This
book is written for those who are seeking an explanation
of life and its purpose — those who are trying to fathom
the "whence" and the "whither" of
the human race. It is not a book of abstractions to
delight the metaphysician. It is for the reader who
is in quest of a solution of the mysteries of existence
that is devoid of all technical terms and puzzling
phrases.
The
aim has been to make a very simple presentation of
elementary Theosophy. It is certainly elementary throughout
but, of course, the ground is not fully covered. The
subject is too vast for that. Instead of attempting a
complete and detailed exposition of elementary Theosophy,
the plan has been rather to discuss its fundamental principles
from the viewpoint of "the
man in the street."
The
fear of death and the hope of immortality are well-nigh
universal. Those who are dissatisfied with the old answers
to the riddles of life and death, and who insist that
faith shall be justified by reason, will find in Theosophy
explanations of the puzzling things in life that disregard
neither the intuitions of religion nor the facts of science.
Perhaps
it is because our modern civilization is so engrossed
with material things that we have done so little toward
finding a satisfactory philosophy of life. At any rate,
we have thoughtlessly accepted much theological absurdity
from the middle ages. The utter failure to improve upon
the religious thought of earlier periods is one of the
really astounding things of our times. We have traveled
fast and gone far in material life, but we have scarcely
moved at all in things spiritual. We have worked wonders
in invention, we have wrought miracles in science; but
we have done little indeed on the ethical side of life.
It
is surely time for a change. We need a philosophy of
life that is as scientific as it is beautiful, as logical
as it is reverent. We need not only sciences material
but a science of things spiritual that attacks both ignorance
and superstition, with all their paralyzing doubts and
their monstrous fears — a science of the soul that
satisfies the heart while it proves to the intellect
that man is the deathless son of an eternal God, and
that by right divine he walks the upward way of endless
life.
Rediscovery
is one of the methods of progress. Very much that we
believe to be original with us at the time of its discovery
or invention proves in time to have been known to earlier
civilizations. The elevator, or lift, is a very modern
invention and we supposed it to be a natural development
of our civilization, with its intensive characteristics,
until an antiquarian startled us with the announcement
that it was used in Rome over two-thousand years ago;
not, of course, as we use it, but for the same purpose,
and involving the same principles. A half century ago
our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths
of evolution that were being discovered and placed before
western civilization; but as we learn more and more of
the thought and intellectual life of the Orient it becomes
clear that the idea of evolution permeated that part
of the world centuries ago. Even the most recent and
startling scientific discoveries occasionally serve to
prove that what we supposed to be the fantastic beliefs
of the ancients were really truths of nature that we
had not yet discovered. The transmutation of metals is
an example. We have already gone far enough in that direction
to show that the alchemists of old [Page
7] were not the foolish and superstitious
people we supposed them to be. We have given far too
little credit to past civilizations for their achievements
and we are coming slowly to understand that we have misjudged
them. Our modesty must necessarily increase as it becomes
clearer that much of our supposed contribution to the
world's progress is not invention but rediscovery. We
are beginning to see that it is not safe to put aside
without careful examination an idea or a belief that
was current in the world thousands of years ago. Like
the supposed folly of the alchemists it may contain profound
truths of nature that have thus far been foreign to our
modes of thinking.
Theosophy
is both very old and very new — very old because
the principles it contains were known and taught in
the oldest civilizations, and very new because it includes
the latest investigations of the present day. It is
sometimes said by those who desire to speak lightly
of it that it is a philosophy borrowed from the Buddhists,
or at least from the Orient. That is, of course, an
erroneous view. It is true that the Buddhists hold
some beliefs in common with Theosophists. It is also
true that Methodists hold some beliefs in common with
Unitarians, but that does not show that Unitarianism
was borrowed from Wesley! Buddhism is not unique in
resembling [Page 8] Theosophy. In the same list may be placed the
Vedanta philosophy, the Cabala of the Jews, the teachings of the Christian
Gnostics and the philosophy of the Stoics. None of them are Theosophy, but
in their treatment of various truths of nature all of them are, at one point
or another, in agreement with Theosophy; and this sometimes leads a superficial
reader to the hasty conclusion that they are identical with it.
The
more general charge must also be denied; Theosophy
is not something transplanted from the Orient. It belongs
to the race, as the air does, and cannot be localized,
even to a continent. As it is taught today in Europe
and America it is probably unknown to the masses of the
Orient, for the great general truths it embodies have
here the special application and peculiar emphasis required
by a totally different civilization; but that theosophical
principles were earlier known and were more widely accepted
in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no way
lessen their value to us. Precisely the same thing is
true of the principles of mathematics. Mathematical science
reached European civilization directly from the Arabs,
but we do not foolishly decline to make use of the knowledge
on that account.
The
literal meaning of the word Theosophy is self-evident
— knowledge of God. It has three aspects, determined
by the different ways in which [Page
9] the human being
acquires knowledge— through the study of concrete
facts, by the study of the relationship of the individual
consciousness to its source, and through the use of reasoning
faculties in constructing a logical explanation of life
and its purpose. In one aspect it is, therefore, a science:
it deals with the tangible, with the facts and phenomena
of the material scientist and makes its appeal to the
evidence of the physical senses. In another aspect it
is a religion: it deals with the relationship between
the source of all consciousness and its multiplicity
of individual expressions; with the complex relationships
that arise between these personalities; with the duties
and obligations which thus come into existence; with
the evolution of the individual consciousness and its
ultimate translation to higher spheres. In its other
aspect it is a philosophy of life: it deals with man,
his origin, his evolution, his destiny; it seeks to explain
the universe and to throw a flood of light upon the problem
of existence that will enable those who study its wisdom
to go forward in their evolution rapidly, safely and
comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the darkness
of ignorance, reaping as they go the painful harvests
of misdirected energy.
While
Theosophy is a science and a philosophy it is not,
in the same full sense, a religion. It has [Page
10] its distinctively
religious aspect, it is true, but when we speak of
a religion we usually have in mind a certain set of religious
dogmas and a church that propagates them. Theosophy is
a universal thing like mathematics — a body of
natural truths applicable to all phases of life. It sees
all religions as equally important, as peculiarly adapted
to the varying civilizations in which they are found,
and it presents a synthesis of the fundamental principles
upon which all of them rest.
From
all of this it will be seen that there is a vast difference
between Theosophy and theology. Theosophy declares the
immortality of man but not as a religious belief. It
appeals to the scientific facts in relation to the nature
of consciousness. It knows no such word as "faith",
as it is ordinarily used. Its faith arises from the constancy
of natural law, the balance and sanity of nature. Theosophy
is very old in that it is the great fund of ancient
wisdom about man and his earth, that has come down
through countless centuries, reaching far back into
prehistoric times. Added to that hoary wisdom are the
up-to-date facts that have been acquired by its most
successful students, who have evolved their consciousness
to levels transcending the physical senses — facts
which, however, do not derive their authority from
the method of their discovery but [Page
11] from their
inherent reasonableness. A detailed discussion of such
methods of consciousness and the proper value to be
placed upon such investigations rightly belong to another
chapter. It is enough now to warn the reader against
the error of confusing the pronouncements of pseudo-psychism
with the work of the psychic scientists who have already
done much toward placing a scientific foundation beneath
the almost universal hope of immortality. [Page
12]
CHAPTER
2
THE
IMMANENCE OF GOD
All
the differences of opinion about immortality run back
to the various conceptions which people hold of the universe.
The materialist's belief that consciousness ceases when
the body dies arises from his conception of a universe
in which consciousness is produced by the evolution of
forms. He begins his universe with the declaration that
matter and energy exist; that they have always existed;
that they give rise to forms and intelligence; and that,
therefore, when the forms disintegrate the intelligence
they expressed ceases to be. The materialist usually
makes a strong point of the scientific aspect of his
philosophy and frequently reminds us that the belief
in immortality is merely a hope with no substantial basis
— a sort of delusion possible only to those who
cannot reason soundly.
The
Theosophist begins with the declaration that God exists;
that He is eternal; that matter and energy are emanations
from Him; that all degrees of intelligence are expressions
of His life. In what way is the materialist's hypothesis
more scientific or reasonable than the Theosophist's?
Both start with a first cause and postulate an eternal
universe. The difference between them is that the Theosophist
postulates an intelligent[Page 13] first cause. Is it not just as reasonable to
say that mind has always existed as to say that matter has always existed?
Nobody will deny that consciousness is higher than matter. With one or the
other, or with both, we must begin. Why begin with the lower? In asserting
that consciousness has always existed, what rule of logic do we violate that
the materialist does not violate with the declaration that matter has always
existed? We know that consciousness can and does create forms from matter.
Is it not, then, more logical to think that eternal consciousness has fashioned
the forms that fill the world than to believe that eternal matter has created
man?
Those
of us who believe in an intelligent first cause are
sometimes reminded of the child who, when told that God
had made the earth, asked his mother who made God; and
thoughtless people triumphantly remind us that the question
is unanswerable. But precisely the same trouble arises
if you ask how matter first came to exist. It is just
as hard to account for the materialist's original matter
as to account for the Theosophist's original consciousness.
The finite mind cannot comprehend eternity. It is difficult
to see how there was never a beginning, yet it is quite
impossible to think of an end; for the mind at once asks, "What
after that?" Tennyson
put well that limitation of the finite mind when he
wrote, [Page
14] "It is hard to believe in God;
it is harder not to believe in Him". In these
basic declarations, then, with which each begins the
universe, the Theosophist cannot be said to be either
illogical or unscientific because he starts with the
higher factor instead of with the lower — with
eternal consciousness instead of with eternal matter.
Next
comes the task, for each, of showing that his hypothesis
satisfactorily explains the universe as it now stands.
Think for a moment of what the materialist must do! He
must show that, from a universe of original chaos, the
reign of law springs up; that from unguided matter has
arisen the human race with its wondrous expressions of
genius and its marvelous achievements in science; that
with no original intelligence nature has produced an
intelligence that is steadily rising to colossal heights;
that from no morality has come a morality so sublime
that men sacrifice their lives for the common good; that
all the multitudinous emotions of the race have no higher
source than the mud beneath our feet; that from senseless
dust has come the jester's wit, the inventor's craft,
the artist's dream, the sage's mind, the martyr's zeal,
the mother's love, and all the subtle lights and shades
and heights and depths within the heart and brain of
man! It is only necessary to state the case in order
to see its utter absurdity. The materialist often refers
to [Page 15] the tendency of one class of his opponents to
put aside law and reason and fall back upon faith and miracle; but if ever
there was an appeal to the miraculous it is found in the belief that matter,
the slave, created mind, the master!
There
is more wrong with the materialist's philosophy than
his acceptance of a hypothesis that is so inadequate,
and the more science learns about nature the worse does
his case become. Matter is the great fetish in his system
of things. Deprive him of his hypothesis of eternal
matter and the foundation of his philosophy is gone;
yet that is precisely what modern science in recent years
has done. By a single discovery it has exploded all the
old theories and shown that the supposed ultimate atom
is composed of electrons. In other words, matter as known
to the physical senses, is just as much an illusion as
the apparent movement of the sun through the sky. Matter
is in reality one form or phase of energy, and if we
put the scientific dictum in ordinary words it comes
substantially to this: that matter is the lowest expression
of life. Where, then, does the materialist stand? Under
the searchlight of modern science his eternal matter
is seen to be eternal life. No wonder so great a scientist
as Sir Oliver Lodge has written in one of his books
that it may well be doubted if there is any longer
such a thing in the world as scientific materialism. [Page
16]There is unquestionably widespread materialism
but it is not up-to-date with science. It is merely repeating as facts theories
that are exploded; for the very science to which it appealed has given it
the death blow and torn its philosophy to tatters.
Let us amplify
the hypothesis that God eternally exists, and that the whole
of our universe is but an emanation from Him. If it will
help those who think in materialistic terms to use language
that is not intimately associated with religion, we can say
that a first cause eternally exists and that its characteristics
are wisdom, power and compassion. That comes to the same
thing as saying that God is good, wise and powerful. The
Theosophist regards that first cause as an inconceivably
mighty spiritual entity, of wisdom, love and power, but he
does not, by any means, hold the anthropomorphic conception
of the Supreme Being so popular with millions of people.
The declaration that our universe is an emanation from God
is to be taken in the most literal sense. Now that we have
reached the point in scientific knowledge where matter is
seen to be a form of energy, it is not so difficult to understand
the old doctrine of the immanence of God. If one thinks of
our solar system in its primordial condition it will be still
easier to see it as the emanation of a central Being — as
mighty streams of energy flowing outward from Him and gradually [Page 17] differentiating
into various classes of matter. The theosophical view is
that all forces are His forces. Consequently there is no
such thing as an unintelligent force. It may, like the force
we call gravity, be absolutely impersonal, but it is not
an unintelligent application of force. It has its purpose
in a mighty plan. All energy, all matter, all life in the
system, are His life. The consciousness of an insect and
that of man are but the varying expressions of the one eternal
life that we call God. That is the old doctrine of immanence — that
His life thrills through every form and every atom of the
universe, that His consciousness embraces it all, that His
will sustains it all. There is nothing in the universe that
is not some kind of expression of His life. It may be at
the human, at the animal, at the vegetable, or only at the
mineral level of evolution, but it is none the less an expression
of the life of the Supreme Being. The intelligence in man
is of a high order and we call it self-consciousness. The
intelligence in matter we name chemical affinity; but the
two differ only in degree. There again science has rendered
great service by showing that the life in a mineral responds
to stimuli and can even be poisoned, as certainly as an animal
can. The scientific discovery that swept away the theory
of the ultimate atom, and showed that it is in fact but a
center of force, is the most [Page 18] stupendous revelation of
modern life. It is yet too new to have registered its full
significance in the consciousness of the race. Like all revolutions
it will be followed by slow readjustment of thought; but
when that readjustment is complete, there will no longer
be difficulty in seeing that matter is but a form of life,
and that all life is one life.
Why
then, it may be asked, is that one life more intelligent
at some levels than at others? Because at low levels it is
being only very partially expressed through dense encasements
of matter, while at higher levels it is being more fully
expressed. Or, we may say that, at low levels life is in
the kindergarten learning response to simple vibrations,
while at high levels it is at the university getting lessons
that can be learned only from complex vibrations; but all
life is some phase of God's life, for nothing exists outside
the Supreme Being.
Some
good people seem to think of God as a manufacturer
and of heaven as a soul factory! To them God and
the human soul are as separate as a teacher and
his pupils; but if they will carefully read their Scriptures
they will find there the most explicit statements
to the contrary. It is not said that by His power
and permission we exist. It does not say that near
Him we live, but it says very pointedly that in
Him we live, we move, we have our being. [Page 19]
How
can that be? How can one being exist literally within
another? It is simplicity itself when we think of our
universe as an emanation of the Supreme Being, as something
generated from a central life, as an expression of that
life which gives rise to the two poles within it that
we know as consciousness and matter. The human soul is
an individualized fragment of that divine life. Of course
our limited consciousness can only imperfectly comprehend
it. Imagine that central life of our universe that we
call God to be like an eternal light, sending its rays
out into space. Imagine those rays, as they are generated
and travel outward, having the power to set up within
themselves an action that results in differentiation,
so that they become at last two distinct types of rays,
one corresponding to what we know as life, and the other
to what we know as matter. Imagine rotary currents that
imprison the rays of light within the currents of matter.
Imagine that the farther the rays get from their source
the feebler they become until, at a vast distance, instead
of being the blinding light near the central source,
they are merely a feeble glow in the void. Then that
fragment of a ray, enmeshed in intervening matter but
still dimly glowing because it is of the very nature
of the central light, of which it is an actual portion,
will represent the relationship of the soul to God. [Page 20] It
is literally a spark of the divine fire, and latent within
it are the characteristics of that central light from
which it originated. That is the theosophical conception
of the soul — that it
is literally an emanation of God, and since it is therefore of His
own essence it becomes clear why Theosophists assert that man is a god in
the making.
Anybody
who analyzes that stupendous truth, and ponders over
it, will gradually get a truer understanding of some
of the marvelous facts about consciousness which material
science cannot explain. He will see that in such astounding
phases of human consciousness as premonitions, which
sometimes bring into the physical brain knowledge of
an impending tragedy, of a future event, the characteristic
of omniscience is no longer puzzling. The soul is of
the essential nature of God, who is omniscience.
At a lower level of evolution than man he will have an
equally clear explanation of animal instinct. What is
it? Physical
science has never been able to answer that question.
It can only marvel that an unreasoning creature like
a wild bird, or a pig, exhibits a wisdom that, within
limited scope, is often superior to the talents of man;
but the thing ceases to be miraculous when we reckon
it from the hypothesis of the immanence of God and remember
that we are again dealing with what, in reality, is another
phase of the one supreme life. [Page
21]
It
is no truer that an acorn is an oak in the making than
that man is a god in the making; but the potentialities
within the acorn must pass through various stages before
the future tree comes into existence. It must lie long
in the soil, slowly changing from within, before it
can even send out a tiny sprout, which has little likeness
to a tree. As with man, the likeness to the cosmic parent
is not in outward form but in inward life. Slowly the
latent power of the acorn comes into expression. It reaches
downward into the soil for anchorage and upward into
the air for the true and full expression of its being.
There is little semblance between its first sprout and
the rugged and powerful tree in its completed growth.
Even thus it is in the soul's evolution. It is divine
from its inception but its wisdom is undeveloped. Its
power is latent. It is only a spark of the divine life
that dimly glimmers in its material prison. In the lower
kingdoms it very slowly, through long periods of time,
lays the foundation for the self-consciousness that will
dawn only at the human level. There it reaches individual
existence and the divine spark expands into the human
soul.
Of
course it is not, at that stage of its evolution, the
soul as we know it now. It might truly be called the
nascent soul. It is only just above the level of the
animal kingdom and in the beginning [Page
22] of human development. It differs from the most intelligent animal
in that it now has the human mind but it is the mind of the infant soul of
savage man. It can use tire and construct a shelter but a long period of
evolution must pass before it enters the stage of civilized life. In that
evolution life and form are developing together. The savage is the savage
only because his latent mental and moral qualities are unevolved. Precisely
the same spark of the life of God is in him, and constitutes his inmost being,
but only long experience in the material world can stimulate and arouse it
into action and finally raise him to the level of civilized man.
The
antagonism between scientific and religious thought
was the cause of the greatest controversy — that
occurred in the intellectual world in the nineteenth
century. If the early teaching of the Christian Church
had not been lost the conflict could not have arisen.
The Gnostic philosophers, who were the intellect and
heart of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true
that it could not possibly come into collision with any
fact of science; but, unfortunately, they were enormously
outnumbered by the ignorant and the authority passed
wholly into the hands of the latter. It was inevitable
that misunderstanding should follow. The gross materialization
of the early teaching, the superstition, the bigotry
and the [Page 23] persecution
of the Middle Ages was a perfectly natural result. That perverted, materialistic
view has come down to us, and even now gives trend to the religious thought
of Western civilization. Of that degradation of the early teaching the Encyclopedia
Britannica says:
The
conception of God as wholly external to man, a purely
mechanical theory of creation, is throughout Christendom
regarded as false to the teaching of the New Testament
as also to Christian experience.
It
is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but
if it is so regarded "throughout
Christendom" it is only on the part of its scholars;
most certainly not by the masses of the people. The
popular conception is undeniably that the relationship
between God and man is identical with that between
an inventor and an animated machine. It is an absolutely
anthropomorphic view of the Supreme Being and thinks
of God as being apart from man in precisely the same
sense that a father is apart from his son. It may be
an exalted, idealized conception of the relationship
of father and son but it is nevertheless just that
relationship, and along that line runs practically
all the teaching and preaching of those who speak officially
in modern religious interpretation. Emerson sought
to counteract that popular misconception but he was
regarded as a heretic by all [Page
24] but
an infinitesimal
portion of the church of his time.
The
idea of the immanence of God is as different from the
popular conception as noontide is different from midnight.
It is so radically different that one who accepts that
ancient belief must put aside his old ideas of what man
is and raise him in dignity and potential power to a
level that will, at first, seem actually startling; for
it means, in its uttermost significance, that God and
man are but two phases of the one eternal life and
consciousness that constitute our universe! The idea
of the immanence of God is that He is the
universe; although He is also more than it is; that
the solar system is an emanation of the Supreme Being
as clouds are an emanation of the sea. This conception
makes a man a part of God, having potentially
within him all the attributes and powers of the Supreme
Being. It is the idea that nothing exists except God
and that humanity is one portion of Him, — one
phase of His being. The immanence of God is a conception
of the universe that puts science and religion in harmony
with each other because miraculous creation disappears
and evolutionary creation takes its place.
Although
the mechanical conception of the universe has such
widespread dominion in Occidental thought the immanence
of God is plainly taught [Page
25] and
repeatedly emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For
in Him we live, and move, and have our being",
is certainly very explicit and admits of no anthropomorphic
interpretation. It could not be said that a son lives
and moves in his father. The declaration presents a
closer relationship — the relationship of a lesser
consciousness within a greater, and constituting
a part of it. The essentially divine nature of
man is made clear in the declaration in Genesis that
he is an image of God. To say that the likeness is
on the material side would, of course, be absurd. In
divine essence, in latent power, in potential spirituality,
man is an image of God, because he is a part of Him.
The same idea is more directly put in the Psalms with
the assertion, "ye are gods". [ Psalms
LXXXII — 6] If
the idea of the immanence of God is sound then man,
as a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve
his latent powers into perfect expression.
The
oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus. Emerson's
teaching of the immanence of God is unmistakable in both
his prose and poetry. "There
is no bar or wall," he says, "in the soul where man, the effect,
ceases and God, the Cause, begins." Still more
explicitly he puts it: [Page
26]
The
realms of being to no other bow;
Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.
The
statement is as complete as it is emphatic. "Not
only all are Thine, but
all are Thou." It's an unqualified assertion that humanity is a
part of God, as leaves are a part of a tree – not something a tree has created
in the sense that a man creates a machine but something that is an emanation
of the tree, and is a living part of it. Thus only has God made man. Humanity
is a growth, a development, an emanation, an evolutionary
expression of the Supreme Being.
It
is upon the unity of all life that Theosophy bases
its declaration of universal brotherhood, regarding it
as a fact in nature. The theosophical conception is that
men are separated in form but are united in the one consciousness
which is the life base of the universe. Their relationship
to each other is somewhat like that of the fingers to
each other — they are separate individuals
on the form side but they are united in the one consciousness
that animates the hand. If we imagine each finger to
possess a consciousness of its own, which is limited
to itself and cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall
have a fair analogy of the unity and identity of interests
of all living things. Under such circumstances an injury
to one finger would not appear to the others as an injury
to them, but if the finger [Page
27] consciousness could be extended to
the hand the reality of the injury to all would be
apparent. Likewise an injury to any human being is
literally an injury to the race. The race does not
recognize the truth of it because, and only because,
of the limitation of consciousness. Lowell put the
fact clearly when he wrote:
He's true to God who's true to man.
Wherever wrong is done
To the humblest and weakest
'Neath the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us;
And they are slaves most base
Whose love of right is for themselves,
And not for all the race.
He's
true to God who's true to man because they are one
life; because they are but different expressions of the
one eternal consciousness; because they are as inseparable
as the light and the warmth of the sun. It follows that
being true to man is fidelity to God.
The
popular idea is that people should be moral because
that sort of conduct is pleasing to the Supreme Being
and that He will, in the life beyond physical existence,
in some way, punish those who have broken the moral laws.
It is belief in an external authority that threatens
punishment as a deterrent to law breaking, as a state
devises penalties commensurate with offences, while the
immanence of God represents [Page 28] a
condition in which not punishments, but consequences, automatically follow
all violations of natural law. Under such a state of affairs it, requires
no penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct, for there is no
possible escape from the consequences of an evil act.
It
is not difficult to see the relative value of the two
systems of thought when put to a practical test in human
affairs. Imagine an unscrupulous man of great mental
capacity who is amassing an enormous fortune through
sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings
of others while he safely keeps just within the law.
We can point out to him that while he is not violating
the law, and cannot therefore be prosecuted, he is
nevertheless inflicting injury upon others and consequently
public opinion will condemn him. Such a man usually cares
nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no good
reason why he should not continue in his injurious
work; but if he can be made to see that all life is one
and that we are so knit together in consciousness that
an injury to another must ultimately react upon the person
who inflicts it; if he once clearly understands that
to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that
to maim another is to strike himself, he will require
neither the fear of an exterior hell nor the threat
of legal penalties to induce him to follow a moral course.
He would see that his own larger [Page
29] and true self-interest could be served only when his conduct was
in harmony with the welfare of all. It is but a simple statement of the truth
to say that the immanence of God when fully understood furnishes a scientific
basis of morality. [Page 30]
CHAPTER
- 3 -
THE
EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL
If
we accept the idea of the immanence of God we shall
be forced to abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous
creation of man, and of the earth on which he exists.
The absurd, unscientific idea that the race came
from an original human pair must be replaced by the
hypothesis of the evolutionary creation of the soul.
It
was about the fact of evolution that the great storm
of controversy raged between scientists and theologians
in the middle of the nineteenth century, and later. The
evolutionary truths were not at first well understood.
They seemed to question or deny the existence of God.
Deep within humanity is intuitive religious belief. It
is a natural faith that transcends all facts, like the
faith of a child in its mother. Because evolution was
contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's inception
it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy hope,
and against fact and reason itself rose the protest of
intuition with spiritual intensity. People felt more
than they reasoned, and cried out that science was about
to destroy the belief in God; but time has proved that
they had merely misinterpreted the meaning of [Page
31] evolution. Further understanding has
shown that instead of destroying the belief in a Supreme
Being, evolution has given us a new and better understanding
of the whole matter and has placed the hope of immortality
on firmer ground than it previously occupied.
Evolution
is now generally accepted. No broadly educated person
thinks of questioning it. That all things in the physical
world have become what they are through a long, slow,
gradual development and that organisms perfect in form
and complex in function have evolved from simpler ones
is everywhere accepted by scientists. The age of miracle
has passed and belief in miracle has also passed so far
as its relation to the material world is concerned. It
is no longer necessary to have a belief in an anthropomorphic
God, performing feats in defiance of natural law, in
order to account for that which exists. Science has reduced
the cosmos to comprehension and shown that, given nebulous
physical matter, we can understand how the earth came
into existence.
But
why should we stop with the application of the laws
of evolution to material things? Only the outright materialist,
who asserts that life is a product of matter, can logically
do so. Those who accept the idea of the existence of
the soul at all must necessarily accept the idea of the
evolution of the soul. How can consciousness possibly [Page 32] escape
the laws that evolve the media for the expression of consciousness? There
must be the evolution of mind as certainly as there is evolution of matter.
The material and the spiritual, form and life, are inseparable. Indeed, scientific
progress has now brought us to the point where matter, as such, practically
disappears and we are face to face with the fact that matter is really but
a manifestation of energy. How is it longer possible to speak of the soul
and not accept the evolution of the soul? Psychology is no less a science
than physiology. The phenomena of consciousness are as definitely studied
as physical phenomena, and it is no more difficult to account for myriads
of souls than to account for millions of suns and their planets. The scientists
who have taken the position that the universe has a spiritual side as well
as a material side are among the most eminent and distinguished of the modern
world. If evolution has produced the starry heavens from the material side
it has likewise evolved the human souls of our world, and other worlds, from
the spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand the one than the
other.
From
the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief in
the creation of the earth and the race by an act suddenly
accomplished is, of course, preposterous. If we could
know nothing back of the present moment and were called
upon to [Page 33] account
for the world as we see it — with its
cities, its ships and railways, its cultivated fields and parks — many people
who still believe in the instantaneous creation of the soul would save themselves
much mental exertion by declaring that God had made it all as it stands for
the use and entertainment of man; yet it would be utterly absurd to think
of the world leaping into existence instantaneously — nothing
existing one day and all trains running on time between
ready-made cities the next, carrying ready-made people
about! It sounds ridiculous only because we are putting
it in matter-of-fact terms, but in very truth it is
less ludicrous than thinking of the instantaneous creation
of the creators of cities and railways.
The
belief that humanity is a sudden creation is possible
because of the very vague ideas of what souls are. The
chief difficulty with the popular notion that a human
soul is as new as the body it inhabits is that it is
an indefinite conception of life, and the moment we begin
to think seriously about it the absurdity of the thing
becomes apparent. Such an idea has no relationship to
the processes of reasoning. How can one reason with a
man who believes it possible for a soul to spring into
existence from the void? When it settles the whole matter
to say, "God did it," why reason about it?
One
thing that prevents us from believing, not [Page
34] only that millions of souls were created in the twinkling of an
eye, but also that the world as it now is was likewise suddenly created,
is that we happen to know quite definitely the natural history of the world
a little way into the past, and that history affirms that the earth and all
life on it is the product of slow evolutionary growth.
The
evolution of the soul places the realm of religion
on a scientific basis. Not only the origin of the soul
but its development and its destiny at once appear in
a new light. The mind is instinctively impressed with
the dignity of the idea of the evolution of the soul,
which, with its corollary, the immanence of God, makes
the divinity of man a fact in nature. [Page
35][Page 36]
CHAPTER -
4 -
THE
CONTINUITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
One
of the really remarkable facts of modern life is the
disinclination to accept at apparent value the scientific
and other evidence there is to prove that consciousness
persists after the death of the physical body. There
is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much
of it is offered by scientists of the highest standing;
yet the average man continues to speak of the subject
as though nothing about it had yet been definitely
learned. It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust
itself very slowly to the facts as they are discovered.
Sometimes a generation passes away between the discovery
and the general acceptance of a great truth. When we
recall the intense opposition to the introduction of
steam-driven boats and vehicles, and the slowness with
which the world settles down to any radical change in
its methods of thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable
that the truth about the life after bodily death has
waited so long for general recognition.
The
evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of consciousness
is based is of two kinds — that furnished by physical
science and that [Page 37] furnished by psychic science. Together they make a very complete
case.
The
printed evidence of the first division — physical
science — is voluminous. In addition to that
gathered by the Society for Psychical Research, monumental
in itself, there are the researches and experiments
by the scientists of England, France and Italy, among
whom are Crookes, Lodge, Flammarion and many others
of almost equal fame. Crookes was a pioneer in the
work of studying the human consciousness and tracing
its activities beyond the change called death. All
of that keenness of intellect and great scientific
knowledge, which enabled him to make so many valuable
discoveries and inventions, and won for him world-wide
fame, were brought to bear upon the subject, and for
a period of four years he patiently investigated and
experimented. Many illustrated articles prepared by
him, fully describing his work, were published at the
time in The Quarterly Journal of Science of
which he was then the editor.
Three
vital points in psychic research were established by
Sir William Crookes. One was that there is psychic force.
He demonstrated its existence by levitation. He showed
next, that the force is directed by intelligence. By
various clever experiments he obtained most conclusive
evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated that [Page 38] the
intelligence directing the force is not that of living
people. Crookes also went exhaustively into the subject
of materialization and here, again, he was remarkably
successful. He was the first scientist to photograph
the materialized human form and engage in direct conversation
with the person who thus returned from the mysterious
life beyond. This evidence from the camera must be regarded
as particularly interesting. It was received with much
amazement at the time, but that was before we had revised
our erroneous ideas about the nature of matter and before
the day of liquid air. Materialization is no longer a
startling idea, for that is precisely what liquid air
is — a condensation of invisible
matter to the point where it becomes tangible and can
be weighed, measured, seen and otherwise known to the
physical senses.
These
things Sir William Crookes did upon his own premises
and under the most rigid scientific conditions. All the
methods and mechanism known to modern science were employed
and he finally announced his complete satisfaction and
acceptance of the genuineness of the phenomena observed.
As
Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver Lodge
is the latest of the famous scientists who have taken
up the investigation of the continuity of consciousness.
In a lecture upon the [Page
39] subject,
before the Society for the Advancement of Science,
he declared not only that the subject of life after physical
death was one which science might legitimately and profitably
investigate but that the existence of an invisible realm
had been established. He declared the continent of an
intangible world had been discovered, and added, "already
a band of daring investigators have landed on its treacherous
but promising shores. "Different scientists
make a specialty of certain kinds of psychic investigation
and while Crookes made a detailed and careful study of
materialization, Lodge has given equally painstaking
efforts to investigations by the use of that class of
sensitives known as "mediums". A medium is
not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is not clairvoyant.
A person in whose body the etheric matter easily separates
from the physical matter is a medium and call readily
be utilized as a sort of telephone between the visible
and the invisible planes. A medium is an abnormal person
and is a good medium in proportion to the degree of abnormality.
If the etheric matter of the body is easily extruded
the physical body readily falls into the trance condition
and the mechanism of conversation can be operated by
the so-called "dead" person
who has temporarily taken possession of it. In such
cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living "dead" communicator. [Page
40] He is speaking directly himself,
but he may often do it with great difficulty and not
always succeed in accurately expressing the thought
he has in mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts,
moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand
something of his difficulties it is not strange that
such communications are frequently unsatisfactory.
It is not often that an analogy can be found that will
give a physical plane comprehension of a super-physical
condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be
had by thinking of a "party line" telephone
that anyone of a dozen people may use at any moment
he can succeed in getting possession of it. A listener
attempting to communicate with one of them may find
that several others are constantly "switching
in", much
to his confusion. If distinction of voices due to sound
were eliminated and then a stenographic record were
to be made of all words reaching the listener he would
find that it would often be fragmentary and trivial.
That would not, however, prove that the conversation
did not come from living beings nor that there was
not at least one intelligent person among them. That
scientists engaged in psychic research have similar
experiences proves nothing more.
It
seems to be a common opinion that the evidential value
of such psychic communications, [Page
41] even under the direction of a skillful scientist, cannot be very
great; but it is not at all difficult for the investigator to direct his
work, not only to incidents unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts
which the medium cannot possibly comprehend. It is a matter of common knowledge
that mediums are usually people without technical scientific knowledge. A
few of them have a fair degree of education while many of them are illiterate.
Some of the most celebrated belong to the peasant class of Europe.
Let
us suppose that an investigating scientist is about
to attempt to communicate with a scientist who has passed
on to join the living dead. He will ask technical scientific
questions that nobody but a scientist can answer and
that the medium can by no possibility even understand
when they are answered. Let us suppose that he gets a
communication from the medium's hand signed by a great
author. The living dead man writes a criticism, let us
say, of some new book and does it in his characteristic
style, full of the power of keen analysis and sound literary
judgment. Surely nobody can believe that the medium is
producing such things on her own account. If she could
do so she would not be earning her living as a medium.
The
scientists do not stop here. We often hear the expression "cross-correspondence".
Just what [Page
42] do they
mean by that and in what way does it indicate the personal
identity of a dead man who is communicating? The
principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method.
Sometimes a guest leaves a sum of money with the clerk,
and he wishes to be perfectly sure of the guest's identity
when he returns to claim it. He requests him to put
his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in
two, gives him one piece and keeps the other. That
gives him a double proof of identity. When the guest
comes for his money he must first give his name and
then produce the piece of card that fits into the ragged
edge of the piece the clerk has retained, the two together
making the whole and restoring the signature. It's
one of the simplest but most satisfactory proofs possible.
Neither piece of that card alone is intelligible. If
one piece should be lost and others should find it
nobody could read it or make anything of it. Nobody
could guess the full name unless he had the other fragment.
He knows only about the part he holds. He may be a
thief and may earnestly desire to use what he has found
to defraud, but he is helpless because he has only
one of the two parts it requires to make an intelligible
whole. That is the principle involved in identity by
cross-correspondence. Part of a message is written
through one medium and part through another medium
at another time in [Page
43] another place and neither part presents
a complete statement or has coherence until it is fitted
into the other part; and that prevents a medium who
is dishonest from manufacturing a story that may be
more or less plausible.
We
are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific investigation
for evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people
are sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge
of the matter. The number is far beyond what it appears
to be for two reasons. One is that the average person
fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult
experiences. The other is the feeling that communications
from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for
public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen
demonstrations at spiritualistic séances which,
while possessing little evidential value from the scientific
viewpoint, nevertheless have a legitimate place in the
great mass of psychic phenomena. Still more convincing
is the evidence furnished in hundreds of homes where
some member of the family acts as automatic writer or
medium.
The
most satisfactory evidence is not always scientific
evidence. What can be more convincing than the evidence
furnished in one's home by members of the family? There
is much such [Page 44] evidence,
obtained both through mediums and by automatic writing.
Automatic
writing — that is, the control of the hand of a living
person to record the thoughts of another who has lost
the physical body — is perhaps one of the least objectionable
ways in which communications have come from the astral
world, and to it we are indebted for some useful books
with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions.
Here, of course, as elsewhere, discrimination must be
used, for the wise and foolish, the useful and useless
are to be found side by side. In accepting or rejecting,
one must use his common sense just as he does on this
plane in separating the valuable from the worthless.
