The Force Of Kindness

By André Luiz Ruiz, By the Spirit Lucius and Professor T. Jansen

The rescue processes in the inferior spiritual regions, the luminous shelter of the invisible world at the moment of sacrifice, the importance of goodness as a factor of victory in the struggles of each day, are some of the spiritual issues addressed by Lucius in this work, a continuation of the exciting romance of "Love Never Forgets You", where we find Livia and Zacariah, Cleophas and Simeon protecting the recovery of Savius, Pilate, Fulvia, Sulpicius and Aurelia, at the same time in which they shelter with elevated energies and intuitions the generous effort of the centurion Lucilius, reincarnated in the world next to these characters, in the figure of the Roman Licinius, the right arm of the irresponsible and wasteful Marcus, husband of Drusilla and lover of Serapis, the same Aurelia and Fúlvia reborn, now as the lady and the employee of the mansion, respectively.
Gathered on the world stage by the commitments assumed in the same mistakes, Marcus, Drusilla and Serapis find themselves involved by the love conflict, by the sensual disputes through which both seek to impose themselves on the interest of Marcus, Savius himself reincarnated.
While they lose themselves in libertine fights, Licinius strives to exemplify virtue, in the service humble and dedicated that he lends to the lavish house of Marcus, his childhood friend. Beside the disorders and petty disputes, we will find that spirit that was reborn to help others to get up and who, in turn, gives himself up to save a simple servant, servant of the same palace, of the injustice of being convicted without guilt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: World Spiritist Institute
• Release date: Dec 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215413456

Book preview

THE FORCE OF KINDNESS

By the Spirit

Lucius

Written by

André Luiz Ruiz

Translated by

Professor T. Jansen

a retired head professor of

English language at the

Pontifical Catholic University

of Campinas, state of São Paulo,Brazil

Original Title in Portuguese:

A Força da Bondade

© André Luiz Ruiz

Translated from the 6th edition

Instituto de Difusão Espírita – 2003

São Paulo – Brazil

Reviewers:

Alipio Gonzales Jr., Miami, USA

Karen Camaqué Inga, Lima, Perú

Cover:

Triumph of Faith Christian Martyrs in the time of Nero  by Eugene Romain Thirion (1839- 1910)

Houston, Texas, USA       

E–mail: [e-mail]

About the Medium

André Luiz Ruiz, began in the Spiritist knowledge through the examples received from his parents, Miguel D. D. Ruiz and Odete de Andrade Ruiz, also admirers of the doctrine codified by Kardec. Born in the city of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil on August 11, 1962, from childhood he established residence in Birigui, in the same state, from where he transferred to Campinas in 1977.

In 1979 he went to attend the Beneficent Society Bezerra de Menezes, where he is still today, developing, alongside many colleagues dedicated to the Christian ideal, the fraternal work of care for the brothers in the evolutionary journey.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank wholeheartedly the members of the Beneficent Society Bezerra de Menezes, particularly Heloisa Helena Oliveira Salgado for her help in the challenge of translating this literary work into the English language.

Table of Contents

1.- Recalling the Story

2.-  The Effects of Turpitude

3.- In Front of Herself

4.-  The Catacombs

5.-  Prophetical Words

6.-  Assuming the Testimony

7.-  The Canticle of Kindness

8.- The spiritual aid

9.-  Outreaching Hands

10.-  Goodness as a Prize of Kindness

11.-  Learning through Love

12.-  The words of Zachariah

13.-  The Abyss

14.-  The effort of Goodness

15.-  Rescuing Pilate

16.-  Rescuing Fulvia

17.-  Sulpicius and His Turn

18.-  Majestic Forces

19.-  Explanations Before Returning

20.-  The Return

21.-  Rome Once More

22.-  Claudius Rufus

23.-  The Miseries of the Capital  of the Empire

24.-  Serapis

25.-  In the palace

26.-  Testing Serapis

27.-  Feelings and Interests

28.-  Selfishness in Action

29.-  A Rendezvous Followed  by Many More

30.-  Spiritual Aid

31.-  Unfortunate Choices

32.-  The New Routine

33.-  The Bitter Taste of Passion

34.-  An Ill Affection

35.-  An Old Setting for  the Same Errors

36.-  Licinius becomes a Christian

37.-  Absurdity Seeding Pain

38.-  Tragic Surprises

39.-  The Absence of God  in the Hearts

40.-  Lessons for Licinius

41.-  Faithfulness to Goodness

42.-  Renouncement and Consciousness

43.-  Discovering the Truth

44.-  The Force of Kindness

A Few Words by Lucius

Dear reader,

We return to your heart to continue with the story of the life of the same characters of the book Love Never Forgets You, reporting the consequences of human acts on the reality of their immortal Spirits as well as the effects that our everyday choices have in our future existence.

More than producing a constraining impact, our aim is to disclose how Divine Justice works with great accuracy and clemency by seeking to protect the immature creatures with the mantle of the Augusta Mercy.

