa. 28:11)

Finally, it is proper to remember that in His past communications, the Lord has never chosen powerful nations to deliver His messages and teachings. On the contrary, He always pleased in chosing the humble and the poor to be the receivers of His divine inspirations. Jesus emphasizes this by saying: ” I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes”…

Q: In recent times there has been a lot of speculation about “contactees”, persons that supposedly are receiving messages from superior beings, extraterrestrials, aliens or UFOS, etc. Is The Third Testament part of this frenzy? And what about the New Age movement? Is The Third Testament related with any of this in any way?

The communication of the Holy Spirit through human understanding dates from the past century (1866), long time before the popular psyche was to be impacted by sightings of UFOs and phenomena of this kind. And even then, the spokesmen that received those divine revelations made it through elevating their mind and intuition, even before Alan Kardec’s channeling experiences. The thing that still amazes many that have studied the Third Testament is the fact that, even though those revelations were received by very humble persons (many of them illiterate peasants), the language and concepts that their lips poured were of such a sublime and superior nature, that makes it unthinkable a conspiracy or a fraud. Regarding the New Age movement, even though there are some things in common -such as the awareness of a new time for mankind and the acceptance of the law of reincarnation- The Third Testament is far more than a movement or an organized new cult or religion: It is God’s own legacy to humanity, regardless of age, color, race, nationality or creed, it is the Divine Doctrine at its best.

Q: Does The Third Testament belong to any religion or sect?

No. The Third Testament is a legacy of God to humanity and does not belong to any group, religion or sect. It is a divine heritage to all God’s children regardless of race, creed or nationality. But we must bear in mind that in The Third Testament it is prophesized that a major religion would make an attempt to appropiate this treasure claming that it was delivered in her congregation and once again, try to make a material profit out of it and to retain her temporary power . And all this should be in vain.

Q: I am very interested in cooperating to the spreading of the teachings of The Third Testament. Can I freely distribute copies of the texts or should I request for prior authorization?

Even though the compendium and abridged version of The Third Testament is protected by international copyright laws, and only because human laws required it so, in reality these teachings belong to humanity present and future as a whole, and it is because of this that the printing, copying, distribution and reproduction of the Third Testament is not only hereby fully authorized, but any further spreading and diffusion of its contents is strongly encouraged, with the only restriction that the original words and text should be respected and the source be rightfully quoted as well.

How to free disturbed spirits. True exorcism

This entry it's part of the Humanity series. Part [part not set] of 40

There are forces, invisible to the human eye and unintelligible to human science, that constantly influence your life.

These disturbed beings, lacking peace and enlightenrnent, are drawn towards you by your bad thoughts, low passions, bad habits, and vices.

Your negative behavior attracts those beings who seek to dwell in impure mansions since they have not been purified. These are beings without a body who, in their confusion, seek the body of others to express themselves. However, due to their disturbed state and negative influence, the only thing they achieve when they approach others, is to make them ill, to confuse them mentally, and to disrupt their peace.

Those spirits are the symbol of illness, the inhabitants of the darkness, who know neither life nor death.

A man who leads a sinful life is capable of having a legion of beings in darkness following him. These disturbed beings will leave a trail of evil influences along his path.

The forces that make up evil are forming a powerful nucleus, causing worldwide destruction, wars, and disharmony among men. Although the population of earth is very great, it is very small in comparison to the world of spiritual beings that surround mankind.

Those legions interfere greatly with the lives of mankind, but man is not able to perceive, feel or hear that world that is in turmoil around him.

If you do not become aware of this reality, you will never be able to free yourself from their influences, nor will you be able to help them. You will both be ill and will continually contaminate one another.

The way to battle against these numerous and powerful evil influences is to pray.

Utilize the weapons that I give you. These weapons do not destroy lives, cause blindness, shed blood, bring suffering, leave widows or orphans, nor leave homes behind in their wake, submerged in desolation.

The weapons that I have given you are love, charity, and forgiveness, because with their help you will be able to change evil influences into vibrations of light.

In your prayers always dedicate a thought to those whom you cannot visually perceive, but who are near you and who weep; however, do not attempt to reach them nor obligate them to manifest themselves.

Remember that in the Second Era, when the body of Jesus was taken to its tomb, my Spirit went to give light to all spirits that were in darkness and to free them from their chains. From that moment those spirits received light

The tombs keep the dead, but the Spirits escape and materialize in order to give testimony that the spirit survives.

I prepared everything in order to teach you and give you proof of my love; many were astonished, as I healed many through Jesus.

The unbelievers, those who had heard about the power of Jesus and knew of His miracles, sought to make Jesus stumble with very difficult tests and thus demonstrate that He was not infallible. But they became confused when they witnessed that those who were possessed became normal after being healed by Jesus. He would heal them by only touching them, looking at them, or giving the spintual beings a verbal command to abandon the posessed body. Thus He would relieve one and the other of their heavy load.

In the presence of that power, the pharisees, the scientists, the scribes and the publicans had different reactions. Some acknowledged the power of Jesus, others attributed His power to unknown influences and yet, others did not say anything. Some who were ill had been possessed by a single spirit, others had been possessed by seven spirits such as Mary Magdalene, and still others had been possessed by such a large number of spirits that even the spirits described themselves as a legion.

