How many times do we reincarnate?

Is there a number of lives? An end to the process? Tom's answer draws the law that governs the whole evolution of souls — where nothing is lost and everything is paid.

— How many times does the spirit reincarnate? Or is the process of reincarnation also eternal, like the soul?

— The spirit incarnates as many times as necessary. At the moment when it is no longer necessary for it to incarnate, it lives solely and only as a spirit.

— So incarnation only occurs while the spirit is imperfect, is that it?

— Yes, precisely. When it no longer needs to incarnate, it is because it has already attained the state of purity. It has evolved, both intellectually and morally, to the point of being a pure spirit. Complete happiness is bound to perfection, that is, to the complete purification of the spirit. There is not a single imperfection of the soul that does not entail inevitable consequences, just as there is not a single quality that does not result in enjoyment. By virtue of the law of progress, which gives every soul the possibility of acquiring the good it lacks, as of divesting itself of the evil it has, according to its own effort and will, evolution is open to all creatures. Suffering depending on imperfection, as enjoyment depends on perfection, the soul carries with it its own punishment or reward, wherever it may be. The good and the evil we do arise from the evolutionary stage we have reached. Not to do good when we can is, therefore, the result of an imperfection. If every imperfection is a source of suffering, the spirit will suffer, not only for the evil it did, but also for the good it failed to do in its life. The spirit suffers for the evil it did, so that, its attention being constantly directed to the consequences of that evil, it better understands its drawbacks and seeks to correct itself. The justice of God being infinite, good and evil are rigorously taken into account, there being not a single action, a single good or evil thought that has no consequences. There is not a single good impulse of the soul that is lost, even in the most perverse, such actions constituting a beginning of progress. Every fault committed, every evil done is a contracted debt that must be paid; if it is not paid in one existence, it will be in the next or the following ones, because all existences are bound together in solidarity. He who settles his debt in one existence will not need to pay a second time. (3)

— Hence the supreme justice and goodness of God. Justice must not annul goodness, nor must goodness annul justice. Justice and goodness must go hand in hand so that justice does not turn into mercilessness or vengeance, and goodness without justice does not turn into injustice.

— Without doubt. God reconciles justice and goodness in perfection.

Roger signals for Tom to continue.

— The spirit suffers, whether in the corporeal world or in the spiritual one, the consequence of its imperfections. The miseries, the vicissitudes endured in bodily life, spring from our imperfections, they are expiations of faults committed in the present or in preceding existences. By the nature of the sufferings and vicissitudes of bodily life, one may judge the nature of the faults committed in a former existence, and of the imperfections that gave rise to them. Expiation varies according to the nature and gravity of the fault, so that the same fault may, therefore, determine different expiations, according to the circumstances, mitigating or aggravating, in which it was committed. There is no absolute or uniform rule as to the nature and duration of expiation. Its duration depends on the improvement of the guilty spirit. If there were a condemnation for a predetermined time, it would have the double drawback of continuing the martyrdom of the unrepentant spirit, or of freeing it from suffering while it still remained in evil. Now, God, who is just, punishes evil only while it exists, and ceases to punish it when it no longer exists. On the other hand, moral evil, being in itself a cause of suffering, will make that suffering last as long as it subsists, or will diminish in intensity as it decreases. (3)

Excerpt from the work The Great Discovery, by César Manuel Malainho de Oliveira.
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