May your heart open itself to the Power of Kindness in the same sensitive way you received the embracement of Love Never Forgets You, remembering that both have been written for you to enhance yourself through the example of goodness and convert it into acts of Kindness so as to benefit those who should cross your path.

You are the only one who can do this by yourself!

May your light shine!

May peace be with you,

Lucius

1.- Recalling the Story

In the distant year of 38, the figure of Pontius Pilate entered into an even more turbulent period since his unfortunate conduct of ending his own life had transferred him to the spiritual world practically without any protection or preparation that could help him to face the new situation. Confined by the experience of his exile, even without the presence of Zachariah who had left for the spiritual life a few months earlier victimized by the poison intended for Pilate, he might have begun there to redeem himself through the pain of some of the committed acts, by maturing his spirit and by learning to conquer a sort of humbleness on facing adversity.

In the prison of the ancient garrison, where Pilate had conquered some of his worldly glories, he could better evaluate the transitoriness of things, the capricious way in which life flows, in a come and go action like the motion of a seesaw that places a man on the top at a certain moment and shortly afterwards brings him down to a level even lower than an ordinary slave.

In spite of the cruel manners that the power of the world had to punish the persons that were not of interest any longer, the punishment inflicted on the former powerful Governor was imposed on him by following the evolutional needs so as to enable his inner renovation. The law of the Universe was not interested in maintaining a man belittled in his false condition of power and nobility. According to the spiritual rules, the prime intention was, and will always be, to direct the creature towards the truth, towards a true and actual maturation.

Thus, placing Pilate in a prison at the same place he had left as a respected Roman commander was what could bring about more benefits than any other destination offered, since his shame would break up his arrogant fibres, the humiliation would favour his spirit to search for new ways of understanding the transitoriness of human splendour. That is why divine Kindness and the power of true Love had assured him the constant company of Zachariah who had been outworking himself since he left Jerusalem to have Pilate been helped and not be left lonely along the long journey of the downfall that lay ahead. Furthermore, Zachariah had been able to win over the support of Lucilius who could well keep on as a protector to provide the most urgent needs Pilate had. However, nothing of this had managed to move the weakened soul of that man who had been fallen in his own trap. His moral fragility became exposed in his conscience and the affection he received from Zachariah and from Jesus himself, who had not neglected him since well before he became his victim, had deranged him in view of the shame he was feeling, a shame that he was not able to overcome. In fact, it was a great mixture of contradictory feelings establishing itself in his spirit.

The absence of Zachariah, the great friend and generous advisor, left Pilate sort of lost in the middle of a moral storm, leaving him without courage to proceed without managing to see the support that Lucilius was granting him and without any strength to face the great tragedy of Mount Calvary of which he felt responsible for not having done anything to avoid it. Thus, it was not difficult for him to choose the way which seemed easier, less dishonourable for a soldier in disgrace, but infinitely more painful for the craven spirit in view of the deceptions of an adverse life. Suicide was the last act of his frail spirit, unprepared for great spiritual decisions always involving renouncement, patience and the understanding of his own weaknesses and faults as well as a patient effort to restart.

The spiritual perturbation of Pilate had also made its inroad affecting his personal balance. This happened particularly when Sulpicius Tarquinius, his right arm for long years of government in the province, his companion in crimes, his first assistant of orders, always covering up his weaknesses, his accomplice in his misdoings and thefts, had been transferred to the spiritual side of life at the occasion of the execution of old Simeon in Samaria. It so happened that when the big and heavy wooden cross to which the elder man was tied to and being whipped until he was not able to bear the crashes of torture any longer, began to move from its base and fall unexpectedly on the torturer throwing him on the ground and causing his immediate death. From then on, the backward and violent spirit of Sulpicius kept yoked to the Governor so as to serve him or to influence him in hateful decisions by continuing the same order of negative complicity. He would incite cruelty; produce teasing sensations by inducing him to look for new adventures in what might be considered as a perfect marriage of a spirit to an incarnated body, in terms of affinity, tastes, wishes and inferiorities.

With the passing of time and the companionship of Zachariah, Sulpicius began to notice modifications in Pilate and the inclination of Pilate for another conduct, which caused a great dread in him since he could not admit to be detached from the one he considered as being the chief and whom he was supposed to obey. So, without being able to impose himself effectively against the strong vibrations of Zachariah, Sulpicius started to harbour a strong wish of forcing Pilate to leave such influences. He became directly involved in the gloomy plot that made Zachariah drink up the poison that Savius had put in the water he had taken over to the jail for Pilate. As an ignorant spirit, he believed that helping to remove Zachariah from the presence of the Governor would allow him to recover the influence and the control he had over Pilate. However, after Zachariah died everything became much worse since the loss of the best and only friend made Pilate be more connected with the teachings that the old man had left behind, making him think about things in a different way, without that characteristic malice of the old times.

