Theosophy - Ancient Wisdom (Part 2) by Annie Besant
ANCIENT
WISDOM (PART 2 OF 2)
by
Annie Besant
CONTENTS
To
Section 1of Ancient Wisdom
INTRODUCTION
THE PHYSICAL PLANE
THE ASTRAL PLANE
KAMALOKA
THE MENTAL PLANE
DEVACHAN
THE BUDDHIC AND NIRVANIC PLANES
REINCARNATION
the following is in this section 2 of Ancient Wisdom
REINCARNATION (CONTINUED)
KARMA
THE LAW OF SACRIFICE
MAN'S ASCENT
BUILDING A KOSMOS
CHAPTER
VIII
REINCARNATION CONTINUED
(Page
208) The
ascending stages of consciousness through which the Thinker passes as he reincarnates
during his long cycle of lives in the three lower worlds are clearly marked
out, and the obvious necessity for many lives, in which to experience them,
if he is to evolve at all, may carry to the more thoughtful minds the clearest
conviction of the truth of reincarnation.
The
first of the stages is that in which all the experiences are sensational, the
only contribution made by the mind consisting of the recognition that contact
with some object is followed by a sensation of pleasure, while contact with
others is followed by a sensation of pain. These objects form mental pictures,
and the pictures soon begin to act as a stimulus to seek the objects associated
with pleasure, when those objects are not present, the germs of memory and of
mental initiative thus making their appearance. This first rough division of
the external world is followed by the more complex idea of the bearing of quantity
on pleasure and pain, already referred to.
At
this stage of evolution, memory is (Page 209)
very short lived, or, in other words, mental images are very transitory. The
idea of forecasting the future from the past, even to the most rudimentary extent,
has not dawned on the infant Thinker, and his actions are guided from outside,
by the impacts that reach him from the external world, or at furthest by the
promptings of his appetites and passions, craving gratification. He will throw
away anything for an immediate satisfaction, however necessary the thing may
be for his future well being; the need of the moment overpowers every other
consideration. Of human souls in this embryonic condition, numerous examples
can be found in books of travel, and the necessity for many lives will be impressed
on the mind of any one who studies the mental condition of the least evolved
savages, and compares it with the mental condition of even average humanity
among ourselves.
Needless to say that the moral capacity is no more evolved than the mental;
the idea of good and evil has not yet been conceived. Not is it possible to
convey to the quite undeveloped mind even elementary notion of either good or
bad. Good and pleasant are to it interchangeable terms, as in the well-known
case of the Australian savage mentioned by Charles Darwin. Pressed
by hunger, the man speared the nearest living creature that could serve as food,
and this happened to be his wife; a European remonstrated with him on the wickedness
of his deed, but failed to make any impression; for from the reproach that to
eat his wife was very, very bad he (Page 210)
only deduced the inference that the stranger thought she had proved nasty of
indigestible, and he put him right by smiling peacefully as he patted himself
after his meal, and declaring in a satisfied way, “She is very good.”
Measure
in thought the moral distance between that man and St. Francis of Assisi, and
it will be seen that there must either be evolution of souls as there is evolution
of bodies, or else in the realm of the soul there must be constant miracle,
dislocated creations.
There
are two paths along either of which man may gradually emerge from this embryonic
mental condition. He may be directly ruled and controlled by men far more evolved
than himself, or he may be left slowly to grow unaided. The latter case would
imply the passage of uncounted millennia, for, without example and without discipline,
left to the changing impacts of external objects, and to friction with other
men as undeveloped as himself, the inner energies could be but very slowly aroused.
As
a matter of fact, man has evolved by the road of direct precept and example
and of enforced discipline. We have already seen that when the bulk of the average
humanity received the spark which brought the Thinker into being, there were
some of the greater Sons if Mind who incarnated as Teachers, and that there
was also a long succession of lesser Sons of Mind, at various stages of evolution,
who came into incarnation as the crest-wave of the advancing tide of humanity.
These
ruled the less evolved, under the beneficent sway of the great Teachers, and
the compelled (Page 211) obedience
to elementary rules of right living – very elementary at first, in truth – much
hastened the development of mental and moral faculties in the embryonic souls.
Apart from all other records the gigantic remains of civilizations that have
long since disappeared – evidencing great engineering skill, and intellectual
conceptions far beyond anything possible by the mass of the then infant humanity
– suffice to prove that there were present on earth men with minds that were
capable of greatly planning and greatly executing.
Let
us continue the early stage of the evolution of consciousness. Sensation was
wholly lord of the mind, and the earliest mental efforts were stimulated by
desire. This led the man, slowly and clumsily, to forecast, to plan. He began
to recognise a definite association of certain mental images, and, when one
appeared, to expect the appearance of the other that had invariably followed
in its wake. He began to draw inferences, and even to initiate action on the
faith of these inferences – a great advance. And he began also to hesitate now
and again to follow the vehement promptings of desire, when he found, over and
over again, that the gratification demanded was associated in his mind with
the subsequent happening of suffering.
This
action was much quickened by the pressure upon him of verbally expressed laws;
he was forbidden to seize certain gratifications, and was told that suffering
would follow disobedience. When he had seized the delight-giving object and
found the suffering follow upon (Page 212)
pleasure, the fulfilled declaration made a far stronger impression on his mind
than would have been made by the unexpected – and therefore to him fortuitous
– happening of the same thing un foretold. Thus conflict continually arose between
memory and desire, and the mind grew more active by the conflict, and was stirred
into livelier functioning. The conflict, in fact, marked the transition to
the second great stage.
Here
began to show itself the germ of will. Desire and will guide a man’s actions,
and will has even been defined as the desire which emerges triumphant from the
contest of desires. But this is a crude and superficial view, explaining nothing.
Desire is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by
the attraction of external objects. Will
is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by the conclusions
drawn by the reason, from past experiences, or by the direct intuition of the
Thinker himself. Otherwise put: desire is guided from without – will from within.
At the beginning of man’s evolution, desire has complete sovereignty, and hurries
him hither and thither; in the middle of his evolution, desire and will are
in continual conflict, and victory lies sometimes with the one, sometimes with
the other; at the end of his evolution desire has died, and will rules with
unopposed, unchallenged sway.
Until
the Thinker, is sufficiently developed to see directly, will is guided by him
through the reason; and as the reason can draw its conclusions only from its
stock of mental (Page 213) images – its experiences – and that stock is limited,
the will constantly commands mistaken actions. The suffering which flows from
these mistaken actions increases the stock of mental images, and thus gives
the reason an increased store from which to draw its conclusions. Thus progress
is made and wisdom is born.
Desire
often mixes itself up with will, so that what appears to be determined from
within is really largely prompted by the cravings of the lower nature for objects
which afford it gratification. Instead of an open conflict between the two,
the lower subtly insinuates itself into the current of the higher and turns
its course aside. Defeated in the open field, the desire of the personality
thus conspire against their conqueror, and often win by guile what they failed
to win by force. During the whole of this second great stage, in which the faculties
of the lower mind are in full course of evolution, conflict is the normal condition,
conflict between the rule of sensations and the rule of reason.
