The Causes of Instinct:
The Time to Know Them Has It Come?

Available Observation Elements allow us to take a Step forward along one of Kardec’s Reasoning Lines

Renato Costa


From item 12 to 16, Chapter II of Genesis, Allan Kardec develops a reasoning line on the causes of instinct, ending it in item 17 with the following words: “All previously explained ways of understanding instinct are forcibly hypothetical and none of them has a safe character of authenticity. This question will undoubtedly be clarified one day when the observation elements that are lacking are gathered. Until then all we can do is submitting the several opinions to reason and logic and waiting for light to happen. The solution closer to truth will surely be the one that’s best compatible to God’s attributes, that is, supreme goodness and supreme justice.”

The purpose of this work is showing that the observation elements that were lacking to clarify the question have already been gathered. We don’t feel at ease to proceed with this argument, however, without first paying tribute to Allan Kardec for his final observation, a product of his highly inspired wisdom, that is, when he says that, no matter which hypothesis proves to be True, it will always be “the one that’s best compatible to God’s attributes, that is, supreme goodness and supreme justice. “

We saw in my article published last month that there is a tenuous border between intelligence and instinct. I haven’t yet called our reader’s attention, however, to a fact that was clear then, to say, that intelligent actions are, under no matter what circumstances, always performed by an individual and only learned and reproduced by the other members of the same group after being proved successful. Therefore, before a learned behavior can crystallize in a group and thenceforth in the group’s species as a fixed action pattern – another name of instinct, as we have learned – all members must already share that behavior.

Talking about Intelligence in Item 12 Chapter III of Genesis, Kardec says that it’s “unquestionably an attribute of the soul”. Now that we have learned that individuals are the ones that perform intelligent actions, we need to find a key to relate the ideas of soul and individuality so that the comprehension on how that relation occurs allows us to integrate the teachings of science and those of the Spiritist Codification into a single understanding. In order to achieve this purpose we are once more going to make use of the thesis proposed by André Luiz and developed by Jorge Andréa as to the development of individuality.

Shortly after the first half of Chapter II of Jorge Andréa’s excellent work called Creative Drives of Evolution, the author defines the concept of group-soul. I will try to explain the concept using quotations so that we can see in which way it will help us in our understanding.
Feeding open mouths, instinct shared by all members of a species - www.thebestfree.net

“Simpler species would have a more interconnected spiritual-energy-drive, allowing us to refer to the group-soul-of-the-species – a dynamic vortex that happens in the superior dimension, beyond time and space, exercising its influence upon a whole set of beings. In other words, a single vibrational field controlling the species to which it’s assigned”.

“As the species loses its colonial connections, a typical trait of the simplest forms, its members acquire relative individuality and the dynamic vortex that directs their destiny succeeds in sculpting a true nucleus - a little I (see note*) - out of the energy whole of the group-soul-of-the-species. Therefore, the group-soul, that combined dynamic force that directs the colonies of minerals, vegetables and primitive animals, would start to show in its body little whirling centers of motion each representing the beginning of individuality definition, as a result of evolution’s maturation. Those however wouldn’t either dare or be able to survive separated from the colony from which they were formed and from which they feed.”

‘”At a certain moment when the maturation of those group-soul ’s dynamic vortexes reaches a higher degree of affirmation and experience, they tend to break their dynamic links to the energy that has brought them forth absorbing whatever they need form the “mother-energy”. When that happens the group-soul is scattered in proper nucleuses, affirmation of its little I’s – individualities – starting to have more liberty.”

“This liberating phase of the spiritual energies must occur in those animal species where new psychological aspects and the first emotions start to show and where the sexual mechanism appears with different variations. Following certain logic we may include in our assertion those animals whose nervous system reveals the first cells of a future pineal gland and which are called pineal eyes due to their primitive appearance. … From those animals onwards the group-soul practically starts disappearing as it gives place to the birth of individualities.”

We may stop examining the proposed model for the purpose we have in view.

Being intelligence, as explained by Kardec, an exclusive attribute of the soul and intelligent actions, as we can conclude from scientific studies, something only performed by individuals, it stays clear that something lies beyond the scrutiny of science, suggesting that there is something happening in the spiritual dimensions.