In such matters we should not lose sight of the fact
that the living dead are unchanged in intellect and morality.
The genius here is the genius there and the living fool
is not different from the dead one. It is often those
who know the least who are the most anxious to tell
it and the medium or automatic writer sometimes gives
them the opportunity. Consequently we get many foolish
communications and an enormous amount of commonplace
platitude is delivered at séances. Nevertheless
it is equally true that striking evidence of personal
identity is sometimes secured.
There
is much valuable non-scientific evidence that the consciousness
survives the loss of the [Page 45] physical body and
it frequently comes from sources that insure respectful attention. The two
following stories of that kind are cited as corroboration of the scientific
evidence.
Little
touches of the personality often constitute the most
convincing of all evidence. It is one thing to show that
people in general live after physical death. It is quite
a different matter to establish the personal identity
of one of them who is communicating, and that is one
of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent
journalist, gives us some valuable evidence on personal
identity. In his earlier years he had studied art in
London. Shortly before the death of Turner, the great
artist had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on
painting, but had not redeemed the promise at the time
of passing away. Stillman had a friend whose daughter
was mediumistic and he decided to experiment. Immediately
on beginning the séance the young girl was taken
possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman
asked his question silently, speaking no words, but mentally
requesting Turner to write his name. The only reply was
an emphatic shake of the head. He then asked if he would
give some advice on painting. The response was another
decided negative. Stillman felt that he was foolishly
wasting his time and declared the séance at an end. The
girl sat silent. Then [Page
46] after a moment she slowly arose with
the air of decrepitude, took a lithograph from the
wall and went through the pantomime of stretching a
sheet of paper on a drawing board, sharpening a pencil,
tracing the outline, the washing-in of a drawing, etc.,
and then proceeded to show a simple but surprising
method of taking out the lights. "Do you mean
to say that Turner got his effects in that way?" asked
the incredulous young artist. The answer was an emphatic
affirmative. Stillman then asked if the central passage
of sunlight and shadow through rain in the well-known
drawing "Llanthony
Abbey" by Turner, had been done in that way and
was answered by another emphatic affirmative. So sure
was the young artist that this could not be true that
he gave it up in disgust and abruptly left. A few weeks
later Stillman was calling upon Ruskin and related
the experience. Ruskin, who had known the celebrated
dead artist intimately, declared that the contrariness
of the medium at the beginning of the séance was remarkably
characteristic of Turner; but what was much more to
the point, in the way of evidence, was that the drawing
in question was in Ruskin's possession and eagerly
it was brought down from the wall for examination.
After close scrutiny the great art critic and the young
artist agreed that, beyond dispute, the drawing had been done in the way described. [Page
47]
Such
evidence has an added value when it comes from those
who are neither spiritualists nor professional investigators,
but who have the things they doubt thrust upon them in
such convincing manner that they feel impelled to record
their experience for the enlightenment of others. In
the last literary work [Reminiscences
of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p.
154] done
by Carl Schurz, we are given, quite incidentally, his
testimony that at a séance soon after the Civil War he
was told the future in such detail as to leave no possible
room for the usual explanation of coincidence. It was
in July, 1865, when Schurz was on his way to Washington,
whither he had been summoned by President Johnson, that
he stopped in Philadelphia at the home of his friend,
Dr. Tiedemann. The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years
old, could do automatic writing. As a matter of interest
and amusement in the family circle the girl gave an exhibition
of her psychic abilities. When Schurz was invited to
ask for a communication he not unnaturally requested
one from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for
he had been personally acquainted with him. The girl
wrote a message purporting to come from Lincoln. It related
to politics and proved, in time, to have been an accurate
prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not transpire
for [Page
48] more than three years!
Schurz lived in Wisconsin at the time and had no intention
of changing his residence, nor did he do so until two
years later. The message which the girl wrote asserted
that Schurz would be elected to the United States senate
from Missouri. He did not regard the message as authentic
and naturally enough considered the prophecy absurd.
In 1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in
January, 1869, he was elected United States senator by
the Missouri legislature.
So
far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will
be understood, of course, that no attempt is here made
to present that. The purpose is merely to call attention
to some of the eminent scientists who have done notable
work and to mention a few of the more interesting discoveries
made. Those who desire to come into possession of the
evidence in full will find upon examination that it is
voluminous.
From
the viewpoint of physical science alone the evidence
of the continuity of consciousness is not only convincing
but conclusive; yet occult science has much more to offer.
To those who have no personal knowledge of the existence
of occult faculties, such evidence can be offered only
upon the inherent reasonableness of the statements made.
The
truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, [Page
49] must slowly win its way to general acceptance. While large numbers
of people still scoff at it, even as the world not so very long ago scoffed
at hypnotism as a fantastic theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless
a large and rapidly growing number who personally know the truth about clairvoyance.
Occasionally
we read about occurrences that can be explained only
by the hypothesis that some people are clairvoyant. This
is well illustrated by a tragedy that occurred some years
ago in the city of Flint, Michigan. Little Harold Moon,
ten years old, mysteriously disappeared from his home
in midwinter. It was thought that he might have been
skating and broken through the ice. A pond not far from
his home was dragged but without result and then the
Flint River was likewise examined, but no trace of the
missing boy could be found.
The
newspapers at the time devoted columns of space to
the story. At Port Huron, some forty miles away, a lady
who was clairvoyant turned her attention to the matter
and wrote the father of the missing boy that the dead
body of his son was at the bottom of the pond above mentioned.
She gave a detailed description, saying that he wore
skates and that the feet were so entangled in the weeds
at the bottom of the pond that the body could not rise
to the surface. She described [Page 50] the exact location by making a diagram with lines
running from surrounding trees and houses to the spot where she declared
the body could be found. Again the searchers dragged the pond but found nothing.
They returned to the river where they were equally unsuccessful.
Meantime
the clairvoyant so insistently urged the truth of her
story that at last it was decided to drain the pond.
When that was done the boy's body was found at the point
and in the condition described by her. Thousands of people
who had been daily following the newspaper reports of
the developments in the case know that the clairvoyant
correctly located the body and insisted upon the accuracy
of her description several days before her advice was
acted upon and the truth was thus discovered. How did
she know what could not be known by any physical sense?
It
should be understood, of course, that clairvoyant investigations
are not infallible. Clairvoyance is merely a sense, as
eyesight is, and may be used with varying degrees of
accuracy. As with eyesight, the observation may be either
casual or careful and the deductions may be definite
or vague. A clairvoyant may be mistaken for precisely
the same reason that an investigator using his eyes may
draw erroneous conclusions. He may not see accurately
or, having seen [Page 51] unerringly, he may not remember
correctly when he comes to record or to repeat it. Witnesses who have observed
the same incidents often go into court and flatly contradict each other as
to what really occurred. One is sure that the sun was shining while another
is equally sure that it was cloudy; one says a cloak was blue while another
knows it was green; one refers to the distance between two objects as being
but a few feet while another insists that it was as many yards. As with eyesight,
so with clairvoyance. It is merely a method of consciousness which the observer
uses and the correctness of his deductions depends upon the qualifications
of the observer.
There
are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that which
is most in evidence with the public is not calculated
to inspire confidence. It is employed almost exclusively
in what is known as "fortune-telling" and
is often practiced by those who are interested only
in the money they can earn by it. As a matter of course,
trickery and fraud are found associated with it among
such people, and those amongst them who are both capable
and honest suffer on account of it.
The
fortune-telling clairvoyant is usually one who was
born with "second
sight", as the Scotch have named it, and almost
without an exception they do not in the least understand
its rationale. They find certain facts in their consciousness
that [Page
52] could
not be known to them by the physical senses, but why
or how they get the information they do not know. That
form of clairvoyance is a sensitiveness related to
the sympathetic nervous system, the center of which
is the solar plexus. It has no relationship to the
mind, no necessary association with intelligence, and
will often be possessed by the ignorant and uncouth.
It is much more common among Indians and negroes than
among more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and
will slowly disappear from the race. It
belongs to the realm of emotion, not mind.
The
higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing", is
associated with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and
its seat is in the brain. It is not a "natural
gift" [ There
are, of course, really no natural gifts. Nature does
not favor some and ignore others. When a few possess
what others do not have, they earned it by giving special
attention to its development or, as in the case of
the psychic sensitiveness of the sympathetic nervous
system, it is vestigial, and has been possessed by
the race in earlier ages] like the other,
although it is latent in all human beings. It has been
highly developed in some who have had the unusual opportunity
of long training under the direct supervision of great
psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never to
be found among the fortune tellers. Only people with
serious views of life and intense devotion to human
service would have the patience and endurance to undergo [Page
53] such training and only those of singular
purity of life would have any possibility of success.
Such clairvoyants are people of keen intelligence.
By special training and tremendous effort, not yet
possible to most of us, they have pressed forward in
evolution and attained a development that the race
will be many a century in reaching.
It
is true that the work of occult scientists cannot be
verified by those who have no such faculties, but, as
a matter of fact, we do not personally verify the pronouncements
of physical science before acting upon them. Not one
man in ten thousand knows himself the truth of the scientific
dictums he accepts. The average man, every day of his
life, acts upon information of which he personally knows
nothing. He knows nothing of chemistry but he tries to
avoid what he is told is chemically injurious. He does
not understand surgery but trusts his life to the experts
who do. He cannot distinguish quinine from strychnine,
but unhesitatingly takes what the doctor gives him. Many
of the scientific facts he accepts are not only personally
unverified but are in contradiction to the testimony
of his physical senses. He believes the earth is a sphere
but his personal experience is all in favor of the idea
that it is flat. He believes the astronomer's statement
that the earth revolves about the sun but his eyes tell
him it is the sun that does the traveling. [Page 54]
Few
of us know of our personal knowledge the simplest facts
in astronomy, or chemistry, or history, or physics. We
accept the investigations of others. Even if we were
not too busy to act for ourselves we should find that
a certain amount of training is necessary to fit a man
to be an astronomer or chemist; and so only a small number
are engaged in such research. Very few people have the
mental equipment essential for the work, together with
the disposition to engage in it. The great scientist
is a man of good intellect and almost infinite patience.
He must have, also, the devotion to his work for its
own sake that means complete absorption in it. This is
a combination of qualities very rare in human beings
and the consequence is that the vast majority of people
are obliged to take scientific facts from others and
use reason alone in accepting or rejecting them.
When
we come to occult science the necessary qualifications
of the explorer are human characteristics much rarer
than those required in physical research. Any person
who desires to do so may take up the study of Theosophy
and quickly have the proof of its ethical truths by observing
the results, in his daily life, of practicing its precepts;
but the advanced explorer, the investigator in occultism,
who may be compared with a trained physical scientist,
must have, among other qualifications, purity of body.
Such characteristics [Page 55] are so rare a combination that it is not strange
that occult scientists are few in number; but these few, like the larger
number devoted to physical science, are gradually acquiring information of
great practical value to those fortunate enough to be interested. Theosophy
no more asks that its truths be accepted with unquestioning credulity than
physical science expects its facts to be thus received. In each case those
who explore the unknown and bring back information for those who are not
able to do that for themselves place before the public facts that may be
verified by all who will qualify themselves for such work. Neither expects
blind faith, but rather reasoning consideration. In the end it is not our
personal experience but our reason that we rely upon. We do not accept things
as facts solely because we have personally tested them but because our reason
approves them.
It
is by the use of the higher type of clairvoyance that
invisible realms are explored and supplemental knowledge
is added to the ancient wisdom. Such a clairvoyant is
not a medium. The medium surrenders his physical mechanism
for the use of another, who speaks through it, and
at the close of the séance the medium knows nothing
of what has occurred. The clairvoyant is always in possession
of his senses and is fully aware of what is occurring.
He is the explorer [Page
56] and discoverer. He deals with the facts
of the life after bodily death in a different way than
the physical scientist does but it is soon found by the
student that the physical scientist and the psychic scientist
corroborate each other. Together they bring overwhelming
evidence to support the hypothesis that life is continuous;
that the consciousness we have at this moment will never
cease to be; that our individuality, with all its present
memories, will eternally persist; that what we call death
is in reality but a forward step in an orderly evolutionary
journey and an entrance upon a more joyous phase of life.
The sum total of the knowledge that we have gained through
the combined work of the material scientists and the
occult scientists leads us to the conclusion that the
death of the physical body means neither the annihilation
of consciousness nor a radical change in consciousness.
It is, in fact, but the release of consciousness from
its confinement to the physical form, as a song-bird
is released from a cage to the joyous freedom of a wider
world, where woods and stream and field and sky give
new impulse to its innate characteristics. [Page
57][Page
58]
CHAPTER -
5 -
THE
EVOLUTIONARY FIELD
In
a treatise on elementary Theosophy, the solar system
may be reckoned as our universe and we shall have no
need of considering more than a small fragment of that.
It is septenary in constitution as may be seen by its
vibrations as expressed in color and sound. Beyond the
seven colors of the prism, we have only tints, and outside
the seven notes we can get only overtones or undertones.
The
word "plane", so often encountered in theosophical
literature, should perhaps be defined. It has a wide
application and is used as a synonym for region, place,
sphere or world. In referring to the physical plane,
the term embraces all we know of earth and sky and
life through the physical senses.
In
discussing the evolutionary field, through which the
soul makes its cyclic pilgrimage, only that portion of
it which is invisible need engage our attention. The
first thing to be said about that invisible world is
that the approach to it is over familiar ground. The
street-cars we ride upon and the telegrams we send are
visible evidence of the existence of the invisible thing
we call electricity, — a force as mysterious and [Page
59] incomprehensible
to the scientist as to the schoolboy. The very winds
that blow are a part of the invisible, — moving
masses of an invisible matter that science is now able
to condense into visible, liquid form. There is a still
rarer matter than air, called ether, that science declares
exists, although it cannot condense it, nor in any way
whatever grasp, measure or contact it. How, then, is
it known to exist? Because certain phenomena could not
be, without it. So in air and ether we have two kinds
of invisible matter, and in electricity we have a force
working through one of them whose visible results we
see daily.
Theosophy
divides the universe into seven planes or regions of
nature, but for our present purpose we need give attention
to but three of them; the physical, astral and mental.
On these occur all the phenomena of life and death, and
a clear understanding of them will dispel all doubt
and drive away all fear for either our friends or ourselves.
Now, while two of these divisions of the universe are
invisible to physical sight and impalpable to physical
touch, they are, nevertheless, composed of matter, and
the first thing we should get clearly in mind is that
this invisible matter interpenetrates and completely
permeates all visible matter. If we could take a large
sponge, very coarse and porous, of spherical [Page 60] shape,
and completely fill every cell with sand, and also surround it entirely with
the sand; if this sand globe, somewhat larger than the sponge, could then
be lifted, with the sponge inside, and put into a globe of water that would
completely surround both while the water interpenetrated the whole mass,
filling all the space between the grains of sand, that would give us a fair
idea of the relationship of these three regions of nature. The sponge would
represent the physical region, enveloped and interpenetrated by the sand
representing the astral region. The mental region would be represented by
the water which entirely surrounds and interpenetrates every particle of
both the others. Holding this picture in the mind a moment, it is easy to
see how a force acting on the sand and moving the grains from point to point,
need not in the least disturb the sponge; and how, also, force acting on
the molecules of the water need not affect anything but the water, although
the molecules be moved freely through the entire mass. As a matter of fact,
something like that is just what is occurring on these three planes of the
universe. All the activities of life go forward on each without in the least
interfering with any other.
These
regions of nature, these grades of matter growing finer
and rarer, may be crudely represented by the difference
that exists between ice, [Page
61] water and steam. We can take the visible solid
called ice, and by the application of heat raise the rate of vibration until
it becomes the visible liquid called water. We can continue the process until
we change the visible liquid called water into the invisible gas called steam.
It is precisely the same matter all the time. We have merely raised the vibratory
rate and in doing that we have caused a solid to disappear. Of course, every
atom of that matter is as much in existence as though we could still see
it, and if this were done in a laboratory the steam could be reduced to vapor,
the vapor to water and the water to ice, giving us the identical solid with
which we began.
Each
plane consists of a totally different grade of matter
than the next plane, but all have for their base the
ultimate atom of the solar system. When modern science
discovered, to its astonishment, that the physical atom
was a composite body it confirmed the theosophical teaching
that the ultimate physical atom was not the final
point of division. Theosophy teaches that when the ultimate
physical atom is disintegrated its particles become the
coarsest matter of the next plane or region above it — the
astral plane. The process repeated with astral matter
results in driving its ultimate atom from the highest
level of the astral plane, or world, to the lowest of
the mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom
is the brick [Page
62] of the universe stated a great truth,
for of its combinations all forms are built; and if
the idea be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar
system it will then be true that of such "bricks" all
the planes are built.
The
astral plane, surrounding and interpenetrating the
physical plane is, of course, an enormously larger globe
and is composed of exceedingly tenuous matter. This vast
sphere of invisible matter is within the earth as
well as beyond it, interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the
earth's center. It is because its grossest grade of matter is so rare, and
its vibration so intense, that they do not affect the physical senses and
therefore we remain unconscious of that realm while its matter moves freely
through all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life and activities
for precisely the same reason that we know nothing of the messages of intelligence
registered by the vibrations of the wireless telegraph, although they pass
through the room where we sit. We have no sense organs with which it is possible
to receive such vibrations. Messages conveying intelligence of tremendous
import, involving the movements of vast armies, the fall of empires and the
destinies of great nations, flow through the very space we occupy but we
are wholly unconscious of them. Even so we remain blind and deaf to [Page 63] the stupendous activities of life and consciousness
in the astral world, notwithstanding the fact that it surrounds and permeates
us while its forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the physical world as
freely as water flows through a sieve.
The
mental plane, or world, constitutes a region of our
earth still more vast than the astral portion of it.
As the astral sphere encloses the physical globe, the
mental encompasses both, enclosing them and also interpenetrating
them to the earth's center. The term "mental world" may
seem confusing to some because we are accustomed to
think of the mental and the material as being opposites.
The mental world, or sphere, or plane, of Theosophy,
is a world of matter, not merely thought. It
is matter, however, of such remarkable tenuousness
that it may properly be called mind-stuff, and in its
rarest levels it is said to be "formless" so
far as the existence of what the physical senses know
as form is concerned.
All
three of these concentric globes — the physical,
astral and mental — are, then, worlds of matter,
of form, of activity, of thought.
If
the relationship of the three worlds — physical,
astral and mental — is fully understood later
confusion of thought will be avoided. Physical language
is not capable of fully expressing much with which
students of the occult must deal. Because there is
nothing better for the purpose, [Page
64] words must be used that express but
a part of the truth and may sometimes prove misleading
unless the constitution and relationship of the three
spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary to speak
of higher and lower worlds, or planes, of inner or
outer, and of the soul coming "down" into
the material world when, as a matter of fact, no
movement in space is
under consideration. The astral is commonly spoken
of as an inner plane and while it truly is so because
it can be known only to astral senses by a withdrawal
of the consciousness from its exterior, material body,
it is also true that the astral world is outside the
physical because it envelopes it as the sea does a
sponge. We usually speak of coming down from higher
planes to lower and that may be true not only in the
sense of changing the state of consciousness from higher
vibrations to lower ones but it could mean
a journey in space from a point in the astral plane
above the physical globe to a point at its surface. "Up" and "down" are
relative, not absolute. "Down" for
us is toward the earth's center and "up" is
the opposite direction. A spire in the Occident and
a spire in the Orient are both said to be pointing
upward but they are pointing in opposite directions.
On most parts of the earth's surface we have four directions,
while at the poles there is, of course, but one direction
— south or north, as the case [Page
65] may be. East, west and north disappear
at the north pole. Reflection upon such facts leads
one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility
of space itself disappearing from the inner planes
— space as we know it.
The
matter of each of the planes consists of seven classes.
We are familiar with the solids, liquids and gases of
the physical plane, and to them must be added the four
grades of the ether. The seven grades of matter of the
astral and mental worlds constitute an important part
of the mechanism for the soul's evolution, for they determine
the state of consciousness in the life beyond the physical
plane. But a study of those states of consciousness belongs
to a later chapter.
A
difficulty which the student of Theosophy should make
an early effort to eliminate, is the tendency to think
of invisible realms as unreal. It should not be forgotten
that it is only the limitation of the physical senses
that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond the
visible.
We
frequently hear people who are students of the occult
speak of a deceased person as having left the earth.
But passing into the astral plane, or world, is not,
of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral world and
the mental world are divisions of the earth. As the atmosphere
is invisible and yet is a part of the earth's physical
matter, so the invisible astral and mental regions [Page
66] are
other parts of the earth. They are properly called worlds
because the activities in consciousness that make up
existence there are as remote from ours as though they
were upon another planet. We have erroneously supposed
that with the physical senses we really see and know
the earth, whereas we have known only that small fragment
of the earth that consists of physical matter. Beyond
the limitation of our poor senses" stretch in unsuspected
grandeur vaster regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations
of an intenser life. [Page
67] [Page 68]
CHAPTER
- 6 -
THE
MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The
soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness,
or the life of the solar Logos; an individualized portion
of the universal mind. That fragment of the divine life,
with its latent God-like attributes, is expressed through
a mechanism of consciousness that is formed of the matter
of the various planes. Naturally enough it is expressed
more fully upon the higher planes than upon the lower.
At a very high level it is known as the monad. When it
reaches down into the higher subdivisions of the mental
world it is the ego, a lesser expression of the same
divine life that pours from the Logos through the monad
— lesser because it is then functioning through
the denser matter of a lower level.
The
knowledge that has been gained about the nature of
matter in recent years is helpful in understanding the
activities of consciousness. The atom is found to be
a center of force, and we are at the point where matter,
as we have known it, disappears. All the force and consciousness
of the solar system is, of course, but the life of the
Logos, and on higher planes the distinctions we observe
here fade out. Matter becomes a very [Page
69] different thing from the matter we know.
The ether of the physical world is almost inconceivably tenuous matter; yet
it is gross when compared to even the lowest grade of astral matter. The
matter of the mental world is enormously rarer than the most tenuous matter
of the astral world. In view of these facts it requires no stress of the
imagination to understand that the matter of the higher planes is responsive
to the vibrations of consciousness.
The
outraying energies of the individualized center of
consciousness act upon the matter of the plane and
draw about it a film that slowly grows into a vehicle
through which consciousness can be more fully expressed,
and which serves as a point of vantage from which its
expression can be extended to lower planes. A thoughtful
writer has said that man is the universe in miniature.
His mental and moral nature is a fragment of the supreme
life. His physical being is a microscopic replica of
the material universe.
Just
as the earth has its visible and invisible regions
of matter freely interpenetrating each other, so a
human being has visible and invisible bodies, composed
of these different grades of matter, with the same
interpenetrating relationship. We have from birth not
only the visible physical body, but the invisible astral,
mental and spiritual bodies; and just as the astral
region of[Page
70] the
earth not only interpenetrates the physical but extends
beyond it in all directions, so the matter of the astral
body interpenetrates the matter of the physical body,
and extends somewhat beyond it. It is an exact duplicate
in form and feature.
To
understand how the real self, or conscious being comes
into possession of these bodies, we must get rid of some
of the delusions of which we are now the unconscious
victims. One of these is that this physical life is the
point where we begin the journey in the cycle of existence.
This is not the home plane of the soul. It is the farthest
region away from it; but on this point we are in the
grip of the same sort of delusion that leads us to see
the earth as the center of the universe, with the sun
and stars apparently moving about it. If we could be
transported to the sun, and from there behold the earth
as the mote it would comparatively be, that delusion
about their relative size and movement would instantly
vanish. Precisely so would this illusion of the exaggerated
importance of the physical plane, with its material affairs,
vanish if viewed from the mental region. Indeed, so
very illusory is this physical life that the occultist
speaks of the physical body as the "shadow" of
the real self. As we move toward the mental region
we approach reality.
Let
us think of the conscious being, the living, thinking
soul, as beginning its journey for a cycle [Page 71] of experience
in the highest or rarest portion of the realm that we have called the mental
region. Its desire for experience generates energy. It draws to itself the
unimaginably rare matter of the mental region somewhat as a magnet attracts
iron filings, and as these minute iron particles arrange themselves about
the magnet in perfect order, obeying the laws of vibration with the same
accuracy with which the earth moves in its orbit, so in different but analogous
fashion is this mental matter drawn about the soul for the construction of
the mental body. This accomplished, the soul continues its descent into matter,
the astral body being the next acquisition.
We
must not be misled by the phrase, "descent into
matter", or by
the expression, "from higher down to lower regions". There
is no higher or lower in the sense of altitude. The
mental region is not further away than the astral.
Both are as much here as the physical. We must not
lose sight of the fact that the matter of both interpenetrates
all physical matter, and also completely envelops it.
So the soul, or consciousness, does not come down from
some place. There is no movement in space necessary.
It merely attracts to itself the matter of a very rare
grade, called "mental";
then, in a coarser grade of matter, the astral body
is secured. Finally, by a different process, but still
one of slow building, the physical [Page
72] body is constructed of physical matter.
The three vehicles, or organisms, through which the
soul is to function in the three regions are now ready
to enable it to contact the various grades of matter
and obtain the experience it seeks.
Having
followed in thought the way in which, starting on the
home plane of the soul, we are successively clothed in
the matter of these three regions, thus acquiring bodies
in which it is possible to function in each region, we
are in a position to understand that this physical body
is very far from being the real man; and that we are,
each of us, far more than we appear to be, far more than
we are able to express through this physical mechanism.
Some writer has somewhere given the excellent illustration
of likening the soul on its home plane to the bare hand.
The hand is capable of much. In music, in art, in many
lines of commercial dexterity, it can work wonders. When
the soul clothes itself in mental matter it is more like
a hand that has put on a very thin glove. It is a limitation.
The fingers are not so nimble. When, in addition, the
soul takes on the
astral body, it is as though the
thinly gloved hand drew on a heavy glove. Now the limitation
is sorely felt. The fingers can scarcely move. The delicate
touch has vanished, and the enrapturing music becomes
broken and uncertain. The wonderful painting is but
a distortion. When [Page
73] the soul reaches the physical plane and begins to express itself
through the physical body, this is as though over the thin and heavy glove
is drawn a thick mitten. The four fingers are now one. The hand is a clumsy
club, and the once divine harmony would be but meaningless sound. And thus,
limited and confined as we are in dense matter, the soul is showing forth
in this visible life but the merest fragment of the real self.
Each
of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness
on the plane to which it belongs. The soul is evolving
simultaneously in each of the worlds, physical, astral
and mental, and these various bodies enable it to receive
the vibrations of the plane they belong to and thus to
be conscious there. The mental body is the seat of intellectual
activity. Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes
through the astral body into the physical brain. Whenever
we think we are using the mental body. The astral body
is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All emotion
passes from it to the physical body to be expressed in
the material world. The astral world is also called the
emotional world, as the mental plane is called the heaven
world. The physical body is the soul's instrument of
action. It attaches it to the physical world, enables
the consciousness to contact material objects and to
move about and express on the material plane the thoughts [Page 74] and
emotions generated in the mental and astral bodies.
Another
part of the mechanism of consciousness is known as
the etheric double; but
it is only a link in the chain and not a body through
which the soul can function. It is composed of the etheric
matter of the physical world and connects the astral
body with the physical body. As every atom of physical
matter is surrounded and permeated by etheric matter,
it follows that the physical body has its duplicate in
etheric matter. "Etheric double" is
a very appropriate name since it is a perfect duplicate
of the physical body in etheric matter. It serves the
purpose of supplying the life force to the nervous
system and is the medium through which sensation is
conveyed. The action of an anaesthetic drives out so
much of the matter of the etheric double that the connection
is broken and sensation in the physical body ceases.
One
of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear conception
of the constitution of man, and realizing that he is a soul functioning
through various vehicles of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of
thought common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed to thinking
of the physical body itself as being the man, and if there is any thought
at all of the consciousness surviving the death of the body it is very vague [Page 75] and
indefinite as to where it exists and how it is expressed. Very
little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity
of the belief that the body is the man. Two bodies
may be alike, as in the case of twins, but the souls,
the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real man
is super-physical. His intelligence or his stupidity,
his genial disposition or his moroseness, his generosity
or his selfishness, are but the manifestations of himself
through the body by which they are expressed. The body
itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as
a planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument
for a purpose. The mass of matter constituting the
body is a variable mass. It may increase or diminish
greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There is no
permanent relationship between the man and the physical
matter which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness.
According to the physiologists every atom of the body
changes within a period of a few years. The cells wear
out, break down and pass away to be replaced by new
matter. Not a particle of the physical matter that
was in our bodies a few years ago is there now, and
none that is there now will remain. Within seven years,
or less, we shall have bodies composed of new matter
as certainly as an infant's is.
Of
course such reconstruction of the body does not change
its appearance. It is built on the same [Page
76] lines. It
is as it would be with some very old building. As the
centuries pass it must be slowly rebuilt. The floors
wear out and are relaid. The roof serves its time and
is replaced. The walls crumble first in one place and
then another until they have been completely reconstructed.
After a thousand years have passed there may be none
of the original material in the building, yet its appearance
is unchanged. The matter composing the bodies we have
today shall have passed away and will be growing in the
trees and blooming in the flowers in a few years. The
matter of the bodies we shall then have is now scattered
through the world. It will be brought together during
that time and will come from many parts of the earth.
The
physical senses continually deceive us and nowhere
more than in our ideas about the physical body. It is
an unstable mass of matter, in constant motion, with
great gulfs of space between its atoms. Emerson was very
far ahead of his time and it took science a half century
to catch up with him and learn that he had recorded a
fact in nature when he wrote:
Atom
from atom yawns as far
As earth from moon, or star from star.
In
1908 the Scientific American Supplement, commenting on our reconstructed
ideas about [Page 77] matter, remarked that
the actual mass of the physical body to the apparent mass is about one to
one million!
Clearly,
the physical body is not the man. If it were, the loss
of a part of the body would logically be a loss of part
of the man; but we know he may lose both arms and both
lower limbs, the sight of both eyes, the hearing, the
major part of the lungs and the entire stomach, and still
live his allotted time. With se little of the physical
body left he is the same man, with all the force of will
and power of thought, with all the attributes of character
that constitute a human being. This mere fragment of
a body is sufficient for the real man to function through
in the visible world. Of course, there is a point beyond
which the mutilation of the physical organism cannot
go without forcing the ego to abandon it; but every forward
step in surgery is demonstrating more and more clearly
that the body is but a wonderful machine and laboratory
operated by a still more wonderful and independent intelligence
— the soul, the self. If the physical body is
merely an organized mass of matter, continually varying,
constantly coming and going, and having no permanent
relationship to the consciousness that functions through
it, what reason is there for believing that it is the
man? [Page
78]
This
complex mechanism of consciousness, composed of the
various bodies through which the ego expresses itself
at different levels, is used as a whole for functioning
on the physical plane; but when the ego is functioning
no farther down than the astral plane, the physical body
is, of course, temporarily discarded. It is then in the
condition known as sleep, or trance. Sleep is the natural
withdrawing of the consciousness from the physical body.
When the separation occurs in the case of the medium
it is called trance. The physical body in sleep is unoccupied,
but the consciousness maintains magnetic connection with
it. In death that tie is severed and the consciousness
can return to the body no more. Instances in which the
apparently dead are brought back to life are cases where
the magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there
is every appearance of death.
In
form and feature the physical body has its exact duplicate
in the astral body, and in it we function in the astral
world whenever the separation between the two occurs,
whether from sleep or death. In sleep the consciousness,
expressing itself in the astral body in the astral
world, may be turned dreamily inward or it may be turned
outward and be vividly aware of the life and activities
of that world; but there is small chance that any memory
of it will come [Page 79] through into the physical consciousness upon
awakening. Occasionally, however, it does occur and then it is usually remembered
as a very vivid dream. In illness, and other abnormal conditions, the connection
between the physical and astral consciousness is much closer. At a comparatively
high point in evolution the two states of consciousness merge. The man is
then continuously conscious, and has a full memory in the physical brain
of all his activities in the astral world during the hours when the physical
body was asleep.
Consciousness
is, of course, at its worst when expressed through
the limitation of its lower vehicles. Any person, whether
brilliant or stupid, will be much abler and keener on
the astral plane than on the physical, because in sleep,
as after death, he has lost the limitations imposed by
physical matter. But the degree of restriction is variable
and depends much upon the kind of
matter of which the brain and body are composed; for the physical atoms vary
greatly, and as they come and go in the passing years the body may either
become purified and refined or it may grow grosser and coarser. By careful
attention to character building, by control of the emotions, the limitations
of physical matter may be lessened and a much higher and more efficient state
of consciousness in the physical body can be attained. [Page
80]
CHAPTER
- 7 -
DEATH
Perhaps
one of the reasons why death is so commonly associated
with a feeling of fear is because we give so little thought
to it. Most people seem never to think of the subject
at all until death invades the home or threatens some
member of the family. Then terror fills the mind and
all but paralyzes the reasoning faculties.
Such
fear of death, so widespread in Occidental civilization,
is eloquent testimony to the materialism of our times.
It is doubt about the future that causes fear of death.
Only when we have a scientific basis for the hope of
immortality will that awful fear disappear. Death is
feared because it seems like annihilation. If people
really believed in a heavenly existence beyond the physical
life they could not possibly be filled with terror at
the prospect of entering it. If a man's religion has
not given him a genuine confidence in a future life,
and made it as much of a reality to him as this life
is, it has failed to do what we have a right to demand
of religion. If it does not enable him to look upon the
face of his dead without a doubt, or a fear, there is
something wrong, either with his religion or with his
comprehension of it. What possible reason is there for
fearing death? [Page
81]A
thing that is universal, that comes to all, cannot
be pernicious. To regard death as a disastrous thing
would be an indictment of the sanity of nature.
Death
is merely the close of a particular cycle of experience.
It is the annihilation of nothing but the physical body,
in its aspect of an instrument of activity and a vehicle
of the consciousness upon the physical plane. The atoms
of the body, drawn together in the human form for temporary
use are, in death, released from the cohesive force of
a living organism and will return whence they came.
In
reality there is no such thing as death, unless it
be strictly applied to the form, regarded as a temporary
medium of consciousness. As for the consciousness, there
is no death. There is life in a physical form and life
out of it, but no such thing as the death or cessation,
of the individual intelligence. What we name "death" is
but a change in the orderly evolution of life, and it
is only because the phenomenon is viewed from the physical
plane that such a term can be applied to it. From this
plane it is death, or departure; but looked at from the
astral world it is birth, or arrival. What we call birth
is the beginning of the expression of the soul through
a material body on the physical plane. It is an arrival.
But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure and [Page
82] therefore
is as logically a "death" there as departure
from a physical body is here. So death and departure
from one plane is simply birth, or arrival, upon another,
although it is not, of course, birth as we know it.
Every
process in nature has a part to play in evolution and
therefore death is as necessary as life and as beneficial
as birth. Death is the destroyer of the useless. There
is a time when each human being should die — that
is to say, a time when the physical body has fulfilled
its mission and completely accomplished the purpose for
which it exists. To continue life in a physical body
beyond that point is to waste energy and lose time in
the evolutionary journey. Under the action of what we
call “diseases" the
body becomes inefficient, or through its gradual breaking
down in old age the senses grow dim and uncertain.
The consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed
through its impaired machine and it is decidedly to
the advantage of the ego to withdraw from it. The soul
is in the position of an artisan obliged to work with
broken and rusted tools. Good results are no longer
possible. It is then that death comes, beneficently
destroying the worn-out instrument and releasing the
consciousness from its too-often painful situation
and permitting its escape into a field of unobstructed
activity. [Page
83]
Death
is painless. The breaking down of the body under the
ravages of disease may cause pain, but that belongs to
physical life, not death. Distress may also be caused
by groundless fear of death; but the dying person who
does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and
no pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation
will convince one that the distress about a deathbed
is invariably on the part of surviving friends, not on
the part of the dying.
Those
who are left behind remain within the limitations of
the physical senses, and they are therefore separated
from the so-called dead man, but he is not separated
from them. It is because of that separation that the
terror of death exists for them; but in that very fact
is to be seen the great evolutionary value of death.
The separation it causes intensifies love as nothing
else could do. It is only when our friend is gone that
we begin to appreciate his real value and comprehend
how large a part he really played in our existence. As
sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener realization
of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its contrast,
gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how
enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death
of a close friend. The whole nature is in some degree
purified and spiritualized. Selfishness decreases and
compassion grows. Sympathy for others in [Page 84] distress is born, and
thus a decided evolutionary advance is made.