The prisoner had not forgotten the image of Jesus and often Sulpicius had seen Pilate praying to the Jewish Prophet that produced an immediate reaction of revolt in the spirit of Sulpicius. Thus, he believed that the Governor was under the effect of some hallucination, some enchantment that had taken away his capability of thinking or acting. Sulpicius decided then to do everything possible for Pilate to be transferred to the spiritual world, so that by leaving this life of pains and disappointments they could resume the way of wrongdoings far away from the body of flesh. Furthermore, Sulpicius felt a great rage against Lucilius and against Pilate himself in some occasions. He thought that if Pilate were not a victim of a new enchantment, his transformations were a sure sign of treason. He, the loyal lictor who had given his life to serve that powerful and despotic man, would not allow things to follow that way where the former Governor decided to change side; begin to be a good man, change gods – which was considered the most serious heresy in the ancient belief of the Romans – unless he, Sulpicius, would intervene. Were it to save the prisoner from his tormenting path, were it to punish his new conduct considered as being an unacceptable weakness, the fact is that Sulpicius began to influence the Governor even more directly, insufflating low level thoughts, sticking to his moral weaknesses, bringing about negative ideas in his dreams, not allowing the body to have a needful rest. More than this, during the rest, Pilate was pursued countless of times by dark horrible and disfigured accusers who had actually been his early victims, the spirit of Sulpicius had gathered them from the caverns of darkness where revolt and hatred had projected them so as to help him increase the siege on that ruined earthly leader.

Knowing that Pilate had hurt many persons through his behaviour and having the idea of increasing the negative weight on the mind and spirit of Pilate, the spirit of the Roman lictor gathered many men and women that had transferred themselves to the spiritual world filled with hatred and seeking vengeance against the Governor. They were able to do it now that he was defeated and reduced to the condition of a simple prisoner. This fact favoured the aggravation of the moral state of Pilate for through the gaps of his faults and his low level thoughts, a great number of entities were connecting themselves to his magnetic structure and began to suck his vital forces. This brought about a great weakness and a change in the awareness of things by taking advantage of the complex composite of guilt against which Pilate had not fought, making it become even worse. Because of all this, the prisoner was abating himself.

Pilate heard inner voices, echoes from the thoughts and the words of his past victims who were taking advantages of his fragility and were imposing on him malicious suggestions, sinister accusations and making constant pursuits, giving him no truce. Furthermore, they always managed to influence some of the soldiers of the Viennese camp to approach the door protecting the prison and scoff his condition by accusing Pilate of having shamed the legion they had served in the past, believing the legion to be in a bad position in the eyes of the Emperor. They were early servants that were nourishing the pride of a caste and the simple presence of a military ruler in disgrace was a demerit for their association. Pilate had to hear all this and could only count on the friendly word of Lucilius now that Zachary had died.

The influences from all sides, added to the moral weakness of his feeble character, made him see, as a last resort, a sword placed at his reach by one of the men who scoffed him and wanted to get rid of the shame. So, he did not hesitate to grasp the cold and hard metal of the Roman sword and throw himself against the wall of the cell stabbing his belly by considering it to be at least a worthy death for a soldier.

Nothing had managed to make Pilate change his attitude.

At the other side of life, a funeral cortege was waiting for him consisting now not only of Sulpicius having the sordid appearance of a down fallen spirit, but rather, of as many spirits as it was possible to gather to disturb him as a form of a fore vengeance in order to bring him into the invisible world where they could effectively exert the punishment they believed to be more appropriate.

A countless number of disfigured women dressed in infected rags now approached his disturbed spirit and threw themselves on him by saying lustful and sensual words and offering themselves as if they were his new elected women. The awful state in which they presented themselves produced nausea in the immature spirit making him try to escape from there without succeeding. This was so because his suicide did not have any power to leave his own mental constructions and place himself in an environment enabling him to have a little peace. Rebellious by nature it was now his responsibility to handle his personal and capricious choices having to face the moment of harvesting the thorns he had shown.

As soon as the women passed by, there came their hurt and ashamed husbands led to their unhappiness and destruction of their dreams due to the acts of that authoritarian and luxurious Governor. Then came the persons whom he had unjustly imprisoned, the persons that he had deprived from their properties, the persons who had been the victims of his ignorance, the persons he had somehow affected in their personal life, in politics, in the unfairness of his brief judgements; the persons who had died in bloodthirsty pursuits as was the case after the death of Sulpicius, etc. At last came the persons who accused him of killing the son of God, of not having done anything to avoid his murdering. Such jeering entities reproduced before his eyes the ultimate scene where he ended up washing his hands and they repeated the scene at the right moment by making a sumptuous pitcher gush out bubbling blood instead of clear crystalline water. The bubbling blood fumigated on touching his hands. This scene was the one that hurt his soul most.