The
problem to be solved in humanity is the putting an end to conflict while preserving
the freedom of the will; to determine the will inevitably to the best, while
yet leaving that best as a matter of choice. The best is to be chosen, but by
a self-initiated volition, that shall come with all the certainty of a foreordained
necessity. The certainty of a compelling law is to be obtained from countless
wills, each one left free to determine its own course. The solution of that
problem is simple when it is known, (Page
214) though the contradiction looks irreconcilable when first presented.
Let man be left free to choose his own actions, but let every action bring about
an inevitable result; let him run loose amid all objects of desire and seize
whatever he will, but let him have all the results of his choice, be they delightful
or grievous. Presently he will freely reject the objects whose possession ultimately
causes him pain; he will no longer desire them when he has experienced to the
full that their possession ends in sorrow.
Let
him struggle to hold the pleasure and avoid the pain, he will none the less
be ground between the stones of law, and the lesson will be repeated any number
of times found necessary; reincarnation offers us many lives as are needed by
the most sluggish learner. Slowly desire for an object that brings suffering
in its train will die, and when the thing offers itself in all its attractive
glamour it will be rejected, not by compulsion but by free choice.
It
is no longer desirable, it has lost its power. Thus with thing after thing;
choice more and more runs in harmony with law. “There are many roads of error;
the road of truth is one”; when all the paths of error have been trodden, when
all have been found to end in suffering, the choice to walk in the way of truth
is unswerving, because based on knowledge. The lower kingdoms work harmoniously,
compelled by law; man’s kingdom is a chaos of conflicting wills, fighting against,
rebelling against law; presently there evolves from it a nobler unity, a harmonious
choice of voluntary (Page 215)
obedience, an obedience that, being voluntary, based on knowledge and on memory
of the results of disobedience, is stable and can be drawn aside by no temptation.
Ignorant, inexperienced,
man would always have been in danger of falling; as a God, knowing good and
evil by experience, his choice of the good is raised forever beyond possibility
of change.
Will in the domain of morality is generally entitled conscience, and it is subject
to the same difficulties in this domain as in its other activities. So long
as actions are in question which have been done over and over again, of which
the consequences are familiar either to the reason or to the Thinker himself,
the conscience speaks quickly and firmly. But when unfamiliar problems arise
as to the working out of which experience is silent, conscience cannot speak
with certainty; it has but a hesitating answer from the reason, which can draw
only a doubtful inference, and the Thinker cannot speak if his experience does
not include the circumstances that have now arisen.
Hence
conscience often decides wrongly; that is, the will, failing clear direction
from either the reason or the intuition, guides action amiss. Nor can we leave
out of consideration the influences which play upon the mind from without, from
the thought-forms of others, of friends, of the family, of the community, of
the nation. (Chapter 11, “The Astral Plane.”) These all surround and penetrate
the mind with their own atmosphere, distorting the appearance of everything,
and (Page 216) throwing all things
our of proportion. Thus influenced, the reason often does not even judge calmly
from its own experience, but draws false conclusions as it studies its materials
through a distorting medium.
The
evolution of moral faculties is very largely stimulated by the affections, animal
and selfish as these are during the infancy of the Thinker. The laws of morality
are laid down by the enlightened reason, discerning the laws by which Nature
moves, and bringing human conduct into consonance with the Divine Will. But
the impulse to obey these laws, when no outer force compels, has its roots in
love, in that hidden divinity in man which seeks to pour itself out to give
itself to others. Morality begins in the infant Thinker when he is first moved
by love to wife, to child, to friend, to do some action that serves the loved
one without any thought of gain to himself thereby. It is the first conquest
over the lower nature, the complete subjugation of which is the achievement
of moral perfection.
Hence
the importance of never killing out or striving to weaken, the affection, as
is done in many of the lower kinds of occultism. However impure and gross the
affections may be, they offer possibilities of moral evolution from which the
cold-hearted and self-isolated have shut themselves out. It is an easier task
to purify than to create love, and this is why “the sinners” have been said
by great Teachers to be nearer to the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisees and
Scribes.
The
third great stage of consciousness sees (Page
217) the development of the higher intellectual powers; the mind
no longer dwells entirely on mental images obtained from sensations, no longer
reasons on purely concrete objects, nor is concerned with the attributes which
differentiate one from another. The Thinker having learned clearly to discriminate
between objects by dwelling upon their unlikenesses, now begins to group them
together by some attribute which appears in a number of objects otherwise dissimilar
and makes a link between them.
He
draws out, abstracts, his common attribute, and sets all objects that posses
it, apart from the rest which are without it; and in this way he evolves the
power of recognising identity amid diversity, a step toward the much later recognition
of the One underlying the man, he thus classifies all that is around him, developing
the synthetic faculty, and learning to construct as well as analyse. Presently
he takes another step, and conceives of the common property as an idea, apart
from all the objects in which it appears, and thus constructs a higher kind
of mental image of a concrete object – the image of an idea that has no phenomenal
existence in the worlds of form, but which exists on the higher levels of the
mental plane, and affords material on which the Thinker himself can work.
The
lower mind reaches the abstract idea by reason, and in thus doing accomplishes
its loftiest flight, touching the threshold of the formless world, and dimly
seeing that which lies beyond. The Thinker sees these ideas, and lives among
them (Page 218) habitually, and
when the power of abstract reasoning is developed and exercised the Thinker
is becoming effective in his own world, and is beginning his life of active
functioning in his own sphere.
Such
men care little for the life of the senses, care little for external observation,
or for mental application to images of external objects; their powers are indrawn,
and no longer rush outwards in the search for satisfaction. They dwell calmly
within themselves, engrossed with the problems of philosophy, with the deepest
aspects of life and thought, seeking to understand causes rather than troubling
themselves with effects, and approaching nearer and nearer to the recognition
of the One that underlies all the diversities of external Nature.
In
the fourth stage of consciousness that One is seen, and with the transcending
the barrier set up by the intellect the consciousness spreads out to embrace
the world, seeing all things in itself and as parts of itself, and seeing itself
as a ray of the LOGOS, and therefore as one with Him. Where is then the Thinker?
He has become Consciousness, and, while the spiritual Soul can at will use any
of his lower vehicles, he is no longer limited to their use, nor needs them
for this full and conscious life. Then is compulsory reincarnation over and
the man has destroyed death; he has verily achieved immortality. Then has he
become “a pillar in the temple of God and shall go out no more.”
To
complete this part of our study, we need to understand the successive quickenings
of the vehicles of (Page 219) consciousness,
the bringing them one by one into activity as the harmonious instruments of
the human Soul.
We
have seen that from the very beginning of his separate life the Thinker has
possessed coatings of mental, astral, etheric, and dense physical matter. These
form the media by which his life vibrates outwards, the bridge of consciousness,
as we may call it, along which all impulses from the Thinker may reach the dense
physical body, all impacts from the outer world may reach him.