We
have only to reflect upon the fact that separation
without death produces the same effects in a minor key,
to realize the evolutionary value of death. In constant
association we grow careless and indifferent; but an
absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer
perspective of personal associations and thereafter life
has new zest. A child regards its mother with a certain
degree of appreciation but a short absence enormously
increases its valuation of her presence. All human beings
come into closer and more sympathetic association after
a period of separation, and the completeness of the separation
caused by death renders it peculiarly efficacious in
the development of the spiritual side of one's nature.
It
often requires death to turn attention away from materialistic
life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed
in material success. There is no thought at all given
to the higher life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all
the vanities of the world, firmly hold them. They become
completely self-centered. Then suddenly death enters
and breaks the family circle, and the transient character
of all they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly
dawns upon them, and attention is turned to the nobler
things of life. [Page
85]It is a well known fact that great wars are accompanied or followed
with widespread spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the
shadow of death has fallen on tens of thousands of homes.
It
has sometimes been asked by doubting critics if it
would not be an improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow
caused by the death of our friends were softened by direct
knowledge of their continued existence. It is evidently
the plan of nature to have the physical life and the
astral life normally separated at our present level of
evolution. Some of the reasons have already been discussed.
There are undoubtedly others that we are incapable of
understanding, and still others that we can readily comprehend.
If the higher, joyous life of the astral world were open
to our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties
of this life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our
life in the physical body may be compared to the tasks
of children in school. They have serious business before
them in the acquiring of knowledge and the development
of the intellect. They can best accomplish the work
when completely isolated from other phases of life. Introduce
daily into their work-day consciousness the joys of a
child's existence, the circus, the military parade, the
picnic and the dancing parties, and the purpose for which
the school exists would be [Page 86] defeated. To exactly the extent
that the consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable progress
be made with the work of the schoolroom. And so it is with the limitation
of our physical senses. It serves a purpose.
However,
there is a point in human evolution where such limitation
of the senses is no longer of any service and may be
transcended. Some people have attained it. They are those
who have previously been referred to as the psychic scientists,
with the higher clairvoyance of the cerebrospinal nervous
system developed. It is an accomplishment to which all
may aspire. None need submit to the separation commonly
caused by death. By hard work in co-operating with nature's
methods of evolution and by a serious and sustained
effort to live the highest and most helpful life of which
one is capable, it is possible in time to attain a level
of consciousness where one has personal knowledge that
the dead still live. But in the very work of rising to
that level, the concentration previously enforced by
the limitation of the physical senses will have been
acquired.
One of the common delusions about death is that some radical
change in the nature of a person then takes place. This is no doubt due
in part to the theological ideas that have come down to us from the Middle
Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some sort
of judgment [Page 87] that
classes him as either a saint qualified for eternal
bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The
belief is based on that erroneous view of human nature
that was common to the melodrama of a past generation
and that will possibly have eternal life in the cheap
novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good
and the villain as absolutely bad. The one had no
flaw of character and the other had not a redeeming
virtue. Human nature does not thus express itself.
The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding
it is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand
we find about us no perfected beings. The perfect
heroes are merely creations of an imperfect imagination.
At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither
the absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad though
a few have risen very high in moral development and
a few have sunk into bestial characteristics from
which they can rise only with great difficulty.
Why
should the change we call death transform a human being?
It is merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of
consciousness. The soul, the thinker, has lost connection
with the material world because the physical body has
ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body
remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he
can not think more than he knows, nor feel what he has
not evolved. All that has happened [Page
88] in death is that contact with the material world has been lost.
One
of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom,
and we often hear of people getting into communication
with those who have passed on, with the hope of obtaining
valuable advice. It is true that death ushers one into
a realm of wider consciousness, but — and it is a vital
point — he would have no better judgment in determining
a course of action than he had while here in the physical
world.
Both
mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade
of morality is neither better nor worse. His tolerance
or narrowness remains what it previously was. If he was
bigoted while here he is still intolerant there. If he
was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely
that in the astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint
or villain, he remains unchanged and goes on with his
evolutionary development, but in a world where emotion
is the ruling factor.
Death
merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where
the evolution of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult
to say which is the greater misfortune — the delusions
that make death the king of terrors, or the complacent
belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings
the soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility
and settles one's fate forever. Death [Page 89] can no more lessen responsibility or transform
the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine destiny.
The
theosophical conception of the matter is as consoling
as it is scientific. Instead of the fear of death it
gives us knowledge of continued life. Instead of doubt
and despair it gives us confidence and joy, for it guarantees
the companionship once more of those we have known and
loved but have not permanently lost. [Page 90]
CHAPTER
- 8 -
THE
ASTRAL LIFE
To
those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing
to some remote heaven, where they become angels, it will
perhaps sound startling to say that a "dead" man
is not usually aware at first that the change we call death has taken place;
yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at all remarkable that it should
be so. We have only to recall the fact that all physical matter is surrounded
and permeated with astral matter to realize that the physical plane is duplicated
in astral matter. Not only the physical body of the human being but, of course,
every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The "dead" man
sees, then, the exact duplicate, in astral matter,
of the familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees,
too, his friends, for their astral bodies are replicas
of their physical forms.
And
yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference,
though not a difference that enables him to comprehend
what has occurred. He may know that only yesterday, or
what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was ill
and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he
was about to die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never
felt so free from aches and pains in all his life. The [Page 91] pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth are
his again! This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally speaks to
them, but gets no reply and finds that he cannot attract their attention.
It must be remembered that he cannot see their physical bodies just as they
cannot see his astral body; yet he truly sees them. If a so-called dead man
and a living person look at the same instant at another living person they
will both see him, but the latter sees the physical body while the former
sees the astral body that surrounds and permeates it.
Under
these circumstances it is not strange that the new
arrival in the astral world has a feeling of baffling
mystery. He is in full possession of his reasoning faculties
and will power, but there is a puzzling limitation to
his efforts to produce expected results. A partial
analogy may be found in the case of a person suddenly
stricken with aphasia over night. He rises in the morning,
dresses, and goes about his accustomed duties without
the slightest suspicion that any change has come to him;
but when he takes up the morning paper he finds to his
amazement that he cannot read — that the familiar
print simply means nothing to him. When he sees another
member of the household and tries to speak he finds that
he can say nothing intelligible. He is all the more alarmed
because there seems to be nothing at all [Page
92] wrong with him! He only knows that
yesterday he could read and converse with his friends
but that today he cannot and the reason is an utter
mystery. It is not difficult to imagine that he is
both puzzled and alarmed. Quite as baffling and appalling
must be the first experience of many who pass into
the astral life without some knowledge of it. Of course,
in time the living dead man gets adjusted to the new
life. He soon meets others in the astral world who
have been there longer and they, sooner or later, succeed
in convincing him that he is not having an exceptionally
vivid dream.
There
is a mistaken idea that the astral world is something
vague, misty and unreal. In truth it is a more vivid
and realistic life than this we are now living. There
is nothing ghostly about it. With the shifting of the
consciousness to the astral grade of matter the astral
world becomes as real as the physical is now. We do not,
by death, suddenly acquire great knowledge and wisdom,
as is sometimes supposed, but the mind is no longer
hampered by the dense physical brain. We also leave physical
pain behind. There is no bodily weariness in the astral
life.
Naturally
enough, we cannot even imagine what so great a change
means. We may think of a lifelong dungeon prisoner being
suddenly released in this world and all its prized freedom
and [Page 93] opportunity
becoming an instantaneous possession; but so tame a
comparison is of little assistance. In many ways that
do not occur to us larger freedom and new vistas of existence
must appear. Of those that do occur to us we can hardly
hope to get a comprehensive idea. Take one simple fact
as an illustration — the fact that food, clothing and
shelter would no longer be a problem of life, and that
all the tremendous energy now given to their production
would be necessarily turned in other directions. Think
what that would mean if applied even to the physical
life, and what a change would be wrought if each were
free to use his time as he chose! Of course, the astral
existence means different things to different people.
We shall doubtless enjoy it or dislike it in proportion
that we have wisely or foolishly lived the physical
life. If we have been students we shall probably find
our chief pleasure in pursuing our studies under immensely
better facilities. If we have lived useful, helpful
lives, we shall find wider opportunity for continuing
in that line. If we have been completely absorbed in
the accumulation of property, we shall probably find
the sudden cutting off of all business affairs a great
annoyance. If we have lived so selfishly that we cannot
use our leisure and enjoy our liberty when it comes,
we may find the astral world very dull and irksome.
The
astral life is not punitive, but purgative. [Page
94]All
of nature's processes are really kind and beneficent,
although it is not always apparent on the surface.
Pain is a friend. It is always the lesser of two evils.
It is nature's danger signal. We unconsciously get
the hand too close to the fire and are startled with
a burn. That is the warning; but for it the hand would
have been consumed. We overwork, and a warning pain
springs up in the brain or heart. The network of nerves
that makes us suffer is but nature's telegraph system
prepared to send an instantaneous message of warning
from every point of the body to the brain. Now, for
precisely the same reason that we suffer here we may
suffer there — not because we
are being punished, but because the moral nature is
being purged; because we are getting rid of certain
traits and tendencies that to retain would mean greater
suffering in the future. If a man has an abscess it
may be painful to submit to the surgeon's knife; but
that suffering is the way back to good health, plus
the consequence of having violated some of nature's
laws. There is no such thing as escaping natural law.
It operates as unerringly and as exactly in the unseen
world as in the visible, and therefore a study of the
subject is important. By having a knowledge of the
astral life and the after-death conditions, both terror
and suffering may be avoided. Such suffering as may
be experienced [Page
95] is not, of course, physical, for
the physical body, with all its aches and pains, has
been left behind. But we all know from experience that
physical pain causes less suffering than mental and
emotional distress. No physical pain is comparable
to the pangs of remorse, or the suffering caused by
the sudden loss of a very dear friend. Strong but ungratified
desire may also be a source of suffering, as may easily
be seen in the case of a hard drinker here being unable
to gratify his insatiable thirst. This must be equally
true, in varying degree, of all other material desires
which people carry with them into the astral life,
where there is no possibility of their gratification.
The
astral region has seven subdivisions and our location
there depends upon the sort of life we live here; not
that we are sorted out and assigned to different regions,
as the guests at a hotel are sent to various floors,
but that our life here is constantly drawing into the
astral body finer or coarser astral matter, and this
determines with absolute accuracy our astral career.
If, for example, a man lives a very low and bestial,
or a very selfish life, he is thereby constantly attracting
into his astral body the grossest grade of astral matter,
and the preponderance of this matter will carry him to
the most undesirable subplane of our world, the lower
astral region, as certainly as a gross impulse here will
take him [Page 96] where
it may be gratified. This lowest subdivision of the astral world is described
by trained occult observers as appearing devoid of all that is light and
beautiful. One investigator describes it as having an atmosphere of grossness
and loathsomeness that gives one the sensation of being surrounded by some
black, viscous fluid, instead of by pure air. This is that subdivision of
the astral world that is undoubtedly the basis of the descriptions in Biblical
literature of purgatory or hell.
It
is the next rarer region of the astral plane to which
the great majority go at death, and here the sojourn
may be long or short. It will depend wholly upon circumstances,
precisely as the length of the physical life depends
upon many things, including the soundness of the physical
body, the care we take of it and the manner in which
we live. Some may remain on the astral plane a very short
time, and others for a long period. In general it may
be said that in the same way we reckon an ordinary
physical life at sixty or seventy years, the astral life
might be put at thirty or forty years.
This
astral region, as a whole, is the world of desires,
passions and emotions. During physical life we have generated
certain forces that have not had their full expression,
and this stored-up energy must work itself out on the
invisible [Page
97] planes. It may thus happen that, although a man, who dies has
no physical body through which he can suffer, he passes through a purgative
process that we should as earnestly seek to avoid as we would try to avoid
burns and bruises, regrets and heartaches here. All evil and selfish thoughts
and acts indulged during the physical life must necessarily cause more or
less suffering in the astral life. All hatred, envy, jealousy, anger, and
all gross desires and appetites indulged here must inevitably work out unpleasantly
there. On the other hand, those who have lived clean, wholesome and unselfish
lives here pass quickly to the loftiest conditions of the astral world, and
for the simple reason that they have been unconsciously all the time attracting
the rarest grade of astral matter to their astral bodies until it predominates.
When
the astral life is finished — that is to say, when
the forces that hold us to the astral plane are exhausted
— we pass into the mental region, or heaven world,
which is the second division of the invisible world about
us. This does not represent a movement in space, but
a gradual release from the astral body and a transfer
of the consciousness to the mental body.
Each
of these planes of nature, the physical, astral and
mental, has its particular purpose in evolution. In the
physical here we produce causes; [Page 98] we
generate certain forces which, later on, must have either
good or bad effects. It is, so to speak, the seed time.
The astral is the purgative plane, where detrimental
tendencies are worn away and undesirable forces are exhausted.
The mental plane is the place of assimilation, the harvest
time, the period in which we reap the rich reward of
noble thought and deed and garner the wisdom from all
the experiences we have passed through on the other planes.
There, in a perfectly blissful life, in a state of ecstasy
impossible to describe, is passed a comparatively long
period. Just as on the astral plane, the circumstances
once more determine the length of the life in the heaven
world, but the investigators agree that on an average
it is a period equal to several times the length of
the combined physical and astral periods. This is a time
of rest and of mental and spiritual growth. Here all
the highest aspirations of one's life on the physical
plane have their complete working out. Experience becomes
wisdom and power for future accomplishment. All the grossness
of every possible kind has dropped away during the astral
life, and not a single shadow of any sort remains to
mar this life of perfect joy.
The
astral world, as previously explained, has seven subdivisions
and the astral body contains matter belonging to each
of them. While we have [Page 99] the physical body the matter of the astral body
is in rapid circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented at
the surface. But when the connection with the material plane is broken, a
rearrangement of the matter of the astral body automatically takes place
(unless it is prevented by an exercise of will power) and the grossest grade
of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently the consciousness
of the man is limited to that subdivision of the astral world represented
by the lowest grade of matter which his astral body contains at the time
of his death.
There
are three, and only three modes of death, or release
from the physical body — by old age, by disease,
or by violence. Old age is the natural and desirable
close of the chapter of physical plane experience. It
is most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate
a large harvest of experience. To live long and actively
is excellent fortune. It is not well to pass into the
astral world with strong physical desires. As old age
comes on the desire forces subside. Most of that grade
of astral matter that is capable of expressing them has
slowly disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual
loosening of the life forces from the material plane,
and that has many advantages.
Release
from the physical body by disease is the next in order
of desirability. It is a quicker [Page
100] and less complete
breaking down of the connection with the physical world. Nevertheless it
is a condition in which much progress may be made in getting free from physical
desires, as those who have had experience with invalids are aware. Desires
naturally grow weaker with the progress of the disease that finally ends
in death.
Release
from the physical form by violence is, of course, the
least desirable of the three, not merely because it is
violence, but for the much more important reason that
sudden death finds a man, as a rule, with a considerable
amount of the lower grades of astral matter in his astral
body.
Whether
the death by violence is the result of accident, murder,
suicide or legal execution, the astral plane conditions
of consciousness are alike unfortunate, in that it is
sudden death, not the manner of death, that permits entry
upon the invisible life before the lower grades of astral
matter have been eliminated from the emotional body.
This is one reason why suicide is unfortunate — because
it ushers the man into the inner world with more of the
matter of the lower levels in his astral vehicle than
would be there if he had lived out his normal physical
life.
Purgatory
is a term often applied to the lowest level of the
astral world. The word is well chosen because it is there
that the moral nature is purged of its impurities. Strong
desires cultivated and [Page
101] indulged during the life in the physical body are eliminated
with the gross astral matter through which alone they can be expressed and,
freed to that extent, the man passes to the next subdivision, and into its
higher state of consciousness.
In
the astral life some people linger long on the lower
levels while others know them not at all, but awaken
to the blissful consciousness of the higher subdivisions.
Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping together people
of a kind. It is the manner in which one lives during
physical life that determines his happiness or sorrow
after death. The astral body, the seat of the emotions,
is, like the physical body, constantly changing the
matter that composes it. An emotion of any kind expresses
itself as a vibration in the matter of the astral body.
If it is a base emotion, such as anger, hatred, lust
or cruelty, it throws into vibration the grossest of
the astral body's matter, for only in that can it be
expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love,
sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects
only the rarer grades of astral matter, for in them only
can such feeling be expressed.
With
most people there is a constant mingling of a wide
range of emotions, with a gain in one direction and a
loss in the other. One who fortunately understands the
law of emotional cause and effect may make absolutely
certain of a [Page 102] comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane after
death. He would make it a rule to watch his emotions and control them, knowing
that each time he indulged a gross one the vibration set up in his astral
body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of matter in it, while
pure and exalted emotions would strengthen the higher grades. Ultimately,
the grossest grade, becoming atrophied through inactivity, would drop away
from him.
The
descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic scientists
are calculated to induce even the reckless to avoid it.
If we could bring together all the worst men and women
now living on the physical plane, the most cruel of murderers,
the most besotted drunkards, the vilest degenerates,
the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends of every
description, and huddle them together in hovels reeking
with filth, and let them remain without any outward government,
free to prey upon each other, we should perhaps have
a faint comprehension of the reality of the lowest subdivision
of the astral world. But no physical plane comparison
can do it full justice, for we must remember that it
is the emotional world and that the feelings of its inhabitants
make its atmosphere in a way that would here be impossible.
Astral matter instantly and exactly reproduces emotion,
so that the fiend or the sensualist looks [Page
103] exactly
what he feels. Even in the unresponsive physical matter,
the evil in a man is often sufficiently expressed to
fill those who behold him with terror. In the astral
world every cruel thought and hideous emotion would express
itself in visible form and the multitudinous emotions
welling up in the lower level of the astral world would
be as a loathsome swarm of reptiles gliding through its
horrible life. Add to all that the fact that the hopeless
despair of its denizens gives an atmosphere of utter
gloom and desolation, and we have a hell that leaves
no need of "lakes
of fire" to check the course of the erring soul;
and yet there is no suffering that is not self-imposed.
It is both consistent and just that a man should associate
with his kind and look upon himself in others until
he grows sick of his own vileness and cries out in
agony of spirit against his own moral offenses. It
must not be assumed that every person dying with considerable
matter belonging to the lower astral level still within
his emotional body will necessarily pass through such
experiences. It should never be forgotten that we are
dealing with a matter of the utmost complexity and
that even the most exhaustive description in print
would present only a fragment of the truth. The conditions
of consciousness on any sub-plane vary as individuals
vary. Many people on the lowest astral level are wholly
unconscious of their [Page
104] surroundings.
Another variation is that some people find themselves
floating in darkness and largely cut off from others — a
sufficiently undesirable condition, and yet better
than the fate of some. All states of astral consciousness
are reactions from previous good or evil conduct and
are, moreover, temporary conditions that will in time
be left behind.
In
a different way and at a higher level there may be
suffering on the astral plane that is purifying the nature.
Not all offenses against nature's laws are of so gross
a type. There is the foolish strengthening of desire
and the violation of conscience that may result in various
kinds of regret and emotional distress. A desire of a
refined type strongly built up upon the physical plane
lives with an intenser vitality on the astral plane after
the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton
and a miser have strong desires of a very different type.
Each of them is likely to suffer on account of it during
the astral life. They need not dwell upon the lowest
level to get a reaction from their folly in the physical
life. We can easily imagine the distress of the glutton
in a world without food. There could be no distress because
of hunger, for the astral body is not, like the physical
body, renewed and maintained by what it consumes; but
hunger and the gratification of the sense of taste are
very different things. [Page
105] It is the latter that would trouble
the gourmand, and it is said that great suffering, as
in the case of the drunkard, is his lot until the desire
gradually disappears because of the impossibility of
its gratification.
The
miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his
greed for gold may be quite as intense as that of the
glutton for sensual gratification. The accumulation of
money has been the dominant thought of his life. He has
created in his mind a wholly false value for money and
it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it. Only
dire necessity forces him to spend any portion of his
hoard. It is not difficult to imagine his emotions
when he is obliged to leave it behind and see others
spend it freely!
Any
kind of a desire that is related to the physical body
is without means of gratification in the astral world
and if such desire has been cultivated until it becomes
strong enough to play an important part in one's life
it will certainly give him more or less trouble after
the loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of
an over-refinement and excess in a natural appetite,
as in the case of the epicure, or is simply an artificial
thing that is unrelated to any natural demand, as in
the case of the smoker, the inability to gratify the
desire is equally distressing. The suffering that results
could hardly be judged by what would [Page
106] follow on the physical plane when desire is thwarted, for in
the astral life emotion expresses itself much more intensely.
All
of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever type,
is the natural result of the thoughts, emotions and acts
during the life on the physical plane. The astral world
is that part of the mechanism for man's evolution that
brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving in
the wrong direction. He is not being punished. The injurious
forces he has generated are simply reacting upon him.
This reaction, that sets him right, is as certain as
in the case of the infant that picks up a glowing coal.
It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in result,
and it works itself out in a multiplicity of ways. One
of the methods of reaction that helps to stamp out a
fault is the automatic repetition of the unpleasant consequences
of wrong doing. The murderer will serve for a general
illustration. In the case of a deliberate, premeditated
and cruel murder, the assassin is moved by such base
motives as revenge or jealousy. The results of these,
so far as their frightful consequences to the victim
are concerned, do not in the least tend to deter the
assassin from further deeds of violence. He feels gratified
with his success and is quite satisfied with himself.
Only the possibility of detection and punishment troubles
him. [Page
107] If they follow in
due course they may accomplish something in correcting
his erroneous views of life; but they will not be sufficient
to register indelibly, in the very nature of the man,
a proper sense of the crime of which he has been guilty.
Such a man can be impressed and his viewpoint changed
only by consequences to himself. It is in the reaction,
in the astral life, of the forces he has generated here
that he gets the lesson that drives in upon his consciousness
the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the
physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless
come into contact in the astral world with conditions
sufficiently terrifying. He has made a tie with his victim
that cannot be broken until the scales of justice are
balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the uttermost.
Just what form of retribution will follow depends, of
course, on the nature of the case; but the reaction is
as certain as it is multiplex. One of its variants is
the gruesome experience of always fleeing from the corpse
of the victim, but with the utter impossibility of a
moment's escape. In the case of a murderer who has been
apprehended, tried, condemned and executed, the whole
of the tragedy and its sequel would be not only lived
over in imagination but repeated automatically, in fact,
and worked out in full detail in the plastic matter of
the astral region. Probably few of us have [Page
108] the imagination
to comprehend what the murderer feels of apprehension
and fear at his trial, when his life is in the balance;
or what he suffers while hiding from justice and making
futile efforts to escape the pursuing officers of the
law; or what his emotions are as his hands are tied and
he steps upon the death trap. All this is reproduced
in the astral life, repeatedly. As one whose mind is
completely filled with a subject — let us say something
that is the cause of much anxiety — finds it impossible
to turn his attention from it and think of other things,
or to go to sleep, and is impelled against his desire
to think the matter over and over, so the assassin is
enmeshed in the emotion-web of his crime and cannot escape
from living and acting it all over and over again until
a revulsion of feeling arouses him to full comprehension
of the horror of his crime.
Again
it should be said that no attempt is here made to give
more than a very fragmentary description, and a few hints,
of the manner in which the retributory laws of nature
work. A writer on the subject should also be careful
that, in pointing out the fact that to certain classes
of offenders against nature's laws severe penalties accrue,
the reader does not get the impression that suffering
is the common lot in the astral life. The truth of the
matter is that people who live clean, moderate lives,
and refrain from generating forces that are [Page
109] injurious to others, will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate
side of astral existence. In the limitations, the vexations, the physical
aches and ills, the poverty, sorrow and suffering of the material plane,
most of us are as near to hell conditions of existence as we ever will be.
The kindly man of average morality has so little of the matter of the lowest
level of the astral plane lingering in him that as a rule he would begin
his postmortem existence on the next higher subdivision, which is the counterpart
of the earth's surface. He would therefore have no knowledge of the hell
that exists on the lower level; but that is not at all true of those who
live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger, jealousy, hatred,
revenge, and their kindred impulses, that often lead to violent crimes. It
is possible to live the physical life so sanely, usefully, harmoniously and
unselfishly that at the death of the physical body one will pass almost immediately
to a joyous and useful career in the astral world; but while that is quite
possible the unfortunate fact is that a great many people so color all their
emotions with selfishness that the astral sojourn is unhappily affected by
it. It is the emotions that determine the astral life and if they are directly
selfish they bring the man into conditions on the astral plane that are very
unpleasant.
It
must be expected that any idea we may form [Page
110] of the astral life will be incomplete, and inadequate to give
a true conception of what it is really like. Perhaps the most comprehensible
of the sub-planes is that which reproduces the physical landscape in astral
matter. There the average man will begin his conscious astral career. If
we think of the world as we know it here and then imagine all that is material
to have vanished from it we shall gain some comprehension of the situation.
Eliminate the necessity of providing food, clothing and shelter and nearly
all of the labor of the race would cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining,
the building, the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange of the
products of field and factory, constitute nearly the whole of human activity.
In the astral life no food is required and one is clothed with the astral
matter from which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and rapidity
of thought. No houses are needed for shelter. The astral body is not susceptible
to degrees of heat and cold, and nothing there corresponds to our temperatures.
There is no division of night and day, objects being self-luminous and light
being perpetual.
If
we could drop out of physical life, all need of physical
labor, abolish all response to heat or cold, the need
of food and houses, and add unlimited wealth or, to be
more exact, give each person the ability to possess all
that wealth can [Page
111] confer and much
that it cannot, we would have an approach to a conception
of the astral world from one viewpoint. Each one entering
the astral life has, of course, a fullness of liberty
and freedom from responsibility that is not instantly
comprehensible to the physical consciousness. There
is nothing whatever that he must do. There is, however,
plenty that he can do if he desires to be active. On
the physical plane many people of wealth travel and
amuse themselves with sight seeing. Thousands of others
would do so if it were possible. In the astral world
it is possible, and large numbers of people drift about
with no particular plans.
As
the astral life becomes more and more familiar to the
newly arrived individual he gets well settled in it and
gradually readjusts his viewpoint to a truer perspective.
As time passes he is less and less in touch with the
affairs of the physical life and finally loses consciousness
of them altogether as he passes on to the higher levels
of the inner world; but there are many people who have
a more serious view of life and who lose no opportunity
of acquiring knowledge; and the astral world, which is
called "the hall
of learning" by students of the occult, furnishes
them remarkably good conditions. Here we are limited
in three dimensions of matter and hampered by the very
narrow range of the physical [Page 112] senses.
In the astral world matter has four dimensions and new and marvelous avenues
of learning open before the student. Those who are at all interested in music,
or art of any kind, find both the field and the facilities enormously extended.
Those who study nature, whether by directly probing into her secrets or by
cleverly combining her principles into new processes and inventions, have
such opportunities as scientist or discoverer has not dreamed of on this
plane. And so for all the thoughtful and studious there is a life of the
most useful and fascinating kind in the astral world; but it must not be
supposed that the avenues to progress are only for the studious. There, as
here, the opportunity for useful work in helping humanity forward is boundless;
for while poverty and disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic
work of other kinds to be done. People are to be taught, for there, as here,
the majority are sadly in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of nature's
laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in harmony with them in order
to get the greatest happiness from life; but the work to be done is by no
means confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes the teaching so necessary
has brought a great many people into the unfortunate condition where immediate
assistance is most urgently needed, and there is [Page
113] such a variety of helplessness that nobody need be idle.
Because
of the false teaching upon the subject of life hereafter,
people are bewildered when they become conscious in the
astral life. Many have had their minds so vividly impressed
with the awful fate that awaits those who are not "saved" before
death that they fall into a state of terror when at
last they realize that death has really occurred. Those
among the so-called dead who are kindly enough to rescue
the distressed may come to their relief and give most
valuable assistance. Perhaps the commonest thing that
engages the attention of the astral worker is the fear
that death brings to most people. They arrive in the
astral world with the feeling that everything is unknown
and uncertain. All preconceived ideas about the life
after death have suddenly been found unreliable and
they are afraid of, they know not what. They want to
cling to anybody who knows something of the new world.
When we remember that people are arriving in the astral
world by the tens of thousands daily, even under normal
conditions, it is evident that all who wish to be of
service can find plenty to do. No special knowledge
of the astral plane is necessary, though naturally
enough the greater one's knowledge the greater is his
usefulness; but common sense is a sufficient equipment
in [Page
114] simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead of giving
the entire time to the pleasures of that world. The work for the astral helpers
ranges upward in complexity, of course, and there is profitable activity
for those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually work in well
organized groups and render service of great practical value.
Life
on the astral plane has its end for the same reason
that it comes to a close on the physical plane. Nature's
purpose has been accomplished and the man is ready to
go on farther in his evolution. The length of the astral
life varies just as it does in the physical world. Some
physical lives are very long and sometimes only when
five scores of years, or more, have passed does the ego
withdraw. Other lives are very short and are scarcely
well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close. There
is nevertheless a general average to be found. It is
at least possible to make averages for different classes
of people and to say that a majority of those who are
of ordinary health and strength are likely to attain
a stated age, while it is certain that the majority of
those who have such and such a physical handicap will
lose their physical bodies when they are much younger.
Such general rules may also be applied to the astral
life.
Here
a long and alert life is most desirable [Page 115] because
the purpose of the physical plane is to gather experience that shall be transmuted
into wisdom on a higher plane; but the astral plane is, for the vast majority
of the race, related to the purgative process. In that life the errors of
the physical existence are largely worked out. Desires that have grown up
like weeds in a garden are killed and the budding virtues are given a chance
to grow. The rule of a long life being most desirable on the physical plane
is reversed on the astral plane. It is the shortest life in the astral world
that is the greatest prize, and it comes to those who have lived the purest
and noblest lives while here. The sooner a man gets through the astral world
and begins the reaping of his harvest on the mental plane, or heaven world,
the better.
The
length of the astral sojourn depends primarily upon
the durability of the astral body and that, in turn,
depends upon the kind of a life he has lived here. Let
us suppose that he has lived a very gross and sensual
life. Let us also imagine that he had an ungovernable
temper and frequently gave way to outbursts of fury;
farther, that he was cruel and revengeful, seeking and
finding many opportunities of inflicting injuries upon
others. Here we have a case for long life on the lower
levels of the astral world.
Let
us now consider a different type of man. He lives peacefully
and harmoniously with those [Page
116] about him. He feels
strong affection for wife and children. He has a host
of friends because of his cheerful, helpful and sympathetic
attitude toward others. He lives cleanly and thinks nobly.
His mind is kept free from trivialities and his tongue
is never employed in gossip. He makes a determined and
persistent effort to eliminate pride, envy and ambition.
He cultivates the habit of thinking first of the welfare
of others and always last of himself — in short,
tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all things
impersonally. Such a man could know nothing whatever
of the disagreeable part of the astral life and would
pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions and
reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.
From
the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually to
the higher. He remains on a given level for the period
that is required to eliminate the matter of that subdivision
from his astral body. He is then immediately conscious
on the next higher level. The grosser matter falls
away because the man has at last stopped sending his
life force through it. Ungratified desire has finally
worn itself out and he is free. The process can be greatly
hastened or retarded by the man's attitude toward life.
If he foolishly dwells upon his desires, he gives new
vitality and prolonged life to them. If he can resolutely
turn his mind to higher things he hastens his release.
His fate [Page
117] is in his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he has a knowledge
of such matters.
One
who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly through
the astral world than he would have done had he died
in the full strength of manhood. As the years accumulate
the emotions that vivify the lowest grades of astral
matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in
which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is
an additional reason why it is desirable to live to old
age in the physical world.
The
hold that the material world has upon the mind is one
of the causes which greatly prolong existence in the
astral world. Some people give their time and thought
so exclusively to material things that after they lose
the physical body they cannot keep the mind away from
the life that lies behind them. This difficulty does
not necessarily arise wholly from having given one's
energies entirely to personal ambition and material accumulation.
Sometimes the ruler of a country is so determined to
still dabble in affairs, as far as possible, that this
vivid interest in the physical world stretches out the
period of astral life most unfortunately.
Ordinarily
one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively
short, if we measure it in the terms of physical life.
A person who has lived here seventy years may have twenty
or thirty years on [Page
118] the
astral plane. But that will depend not only upon how
he lived the physical life just closed but also upon
his general position in human evolution. A savage of
low type would have a comparatively long astral life
while a man at the higher levels of civilization would
have a comparatively short period there. The man at the
somewhat lower levels of civilized life might be said
to come in at about midway between the two. But
it must be remembered that these are very general estimates
and that among civilized peoples individuals differ
enormously. Some will pass very slowly and, so far
as lower levels are concerned, painfully, through astral
life, while the sojourn of others is measured in minutes,
and they pass happily and almost instantaneously from
physical death to the heaven world; but such cases
are undoubtedly exceptional.
Communication
with those who have passed on into the astral world
is possible, but not always desirable, for a number of
reasons. As an evidence of the continuity of consciousness,
such communications have been of the greatest service
in the hands of the scientific investigator. As a consolation
to those who have thus come again in touch with dead
friends such messages have been of inestimable value
to the bereaved, particularly when they have been received
in the privacy of the family circle by some of its members. [Page
119] For a time those who have lost the
physical body are usually within easy reach through the
usual methods employed for the purpose and perhaps no
harm is done by such communications unless they arouse
anew the grief of those who have been left behind and
thus greatly depress the departed. But after the living
dead get farther along, and are much out of touch with
the material world, then directing their attention backward
may be injurious to them. For that reason careful students
of the occult seldom seek to obtain messages, or at least
do it with proper consideration for all the circumstances
of the particular case.
Due
regard for the welfare of those who have passed on,
as well as for those who remain, requires that the facts
be thoughtfully considered. The truth of the matter is
that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise to
the desire for a message of some sort. We long once more
to get into touch with one that seems to be lost to us.
We are not really thinking much about his welfare. As
a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us and does
not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able
to see us at all times and be conscious of our feelings
and emotions, but during the hours when we are asleep
he is in full and free communication with us and we with
him. On awakening we usually have no memory of this and
if we do we [Page
120] call it a dream. But it is not so with him. His memory of it
is perfect and as a consequence he has not our sense of separation and loss.
The
result of knowledge upon the subject, which can readily
be gained by a study of the researches of the skilled
occultists, is that we come to feel that we should rest
satisfied with the fact that we do converse with the
dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to
the scientific investigators. The natural order of things
is that the person who passes into the astral world shall
in time fix his attention exclusively upon the inner
life and be completely divorced from physical plane affairs.
That is the mental and emotional condition which permits
of his rapid passage through levels where he should not
linger. It is said that to turn his attention backward
at this juncture sometimes causes him acute distress.
A
reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge
of occultism often throws a new light upon the subject.
An instance of this is to be found in the story of the
woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his quest for
psychic information about the crisis that has been reached
in the affairs of his kingdom. The woman went into trance
and acted as a medium for a communication from Samuel,
who tells Saul just what will occur in the impending
battle. Samuel's first words were a reproach to Saul. "Why
hast thou [Page
121] disquieted
me to bring me up?" [Samuel XXVIII - 15]was
his greeting. It is the language of one who is displeased.
Drawing his attention forcibly back to the material
world by the strong desire of Saul to communicate with
him was evidently distressing, hence the rebuke, "Why
hast thou disquieted me?"
What
is here said on the subject of communication, however,
has reference to general principles only. There is no
intention of suggesting that it is always undesirable
to communicate with those who have passed over. Often
those on the other side seek means of communicating and
they should then find the most willing co-operation from
this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical plane
life has a message of great importance to deliver and
such a case reverses the general rule — he would
be delayed if he could not communicate. It would
be decidedly to his advantage to free his mind of the
matter. Until he has done so he may remain in a restless
condition and his case falls into the category of what
the spiritualists call "earth bound". He
may have left undone something that a message will
set right, if he can get it through, or he may have
secreted something that cannot be found because he
died suddenly and had no opportunity to speak of it;
or it may simply be a case of desiring to prove to
materialistic friends the fact that the [Page
122] so-called dead are not dead, and
are close at hand. It is sometimes possible for the
important information to come through into physical
life in the form of a dream by the living, and thus
the recovery of valuables has followed. [See Dreams
and Premonitions by L.W.Rogers]
It
sometimes happens that one who thus earnestly desires
to communicate but is wholly ignorant of how to accomplish
his purpose causes a good deal of annoyance. His blundering
attempts to use psychic force may be wholly abortive
and result in meaningless noises, raps, the tumbling
of books or dishes from shelves or the aimless movements
of furniture. Annoyance may sometimes be caused also
by intention, on the part of those who think it is
humorous to play pranks. It must be remembered that
passing on to the astral life does not improve one's
common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing
to astonish or delude somebody, or trick a friend into
seriously accepting some absurd assertion as a fact,
he still regards the same course as entertaining. This
accounts for many of the foolish, and sometimes startling
messages, or answers to questions, received at séances.