On top of all this, the spiritual body of Pilate was feeling a strong pain on the lower part of his belly injured by the perforation of the sword as if it were still stuck in the belly, bleeding without stopping and without being able to find means of staunching the wound. At the peak of his despair, Pilate saw the figure of Sulpicius who was looking at him without intervening. A ray of hope appeared in the eyes of the insensible suicide believing that Sulpicius would help him. He pronounced his name in vain, as if he were calling him again for a task as he used to do at the time of his relationship with him in the Roman court.

Sulpicius did not move from the place he was at and his state of immobility still constrained Pilate even more. Tears of despair were coming naturally to his eyes and, as soon as they appeared, a wave of a loud laughter filled his hears while cruel mean ironic and irreverent accusations were darted into his face:

Since when is a serpent able to cry? yelled the more aggressive ones.

Your acid tears will corrode your flesh. said another spirit, imposing himself on the victim so as to hypnotize Pilate which produced a change in his face as if deep furrows were marking the track where the caustic drops were running down.

The former Governor was now handed over to his own actions and to the sowing he himself had made in the past, facing the bitter results that were looking for him as if they were paying back the effort of the dissemination in a load corresponding exactly to the quality of what he had planted. His emotional and mental states were close to a hallucination, trying to do everything to leave from there, fleeing from the awful pictures that did not move away from him. No words of forgiveness were accepted, not even a posture of remorse. On the contrary, it seemed that the more he was becoming humble or was humiliated before that crowd, the more he heard sarcasms and ironies because the crowd did not believe in his new disposition. None of the present spirits was willing to allow him to change before paying off the debt regarding what they had suffered in his merciless hands.

In view of such a disturbing scenario, Pilate tried to return to his physical body that had been placed in a poor pit in a remote part of the camp, so as to try to make the body stand up again, since he had no way to explain the feeling of vitality involving him.

Yes, he had thought of killing himself. However, even if he was able to remember the mad gesture, to see his injured body bleeding, he was not capable of understanding why he had not died. His consciousness was lucid; no ancestor was there on his side to reach out the hands as he had been taught for a long time. Where were the gods of his devotion who had received his favours and tributes in the form of offerings since his youth? That pursuit was incomprehensible for him and that is why, believing to have passed through a cruel nightmare, he tried to return to the body, a common way out when a bad dream hurts our sensibility. Consequently, he felt strongly attracted to the place where his remains had been buried. He saw himself trying to enter into the remains in order to wake up from that situation and overcome the bad impression of those voices that were pursuing him inflexibly.

However, he was at once faced with another tragedy. Though he had plunged into the earth covering the grave, without asking why he had been attracted to that place, he saw himself enfolded by the dense mass of the earth pressing on his body. A horrible feeling involved him again… It was as if millions of barbs or teeth were lacerating his flesh, changing his whole structure already weakened by the pursuit of him and of the others. He began to connect himself again with the corpse in putrefaction and for a short moment he felt the whole bad smell that was produced there.

The million pricking actions and the frightening barbs was the feeling produced by the colonies of worms and micro-organisms that were devouring the dead flesh, reprocessing the matter so that it could be used again by nature in modelling new bodies.

Nothing in the world could have been so desperate to his soul than that horrible sight where he identified himself in such a grotesque way, without understanding how all this came about. Comparing such a discovery, the pursuits of his victims seemed a soft poison preferable to any idea of coming near that place. However, the conduct of a suicide bound him to the tomb and the more he wanted to leave now, the more he felt magnetized to the cadaverous sensations. By making a Herculean effort, he managed get up from the pit like a person freeing himself from the tragic vision of a film of terror. However, he continued to be linked to the physical body by magnetic bonds which he began to see and that he tried in vain to break off from by using his hands. Such magnetic cords kept Pilate in straight contact with his biological forces that were destroying his inner physicals organs thus proving to his former owner that it is not possible to undress oneself from the body before the set time without having to face the consequences of such a mad and insane act. No matter how much he would stay away now from the earth that served as his last dwelling, he would carry with him the cruel feelings of the decomposition. However, fleeing did not take him to better places.

The crowd of unoccupied spirits and opportunists, suckers of the vital fluids, all were seeking Pilate as if they were vampires in search of blood to feed themselves on. Obviously, such a reference is only an unsuitable comparison, since the dear reader knows that the figure of a vampire is the result of an ingenious myth with the intention of darkening the earthly atmosphere a little more through a message of horror. However, at the spiritual level, a great quantity of entities who have lost the physical body are always in search of a source of vital energy, usually accomplished by means of recently discarded bodies, from humans or just slaughtered animals, so as to assimilate the biological strength to produce a vain and temporary feeling of the vitality of the body.

As the suicide is an individual that carries with him a great quantity of this type of energy, since his body has not suffered the natural down wear resulting from a long infirmity or from old age that consumes the strength, it becomes a generous source of this type of means which always attracts entities that want to suck energy and that is why they are considered as vampires without having yet the gestures and the grimace that have been patented by the cinematographic industry. Because of this, while trying to move away from the poor tomb, Pilate saw himself being pursued by large groups of entities that showed up and ran in his direction as if they wanted to destroy him, making him feel a horrible fear since he felt unable to hide himself.