But
this general use of the successive bodies as parts of a connected whole is a
very different thing from the quickening of each in turn to serve as a distinct
vehicle of consciousness, independently of those below it, and it is this quickening
of the vehicles that we have now to consider. The lowest vehicle, the dense
physical body, is the first one to be brought into harmonious working order;
the brain and the nervous system have to be elaborated and to be rendered delicately
responsive to every thrill which is within their gamut of vibratory power. In
the early stages, while the physical dense body is composed of the grosser kinds
of matter, this gamut is extremely limited, and the physical organ of the mind
can respond only to the slowest vibrations sent down.
It
answers far more promptly, as is natural, to the impacts from the external world
caused by objects similar in materials to itself. Its quickening as a vehicle
of consciousness consists in its being made responsive to the vibrations (Page
220) that are initiated from within, and the rapidity of this quickening
depends on the co-operation of the lower nature with the higher, its loyal subordination
of itself in the service of its inner ruler.
When
after many, many life-periods, it dawns upon the lower nature that it exists
for the sake of the soul, that all its value depends on the help it can bring
to the soul, that it can win immortality only by merging itself in the soul,
then its evolution proceeds in giant strides. Before this, the evolution has
been unconscious; at first, the gratification of the lower nature was the object
of life, and, while this was a necessary preliminary for calling out the energies
of the Thinker, it did nothing directly to render the body a vehicle of consciousness;
the direct working upon it begins when the life of the man establishes its centre
in the mental body, and when thought commences to dominate sensation.
The
exercise of the mental powers works on the brain and the nervous system, and
the coarser materials are gradually expelled to make room for the finer, which
can vibrate in unison with the thought-vibrations sent to them. The brain becomes
finer in constitution, and increases by ever more complicated convolutions the
amount of surface available for the coating of nervous matter adapted to respond
to thought-vibrations. The nervous system becomes more delicately balanced,
more sensitive, more alive to every thrill of mental activity. And when the
recognition of its function as an instrument of the Soul, spoken of above, has
come, then active co-operation in performing (Page
221) this function sets in. The personality begins deliberately to
discipline itself, and to set the permanent interests of the immortal individual
above its own transient gratifications.
It
yields up the time that might be spent in the pursuit of lower pleasures to
the evolution of mental powers; day by day time is set apart for serious study;
the brain is gladly surrendered to receive impacts from within instead of from
without, is trained to answer to consecutive thinking, and is taught to refrain
from throwing up its own useless disjointed images, made by past impressions.
It is taught to remain at rest when it is not wanted by its master; to answer,
not to initiate vibrations. (One of the signs that it is being accomplished
is the cessation of the confused jumble of fragmentary images which are set
up during sleep by the independent activity of the physical brain. When the
brain is coming under control this kind of dream is very seldom experienced.)
Further,
some discretion and discrimination will be used as to the food-stuffs which
supply physical materials to the brain. The use of the coarser kinds will be
discontinued, such as animal flesh and blood and alcohol, and pure food will
build up a pure body. Gradually the lower vibrations will find no materials
capable of responding to them, and the physical body thus becomes more and more
entirely a vehicle of consciousness, delicately responsive to all the thrills
of thought and keenly sensitive to the vibrations sent outwards by the Thinker.
The
etheric double so closely follows the constitution of the dense body that it
is not (Page 222) necessary to
study separately its purification and quickening; it does not normally serve
as a separate vehicle of consciousness, but works synchronously with its dense
partner, and when separated from it either by accident or by death, it responds
very feebly to the vibrations initiated from within. It function in truth is
not to serve as a vehicle of mental-consciousness, but as a vehicle of Prâna,
of specialised life-force, and its dislocation from the denser particles to
which it conveys the life-currents is therefore disturbing and mischievous.
The
astral body is the second vehicle of consciousness to be vivified, and we have
already seen the changes through which it passes as it becomes organised for
the work. (see Chapter II, “The Astral Plane”.). When it is thoroughly organised,
the consciousness which has hitherto worked within it, imprisoned by it, when
in sleep it has left the physical body and is drifting about in the astral world,
begins not only to receive the impressions through it of astral objects that
form the so-called dream-consciousness, but also to perceive astral objects
by its senses – that is, begins to relate the impressions received to the objects
which give rise to those impressions.
These
perceptions are at first confused, just as are the perceptions at first made
by the mind through a new physical baby-body, and they have to be corrected
by experience in the one case as in the other. The Thinker has gradually to
discover the new powers which he can use through this subtler vehicle, and by
which he can control the (Page 223)
astral elements and defend himself against astral dangers. He is not left alone
to face this new world unaided, but is taught and helped and – until he can
guard himself – protected by those who are more experienced than himself in
the ways of the astral world. Gradually the new vehicle of consciousness comes
completely under his control, and life on the astral plane is as natural and
as familiar as life on the physical.
The
third vehicle of consciousness, the mental body, is rarely, if ever, vivified
for independent action without the direct instruction of a teacher, and its
functioning belongs to the life of the disciple at the present stage of human
evolution. (See Chapter XI, “Man’s Ascent”). As we have already seen, it is
rearranged for separate functioning (See Chapter IV, “The Mental Plane”), on
the mental plane, and here again experience and training are needed ere it comes
fully under its owner’s control. A fact – common to all these three vehicles
of consciousness, but more apt to mislead perhaps in the subtler than in the
denser, because it is generally forgotten in their case, while it is so obvious
that it is remembered in the denser – is that they are subject to evolution,
and that with their higher evolution their powers to receive and to respond
to vibrations increase.
How
many more shades of a colour are seen by a trained eye than by an untrained.
How many overtones are heard by a trained ear, where the untrained hears only
the single fundamental note. As the physical senses grow (Page
224) more keen the world becomes fuller and fuller, and where the
peasant is conscious only his furrow and his plough, the cultured mind is conscious
of hedgerow flower and quivering aspen, of rapturous melody down-dropping from
the skylark and the whirring of tiny wings through the adjoining wood, of the
scudding of rabbits under the curled fronds of the bracken, and the squirrels
playing with each other through the branches of the beeches, of
all the gracious movements of wild things, of all the fragrant odours of filed
and woodland, of all the changing glories of the cloud-flecked sky, and of all
the chasing lights and shadows on the hills. Both the peasant and the cultured
have eyes, both have brains, but of what differing powers of observation, of
what differing powers to receive impressions.
Thus
also in other worlds. As the as the astral and mental bodies begin to function
as separate vehicles of consciousness, they are in, as it were, the peasant
stage of receptivity, and only fragments of the astral and mental worlds, with
their strange and elusive phenomena, make their way into consciousness; but
they evolve rapidly, embracing more and more, and conveying to consciousness
a more and more accurate reflection of its environment. Here,
as everywhere else, we have to remember that our knowledge is not the limit
of Nature’s powers, and that in the astral and mental worlds, as in the physical,
we are still children, picking up a few shells cast up by the waves, while the
treasures hid in the ocean are still unexplored. (Page
225)
The quickening of the causal body as a vehicle of consciousness follows in due
course the quickening of the mental body, and opens up to a man a yet more
marvelous state of consciousness, stretching backwards into an illimitable past,
onwards into the reaches of the future. Then
the Thinker not only possesses the memory of his own past and can trace his
growth through the long succession of his incarnate and excarnate lives, but
he can also roam at will through the storied past of the earth, and learn the
weighty lessons of world-experience, studying the hidden laws that guide evolution
and the deep secrets of life hidden in the bosom of Nature.
