223. Is the soul reincarnated immediately after its separation from the body?

"Sometimes immediately, but more often after intervals of longer or shorter duration. In the higher worlds, reincarnation is almost always immediate. Corporeal matter in those worlds being less gross than in the worlds of lower advancement, a spirit, while incarnated in them, retains the use of nearly all his spirit-faculties, his normal condition being that of your somnambulists in their lucid state."

224. What becomes of the soul in the intervals between its successive incarnations?

"It becomes an errant or wandering spirit, aspiring after a new destiny. Its state is one of waiting and expectancy."

– How long may these intervals last?

"From a few hours to thousands of ages. Strictly speaking, there are no fixed limits to the period of erraticity or wandering, which may be prolonged for a very considerable time, but which, however, is never perpetual. A spirit is always enabled, sooner or later, to commence a new existence which serves to effect the purification of its preceding existences."

– Does the duration of the state of erraticity depend on the will of the spirit, or may it be imposed as an expiation?

"It is a consequence of the spirit's free-will. Spirits act with full discernment; but, in some cases, the prolongation of this state is a punishment inflicted by God, while in others, it has been granted to them at their own request, to enable them to pursue studies which they can prosecute more effectually in the disincarnate state."

225. Is erraticity necessarily a sign of inferiority on the part of spirits.

"No, for there are errant spirits of every degree. Incarnation is a transitional state, as we have already told you. In their normal state, spirits are disengaged from matter."

226. Would it be correct to say that all spirits who are not incarnated are errant?

"Yes, as regards those who are to be reincarnated; but the pure spirits who have attained to perfection are not errant; their state is definitive."

In virtue of their special qualities, spirits are of different orders or degrees of advancement, through which they pass successively as they become purified. As regards their state, they may be – 1. Incarnated, that is to say, united to a material body; 2. Errant or wandering, that is to say, disengaged from the material body and awaiting a new incarnation for purposes of improvement; 3. Pure spirits, that is to say, perfected, and having no further need of incarnation.

227. In what way do wandering spirits obtain instruction? It can hardly be in the same way as men.

"They study their past, and seek out the means of raising themselves to a higher degree. Possessed of vision, they observe all that is going on in the regions through which they pass. They listen to the discourse of enlightened men, and to the counsels of spirits more advanced than themselves, and they thus acquire new ideas."

228. Do spirits retain any human passion?

"Elevated spirits, on quitting their bodily envelope, leave behind them the evil passions of humanity, and retain only the love of goodness. But inferior spirits retain their earthly imperfections. Were it not for this retention, they would be of the highest order."

229. How is it that spirits, on quitting the earth, do not leave behind them all their evil

passions, since they are then able to perceive the disastrous consequences of those passions?

"You have among you persons who are, for instance, excessively jealous; do you imagine that they lose this defect at once on quitting your world? There remains with spirits, after their departure from the earthly life, and especially with those who have had strongly marked passions, a sort of atmosphere by which they are enveloped, and which keeps up all their former evil qualities; for spirits are not entirely freed from the influence of materiality. It is only occasionally that they obtain glimpses of the truth, showing them, as it were, the true path which they ought to follow."

230. Do spirits progress in the state of erraticity?

"They may make a great advance in that state, in proportion to their efforts and desires after improvement, but it is in the corporeal life that they put in practice the new ideas they have thus acquired."

231. Are wandering spirits happy or unhappy?

“More or less so according to their deserts. They suffer from the passions of which they have retained the principle, or they are happy in proportion as they are more or less dematerialised. In the state of erraticity, a spirit perceives what he needs in order to become happier, and he is thus stimulated to seek out the means of attaining what he lacks. But he is not always permitted to reincarnate himself when he desires to do so, and the prolongation of erraticity then becomes a punishment."

232. Can spirits in the state of erraticity enter all the other worlds?

"That depends on their degree of advancement. When a spirit has quitted the body, he is not necessarily disengaged entirely from matter, and he still belongs to the world in which he has lived, or to a world of the same degree, unless he has raised himself during his earthly life to a world of higher degree; and this progressive elevation should be the constant aim of every spirit, for without it he would never attain to perfection. A spirit, however, may enter worlds of higher degree; but, in that case, he finds himself to be a stranger in them. He can only obtain, as it were, a glimpse of them; but such glimpses often serve to quicken his desire to improve and to advance, that he may become worthy of the felicity which is enjoyed in them, and may thus be enabled to inhabit them in course of time."

233. Do spirits who are already purified ever come into worlds of lower degree?

"They come into them very frequently in order to help them forward. Unless they did so, those worlds would be left to themselves, without guides to direct them."