Having no immediate way out since the presence of such an energetic cord was similar to Ariadne's thread that pointed the way for Theseus to leave the refuge in the labyrinth where he had gone to kill the Minotaur of the Greek mythology. Pilate only found a safe refuge against such entities by entering again in the cold pit where he hid the magnetic connection from the sight of all others who did not understand what had happened with the pursued suicide.

Returning to the pit, Pilate had to contain himself and endure the same feelings until such frightening groups would have gone away and so leave that place once more. Thus, the saga of the former Governor in the prison of Vienna had been extremely light as compared to what he was obligated to face now in the recoil of his acts in the form of painful thorns. Despair had taken over his whole being and no matter how much he wanted to find a way out, it seemed that it would never come to him. Furthermore, the image of the suicide in which he saw the wall of the prison coming towards him with the sharp sword pointed against him, repeated itself, again and again, without stopping.

When Pilate was not running away from the grave, or fleeing from the sucking entities by returning to the grave, or when, distant from the grave, he was not pursued by his victims, he was enslaved by the constant vision of the scene of his suicide that repeated itself millions of times in his eyes impotent to prevent such images from happening. He had lost the notion of time for he did not know how many days had passed. He was constantly feeling hungry without managing to eat anything. When he came near a water stream, on ingesting the first mouthful of water, it seemed as if he was drinking blood since his hands kept on being red like the vision that his pursuers projected on him when he had washed his hands in the judgment of Christ and that his guilt had been accepted by his weighty conscience. His hands, dirty of blood, contaminated the water lending it a biter taste and a deep red colour preventing him from swallowing it to quench his thirst.

The overall state of the former Governor was deteriorating extensively and he would not do anything else but engulf himself in his despair seeking to hide himself in caverns existent in that astral region, the only place where it was possible to hide away for a while from all the pursuers under the vigilance of Sulpicius. Actually, Pilate remained in this state for a long time, until the period when the first martyrs were devoured by lions in Rome in the year 58. Zachariah would visit him in the cavern, but Pilate was not capable of feeling his presence. There was so much frightening novelty in the life of the former Governor and so much lack of notion of what to do that Pilate was not willing to resume the elevated notions that had been sown in his soul.

Led by Sulpicius, Pilate was taken like an automaton to meet Fulvia, his former lover, also appearing before his spiritual eyes as if she were a disfigured soul, particularly now that she was already in the kingdom of the dead in a deplorable spiritual situation. Soon afterwards, Pilate was led to the same cavern as if the old partner in crimes was waiting for him; at same time she would eventually fustigate him with such terrifying saunters. At the entrance of the caverns, praetorian sentries subordinated to Sulpicius were mounting a vigilant guard preventing the entrance of anybody that was not authorized by the lictor who had become notably for his cruelty and stinginess.

Pilate had not yet resorted to a true prayer and did not feel worthy of asking Jesus to help him. His hands were still red as well as his conscience.

2.-

The Effects of Turpitude

Another character of our story, equally defeated by its own madness, had succumbed to the tragic destiny that lies in store for those who give in to the way of wrong doings, of intrigues, of deliberate meanness, of slander and of crime. It refers to Fulvia who had been spreading thorns wherever she passed by and who received the indispensable sorrow in her own body for the last years of her life that was needed to begin her own rectification.

We know that after her adventures on the several beds on which she managed to obtain the consent of powerful people in the preparation of her plans, Fulvia had tried to take the life of Pilate by means of a lover whom she ended up poisoning as a prize for his dedication.

After Salvius lost his life in the painful death rattles of a cruel poisoning, Fulvia was left waiting for the arrival of the official news on the death of Pilate. This information, however, did not arrive at the speed she expected exactly because the military envoy to give the poison to Pilate was not able to kill him thanks to the decisive action of Zachariah who ingested the toxic liquid to save the former Governor in prison, thus fulfilling the promise he had made to Jesus.

The scenario in Rome was modifying itself very quickly after the death of Emperor Tiberius some months before the actual suicide of Pilate. In the middle of political storms, Fulvia kept on navigating in turbulent seas, always trying to lend her influence on the more important men of the government. Now she was striving to place her daughter Aurelia in advantage in the centre of that corrupt society lacking the moral values of earlier times. Aurelia was a worsened copy of her mother. She had been trained in malice, in seduction, in immoral conducts and in the conducts of love; the young woman would not be affected by any argument involving ethics. She tried to solve her problems through the tortuous ways that seemed easier and more adequate to her, even if she had to pass over social conventions, standards of dignity and all the norms of a decent conduct.