In
that lofty vehicle of consciousness he can each the veiled Isis, and lift a
corner of her down-dropped veil; for there he can face her eyes without being
blinded by her lightening glances, and he can see in the radiance that flows
from her the causes of the world’s sorrow and its ending, with heart pitiful
and compassionate, but no longer wrung with helpless pain. Strength and calm
and wisdom come to those who are using the causal body as a vehicle of consciousness,
and who behold with opened eyes the glory of the Good law.
When
the buddhic body is quickened as a vehicle of consciousness the man enters into
the bliss of non-separateness, and knows in full and vivid realisation his unity
with all that is. As the predominant element of consciousness in the causal
body is knowledge, and ultimately wisdom, so the predominant element of consciousness
in the buddhic body is bliss and love. (Page
226) The
serenity of wisdom chiefly marks the one, while the tenderest compassion streams
forth inexhaustibly from the other; when to these is added the godlike and unruffled
strength that marks the functioning of Âtma, then humanity is crowned with divinity,
and the God-man is manifest in all the plenitude of his power, of his wisdom,
of his love.
The handing down to the lower vehicles of such part of the consciousness belonging
to the higher as they are able to receive does not immediately follow on the
successive quickening of the vehicles. In this matter individuals differ very
widely, according to their circumstances and their work, for this quickening
of the vehicles above the physical rarely occurs till probationary discipleship
is reached, ( See Chapter XI, “Man’s Ascent”), and then the duties to be discharged
depend on the needs of the time.
The
disciple, and even the aspirant for discipleship, is taught to hold all his
powers entirely for the service of the world, and the sharing of the lower consciousness
in the knowledge of the higher is for the most part determined by the needs
of the work in which the disciple is engaged. It is necessary that the disciple
should have the full use of his vehicles of consciousness on the higher planes,
as much of his work can be accomplished only in them; but the conveying of
knowledge of that work to the physical vehicle, which is in no way concerned
in it, is a matter of no importance and the conveyance or non-conveyance is
generally determined by the effect that the one course or the other would have
(Page 227) on the efficiency of
his work on the physical plane.
The
strain on the physical body when the higher consciousness compels it to vibrate
responsively is very great, at the present stage of evolution, and unless the
external circumstances are very favourable this strain is apt to cause nervous
disturbance, hyper-sensitiveness with its attendant evils. Hence most of those
who are in full possession of the quickened higher vehicles of consciousness,
and whose most important work is done out of the body, remain apart from the
busy haunts of men, if they desire to throw down into the physical consciousness
the knowledge they use on the higher planes, thus preserving the sensitive physical
vehicle from the rough usage and clamour of ordinary life.
The
main preparation to be made for receiving in the physical vehicle the vibrations
of the higher consciousness are: its purification from grosser materials by
pure food and pure life; the entire subjugation of the passions, and the cultivation
of an even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the turmoil and vicissitudes
of external life ; the habit of quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the
mind away from the objects of the senses, and from the mental images arising
from them, and fixing it on higher things ; the cessation of hurry, especially
of that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps the brain continually
at work and flying from one subject to another ; the genuine love for the things
of the higher world, that makes them more attractive than the objects of the
lower, so that the mind (Page 228) rests
contentedly in their companionship as in that of a well-loved friend.
In
fact, the preparations are much the same as those necessary for the conscious
separation of “soul” from “body” and those were elsewhere stated by me as follows:
The
student –
“Must
begin by practising extreme temperance in all things, cultivating an equable
and serene state of mind, his life must be clean and his thoughts pure, his
body held in strict subjection to the soul, and his mind trained to occupy
itself with noble and lofty themes; he must habitually practise compassion,
sympathy, helpfulness to others, with indifference to troubles and pleasures
affecting himself, and he must cultivate courage, steadfastness, and devotion.
In
fact, he must live the religion and ethics that other people for the most
part only talk. Having by persevering practice learned to control his mind
to some extent so that he is able to keep it fixed on one line of thought
for some little time, he must begin its more rigid training, by a daily practice
of concentration on some difficult or abstract subject, or on some lofty
object of devotion; this concentration means the firm fixing of the mind on
one single point, without wandering, and without yielding to any distraction
caused by external objects, by the activity of the senses, or by that of the
mind itself.
It
must be braced up to an unswerving steadiness and fixity, until gradually
it will learn so to withdraw its attention form the outer world and from
the body that the senses will remain quiet and still, while the mind is intensely
alive with all its energies drawn inwards to be launched at a single point
of thought, the highest to which it can attain.
When
it is able to hold itself thus with comparative ease it is ready for a further
step, and by a strong but calm effort of the will it can throw itself beyond
the highest thought it can reach while working in the physical brain,
and in the effort will rise and unite itself with the higher consciousness
and find itself free of the body. When this is done there is no sense of sleep
or dream nor any loss of consciousness; the man finds himself (Page
229) outside his body, but as though he merely slipped off a weighty
encumbrance, nor as though he had lost any part of himself; he
is not really “disembodied”, but had risen out of the gross body ‘in a body
of light’ which obeys his slightest thought and serves as a beautiful and
perfect instrument for carrying out his will. In this he is free of the subtle
worlds, but will need to train his faculties long and carefully for reliable
work under the new conditions.
“Freedom from the body may be obtained in other ways; by the rapt intensity
of devotion or by special methods that may be imparted by a great teacher
to his disciple.
Whatever
the way, the end is the same – the setting free of the soul in full consciousness,
able to examine its new surroundings in regions beyond the treading of the
flesh of the man of flesh. At will it can return to the body and re-enter
it, and under these circumstances it can impress on the brain-mind, and thus
retain while in the body, the memory of the experiences it has undergone.”
[ Conditions of life after death" Nineteenth
Century of Nov. 1896 ]
Those
who have grasped the main ideas sketched in the foregoing pages will feel that
these ideas are in themselves the strongest proof that reincarnation is a fact
in nature. It is necessary in order that the vast evolution implied in the phrase,
“ the evolution of the soul,” may be accomplished. The only alternative – putting
aside for the moment the materialistic idea that the soul is only the aggregate
of the vibrations of a particular kind of physical matter – is that each soul
is a new creation, made when a babe is born, and stamped with virtuous or with
vicious tendencies, endowed with ability or with stupidity, by the arbitrary
whim of the creative power.
