reprinted
from “Theosophical Siftings” Volume - 3 -
[Page 3] WHILE
a wave of spiritual enlightenment is passing over the world,
calling forth various reforms in the political and social
relations of humanity, there is one extremely dark spot
in the mind of mankind, into which this light does not
seem to be able to penetrate, namely, the idea of killing
criminals for the purpose of punishing them. This idea
is a superstition, arising from an entire ignorance of
the true nature of man; a relic of the Dark Ages, a blot
on the character of humanity. It was to be expected that
in consequence of the rapid spreading of progressive ideas,
disseminated by Theosophical literature, this remnant of
a barbaric custom would gradually disappear. Instead of
that, the Austrian lawmakers have just revised the penal
code, retaining capital punishment, and, the faculty of
medicine having memorialized the Minister of Justice recommending
the cutting off of the heads of criminals in the place of
hanging them. In the most progressive country of the world — the
United States of America — legal killing by means of
electricity is about to be introduced, while in other so-called
civilized countries the carelessness of allowing oneself
to be caught for committing a crime is punished by hanging,
garrotting, shooting, or by the guillotine.
The first question
which arises in the consideration of this subject is: "What
is the object of killing a criminal ?" The second
question is, "Is that object attained
? " The only imaginable objects in killing a criminal
are:
1)To inflict punishment on him for having acted against
the law;
2) To render him incapable to do further mischief,
and thereby to protect society.
The age in which
criminals were tortured has passed away; the authorities
are content upon finding a way by which the death penalty
can be inflicted with the least possible suffering to the
delinquent; and even inflicting mental suffering upon the
candidate for death is avoided, because, instead of causing
him to get frightened by imagining the horrors of hell, everything
is done to make him believe that his sins are forgiven, and
that he will be received with open arms in the celestial
kingdom. The "punishment" is, therefore, evidently
not intended to produce physical or mental' suffering, and
if the criminal is a man of courage, and does not fear death,
there will be no horror of dying, there will be no suffering,
and the only possible punishment for him is the loss of his
life. Now the medical fraternity inform us that as soon as [Page 4] the heart and the brain of a person are paralysed,
there is an end to his consciousness. If this is true, then
the criminal, as soon as he is killed, is unconscious of
ever having lived; he is unconscious of ever having lost
his life, and where, then, is the punishment in causing a
man a loss of which he is not aware, and in taking away from
him something that he will never miss? It is like taking
away from a person something that never belonged to him,
and of which he does not even know that it exists.
Seen from this point of view, capital punishment is a total
failure, because, besides frightening a timid criminal for
a few hours or days before his death, there is no pain inflicted
upon him; and even this mental torture, if any, is not inflicted
by the law, but merely by the criminal's own imagination,
and by his belief regarding the state after death. The capital
punishment being, therefore, merely an imaginary punishment,
does not fulfil its object as a punishment, and the only
remaining question is whether society can protect itself
better by killing a criminal than by shutting him up in a
prison and seeking to educate him and to improve his character.
At a time when no convenient prisons existed, and when the
only means of protecting oneself was to kill the aggressor,
the killing of criminals may have appeared to be useful and
necessary; but at the present state of civilization, where
the country abounds with prisons, there is, to say the least,
no necessity for killing an offender against the law; nor
is there any financial profit arising from killing him, because,
besides the cost of the execution, the Government loses his
labour.
There is still
another reason given by the advocates of capital punishment
for its continuation, namely, the “wholesome
effect which it will have of frightening other criminally-inclined
people into remaining virtuous"; but it is very doubtful
whether the defenders of such an argument believe it themselves,
or whether they have ever seriously considered it; because
it is well known that the law does actually never punish
a crime unless the criminal is caught, and, therefore, the
punishment is rather for having committed the crime in a
bungling manner, which involved discovery, than for committing
it; and the only thing which the captured criminal regrets
is that he was not cunning enough to avoid being caught,
and the only sincere resolve which he forms in his own mind
is to be more careful the next time, so as not to be caught
again. Moreover, the morality of a people which is based
only upon cowardice arising from fear of punishment is worth
very little, and the passions, merely restrained and pent
up by fear, accumulate and grow in strength. The pent-up
passions of a nation restrained by fear resemble a mine loaded
with dynamite, waiting for a favourable moment to explode,
when the result will be such as has been
witnessed during the horrors of the French Revolution.