Time had charged its price around the year 51 at same time that Salvius Lentulus, a Military Official and the husband of Fulvia, returned to the spiritual world, Fulvia began to show signs of unmistakable organic debility. Pains began spreading all over her physical body, now reduced to rags by a violent cancer that was consuming her tissues and was localized in the genital organs which Fulvia had made use of in her uncountable malpractices by turning the sacred centre of life into a weapon of attack. These areas bore extensive wounds that not only produced a bad smell, but also brought about great suffering because they were always infected as a result of her physiological needs made without leaving her bed. The excrements were deposited on the open ulcerations fostering even more purulent and intolerable infections. Grey hair showed the arrival of old age accompanied by the state of physical wear resulting from her countless adventures all along her youth harming all her vital balance and making room for the infestation of psychological larvae in the whole field of her vibratory organism, a prelude of the countless morbid manifestations that were affecting her physical cosmos and leading her to the death of the physical body. For all these reasons, in two years’ time the figure of Fulvia began to suffer the sad consequence of her previously practiced acts, effects which were only at its very beginning.

The only daughter who might have served as a companion in the pain of the final period of the existence of her mother was closely following the same steps learnt with the mother, busying herself with social meetings in which she played with somebody else's feelings by committing herself with unfaithfulness, by disregarding her worthy husband whom destiny had favoured her with.

In face of her merciless pains and the weight of her conscience in the last days of her anguish, Fulvia was alternating moments of reasonable lucidity with moments of deep insanity when she would return to the past, chide obscenities and cast vituperations against ghosts that only her eyes could see in her dim bedroom. Her very helpful son-in-law Emilianus Lucius always assisted her. He was a military official whom she would often seek to relieve the strong inrushes of pain and displeasure now that her physical weakness was transferring her to the destination waiting for all living beings on the Earth.

The time was coming to have Fulvia meet again with the persons whom she had hurt, those who had already gone to the true life before her, carrying the thorns that her hands had stuck into their spirits, victimized as they were, by her cunning and poison. Thus, at the moments of little lucidity, Fulvia would address Emilianus who was on her bedside facing the nauseating waves of the bad smell coming from the physical degeneration of her body that was rotting away well before it was dead.

My son … you are the only thing that I have left in this world since I know that tragic consequences are in store for me in the gloomy kingdom of death, the ill woman was saying in anguish. Wanting to retrieve her forces and remove the negative ideas from her mind, Emilianus tried to change the course of the conversation. However, even though Fulvia was feeling that her life was coming to the end, she kept on with the same subject as if she wanted to punish herself as an imperative of her guilty conscience she had ignored for a long time through her indifference.

"No, my son, I cannot reward your dedication with the same indifference I have made use of throughout the whole course of my life. I have been an unfaithful wife, a merciless woman and an unnatural mother. As a wife, I have acted in a conjugal comedy and Salvius always knew that we married having calculated interests. To maintain the appearance necessary for our way of being and for the lying society in which we live in, the lies elude us so as to seem truths. Unable to stay within the standards of decency, I kept my court of lovers among the most powerful men, but I never despised an adventure with anybody else less important to satisfy my carnal impulses. Thus, I never hesitated in going to bed with authorities and subordinates, Romans and foreigners, provided I could withdraw some advantage in the form of favours which I would collect later on with added values. I have been the lover of my own brother-in-law; the husband of my sister, inside her own house without having this caused me any pain in the conscience. How many times I felt Claudia afflicted for the illicit conducts of Pilate and I would try to calm her with pretended words of understanding when I was the one that spoiled her marriage, hurting her generous and trustful heart. As a woman, I have ordered to kill the persons who did not interest me any longer and I myself have poisoned some others so that the tracks of my crimes were erased forever. As a mother, I brought up my daughter using the same tortuous ways, educating Aurelia to be always simulated and innocent in the outside, but viper like and despicable in the inside. When you were already married with Aurelia, my son, knowing of my daughter’s deep inclination for another man, the young Pliny Severus, I made everything possible for both of them to consume their love here in this house, during your absence.

Wanting to hurt the family of the proud Senator that always despised me for the secret affection I devoted to him, I managed to poison his animus towards his wife by accusing her of being frivolous without having effective proof of her treason, at the same time I interposed myself in the way of her daughter Flavia who was married with Pliny as a form of joining the two families that had been coming along well for many years of friendship, the Lentulus and the Severus. Knowing of the great love of Flavia for the young Pliny, I instructed Aurelia, who had shown an interest in a carnal adventure in the company of the young boy. He was also engaged in the army and Aurelia felt attracted by his slim body in the technicality of the conquest and seduction always so effective before unprepared men in a faithful affection and the security of a marriage. It did not take long for Pliny to change his joys in the arms of his wife for the nights of adventures beside Aurelia as a lascivious and attractive lover who, using winding ways, became my weapon against this family I had not been able to conquer with my sincere affection. All this I have done for being envious and for a wish of vengeance of the happiness that I was not able to build up around me.