It
has often been asked why, if communication between
the physical and astral planes is possible, we do not
receive information that might lead to valuable discoveries
and inventions. The very [Page
123] fact
that death does not confer wisdom explains it in part.
But an even more important fact is that communication
is easy with the lower levels and correspondingly difficult
as the higher levels are reached. All who have had much
experience with séances are familiar with the fact that "guides" or "controls", that
is, the persons in the invisible realms who direct
the séance and frequently speak through the medium,
are very often American Indians or others at a low level
of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants of the
astral levels with which communication is easy are not
the type capable of furnishing ideas of any great value.
It is on the higher levels that the man of intellectual
power passes most of his astral life. The scientist
or the inventor who has given so much thought to his
work that he has been in some degree successful here
is likely to pass swiftly through lower levels. It is
the highest of the seven subdivisions of the astral world
that is the habitat of the person who has followed intellectual
pursuits during physical life, and with that level it
is practically impossible for the ordinary medium to
communicate.
One
of the objections to indiscriminate communication with
the astral plane lies in the fact that the lowest class
of entities are most accessible. That not only accounts
for the commonplace messages in such abundance, but it
is [Page 124] frequently
a source of actual danger, especially where people form "circles" for
the purpose of rendering themselves more sensitive to
psychic influences. In such cases it is common to accept
every message as absolute truth. There is no doubt
that as a rule the astral people in charge of such a
gathering are earnest and honest; but they are neither
all-wise nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about
that some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed
by astral entities, and should that occur it might prove
to be an exceedingly serious matter. Some people have
thus lost their sanity and others their lives.
Probably
there is no astral subject of more vital importance
to any of us than that of the right attitude of mind
and emotion toward the living dead. It is commonly said
that we can do nothing more for them when they have passed
away from physical plane life, but a greater error could
not easily be made. The connection with us is by no means
severed. Not only are they emotionally in touch with
us but their emotions are very much keener than when
they had a physical body through which to express them.
They are now living in the astral body, the matter of
which is enormously more responsive to emotional vibrations.
A joyous emotion here would be tremendously more joyous
there and a thing that would produce depression would
be enormously [Page 125] more depressing there. That fact should give pause to those
who are inclined to think in sorrow, and with something of despair, of their
friends who have passed on. They are not far away in space and our strong
emotions affect them instantly and profoundly.
We
are all familiar with the fact that moods are communicable.
The person who is cheerful cheers up others in his vicinity,
while the one who is gloomy spreads gloom wherever he
goes. It is a simple matter of vibrations. It is often
within the power of a member of the family who habitually
has "the
blues" to destroy the happiness of the entire
household. If we think of the most depressing effect
that can be caused by sorrow on the physical plane,
and then multiply its effectiveness many times we shall
have no exaggeration of the astral effects of the emotions
we indulge in the physical body. If, then, the sorrow
of a weeping relative distresses us here it is clear
that it must bring really keen distress to the one
who is the subject of such grief. His life may thus
be made miserable by the very persons who would be
the last to cause him sorrow if they understood what
they were doing.
We
can really help the so-called dead and make them very
much happier by simply changing our mournful attitude
toward them. All violent expressions of grief should
be avoided and a [Page 126] determination
to make the best of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may indeed
be bad, but we make it very much worse by our mourning. The funeral customs
of Occidental civilization are quite consistent with its materialism. We
act as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are lost to us forever.
A
more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at any
theosophical funeral and, with growing frequency, at
the funerals among all thinking people. A funeral should
not be the occasion of a final expression of grief, but
a gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and helpful
good wishes to the comrade whose life work in the physical
world is finished. The general feeling should be very
much like that of a party of friends who go to the pier
to see a well loved traveler off on a long journey to
remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of many years
or possibly a lifetime. There should be constant thought
of his welfare, not of the loss to his friends. Grief
that thinks of itself is an expression of selfishness
and is detrimental to all. One should practice self-control
in such matters just as one would control the emotion
of anger under different circumstances.
Naturally
enough the control of grief, when one we love has passed
on, is none too easy. But any degree of success is much
better than no effort, [Page 127] and will certainly help the one for whom we
mourn. Much can be accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that bring
vividly back the keen sense of loss. Many people indulge the foolish custom
of regularly visiting the cemetery where the body has been interred. A little
analysis will show that this is only another evidence of our materialistic
modes of thought, and the custom serves to perpetuate emotions that should
never have existed. We cannot, of course, think too often nor too tenderly
of those who have passed on, but we should do nothing that leads us to think
of them as being dead, or being far away. The fact that they are alive and
well and happy and near should constantly fill the mind; and all of that,
in nearly all cases, will be perfectly true if we do not foolishly destroy
their peace of mind with our selfish sorrow.
Occasionally
a hint on the subject comes from the astral plane people
themselves. In a book [Raymond: or Life and
Death by Oliver Lodge] by Sir Oliver
Lodge, on his experiments in psychic research, there
is a message from his son, who was killed in battle,
agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner and
to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they will
all refrain from gloomy thoughts about him! No one
who is informed on the subject of emotional reaction
on the astral body, after the loss of the physical
body, [Page
128] could be surprised
by the conditions named by the young man.
The
advocates of cremation have a strong argument in the
fact that the preservation of the body for a time, whether
in a tomb or a grave, tends to keep grief alive. When
the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that the body
is somehow the man seems to have less of a material basis.
Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate, not alone
because they renew grief through thinking upon it and
thus cause great distress to those for whom we mourn,
but also because the environment of a cemetery is one
of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It is a dismal
park of concentrated griefs where each mourner accentuates
the emotional distress of all others. There is but
one sensible attitude to take toward those who have just
passed on — to think of them as living a joyous,
busy life and at least calling on us daily even though
most of us are not sensitive enough to be conscious of
the fact. We should try to realize the truth of the matter
and then readjust our habits to fit the facts. The average
person who is afflicted with the erroneous ideas still
so common, is doing an enormous amount of injury and
is bringing into the lives of the very people he loves
a depression of which he little dreams, and which he
can change to vivid pleasure by always thinking cheerfully
of them and sending them daily thoughts of peace and
serenity. [Page
129] [Page 130]
CHAPTER
- 9 -
REBIRTH:
ITS REASONABLENESS
The
soundest ground upon which anything can rest is its
inherent reasonableness. From that viewpoint, let us
examine the idea that the multitudes of people about
us are old souls in new bodies. Perhaps the greatest
folly of which one can be guilty is to instantly reject
an idea because it is wholly different from what he has
previously believed. That makes him a slave to his present
idea, whatever it may be, and quite regardless of how
erroneous it may be. If people were not willing to examine
unaccustomed ideas, the world would make no progress.
If that had always been the attitude of everybody in
the past, if they had clung tenaciously to the ideas
with which they were born, we should still believe that
the earth is flat, that slavery is a necessary human
institution, and that railways would be a dangerous and
undesirable innovation. In short, if we did not seriously
examine what often appears at first statement to be almost
impossible, and perhaps absurd, all the follies and superstitions
of the past would still be afflicting mankind.
Let
us consider the human infant as we see it at birth.
Whence came it? How
can we account [Page 131] for
it in a universe of law and order? We can understand it from the physical side. Its tiny
body is a concourse of physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few months.
But its mind, its consciousness, its emotions, what of them? The average
man replies that God made them and they constitute the soul. But how and
when were they "made"? Even the material part of this infant did
not spring miraculously and instantaneously into existence. How much less
possible it is that the soul did so! If we say "God made it" we
have explained nothing. But it is not necessary to
deny that God creates the soul in order to move toward
an understanding of how the soul came to be. It is
only necessary to say that the process of its creation
was evolutionary. Nobody denies that the earth was
created by evolution, although men may differ in opinion
on the matter of a divine intelligence guiding its
evolutionary development. The same truth must apply
to the human intelligence.
Lodge
wrote ‘Life and Matter’ as a reply to Haeckel's ‘Riddle
of the Universe’, which presented the latter's
philosophy of materialism. But
Lodge did more than demolish Haeckel's premises and
leave him with not an inch of scientific ground to
support his theory. The English scientist raised questions
that have not been answered, and cannot be answered,
by the scientific materialist. [Page
132] He points out that
the materialist's philosophy has no explanation for "the
extraordinary rapidity of development which results
in the production of a fully endowed individual in
the course of some fraction of a century". [Life and Matter. — Lodge,
page 121]
With
those two dozen words Lodge leaves the scientific materialist
speechless; for scientists are evolutionists, and it
is impossible to account for "the
extraordinary rapidity of development" by
the laws of evolution. It
is well known that the evolutionary age of anything
depends upon its complexity. A simple form is comparatively
young while a complex one has a long evolutionary history
behind it. The earth is simple compared to a human
being. If, then, it has required ages to evolve the
earth to its present stage how long did it take to
evolve the wonderfully complex mental and emotional
nature of the human being that inhabits the earth? And
thus Lodge bottles Haeckel up on his own premises and
shows that the very evolutionary principles to which
the naturalist appeals demolish his theory! He practically
says to Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir, fails
to show how it is possible for the vacuous mind of
the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
in thirty or forty years". In other words, if
the infant is nothing but the form we see it would
be utter absurdity to say that that mass of matter [Page 133] can evolve a high grade
of intelligence within a few years when it takes centuries
to make a slight evolutionary gain.
Look
at an infant the day it is born. Study its face. One
might as well search the surface of a squash for some
indication of intelligence. But wait only a little
while and you shall have evidence not merely of intelligence
but of emotions possible only to the highest order
of life. Clearly, here is something not evolved within
a brief period from a mass of material atoms. Such
a theory would be as unscientific as the popular belief
in miraculous creation at which the scientific materialist
scoffs. The swift change from the vacuity of the infant
mind to the intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction
of a century" is not the creation
of something but its manifestation — the coming
through into visible expression of that which already
exists The soul, the consciousness, the real man,
consisting of the whole of the mental and emotional
nature, which has been built up through thousands of
years of evolution, is coming once more to rebirth,
to visible expression in a material body.
The
body is, of course, but the new physical instrument
of the old soul — an instrument, as, certainly
as the violin is an instrument and a vehicle for the
musician's expression. At every turn our materialistic
conceptions mislead us and [Page 134]prevent the perception of nature's truth. It
is because we think of the body as being actually the person, that it seems
improbable that an old soul has entered the infant body. We think of the
power and intelligence of an old soul and then look at the baby and find
no indication of such things. But that is only because the baby body is such
a new and undeveloped instrument that it is at first useless and only slowly
can it be brought under control of the soul and made to express its intelligence
and power. The body is a growing instrument, not a completed one.
Let
us suppose that musical instruments grow as physical
bodies do. Suppose there was a time when the piano was
keyless, as a baby is toothless. Suppose that sounding
boards have a period of immaturity and that the whole
mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only
be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts
to play on such a piano his performance would by no means
be an indication of his ability. A competent critic who
could hear the performance but not see the musician would
promptly declare that no really great musician was touching
the keys. And that is precisely the mistake we make in
assuming that the immature body of an infant is capable
of expressing the intellectual power of the old soul,
or, to put it differently, denying that a returned old
soul is in possession of the infant [Page
135] body simply because there is no physical plane evidence of the
fact. If pianos slowly grew to maturity then only when the instrument was
mature could the master musician give a practical demonstration of his skill;
and only when the physical body has reached its maturity can the soul that
is using it fully express itself.
In
the early years of the physical body the soul is only
very partially expressed through it. The entrance of
the consciousness into the physical world is slow and
gradual. Beginning some months before the birth of the
physical body and continuing for a period of several
years the soul, or consciousness; is engaged in the process
of anchoring itself in the physical world. For a long
time the center of consciousness remains above the material
plane and during the early years of childhood the consciousness
is divided between the astral and physical worlds, with
the result that the child is often somewhat confused
and brings fragments of astral consciousness into physical
life. When the physical body is about seven years old
the consciousness may be said to be centered on the physical
plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's
new instrument are mature has the opportunity come for
the fullest expression.
Some
of the difficulties commonly associated in the mind
with the thought of the pre-existence [Page 136] and rebirth of the
soul will disappear if we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is
a center of consciousness, which is always conscious somewhere, but which
very gradually shifts its focus, from plane to plane. Its permanent home
is in that body of subtle matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels
of the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws
about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle of
consciousness, that is not permanent but which will serve the purpose of
functioning for a period on that plane. Downward or outward again the energies
are sent, building about the center of consciousness on the astral plane
a temporary body of astral matter, temporary in the same sense that the physical
body is temporary, and which shall serve the consciousness in the astral,
or emotional world, during the whole of the physical plane life and for some
time afterward. Still outward, or downward, the soul sends its energies till
the material world is reached, when it begins to function partially, and
very feebly, through the infant physical body.
That
we learn by experience, nobody will deny. That the
events of daily life develop intellect and compassion
is too obvious for argument; but it is equally clear
that the mental and moral difference between the savage
and the civilized is so [Page 137] great that
only a very small portion of the evolutionary work can be done in the longest
physical existence possible to man. The way in which nature accomplishes
so great an achievement is by repeated visits of the soul to the physical
realm. During the interval between physical lives the consciousness abides
on its own plane in the spiritual world. The thought is turned inward instead
of outward. That state of consciousness, being greater than this one, includes
a memory of the physical life just closed. The soul during that period may
be likened to a man who, at the close of a busy day, retreats to the privacy
of his fireside and there goes thoughtfully over the day's events. He seeks
out of memory's record all the blunders he has made and by careful analysis
fortifies himself against a repetition of such mistakes in the future. As
he reviews the record, he sees with satisfaction the good points it contains
and he resolves to be even more helpful to others on the morrow. He outlines
in his mind the affairs of the next day and determines to make the most of
his opportunities. The result of all this is that he will begin the active
life again on the following morning, not only rested and refreshed for the
day's program but at a somewhat advanced mental and moral level. He starts
wiser and stronger than he was on the previous day. And even so it is with
the soul, the real man. [Page 138] The long
centuries of blissful life that elapse before the return here, give opportunity
for the complete digestion and assimilation of all the experiences, great
and small, of the period that closed with the death of the physical body.
On its next visit to the physical plane the soul will begin at a higher point
than in the previous life because the period of assimilation will have transmuted
past experience into wisdom and a better brain will express that wisdom in
the following incarnation.
The
soul is the life, the thought, the emotions, the intelligence.
Everything about the human being that is not material
belongs to the soul side, the life side. All that is
physical constitutes the environment of the soul. The
physical body is as much a part of the soul's environment
as a house is. The soul comes and goes. It appears, disappears
and reappears in the visible world, and each time it
lives in a new body. That body is its temporary house.
Imagine a naturalist journeying to far lands where the
climatic conditions permit but a short stay and where
only a rude shelter can be erected, that will be blown
to pieces and scattered by the storms soon after he abandons
it. Each year he comes to gather specimens. He constructs
a temporary house, accumulates his store of material,
and then retires to his permanent home in a more genial
clime. There [Page 139] at his leisure, under the most favorable conditions,
he classifies the specimens, studies them profoundly and adds another harvest
of wisdom to the lessons he learned on preceding journeys.
Even
so does the soul come, seeking in the rude material
world the experience that will give it greater wisdom.
It also lives in a temporary house, called a body, that
time will destroy. That body serves the same purpose
for the soul that the temporary hut does for the naturalist.
Like the naturalist, the soul retires with its accumulations
to more genial climes and there it also deeply studies
its sentient experiences, gleaning from them another
harvest of wisdom to add to its spiritual wealth.
In
trying to understand the relationship of the soul to
the universe it should never be forgotten that the permanent
residence of the soul is on the inner planes and that
a lifetime here is, comparatively, but a fleeting visit.
In the case of the naturalist, when the season suitable
for his brief sojourn in the far country arrives, he
turns his attention to it and roughly outlines in his
thought the work he will do. Then he takes the necessary
steps to bring his consciousness into contact with the
work — that is, he travels to the scene of his
coming activities. Analogous to that is the task of the
soul, which is the real man. Having finished the assimilation
of the experiences obtained in [Page 140] the last embodiment he
again turns his energies outward toward the material
plane. As it would be impossible for the naturalist to
accomplish his purpose at a distance, so it is for the
soul. In each case the consciousness must be brought
to function where the work is to be done. There must
be a means of approach. The naturalist cannot see and
hear and collect at a distance. No more can a soul receive
vibrations from the material world. To get experience
here it must be encased in a physical body. The naturalist
brings his consciousness into contact with the work by
the media of railways and ships. The soul accomplishes
the task by drawing about itself an instrument composed
of the next lower grade of matter and we call that instrument
its mental body. Sending its consciousness outward through
that it is able to come into contact with astral matter,
and to fashion another vehicle from that. Through the
astral matter it can contact physical matter and express
itself in the material world. If, with clairvoyant sight,
we could observe the true, the inner man, we should perceive
the subtle bodies through which alone he can be conscious
here — the physical body surrounded
and permeated by the matter of the astral body, then
both the physical and astral bodies enveloped and interpenetrated
by the matter of the mental body, and all three of them
within the embracing control [Page
141] of the causal, or spiritual, body. All these together constitute
the mechanism through which the soul sends its energies outward into expression
in less spiritual realms; and through them alone can it become conscious
of the material plane. Now, there is a most important distinction between
some of these visible and invisible bodies, or vehicles of consciousness,
and it is that the causal, or spiritual, vehicle is the only one that does
not perish before another incarnation begins. The physical, astral and mental
bodies are but temporary aggregations of matter that the soul uses for a
while and then discards. Not so the causal body. It persists and plays a
wonderful part in the soul's evolution. It is composed of matter that is
very little like matter as we know it. Perhaps we may call it spiritual matter,
but matter that is so much nearer to the source of being that it scintillates
with the essence of life. This spiritual body may be called the permanent
residence of the soul, from which its energies are sent outward through the
mental and astral into the physical body. It is also a hall of records, for
in it is, in epitome, the result of past experiences gathered through all
the incarnations. To liken it to a phonograph record that can both record
and reproduce words, would not be a perfect simile, but it is at least a
suggestion. If a phonograph could not only record all that is said [Page
142] in its vicinity but all that is thought and felt and seen, and
was itself a living thing that could then take the whole of those experiences,
extract and absorb the mental and moral lessons they teach, and could put
those lessons at its own service in such a readjustment of its mechanism
as would enable it in the future to exclude the trivial and record only the
valuable for its more rapid evolution, it would then do for an analogy of
at least a part of the functions of the causal body.
One
great purpose served by the causal body is the conservation
of energy. While the mental, astral and physical bodies
perish in each incarnation the persisting spiritual body
has recorded and preserved all the experiences they enabled
the soul to get. Therefore all the skill and knowledge
evolved has been stored in the causal body and can be
used in following incarnations in the exact degree that
the new lower vehicles are able to transmit its lofty
vibrations. That is one reason why it is so important
to purify the lower bodies and make them responsive.
It is because what we learn in each life is preserved
in each individual that the rapid progress of the race
is possible. Each old soul brings back and expresses
through the new physical body the accumulated harvests
of past lives.
For
the time being the soul's evolution lies on [Page
143] the physical plane where certain lessons are to be learned. After
the early years of childhood are over the consciousness is firmly anchored
here, where the chief work is to be done, during the hours of the waking
life. During sleep the ego temporarily abandons the physical body and functions
in the astral body in the astral world. The material body sleeping here is
merely a deserted and empty vehicle, magnetically connected with the soul,
awaiting its return.
As
childhood, youth, maturity and old age pass, complex
experiences come to the soul thus functioning here. Other
souls functioning through physical bodies are encountered
and various relationships are established. Out of the
complexity of social, business, religious and political
activities the soul gets a large and varied experience.
Sooner or later the death of the physical body closes
the chapter. The gathering of such experiences has ceased,
not because the soul has acquired all possible physical
world knowledge, but because its instrument of consciousness
here has worn out.
Death
cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection
and the center of its consciousness is then shifted to
the astral plane. There the purgative process goes forward,
as explained in a previous chapter. As that proceeds
the soul gradually gets free from one grade of astral
matter after another and with the disappearance of [Page 144] each the
man becomes conscious on a higher level. The physical body is lost in a moment
but the matter of the astral body gradually wears away until there is so
little left that the soul has lost connection with the astral world also.
This means that the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental plane,
or heaven world, where the man will function on its lower levels.
There
in the mental world, functioning through the vehicle
of mental matter, a very important process goes on. The
heaven world life is a harvest time in which assimilation
of experience takes place. The consciousness there deeply
broods over the experiences of life and extracts the
essence from them which is transmuted into faculty and
power for future greater expression. It is thus that
the soul grows in wisdom and power through its long evolution.
When
the heaven life is finished, when experience has been
transmuted and the net gain has been built into the enduring
causal body, the mental body, like the astral, has been
dissipated. The end of a cycle has come and the physical,
astral and mental bodies have all perished. Nothing
remains but the soul, the real man, functioning through
the causal body, which persists. From that the ego again
sends the forces outward, in the first activity toward
rebirth, forming a new mental body by drawing about itself
the matter [Page
145] of the lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new
astral body on the astral plane and finally taking possession of another
infant body in process of formation on the physical plane, into which it
will in due course be reborn.
Another
incarnation has been begun. Again the soul will have
the experiences of childhood, youth, maturity and old
age. In the early part of the incarnation it slowly secures
fuller and firmer possession of its new physical instrument
— the material body — and passes through
a period of recapitulation.
We
must not lose sight of the fact that during the stay
on inner planes the soul has progressed in evolution
and has returned with greater mental capacity and deeper
moral insight than it has ever before possessed. It is
now capable of acquiring new and more difficult lessons
than it could have mastered in its previous incarnation.
Thus each incarnation marks an advance in the long evolutionary
journey. In each physical life it develops something
of intellect and strengthens somewhat the moral nature.
The objective is to bring them both into their highest
possible expression. When, after a long series of incarnations,
this is accomplished, the individual becomes a combination
of saint and genius and passes on to super-physical
and super-human evolutions to return no more, unless
in a voluntary [Page 146] incarnation
as one of the teachers and saviours of the human race.
The
period between these consecutive appearances of the
soul in a succession of physical bodies varies greatly
and depends on a number of things. The length of time
spent upon the astral plane has already been discussed.
The time spent in the heaven world depends upon the mental
and moral forces generated during the physical and astral
life. If there is a great harvest of experience it will
require a longer time to transmute it, while, of course,
one who has thought little and loved but little will
have a shorter period there, for it is the heart and
head activities that have their culmination in the mental
world. The question is a rather complex one and other
factors come into play, including the intensity of the
heaven world life. In general terms, however, it can
be said that the heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent
person will commonly be a period several times the
length of his combined physical and astral life. Some
people will have only two or three hundred years between
incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries
and still others a much longer period.
In
getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth,
or reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the
fact that the soul, or center of individualized consciousness,
is the man and that [Page
147] the
physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a
number of years; that the causal body is his permanent
body for the whole of human evolution; that the mental
plane is his home plane and that from there he sends
forth successive expressions of himself into these lower
planes. With such facts before us there should be no
confusion of thought about the successive personalities
of an individual; yet we sometimes hear people speak
of the absurdity of supposing that a person can be one
man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth.
Of course no such thing occurs. An individual remains
the same individual forever. "But", objects
the critic, "may
I not have been Mr. Smith in England six hundred years
ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in America,
at this moment? If so is that not a
case of being two individuals?"
It
is not a case of being two individuals. It is a case
of one individual being expressed through a physical
body six hundred years ago in England, dying from it,
spending a fairly long period in the astral plane and
heaven world, and then again expressing himself through
another physical body in America at the present time.
The confusion of thought on the part of the questioner
arises from thinking of the physical body as being
the man; but it is no more the man than the clothing
he wears. It is true that he is known at one period [Page 148] as Smith and at another as Brown, but that no
more affects his individuality than the assumption of an alias by a fleeing
criminal changes him. The name applies exclusively to the physical body,
or personality, as distinguished from the individuality. That body is but
the temporary clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were
applied to his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his
body. We might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and Mr. Darkclothes
in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name would in the least
degree make him somebody else. The majority of women change their names in
each incarnation. A man may know a certain woman as Miss Smith when she is
a slip of a girl, free from care and with little serious thought of life.
Twenty years later she may be Mrs. Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron,
the mother of children. She has changed her name and greatly changed in character,
too, but she is the same individual.
It
seems probable that a person may change quite as much
between infancy and old age as between this incarnation
and the next. Even the difference between a youth of
twenty years who is an artist and the same man at three
score and ten who has given forty years to scientific
study and research, may be enormous, but the individuality
is, of course, identical. He has rapidly [Page
149] evolved and greatly improved, and that
is just what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths — steady
evolutionary development of the eternal individual.
The
reincarnating process by which the soul evolves is
somewhat analogous to the growth of a young physical
body. The process consists of alternating periods of
objective and subjective activity. How does the body
of a child grow? It consumes food, the objective activity.
It then digests and assimilates it, the subjective procedure.
These periods must alternate or there can be no growth,
because neither alone is the complete process. The one
is the complement of the other. So it is in the evolution
of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life
is the food on which the soul grows. The physical plane
existence is the objective period in which the food is
gathered. At death the man passes into the invisible
realms where the subjective process is carried on. He
digests and assimilates his experiences and the gist
of these experiences is stored in the causal body. What
food is to the growth of the physical body, experience
is to the growth of the causal body.
The
same law governs mental and moral growth, as it operates
in our daily affairs. A young man is in college. How
does his intellect grow? By precisely the same process
of [Page 150] alternating
periods of objective and subjective activity. In the
class room the instructor puts a mathematical problem
on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward senses
of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the
student gathers the food for mental growth. This period
of objective activity comes to an end and he then retires
to the privacy of his room and there the subjective period
begins. He deeply thinks over the problem. His material,
the food for mental growth, is only a few notes that
serve to keep the problem in his mind. At first all that
they signify is not obvious, but as he turns the various
points over and over in his mind their significance becomes
clearer and fuller. It is the subjective process of digestion.
Little by little new light dawns in the student's mind.
Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
principles involved, and the process of assimilation
is finished. This subjective period is the complement
of the objective period and they must go on alternating
or intellectual growth will stop. When the process of
digestion and assimilation is finished the student must
return to the classroom for further mental food and
when he arrives it is by virtue of the fact that he did
digest the previous lesson that he is able to take a
higher and more difficult one. Precisely so it is with
the reincarnating soul. In the interval between [Page
151] incarnations it so assimilates the
experiences of the last physical life that it comes to
rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take
higher and more difficult lessons than it could previously
master.
In
the case of both physical growth by eating and mental
growth by instruction there is no possible escape from
the law of alternating periods of objective and subjective
activity. When the child has digested and assimilated
a meal there is but one possible thing that can follow
— return to his source of supply for another meal.
When the student has digested and assimilated the lesson
given to him the only possibility of further mental growth
lies in his return to the class-room for more material.
And so it is with the human soul in its work of evolving
its latent powers and possibilities. There is no other
road forward but the cyclic one that brings it back to
the physical life incarnation after incarnation, but
always at a higher point than it previously touched.
The hunger of the child that insures its return to the
table for more food is analogous to the desire of the
soul for sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.
These
alternating periods with the element of constant return
are found everywhere in the economy of nature. All her
evolutionary expressions are cyclic. But the cyclic movement
is not [Page
152] in
closed circles. It represents a spiral. The "evolutionary
ladder" that
the soul climbs is a winding stairway. In its upward
progress it makes many rounds but it is always mounting
and never returns to the same point. In each cycle,
that is made up of the journey from the heaven world
through the astral plane, into the physical and then
back through the astral plane into the heaven world,
it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a
higher state of development, than it had previously
attained. Each rebirth finds it abler here to gather
a larger harvest of experience here and each return
to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler
to digest and assimilate its experiences and to comprehend
more of the realities of the life of its home plane.
This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral
and mental regions, is a continuous progressive journey
of the soul which began away back at the dawn of mind
in man and will continue until he is the perfected
mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he
gathers experience in proportion to his alertness and
to the opportunities his previous lives have made for
him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to
be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure
in the astral life and joy and wisdom in the mental
region, or heaven world. But he also does some evil
things. He makes enemies, he [Page 153] generates hatred and
he injures others. This will give him distress in the
astral life and no results for soul growth or general
progress in the heaven world. If he does an equal amount
of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he does
much good and little evil his progress will be rapid
and his existence happy. If he is a man of great energy,
and no very great moral development, and selfishly
does much wrong, he will suffer much in the astral
life.
It
often puzzles the student of elementary Theosophy to
be told that the soul passes through the purgation of
the astral plane and goes on into the heaven world only
to return to another incarnation and later to again enter
the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who
has thus been purified be again purified?
The
astral reactions are the results of the blunders made
in each lifetime. Each of us in any given incarnation
creates by his wrong doing the only purgatory that awaits
him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly
be any painful reaction. As a matter of occult fact the
average good man will find the astral plane life a happy
existence and will soon pass on to the blissful heaven
world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only
to his evil deeds. Let us assume that he has committed
murder. When the reaction of the evil force he has generated
is [Page 154] over
and he passes on into the heaven plane it does not mean that he is incapable
of future evil. It means that he has probably learned thoroughly the lesson
that it is very foolish to take life. But there are many other lessons he
has not learned. When he passes into the heaven world he temporarily leaves
all evil behind him. He is as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple.
The astral body, like the physical, has perished and it is the freed soul
that enters the heaven world. But when he returns through the astral plane
to reincarnation he is clothed again in astral matter and this new astral
body is exactly representative of his attainments in evolution. In his coming
incarnation he will have other physical plane experiences and learn other
lessons. The next time probably he will not kill, but perhaps he will cheat
and steal or be a drunkard. These errors will react upon him in the astral
life that follows. In a coming incarnation he will be wise enough to be temperate
and neither cheat nor steal; but perhaps he will be a gossip and work much
evil through slander. This in turn will bring its pain; and so in time he
will learn to generate no evil force at all but to live in good will and
helpfulness toward everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed, his
life on all planes will be happy and the painful part of human evolution
will, for him, be over. [Page 155]
The
purpose of evolution is no less obvious than the fact
of evolution. Evolution is an unfolding process in which
the simple becomes the complex and the inner life is
more and more fully expressed in outer form. The development
and improvement in form keeps pace with the necessities
of the unfolding life. In the lowest levels in the animal
kingdom the form is but a cell. But as the life comes
into fuller and fuller expression, limbs for locomotion
and, in due course, the organs for hearing and seeing,
and the other mechanism of the developing consciousness,
are evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of consciousness
comes to its highest possible form and then evolution
goes on in the perfecting of that physical form. In the
process of continually changing the matter of the body
it is possible for the brain to be constantly improved
and the whole body to grow more and more sensitive and
gradually to become a better and truer expression of
the evolving life within. In each incarnation the physical
body thus improves. The evolution of life and form necessarily
go forward together. Ultimately perfection of form, as
well as perfection of intellect and morality, will be
reached and human evolution will be finished.
The
purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a god
in the making — not actually, but only potentially
a god, a being to whom all wisdom, [Page 156] perfect compassion and unlimited power are possible;
and by the process of evolution he changes the latent into the active. He
is at first only an individualized center of consciousness within the All-Consciousness,
a mere fragment of the divine life. His relationship to the Supreme Being
is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product of it that has latent
within it all the characteristics of the plant and the power to become a
plant. It is not a plant and neither is man a god; but when the seed has
sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is a plant in the making;
and when the human being has begun to evolve his latent spiritual qualities
he is a god in the making. The theosophical view is that man is essentially
divine.
Critics
sometimes ask why, if man is originally divine, it
is necessary for him to pass through any evolutionary
process. Divinity indicates merely the essential nature
of the human being, not his possession of either knowledge
or power or any degree of spiritual perfection. It is
as though we should say that the infant son of a great
king is royal. The word "royal", like
the word "divine". indicates a relationship.
The baby royalist is not a king; but he is a king in
the making. He has much to learn. He must be educated
in statecraft and he must evolve diplomacy. After much
experience he will, in time, be capable of ruling [Page
157] an
empire. At present this helpless infant bears little
resemblance to a king. Nevertheless, on the day of
his birth he was as royal as his father. In the same
sense the divinity of man represents potential possibilities
rather than an obvious fact of the moment. Man is an
embryo god and, in time, he shall evolve faculties
and powers that his present limited consciousness cannot
even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature of
physical origin that lives a brief span to catch a
glimpse of immortality and perish, but a spark of the
divine life that shall evolve into flame.
Some
people accept evolution as a matter of course, in a
general way, but they appear unwilling to admit that
the race has really made any evolutionary progress. Even
scientific men have sometimes expressed doubt whether
the world is growing better. In a newspaper interview
an English scientist was quoted as saying a few years
ago that the race is just as wicked today as at any time
within recorded history. If he was correctly reported
it must have been a hasty expression of opinion which
a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It
is true that things are still bad enough but they are
certainly enormously better than they were some centuries
ago. To say that the world is full of crime and violence
proves nothing; nor does even [Page
158] the fact that a civilized nation reverts to the wartime practices
of savage life furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to
do in determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality
is to take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective
conscience. How does the world of today view war and how did the world in
the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to shock us now but the very
fact that it does shock us is the best evidence of moral progress. Atrocities
were expected and taken as a matter of course some centuries ago. They are
not the rule now but the rare exception and those guilty of them are likely
to make their name a byword among nations. Well within the era of recorded
history the usages of nations condemned prisoners of war to become slaves
for life. Now the rule is to feed and clothe them and at the close of the
conflict send them home.
A
simple thing like public sports may be used as a test
of public morals. They show what the collective conscience
approves. In these days there is very little of brutality
in public sports. In countries like Spain and Mexico
bull fighting is still popular; but if we look backward
to the Roman period we find a cruelty in public sports
that is comparatively shocking. Gladiators, according
to the historians, were compelled to fight [Page
159] to the death. Offenders were devoured by
starving wild beasts, and it all made a Roman holiday.
Such "sports" would, of course,
be utterly impossible anywhere in the world today;
but at that time they were matters of course in the
life of the world's greatest empire. The fact that
the race has evolved morally and that the collective
conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer
than in the past is too obvious for argument.
Now,
how are we to account for that evolutionary progress?
It will not do to say that the Christian religion has
wrought the change because, splendid as are the teachings
of the Christ, the world has not accepted them and shaped
its civilization by them. If it had done so, a world-war
would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called
Christian nations wrangled and fought over commercial
spoils through all their history but class has been
arrayed against class and every gain in either personal
liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by force
from those who profited by the misfortunes of others.
In other words, the particular improvements that should
have been brought about by religion were compelled, not
freely volunteered. All religious teaching helps but,
allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of Christianity,
we are still unable to account for the change in [Page
160] the common conscience of the race, an evolutionary
gain that has been going steadily on since long, long
before the coming of the Christ
— gradual improvement that is by no means confined
to Christian nations. It is as pronounced in Asia as
in Europe. How then shall we account for it?
If
the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress
of the race in morality becomes simple. The majority
of the great groups of souls that constituted the civilized
nations in the time when Rome was mistress of the Occidental
world have had several incarnations since and in each
sojourn on the astral plane have had the severe lesson
of the painful reaction from cruelty to others. Thus
does nature gradually change the cruel man to the merciful
man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane
as well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned
in any incarnation are carried forward into the next
life, and thus compassion grows until there is ultimately
perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the progress
of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the
viewpoint of reincarnation.
Except
by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such
evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the
pre-existence of the soul and hold that it is in some
way brought into being at the time of conception or birth,
are put in the very illogical position of saying that
the [Page
161] reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman period
is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now than He created
then!
The
principle of rebirth holds also with the animal kingdom
at a high level in it. The last phase of evolution in
the animal kingdom is the individualizing of the consciousness.
A particularly intelligent cat or dog, for example, may
be just finishing animal evolution and will be reborn
at a low human level. Previous to its individualization
it evolves in a group with others of its kind, animated
by a common ensoulment that has not reached the level
of complete self-consciousness. At that group-soul
stage the experience of each animal in the group adds
to the knowledge of all. This theosophical teaching on
one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to
understand many things that would otherwise remain baffling.
Instinct has never been satisfactorily explained. Some
of its best known expressions are altogether mysterious.
Why does a young wild animal hide from the enemies of
its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen
either? A quail a day old will fall upon its side with
a chip or small stone or clod firmly clutched in its
tiny claws to hide its body, and remain perfectly motionless
at the approach of a human being, but will take no alarm
at the [Page
162] passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. Why,
in remote places like the Antarctic regions, are both
young and old birds and animals unafraid of man? The
group-soul is a clear and simple explanation of all
such phenomena. The youngest have the knowledge of
the oldest because they are attached to the same group-soul,
or source of consciousness. The young quail of this
season come back to rebirth from the group-soul that
is the storehouse of the experiences of the quail that
were killed by men in past seasons, and thus all young
things know the common enemy. In the remote regions
referred to the killing proclivities of the human being
have not become known and there is no "instinct" to
warn.