Thus, seen from
a merely external and "materialistic" point
of view, capital punishment is useless and unnecessary; but
a correct conception of its [Page 5] true
nature and consequences can only be formed if we look below
the surface appearances and study the true nature of "life" and
of the constitution of man.
There is nothing
more irrational than the attempts which have been made
by our modern "rationalists" of
separating science from philosophy. In doing so, science,
so-called, condemned itself of being merely a science of
external appearances and phenomena, relegating the causes
of such external appearances to the region of the "unknowable".
It is admitted by all modern and ancient philosophers that
a tree is the result of something capable to produce a tree; i.e.,
of the action of some invisible principle, or "potentiality",
residing in a kernel and capable to develop into a tree;
and likewise that the organism of man is the result of something
invisible in connection with a power whose manifestation
is called "life";
but material science, in disregarding and denying the existence
of causes which she cannot see with material eyes, makes
of every man and of every tree a miracle whose existence
cannot be explained. Occult science says that the principle
which causes the appearance of a tree, or which manifests
itself in the human form as a man, is the real thing of importance
which is to be taken into consideration; and that the external
form, be it that of a man or of a tree, is nothing else but
an external form whose importance does not transcend the
plane whereon it exists. She says that while the form or
appearance perishes, the power which caused that form to
exist remains, and will be capable, under favourable conditions,
to produce another similar form, be it a man or a tree, exhibiting
the same qualities as the former. There is only this difference,
that while the seed of a tree may be destroyed, the spiritual "seed" which
produces the soul of a man cannot be destroyed by capital
punishment, but will, under favourable conditions, produce
such a man again as sure as the seed of a thistle will produce
nothing else but a thistle. All this is taught by the doctrine
of Reincarnation, a doctrine with which our scientists ought
to make themselves familiar, if they do not prefer to remain
in ignorance regarding that which is of supreme importance
in studying the nature of man. This doctrine, then, teaches
us that, in depriving the spirit of a criminal of his physical
body, we do not kill the cause that produced the criminal,
and that this cause will in due time produce another criminal
of the same kind, if not of a still worse character, as the
unjust act of robbing him of his life will have caused a
sense and desire of revenge and an embitterment of the spirit.
By capital punishment we, therefore, at best, defer the manifestation
of an evil cause for some future time, and give to a future
generation an evil inheritance, with which we ourselves ought
to have contended, and which we ought to have sought to ameliorate.
This is, however, not all. It might be said that we do not
care about the troubles that will affect future generations,
and that it is all we can do to protect and take care of
ourselves; but a deeper [Page 6] investigation
in the invisible nature of man will show us that in killing
the body of a criminal we do not get rid of the powers that
constituted him a criminal, and that these powers, after
having been deprived of one instrument for their manifestation,
will continue to manifest themselves in other still less
convenient ways. To understand this it will be necessary
to throw a glance at the constitution of man, as it is taught
by those who have the capacity to know it; and for the sake
of those who are not familiar with the doctrines of Occultism,
we will attempt to outline that constitution in comprehensible
terms. According to the doctrines of the sages, Man is a
fourfold manifestation of consciousness, or, in other words,
a trinity of spirit and body, with the intermediary link
called the " soul," the latter being divisible
into the purely animal and the divinely human soul. To the
former belong the animal emotions and passions, to the latter
the higher powers of the mind. We may, therefore, classify
these four states of consciousness as four principles, giving
them the following familiar names:
1. GOD, the Atma,
the "divine Self", i.e.,
the Divinity in man, a universal power, existing in the majority
of the criminals, only, so to say, in a dormant or latent
state, and not having arrived at a state of self-consciousness
in them. This means that the criminal is not a saint, and
does not know the god that is hidden in him, and whom to
awaken to consciousness is the object of human life, an object
frustrated by the execution of the criminal. This principle,
whether awakened or not, cannot be executed and killed; it
is the real and true Self, and returns to its divine source
after the death of the body, as is also taught by the Church,
which, at the funeral service, relegates "the body to
Earth, and the spirit to God".