I am sure that the wounds, which attack me today, are the result of this illicit and low procedure. Now that I am preparing myself to die, I feel the need of confessing myself before you, my son, asking you to forgive me for all the evil I have disclosed to you."

Emilianus was stunned, not knowing what to do on hearing so much confessed evil at the brink of the dark precipice of death. What to do for a woman who now was just an evil-smelling shadow of what she had been in the past? A pungent burning rose from his stomach which seemed to corrode his entrails and, were it not for his military discipline, he would vomit right there, such was the disgust of all that was working on him. He had lately begun to understand better Aurelia's behaviour, always interested in parties, in the company of strange friends who did not have his sympathy and approval, but that she made use of to excuse her unfaithful escapes, in the handing over of her body to the passion of another man. With his thought wandering over everything he had heard, he saw himself being called to the reality of the patient by an outbreak of a seeming madness which was nothing else than a reflection of her spiritual visions, a glance at the dark procession of the vindictive entities placed near her bed so that they could proffer scurrilities that would reinforce the promises of vengeance that sooner or later would become effective, thanks to her imminent physical death. Thus, at these moments in font of those physically present at her bedside, it appeared that the patient was speaking deliriously. However, her words and shouts were clearly linked to commitments of a recent past.

Emilianus … Emilianus … protect me, my son … these cursed ones are not to take me along with them.

Be calm, my mother, be calm, there is no one else here except the two of us… the young man answered without really understanding the words of the old woman.

But don’t you see how this bedroom is full of shadows and serpents with the head of people, all looking at me? the afflicted woman was questioning by sharing now both the physical and the spiritual realities. I see these gloomy and dark things, all obeying the orders of the mean Sulpicius Tarquinius, the lictor of my brother-in-law … He commands an enormous legion of masked soldiers. They laugh at me; they talk about my death and say that they are waiting for me in order to resume our early relationships … They are men whom I made use of in the past, including Sulpicius who had always wanted to have me and with whom I often went to bed either to obtain favours from the Governor or to coax him in my plans by making him be an accomplice of mine. Now he is here looking like a dragon with fiery eyes and the smile of a serpent, reaching out his hands as if he wished to take me along with him.

I won’t go … I won’t go … repugnant viper! the ill woman was shouting in despair. He wants me; he is wrapping my body with his animal tail; he wants to strangle me so I die sooner! Emilianus, please, help me; don’t let me go with this demon…

The son-in-law was struggling to calm her down a little by looking for the resource of a prayer to his ancient gods asking for that afflicted heart a little peace now that it was taken over by the shadows of her crimes. After a great effort, it seemed that the visions were leaving her and she returned to have a reasonable serenity, resuming her talk with the young man, but she was feeling tired now due to the effort of the cruel fight that she kept on against those terrible visions that came to collect her early conducts and pacts. Emilianus asked her to rest on seeing her prostration.

Aurelia, where is she? asked the ill mother knowing of the adventures of the daughter.

She will be back soon, my mother the husband answered rather confused.

She certainly is in the arms of a lover in some place, my son. You should follow up your wife and impede her from continuing with this low behaviour since you do not deserve this kind of treatment…

Yes mother, I will follow your advice, but I ask you to rest now.

Yes, I feel tired. However, tomorrow, I want you to come back here because I have to tell you other infamous secrets of our unfortunate existence involving Aurelia's conduct in our day-by-day life.

Knowing that the uttered words might be words of an almost insane woman, the young man promised her to return to resume their talk, without noticing that Aurelia was in the bedroom beside them in silence as was her habit as an astute woman eager to hear secret confessions. She had arrived from her adventures and managed to hear a great part of the confessions of her mother and of the accusations against her and her illicit conduct. Finding herself unmasked before the eyes of her husband and knowing that her mother intended to make things become even worse the next day, she did not see any other solution than to haste the end of the old and ill woman with the corrosive beverage she had already offered to a great many of her lovers and enemies. Thus, leaving her hiding place as if she had not heard anything, she made a shaming approach to her mother’s bed bearing an air of great worry and wishing to relieve her suffering. She had taken off the cheerful and festive clothes that would denounce her arrival from unsuitable places surely not recommended to visit at that moment at which her mother was having her painful death rattles.

The husband of Aurelia observed her having his brain boiling with conflicting thoughts. Aurelia tried to look sweet and worried as ever, boasting the need of having her mother rest.

With the arrival of Aurelia, Emilianus left the bedroom so that both could be more at ease, knowing that the daughter, as a woman, could take care much better of the wounds of her mother without his presence that would only embarrass them during such a delicate and intimate operation. However, with the absence of her husband Aurelia was able to go ahead with her plans.

Would you like to take a tranquilizer, mummy, so that you can rest better? the daughter asked. Welcomed by the trustworthy words of the one who had always been her partner and her accomplice in all the errors they had committed, Fulvia felt more secure with her presence and her seemingly sweet words. She sat up on her bed, caressed the hair of her daughter and agreed to receive the tranquilizer so that her rest would be less painful.