An
excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the group-soul
is the fact, often chronicled but not explained, that
when telephone lines are built in new countries the birds
fly against the wires and are killed by thousands, the
first season; but when the next season's birds are
hatched they are wise and avoid the wires! If the group-soul
were not a fact in nature it would naturally require
a long time for wire education. No such sudden adjustment
would be possible.
Reincarnation
represents continuous evolution with no waste of time
or loss of energy. Death is not the sudden break in the
life program that the popular belief pictures it. The
common view [Page 163] of
death is as erroneous as the common view of birth.
If death were really what most people believe it to be
it would constitute a blunder of nature — an
irrational interruption of orderly development. In
nature's economy there is conservation of energy and
no loss can arise through the change called death. If
the popular belief that at death we go far away to a
totally different kind of existence were sound then death
would usually mean an enormous waste. A young man is
educated for some particular work, engineering, architecture
or statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to die soon
afterward. All the time and energy spent in getting such
an education would be largely lost either if death ends
all, or is the last he will know of material things.
Nature does not thus blunder. Her law of conservation
is always operative. All the skill and wisdom acquired
will be brought back in rebirth and will be used in the
future incarnations.
A
criticism that we sometimes hear is that since reincarnation
gives us endless opportunity, there is no particular
reason for living a noble life because there is always
a chance to "make good" some
time in the future. It is true that we shall have such
opportunity as long as we need it and that is one of
the most inspiring truths of nature; but since it is
also true that all wrong doing brings a harvest of
pain and regret — since the [Page 164] real judgment day is
sure and constant — there
is no possible incentive to an evil course. No advantage
that may be claimed for the restraining influence of
the threat of a future hell is lacking in the hypothesis
of reincarnation. The difference is that hell is vague
and remote while reaction is definite and sure and
therefore constitutes a more rational and effective
restraint.
A
child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in evolution.
The child cannot get an education in a term nor in a
year. He must return often to the same school, after
the rest of regular vacations. He may use new books with
higher lessons but he returns periodically to the same
environment. Continuous attendance would be as unthinkable
as finishing his education in one short term. In evolution
the soul returns periodically to the physical plane for
the same reasons. Continuous life here until all material
experience is gained would be impossible. Aside from
the need of the double process of acquiring and digesting
experience, the physical body would become a hindrance
to evolution. Within certain limits the physical brain
can respond to the requirements of the growing soul but
a new body is in time an absolute necessity to further
evolution.
If
we give a little thought to the evolutionary progress
the ordinary person must make to raise [Page
165] him to mental
and moral perfection, the inadequacy of a single lifetime
becomes apparent. Consider, a moment, intellectual perfection.
It would mean a development of the mind to the point
of genius in many directions. If we combine into one
mind the attainments of the mathematical genius, the
musical genius, the inventive genius, the statecraft
genius, and so on until every line of intellectual activity
is included, we then have only the perfect mental man.
On the moral side we must add to that the combined
qualities of the saints. Then we have the perfected human
being, with nothing more to be learned from incarnation
here. His further evolution belongs to super-physical
realms.
In
trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul, that
slowly changes it life after life from the savage to
the civilized state and finally raises it to perfection,
it is helpful to observe how that great work corresponds
to the smaller cycle of a single lifetime. A great character
in history begins life with helpless infancy. Steadily
he progresses, unfolding new power at each step. He passes
through the graded schools, slowly acquiring elementary
lessons. College follows with higher and more difficult
mental achievements. Then he enters business or professional
life and begins to use his intellect with more and. more
initiative. He moves on into public life with [Page
166] its wider duties and responsibilities.
From one post of honor he rises to another, with increasing
ability and mastery, until at last he is the head of
a nation and has become a world figure. Even so it is
in the evolution of the soul. Life by life we rise, evolving
new powers and virtues amidst ever-increasing opportunities
and responsibilities. In one incarnation we have conditions
that evolve courage. In another we are thrown into situations
that develop tolerance. In still another we acquire
patience and balance. In all of these incarnations we
steadily evolve intellect and strengthen all previously
acquired virtues. In each life we find the new conditions
that are necessary for the exercise of our added abilities
and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual insight
and the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves, we move
forward to still higher fields, in super-physical evolution. [Page
167] [Page 168]
CHAPTER
- 10 -
REBIRTH:
ITS JUSTICE
No
matter how much we may differ in our views of the relationship
between God and man there is general agreement about
the attributes of the Supreme Being. All ascribe to Him
unlimited power, wisdom, love and, of course, the perfection
of all those desirable qualities that we see in human
beings. The theosophical view is that all we know in
man of power, wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony,
are faint but actual manifestations of the attributes
of the deity. All who are not materialists, denying the
existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that the wisdom
and justice of God must be perfect. It would be illogical
and inconsistent to limit or qualify His attributes.
Either He is all-wise and absolutely just, or else the
materialist is right. We cannot have a deity at all unless
He represents perfect justice.
Another
point on which all but the materialists must agree
is that creation is so ordered that the common welfare
of humanity is best served by precisely the conditions
of life that surround us. Nothing is different from what
it should be unless it is because of man's failure to
do what he should do for his own welfare. If it were
otherwise [Page 169] what
would become of the argument that an omniscient God
has ordered it as it is? If, then, things are as they
should be in the truest interests of man, and we find
things in life that, according to our views of creation,
are not right and just, it necessarily follows that the
views we hold are erroneous.
The
popular belief is that human beings constitute a special
creation; that whenever a baby is born God creates a
soul or consciousness for that body and that after a
life of many years or a few, as the case may be, the
body dies and the consciousness goes to dwell in remote
regions for ever and ever. If the person lived a good
life and also believed in the current religion he will
be "saved" and will be eternally happy. If
he did not live a good life but finally "believed" before
death he will be saved anyway and be just as happy
as though he had lived right from the start. If he
did live a good life, but was not born with the ability
to believe easily, he will be lost and will be eternally
miserable. According to this theory of special creation
God makes people of all sorts. None of them can help
being what they are created. Some are wise and some
are foolish. Those who are smart enough to find the
way of salvation will finally have heaven added to
their original gift of wisdom. Those who are not created
clever enough to find it will finally have [Page 170] hell
added to their original lack of sense. This is what
some people are pleased to call divine justice!
It
will hardly do to argue that the possibility that all
may at last be happy in an endless heaven, makes it unimportant
that there are inequalities now. The vast majority of
the theologians do not admit that such a state awaits
the whole of the human race, and the comparatively
few who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that
present justice can be determined by future happiness.
Even if we positively knew that eternal bliss awaited
everybody after the close of this physical life how could
that make it just that one person shall be born a congenital
criminal and another shall be born a poet and philosopher?
How could it make it right that one is born to life-long
illness, suffering and poverty, while another inherits
both wealth and a sound physical body? Not even the
certainty of future happiness would be compensation for
such present inequities. Why should there be any such
inequalities if God represents unlimited power and perfect
justice? Why should there be any poverty when, if He
really created the soul itself instantaneously, He can
as certainly create any necessary condition for the soul?
Why poverty and disease and suffering at all? There
must be a better answer to such questions than that [Page 171] "it pleased God
to have it so". It
is surely little better than blasphemy to suggest that
any kind of unnecessary hard conditions for man are
pleasing to the deity.
To
hold that any future condition of happiness can make
present justice out of the truly terrible inequalities
of life, would be much like a millionaire who has two
sons giving one of them all the advantages of wealth,
travel, skilled instructors and special care, while the
other was permitted to wear rags and go hungry. If the
neglected son asked why he was thus treated while his
brother was most carefully provided for, the father might
reply with some indignation, "You are to have plenty in the future! My will is
so drawn that when I die my great wealth will be equally divided between
you and your brother. You will then be a millionaire with more money than
you can possibly spend. So don't be foolish about your hardships now. Learn
to starve like a gentleman!" The father's position
in such a case would be just as reasonable as that
of those who think a heaven hereafter can justify an
earthly hell now.
Let
us take some of the particular facts of life that puzzle
us and test them with the hypothesis of special creation,
and also with the hypothesis of reincarnation, and see
which can explain them in a really satisfactory manner.
In a Massachusetts prison some years ago, died an
old man whose name [Page
172] became familiar to many of us in our youth.
He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer.
The present generation scarcely knows him. But fifty
years or more ago he was talked about in all the newspapers.
For the crime of murdering his playmates the boy was
sent to prison for life. Why did Pomeroy become a noted
criminal in childhood? If the theory of special
creation is sound he was created and put in the world
to fit himself for a future heaven. But he was created
in such fashion that he was deficient in moral perception
and he began life with an act that led to his expulsion
from society. If God created this soul as we first
knew him why was he not created with the moral balance
of a law-abiding citizen so that he could have lived
long and peacefully in civilized society and have been
prepared for heaven at death? What could have been
the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think
soundly and a conscience that welcomed murder? That
leads us inevitably to the question, Why are criminals
created at all? Why
are idiots created? The deeper we look into the facts
of life the more unsatisfactory does the theory of
special creation become because we find a thousand
things that contradict it and show its inconsistency.
If the purpose of God was to create a heaven to be
enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He
should create a humanity the [Page
173] majority
of which is incapable of ever attaining it. If He creates
them as they come into the world at birth why are not
all of them created wise and kind? Why
must most of them blunder through life, making all
sorts of mistakes, bringing suffering to others by
their unkindness or cruelty and only, in the end, to
pass from a life of failure to eternal punishment for
that failure? There
is no reason, no justice, no sanity in such a theory.
Let
us turn to the explanation of reincarnation. According
to that, Pomeroy has had many past incarnations and will
have many more. Like all the rest of us he came up from
primitive man. We have all learned the lessons of civilized
life slowly by experience like children acquiring lessons
from their books. The majority have come along well and
have developed a fair share of intellect in dealing with
life's problems, and some degree of sympathy for others.
Some have evolved rapidly like hard working pupils
and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged behind
and have learned very little. They are like the truants
at school who have broken the rules and run away from
their lessons. These laggards of the human race are the
dullards and the criminals, who have moved so slowly
incarnation after incarnation, or are so much younger
in evolution, [Page 174] that they are now bringing savage traits into
our present civilized life.
Reincarnation
not only explains who and what the criminal is but
it also explains away the hell with which special creation
threatens him. No hell awaits him except that which he
has created himself by what he has done. By the law of
cause and effect all the cruelty and suffering he has
inflicted will react upon him to his sorrow, but will
also serve for his enlightenment. In his next incarnation
the kind of body he will have and the environment in
which he will live will be determined exactly by the
thoughts and emotions and acts of this and past incarnations.
He will therefore neither go to a heaven for which he
is not yet fitted nor to a hell which he does not justly
deserve. He will simply come back in another physical
body and have a chance to try it again, but he will have
to make the trial under the conditions which his conduct
merits.
And
what of the idiot? According to special creation we
cannot possibly explain him. It would be blasphemous
to believe that God creates a mindless man. If one
soul is given a mind and another is not, and for no
reason whatever, it is the most monstrous injustice
that ever challenged the understanding of man! Think
for a moment of the difference between the idiot and
the normal person. The man of sound mind has before
him [Page
175] the opportunity of progress, of mental
and moral development. The avenues of business and
professional life are open before him. He is free to
try his powers and win his way. Wealth, power and fame
are all possible for him. All the joys of social life
may be his. Think of him surrounded by his family and
friends, successful, satisfied, happy, and then think
of the life of the idiot. Language cannot express the
horror of the contrast! If
there were no other explanation of life than that of
special creation it would change the world into the
hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation saves
us from either blasphemy or madness. The idiot, like
the congenital cripple, differs from the normal man
only in the body, which is the instrument of the soul.
Deformity of the body is a limitation of the ego who
functions through it. A withered arm, a club foot,
a deformed back, in this incarnation are results of
unfortunate causes which that soul has generated in
past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in the brain.
Of course this is not an accident. There is no element
of chance which places the limitation in one body where
it causes but minor trouble and in another where it
prevents mental activity and thus produces idiocy.
In each case it is the exact working out of the law.
The body of the idiot is the physical plane representation
of a soul that has made a serious blunder in the [Page 176] past,
possibly by limiting another with cruel restraint, and the gross misuse of
his intellect and power in that way has operated to prevent his using it
at all in the present life. Such limitations belong to the outer planes.
It is the form that limits and when the form perishes the limitation disappears.
As with the criminal, no hell is needed to punish the idiot. He has made
his own hell by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he must live
in it and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it may seem to some that since the
idiot is incapable of realizing the life of the normal person the situation
represents no real misfortune for him; but idiocy on the physical plane does
not mean idiocy in the soul. Even from the astral plane the ego may keenly
feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime through such a physical body,
as one here would feel the anguish of incarceration in a dungeon.
The
criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations of
the failure of the theory of special creation to satisfactorily
explain the facts of life; but if we turn to the other
extreme and consider the most fortunate people in the
world we shall find there, too, precisely the same failure
to explain. By the hypothesis of special creation we
find a gross injustice done to the soul born an ignoramus.
Yet we find others possessing enough intelligence for
several people. [Page
177]
In
the same city where the genius is born we find the
idiot. Did God create them both as they were born or
did they come up to their present difference of mental
equipment through a process of evolution that accounts
for it all satisfactorily? If the theory of special creation is sound why did not the
idiot get at least a little of the intellect that the genius could so easily
have spared? If they are the work of special creation
it is impossible to find reason or justice in such
terrible inequalities; but if reincarnation is God's
method of creation the explanation of the difference
between them becomes simple. The genius is not only
an old soul but evidently one who has worked hard in
past lives, overcoming lassitude and evolving the power
of will that enabled him to triumph over obstacles,
conquering all the enemies of intellectual progress
and thus earning the fine brain he now possesses. His
present abilities are but the sum total of the energies
he has put forth in the past.
The
theory of special creation does not explain the facts
of life. It is not in accord with natural law. Nature
knows no such thing as special creation. To believe in
special creation is to ignore all scientific facts and
principles. Reincarnation is evolution and every kingdom
of nature develops through evolution. The difference
between the shriveled wild grain that, ages ago, struggled
with [Page
178] the rock and soil for sustenance
enough to reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of
the cultivated fields that, today, feeds the world,
is the work of evolution. The wild stalk produced the
seed and from that seed came a better stalk. The better
stalk produced a still better kernel and from that
sprang a superior stalk to yield a higher grade of
wheat than any of its predecessors. The stalk sprouts
from the ground, matures, stores all its gain of growth
within the seed and perishes; but from the seed springs
its reincarnated form, to repeat the process that changes
poor to good, good to better and better into best.
And thus it is with the reincarnating soul. As the
almost worthless grain through countless seasons is
slowly changed to perfect worth, the soul is by that
same law of evolution slowly changed through many incarnations
from the chaos of savage instincts to the law and order
of the moral world. Each incarnation yields some improvement.
As the grain sprouts within the darkness of the soil
and, perishing there, attains its full results in the
higher realm of air and sun, drawing from the soil
that which, stored within the surviving seed, gives
power to reproduce its better self, so the soul strikes
anchorage in the lower planes and draws from its varied
experiences here that which, transmuted after the body's
death, gives the power to return with greater life. [Page
179]
Attempts
have been made to find some explanation of the mental
and moral inequalities that exist at birth. In the earlier
days of the study of evolution it was usually asserted
that the human being inherits his mentality and morality
from his parents; but even if that were true the injustice
of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain.
It is the inequality that constitutes the injustice,
and it is of no importance whether it comes about through
heredity or otherwise; but as a matter of fact heredity
is confined to the physical side of existence. As more
and more is learned by observation the old theory of
mental and moral heredity has lost ground until it can
be said that it now has no recognition in the scientific
world.
In
the absence of evidence that either mental or moral
traits are transmitted to offspring, one naturally turns
to the observations of those having some practical experience.
Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University Children's
Clinic, who has large numbers of defective children in
charge, treating no less than sixteen hundred in a single
year, says:
“As
to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective
types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance. I
do not agree with social or educational doctrinaires
who assign the causes definitely to liquor, poverty,
infectious diseases, or other [Page 180] social or moral shortcomings.
The greatest minds of the world are hesitant in theorizing
about this. There is a complexity of causes which explains
many of these cases, but no generalization fits absolutely.
We may find a case which is not traceable to any of
these conditions — a case in which the antecedents
would promise a perfectly normal child, and yet we
are confronted with a defective child. On the other
hand, bright, normal children, even children of superior
intelligence sometimes spring from such conditions." [Interview
in San Francisco Examiner, March
5, 1916]
A
little reasoning about the facts concerning both genius and
idiocy will make it clear that neither is inherited.
If it were true that genius is inherited society would
present a different appearance. There would be famous
families of geniuses living in the world, in music, in
poetry, in warfare, in invention, in art, if genius were
inherited. The fact is that it is difficult to find even
two geniuses in any family. Caesar, Napoleon, Edison,
Wagner, Shakespeare, stand alone with neither great forbears
nor great descendants. We search in vain for famous
ancestors of such men; but if the theory of mental heredity
were sound we should know their ancestors for precisely
the same reason that we know them. [Page 181]
Heredity,
then, does not explain whence genius comes; and if anybody
had really traced genius from father, or grandfather, to
son or grandson, we should still have no explanation of
what genius is. The only reason why it appears so incomprehensible
is because we have not looked at it in the light of nature's
truth. We have erroneously assumed that this is the only
life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the time
is too short for the evolution of genius. A man can become
an expert in one lifetime but not a genius. If we give
him many incarnations to develop along certain lines he
can become a genius. The soul that works strenuously at
building up a certain faculty through many incarnations
naturally develops qualities that shine out brilliantly
upon its return to a physical body and we have the genius.
We evolve our mentality and morality, and there could be
no justice in life if it were otherwise.
It is
important to distinguish between mental and moral heredity,
and physical heredity. The latter is, of course, well established.
Insanity and certain diseases run in families and are sometimes
handed on from parents to children; but these things are
not of the Self; they relate, not to the soul, but to the
soul's vehicle. There is no insanity in any soul but only
some malformation in one or more parts of the mechanism
through which it functions. [Page
182]
It is
commonly said that a person inherits some disease or at
least a tendency that will develop it as, for example,
tuberculosis. But what has really occurred is that, in
his reincarnation he has, by the operation of natural laws,
been drawn into a family that can give him a physical body
with such power of resistance, or the lack of it, as he
is entitled to. If certain parents could give a reincarnating
soul only a weak body or a defective brain, or both, then
a soul whose past does not merit such a fate simply could
not be drawn into that family; but the hypothesis that
any two parents must necessarily endow their offspring
with such bodies should be used with caution. We commonly
see great diversity in families; weak parents with strong
progeny, brothers and sisters representing all degrees
of constant health and chronic illness, fathers and mothers
with children endowed with mental capacity far beyond their
parents, and also normal and brilliant parents with children
that are stupid or idiotic. Obviously the laws that determine
such things go much deeper than physical relationship and
are too complex to be explained solely by physical heredity.
Sometimes people who do not clearly understand reincarnation
say they do not like the idea because they might not next time
get the kind of body they would like. Some even fear they might [Page
183] get the body of a savage! Since the body is always
the material expression of the soul, of one's own deathless
self, one's next incarnation must necessarily be all that he
now is in thought and emotion, intellect and morality, plus
all he shall evolve between now and his next appearance here.
If we have the least understanding of the relation between
the physical body and the spiritual body, we must see that
exact law and not chance governs the whole matter. To rightly
understand the theosophical idea of old souls in new bodies
one must get clearly in mind the imperishable individuality
of the soul. It is originally a spark of the divine life and
through the evolution of a vast period of time that spark becomes
a flame. From the time it is the spark it undergoes experiences
that are unlike the experiences of any other soul, and these
give it an individuality that is never lost. When it has risen
high enough to enter the human kingdom and has expanded to
what we call the human soul, it then goes forward in its evolution
to super-human levels by getting the experiences in a succession
of physical bodies that develop its latent divinity, and each
body is something of an improvement on the last. In a given
incarnation the man thinks and feels and acts, and the forces
he thus generates must have their reactions. Some of the reactions
take place immediately but others are long deferred; and thus [Page
184] a chain of cause and effect connects all the lives
in the whole evolutionary journey of the soul. Each incarnation
is as definitely the result of preceding incarnations as our
todays are definitely related to our yesterdays. What we think
and feel and do in this life, plus what we were at the beginning
of this life, exactly determines what we shall be in the next
one. To get a body in our next incarnation that is not precisely
representative of one's self is as impossible as it is that
a man who has been a surgeon or an artist all his life should
awaken tomorrow with only the ability to be a fruit vendor
on the street; or that a bootblack, who has never known any
other occupation, should find himself tomorrow able to take
up the work of the chemist or the statesman.
If a
soul that has evolved the ability to think deeply, like
a great scientist or a philosopher, could come back in
a body that had the brain of a very commonplace man, it
would be impossible for such a brain to express that soul's
wisdom and so all the hard study of the past would be lost
for that incarnation. His knowledge would be useless here.
Sometimes just that does occur through the evil course
followed by a soul in a previous incarnation. In such a
case the real man, the soul, would not be less wise than
in the past. He would merely be afflicted with a body for
the time being through which he could not [Page
185] possibly express that wisdom. At each birth
in a new body the old soul brings into action, as rapidly
as the new infant brain becomes developed, the skill and
wisdom acquired in previous lives, provided there is no
restricting factor arising out of past wrong-doing that
constitutes a temporary limitation.
There
is no element of chance in getting a new physical body
in the next incarnation. The body is the material expression
of the self. It is as much the product of the self as the
rose is of the bush, the apple of the tree, or the tulip
of the bulb. The musician can no more get a body suitable
to the blacksmith than the rose bush can produce an apple.
We do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people
drawing clothing by numbers which might result in grotesque
misfits. We do not receive bodies at all. We evolve them,
and in each incarnation the new body represents all the
soul has come to be up to that point in its evolution.
Such a view of life has a basis of absolute justice. Every
soul has exactly what it has earned.
The old
theory of but one physical lifetime is devoid of consistency
as well as of justice. The common belief in Occidental
civilization is that we live here for only sixty or seventy
years and that then, when we die, we pass on to live eternally
somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity, [Page
186] whether it is filled with pleasure or is horrible
with pain, is made to depend on how we spent those few
years of the physical life! Such a fate would be unfair
and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a term it
would not be fair to condemn him to lose all opportunity
of getting an education. We would give him another chance
at the following term.
A little
incident of disobedience from home life will illustrate
the point involved. A quinine capsule was lying on the
table. A three-year-old boy reached for it. His mother
called across the room, "Don't eat that, it isn't
good;" but in a spirit of reckless mischief he hurried
it into his mouth and quickly chewed it up! It was a very
disagreeable but salutary lesson for the little fellow.
It is an example of nature's methods. She is always consistent,
and has a balanced relationship between cause and effect.
But suppose in this case we throw her consistency aside
as those who believe that eternal results will follow temporal
effects are obliged to do. An ordinary lifetime compared
to eternity is somewhat like that instant of disobedience
compared to a long physical life; but the illustration
is not adequate because eternity never ends. As nearly
as the principle can be applied it would be by saying to
the child, "Because you were disobedient for a second
of time you shall taste quinine for eighty [Page
187] years!" If that punishment is injustice
what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain
as the result of the errors committed in a lifetime?
Any hypothesis
of existence that does not take into consideration the
welfare of humanity is a false hypothesis. What plan can
better serve the common welfare than a chance to redeem
a failure? When a prisoner is condemned for a crime we
do not deprive him of opportunities. We give him every
possible chance to improve his character. God cannot be
less just or merciful than man. Rebirth is another chance.
Every incarnation is a new opportunity.
If the
popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell is sound, and
there be few who find the "narrow way". the time
will come when the majority of the race will have used
their one opportunity of a brief lifetime, and have failed.
If that were really true, it is easy to imagine what they
would do with another opportunity if they had it! How long
should opportunity be given? Just as long as it will be
used, and to deprive anybody of it when he is eager to
redeem past errors is to ignore the essentials of human
welfare. Therefore such a plan cannot be the true one. John
J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:
Master
of human destinies am I !
Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps
wait;
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate [Page
188]
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel and mart and palace, soon or
late
I knock unbidden once at every gate.
If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save Death; but those who doubt or
hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
I answer not and I return no more.
That
is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably emphasizes
the importance of promptly acting when the time for action
arrives; but there is another truth to be expressed on
the subject and it is well done by Walter Malone, who says:
They
do me wrong who say I come no more,
When once I knock and fail to find
you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you wake and rise to fight
and win.
Wail not for precious chances passed away;
Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
Each night I burn the records of the day;
At sunrise every soul is born again.
Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;
To vanished joys be blind and deaf
and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.
Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,
I lend my arm to all who say, "I can".
What
a magnificent view of human evolution! No ultimate failure
possible because there is [Page 189] always
another chance. The failures of one incarnation made good
by the sincere efforts of the next! All the faults and
frailties — the shadow blots of the past — vanishing
in the light of a higher wisdom that has been won. No endless
hell, no eternal torment; not even the ghosts of vanished
chances to haunt the mind; but only the insistent voice
of immortal Opportunity, urging us to wake and rise to
strive and win! [Page 190]
CHAPTER
- 11 -
REBIRTH:
ITS NECESSITY
There
are apparently but three ways in which anybody has attempted
to explain the origin of the race. One of the three theories
is that of the materialist. Another is the common belief
that God created an original human pair and continues to
create souls equal to the number of babies born into the
world. The third hypothesis is that of the evolution of
the soul.
The materialist's
position seems to be, briefly, that the forces of nature,
with no directive intelligence, are sufficient to account
for man as we see him; that a continuing consciousness
in the human being is a delusion; that immortality is a
vain dream and that the human being has neither a past
nor a future life.
This
materialistic belief regards the human body as a self-sufficient
machine whose brain generates thought; but the savage has
a completely evolved physical body with eyes, ears and
other organs like our own. His brain has the same structure
as the brain of civilized man. Indeed, his physical body
is not only as complete a machine as ours but is likely
to be materially sounder. Why, then, if the brain produces
thought, does not this savage produce the thoughts [Page
191] of a philosopher? If there is no directing
soul back of the brain, why the marvelous difference in
the product of the two brains?
Materialists
do not explain the phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly
about it but they must stop short of the source of life.
Everything about anatomy and physiology they know, but
the life that flows through the human machine remains unexplained.
They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart
through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins,
from the veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind
the race has produced cannot say what makes the heart beat.
Life has not been explained and cannot be explained from
the materialist's viewpoint. Every human being is a miracle.
A fingernail is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from
the same food that makes the flesh and it will continue
to be formed regardless of the variety or quality of the
food. Why do certain particles become flesh or nails? Who
can draw the dividing line between them? With marvelous
instruments and wondrous skill. science has explored and
mapped and charted the "tabernacle of clay",
but it cannot throw a single ray of light upon the source
of the intelligence that animates it.
Materialism
fails sadly enough in that direction, but still worse as
a satisfactory interpretation of the panorama of life about
us. It is a [Page 192] philosophy
of the gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance
to be that which we are; that we are what we are merely
because of fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations.
Had the combinations chanced to be something different
we should not be in existence. According to this theory
all abilities are the gifts of nature and all lack of them
is the blind award of chance. No credit whatever is due
to anybody for what he was at birth nor can anybody be
logically blamed for his deficiencies.
This
hypothesis holds that recently we were not and that presently
we shall cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our
brief period, suffer or enjoy as it may happen and then
pass to the oblivion of eternal dust; that all the thought,
all the toil and the striving, all the effort and endurance
were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a philosophy
will not long survive the progress of our age. It lacks
the balance of nature's principle of conservation. It lacks
the completeness of universal law. It lacks the element
of justice that is enthroned in every human consciousness
and without which life would be a meaningless mockery and
the world a chaos of despair. However, the materialist's
philosophy has no monopoly of bad points or undesirable
beliefs. The old popular idea of a mechanical creation
is equally at war with both fact and reason. [Page
193] That belief is that God created the earth as
men build houses, and added the human beings as men, furnish
their houses when built. It is the belief that souls begin
their existence at birth, live here but one life and then
pass on into either endless bliss or eternal pain.
This
idea differs from materialism in the matter of a governing
intelligence and on the point of immortality but it is
remarkably like it in other ways. Like materialism it is
fatalistic because it makes man the helpless subject of
resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent force as
first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.
The materialist
says that all human characteristics are the gift of nature
while according to the popular belief they are the gifts
of God. In either case some human beings get abilities
that they have not earned and others are afflicted with
defects that they do not deserve. The intellectual man
is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped without
mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured
by being well born while others are foredoomed to failure.
Predestination goes logically with such ideas. Happily
the world has long been growing away from the once wide-spread
belief in predestination because it is too shocking to
the modern sense of justice; yet if there is but one life
on earth and the soul is created at birth, the very essence
of [Page 194] predestination
remains, because some are created with the wisdom to attain
salvation and others are created without it.
If the
soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility
at the time of birth. Neither can it have any merit. One
is born with a sound mind and moral insight. These qualities
lead to salvation but the man has done nothing to earn
them. Another is born with cruel and vicious tendencies
and a poor intellect. He may therefore miss salvation,
but if he had no pre-existence he can have done nothing
to deserve such a start in life. If we are really here
for the first time then justice can be done only by giving
us equal equipment at the start and equal opportunities
afterward.
The difference
between human beings at birth is enormous. There is every
degree of vice and virtue from the savage to the saint
and every mental variation from the fool to the philosopher.
If God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created
wise and kind though he did nothing to earn it. Another
is created vicious and depraved. He did nothing to deserve
it. One is showered with "natural gifts" to which
he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a stupidity
he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to believe that
God made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason
and to justice. [Page 195]
It is
easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between
God and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible
for a person to be saved by his merit because, if he was
born with his qualities, he had no merit. His very ability
to comprehend spiritual truth and his moral strength to
resist temptation, were conferred upon him, not earned
by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings should
be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human
automata operated by such degree of mental and moral ability
as God chose to assign to them. If this be true, genius
should have no credit for its accomplishments, indolence
no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of condemnation,
tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue
no applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice.
And yet this absurd and illogical belief lingers in the
minds of millions of people. It is believed because it
always has been believed.
If materialism
is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that
the soul is created at birth is impossible. It is a theory
that encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions
that destroy justice and defy logic. That old form of belief
has outlived its day. It was possible at any time only
because there was too little information and, like the
old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place
to the newer knowledge. The truth [Page
196] of evolution is the staunchest friend of religion.
It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific
belief in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality
and a brotherhood of man that has a basis in nature itself.
What
is the essence of the truths that evolution has taught
us and how do they give evidence against materialism and
in support of the theosophical hypothesis?
Evolution
is an orderly unfolding from the single to the diversified,
from the simple to the complex, in which process life evolves
by passing from lower to higher forms and storing within
itself the gist of the experiences gained in each.
One of
the vital facts that evolution establishes is that slow
building is the order of creation. The horse is an example.
He is traced backward with certainty to a small creature
that resembles him very little indeed. Ages were required
to evolve the horse into his present intelligence and utility.
Another profoundly important fact in evolution is the continuity
of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently
used as an illustration, but the principle holds with many
other insects. In the metamorphosis of the caterpillar
we have a phenomenon so common that most people have personally
observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation.
The worm is a physical body occupied by an evolving life.
Its physical body [Page 197] perishes
and becomes part of the dust of the street. The life enters
the grave of the chrysalis. The scientist takes that chrysalis,
packs it in an ice house and leaves it frozen for a number
of years. Now a mere frost will kill either caterpillar
or butterfly, but when the chrysalis is removed from the
ice and brought into a higher temperature the triumphant
life emerges in the form of the butterfly. This phenomenon
proves that life does survive the loss of the body. The
body of the caterpillar is dead and has turned to dust,
but the caterpillar that lived in it is not dead. It now
lives again in the physical world in a physical body of
a higher type.
Here,
in an order of existence almost infinitely below man, we
have an individual life existing in a physical form, passing
from it and, after a number of years, taking possession
of another form and living in that. Who can admit such
continuity of life for the insect and deny it for man? Can
there be a deathless something in a worm and not in a human
being? Even without the mass of physical evidence that
exists upon the subject the logic of nature would lead
us to confident conclusions. The knowledge of evolution
which science has so far accumulated leads to four natural
inferences. One is that man is immortal. Another is that
he has, like all creatures, slowly evolved to what he now
is. A third is [Page 198] that
both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together;
and the fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher
and continually higher ones. The human soul evolves from
the savage to the saint — from animal instincts to
the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot escape
the conclusion that the race has evolved, is evolving and
will continue to evolve until mental and moral perfection
has been attained.
If neither
the theory of the materialist nor the popular notion that
the soul is created at birth is satisfactory, we have only
reincarnation left as a working hypothesis; and if we accept
the evolution of the soul as a natural truth, then reincarnation
becomes a necessity in explaining the known facts of life.
Those
who desire to put their ideas about the soul and its immortality
into harmony with the facts of evolution sometimes ask
why it would not be possible for the soul to leave the
material plane forever at the death of the physical body
and then pursue its evolution on higher planes. In the
vast universe there must be opportunity for all possible
development, it is argued.
Why
go on into other regions when the lessons here have not
been learned? That would be contrary to nature's law of
the conservation of energy. The average human being is
in the elementary grades, with scores of incarnations ahead [Page
199] of him before he will be in a position even
to take advantage of all his opportunities here and thus
make fairly rapid progress. To talk of going on to higher
planes for farther evolution is like proposing that a child
shall leave the kindergarten and enter the university.
We are
evolving along two lines, the mental and moral, and a little
consideration of the matter will make clear two important
points — that we have much to learn and that the
physical plane is wonderfully arranged for our instruction.
We have conditions here for developing mentality that do
not exist on higher planes. The absolute necessity of procuring
food is an example. Death is the penalty for failure to
obtain it. Hunger was the earliest spur to action at the
lowest level of evolution and even now at our comparatively
high point of attainment it is one of the chief factors
of racial activity. In providing the necessities of life
and in gratifying our multitude of desires mentality is
developed. Business and professional life rests upon these
physical plane necessities and, engaged in solving the
problems of civilization, the race evolves intellect. Such
problems do not, of course, exist on higher planes.
While
the mentality is thus being pushed along in evolution by
our material necessities the heart qualities are developed
by the family ties in a way that could not be done elsewhere.
In the [Page 200] nature of
things the entrance of the soul to the physical plane is
attended with helplessness. From the beginning it must
have material necessities or die, and yet it can do nothing
in its new infant body. Again, as a rule, long before it
leaves the physical plane old age has once more rendered
it helpless. Thus every human soul must depend on the assistance
of others at two critical periods of each incarnation.
The help it receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back
to the race, in the care of both the helpless young and
the helpless old, when it is in the vigor of mature physical
life. It is obvious that such experience develops the qualities
of sympathy and compassion as no phase of business life
could. The relationship of parent and child, husband and
wife, evolves the heart qualities in a way that would be
impossible in the totally different environment of higher
planes. Naturally enough, each plane has a specific work
to do in the soul's evolution. We can no more learn in
the highest planes the lessons the material world is designed
to teach us than a pupil can acquire a knowledge of mathematics
from his lessons in geography. Hence the necessity for
a periodical return to this life until its experiences
have developed in us the qualities we lack.
Not only
has each plane its special adaptability to particular needs
of the soul in its evolution, [Page
201] but the two kinds of physical bodies — masculine
and feminine — through which the soul functions,
afford special advantages for acquiring the lessons of
life. The soul on its home plane is, of course, sexless.
Sex, as we know it, is a differentiation arising from the
soul's expression on lower planes. All characteristics
of the soul itself, like intelligence, love, or devotion,
are common to both sexes.
The ego
functioning through the masculine body has the opportunity
of certain experiences that would be impossible in the
feminine body, while, of course, the feminine form enables
the ego to get experience that could not be obtained in
a masculine body. A consideration of the widely different
experiences of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,
will show how true this is. The lessons learned in the
masculine body are largely those of the head while in the
feminine form they are lessons of the heart.
When
the ego puts forth its energies and begins descent into
lower planes for another incarnation it is apparently beginning
a cycle of experience in which either mentality or spirituality
shall be the dominant note for that incarnation, and probably
for several others. If it is to evolve for the time being
through those experiences related to objective activity,
with intellect as the guiding factor, the masculine body
can best serve [Page 202] the
purpose; if the dominant note is to be spirituality, rather
than mentality and the soul is, for the time, moving along
the line of the heart side — the subjective, the
intuitive — then the feminine body is the better
vehicle in which such experience can be obtained. To say
that mentality is the dominant factor of masculine incarnation
does not at all mean that men have a monopoly of the reasoning
faculty; nor does the fact that other souls are being expressed
through the feminine body mean that they have a fundamental
spiritual advantage. Some women are better reasoners than
some men, while some men are more spiritual than some women.
