Works Cited

Third Order spirits are the least advanced spirits around the sphere of earth. They exist close to the surface, a little above and below the crust.  Many walk around us in everyday life; observing and participating. Third Order spirits are those of us who have left this life in either one or more in these conditions (I have created broad categories):

1. Lack of Spirituality – There are many good people who don’t believe in an afterlife. Hence, when they awaken and find themselves still on earth they are confused. These spirits are helped by second order spirits to realize where they are. The vast majority ascend fairly rapidly.
2. Rebellious – Some spirits don’t want to recognize the existence of a Supreme Being. Hence, they remain where their bodies decompose, on earth, until they determine the beauty of life is in serving.  Strong-willed and usually intelligent, when they are ready, they have the capacity to rise quickly in the spirit hierarchy.
3. Materialist – Lived life dedicated to the amassing of wealth. Most or everything else took a lower priority. Being miserly is an example. Spirits who worship their property above all else, find they are still tied to earth and can’t leave it.
4. Selfish – Never thought of others, their needs always came first. Like the materialist, life was about what could be done on earth.
5. Criminal – A combination of materialism and selfishness, with a violent streak and a complete lack of respect for others. They will be in the right place when they pass on. Eventually, they will tire of existing in a world full of souls similar to them and seek to improve.
6. Suicides –They left life on earth before their appointed time. Unfortunately for them, they will have to reside around the earth until they were fated to expire. The Spirituality frowns on people who cut classes. This includes “unconscious suicides”; a spirit term for those who killed themselves by dangerous behavior, such as drinking and drug addiction.

There is a complete description of the third order of spirits in Allan Kardec’s, The Spirits Book, starting at question 101. Third order spirits, while in the spirit realm, are composed of more matter than spirit energy. They are denser than higher spirits. Lower spirits are unable to detect the presence of higher spirits, unless the higher spirits consciously make themselves as dense as lower spirits.

“101. General Characteristics.–Predominant influence of matter over spirit. Propensity to evil. Ignorance, pride, selfishness, and all the evil passions which result from these.

They have the intuition of the existence of God, but they have no comprehension of Him.

They are not all of them thoroughly bad; in many of them there is more of frivolity, want of reasoning power, and love of mischief, than of downright wickedness. Some of them do neither good nor evil; but the very fact that they do no good denotes their inferiority. Others, on the contrary, take pleasure in evil, and are gratified when they find an opportunity of doing wrong.

Among spirits of this order, a certain amount of intelligence is often allied with malice and the love of mischief; but, whatever may be their intellectual development, their ideas are wanting in elevation, and their sentiments are more or less abject.

Their knowledge of the things of the spirit-world is narrow, and the little they know about them is confused with the ideas and prejudices of the corporeal life. They can give only false and incomplete notions of the spirit-world; but the attentive observer may always find in their communications, however imperfect, the confirmation of the great truths proclaimed by spirits of the higher orders.

Their character is revealed by their language. Every spirit who, in his communications, betrays an evil intention, may be ranged in the third order; consequently every evil thought suggested to our mind comes to us from a spirit of that order.

They see the happiness enjoyed by good spirits, and this sight causes them perpetual torment; for they experience all the agonies produced by envy and jealousy.

They preserve the remembrance and the perception of the sufferings of corporeal life; and this impression is often more painful than the reality. They suffer, in fact, both from the ills they have themselves endured, and from those which they have caused to be endured by others. And as these sufferings endure for a very long time, they believe themselves to be destined to suffer forever. God, for their punishment, wills that they should believe this.”[i]

Third order spirits are the unseen souls that we come into contact the most. Our brains pick up, subconsciously, their thoughts. We are on earth to learn to filter out the suggestions made to us by these types of spirits. This is why we have a conscience, so we may use the full set of Divine Laws that God implants inside each one of us, to determine what is right and wrong.

When a person pays a medium for advice or a group of untrained people hold a séance, these are the types of spirits which are attracted. The level of the medium or group calling for spirits determines the level of the spirits who come. Hence, morally and spiritually advanced mediums will attract higher order spirits. While at the other end of the spectrum, the local fortune teller or the Ouija Board users will communicate with lower spirits. The information you receive from third order spirits should not be fully trusted.