As
the Muhammadan would say, his fate is hung round his
(Page 230) neck at birth, for a man’s fate depends on his character
and his surroundings, and a newly created soul flung into the world must be
doomed to happiness or misery according to the circumstances environing him
and the character stamped upon him. Predestination in its most offensive form
is the alternative of reincarnation. Instead
of looking on men as slowly evolving, so that the brutal savage of today will
in time evolve the noblest qualities of saint and hero, and thus, seeing in
the world a wisely planned and wisely directed process of growth, we shall be
obliged to see in it a chaos of most unjustly treated sentient beings, awarded
happiness or misery, knowledge or ignorance, virtue or vice, wealth or poverty,
genius or idiocy, by an arbitrary external will, unguided by either justice
or mercy – a veritable pandemonium, irrational and unmeaning.
And
this chaos is supposed to be the higher part of the cosmos, in the lower regions
of which are manifested all the orderly and beautiful workings of a law that
ever evolves higher and more complex form from the lower and the simpler, that
obviously “makes for righteousness,” for harmony and for beauty.
If
it be admitted that the soul of the savage is destined to live and evolve, and
that he is not doomed for eternity to his present infant state, but that his
evolution will take place after death and in other worlds, then the principle
of soul-evolution is conceded, and the question of the place of evolution alone
remains. Were all souls on earth at the same stage of evolution, much might
be said for the contention (Page 231)
that further worlds are needed for the evolution of souls beyond the infant
stage.
But
we have around us souls that are far advanced, and that were born with noble
mental and moral qualities. But parity of reasoning, we must suppose them to
have been evolved in other worlds ere their one birth in this, and we cannot
but wonder why an earth that offers varied conditions, fit for little-developed
and also for advanced souls, should be paid only one flying visit by souls at
every stage of development, all the rest of their evolution being carried on
in worlds similar to this, equally able to afford all the conditions needed
to evolve the souls of different stages of evolution, as we find them to be
when they are born here.
The
Ancient Wisdom teaches, indeed, that the soul progresses through many worlds,
but it also teaches that he is born in each of these worlds over and over again,
until he has completed the evolution possible in that world. The worlds themselves,
according to its teaching, form an evolutionary chain, and each plays its own
part as a field for certain stages of evolution. Our
own world offers a field suitable for the evolution of the mineral, vegetable,
animal and human kingdoms, and therefore collective or individual reincarnation
goes on upon it in all these kingdoms. Truly, further evolution lies before
us in other worlds, but in the divine order they are not open to us until we
have learned and mastered the lessons of our own world has to teach.
There
are many lines of thought that lead us to the (Page
232) same goal of reincarnation, as we study the world around us.
The immense differences that separate man from man have already been noticed
as implying an evolutionary past behind each soul; and attention has been drawn
to these differentiating the individual reincarnation of men – all of whom belong
to a single species – from the reincarnation of monadic group-souls in the lower
kingdoms. The
comparatively small differences that separate the physical bodies of men, all
being externally recognisable as men, should be contrasted with the immense
differences that separate the lowest savage and the noblest human type in mental
and moral capacities. Savages are often splendid in physical development and
with large cranial contents, but how different their minds from that of a philosopher
or saint!
If
high mental and moral qualities are regarded as the accumulated results of civilised
living, then we are confronted with the fact that the ablest men of the present
are over-topped by the intellectual giants of the past, and that none of our
own day reaches the moral altitude of some historical saints. Further, we have
to consider that genius has neither parent nor child; that it appears suddenly
and not as the apex of a gradually improving family, and is itself generally
sterile, or, if a child be born to it, it is a child of the body, not of the
mind.
Still
more significantly, a musical genius is for the most part born in a musical
family, because that form of genius needs for its manifestation a nervous (Page
233) organisation of a peculiar kind, and nervous organisation falls
under the law of heredity. But how often in such a family its object seems over
when it has provided a body for a genius, and it then flickers out and vanishes
in a few generations into the obscurity of average humanity. Where are the descendants
of Bach, of Beethoven, of Mozart, of Mendelssohn, equal to their sires? Truly
genius does not descend from father to son, like the family types of the Stuart
and the Bourbon.
On
what ground, save that or reincarnation, can the “infant prodigy” be accounted
for? Take as an instance the case of the child who became Dr. Young, the discoverer
of the undulatory theory of light, a man whose greatness is scarcely yet sufficiently
widely recognised. As a child of two he could read “with considerable fluency”,
and before he was four he had read through the Bible twice; at seven he began
arithmetic, and mastered Walkingham’s Tutor’s Assistant before he had
reached the middle of it under his tutor, and a few years later we find him
mastering, while at school, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, book-keeping,
French, Italian, turning and telescope-making and delighting in Oriental literature.
At
fourteen he was to be placed under private tuition with a boy a year and a half
younger, but, the tutor first engaged failing to arrive, Young taught the other
boy. (Life of Dr. Thomas Young, by G. Peacock, D.D.). Sir William
Rowan Hamilton showed power even more precocious. He began to learn Hebrew
when he was barely three, (Page 234) and
“at the age of seven he was pronounced by one of the Fellows of Trinity College,
Dublin, to have shown a greater knowledge of the language than many candidates
for a fellowship. At the age of thirteen he had acquired considerable knowledge
of at least thirteen languages.
Among
these, besides the classical and the modern European languages, were included
Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Hindustani, and even Malay….. He wrote, at the age
of fourteen, a complimentary letter to the Persian Ambassador, who happened
to visit Dublin; and the latter said that he had not thought there was a man
in Britain who could have written such a document in the Persian language. A
relative of his says: “I remember him a little boy of six, when he would answer
a difficult mathematical question, and run off gaily to his little cart.
At
twelve he engaged Colburn, the American ‘calculating boy,’ who was then being
exhibited as a curiosity in Dublin, and he had not always the worst of the encounter.”
When he was eighteen, Dr. Brinkley (Royal Astronomer of Ireland) said of him
in 1823: “This young man, I do not say will be, but is, the
first mathematician of his age.” “At college his career was perhaps unexampled.
Among a number of competitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in every
subject, and at every examination. (North British Review, September 1866).
Let the thoughtful student compare these boys with a semi-idiot, or even with
an average lad, note how, starting with these advantages, they become leaders
(Page 235) of thought, and then
ask himself whether such souls have no past behind them. Family
likenesses are generally explained as being due to the “law of heredity,” but
differences in mental and in moral character are continually found within a
family circle, and these are left unexplained. Reincarnation explains the likenesses
by the fact that a soul in taking birth is directed to a family which provides
by its physical heredity a body suitable to express his characteristics; and
it explains the unlikenesses by attaching the mental and moral character to
the individual himself, while showing that ties set up in the past have led
him to take birth in connection with some other individual of that family. (See
Chapter IX, on “Karma”).
A
“matter of significance in connection with twins is that during infancy they
will often be indistinguishable from each other, even to the keen eye of the
mother and of nurse; whereas, later in life, when Manas has been working on
his physical encasement, he will have so modified it that the physical likeness
lessens and the differences of character stamp themselves on the mobile features.”
[ Reincarnation by Annie Besant, Page 64]
Physical likeness with mental and moral unlikeness seems to imply the meeting
of two different lines of causation.