What it does mean is that for the time being the ego is
expressing itself dominantly along a certain line.
Our ordinary
language confirms the truth of the statement that men normally
express more the head qualities and women more the heart
qualities. We speak of men as being reasoners and of women
as being intuitional and depending upon their impressions.
The soul in the masculine body is for the time being getting
experiences of the outer, objective activities. He is the
home builder and protector, the bread winner, the battle
fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the time,
getting experience along the line of the inner life. She
is the wife and mother, [Page 203] and
her lessons are of the heart rather than the head.
As we
study nature we are more and more impressed with her wonderful
mechanism for the evolution of the soul. It soon becomes
clear to the student that every individual is, in each
incarnation, thrown into precisely the circumstances required
for the greatest possible progress of that particular ego.
If the qualities of initiative and courage, for example,
are to be developed, the masculine body admirably serves
the purpose, while if sympathy and compassion need stimulation
the feminine form is wonderfully effective for that kind
of progress. It requires little reasoning to see that the
soul would not continue to incarnate in one sex indefinitely.
It must develop all its inner qualities. Both intellect
and compassion must reach perfect expression. Such a consummation
can, of course, be best attained by alternating sex experiences;
but here again there is wide latitude in the operation
of the law. The rule seems to be that ordinarily there
are not less than three nor more than seven successive
incarnations in one sex, and then the ego begins to express
itself through a body of the other sex. By that rule it
would commonly be for a period of from a few hundred years
to some thousands of years, that the ego expresses itself
through one sex before it changes to the other; but here
again [Page 204] we must remember
that we are speaking of general rules applied to groups
of souls and that there are almost innumerable exceptions
to such generalities.
While
the necessity for rebirth has its many specific details
it may be placed broadly on the statement that since even
the longest lifetime is not sufficient for acquiring all
the physical realm can teach us, many incarnations are
required to complete the soul's material education. The
more one ponders the subject the clearer does it become
that reincarnation is the necessary method of the soul's
progress from lowly levels to the heights of spiritual
wisdom and power.
The idea
of the immanence of God and the direct relationship of
man to Him is a viewpoint from which all the facts of life
can be rationally explained. By it we can show that this
fragment of the whole that we call physical life exhibits
wisdom and justice, and that the totality which we call
the universe has the elements of success and happiness;
but the popular misconception that God is external to His
universe, gets one into all sorts of difficulties. It is
the mechanical conception that makes the trouble. It's
the idea that God is a manufacturer of souls, producing
them as a factory turns out tables and chairs; but how
then can we explain the tremendous difference between the
various grades of the output and the [Page
205] presence in the earth of such a lot of useless
furniture! Take as an example such human beings as the
lowest types of savages. In great variety they are scattered
all around the earth. There are the Digger Indians of America,
the aborigines of Australia, the cannibal tribes of the
South Sea Islands and the lowest types in Africa. If God
instantaneously created the earth and its contents and
if He started it as many believe with a Garden of Eden
and Adam and Eve to be the progenitors of the race, why
these savages of the present day? Tens of thousands of
those savages are born every year. If God creates the soul
when it appears here in a physical body, why does He go
on making these savages to drag out an existence so devoid
of intelligent life? And why, at our own level of life
are thousands of fools created? The old view assumes that
although there is an all-wise God Who creates and manages
the universe He does it in such a haphazard way that it
is a mere matter of chance whether one is born a genius
or a fool. According to vital statistics in the last twelve
months many millions of babies were born in the world.
Did God create souls for those bodies? If He did, why
did He make so many of them stupid instead of intelligent? Why
did He make the majority of them commonplace instead of
brilliant? Why did He endow some with intelligence so
keen and morality so sound [Page 206] that
they are certain to have successful and happy lives while
others are given minds that are baffled by simple problems,
and a moral will so feeble that it will certainly fail
them in the temptations they meet?
A competent
workman is known by his product. What would one think of
an expert machinist who made some excellent machines, but
who turned out a majority that were decidedly inferior
to the best he could make, and occasionally put out a machine
that instead of being useful destroyed everything in its
vicinity? If God creates souls as a manufacturer makes
furniture, why did He create Socrates for Athens and Nero
for Rome? Why did He make souls like Shakespeare and Emerson
and Whitman and Lincoln and then for every such moral giant
create a thousand fools and destroyers?
Of course,
the Supreme Being does not make blunders. It is because
people create an imaginary God that there is any inconsistency.
Their hypothesis is wrong and that's why the facts as we
see them about us will not "square" with it.
He does, indeed, create all these things, but not in the
very least as men make material objects. His method of
creation is evolutionary. He involves His life in the solar
system and it then evolves and slowly brings its latent
mental and moral powers into expression. The natural [Page
207] savage like the cannibal, and the civilized
savage like some of the inhuman destroyers in history,
are both expression of His life; but they are partial expressions.
The natural savage is a very young soul. He is only a step
above the animal kingdom. Intellect and morality are just
dawning in him. He is no more to be censured because he
does not live our kind of life than a cat should be blamed
for its inability to understand the ten commandments. A
tyrant is an old soul. Intellect is well developed in him,
but he has evolved in unbalanced fashion. Moral unfoldment
has not kept pace with mental development. It is only on
the intellectual side that he is exhibiting the divine
qualities that are latent in every human being; but in
some degree his moral faculties must also be developed.
We get an exaggerated idea of his moral side — or
more accurately speaking his immoral side — because
we are appalled by the horrors for which he is responsible.
When we study closely the life of some of the exponents
of military force we often find an apparent lack of heart
qualities. Intellect may attain high development while
the moral forces still lie latent, but somewhere in the
future incarnations, out of all the great suffering that
comes to one who loves war for its own sake, compassion
will be born and keen sympathy for all humanity will spring
into being. The divine spark is in all, [Page
208] from the savage and the despot to the cultured
and the saint.
If civilized
people are old souls in new bodies, it is easy to account
for things as we see them. If the soul is old we can understand
the wisdom it sometimes exhibits even in childhood. We
can comprehend prodigies. We can explain genius. If the
divine life is latent in all, but can be evolved only through
a long series of incarnations, we can also account for
all degrees of selfishness and cruelty in civilized people
by the irregularity of the development. In short, we can
understand an imperfect world as the creation of a perfect
being, because that world is still in process of creation.
It is like a house during the period of its construction.
There is a stage when it is only half a house. The floors
are not laid, the doors are not hung, the windows are not
set; but we do not complain, because we know that the house
is still in the process of building. We do not rail at
the carpenters because it is incomplete. We know that there
is a certain relationship between the plan of the architect
and the working out of his ideas in wood and iron and mortar.
Now, in precisely the same sense, humanity is incomplete.
It is still in the process of its evolutionary creation.
Thus we can account for the imperfections in that which
is essentially divine; for the mingled wisdom and ignorance,
for the injustice and [Page 209] cruelty,
for the happiness and the sorrow, for the successes and
the failures.
If it
were not so, if humanity sprang into being through instantaneous
creation, it would be impossible to explain why the world
is full of apparent blunders. Even a man, given infinite
power with only a man's intelligence, could make a better
world. He could make seas without treacherous reefs, continents
without deserts, forests without deadly serpents. A witty
critic of orthodox beliefs was once challenged to say how
he could have made a better world if he had the power.
He replied, "Well, for one thing, I would have made
good health catching instead of disease!" Scores
of other improvements we can think of, if humanity had
really been instantaneously created; but it was not. The
evolutionary process of creation is still going on and
that's just why there will be the unpleasant side of physical
life as long as any portion of the divinity within remains
latent. To put it differently, the earth is a mental and
moral training ground, especially designed to evolve us.
If there were no dangers to face, courage could not be
evolved. If
there were no suffering, there would be no sympathy. If
there were no temptations, we should never attain self-mastery.
There must be a mechanism through which the latent divinity
in man can become active as certainly as there must [Page
210] be mechanism by which the athlete develops
his strength. Without a point of resistance his muscles
could not be improved. He would remain a man but he would
never be an athlete. Without the rigors of physical life,
with all its heartaches and difficulties, we would remain
human but we would not become supermen and masters of nature.
The human
soul is an actor in the great drama of physical life. He
has played a hundred roles from the trivial to the great.
He has known a score of civilizations in every clime, and
type of land, from seagirt plains to rugged mountain heights.
He has lived the primitive life where patriotism had its
birth in the battles of the tribes. He has been a chief
of savage men and led his warriors in the fray. He has
lived amid lurking dangers that thrilled his latent senses
into life, and in the desert wilds has matched his skill
and courage against the king of beasts. He has known the
lonely forest depths and in the hush of night has gazed
in wonder toward the solemn silence of the stars; and by
it all, thought was aroused and strength and skill and
courage were evolved. Thus many times he lived and died.
Then
came a wider reach of life with reason slowly rising above
the instincts of the brute. He was born in the lowest levels
of civil life, where wild emotions must answer to the law.
Reaction [Page 211] followed
swiftly upon its cause. He struck the murderer's vengeful
blow, and became the fleeing criminal. He felt the iron
hand of justice close upon his arm. He heard the judge
pronounce his doom and lived through the hell of passing
days until he met a felon's death.
With
slowly growing comprehension he was reborn, scores of times,
to civil life. In each he learned some things. He was lured
onward by desire, he was driven by the lash of need. He
ran the gamut of emotions from ecstasy to woe. He has been
the free citizen surrounded with genial friends, the plotter
of insurrections, and has finished life with a galley slave's
despair. He may have looked upon the beauty of ancient
Greece. He has been a citizen of mighty Rome. He has heard
her orators in the forum, has mingled in the arena's cruel
throng and seen the lion's victim torn to shreds. He has
been a soldier in the field, marching with the legions
of the Caesars, where untamed emotions were brought within
the iron discipline of war.
He has
slowly risen to posts of honor and authority. If well advanced
in evolution, he has been both worker and manager, the
subject and the governor. He has felt the pinch of poverty
and has known the cares of state. He has been both pupil
and teacher and caught a gleam of immortal hope, only to
lose it in reason's tortuous [Page
212] course. He has ascended the heights of aspiration
and has plodded through the valleys of despair; and at
last he awakened to life's real purpose and set himself
to the task of self-mastery, the mightiest battle of all
his lives!
Then
onward and upward, incarnation after incarnation, he rises
in evolution's scale with expanding intellect and increasing
power, amid the higher and finer experiences where the
last and best of moral strength and courage are evolved;
and, when at last the final curtain falls, he has become
the superman — master of himself and of nature's
wondrous forces. [Page 213] [Page
214]
CHAPTER
- 12 -
WHY
WE DO NOT REMEMBER
The loss
of memory between incarnations and the failure to now recall
any of our experiences previous to the present physical
plane life has sometimes been cited as a negative kind
of evidence against the hypothesis of rebirth. The point
could not be made, however, by one who has studied the
matter because close scrutiny will show that the loss of
memory is a necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that
we do not remember is in perfect harmony with the principles
of evolution. Indeed, the close student of the subject
would be very much surprised if we could normally remember,
because he does not get far until he sees, not only why
we do not remember past incarnations but also why we should
not remember them.
The very
nature of the evolutionary work to be done by reincarnation
necessitates a loss of memory. One useful purpose of the
expression of consciousness through a physical body is
that it narrows its scope and thereby increases its efficiency.
The cognition of the ego embraces a vast field, and includes
past lives; but the limitation of matter which compels
consciousness to be expressed through a physical body,
focuses the [Page 215] attention
on the evolutionary work immediately in hand. The brain
becomes the instrument of consciousness but also, fortunately,
its limitation. If there were not loss of memory our minds
would now range over the adventures of thousands of years
in the past. It would encompass a vast drama with countless
loves and hates, of many lives filled with pathos and tragedy.
To thus distract the mind from the present life would retard
our progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place
one can think better and accomplish more than when in the
midst of turbulent scenes and throngs of people. When there
is less to think about the thinking is more effective.
It is necessary to restrict the consciousness and limit
the mind to the present life in order to get the most satisfactory
results. The same truth is embodied in that old saying
that whoever is jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration
is necessary for progress. If we would master the lessons
of this life we must not take other lives within the field
of perception. The very process of reincarnation is a coming
out of the general into the particular.
The permanent
source of memory is, of course, in the causal body because
it is that part of the mechanism of consciousness that
does not perish when the work of a given incarnation is
finished. Within it all that has passed before the individual [Page
216] consciousness is stored; but although all memory
of the past incarnations is there, it is naturally not
available to the physical consciousness until one reaches
the point in evolution where the physical brain is sensitive
enough to receive vibrations from the causal body. There
will come a time in human evolution when that will be the
normal thing for the average person and then there will
be no need of argument that we have lived here before,
because everyone will remember it. The average human being
is yet far from that point and those who remember are few
indeed; but those few are important witnesses. Those who
personally know them, and know the remarkable purity, earnestness,
usefulness and truthfulness of their lives, cannot but
be very greatly impressed by their testimony.
Such
evidence is valuable notwithstanding the fact that it is
somewhat discounted in the minds of many who have met very
ordinary people who confidently assert that they remember
previous lives and declare themselves to have been great
personages in the past. Sensible people will see at once
that such claims are not so much evidence of past greatness
as proof of present vanity. Some people do see glimpses
of the past, but until they become trained observers in
subtle matter there can be no absolute certainty of the
accuracy of the fleeting visions, however honest the seer [Page
217] may be. That vanity is an important factor
in some cases is evidenced by the fact that there are now
living a number of women each of whom remembers that she
was Mary Queen of Scots!
Evolution
means rising life after life to higher positions. It may
not always be what the world would call advancement. It
may be the change from ruler over a nation to teacher of
great truths; but that may be in reality a distinct advance.
If those who so easily “remember" previous greatness
would take second thought, they would see that it is not
particularly creditable to be less now than one was in
the past. In reincarnation we go forward, not backward,
in intellect, power and influence. Nobody who grasps the
evolutionary idea could possibly be pleased with a greater
past and a lesser present. It would be more creditable
to have been a menial then and something of an improvement
now.
Those
who really remember care the least about it and say the
least about it. Old souls are modest souls. They are the
personification of tranquil humility, a living evidence
that true worth is modest and simple. Sometimes it probably
does occur that one well along in evolution is drawn back
into an obscure place in order that certain lacking qualities
may be developed or opportunity for quiet and rapid progress
may be fully utilized; but that is doubtless very rare
and ordinarily a [Page 218] person
with karmic associations such as a ruler must necessarily
have, would not be found in a position of obscurity and
in a narrow environment.
We should
keep in mind the fact that our true and permanent life
is in the causal body, and on the mental plane, and that
there, alone, is unbroken memory possible, until we have
reached a rather high point in evolution. The descent into
matter in each incarnation is also beyond reach of the
brain memory, of course. Getting new bodies is the working
out of natural law even as instinct works in animals. The
whole animal kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man,
nevertheless adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy
and with a precision that is beyond our comprehension.
Even so is human evolution directed by impelling forces
that are unknown to our waking consciousness; but our waking
stage is only a small part of our consciousness — that
fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical
brain. The brain, being a limitation of consciousness,
is therefore a limitation of memory, as certainly as a
mountain range is a limitation of sight. In the higher
realms we do know our wider life and vaster consciousness
that includes the memory of our past incarnations, even
as a traveler on the crest of a mountain range can see
the winding trail by which he ascended; [Page
219] but when he descends into the valley the range
behind him obscures the view. Only when he reaches the
summit of the mountains next before him will he once more
have unobstructed vision. Thus it is in the evolutionary
journey of the soul. We are now in the valley of incarnation,
and we are walled in by the physical brain — the
limitation of our field of consciousness. Only when, between
what we call death and our next incarnation, we have reached
the heights of the causal level shall we be able to glance
backward over our past lives; and when we come downward
into another incarnation it will be as though we were descending
in a narrow vale within mountain ranges that stand between
us and the wider world.
Memory
is dependent on things not within the control of the will.
It often fails to establish facts which we wish to recall.
We know, for example, the name of a certain person. There
is no doubt that we know it and yet it is impossible to
remember it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us, but
we cannot remember it now, try as we may. If memory fails
to produce its complete record even when we have a mental
picture of just how that person looks, and know just where
we have met him, it is certainly not remarkable that with
no such immediate connection with our last incarnation
we fail to recall it.
Our failure
to remember a name we heard only [Page
220] a few hours ago is not because there is no
inner record of it; for if there were no record there,
we should never be able to recall it. Just as the failure
to remember now what recently occurred does not prove that
there is no record of the incident, so the failure to remember
a former life does not prove that the record of our past
incarnations is not within the imperishable causal body.
It may
be asked why it is that, if we do not remember events that
have occurred in past lives, and people we have known before,
we do not now at least possess the technical knowledge
previously familiar to us. What the soul gains from incarnation
to incarnation is not concrete facts but something higher
and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts which
gives the understanding of their true relationship; and
this is the thing we call good judgment or common-sense.
A man does not succeed in business because he knows a lot
of facts, but because he knows what to do with facts. Every
theorist and dreamer is loaded with facts. The successful
man is the one with balance and judgment.
It might
seem on first thought that one who has been a carpenter
in previous incarnations should have no need to learn the
name and use of a saw, or one who has been a skillful penman
to learn slowly to hold the pen and fashion the letters;
but we must remember that the old soul is now [Page
221] "breaking in" a new physical instrument
with which to express itself and that while it will be
able to use all the skill it has previously evolved, its
full expression must await the time when the new vehicle
has been brought into responsive action.
The situation
might be fairly illustrated by the case of a stenographer
who is still using the original typewriter, in some remote
corner of the earth, and who has not even seen or heard
of any of the remarkable improvements made in such machines
since their invention. If his old machine were suddenly
taken away and a model of the present year were put in
its place, it is obvious that he could at first make but
little use of it — not because he has no skill but
because he must become accustomed to the new machine before
he can express himself through it. It would have mechanism
and appliances that he could not immediately manage. That,
however, has no relationship to abilities already acquired.
All that he has previously evolved of skill and understanding,
he possesses. He is as competent a typist as before the
new machine arrived, but he must have a little time in
which to adapt himself to the unaccustomed mechanism before
he can freely express himself upon it. When that is accomplished,
he will be more competent than he was before because of
the improved. instrument he uses. [Page
222]
Let
us imagine also that the characters on the machine are
in a foreign language which must be mastered before it
can be used. Still the difficulties are not great enough
for a fair illustration. We must also suppose that it is
a living thing, with moods and emotions, and that — it
must pass through stages of growth comparable to infancy
and youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain that
the stenographer would appear to have very little knowledge
and to possess little skill; yet as a matter of fact it
is merely the conditions that temporarily prevent him from
expressing his skill.
The gist
of experience gained in the past represents skill that
has no dependence whatever upon brain memory. If a man
should suffer a lapse of memory, as sometimes happens,
and wander about unable to give his name or place of residence,
such loss of memory does not prevent him using any skill
he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not know
in what gymnasium he evolved his great strength, but he
can use it just as effectively regardless of the absence
of memory.
One who
has been a skillful penman brings all his skill to the
new incarnation but of course the new body must be trained
to hold the pen and form the letters. Every teacher knows
that one child will quickly learn that, and soon become
a competent penman, while another can by no [Page
223] possibility exhibit skill in that particular
art. The reason is that one has previously evolved his
skill and the other has not, and may not, for several more
incarnations.
It is
sometimes objected that, by the hypothesis of reincarnation,
we are required to go over the same ground again and again
and learn what we have previously learned. But the criticism
has no foundation in fact. There is undoubtedly some necessary
recapitulation in the early part of the incarnation, just
as there may be in the early part of a school term. But
in the main we are thrown into new conditions which are
calculated to develop additional faculties. We return to
the same material plane but we find it with a higher form
of civilization than when we were here before. Never before
have we who are now here seen a civilization like this,
with its age of iron and steam and electricity, with its
marvelous opportunities for the development of the mechanical
and scientific faculties in human nature. And that is another
bit of evidence of the beauty and utility of the evolutionary
scheme. We come back always to greater opportunities than
we have yet known.
It is
not only clear that the failure to remember the past has
nothing to do with our ability to use the skill and wisdom
we have previously evolved but it is equally obvious that
it is the best of good [Page 224] fortune
that we cannot remember the past. If we could do so that
memory would keep alive the personal antagonisms of past
incarnations. Nobody will deny that we have plenty of them
in this incarnation or that the world would be the better
if we could bury some of the present enmities in blank
oblivion. If all quarreling neighbors were to suddenly
lose memory of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage
to everybody concerned.
Nature's
wisdom in veiling the past from us can be understood by
observing the pernicious effects of remembering too long
the blunders people make in this incarnation. Take the
case of a very young man who has charge of his employer's
money and who, finding himself pressed for ready cash,
makes the grave mistake of "borrowing" a hundred
dollars without his employer's knowledge and consent. The
young man really believes he is borrowing it and knows
just where the money is to come from to replace it soon,
and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know anything
about it; but to his consternation the money that was due
him in a few days cannot be collected in time and an unexpected
examination of his books leads to his arrest for embezzlement.
He is convicted, sent to prison for a year and returns
a marked man. Thoughtless society closes its doors against
him. He seeks employment in vain. Nobody wants an ex-convict.
He explains [Page 225] that
he had no criminal intent; that he really was only guilty
of a youthful indiscretion and that he paid back the money
later. But the world is too busy to listen. It sees only
the court record, and that was against him. The public
forgets, or never knows, the extenuating circumstances;
but it never forgets two things — the verdict of
guilty and the prison. The young man would almost give
his life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible.
It stands against him for life. Nature is wise. She does
not permit our vicious traits to extend their injury too
far. If we could remember from incarnation to incarnation,
that man's misfortune might afflict him for thousands of
years; but by the wise plan of closing all accounts at
the end of each incarnation the mischief of remembering
the blunders of others comes to an end. In the next incarnation
all start with clear records again.
One of
the objections that one sometimes hears against reincarnation
is that it seems to separate us for long periods, if not
forever, and that even when we meet those we have previously
known and loved, there is no memory of the past. The answer
to the first point is that the separation is wholly on
the lower planes and that the time spent on the higher
planes is many times that given to the lower. Separation
is, of course, also unavoidable on the physical plane,
even where people live [Page 226] together
in the same house. The average man spends most of the day
at his office and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four.
He is really separated from his family most of the time
during physical life; but there is no such separation on
higher planes and there we spend by far the larger part
of the entire period of evolution. The second point — that
we do not now have the pleasure of knowing that our friends
are those we knew and loved before — is not an important
one. What is really important is that we again have them.
If the ties of affection have been strong between us in
the past there will be instant friendship when we meet
for the first time in this incarnation. Those with strong
heart ties are certain to be drawn into very close association
life after life. It has been observed through the investigations
that certain egos have been husband and wife, or parent
and child, again and again. The renewal of such close relationship
depends upon the strength of the ties of affection; but
if such real bond between the souls is lacking the mere
fact that they now have family relationship is no guarantee
of such future intimate association. When two souls have
strong ties arising out of past association the failure
to remember that incarnation does not in the least weaken
the ties; but it does mercifully hide the past contentions
that are to be found in nearly all lives. [Page
227]
The failure
to remember previous incarnations will be more clearly
understood if we give some thought to the fact that the
personality here on the material plane is only a fragment
of the whole consciousness of the soul. As we come down
into lower planes from the mental world each grosser grade
of matter through which the ego expresses itself is an
additional limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane
each of us, whatever he may be here, is more alive and
more keenly conscious. On the mental plane he has enormously
greater wisdom than here, with a still farther extension
of consciousness that is quite beyond the present comprehension
of the brain intelligence.
To put
it differently, the ego really does not come into incarnation
at all. It merely sends outward a ray from itself — a
mere fragment of itself, as a man might put his hand down
into the water of a shallow stream to gather bits of ore
from which gold can be obtained. So the ego puts a "finger",
only, down into denser matter to get the earthly experience
that can be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill.
That "finger" of the ego, that we know as the
personality, gathers the experience and then it is withdrawn
into the soul. During the incarnation the personality can
be animated by only a little of the ego's vast intelligence
and that is why it blunders so often. [Page
228] Veiled in dense matter, not much of the ego's
consciousness can reach it.
The relationship
between the ego and the personality may be illustrated
by that which exists between the brain consciousness and
that of the finger-tip. The difference, of course, is great.
The finger-tip cannot see or hear or taste or smell. It
is limited to one sense — touch. But it is a form
of consciousness, and it can get experience and pass it
on to the brain consciousness. A man may be talking to
others and see some substance on the table beside him.
It may be sand or salt. Without interrupting his conversation
he can put down his finger and get at the truth about the
matter. The finger-tip gets the information and passes
it on to the brain consciousness. Meantime there has beep
no pause in the discourse. Not a phrase nor a word nor
the shading of a thought has been missed. The intellectual
life went on in its completeness while the ray of intelligence
sent down in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as
it was.
Just
so the life of the ego — the true self of each of
us — goes forward on its home plane while the personality
here gropes for its harvest of experience. Some of those
experiences will be painful to the personality, and the
event will seem tragic here, but it will be a trifling
event to the ego. In the illustration just used, the substance [Page
229] on the table may prove to be neither sand nor
salt, but tiny bits of glass. Some of the sharp points
may penetrate the finger and pain follows. To the finger-tip
consciousness it is a blinding flash of distress that is
overwhelming; but to the brain consciousness it is a trivial
incident. And thus it is with our painful but very useful
experiences here, — illness, losses, accidents, separations,
disasters, death — they often seem overwhelming to
the physical consciousness, but to the ego they are but
passing incidents.
The personality
finishes its work and perishes, in the sense that it is
drawn up and incorporated in the ego. Most people identify
themselves so fully with the personality that its loss
seems like a tragedy to them. But that feeling will trouble
them no longer when the ego is understood to be the real
self. We might say that the relationship between the ego
and the personality is like that between man and child.
Childhood perishes but only to be merged into manhood.
When we look at that transformation from the viewpoint
of the man it is quite satisfactory; but if looked at from
the viewpoint of the child it may seem appalling. If one
should say to one's son of three summers, "My child,
the time will come when all these beautiful toys will be
broken and lost and your little playmates will see you
no more", it might cause much distress. It would seem
to his limited [Page 230] child
consciousness nothing less than a tragic destruction of
what makes life worth while; but when he reaches manhood
he will look back with a smile to the trivial things of
those early days. If there is something in his childhood
of real, permanent value, it will persist in manhood. All
the trivial and transient will have disappeared and he
will be pleased that it is so, for manhood is the real
life of the personality, as the ego is the true self.
As the
memory of childhood lives in the brain of the man, so the
memory of all the hundreds of incarnations persists in
the causal body and becomes a possession of the ego. When
we are sufficiently evolved to raise the consciousness
to the level of the causal body, while still living on
the physical plane, as some people are now able to do,
we shall thus temporarily recover the memory of past lives.
When that time comes, however, the soul is sufficiently
advanced to use such wider knowledge without injury to
others or to itself. [Page 231] [Page
232]
CHAPTER
- 13 -
VICARIOUS
ATONEMENT
Back
of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is a profound
and beautiful truth, but it has been degraded into a teaching
that is as selfish and brutal as it is false. The natural
truth is the sacrifice of the solar Logos, or the deity
of our system. The sacrifice consists of limiting Himself
in the matter of manifested worlds and it is reflected
in the sacrifice of the Christ and other great teachers.
Nobody more than the Theosophist pays to the Christ the
tribute of the most reverent gratitude; but he also holds
with St. Paul that each must work out his own salvation.
Were it not for such sacrifice the race would be very,
very far below its present evolutionary level. The help
that such great spiritual beings have given mankind is
incalculable and is undoubtedly altogether beyond what
we are able to comprehend. But to assume that such sacrifices
relieve man from the necessity of developing his spiritual
nature or in any degree nullify his personal responsibility
for any evil he has done, is false and dangerous doctrine.
The belief
in special creation arose in that period of our history
when our ancestors knew little of nature. Modern science
was then unborn and [Page 233] superstition
filled the western world. Now that we do know much of the
truths of nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous
evolutionary process that is still going on, it is time
to abandon the old conceptions and bring religious beliefs
and scientific principles into harmonious relationship.
Wherever
it touches the practical affairs of life the old idea of
special creation and special salvation fail to satisfy
our sense of justice and of consistency. Intuitively we
know that any belief that is not in harmony with the facts
of life is a wrong belief. The idea of special creation
is not only inconsistent with the facts as science has
found them, but it does not give us a sound basis for moral
development. Having started with the false idea of the
special creation of the soul, which brought it into the
world free from personal responsibility, it became necessary
to invent a special salvation in order to give any semblance
of justice at all.
The vital
point against this plan of salvation is that it ignores
the soul's personal responsibility and teaches that whatever
the offenses against God and man have been, they may be
cancelled by the simple process of believing that another
suffered and died in order that those sins might be forgiven.
It is the pernicious doctrine that wrong doing by one can
be set right by the [Page 234] sacrifice
of another. It is simply astounding that such a belief
could have survived the Middle Ages and should continue
to find millions who accept it in these days of clearer
thinking. But it seems that when people are taught a thing
in childhood the mind accepts it then without reasoning
and afterwards vaguely regards it as one of the established
facts, without thinking farther about it. Upon reflection
we see at once the impossibility of its being true. We
hear of a lingering practice in a remote province of China,
whereby a man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire
a substitute to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law
must have its victim and its supremacy must be upheld.
We laugh at that and know well enough that punishing the
unfortunate substitute, who sacrifices himself to obtain
a sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot
regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his
willingness to shift the responsibility for his crime upon
another only sinks him farther into iniquity.
By applying
the principles involved to the events of daily life the
absurdity of such a belief is the more readily seen. Let
us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement for
wrong doing were to be adopted generally. Then every murderer
who had the means would escape the consequences of his
crime. Every burglar who was successful enough to have
the cash on hand [Page 235] could
elude prison. Every pickpocket could hire a substitute
to go to jail for him and thus continue his criminal career.
Every embezzler would have the money to purchase freedom.
Every successful thief could laugh at the law. It would
make a mockery of justice. It would place a premium upon
crime. However bad the dishonest might be it would make
them worse. It would destroy the sense of personal responsibility,
and personal responsibility is the basis of sound morals
and the foundation of civilized society.
Yet that
is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief
in special creation and special salvation
— the teaching that we are not responsible for our
sins and that by believing that another assumed them and
died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing
and thus be saved. What are we to be saved from? From
nothing but ourselves; from our selfishness, from our capacity
to do evil, from our willingness to inflict pain, from
our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the heartlessness
that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may
escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy
heaven. The man who is willing to purchase bliss by the
agony of another is unfit for heaven and could not recognize
it if he were there.
A heaven
that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement
a happy arrangement for [Page 236] letting
them in pleasantly and easily would not be worth having.
It would be a realm of selfishness and that would be no
heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those
who have eliminated selfishness; only of those who want
to help others instead of trying to dodge the consequences
of their own acts; only of those who are manly and womanly
and generous and just and true. Nothing less than a recognition
of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that;
yet the theory of vicarious atonement ignores it, waves
it aside — in fact denies it!
Reincarnation
represents personal responsibility and therefore justice.
It shows that, not merely in the future, but also in this
life, the degree of our happiness depends upon our past
and present course. If that were generally understood it
would necessarily raise the average of morality. It furnishes
a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive
for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy.
It shows the one that there is no possible way to avoid
reaction; that he must return life after life to associations
and environments determined by the ill he has done; that
he can no more escape from the consequences of evil deeds
than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately
suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation
of every insult he is willing to inflict [Page
237] upon others. It assures the man of good intentions
and right desires that every noble deed shall rise up in
the future to bless him; that all whom he has helped shall
become his helpers hereafter; that even his good intentions,
that failed in their purpose through mistaken judgment,
shall bring him joy in the future.
What
a splendid thing it is to know that every right thought
and act adds permanent value to the character; that all
we learn in any life becomes an eternal possession; that
we can add to the strength of our intellect, to our moral
insight, to our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power,
as certainly and definitely as a man can add to his bank
account or permanent investments; that whatever we may
be in this incarnation we can return again stronger and
wiser and better!
The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent divinity
and the method by which the latent becomes the actual. Instead
of the ignoble belief that we can fling our sins upon another
it makes personal responsibility the keynote of life. It is
the ethics of self-help. It is the moral code of self-reliance.
It is the religion of self-respect!
Consider
the utility as well as the commonsense of a scheme of salvation
that saves us because it evolves us; that never denies
us a chance to rectify an error; that gives us an opportunity
to right every wrong; that brings us back life [Page
238] after life until all enemies have been changed
to friends; until all accounts are closed and balanced;
until all our powers have been evolved; until intellect
has become genius; until sympathy has become compassion
and the last moral battle has been fought and won. [Page
239] [Page 240 ]
CHAPTER -
14 -
THE
FORCES WE GENERATE
To
say that life is a puzzle to most people is probably
to state the best known fact in the world. Every thoughtful
person has often paused in the rush and turmoil of daily
affairs to ask himself what it is all about. If we look
down into a busy street, from a tall building, at the
endless stream of people flowing below, at the intricate
swarm of human beings coming and going, and think of
them only as related to this, it presents activity as
meaningless as the movements of a community of ants.
Nevertheless, the lack of purpose is merely apparent,
not real. There is a reason why each is there and a reason
will also determine his going. The seeming confusion
exists only because we are unable to relate those people
to the scenes through which they have moved before they
appeared in the street. If we could do that, the chaos
would disappear and we would see that reason and purpose
govern the movements of each.
Just
so it is with the life journey of every human being. As
certainly as the street scene is but a fragment of a larger,
orderly life, so is an incarnation, from infancy to old
age, but a fragment of a soul's evolution, and what we
call birth [Page 241] and death
correspond to the appearance and disappearance of the people
in the crowded street below us.
The fact
that the coming and going in the street scene is not visibly
related to something which preceded it, or to anything
that shall follow it, proves that what we are observing
is but a portion of some larger drama. We know that these
people did not suddenly begin to exist at the instant when
we saw them and that they will not as suddenly cease to
exist when they pass from our sight. We realize that they
must have appeared in the street below us as the result
of a train of causes and that when they disappear from
our range of vision they will move through other scenes
that must just as certainly be related to that fragment
which we see.
Now,
if it were possible to extend our vision to include the
entire life journey of each of the people in the street
below, it would prove to be equally fragmentary. If we
could trace the multitude from birth to death, we should
find many things that we could not explain because they
are not related to anything that has occurred during this
life. We could find no satisfactory relationship between
cause and effect. We should find that one is extremely
selfish; that he cares nothing for the happiness of others;
that he has no respect for the laws or usages of civil
life; [Page 242] that he is
both cruel and dishonest; yet he prospers amazingly and
amasses great wealth. We should find that another had been
crafty in business or politics, breaking promises and betraying
friends, but that he had been successful in attaining fame
and power. We should find that another had lived peacefully
and piously all his life only to be murdered in his old
age; that still another had killed many people but was
never brought to justice for his crimes and finally died
peacefully surrounded by his friends. We should find that
many learned but little from their experiences and that,
after a long life, they departed not much wiser than when
they came. In many others we should find rapid mental and
moral growth while multiplied thousands died in infancy
before they had time to gain any experience and with no
apparent reason for being here at all. We should find that
many wrongs are not righted and that many good harvests
are not reaped. We should see, in short, that doing justice
does not always insure justice; that being kind does not
guarantee an immediate return of kindness; that being patient
does not save us from the irritable; that being honest
is no security against loss by thieves, and that living
in peace does not always protect us from violence.
Thus
life, as we look upon it, in a single incarnation, is a
mystery and apparently a contradiction. It seems to defy
law [Page 243] and to disregard
consistency; but since there must necessarily be a cause
for every effect, we are forced to the conclusion that
some unknown law is at work which, when understood, will
enable us to reduce the apparent confusion to order. That
law is the law of action and reaction which inexorably
works out the destiny of every human being. To that law
we may appeal and build character as we admire it; with
that law we may shape destiny as we would have it.
We should
carefully study the laws of life for the same reason that
a ship should carry a compass. Most people are merely adrift
upon a shoreless sea. No chart marks a destination, no
rudder holds a course. They are at the mercy of every adverse
wind that blows, and if they have made a little progress
when night comes at the end of life's journey it is because
they have been borne onward by the ceaseless tide of evolution,
and not because they have resolutely grasped the opportunities
for a fair and prosperous voyage that lie within reach
of every human being. In order that we may avoid this aimless
drifting, with its wasted energy and its painful collisions,
we must know something of the principles that govern the
journey — something of that great occult law of cause
and effect under whose operation our existence can be a
life of misery and gloom and disaster, or a life of light
and love and joy. [Page 244]
The first
step toward a satisfactory life is to recognize the fact
that natural law governs everywhere, and precisely as much
in the realm of morals as in the world of physical affairs.