2. The MIND. This
we understand not to be the thinking faculty of the brain,
but that principle which manifests itself as thought and
will in the material brain, i.e., that which enables the
brain to think by the aid of the physiological processes
taking place in the living subject. Even if the head is
cut off and the brain with which man used to think is destroyed,
the thought-producing principle cannot be killed; but after
being deprived of its instrument for manifestation, it
enters into its own state of being, which in criminals
of the ordinary kind is presumably that which is called
Devachan, where it rests in its subjective condition until
the time arrives when it will be reincarnated upon the
earth, and evolve a new physical body with the same tendencies
which it possessed in its former life.
3. The ASTRAL
SOUL. It is well known that the physical body or "corpse" of
a man is not the man himself, but merely an instrument
formed by nature, in and through which the consciousness
of man may manifest its mental and physical powers; in
other words, man is not himself his own nature, but he
has an everchanging organism, in which his (temporary)
nature is manifesting [Page 7] itself.
The same is the case with his astral soul, the seat of
his passions and emotions. The astral soul is not the man
himself, but merely a principle wherein the good and evil
powers existing on the astral plane are manifesting themselves,
in the same sense as cold manifests itself in an icicle;
to destroy the icicle does not destroy the cold, even if
that piece of ice were broken into a thousand pieces; and
if the icicle is molten and evaporated, the same cold will
be able to cause the vapour to condense and to freeze into
ice again. This means to say that in the astral plane of
the world there exist certain influences of a good and
an evil kind, comparable to miasmas in the physical atmosphere
of our planet; and as those miasmas will be attracted to
those who are especially susceptible for them, and cause
epidemic diseases, likewise these astral influences are attracted
to those animal souls in men and women where they find a
congenital soil to grow and develop, just as the life principle
in a cherry tree attracts from the soil and the atmosphere
all that is necessary to build up a cherry tree and nothing
else. The animal soul of a hardened criminal is a fruitful
soil where evil astral influences are readily attracted to
and developed. These evil tendencies are not the man himself;
they merely belong to his nature and are acting in and through
him. They cannot be killed by killing the body, but if the
physical form wherein they are active is destroyed, these
powers for evil are liberated and free to be attracted to
and to manifest themselves in other human souls where they
find points of attraction, in the same sense as the cold
liberated by evaporation will cause water with which it comes
into contact to freeze and crystallize. If we kill a malefactor,
we liberate his own essential ego of the evil influences
which had possession of him, and we enable these influences
to fasten upon the souls of innocent but sensitive persons,
in which they create evil inclinations and thoughts, and
which may then repeat the same crime for which the criminal
was executed. The world is full of such sensitive and mediumistic
persons, and it is a known fact that crimes sometimes become
epidemic, and that if a criminal has been executed for some
especially atrocious crime, crimes of a similar nature are
often heard of soon afterwards. The execution of a criminal
in this respect has the same effect as pouring out a stinking
fluid upon the public thoroughfare with the good intention
of getting rid of the evil odour, and thereby poisoning the
whole community by the (psychic) stench that was at first
confined to only one place.
4. The PHYSICAL
BODY. The "corpse" — the
external form with its inherent life principle and " magnetic
body," or "perisprit". This is merely an
external instrument for the inner man, and incapable per
se to do anything good or evil, unless made to act by
the astral soul or the mind. It is merely an innocent victim
of the natural forces acting therein, and to punish it for
the sins which the inner man committed through its instrumentality
is like hanging [Page 8] a stick
with which a murder has been committed, or tearing to pieces
the overcoat of a thief.
