Why and what do we live for? The answer to this question is of great importance in understanding the problem of obsession. According to Spiritism, we live to develop the psychic potentialities with which we are all endowed.

Our earthly existence is aimed at transcendence, that is, the constant improvement of our human condition. From birth to our last day on earth, we go through experiences that develop our innate abilities in every way. The newborn baby grows day by day, develops its organism, learns to communicate with others, to speak and to reason, to want and to act in order to get what it wants.

He transcends the condition in which he was born and passes into the higher stages of childhood, then into adolescence, and then into youth, middle age and old age. Throughout this journey he has developed his organic and psychic forces, his affectivity, his capacity to understand what is going on around him and his power to dominate circumstances. This is transcending, rising above the condition in which he was born. And that is what we live for. This shows us that the meaning of life is transcendence.

Today, Existential Philosophy upholds the same principle in the philosophical field. Existentialists consider man as a project, that is, a being projected into existence like an arrow in the direction of a goal, which is transcendence. But according to Spiritism there are many and successive existences, so that in each earthly existence we reach a new degree of transcendence. Current parapsychological studies on reincarnation confirm this principle. The fact that we live many lives on earth, and not just one, indicates that we have in our unconscious a far greater store of memories and knowledge, aspirations, frustrations and traumas than Freud discovered.

It is good to remember this important fact: when Kardec discovered the manifestations of the unconscious through his researches on psychic phenomena, Freud was only one year old. This does not detract from Freud, who was not aware of Kardec's researches, but it shows us the certainty of the spiritist researches on the human psyche. The spiritist conception of human life on Earth is not imaginary, but real, based on scientific studies. Those who regard Spiritism as a superstitious doctrine, created out of ignorance, reveal themselves to be more ignorant than they could possibly think of themselves.

The Spiritist Doctrine is today scientifically proven by the most advanced scientists. We say this to show our readers that the meaning of life to which we refer is not a hypothesis, but a reality. If we do not understand that life is transcendence, growth, elevation and constant and proven development of the spiritual being that we are, we will not be able to face the problem of obsession naturally and struggle to solve it.