536- Are the great phenomena of nature – those considered as perturbations of the elements – due to fortuitous causes or do they all have a providential purpose?
“Everything has a reason for being and nothing occurs without God’s permission.”
– Do these phenomena always have humankind as their objective?
“Sometimes they occur for a reason directly related to humankind, but most frequently they have no other purpose than to reestablish the balance and harmony of the physical forces of nature.”
– We understand perfectly well that God’s will is the primary cause in these as in all things. But since we know that spirits can in fact act upon matter and that they are agents of God’s will, we would ask whether some among them might not exert an influence over the elements in order to rouse, calm or direct them.
“But that is obvious; it cannot be otherwise. God does not act directly on nature, but has devoted agents on every degree of the worlds’ scales.”
537- The mythology of the ancients is entirely based on Spiritist ideas, with the difference that they regarded spirits as deities, and they represented those gods or spirits as having special attributes. Thus, some were in charge of the wind; others, the lightning, while others presided over vegetation, etc. Is this belief entirely without foundation?
“It is entirely without foundation and far from the truth.”
– Along the same lines, are there spirits inhabiting the earth’s interior, presiding over geological phenomena?
“Such spirits do not actually inhabit the earth, but they preside over and direct its phenomena according to their particular attributes. Someday, you will have an explanation for all these phenomena and you will comprehend them better.”
538- Do the spirits who preside over the phenomena of nature form a special category in the spirit world? Are they separate beings, or are they spirits who have been incarnated like us?
“Who will be or who have been.”
– Do these spirits belong to the higher or lower orders of the spirit hierarchy?
“That depends on whether their role is more material or intelligent, or less so: some command; others execute. Those who perform material functions are always of a lower order among spirits, just as among human beings.”
539- In the production of certain phenomena – storms, for example – does a single spirit act, or do they gather en mass?
“In enormous masses.”
540- Do the spirits who act upon the phenomena of nature do so with full awareness and in virtue of their free will, or out of an instinctive and unreasoning impulse?
“Some in one way, others in the other. Let us make a comparison: consider the myriads of animals that little by little build up islands and archipelagos in the ocean. Do you believe that there is no providential purpose in this, and that this transformation of the surface of the globe is not necessary for its overall harmony? Yet, all this is accomplished by animals of the lowest degree while they are providing for their own needs and without perceiving that they are God’s instruments. In the same way, the least advanced spirits are useful to the general whole. While preparing for life, and before having full awareness of their acts and free will, they act upon certain phenomena in which they are the unwitting agents. At first, they execute; later, when their intelligence is more developed, they command and direct the matters of the material world. Still later, they direct the things of the moral world. Hence, everything is useful; everything in nature is linked together, from the primitive atom to the archangel, who also began as only an atom – an admirable law of harmony, which your limited minds cannot yet grasp in its entirety!”
Site Espírita 