If the above is
taken into due consideration, it will be seen that in executing
a criminal nobody is actually punished except those sensitive
and innocent people who are deficient of the power, of
self-control, and who may become infested with the evil
influences arising from the liberated animal soul of the
criminal, and which may cause them to become criminals
themselves. The other persons that are punished by the
performance of such an official act are the judge, the
jurors, and the executioner, together with those that sanctioned
the infliction of "capital punishment", and
the degree in which they punish themselves will depend on
whether they are thus sinning consciously or unconsciously,
and whether or not they are aware of the true nature of capital
punishment and its consequences. This is explained by the
action of the law of Karma, a law which every lawyer
and judge ought to know above all, as it is the supreme law
for administering justice in the universe. It teaches that
the universe is a whole, and that no individual can inflict
the slightest injury upon any other individual without experiencing
himself the full effect of his acts; or, as Edwin Arnold
expresses it in his " Light of Asia," which, even
if it is a poem, nevertheless embodies the most undeniable
truths: —
"By this
(law) the slayer's knife did stab himself;
The unjust judge hath lost his own defender;
The false tongue dooms its lie; the creeping thief
And spoiler rob to render.
"Such is
the law which moves to righteousness,
Which none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is love; the end of it
Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey!"
The law of Karma
is the law of justice and retribution, by which the harmony
in the universe, which has been broken, is restored. It
is a law which is administered by nobody — neither
by a God nor by a man — and its action is therefore
not to be avoided or thwarted, neither by bribes nor by prayers
or arguments. It is the Law itself, and administers itself
without partiality, its effects being in exact accordance
with the causes that produced them. There is, therefore,
an adequate punishment for every sin, and there is no necessity
that any mortal man should presume to put himself in the
place of the law and judge over the destiny of the soul of
another human being. All that a man has a right and a duty
in regard to criminals is to teach and instruct them, to
educate and aid them to get rid of their own evil inclinations;
for it ought to be kept in mind that as long as a man has
no perfect self-knowledge, his will cannot be perfectly free.
The ignorant man does nothing good [Page
9] or evil himself;
he follows the thoughts that lead him. The man who has no
mastery over himself is mastered by the influences which
are controlling him. It is not our object at present to investigate
the various methods which are employed to enforce prison
discipline. They may be good or they may be bad; they may
or may not be adapted to teach criminals ; but surely the
killing of a criminal can teach him nothing; it can only
arouse in his soul a spirit of fear, embitterment and revenge,
because he instinctively knows that no man has a right to
rob him of his life.
The law of Karma is the law of impartial justice, which
claims an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and which
says that he who kills with the sword shall perish by the
sword. Being a universal law, it applies itself alike to
a criminal as to a judge on the bench; it is no respecter
of persons; it pays no reverence to judicial wigs and gowns,
and even Royalty is not exempt from premature deaths produced
by the action of the Karma of former lives. He who condemns
a fellow-being to death will necessarily suffer for it, either
in this or some future life upon the earth. He may condemn
a man, having, at the same time, the best of intentions,
and he may have his own life cut short while he still has
the best intentions.
Some poet asks
the question about man in the following words:—
"Out of Earth's
elements, mingled with flame,
Out of Life's compound of glory and shame,
Fashioned and shaped by no will of our own,
Helplessly into life's history thrown,
Born to conditions we could not foresee,
Born by a law which compels us to be,
Born by one law, through all Nature the same,
What makes us differ and who is to blame ? "
Our answer to this query is that humanity, being a unit,
the condition of the whole is responsible for the condition
of each single individual, and that unit being made up of
individuals, each individual is responsible for the conditions
which affect the whole, and the responsibility of either
is in exact proportion to its capacity to teach and enlighten
the other. Therefore, instead of killing one another, we
ought to aid each ether in coming to life, for no one can
be said to be truly alive as long as he does not know his
own divine self, and that true Self embraces and includes
the whole of creation, because God is in, and through, and
above All.