The young woman started preparing the medicine by including a few drops of the lethal toxic poison she kept among her things, a habit learnt from the practices of her own mother who had initiated her in the arts of cruelty through the lessons on how to get rid of undesirable persons or of secrets that should never be disclosed. While she was preparing the medicine/poison, Aurelia was thinking to herself,

Yes, only death can preserve the secret forever…

She took the flask directly to her mother making her drink up the content without any shudder of her conscience; without any gesture of vacillation. Leaving the room where she had placed two servants to take care of the sleep of the patient, as it was customary; she went on to her bedroom waiting apprehensively for the facts to roll off. It did not take long for the effect to produce the fatal suffocation that inhibited the victim even from the verbal expression of her last words.

All were called to the bedside due to the state of despair of the patient; everyone tried to come near Fulvia to try to relieve her devastating suffering. In vain they tried all the forms of help and then came those who were skilful in the treatment of illnesses at that time without managing to reach any diagnosis of the poisoning. To everyone the patient was the victim of her own illness, having been considered dead some hours after the last conversation with Emilianus. In spite of the seemingly incidental fact, Emilianus became aware that Fulvia died a short time after the arrival of her daughter and to this suspicion came countless of others to his mind.

The disincarnating of Fulvia was tragic for her spirit. In the same way she had killed many persons, either directly or indirectly, she was also murdered feeling on her own skin the effects of the poison she had given in the past to persons she had wanted to clear off from her path.

In the wise words of Jesus, it was the iron injuring those who had literally injured others with iron.

Now, in the spiritual realm, the cortege of her partners, her victims, of all those who had agreed with her errors and wrongdoings along her life were there waiting for her in a noisy and terrifying way. At the front of this sinister cortege was Sulpicius, the headsman of all earlier companions who would spread the fear and the pursuit, dominating the committed souls that had given in through their errors of their consciences.

It was the year 53 when Fulvia disincarnated through the hands of the own daughter.

3.- In Front of Herself

The awakening of Fulvia in the spiritual realm was as painful as the final period of her physical life. It may be said that, on arriving at the world of truth after the body had been consumed by the poison; Fulvia seemed to have brought with her all the marks of the mental fixations she had been able to develop during the time of her physical life, in terms of habits and emotional conducts, as it happens with each of us when choosing the same paths. Thus, at the beginning she did not understand what had happened to her since the poison had expelled her spirit from the carnal body in an abrupt and cruel way. When she opened her eyes in the spiritual life, she felt all the separations from the matter at the last moments, gasping for air as if something was keeping her alive, but at the same time preventing her from breathing as she felt the need of doing so. Because of her pattern of conduct during her life, it was not only in her physical body that the illness of the cancer had installed itself.

In fact, it is well to clarify the reader that the diseases that appear in organisms are the result of an imbalance of the soul, accumulated along the current incarnation or having originated in previous existences of the soul, added to those demanded by the reincarnated person as a proof of a quicker improvement and by the ones the person decides to create through the abuses he gives in. That is why the cancer in Fulvia was to mark off her spiritual reality, fed by the lowest vibrations of her ignorant and needy spirit, used for insignificant conventions of a corrupt society in which she inserted herself trying to use her weapons to obtain material advantages she thought to be the most suitable. Consequently, she developed the corresponding problems in the area mostly related to the mental worries, which ended up denouncing her deficient moral conduct.

If the carnal matter of the physical body ulcerated by the tumours was still bearing a certain resistance to the transformations imposed by the frantic mind, this matter was only slowly being corroded. In the spiritual body of that unfortunate soul, the changes and the vibratory maladjustments were rather grotesque by changing her into a mixture of a crazy witch and a deformed monster.

The genital area, corresponding to the lower part of the belly in her fluidic body, was totally dilacerated by the sexual vibrations enlarging the genital morphological characters excessively; the ones Fulvia had made used of in an undue and exaggerated way. She was not only bearing the increased degenerated form, but also the action of the tumour in the most grotesque and painful way, making her seek support so that she could walk at least with great difficulty in the hostile environment in which she was projected. She had to walk with her legs separated because of the morphological alterations imposed by the moral profligacy she had given in, making it impossible for her to keep her balance.

Pain was following the steps of Fulvia and collecting the price for all the pain she had spread along her journey that her conscience of guilt was already imposing on her, as could be seen through the confessions she had made to her affectionate son-in-law assisting her. In order to relieve the pain a little, she would maintain one of her hands on her belly, pressing it at each step taken, so as to hold the belly to avoid it to swing excessively and have the pain multiply itself. Besides this, there was also the breathing problem. The toxic had produced in her a sensation beyond the grave. To complete the Dantesque picture of miseries, her spiritual collectors, were it her countless victims, were it the many fellow-partners, some presenting themselves violently as accusers, others ironically and amusingly, wishing to avenge or trying to frighten her even