The
striking dissimilarity found to exist between people of about equal intellectual
power in assimilating particular kinds of knowledge is another “pointer” to
reincarnation. A truth is recognised at once (Page
236) by one, while the other fails to grasp it even after long and
careful observation. Yet the very opposite may be the case when another truth
is presented to them, and it may be seen by the second and missed by the first.
“Two students
are attracted to Theosophy and begin to study it, at a year’s end one is familiar
with its main conceptions and can apply them, while the other is struggling
in a maze. To the one each principle seemed familiar on presentation ; to the
other new, unintelligible, strange.
The believer in reincarnation understands that the teaching is old to the one,
and new to the other; one learns quickly because he remembers, he is
but recovering past knowledge; the other learns slowly because his experience
has not included these truths of nature, and he is acquiring them toil fully
for the first time.[ Reincarnation by annie Besant,
Page 67] ” So also ordinary intuition
is “merely recognition of a fact familiar in a past life, though met with for
the first time in the present,” another sign of the road along which the individual
has traveled in the past.
The
main difficulty with many people in the reception of the doctrine of reincarnation
is their own absence of memory of their past. Yet they are every day familiar
with the fact that they have forgotten very much even of their lives in their
present bodies, and that the early years of childhood are blurred and those
of infancy a blank. They must also know that events of the past which have entirely
slipped out of their normal consciousness are yet (Page
237) hidden away in dark caves of memory and ban be brought out again
vividly in some forms of disease or under the influence of mesmerism.
A
dying man has been known to speak a language heard only in infancy, and unknown
to him during a long life; in delirium, events long forgotten have presented
themselves vividly to the consciousness. Nothing is really forgotten; but much
is hidden out of sight of the limited vision of our waking consciousness, the
most limited form of our consciousness, although the only consciousness recognised
by the vast majority. Just
as memory of some of the present life is in-drawn beyond the reach of this waking
consciousness, and makes itself known again only when the brain is hypersensitive
and thus able to respond to vibrations that usually beat against it unheeded,
so is the memory of the past lives stored up our of reach of the physical consciousness.
It is all with the Thinker, who alone persists from life to life; he has the
whole book of memory within his reach, for he is the only “ I “ that has passed
through all the experiences recorded therein.
Moreover,
he can impress his own memories of the past on his physical vehicle, as soon
as it has been sufficiently purified to answer his swift and subtle vibrations,
and then the man of flesh can share his knowledge of the storied past. The difficulty
of memory does not lie in forgetfulness, for the lower vehicle, the physical
body, has never passed through the previous lives of its owner; it lies in the
absorption of the present body in its present environment, in its (Page
238) coarse unresponsiveness to the delicate thrills in which alone
the soul can speak. Those who would remember the past must not have their interests
centred in the present, and they must purify and refine the body till it is
able to receive impressions from the subtler spheres.
Memory
of their own past lives, however, is possessed by a considerable number of people
who have achieved the necessary sensitiveness of the physical organism, and
to these of course, reincarnation is no longer a theory, but has become a matter
of personal knowledge. They have learned how much richer life becomes when memories
of past lives pout into it, when the friends of this brief day are found to
be the friends of the long-ago, and old remembrances strengthen the ties of
the fleeting present. Life
gains security and dignity when it is seen with a long vista behind it, and
when the loves of old reappear in the loves of today. Death fades into its proper
place as a mere incident in life, a change from one scene to another, like a
journey that separates bodies but cannot sunder friend from friend. The links
of the present are found to be part of a golden chain that stretches backwards,
and the future can be faced with a glad security in the thought that these links
will endure through days to come, and form part of that unbroken chain.
Now
and then we find children who have brought over a memory of their immediate
past, for the most part when they have died in childhood and are reborn almost
immediately. In the West such cases (Page
239) are rarer than in the East, because in the West the first words
of such a child would be met with disbelief, and he would quickly lose faith
in his own memories. In the East, where belief in reincarnation is almost universal,
the child’s remembrances are listened to, and where the opportunity serves they
have been verified.
There
is another important point with respect to memory that will repay consideration.
The memory of past events remains, as we have seen, with the Thinker
only, but the results of those events embodied in faculties are at
the service of the lower man. If the whole of these past events were thrown
down into the physical brain, a vast mass of experiences in no classified order,
without arrangement, the man could not be guided by the out come of the past,
nor utilise it for present help. Compelled to make a choice between two lines
of action, he would have to pick, out of the un-arranged facts from his past,
events similar in character, trace out their results, and after long and weary
study arrive at some conclusion – a conclusion very likely to be vitiated by
the overlooking of some important factor, and reached long after the need for
decision had passed.
All
the events, trivial and important, of some hundreds of lives would form a rather
unwieldy and chaotic mass for reference in an emergency that demanded a swift
action. The far more effective plan of Nature leaves to the Thinker the memory
of the events, provides a long period of excarnate existence for the mental
body, during which all events are tabulated and compared and their results
are classified; then these results are embodied as faculties, and these faculties
form the next mental body of the Thinker.
In
this way, the enlarged and improved faculties are available for immediate use,
and, the faculties of the past being in them, a decision can be come to, in
accordance with those results and without any delay. The clear quick insight
and prompt judgment are nothing else than the outcome of past experiences, moulded
into an effective form for use; they are surely more useful instruments than
would be a mass of unassimilated experiences, out of which the relevant ones
would have to be selected and compared, and from which inferences would have
to be drawn, on each separate occasion on which a choice arises.
From
all these lines of thought, however, the mind turns back to rest on the fundamental
necessity for reincarnation if life is to be made intelligible, and if injustice
and cruelty are not to mock the helplessness of man. With reincarnation man
is a dignified, immortal being, evolving towards a divinely glorious end; without
it, he is a tossing straw on the stream of chance circumstances , irresponsible
for his character, for his actions, for his destiny.
With
it, he may look forward with fearless hope, however low in the scale of evolution
he may be today, for he is on the ladder to divinity, and the climbing to its
summit is only a question of time; without it, he has no reasonable ground of
assurance as to progress in the future, nor indeed any reasonable ground
(Page 241) of assurance in a future at all. Why should a creature
without a past look forward to a future?He
may be a mere bubble on the ocean of time. Flung into the world from non-entity,
with qualities of good or evil, attached to him without reason or desert, why
should he strive to make the best of them? Will not his future, if he have one,
be as isolated, as uncaused, as unrelated as his present? In dropping reincarnation
from its beliefs, the modern world has deprived God of His justice and has bereft
man of his security; he may be “lucky” or “unlucky” but the strength and dignity
conferred by reliance on a changeless law are rent away from him, and he is
left tossing helplessly on an un-navigable ocean of life. (Page
242)
KARMA
Having
traced the evolution of the soul by the way of reincarnation, we are now in
a position to study the great law of causation under which rebirths are carried
on, the law which is named Karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word, literally meaning
“action”; as all actions are effects flowing from preceding causes, and as each
effect becomes a cause of future effects, this idea of cause and effect is an
essential part of the idea of action, and the word action, or karma, is therefore
used for causation, or for the unbroken linked series of causes and effects
that make up all human activity.