Allan Kardec breaks down the third order spirits into more categories:

“103. Ninth Class–Frivolous Spirits.–They are ignorant, mischievous, unreasonable, and addicted to mockery. They meddle with everything, and reply to every question without paying any attention to truth. They delight in causing petty annoyances, in raising false hopes of petty joys, in misleading people by mystifications and trickery. The spirits vulgarly called hobgoblins, will-o’-the-wisps, gnomes, etc., belong to this class. They are under the orders of spirits of a higher category, who make use of them as we do of servants.

In their communications with men their language is often witty and facetious, but shallow. They are quick to seize the oddities and absurdities of men and things, on which they comment with sarcastic sharpness. If they borrow distinguished names, as they are fond of doing, it is rather for the fun of the thing than from any intention to deceive by so doing.

 104. Eighth Class–Spirits who Pretend to more Science than they Possess.–Their knowledge is often considerable, but they imagine themselves to know a good deal more than they know in reality. Having made a certain amount of progress from various points of view, their language has an air of gravity that may easily give a false impression as to their capacities and enlightenment; but their ideas are generally nothing more than the reflection of the prejudices and false reasoning of their terrestrial life. Their statements contain a mixture of truths and absurdities, in the midst of which traces of presumption, pride, jealousy, and obstinacy, from which they have not yet freed themselves, are abundantly perceptible.

 105. Seventh Class–Neutral Spirits.–They are not sufficiently advanced to take an active part in doing good, nor are they bad enough to be active in doing wrong. They incline sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other; and do not rise above the ordinary level of humanity, either in point of morality or of intelligence. They are strongly attached to the things of this world, whose gross satisfactions they regret.

106. Sixth Class–Noisy and Boisterous Spirits.–Spirits of this kind do not, strictly speaking, form a distinct class in virtue of their personal qualities; they may belong to all the classes of the third order. They often manifest their presence by the production of phenomena perceptible by the senses, such as raps, the movement and abnormal displacing of solid bodies, the agitation of the air, etc. They appear to be, more than any other class of spirits, attached to matter; they seem to be the principal agents in determining the vicissitudes of the elements of the globe, and to act upon the air, water, fire, and the various bodies in the entrails of the earth. Whenever these phenomena present a character of intention and intelligence, it is impossible to attribute them to a mere fortuitous and physical cause. All spirits are able to produce physical phenomena; but spirits of elevated degree usually leave them to those of a lower order, more apt for action upon matter than for the things of intelligence, and, when they judge it to be useful to produce physical manifestations, employ spirits of subaltern degree as their auxiliaries.”[ii]

For those who wish to learn more about different types of mediums and how to determine the level of the spirit you are communicating with, I highly recommend The Mediums Book, by Allan Kardec.

All of us need to be aware of the world around us and who is trying to influence us so we can learn how to guard against ruinous advice and onslaughts against holding our emotions in check.

To fully comprehend from where we come from, how we ascend to how we are guided on during our trials on earth, read my book, Explore Your Destiny – Since Your Life’s Path is (mostly) Predetermined. It will inform you of what the Doctrine of Spiritism has revealed to us through the works of many mediums.

All of us, even at a personal level are herded and watched as we progress. To understand how each individual is pushed along the track. Read my book, 7 Tenets of Spiritism – How They Impact Your Daily Life, to realize the force of the unseen power which affects each detail of our destiny.

Author:

Brian Foster has a BSCS degree and a MBA. He has worked in R&D for medical device corporations and in IT for large financial institutions. Brian Foster has a blog at www.nwspiritism.com.

Works Cited

Kardec, A. (2010). The Book on Mediums. Guildford, England: White Crow Books.

Kardec, A. (2010). The Spirits Book. Guildford, UK: White Crow Books.

[i] Kardec, A, The Spirits Book, White Crow Books, Book 2, Question 101

[ii] Kardec, A, The Spirits Book, White Crow Books, Book 2, Questions 103-106