Using Jorge Andréa’s explanation, we can infer that the group-souls of the most primitive species work in the spiritual dimensions under the supervision of the Spirits that direct their actions in order to acquire the behavior characteristics most appropriate to the development of each one, so that those characteristics may next be added to the knowledge of each species as a whole. Such an understanding would explain why certain instincts of primitive species, like the choreography performed by bees when they want to communicate the location of the flowers from which they suck the nectar, seem to be directed by superior intelligence, although they remain unchanged either from one member to the other or from one generation to the next.

As individual vortexes are formed from the group-soul-of-the-species and individualities become better and better defined, intelligence in the members of the correspondent species becomes more and more evident to scientific observation.

At the present stage of spiritist and scientific understanding, therefore, I believe that we can take a step forward along the reasoning line that Kardec left inconclusive in Genesis with respect to the causes of instinct.

Using the model proposed by Jorge Andréa we can view the most primitive beings as directed and helped in groups. The cruder the capacities of those beings and the simpler their needs then the more general that direction and help will be. As the spiritual principle evolves with the corresponding definition of the vortexes that will cause the birth of individualities, the more specific must the direction become and the help given to each being. Therefore, the importance of general influence must correspondently decrease. In the same manner, evolution will take place more and more in the material and less and less in the spiritual dimensions.

We know that nationalities, which are no more than communities of Spirits sharing the same cultural background, have each a corresponding spiritual protector. So, we know, for instance, that Ismael, Bezerra de Menezes, Emmanuel and Joanna de Ângelis, just to name a few, are Spirits in charge of the Brazilian people. We know of the responsibility of our beloved master and model Jesus with respect to the human race and to the other species of the planet as well as of the responsibility of other high order Spirits, like Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Mohamed and Moses, among others, for the communities of other religious traditions, to whom they stand as masters, prophets or models. However, although it’s true that we don’t lack the general orientation we need as creatures, species, religious community and national people, each of us also has a specific spiritual guide, who follows us along many lives, always patient and wise.

Considering that the noblest organizations of the material dimensions are but imperfect copies of those that exist in the spiritual dimensions, we think that an analogy to our educational institutions looks appropriate. In kindergarten an educator and a few trained attendants can deal with all the children. In elementary school a main educator and a few support educators for parallel activities do the job. In intermediate school there is an educator for each subject and the classes are organized according to some criteria with more specialization in high school. At the university specialization increases, contemplating academic areas of interest whereas the number of educators continuously increases, including, not only teachers, but lecturers, laboratory advisers and others. At graduation, on top of all academic professionals available for undergraduate students, a personal counselor is assigned to help the student. As support gets more and more focused, however, the network of support for all the communality remains always present so that, no matter if the student is in elementary school or graduation, there are always directors, vice-directors and other professionals in charge of each specific aspect of academic life.
Teachers and Pupils, here as well as in the spiritual plane. - Elementary school class at Escola Espírita Joanna de Ângelis  (See The IEJA - Our School)



Further back in this simple work I said that I believed that we could take a step forward along the reasoning line that Kardec left inconclusive in Genesis with respect to the causes of instinct. I hope that we have been successful in attaining that purpose.

*****

* Note: The author gives the name “little I’s” to the first occurrences of individuality in a species as opposed to the previous evolution stage when we would refer to the members of that same species only in the plural form since they would all behave extremely alike.


Bibliography

Andréa dos Santos, Jorge. Impulsos Criativos da Evolução (Evolution’s Creatve Drives).  Rio de Janeiro: Societo Lorenz, 1995.

Costa, Renato. The Tenuous Border. Revista Internacional do Espiritismo, Year LXXVIII, N 07. Matão: August 2003.

Kardec, Allan. A Gênese (Gênesis).. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 1995.

Xavier, Francisco Cândido, and Vieira, Waldo. Evolução em Dois Mundos (Evolution in two Worlds). Dictated by Spirit André Luiz. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 1993.
(This article was originally published in Revista Internacional do Espiritismo, Year LXXIX, N 02. Matão: March 2004)