Hence
the phrase is sometimes used of an event, “This is my karma,” i.e., “This event
is the effect of a cause set going by me in the past.” No one life is isolated!
It is the child of all the lives before it, the parent of all the lives that
follow it, in the total aggregate of the lives that make up the continuing existence
of the individual.
There
is no such thing as ”chance” or as “accident”; every event is linked to a preceding
cause, to a following effect; all thoughts, deeds, circumstances are causally
related to the past and will causally influence the future; as our ignorance
(Page 243) shrouds from our vision alike the past and the future,
events often appear to us to come suddenly from the void, to be “accidental,”
but this appearance is illusory and is due entirely to our lack of knowledge.
Just as the
savage, ignorant of the laws of the physical universe, regards physical events
as uncaused, and the results of unknown physical laws as “miracles”; so do many,
ignorant of moral and mental laws, regard moral and mental events as uncaused,
and the results of unknown moral and mental laws as good and bad “luck.”
When
at first this idea of inviolable, immutable law is a realm hitherto vaguely
ascribed to chance dawns upon the mind, it is apt to result in a sense of helplessness,
almost of moral and mental paralysis. Man seems to be held in the grip of an
iron destiny, and the resigned “kismet” of the Moslem appears to be the only
philosophical utterance. Just so might the savage feel when the idea of physical
law first dawns on his startled intelligence, and he learns that every movement
of his body, every movement in external nature, is carried on under immutable
laws.
Gradually
he learns that natural laws only lay down conditions under which all workings
must be carried on, but do not prescribe the workings; so that man remains
ever free at the centre, while limited in his external activities by the conditions
of the plane on which those activities are carried on. He learns further that
while the conditions master him, constantly frustrating his strenuous efforts,
so long as he is ignorant of them, or, knowing them, (Page
244) fights against them, he masters them and they become his servants
and helpers when he understands them, knows their directions, and calculates
their forces.
In
truth science is possible only on the physical plane because its laws are
inviolable, immutable. Were there no such things as natural laws, there could
be no sciences. An investigator makes a number of experiments, and from the
results of these he learns how Nature works; knowing this, he can calculate
how to bring about a certain desired result, and if he fail in achieving that
result he knows that he has omitted some necessary condition – either his knowledge
is imperfect, or he has made a miscalculation. He
reviews his knowledge, revises his methods, recasts his calculations, with a
serene and complete certainty that if he ask his question rightly Nature will
answer him with unvarying precision. Hydrogen and oxygen will not give him water
today and prussic acid tomorrow; fire will not burn him today and freeze him
tomorrow. If water be a fluid today and a solid tomorrow, it is because the
conditions surrounding it have been altered, and the reinstatement of the original
conditions will bring about the original result.
Every
new piece of information about the laws of Nature is not a fresh restriction
but a fresh power, for all these energies of Nature become forces which he
can use in proportion as he understands them. Hence the saying that “knowledge
is power,” for exactly in proportion to his knowledge
(Page 245) can he utilise these forces; by selecting those with which
he will work, by balancing one against another, by neutralising opposing energies
that would interfere with his object, he can calculate beforehand the result,
and bring about what he predetermines.
Understanding
and manipulating causes, he can predict effects, and thus the very rigidity
of nature which seemed at first to paralyse human action can be used to produce
and infinite variety of results. Perfect rigidity in each separate force makes
possible perfect flexibility in their combinations. For the forces being of
every kind, moving in every direction, and each being calculable, a selection
can be made and the selected forces so combined as to yield any desired result.
The
object to be gained being determined, it can be infallibly obtained by a careful
balancing of forces in the combination put together as a cause. But, be it remembered,
knowledge is requisite thus to guide events, to bring about desired results.
The ignorant man stumbles helplessly along, striking himself against the immutable
laws and seeing his efforts fail, while the man of knowledge walks steadily
forward, foreseeing, causing, preventing, adjusting, and bringing about that
at which he aims, not because he is lucky but because he understands. The one
is the toy, the slave of Nature, whirled along by her forces: the other is her
master, using her energies to carry him onwards in the direction chosen by his
will.
That
which is true of the physical realm of law is (Page
246) true of the moral and mental worlds, equally realms of law.
Here also the ignorant is a slave, the sage is a monarch; here also the inviolability,
the immutability, that were regarded as paralysing, are found to be the necessary
conditions of sure progress and of clear-sighted direction of the future. Man
can become the master of his destiny only because that destiny lies in a realm
of law, where knowledge can build up the science of the soul and place in the
hands of man the power of controlling his future – of choosing alike his future
character and his future circumstances.The
knowledge of karma that threatened to paralyse, becomes an inspiring, a supporting,
an uplifting force.
Karma is then, the law of causation, the law of cause and effect. It was put
pointedly by the Christian Initiate, S. Paul : “Be not deceived, God is not
mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”(Galatians,
vi, 7). Man is continually sending out forces on all the planes on which
he functions; these forces – themselves in quantity and quality the effects
of his past activities – are causes which he sets going in each world he inhabits;
they bring about certain definite effects both on himself and on others, and
as these causes radiate forth from himself as centre over the whole field of
his activity, he is responsible for the results they bring about.
As
a magnet has its “magnetic field,” an area within which all its forces play,
larger or smaller according to its strength, so has every man a field of influence
(Page 247) within which play the
forces he emits, and these forces work in curves that return to their forth-sender,
that re-enter the centre whence they emerged.
As the subject is a very complicated one, we will sub-divide it, and then study
the subdivisions one by one.
Three
classes of energies are sent forth by man in his ordinary life, belonging respectively
to the three worlds that he inhabits; mental energies on the mental plane, giving
rise to the causes we call thoughts; desire energies on the astral plane, giving
rise to those we call desires; physical energies aroused by these, and working
on the physical plane, giving rise to the causes we call action. We
have to study each of these in its workings, and to understand the class of
effects to which each gives rise, if we wish to trace intelligently the part
that each plays in the perplexed and complicated combinations we set up, called
in their totality “our Karma.” When a man, advancing more swiftly than his
fellows, gains the ability to function on higher planes, he then becomes the
centre of higher forces, but for the present we may leave these out of account
and confine ourselves to ordinary humanity, treading the cycle of reincarnation
in the three worlds.
In
studying these three classes of energies we shall have to distinguish between
their effect on the man who generates them and their effect on others who come
within the field of his influence; for a lack (Page
248) of understanding on this point often leaves the student in a
slough of hopeless bewilderment.
Then we must remember that every force works on its own plane and reacts on
the planes below it in proportion to its intensity, the plane on which it is
generated gives it its special characteristics, and in its reaction on lower
planes it sets up vibrations in their finer or coarser materials according to
its own original nature.The
motive which generates the activity determines the plane to which the force
belongs.