As we pass through life we have various experiences, establish
a certain relationship with the other human beings we meet,
contract certain obligations and responsibilities, do or
fail to do certain things, and thus set up a train of causes
that must somewhere, at some time, work out into certain
definite results. It is a truth of nature that no force
can be lost; that no particle of energy can be put forth
anywhere in the universe without a natural result following.
If you toss a pebble in the air the act is not complete
when the stone leaves your hand. A result must follow.
Under the operation of what we call the law of gravity
the pebble must return to the earth. When you wind a clock
the energy you put forth must likewise have its result
but not so immediately. It drives the mechanism of the
clock for a certain definite period. The result is somewhat
delayed, but it must be an exact and complete working out
of the cause.
This
law of action and reaction applies to every putting forth
of energy by a human being. Each thought and emotion and
act is a disturbance in some degree of nature's equilibrium
and it will readjust itself as certainly as the rivers
flow to [Page 245] the sea.
Sometimes it works itself out immediately, as in the case
of the pebble. In more complex matters it is delayed, as
in the case of the clock; but sometime, somewhere, it must
exactly work itself out. No human being can escape the
consequences of his lightest thought or slightest deed.
We must reap precisely as we sow. No evasion is possible.
Death does not settle the score any more than moving to
a new town will pay debts in the old one.
In all
the universe there can be no such thing as chance. Nothing
merely happens. Every thought, every movement, every expenditure
of energy, is governed by natural law. Every cause must
have a certain definite effect, modified, of course, by
all subsidiary causes. There is no such thing as luck,
good or bad. Back of every piece of good fortune lies the
cause that we ourselves have somewhere created, perhaps
unconsciously, perhaps in a previous life. Behind every
particle of ill fortune likewise lies the energy that we
ourselves have generated. We make our own sunshine and
shadow, health and disease, friends and foes, heaven and
hell; and if a man really reaps as he sows he has only
himself to blame if the harvest is thistles instead of
figs. It at once becomes clear that misfortune can no longer
be called "the visitation of God", and responsibility
for evil deeds be conveniently charged to Satan. [Page
246] It makes man just what every manly man desires
to be —
a self-reliant being with neither the power nor the desire
to escape responsibility.
To have
convincing proof that in the long run we reap as we sow,
we need only carefully observe the people about us. We
see that they are doing this so far as causes can work
out in one life. We know that the man who hates people
is universally disliked; that the person who has a good
word for all is himself considerately treated; that the
fighter is a target for others' vengeance while the man
of peace is usually free from assault. We see that the
thief loses more than he steals, for he is deprived of
his plunder and loses his liberty besides; while the philanthropist
doesn't grow poor. We know that the pleasant are sought
and the selfish are shunned; that the tolerant are considered
and that the narrow go unheard; that peacemakers have peace
and that killers are killed. We reap as we sow.
We are,
then, determining in this life largely what kind of treatment
we shall receive in the days to come, and we are also creating
the causes that shall make our future lives pleasant or
painful. The subject is one of the most complex with which
Theosophy deals, but occult investigators carefully watching
the working out of this law of cause and effect have observed
some unvarying results. One of these is that whoever in
one life [Page 247] faithfully
discharges his duties and utilizes the opportunities that
come to him, always finds a still wider opportunity awaiting
him. There is said to be no kind of exception to this rule.
On the other hand, neglected opportunity is followed by
loss of future opportunity. And why not? Nature does nothing
uselessly.
That
thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity
is, the student of the occult knows, but the world is not
quite yet at the point where the fact is generally accepted.
When Franklin began his experiments with electrical force
almost nobody believed there was any such thing in existence;
yet today we use it to carry our messages, to run our trains
and to drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that,
at the time of the first experiments, he would have been
considered extraordinarily foolish. What the world accepts
or rejects at any particular time usually has very little
relationship to the facts. The general public can be expected
to come trailing along, about a half century late, with
its acceptance and approval of the truth.
Thought
is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be impossible.
If thought is really the source from which good or evil
fortune flows, it is exceedingly important that we know
precisely what thought is and how we may direct it. In
telepathy two human brains work somewhat as [Page
248] two instruments in wireless telegraphy do.
It is no more wonderful in the one case than in the other.
In wireless telegraphy the communication is through the
vibratory waves in an imponderable matter, which we know
must freely interpenetrate solids. In telepathy the process
is much the same, except that the vibratory waves are in
a still rarer grade of matter. Thought-force, working in
this impalpable matter — just as electricity works
through the intangible ether, molds it into various forms.
These thought-forms act upon others and react upon the
person who generates them. Thus we are establishing an
invisible relationship between ourselves and other people
and between ourselves and material things, which must and
will produce certain exact results that will make or mar
our fortunes far into the future.
When
we think we actually create a thing — a thought-form.
It persists for a length of time in proportion to the intensity
of the thought. It gets renewed vitality from each repetition
of the thought. It reacts upon the mind that produced it,
giving further impulses to that kind of thinking. If we
think of a person in a particular way, let us say with
hatred, we create a certain kind of thought-form. If we
constantly give it new life by continued thinking about
it, that thought-form becomes strongly vitalized and grows
in [Page 249] power. It reacts
upon us, stimulating the mind to fresh thoughts of hatred.
If the object of our wrath is similarly thinking hatred
of us it presently grows into a feud, an encounter, perhaps
a murder; for we have generated an evil force of great
power which must produce its result as certainly as does
the thunderbolt.
Sometimes
we hear of an impulsive crime. One man suddenly slays
another, and a close examination of all the circumstances
reveals no provocation at all commensurate with the deed.
The murderer himself is bewildered and unable to comprehend
just how it occurred. He can only say that he struck
the fatal blow before he fully realized what he was doing.
This statement may be the truth and yet not lessen his
responsibility; for when he has thought and thought of
doing this thing, when he has intensely desired to
do it, and is then suddenly confronted with the opportunity,
he may be automatically hurried into it; for
an act is but the outward expression of an inner condition.
This man is already a murderer in the realm of mind.
The motive is fully developed. The desire to take life
is matured. He is restrained only by fear of consequences
to himself — a fear that may be momentarily pushed
aside by anger. Deep within his soul the murder is already
committed. On the stage of his imagination the tragedy
has been played again and [Page
250] again.
He has experienced the secret joy of cunningly entrapping
his victim. He has felt the fury of anger as he overpowered
his enemy. With the gloating exultation of vengeance
achieved, he has, in imagination, plunged the knife into
his heart and felt no pang of pity. This moral ignoramus
— for that he is whatever his power of intellect
— has brooded in malice until the accumulated force
of hatred hurried him into the crime the instant he was
confronted by the circumstances that made its commission
possible.
Thought-force,
like all force, may be used for a good or a bad purpose,
just as electricity may be used to light a city or to destroy
a human life. If we turn this thought-force in the opposite
direction it is equally potent for good. If we think kindly
of people we shall, in time, have no enemies. If we encourage
noble thoughts we shall soon find ourselves lifted into
a higher moral atmosphere. We shall find it becoming easier
and easier to think nobly, to act generously, to deal justly.
We shall find our friends increasing, our vexations disappearing
and our pleasure in life growing constantly keener.
We get
back from the world what we give to it. If one throws a
ball against the wall it rebounds, and with a force proportional
to the original energy that propelled it. A blow is invariably
met with a blow and a smile with a smile. If we [Page
251] watch people studiously we shall see that they
are daily reaping rewards and incurring penalties as a
result of the mental and emotional forces they have generated.
There
is something almost startling in the immutability of all
natural laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They
are the operation of forces which, in themselves, are not
related to what we call good and bad. The law of gravity
will illustrate the point. It operates with no consideration
whatever for character or motives. It holds all people,
good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it whirls
through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice,
it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality.
If the fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more
cautious than the saint and avoids the precipice, the law
has not favored him. He has merely reaped the reward of
his alertness in spite of his bad morals. The saintly man
may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law
of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over
the precipice, and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty
of carelessness regardless of his benevolence. But this
immutability of natural law is not in the least terrifying
when we come to look more closely at it. On the contrary
it is within that very immutability that divine beneficence
and compassion are hidden. It is only [Page
252] by the constancy of the changeless law that
we can calculate with absolute certainty and surely attain
the results at which we aim.
Why should
there be such a law operating in the mental and moral realm?
Because only thus can we evolve. We must not only change
from ignorance to wisdom but from selfishness to compassion,
from wrong doing to perfect harmlessness. How would that
be possible without the law of cause and effect, without
action and reaction which brings pleasure for righteousness
and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a law can we
learn what is the right and what is the wrong thing to
do. If it is agreed that we are souls, that evolution is
a fact, and that perfection is the goal of the human race,
then the necessity for the law of action and reaction is
as obvious as the reason for a law of gravity.
Every
human being is constantly generating three classes of forces,
and they are not only factors in determining the kind of
life he will lead here, the degree of success or failure
that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
on inner planes after the death of the physical body, but
also the environment and the relationships he will return
to in the following incarnation.
The three
classes of energies which we generate arise out of thought,
desire and action. They [Page 253] belong,
in the order named, to the mental plane, the astral plane
and the physical plane. All people are constantly thinking
and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting
thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into
the realms of thought, emotion and activity, produce certain
reactions, or consequences, and to them the man is bound
until justice is done and the soul has learned its evolutionary
lesson.
Desires
generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role
in the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring
together the desirer and the object that aroused the desire;
for the soul can judge the wisdom of its desires by observing
the result of gratifying them. Thus do we acquire discrimination.
It is usually a strong desire nature that brings trouble
of various kinds and yet the force of desire it is that
pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul
finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires
into higher ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment
and liberation.
Actions
are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and,
as we are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring
and acting, very complex results arise. In the multitudinous
activities of life we set up relationships with other souls,
some of the results of which reach far into the future.
The average man, with no knowledge of the laws [Page
254] under which he is evolving, is usually making
both friends and foes for future incarnations and is often
unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for himself which
a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every
injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not
necessarily in kind. Nature does not punish. She merely
teaches. Retaliation is unknown to her. Her great concern
seems to be that all souls shall get on in evolution and
when a lesson is learned her purpose is accomplished.
It is
a generally acknowledged fact that we must all reap as
we sow. But the people who assent to that truth often have
in mind very different beliefs about it. Many believe that
in some way we shall suffer in a future state for the wrong
we have done here. The Theosophist has a very definite
idea. He believes that each act has a reaction which exactly
corresponds to its cause; that every thought and emotion
reproduce their kind as certainly as the seed of a plant
reproduces its kind, and no other; that all the incarnations
of the soul are thus knit together in a great series of
causes and effects and that these have the same definite
relationship that exists between the course a young man
follows and the results of that course in his latter days.
If he is kind and helpful in early life, he will have many
friends in later life, but if, in his earlier years, he [Page
255] makes enemies of everybody and does nothing
to set such blunders right, he will certainly be friendless
in his old age.
People
speak of a judgment day that is to come. To the Theosophist
every day is a judgment day and the working of natural
law brings the penalty or the reward. The judgment day
for the sharp censure of another's mistake comes when somebody
exposes a blunder that we have made. The judgment day for
a drunken bully who runs amuck on the street comes when
a policeman clubs him into submission. The judgment day
for the soul that cruelly maimed another's body comes when
he is reborn with a defective brain and the awful blight
of idiocy falls upon him. Such things are not punishments
but merely reactions, and to the clear comprehension of
the soul who looks back upon the distant cause of the affliction
with unclouded vision, a necessary lesson is taught by
the sad experience.
The forces
we generate in each incarnation not only modify that one
but shape and determine the next and succeeding ones. Our
friends, our families, our business associates, our nation,
are determined by what we have thought and felt and done
in the past and by the lessons it is necessary for us to
learn. Our wealth or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our
strength or frailty, our intelligence or stupidity, our
good or bad environment, [Page 256] our
freedom or limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and
emotions and acts in the past. From their consequences
there is no possibility of escape; but that does not mean
that we are the helpless slaves of a fate from which there
is no release.
It is
sometimes said by those who have misunderstood, that the
theosophical hypothesis is identical with fatalism. No
assertion could be more erroneous. The conception of fatalism
is that the universe is a huge machine set running by some
infinite being who ordered its intricate movements an eternity
in advance, with the fate of all men fixed and inflexible
like cogs; that, try as he may, a man can be nothing but
what he was destined by this infinite being to be and that
regardless of the man's apathy and indifference he will
be that anyhow. If such a belief were universal, it would
put an end to human progress by leaving us with no incentive.
The theosophical
conception is just the reverse of this. It holds that men
are literally gods in the making; that each has within
him potentially all the attributes of deity; that these
are being slowly developed by the process of evolution;
that among other things he is evolving will-power; and
that man where he stands now is not the result of either
his environment or his will, but of evolutionary forces,
and that important factors [Page 257] in
his development are his will, plus his environment, acting
and reacting upon each other. It holds that man is moving
forward with accelerating speed and the very gist of the
idea is that the rapidity of his evolution depends upon
his own efforts. So, as a matter of fact, the theosophical
hypothesis is precisely the opposite of fatalism.
It may
be thought that if our present conditions are the result
of our past thoughts, emotions and acts, these conditions
must be just, and that we should not, therefore, seek to
change them. If one's neighbor is in the depths of poverty
and has bad health it might be argued that that is his
just fate and that no one has a right to interfere; but
such a view is in error because it leaves oneself out of
the problem as one who might stand aside and look at the
universe. The universe is all-inclusive and the prosperous
man is as much a factor in the problem as his poverty-stricken
neighbor. If the poverty and ignorance and apathy of the
world are needed factors in human development, equally
so are the strength and knowledge and altruism needed factors.
While
unfortunate conditions, either of the individual or of
whole classes, are just the circumstances that must inevitably
have resulted from the sum total of past causes, and are
also the conditions required to teach the necessary lesson
to those individuals, classes or nations, yet when [Page
258] these conditions have accomplished the purpose
of awakening the desire for better things, they have done
their work and should be transcended. Therefore, while
our present environment, physical, social, and moral, is
of our own making, the moment we realize that it is susceptible
of improvement, the instant we are able to see a higher
ideal, it is our duty to seek and to insist upon that improvement
to the limit of our ability.
Those
who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will
and determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably
strong arguments that can be marshaled by each side; to
the controversy. Either side, when presented alone, appears
to be conclusive. The explanation lies in the fact that
each is right, but only to a certain point. Both
free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical
viewpoint is understood the apparent contradiction disappears.
We are temporarily bound, but we did the binding,
by the desires we indulged and the emotions we freely harbored
in the past.
The condition
of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may
be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into
the interior of Alaska to locate mines. They are all aware
that in that remote northern country navigation closes
very early and that after the last boat leaves there is
no possibility of getting out of that region [Page
259] until navigation opens again in the next season.
Some of them are discreet and reach the landing in ample
time. Others are careless. They continue their search for
gold a little too long, allowing barely time for the return
trip. Then the unexpected happens; a sudden storm, a swollen
river that cannot be crossed and they arrive at the steamer
landing a day too late. The boat has sailed and they must
become prisoners of the ice king. It's a great misfortune
but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from
Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely
free. They can build a cabin and either waste the time
with idle games or seriously think and study. They are
limited, but free within the limitation, which was of their
own making. It is precisely so with us in the environment
of the present incarnation and with our various fortunes.
We made them and, when the forces with which we did it
are exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much
toward modification and improvement. We have such degree
of will power as we have evolved and we can use it within
the self-imposed limitations that afflict us.
The reactions
from the forces we generate naturally do us exact justice
simply because they are reactions. We reap in the
long run precisely what we sow. The reaction may sometimes
seem harsh [Page 260] but consideration
of the matter from all points of view will show that mercy
as well as justice is a factor. Let us consider the method
by which nature changes recklessness into caution. A man
is careless, we will say, about lighting a cigar and throwing
the burning match down wherever it may fall. He may go
on doing that for a long time with no serious result, yet
all careful people know that he is a source of danger.
Some time ago a newspaper told the story of such a man,
who passed along the street, lighted a cigarette and carelessly
flung the flaming match from him. A nurse was passing with
her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell on some
of the light, airy wraps of the infant and they burst into
a blaze. Before the fire could be extinguished the child
was so badly burned that it died the next day.
The moment such a case is stated we realize the necessity for
something that will cure the man of such fatal carelessness.
He is a menace to the people and property in his vicinity.
No law, however, can be invoked. He had no criminal intent
but he is none the less dangerous for that, as the incident
proved. We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
carelessness; but nature is not helpless. Under the law of
action and reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be
in the latter part of this incarnation, or it may be in a following
one, but sooner or later his [Page 261] carelessness
will react and he will lose his physical body in pain and distress
and come to know personally just what his recklessness means.
In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane,
he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right.
The folly of his course is so driven in on his consciousness
that he is changed from the careless man to the careful man.
In no other way could his cure be brought about.
In such
a tragedy there is no injustice. This heedless soul can
learn his lesson only through experience and the sooner
he gets that experience the better it will be, both for
him and for others — the better for others because
it removes a source of danger to them, and better for him
because the longer he remains the careless man the longer
will painful reactions continue. Nature is both just and
merciful. In truth, not nature, but one's own self is the
actor. No power outside ourselves ever inflicts a penalty
upon us. There are really neither rewards nor punishments.
There are merely consequences. If an infant picks up a
live coal, it will be burned. It is innocent and ignorant,
but that will not prevent the operation of natural law.
It must suffer the consequence of the mistake. At first
thought that seems cruel, but upon reflection we see that
in no other way can its life be made safe from fire. Following
this method of teaching by experience, nature is [Page
262] constantly permitting us to suffer the minimum
of penalty in order to escape the maximum of pain.
It is
a legal maxim that ignorance of the law excuses no man.
This may sometimes work an apparent hardship, but there
is no other way in which society can be protected
— no other way to secure the greatest good to the
greatest number. If we ignorantly violate law, either statutory
or natural, we must suffer for it. Ignorance is the cause
of all suffering. Happiness is the result of wisdom.
It may
be thought that if a misfortune comes to us as the result
of our wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can
now know nothing of its cause and therefore we cannot profit
by the reaction. Every cause must work out its natural
effect regardless of our memory about it. We may do an
indiscreet thing in youth and still suffer for it in old
age, long after we have apparently learned our lesson and
perhaps after we have forgotten its origin. Even so do
the effects from one life reach into the next. There is
another point to be remembered. While we are not conscious
in the physical brain of the past errors for which we are
now unwillingly paying the penalties, the higher self,
the soul, does remember.
When
we have advanced in evolution to the point where we can
bring the memories of [Page 263] past
lives into the present one — as all of us shall ultimately
do — we can trace remote causes into present effects.
Meantime nothing is being lost, for the result of the slightest
experience is stored in the invisible self, and it becomes
available to us in proportion that we open the way to that
higher consciousness.
The thing
we call conscience is but the impulse from the higher self.
It is the soul memory of past experience coming through
in the form of impressions about a certain thing being
right or wrong. If we have had painful experience about
it we get the warning impression to avoid that line of
action. If we have not had experience through action or
observation, or have not had enough of it to fully teach
the lesson, we get no warning and go ahead, led by desire,
until we do learn. None of us have any doubt about this
dual nature of man for it is a matter of daily experience.
We note the constant warfare between the spiritual and
material, the higher and lower. The lower grovels, the
higher soars — a ceaseless conflict between the animal
and the spiritual, desire continually plunging downward
in pursuit of the material things but warned and checked
by conscience.
There
are two impressive points here involved. One is that under
the operation of natural law, causes must work out into
results regardless of [Page 264] memory,
and the other is that, although we may not be conscious
of the fact in the physical brain, the lesson is absorbed
by the higher consciousness and will guide us in the future.
The principles
of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its
evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he
does not merit and that which often looks like a misfortune
is only the beneficent working of the law seen from an
angle that makes it illusory. It may be thought that it
is scarcely beneficent working of the law" — when
some disaster occurs. Sometimes a theatre is burned and
a score of people, including children, lose their lives.
How can Theosophy explain that?
How can
it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created
at birth? If God really brings the soul into its original
expression in an infant body, why does He throw it out
again in a few years, or even months? What can be the
purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain the death
of children if the soul were created at birth. But let
us look at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child
is an old soul with a young body. Hark back to the case
of the man whose carelessness caused the death of the baby
in its carriage. He, and others like him, are again in
incarnation and in the burning theatre they get the reaction
of the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why
so many in some catastrophes? it may [Page
265] be asked. A principle is not affected by the
number involved. If we can see justice in the death of
one person we can see justice in the death of a hundred.
It is simply class instruction. People of a kind have been
drawn together.
We should
not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such
case from the physical plane. We form an opinion, however,
on that inadequate survey and are quick to declare our
estimate of the justice or injustice involved. But our
verdict depends wholly upon a viewpoint. Let us suppose,
for example, that a man strolls down the street and that,
as he turns a corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy
of life. A young man is lying on the ground while two others
are assaulting him. The sympathies of the average man would
assuredly be with the man on the ground. Now, let us suppose
that the observer had been a moment earlier. He would then
have been in time to have turned the corner with the two
assailants and would have seen the young man, who is now
being assaulted, rush upon a defenseless woman, push her
down, snatch her purse and dash away but, fortunately,
in the direction of the men who were just coming upon the
scene. Had our observer seen the entire affair he would
have reversed his opinion and said that the thief got what
he deserved. Thus it is in our inadequate physical plane
view of [Page 266] what we
call a calamity. It may appear to involve an injustice,
but only because we do not see the entire transaction.
Sometimes those who admit the operation of this law in
the present life, where we know cause and effect may be
separated by many years, ask why it should apply to future
incarnations, granting for the moment that they agree that
there are future lives to be lived here. We can easily
see how our acts on one day have a determining effect on
our affairs the next day. If we neglect business, if we
fail to keep engagements, we know that unfavorable results
must follow. A night during which we forget it all has
intervened but that does not in the least save us from
the results of the causes we generated the day before.
Just so do the thoughts and acts of one incarnation affect
the following ones whether we remember or not.
There
is nothing fantastic about the idea that a cause created
in one incarnation works out into an effect in a succeeding
incarnation. The long period between cause and effect and
the fact that the persons concerned have no continuous
knowledge of the matter do not affect the principle involved.
That may be seen by the obvious relationship between cause
and effect in daily affairs. Let us suppose that A, disguised,
steals a large sum of money from B, and succeeds in escaping
after the robbery. Although B does not capture [Page
267] him he has identified him and knows where he
can be found sooner or later. When night comes both A and
E fall asleep and for several hours are oblivious of mundane
affairs; but later B will most assuredly cause A 's arrest
for the crime. Thus the cause of today has its effect on
the morrow, regardless of the intervening period of the
night during which activities were suspended. The duration
of the intervening period is of no importance. Whether
it is eight hours or a year or a century of oblivion, when
the parties concerned are again thrown together, the past
cause becomes the present effect. Of course, no incident
from material life can be a perfect analogy in a matter
that involves the occult side of nature. In the illustration
used, the thief reaps the results of his crime because
B's memory of the wrong done him is the Nemesis which brings
A to justice. In a matter that carries over from one incarnation
to another, it is not the personal recollection but what
has been called the "memory of nature" which
serves not only equally well, but quite infallibly, in
the working out of cause into effect.
The "memory
of nature" is not merely a poetic name. It is a phrase
that designates a part of the marvelously complex mechanism
by which human evolution is accomplished. In the earlier
history of physical science such a term would have [Page
268] been meaningless; but in the light of more
recent discoveries, there is nothing startling in the idea.
Our conceptions of matter have been revolutionized in recent
years. We have learned that even in its grosser grades,
it is enormously more impressionable than had been supposed — a
thing of which the mellowing of wood in a violin under
the vibrations of musical notes ought to have given us
an earlier hint. The sensitiveness of the ether which permits
wireless communications at great distances gives some suggestion
of the degree to which the responsiveness of matter must
rise on higher planes than this. If, in addition, we take
into account the work of the superintending intelligences
to be dealt with in the following chapter, we have in toto
a plan of human evolution in which each of us is indeed
his own recorder of thought, emotion, motive and act — not
a mere record as a book is written, but a series of activities
which continue their being in living matter and bind him
to the forces he has generated; and which must, whether
instantly or very remotely, react upon him in minutest
exactitude.
Those
who study the occult laws that shape human destiny may
learn to use them for their rapid progress and for insuring
a comfortable, as well as a spiritually profitable, life
journey; but before we can work successfully within the
law we must know that the law really exists. Most [Page
269] people seem either to believe there is no law
that will certainly bring them the results of their evil
thoughts and acts or that, if there is such a law, they
can in some way dodge it and escape the consequences of
its violation; and so we see them pass through life always
doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing. They
falsify facts, they harbor evil thoughts, they engage in
gossip, they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme
to bring discomfort and humiliation upon those whom they
dislike. And then, when the harvest from this misdirected
energy is ripe and they are misled by the falsehoods of
others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the
company of cheats and are swindled, when a false story
is started about them, when — through no fault of
the moment
— they are plunged into grief, they merely call it
so much bad luck and go blindly on with their generation
of wrong forces that will, in due time, bring them another
enforced reaping of pain.
The existence
and operation of this law of cause and effect are set forth
repeatedly in the Christian scriptures. "With what
measure ye mete it to others it shall be measured to you",
is certainly explicit. In Proverbs [Proverbs,
XXVI, 27] we have this definite declaration: "Whoso
diggeth a pit shall fall [Page 270] therein,
and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon him".
Of course the language is figurative. No writer of common
sense would assert that every time a workman digs a pit
he shall tumble into it nor that whenever anybody rolls
a stone it will roll back upon him! We dig pits in the
moral world whenever we injure another with a false story,
whether we originate it or merely repeat it, and into such
a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the law.
We loosen and set rolling the stones of envy and hatred
and they shall return to crush us down to failure and humiliation
in the reactions that follow. We have ignorantly generated
evil forces under the law when we could have used it for
our success and happiness.
"Judge
not, that ye be not judged", is another statement
of the law of action and reaction. It is not an assertion
that we should not judge because we are not qualified nor
because we may ignorantly wrong another with such judgment.
It is an explicit statement that the consequence of judging
others is that we, in turn, shall be judged. If we criticize,
we shall be criticized. If we condemn others for their
faults and failures, we shall be condemned. If we are broad
and tolerant and remain silent about the frailties of others
we shall be tolerantly regarded.
All of
us who have studied the subject find in [Page
271] our daily lives the evidence of the truth of
such Biblical declarations. We know perfectly well that
anger provokes anger and that conciliation wins concessions,
while retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort
calls out retort, while silence restores the peace. In
these little things it is usually within the power of either
party to the trouble to have peace instead of turmoil — just
a matter of self control. But in the larger events it is
not always so. They are not invariably within our immediate
control because they are often the results of causes generated
in the past which we can no longer modify; and this brings
us to a wider view of this law of cause and effect.
If we
look at the life history of an individual as it stretches
out from birth to death it presents a remarkable record
of events that appear to have no logical relationship to
each other. In childhood, there may have been either great
happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of character
qualities, and there is nothing in the present life of
the child to explain either. The child itself may be gentle
and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross
abuse and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find
still greater mysteries. Almost invariably there are mingled
successes and failures, pleasures and pains; but when we
come to analyze them we fail [Page
272] to find a satisfactory reason for them. We
see that the successes often arrive when they are not warranted
by anything that was done to win them, and for, the want
of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We
also observe that sometimes failure after failure comes
when the man is not only doing his very best but when all
of his plans will stand the test of sound business procedure.
Baffled again we throw logic to the winds and call it "bad
luck".
"Luck" is
a word we use to conceal our Ignorance and our inability
to trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask
a savage to explain how it is that a few minutes' time
with the morning paper enables one to know what happened
yesterday in a city on the opposite side of the earth.
He knows nothing of reporters and cables and presses. He
cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend it. But if
he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because
we are lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly
as we use it!
If by
luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world.
Chance necessarily means chaos and the absence of law.
From the magnificent, orderly procession of a hundred million
suns and their world systems that wheel majestically through
space down to the very atom, with [Page
273] its mysterious electrons, the universe is a
stupendous proclamation of the all-pervading presence of
law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and effect. There
is no such thing as chance.
What
then is good luck? We know that people do receive
benefits which they apparently have not earned. There simply
cannot be a result without a cause. They have earned it
in other lives when the conditions did not permit immediate
harvesting of the results of the good forces generated
and nature is paying the debt and making the balance of
her books at a later period. It may be in the case of one
that some specific act is attracting its reward, or it
may be in the case of another that he is nearing the point
of evolution where he no longer desires things for himself,
only to discover that nature fairly flings her treasures
at his feet. He has put himself in harmony with evolutionary
law — with the divine plan, and nothing which he
needs is withheld. With the insight of genius Ella Wheeler
Wilcox stated the law in eight lines:
Luck
is tile tuning of our inmost thought
To chord with God's great plan. That done, ah know
Thy silent wishes to results shall grow,
And day by day shall miracles be wrought!
Once let thy inner being selflessly be brought
To chime with universal good, and lo!
What music from the spheres shall through thee flow,
What benefits shall come to thee unsought! [Page
274]
When
we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to seek the cause
of unexplained good or bad fortune beyond the boundaries
of this life because there is nothing else we can do. We
have results to explain and we know they do not come from
causes that belong to this life. They must of necessity
arise from causes generated in a past life.
The moment
we get away from the narrow view that we began existence
when we were born, most of the mysteries about us disappear
and we can fall back on natural law and logically explain
everything. Why does one person begin life with a good
mind while another is born with small mental capacity?
Because one worked hard at life's problems in past incarnations
while the other led a butterfly existence and merely amused
himself. Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances
always maintaining a cheerful view of life while another
loses control of his temper at the slightest annoyance
and wears himself out with trifling vexations? Only because
one has for a long period practiced self-control while
the other has never given a moment to the matter. Why is
one so thoughtful of others that he wins universal love
and admiration while another is so self-centered that he
makes no true friends at all? Again past experience explains
it. The one has studied the laws of destiny and [Page
275] lived by them while the other has not yet even
learned of their existence.
If we
put aside the old belief that the soul is created at birth,
and keep in mind the more scientific view that we have
all lived many lives before, we shall no longer be puzzled
because we find in a man's life some good fortune when
he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we see
that he must, in a previous life, have set in motion the
forces which now culminate in this result. We are no longer
mystified when apparently causeless misfortunes befall
him for we know that in the nature of things he did generate
the causes in the past. A single incarnation has the same
relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single
day has to one lifetime. As the days are separated by the
nights and yet all the days are related by the acts which
run through them, so the incarnations are separated by
periods of rest in the heaven world and yet all the incarnations
are related by the thoughts and acts that bind them together.
What we did yesterday modifies the events of today, and
what we did in our last incarnation is affecting the present
life. The one fact is no more remarkable than the other.
As we mould old age by youth so we, are shaping the coming
incarnation by this one. Before we shall be able to see
the utter reasonableness of the truth that what we are
now is the result of our [Page 276] past
we must have a clear understanding of the relationship
between the soul and the body. The physical body in each
incarnation is the material expression of the soul — of
what it has come to be at that stage of its evolution,
of its moral power or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance,
of its purity or its grossness. One's face is, at each
moment, the tangible expression of one's thought. Every
change of consciousness registers itself in matter. A man
has emotions. He feels a thrill of joy and his face proclaims
the fact. He becomes angry, and the change from joy to
anger is registered in physical matter so that all who
see his face are aware of the change in his consciousness,
which they cannot see. These are passing changes like sunshine
and shadow and they are obvious to all; but we know that,
as the years pass, the constant influence of consciousness
moulds even physical matter into more permanent form. A
soul of sunny disposition finally comes to have benevolent
features while one of morose tendency as certainly has
a face of settled gloom. Nobody can contact the soul of
another with any physical sense we possess yet nobody has
the slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between
a sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony
with life. We know the difference only because consciousness
moulds matter. Consciousness is continually influencing
matter and the [Page 277] major
part of its work is not visible to us. What the consciousness
is, the body gradually becomes. Whether we are now brilliant
or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities
of consciousness, in this and previous lives.
Consider
a specific thing like deformity. We can readily understand
one of the causes that may have brought it about. If in
a past life a person was guilty of deliberate cruelty to
another, and on account of it suffered great mental and
emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on
his victim are reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have
apparently merely a distorted brain so that the soul cannot
function through it. Might not that distortion of the physical
brain easily be the result of violent emotional reaction
from cruelties in a past life? The soul that can be guilty
of cruelty is seeing things in distorted fashion — out
of proportion. This distortion of consciousness must register
a corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the
faithful and accurate reflection of that consciousness.
It is precisely because the body is the true and exact
expression of the consciousness in physical matter that
the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such
remarkable delineations of character. The record is there
in hand and head for those who are clever enough to accurately
read it. [Page 278]
This
broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very
long series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different
view of the difficulties with which we have to contend
and of the limitations which afflict us. It at once shows
us that in the midst of apparent injustice there is, in
the long run, really nothing but perfect justice for everybody;
that all good fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune
is deserved, and that each of us is, mentally and morally,
what he has made himself. Masefield put it well when he
wrote:
All
that I rightly think or do,
Or make or spoil or bless or blast,
Is curse or blessing justly due
For sloth or effort in the past.
My life's a statement of the sum
Of vice indulged or overcome.
And as I journey on the roads
I shall be helped and healed and blest.
Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads
To urge to heights as yet unguessed.
My road shall be the road I made.
All that I gave shall be repaid.
Have
we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth more inspiring?
It is surely a satisfying thought that every mental effort
shall give increased power of intellect; that all kindly
thought of others becomes a shield for our own protection
in time of need; that every impulse of affection shall
ripen into the love of comrades; that all noble thinking
builds heroic character, with which we shall return, in
some future time, to play a still nobler part in the world
of men. [Page 279] [Page 280]
CHAPTER -
15 -
SUPERPHYSICAL
EVOLUTION
If we
accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot escape the
conclusion that there is superphysical evolution. The belief
that man is the highest intelligence in the universe, except
God Himself, would be utterly inconsistent with evolutionary
facts and principles. Evolution is a continuous unfolding
from within, and it is only the limitation of our senses
that leads us to set limitations to it. The one great life
of the universe expresses itself in myriad forms and at
innumerable levels of development. One of those levels
is humanity. As certainly as our consciousness has evolved
to its present stage it shall go on to higher ones.
The thought
of Occidental civilization has been sadly fettered with
materialism. It has scarcely dared to think beyond that
which could be grasped with the hands. The physical senses
marked out its field of investigation. What could not be
seen or heard or felt had for it no existence. Modern science
explored the material universe and perfected its methods
until the vast panorama of worlds could be intimately studied,
and its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat
comprehended; but there was no study [Page
281] of life comparable to the vast panorama
of material worlds, for material scientists had made the
remarkable blunder of assuming that the last word on the
nature of matter had been spoken. Then came the startling
discoveries that revolutionized the accepted views of matter,
that proved that the supposedly indivisible atom was a
miniature universe, a tiny cosmos of force. The old theories
about matter had to be discarded. They were as much out
of date as the belief that the earth is flat; and now modern
science is turning tardy attention to a study of the life
side of the universe. The moment that is done the sense
of consistency and the law of correspondences compel us
to postulate a gradation of intelligences rising above
man as man does above the insects.
While at our stage of evolution we cannot comprehend the more
highly evolved life and intelligence above and beyond us any
more than a domestic animal can comprehend the comparatively
complex life we live, we can, nevertheless, see that our environment
is admirably designed to furnish the experience necessary for
our mental and moral evolution and that the race as a whole
is making rapid progress in the development of altruistic qualities.
Here is a fact of tremendous significance: the development
of unselfishness in the midst of a world where, if things were
controlled by physical laws alone, we should expect [Page
282] the opposite result; for the physical laws that
guarantee the survival of the fittest give life and success
and supremacy to selfish and brutal physical and mental power.
No nature
student denies the fact of evolution, denies that we are
moving forward and upward in a systematic, orderly way.
Now, if our evolution is ruled by chance, if we are but
the product of chemical affinities and mechanical laws,
as the materialists believe, then it is clear that our
development should be following the course of chance; that
the race would be as likely to become extinct as to achieve
great progress, and that vice, ignorance and selfishness
would be quite as likely to be our ideals as purity, wisdom
and benevolence.
Leaving
the materialist aside and assuming, as all the rest of
us are doubtless willing to do, that the universe exists
for the sake of the evolution of life and is designed to
develop its inherent qualities, we would expect to find,
as we do, law and order everywhere from the smallest life
the microscope reveals to the farthest reach of the telescope.