I freed those who were possessed by large legions of perturbed spirits, and those who believed in me arose, glorifying My name and acknowledging my power; those who did not, judge me and attributed My power to an evil source, treating me as a sorcerer.

In the Second Era, after I had healed a man who was possessed, those who saw this, stated that I had a pact with the spirit of evil. However, the spirit who had been tormenting the man spoke to me and said: I know who you are, you are the Son of God.

Nevertheless, also there were some who were amazed with the deeds of Jesus and asked: With what authority and power does He command those impure spirits who obey Him? They were not aware that all men possess this, that all carry this weapon. Later My disciples repeated the deeds of their Divine Master, thus demonstrating that Christ had come as a teacher to mankind. He not only came to demonstrate His power, but also to reveal to humanity the gifts and powers that everyone possesses.

How profound were those teachings! But those who refused to see the light in those teachings, such as the hypocritical priests and pharisees of that period, have attributed all spiritual knowledge to evil forces. Did they not say in that period that Jesus healed those who were possessed because He had a pact with the devil?

In the same manner, you were surprised in this period when I came in my true essence, the Spirit, in order to give you another teaching in the life of the spirit. This teaching is more extensive, dear and profound, and one in which you will be able to experience personally what I have come to reveal to you.

I am going to respond to those who, along their path, have experienced the presence of spiritual beings whom you call dark and disturbed beings.

Truly I say to you that those beings whom you refer to as demons or tempters, are no more than imperfect or disturbed beings whom the Father wisely utilizes to carry out His higher level plans and designs. However, those beings who are presently in darkness and who are making bad use of the gifts that I have granted to them, will be saved by Me at the proper time. I would cease to be God, if I were unable to save a spirit with My power, wisdom, and love.

If you have imagined that the beings in darkness are like monsters, I only perceive them as imperfect creatures whom I will help and save, for they are also My children!

Disincarnated spirits in different conditions, approach my workers seeking charity. When they discover that the door to your heart is closed, and you do not offer them comfort, they will leave you in a state of mental stress, caused by their influence of suffering and restlessness.

The ones you have sensed the existence of spiritual beings who wander through space and sometimes surround you, believing they are spirits who might suffer, you have attempted to help them. Your intention has been good, but always you have lacked the knowledge enabling your charity to be effective. Until now, you have not known how to offer these disturbed and remorseful beings true enlightenment

You have performed ceremonies for them and have offered them material objects. Although this brings tranquility to your heart, in reality these beings have received nothing as the things of the world no longer concern them. These beings seek spiritual charity, comfort, love, and understanding. How can you help them spiritually? My word also comes to explain how you can be charitable with those beings whom you cannot perceive.

If you truly want to help your spiritual brethren and at the same time want to free yourself from their bad influences, you need to pray, a prayer of compassion, full of mercy and of elevated thoughts. If you feel that those beings are manifesting themselves in your life in some form, provide them with good examples and good deeds so that their spirit may receive light. Let them observe you healing those who are ill and forgiving those who have offended you. Allow them to perceive noble ideas illuminating your mind and kind words being spoken.

With your prayer convert those beings who are in darkness, for while you sleep, they fight and battle just as armies do. Be aware that an unknown world surrounds you, a world in a state of distress where light battles darkness. The turmoil and effects of this war disrupts your world, your heart, and your mind.

The greater part of the confused spiritual beings are so because they are not aware that they are already in a spiritual state; they retain the belief that they continue within the material world and persist in wanting to live as when they were human beings.

Though they are in spirit, they insist in believing they are human beings, because the impression left by the flesh in their spirit was very profound, very intense, due to their living submerged in the materialism, in the passions, in sin and fanaticism.

The ignorance they had while in their earthly existence, enveloped the spirit and the latter had no strength left on reaching that transition which you call physical death, to rid himself of that heavy load, that heavy burden.

Those spirits are worthy of your greatest charity, because they are not fully in the material world as you are, nor are they fully in the spiritual valley.

They are beings who wander in a very painful situation, more so in their sadness. The spirit acquires experience, he evolves, and manages to comprehend that he has passed on into a different life. His prostration cannot be eternal and his confusion can be dispelled if he draws near a spirit, a heart obedient to the Law, to a laborer of the Lord.

When you find yourself surrounded by spirits in darkness, being in your home, along the pathway, or in your own person, how should you impart, in an effective manner, the light to those spirits?

Through your spiritual prayer; then, through your charity, and later, by practicing virtue, the good manners and morality in your life. And they who live among you and who see you incessantly, on contemplating that you are stronger in virtue than they are in evil, will began to yield, setting aside their bad inclinations on receiving the light.

Do not cast them away from your life and whenever possible attract them; do it with love, with charity, and then you will form around you an atmosphere of true spirituality.

And those beings who come near you to test your strength and the Doctrine you practice, on seeing themselves illuminated by the light of your love and your charity, will convert themselves into a barrier that will protect you; they will be your shield, your defenders and friends in your human existence; and when your spirit crosses the threshold of the Great Beyond, you will find yourself followed and blessed by those legions of spirits who will receive you with love and peace, and your spirit will be surprised contemplating them so full of light, the light that you were able to give them.

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