Nothing would be allowed to drift. Skillful control would
be found everywhere. Evolution would be supervised and
directed, unfavorable conditions would be minimized and
the race would be guarded and guided to the extent that
was consistent with the development of free will. [Page
283]
Is it
not clear that something is required in evolution besides
the thing to be evolved and its environment? Take, for
example, children in a school. We have the children and
the books, but something else is required before they will
make any progress. There must be a superintending intelligence
that we call the teacher, and we know well enough that
without that there will be chaos instead of progress.
Whoever
accepts the idea of evolution at all sees that there must
be, somewhere in the universe, the finished products of
evolution. We can see an orderly gradation of life running
through the kingdoms below us. We observe the higher animals,
and the lower, the reptiles, the insects, making an orderly
decline down to the microbe. It would be downright nonsense
to suppose that evolution stops suddenly with man and that
this orderly gradation there disappears; that there is
no connecting link between man and God, and that in this
vast universe, in which our earth is like a grain of sand
upon a chain of mountains, there is no higher product of
evolution than man. That would be as irrational as some
of the misconceptions of ancient days.
There
was a time when our ancestors, huddled in an insignificant
portion of the earth and constituting a very small fraction
of its population, firmly believed that the earth was the
center of [Page 284] the universe;
that all the stars revolved about it; that the sun was
a small but convenient affair that existed only for the
purpose of furnishing them light and that everything was
arranged for the particular convenience of the people of
that locality. Their conception of God was equally grotesque.
They thought of Him as a mighty ruler in the little universe
their imaginations had outlined. They conceived Him to
be their especial protector and defender against all other
peoples. We can hardly say which is the greater, the ignorance
that held that conception of the universe or the vanity
that led to the belief that they were the only living things
worthy of consideration. We have certainly advanced in
knowledge, but how is it with vanity when we still believe
we are the supreme thing in evolution and, as many do,
that the rest of creation, including the animals, exists
only for the use of man?
As a
matter of occult fact there are other lines of evolution
besides the human going forward upon this particular planet,
and one of these is as much higher than we as we are higher
than the animals. It is so much higher that its lowest
forms are composed of etheric matter and it is not, therefore,
visible to the physical senses.
However
strange and improbable such a fact may seem to those who
have not investigated the matter, scientific men see that
it is reasonable and [Page 285] natural.
Huxley, in "Some Controverted Questions", says
that the working of consciousness in the higher cannot
be understood by the lower and that there is nothing against
the analogy of nature in supposing there are grades of
intelligences as high above men as men are above beetles!
Writing
on the subject of energy, Nicola Tesla says:
"We
can conceive of organized beings living without nourishment
and deriving all the energy they need for the performance
of their life functions from the ambient medium. . . There
may be . . . individualized material systems of beings,
perhaps of gaseous constitution, or composed of substance
still more tenuous. In view of this possibility
— nay, probability — we cannot apodictically
deny the existence of organized beings on a planet merely
because the conditions on the same are unsuitable for the
existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot even, with
positive assurance, assert that some of them might not
be present here in this our world, in the very midst of
us, for their constitution and life manifestation may be
such that we are unable to perceive them. [ "The
Conservation of Energy", Nicola Tesla, Century
Magazine, June, 1900]
Alfred
Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand old man
of science", wrote:
"I
think we have got to recognize that between man and the
ultimate God there is an almost infinite multitude of
beings working in the universe at large, at tasks as
definite and important as any we have to perform on earth.
I imagine that the universe is peopled with spirits — that
is, with intelligent beings — with power and duties
akin to our own, but vaster. I think there is a gradual
ascent from man upward and onward." [Page
286]
While
such scientists, lacking conclusive evidence, go only to
the point of asserting that it is reasonable and probable
that supermen exist, the occultist asserts it as a fact
within his personal knowledge. [An
Outline of Theosophy — C. W. Leadbeater,
pp. 6-12]
When
we reflect upon the very narrow range of the physical senses,
when we remember that it is only by receiving vibrations
through the sense organs that we can be conscious of what
exists about us and that with the physical organism we
can receive only a small fraction of known vibrations,
we ought to easily abandon the notion that because we are
unconscious of a thing is no evidence against its reality.
To suppose
that the vast cosmos exists to produce a single line of
evolution, and that the frail and imperfect thing we call
man is its supreme product is absurd — an idea as
provincial as the belief of our remote ancestors that the
earth was the fixed center of the solar system. If there
is one thing more striking than another in the phenomena
that surround us it is that the order of nature is diversity
and profusion. No matter whether we turn to the animal
or the vegetable kingdom we find a bewildering variety
of life and the greatest complexity of production. Everywhere
the universal life is seeking expression [Page
287] through a multiplicity of forms, and is manifesting
itself in a gradation of intelligence that begins far below
the point where the eye can see it and extends in orderly
sequence far beyond where we can see it or comprehend it.
Either
life is not eternal progress and evolution is not a fact
at all, or else there is a gradation of intelligences corresponding
in its scope to the universe. As the animal's comprehension
is to its small world, and as our own intelligence is to
our larger world, so higher intelligences must be to their
still wider environment.
This
not only commends itself to one's reason as the natural
state of affairs, it not only has the endorsement of the
scientific mind as the probable state of affairs, but it
has been ascertained by occult investigation to be the
actual state of affairs. Quite aside from the other lines
of evolution going forward on the earth, the human race
itself has, as one would naturally suppose it must have,
its evolutionary products above us as well as below us.
Towering above and beyond us, as the solar system stretches
beyond the earth, are the beings of super-intelligence
whose mundane evolution was completed before ours was begun.
Is it not reasonable that in the hands of some of these,
and lesser intelligences, must rest the great work of guiding
and directing the present human evolution? From these [Page
288] Elder Brothers of the race come the great religions
of the world and in the scriptures of everyone of them
will be found more or less of a description of some of
these higher products of evolution, called by various names
in the various sacred books and known in the Bible as angels
and archangels. But the workaday world is so completely
absorbed in material affairs, and the facts are so obscured
in mysticism and poetry, that even the Christians have
generally come to think of this spiritual hierarchy as
something very vague and far away, and as having little
or nothing to do with human affairs.
Leaving
all mysticism entirely aside for the moment and looking
at the question with the calculating eye of science it
is easy to see that evolution must have its products in
the way of greater intelligences than our own, and that
these intelligences must have their work in the activities
of the universe as well as we ourselves. What would naturally
be the work of those who are but a grade or two beyond
us, who differ from us partly in a vastly superior intelligence,
and a stronger and steadier benevolence, and who for the
time being may, or may not, be living in a physical body?
What is the chosen work of those a lesser degree ahead
of us in evolution, but who still live among us and know
but little or nothing more of the beyond than we do — the
work of our [Page 289] greatest
living souls, our thinkers, poets, philosophers, statesmen,
scientists? Teachers, all of them, and leaders in human
evolution — teachers and leaders of others not quite
so far along.
So it must be for those higher than our humanity. In a somewhat
different way they are still the teachers, the inspirers, the
directors, in human evolution. Rank after rank, rising from
plane to plane, this gradation of intelligence, growing more
and more spiritual, ascends to the supreme heights we cannot,
as yet, comprehend. From these lofty heights come the spiritual
impulses that guide the race, so far as the race can be guided
without interference with its developing will power. It is
only by an orderly gradation that such impulses can reach our
groping humanity. It is very much like a great army in motion.
There may be a number of directions in which it can move, some
much more desirable than others. An order is issued by the
staff of commanders; from them it reaches the brigadier generals;
it passes on to the regimental officers; and so it travels
on downward to the captains, the corporals, until it is a part
of the intelligence of the entire army. In our evolution, it
is not orders that are issued to be obeyed. That would destroy
that priceless thing we call free will. It is rather ideals
that are issued, ideals a little higher than the present accomplishment,
but which our inherent divinity [Page
290] urges us forward to attain. This is the hidden
side of evolution that the race feels, but does not see, and
the visible results of which are everywhere apparent in the
history of human affairs.
The point
of contact for a spiritual impulse may be a single individual
as it was in giving the Christian religion to the world,
and as it was when John Brown became an instrument to arouse
a nation from its callous toleration of human slavery and
the paralysis of conscience that was growing out of it;
but in this, as in all other things, there is the gradation
from the most spectacular and dramatic to the most inconspicuous.
Every human being who is striving to live unselfishly is
a point of contact for the divine impulse that forever
seeks its way into the visible human life.
Guiding
the evolution of humanity is no mysterious or fantastic
thing. It is merely a question of setting people thinking
along the right line, of getting the necessary ideal before
them, of finding one or many points of contact between
the higher wisdom and the lower intelligence, and this
may come through the self sacrifice of a single John Brown
or through the quickened consciences of many.
Among
the fairly thoughtful criticisms from the materialist's
point of view is a book setting forth the declaration that
nature is unintelligent [Page 291] because
wasteful. Looking at the so-called waste that occurs in
the prolific production of nature, while only a part of
that production appears to fulfil its intended purpose,
the author says it is as though a potter should produce
pots on a large scale in order that ninety per cent could
be broken and still leave the required number. That, of
course, would show lack of intelligence; but is it not
clear that before we can determine the wisdom, or lack
of it, that characterizes any process, we must first know
the full purpose of that process? If a potter is producing
pots to sell and the final purpose of the production is
to get as many pots as possible from a given quantity of
clay, and the whole matter ends there, then destroying
ninety while making a hundred would be a senseless performance;
but let us suppose that instead of the prosaic business
of producing pots the purpose is a wholly different one;
that it is, in the first place, the training of the intelligence
at work in the production and, in the second place, the
evolution of the material of which pots are made to the
point where it becomes possible for that material to be
made into translucent vases
— a point in its evolution that shall be reached
simultaneously with the development of the potter's art
to the level where it is equal to the making of such vases.
Then there has been no waste at any time, for the purpose
of the work was [Page 292] triple:
the making of some pots of the inferior quality, the evolution
of the clay to a higher quality and the evolution of the
intelligence working in the clay to a higher level. There
was only the appearance of waste, because the purpose was
not understood.
Looking
at the apparent loss through disease and violence the critic
declares that the waste presents a stupefying scene. Of
course it does unless we keep steadily in mind the stupendousness
of even our little corner of the universe and have some
understanding of the plan and purpose in hand. If we have
no thought of a coherent whole, no idea of the object toward
which nature is working, as a matter of course it will
appear wasteful and unintelligent. If a very small child
were to go where some vast cathedral is under construction,
and but half finished, he might be barely able to make
his way through the wilderness of odds and ends, of bits
of stained glass and small pieces of onyx and bronze. This
would to him appear like downright waste, this reckless
throwing away of beautiful playthings. If he thought at
all on the subject he would probably conclude that the
architect was a very foolish person.
Another point put forward by our critic is that no beneficent
power can be directing evolution, for nature, he asserts, is
merciless because [Page 293] destructive.
He sees this destruction going on everywhere and particularly
in the animal kingdom. He seems to look upon physical life
as the most desirable thing in the universe, and therefore
when living things are deprived of it he calls nature merciless;
but considered as a problem of evolution the form is as nothing
to the progress of that life. It only drops a form in order
that it may express itself in a better one. Who shall say at
what particular point of the physical life it is most advantageous
to do that? How do we know that death is not a blessing instead
of a misfortune? If nature is really indifferent why is death
practically painless? How does it happen that "merciless,
senseless nature", so arranges things that the mouse or
bird caught by the cat is at once stupefied? And this holds
good higher up. Dr. David Livingstone, in his book on African
exploration tells us that when the lion crushed his arm he
felt no pain and had not even any mental distress although
death seemed certain. Physicians declare that in spite of appearances
to the contrary death is always a physically painless process.
It is only the mind that tortures, sometimes. It is not death
itself, but the fear of death, or the accident or disease that
leads to death, that gives pain. The assertion that nature
is merciless is not consistent with these facts.
If we
once start with a false premise we can [Page
294] afterwards reason logically and yet always
go astray in the end, and this is just the mistake we make
when we assume that physical life is the thing of supremest
value in the universe. Another error is to regard man,
because he represents the highest development of that life
which we see, as the most important thing in the universe
and then proceed to make his desires the standard by which
to determine the wisdom and consistency of nature. It is
common to say that in the bee Providence has been kind
or nature has been wise, while the vexatious ant is looked
upon as an inscrutable blunder. Now, this different view
arises simply from the fact that we are judging the wisdom
of nature by the utility to man. The bee makes honey. The
ant does nothing for us and often annoys us; but why should
we assume that the life of the bee has no other purpose
than to help feed the human race? Would not a little more
thinking on the subject lead us to see that the bee is
a manifestation of life that is doing a work in the universe
the importance of which is in nowise dependent upon the
fact that we contrive to make it give part of its time
to us? Is it not quite conceivable that the marvelous little
civilization of the bee would go forward just the same
if there were not a human being on the earth? Only our
vanity blinds us to the fact that both bees and ants are
carrying forward a [Page
295] work in evolution as important to the universe
in its way as our own. Darwin has shown that worms playa
most important role in relation to the soil. Human life,
its welfare and even its continued existence, is closely
interwoven with all animate creation. We could not be what
we are, expressing the intelligence we now possess but
for the evolution of matter that has gone before through
work in which we had no part. To the universe as a whole
and the intelligence which plans and guides it there is
surely neither the great nor the small. Each and all are
equally necessary to the whole. To a clock the weights
that give the driving force are of no more importance than
the pendulum, nor are both of them of more consequence
in achieving the purpose back of the whole mechanism than
the smallest cog wheel in it.
That
nature is destructive does not in the least indicate that
profound wisdom is not in directive control of natural
law. There is a verity in that old saying, "There
is no great loss without some small gain." It is true;
and the reverse is equally true. There can be no great
gain without some loss. We are in a world of action and
reaction, and in the very nature of things neither creation
nor destruction can stand entirely by itself. We have only
to look about us to see that no creative work by man can
possibly go forward without a [Page
296] certain margin of destruction. No great canal
has ever been made without costing thousands of lives.
Not even a great bridge is built without a greater loss
of life than the public suspects. No imaginable kind of
achievement can be wholly free from reactionary loss. This
must inevitably be so and is as true of the greater as
of the lesser, as true of gods as of men. Law applies as
much to the greatest intelligence as to the human. If so,
then it must be that there is a constant choosing of the
lesser of necessary evils. Sometimes one who is apparently
the greatest destroyer is actually the most merciful. There
is a story about a great general that illustrates this
fact. During a battle he sent an order to a subordinate
officer to move his men to a certain position. This officer
failed to perceive that the general really understood what
he was about and sent him a note: "If I understand
your order it means the annihilation of my command".
Beneath that note the general wrote two words, "You
understand", and sent it back. Of course the general
knew that he was choosing the lesser of two evils and he
did not hesitate to order a few hundred men to march to
certain death in order to prevent the loss of ten thousand
in a prolonged battle. If these soldiers were judging everything
from the viewpoint of their personal interest they would
certainly think it most brutal indifference to the [Page
297] sacredness of life. No doubt their wives and
children, who knew still less of the great plan in the
mind of the general, which doubtless included not merely
this particular battle but looked forward to issues involving
hundreds of thousands of lives, would regard the order
that sent these men to death as one of the most inhuman
atrocities, and possible only to a fiend incarnate.
Those
who try to interpret the purpose of life without the help
of a hypothesis that takes a comprehensive view of the
universe are likely to go astray in their conclusions,
and what is the soundest wisdom and the highest altruism
may be mistaken for foolishness and cruelty. But when we
set to work with the theory that the universe exists for
the purpose of evolving all life, the difficulties vanish.
Chaos and confusion give way to order and to law. We see
a vast universe in which diversity and profusion are the
natural order. We see the upward climb of all life expressed
in a multiplicity of forms and showing many lines of evolution.
We see an orderly gradation of intelligence below us and
see the reasonableness of the idea that it must also rise
above us. We see that the higher products of this evolution
must, like ourselves, have their activities in consciousness.
We see that their natural and reasonable relationship to
us is that of teachers and leaders, of supervisors of evolution.
We see [Page 298] in such religions
as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Mohammedanism,
their guiding hand at work. We see in earnest, selfless
and heroic men the channels through which divine ideals
reach our physical life. We see that the idea that nature
makes mistakes has its origin in treating a fragment as
though it were the whole. We see that the notion that nature
is cruel arises from a misconception of the facts. We see
that wisdom and beneficence are as certainly integral parts
of the universe as they are growing attributes in human
life.
This hypothesis of life is as full of reason as it is of hope.
With this hypothesis the Theosophist turns his back to the
temporary night, built of the fantastic shadows of doubt, terrified
by no specter of death and afflicted with no pessimism of despair.
While
the relationship of the supermen to the human race is that
of teachers, guardians and directors, the relationship
is not at all that expressed in the term "spirit guides",
so frequently used by spiritualists. That is a totally
different thing. They seem to imply that the "spirit
guide" gives direct instructions or orders to the
person known as a "medium". If we were all thus
controlled and directed what would become of free will?
Evolution can proceed only if we use our initiative in
the affairs of life. If we were to be [Page
299] directed by the wisdom and will of others we
would not evolve at all. We would be merely automata directed
by others, and no matter how great they were we could never
develop our judgment and self-reliance. It is not thus
that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution.
It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse and bringing
mental and moral forces to play upon them, thus stimulating
latent intellectual and spiritual forces from within. In
another direction it is actual superintendence, or administration,
or teaching, in a way that does not interfere with one's
initiative or will. If the soul is to evolve it must have
liberty — even the freedom to make mistakes.
It is
sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist, those who are
in incarnation do not come out into the world and give
us ocular evidence of the fact. It is pointed out that
they could speedily convince the world by a display of
superphysical force; but they are probably not in the least
interested in convincing anybody of their existence. They are interested
in raising the general level of morality, of course, but
such an exhibition would not make people morally better.
The work of the supermen can best be done from higher planes
than the physical. As for the very small number of the
supermen who take physical bodies to better do their special
work, they can [Page 300] best
accomplish it from secluded places; and if they sometimes
have reason to come out into the seething vibrations of
our modern civilization it is easy to understand that they
would not, to the ordinary observer, be conspicuously different
from other men.
It is
from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the religions
of the world. There the question may arise, "Then
why do they differ so greatly?" Because the peoples
to whom they are given differ. The difference of temperament
and viewpoint between the Orient and the Occident is enormous.
We are evolving along the outer, the objective, and our
civilization represents the material conquest of nature.
They are evolving different faculties. In the Orient the
common trend of conversation is philosophical, just as
in the Occident it is commercial. Such different types
of mind require somewhat different statements of ethics,
but the fundamental principles of all religions are identical.
As individuals
differ so do races. Let us imagine that the world had never
had any ethical teaching and one had thought out a moral
code of his own. He begins teaching it. The first man he
meets is obviously a high type. He says to him, "My
friend, here is something which I have worked out that
may help you. It is this — do to others as you would
have them do to you". [Page 301] Now,
simply because this person has much inner refinement, he
would reply "That's magnificent! I have never thought
of human relationships in just those terms; but, of course,
if we all practiced your precept it would establish a heaven
on earth. I shall try to live up to your lofty ideal".
Pleased with his success he goes on to the next man and presents
the same idea. But this man is far down in the evolutionary
scale. He has never thought of the welfare of anybody but himself. He
is still engaged in the sharp practices of the world. He cheats
his neighbor whenever he gets the opportunity. This man is
amazed by such teaching. He finds it difficult to believe it
sane. Realizing, then, that such a moral code is too high for
him the teacher brings the ideal down to his comprehension
by saying, "How will this do — do to others as they
do to you?"
"Why,
that's common sense", he replies. “I don't always
do it but I really think I should. We should all give to
others as good treatment as they give us. I'm willing to
try to live up to that; but your other proposition, that
we should treat others as we would like to be treated regardless
of what they do to us is simply foolish".
The first man readily took the highest statement of ethics
because he was far enough along in evolution to appreciate
its beauty. The second [Page 302] man
rejected it because it was too advanced for his mental and
moral grasp. Had the teacher insisted upon giving him what
the other man readily took he would have lost him altogether.
The difference
between men in the street is no greater than the difference
between the various peoples of the earth. A spiritual truth
put in one way is effective with one people but does not
move another. While religions are essentially the same
in principle their presentation must differ as peoples
differ, each religion giving to those to whom it is presented
what is best suited to serve the evolutionary need of that
era.
When
a new era in human evolution begins a World Teacher comes
into voluntary incarnation and founds a religion that is
suited to the requirements of the new era. Humanity is
never left to grope along alone. All that it can comprehend
and utilize is taught it in the various religions. World
Teachers, the Christs and saviours of the race, have been
appearing at propitious times since humanity began existence.
Most
readers will probably agree that a World Teacher known
as the Christ did come and that He founded a religion nearly
two thousand years ago. Why do they think so? They reply
that God so loved the world that He sent His Son, the Christ,
to bring it light and life. If that is true how can we
avoid the conclusion that He, or His [Page
303] predecessors, must have come many a time before? The
belief that He came but once is consistent only with the
erroneous notion that Genesis is history instead of allegory,
and that the earth is about six thousand years old! Science
has not determined its age but we know that it is very
old, indeed. Many eminent scientists have made rough estimates,
taking into consideration all that we have learned from
astronomy, geology and archeology.
It is
interesting to observe that the estimated age of the earth
grows with our knowledge of nature. Many years ago such
scientists as Joly and Bosler, basing their calculations
on the time necessary to produce the sodium content of
the ocean and upon the radio activity of the rocks, made
estimates varying from one hundred million to seven hundred
million years, but today the scientist talks of the age
of the earth in thousands of millions of years.[ The estimate by scientists
of two thousand million years is in substantial agreement
with theosophical teaching ]
In the
face of such facts what becomes of the assertion that God
so loved the world that He sent His Son to help ignorant
humanity about two thousand years ago — but never
before? What about the hundreds of millions of human beings
who lived and died before that time? Did He care nothing
for them? Did He give his attention to humanity for a
period of only two thousand years and neglect it for millions
of years? [Page 304] Two thousand
years, compared to the age of the earth, is less than an
hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does anybody believe
that God, in His great compassion, sent just one World
Teacher for that brief period? What would we say of a father
who gave one hour of his whole life to his child and neglected
him absolutely before and after that? Countless millions
of the people who lived and died prior to the coming of
the Christ were very much like ourselves. They belonged
to ancient civilizations that often surpassed our own in
many desirable characteristics. They were educated and
cultured in their time and fashion. They were fathers and
sons and mothers and daughters and husbands and wives,
with the same kind of heart ties that we have. What of
them? Were they permitted to grope in the moral wilderness
without a Teacher or a ray of light? Of course the idea
is preposterous. If God so loved the world that He sent
His Son two thousand years ago He sent Him, or some predecessor,
very many times before. By the same token He will come
again. The only logical escape from such a conclusion is
in the materialist's belief that He never came at all.
All religions
crystallize, become materialized, and finally lose their
spiritual significance. That is precisely what has happened
to the various great religions of the modern world, including [Page
305] Christianity. It is no longer the dynamic
thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why
a world war was possible. The fault is not with the teachings
of the Christ. The trouble is that the world has not lived
by them. We need a restatement of the old teaching in the
terms of modern life that shall again make it a living
force in the lives of men.
The Supermen
are not myths nor figments of imagination. They are as
natural and comprehensible as human beings. In the regular
order of evolution we shall reach their level and join
their ranks while younger humanities shall attain our present
state. As they arose we, too, shall rise. Our past has
been evolution's night. Our present is its dawn. Our future
shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from which
we have emerged
— a chaos of contending forces, a world in which
might was the measure of right, a civilization of scepter
and sword, of baron and serf, of master and slave. That,
we have left behind us. We have reached the grey dawn of
a real civilization, of a public conscience, of individual
liberty, of collective welfare, of the sacredness of life,
but with armed force still dominant, with war the arbiter
of national destiny, with industrial slavery still lingering,
with conflict between the higher aspirations and the lower
desires still raging
— a world of selfishness masked [Page
306] by usage, a world of veneered cruelty and refined
brutality. In all that we now live. But think of the coming
results of evolution — an era in which love shall
replace force, when saber and cannon shall be unknown,
when selfish desires shall be transmuted into noble service,
when, finally, we shall finish the painful period of human
evolution and join the spiritual hierarchy to direct the
faltering steps of a younger race. [Page
307] [Page 308]
INDEX
Absurdity of a Ready-Made World
34
Accidents and Calamities
265,266,267
Action and Reaction
244,245
Actions
254
Alchemists, Their Knowledge
8
Ancient Wisdom
11
Animal Instinct
21
Aphasia
92
Aspects of Theosophy
10
Assimilation
152
Astral Body, a Duplicate of Physical
79
Astral Entities
124,125
Astral
Life
91
Astral Life, Conditions
111,112
Astral Life, Length of
115,116,118,119
Astral Life, Not Punitive
94
Astral Life, Suffering Not Common
109,110
Astral Life, Useful
113,114,115
Astral Plane
63
Astral Plane, Length of Life
97
Astral Plane, Lower Levels
102,104
Astral Reactions
154
Astral Region, Lower
96,97
Astral World, Causes of Suffering
107
Astral World,
Dimensions
113
Astral World Not Vague
93
Atom, The Ultimate
62
Automatic Repetition
107,108,109
Automatic Writing
45
Bodies, How Acquired
73
Bodies, Vehicles of Consciousness
74
Body, An Instrument of
Soul
134, 135
Body, Is Not the Man
75,78
Body, Material
Expression of Soul
184
Body, Reflects Soul
277
Broader Outlook, The
279
Carl Schurz's Experiment
48, 49
Body, Material Expression
of Soul
184
Body, Reflects Soul
277
Broader Outlook, The
279
Caterpillar and Butterfly
198
Causal Body
142,143,145,219
Cause and Effect
247
Cause and Effect, Definite
Relationship
255
Cause and Effect, in Scriptures
270,271
Causes Carry Over
267,268,269
Clairvoyance, Evidence
of
50,51
Clairvoyance, the Higher
53
Clairvoyance, Two Kinds
of
52
Clairvoyants and Mediums
40
Clairvoyant Not a Medium
56
Communication With Dead
119, 120,122, 123
Concentric Globes
64
Conditions Teach Lessons
258
Congenital Criminals
172, 173
Conscience, What It Is
264
Consciousness, Center of
136
Consciousness, How Limited
80
Consciousness, the Conditions
of
104, 105
Consciousness, When Continuous
80
Continuity of Consciousness
37
Creation Continuous
210
Creation Is Evolutionary
207,208
Cremation
129
Crookes, Sir William, His
Experiments
38, 39
Cross-Correspondence
42, 43
Cruelty Only Apparent
297
Cycle In
Nature
152, 153
Cycles Of Experience
71, 72
Dead, But Alive
91
Death
81
Death, Alarmed By
93
Death, Delusions About
87-90
Death, Its Utility
85
Death, Mystifies
92
Death, Not Annihilation
57
Death, Painless
84
Death, Three Modes of
100
Death, Violent
101
Death, What It Is
82
Death, Why Necessary
83
Deformity
176, 278
Desire Force
254
Desire, Subtle Forms of
106
Destiny, Shaping It
269
Differences at Birth
195
Dreams
121
Dual Nature of Man
264
Ego and Personality
229
Elder Brothers
289
Emerson on Immanence
26, 27
Emotional Distress
105, 106
Emotional
Reaction
107, 108
Emotional World
74
Emotions
102, 103
Emotions Determine Astral
Life
116, 117
Emotions In Astral Life
110, 117
Environment Corresponds
To Soul Development
204
Essential Divinity
26
Etheric Double
75
Evidence, Non-Scientific
45
Evidence of Survival
44-49
Evolution
32, 197
Evolution, Guiding It
291
Evolution,
Of Altruism
282
Evolution,
Of Horse
197
Evolution, Of the Soul
22, 31
Evolution, Progress in
146
Evolution, the Factors
in
284
Evolution, the Hidden Side
291
Evolutionary Field, the
59
Evolutionary Progress
160
Experience Evolves Soul
155
False Teaching and Fear
114
Fatalism
257
Fear Unnecessary
29
Forces Shape Fate
256
Forces, Three Classes of
253
Forces, We Generate
241
Free Will and Determinism
259
Funerals, Grief Harmful
127
Genius and Idiot
178
Gnostic Philosophers
23
Gods In
the Making
257
Gradation of Life
284
Grief Injurious To Dead
128
Group Soul
162, 163
Hell Not Necessary
177
Heredity
180-183
Heredity, Moral and Physical
182
Higher and Lower Relative
Terms
65
Huxley Quoted
286
Ideals and Free Will
290
Idiocy
278
Idiots
175
Immanence of God
13, 21, 205
Immutability of Natural
Law
252
Impulsive Crime
250
Incarnations, Period Between
147
Individuality Is Permanent
148
Inequalities At Birth
171
Insanity
182
Interpenetration of Bodies
70, 71, 141
Interpenetration of Matter
63
Interpenetration of Planes
61
Judgment Day
165, 256
Latent Qualities
23
Laws of Growth
150, 151
Limitations Self-Imposed
260
Limitations of Senses
67
Living and Dead, Their
Relationship
125
Lodge and Haeckel
132, 133
Lowell, Quotation from
28
Luck and Chance
273, 274
Man a God
156
Man Divine
157, 158
Materialism
192-194
Materialism and Theosophy
13
Materialistic Belief
191, 192
Materialistic Difficulties
15, 16
Materialists, Criticisms
by
291-293
Masefield Quoted
279
Matter, the Nature of
77
Mechanical Creation, Theory
of
24, 193, 194, 205
Mechanism of Consciousness
69
Mediums
79, 121, 124
Memory, Its Failure
220
Memory, Its Source
216
Memory, Not Necessary to
Skill
221
Mental Plane
64, 98
Mental World
145
Moods are Communicable
126
Natural Law Governs
245
Nature
Beneficent
95
Nature Does Not Punish
255
Nature Not Merciless
294
Nothing Great or Small
296
Occult Research, Qualifications
for
55
Occult Scientists
54
Old Soul
in Young Body
265
One Lifetime
Contradictory
243
One Lifetime, Not Just
186, 187
Opportunity
188
Origin of Universe
14
Outgrown Beliefs
284
Partial Creation
209
Personality a Fragment
228
Personality Changes
149
Personality Like Childhood
230, 231
Physical Body Changes
76
Physical Body, the New
One
222
Plane, Meaning of the Word
59
Planes, Purpose of
98, 99
Planes, Seven in Number
60
Popular Belief
170
Pre-existence of Soul
134, 136
Premonitions
21
Prodigy and Genius
209
Psychic Communications
41
Psychic Scientists
87
Psychology a Science
33
Purgative Process
116
Purgatory
101
Purgatory, Description
of
103, 104
Purification
154
Purpose of Evolution
156
Reactions
Represent Justice
260-262
Rebirth, Its Necessity
191
Recapitulation
224
Rediscovery
7
Reincarnation
131, 146
Reincarnation and Responsibility
237
Reincarnation, Animal Kingdom
162
Reincarnation, Another
Opportunity
188, 189
Reincarnation, Conservation
of Energy
163, 164
Reincarnation, Its Evolution
178, 179
Reincarnation, Its Justice
169
Reincarnation, Its Utility
238
Reincarnation, Moral Progress
by
161, 162
Reincarnation, No Chance
Involved
185, 186
Reincarnation, the Reason
for Return
199, 200, 201
Religions Crystallize
305
Religions, Their Origin
301
Religions, Why They Differ
303
Remembering Past Lives
217, 218
Remorse
96
Salvation By Faith
196
Saul and Samuel
121
Scientific Investigations
42
Scientific View
276
Separation
85, 226, 227
Sex
202, 203
Sleep
144
Sleep and Consciousness
79
Society For Psychical Research
38
Soul an Actor
211, 212
Soul Does Not Leave Earth
66
Soul, Its Permanent Home
137, 140
Soul, Like Naturalist
139
Souls of Savages
206
Soul, What
It Is
139
Special Creation
178, 233, 234
Spiritual Matter
142
Stillman, W.J.
46, 47
Subdivision of Planes
66
Super-Intelligences
286
Supermen
288, 290, 306
Supermen,
Not "Spirit Guides"
299
Super-physical Evolution
281
Telepathy
248
Tesla Quoted
286
Test of Public
Morals
159
Theosophy, Ancient Knowledge
8
Theosophy, Its Literal
Meaning
9
Thought a Force
251
Though and Desire are Forces
248
Thought Forms
249
Transmuting Experience
138
Unity of Life
27
Universe an Emanation
17
Utility
of Oblivion
225
Vicarious Atonement
233
Vicarious
Punishment
235
Wallace Quoted
286
World Growing
Better
158, 159
World Teachers
304, 305
Wrong-Doing Brings Pain
164
Why We Do Not Remember
215
Other
Books by L. W. ROGERS:
The
Ghosts in Shakespeare
A
Study in the Occultism of the Shakespeare Plays
A
book unique in theosophical literature. There is nothing
else of the kind in print. The author has made an exhaustive
study of the Shakespeare Plays for the purpose of placing
their rich store of occult teaching at the service of
the reader. The plays and subjects dealt with are: Hamlet,
Macbeth, Richard Ill, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida,
The Winter's Tale, soothsayers and prophecies, astrology,
ceremonial magic, Joan of Arc, the fairies, dreams and
premonitions. The author's method of treatment may be
seen from his declaration that what is superstition to
this generation will be science to the next, This volume
places an enormous amount of useful occult material in
the hands of the reader and material, too, of the highest
literary value. HINTS
TO YOUNG STUDENTS OF OCCULTISM
In
this book the author turns from the scientific to the
ethical and occult view of life and deals with inner
problems.
Among
the attractive chapters are the following:
Thought
Assimilation is Essential to Soul Growth
The
Conditions of Spiritual Progress
Safe
and Dangerous Mental Conditions
Conquering
Delusions
Faults
to be Guarded Against
The
Wrong Road and the Right One
Four
chapters are devoted to the evolution of the virtues.
The
following from the Preface shows the very useful ground
covered by the book :
"Many
who earnestly desire to escape from the bondage of
the lower nature, and rise to spiritual illumination,
are at a loss how to proceed, or even how to practically
apply to daily life the occult information they may have
gained by general reading. This book is an effort to
assist them — hints on how to utilize time and energy
— a few guide-boards in the evolutionary wilderness
at doubtful turns in the road, indicating the advantageous
way to go and displaying warning signs across some attractive
byways that lead to perilous places."
DREAMS
AND PREMONITIONS
This
psychological and scientific work has no relationship
to the trashy "dream books" that are so common.
In the Introduction the author says:
"Dreams
and premonitions are the most common of all psychic
phenomena, but they are nevertheless but little understood.
Modem
psychology has accumulated an immense array of facts
which very conclusively show that the consciousness
of the human being is something vaster, deeper and
altogether more remarkable than has generally been
supposed. But just there the psychologists stop, on
the very threshold of great discoveries. They are puzzled
by the remarkable facts and are baffled in their attempts
to co-relate them and satisfactorily explain them.
"The
facts that have been collected and verified show that
while some dreams are fantastic, contradictory and
illogical, others are not only coherent and logical,
but present a marvelous depth of wisdom which, when
compared to ordinary human knowledge, seems almost
like omniscience. They sometimes solve problems that
are impossible of solution by the waking consciousness,
and frequently actually forecast the future by accurately
describing an event which has not yet occurred but
which is to be. Thus people have dreamed of their approaching
death, or the death of others, stating exactly the
nature of the accident that would cause it, and describing
in detail the scenes of the coming tragedy. Yet again
the impending event presented to the consciousness
in the dream state may represent only the most trivial
of circumstances.
"There
is a working hypothesis that logically and satisfactorily
explains all the remarkable facts, tragic or trivial,
presented by dreams and premonitions; that will enable
us to classify and comprehend them; that will assign
to each dream neither loss or more importance than
the facts warrant, and that will give to those interested
in the subject a key to these mysteries
of the mind. The purpose of this book is to present
that hypothesis, together with the necessary facts
to fully illustrate the psychic principles involved
in the remarkable dreams herein recorded."
Reincarnation and
Other Lectures
A
volume of popular lectures on Reincarnation, Scientific
Evidence of Future Life, Beyond the Borderland, The
Soldier Dead, and A Scientific Religion.
The
Purpose of Life and
Other Lectures
Uniform
with the foregoing. Subjects: The Purpose of Life,
The Life Sublime, Universal Brotherhood, The Death Penalty,
The Significance of War, Orient and Occident: A Plea
for Tolerance.
Gods
in the Making and Other Lectures
Uniform
with the foregoing. Subjects: Gods in the Making, Self
Development and Power, Soul Powers and Possibilities;
and The Inspired Life.