Next it will be necessary to distinguish between ripe karma, ready to show itself
as inevitable events in the present life; the karma of character, showing itself
in tendencies that are the outcome of accumulated experiences, and that are
capable of being modified in the present life by the same power (the Ego) that
created them in the past; the karma that is now making, and will give rise to
future events and future character. ( These divisions are familiar to the student
as Prārabdha (commenced, to be worked out in the life); Sanchita (accumulated),
a part of which is seen in the tendencies, Kriyamāna, (in course of making).
Further,
we have to realise that while a man makes his own individual karma he also connects
himself thereby with others, thus becoming a member of various groups – family,
national, racial – and as a member he shares in the collective karma of each
of these groups.
It
will be seen that the study of karma is one (Page
249) of much complexity; however, by grasping the main principles
of its working as set out above, a coherent idea of its general bearing may
be obtained without much difficulty, and its details can be studied at leisure
as opportunity offers. Above all, let it never be forgotten, whether details
are understood or not, that each man makes his own karma, creating alike his
own capacities and his own limitations; and that working at any time with these
self-created capacities, and within these self-created limitations, he is still
himself, the living soul, and can strengthen or weaken his capacities, enlarge
or contract his limitations.
The
chains that bind him are of his own forging, and he can file them away or rivet
them more strongly; the house he lives in is of his own building, and he can
improve it, let it deteriorate, or rebuild it, as he will. We are ever working
in plastic clay and can shape it to our fancy, but the clay hardens and becomes
as iron, retaining the shape we gave it. A proverb from the Hitopadesha
runs, as translated by Sir Edwin Arnold:
“Look!
The clay dries into iron, but the potter moulds the clay;
Destiny today
is the master – Man was master yesterday. “
Thus
we are all masters of our tomorrows, however much we are hampered today by the
results of our yesterdays.
Let
us now take in order the divisions already set out under which karma may be
studied.
Three
classes of causes, with their effects on their (Page
250) creator and on those he influences.The
first of these classes is composed of our thoughts. Thought is the most potent
factor in the creation of human karma, for in thought the energies of the SELF
are working in mental matter, the matter which, in its finer kinds, forms the
individual vehicle, and even in its coarser kinds responds swiftly to every
vibration of self-consciousness. The vibrations which we call thought, the immediate
activity of the Thinker, give rise to forms of mind-stuff, or mental images,
which shape and mould his mental body, as we have already seen; every thought
modifies this mental body, and the mental faculties in each successive life
are made by the thinkings of the previous lives.
A
man can have no thought-power, no mental ability, that he has not himself created
by patiently repeated thinkings; on the other hand, no mental image that he
has thus created is lost, but remains as material for faculty, and the aggregate
of any group of mental images is built into a faculty which grows stronger with
every additional thinking, or creation of a mental image, of the same kind.
Knowing
this law, the man can gradually make for himself the mental character he desires
to possess and he can do it as definitely and as certainly as a bricklayer can
build a wall. Death does not stop his work, but by setting him free from the
encumbrance of the body facilitates the process of working up his mental images
into the definite organ we call a faculty, and he brings this back with him
to his next birth on the physical plane, part of the brain (Page
251) of the new body being moulded so as to serve as the organ of
this faculty, in a way to be explained presently.
All
these faculties together form the mental body for his opening life on earth,
and his brain and nervous system are shaped to give his mental body expression
on the physical plane. Thus the mental images created in one life appear as
mental characteristics and tendencies in another, and for this reason it is
written in one of the Upanishads: “Man is a creature of reflection: that
which he reflects on in this life he becomes the same hereafter.” (Chhāndogyopanishad
IV, xiv,1). Such
is the law, and it places the building of our mental character entirely in our
own hands; if we build well, ours the advantage and the credit; if we build
badly, ours the loss and blame. Mental character, then, is a case of individual
karma in its action on the individual who generates it.
This
same man that we are considering, however, affects other by his thoughts. For
these mental images that form his own mental body set up vibrations, thus reproducing
themselves in secondary forms. These generally, being mingled with desire, take
up some astral matter, and I have therefore elsewhere (see Karma, page
25 - Theosophical Manual No. IV) called these secondary thought-forms – astro-mental
images. Such forms leave their creator and lead a quasi-independent life – still
keeping up a magnetic tie with their progenitor.
They
come into contact with and affect others, in this way setting up karmic links
between these (Page 252) others
and himself; thus they largely influence his future environment. In such fashion
are made the ties which draw people together for good or evil in later lives;
which surround us with relatives, friends, and enemies; which bring across our
path helpers and hinderers, people who benefit and who injure us, people who
love us without our winning in this life, and who hate us though in this life
we have done nothing to deserve their hatred. Studying the results, we grasp
a great principle – that while our thoughts produce our mental and moral character
in their action on ourselves, they help to determine our human associates in
the future by their effects on others.
The
second great class of energies is composed of our desires – our out-goings after
objects that attract us in the external world: as a mental element always enters
into these in man, we may extend the term “mental images “ to include them,
although they express themselves chiefly in astral matter. These in their action
on their progenitor mould and form his body of desire, or astral body, shape
his fate when he passes into Kāmaloka after death, and determine the nature
of his astral body in his next rebirth.
When
the desires are bestial, drunken, cruel, unclean, they are the fruitful causes
of congenital diseases, of weak and diseased brains, giving rise to epilepsy,
catalepsy, and nervous diseases of all kinds, of physical malformations and
deformities, and, in extreme cases, of monstrosities. Bestial appetites of an
abnormal kind or intensity may set up (Page
253) links in the astral world which for a time chain the Egos, clothed
in astral bodies shaped by these appetites, to the astral bodies of animals
to which these appetites properly belong, thus delaying their reincarnation;
where this fate is escaped, the bestially shaped astral body will sometimes
impress its characteristics on the forming physical body of the babe during
ante natal life, and produce the semi-human horrors that are occasionally born.
Desires
– because they are outgoing energies that attach themselves to objects – always
attract the man towards an environment in which they may be gratified. Desires
for earthly things, linking the soul to the outer world, draw him towards the
place where the objects of desire are most readily obtainable, and therefore
it is said that a man is born according to his desires. ( See Brihadāranyakopanishad,IV,iv,
5,7,and context). They are one of the causes that determine the place of rebirth.
The
astro-mental images caused by desires affect others as do those generated by
thoughts. They, therefore, also link us with other souls, and often by the
strongest ties of love and hatred, for at the present stage of human evolution
an ordinary man’s desires are generally stronger and more sustained than his
thoughts. They thus play a great part in determining his human surroundings
in future lives, and may bring into those lives persons and influences of whose
connection with himself he is totally unconscious.
Suppose
a man by sending out a thought of bitter hatred and revenge has helped to form
in (Page 254) another the impulse
which results in a murder; the creator of that thought is linked by his karma
to the committer of the crime, although they have never met on the physical
plane, and the wrong he has done to him, by helping to impel him to a crime
, will come back as an injury in the infliction of which the whilhom criminal
will play his part. Many a “bolt from the blue” that is felt is utterly undeserved
is the effect of such a cause, and the soul thereby learns and registers a lesson
while the lower consciousness is writhing under a sense of injustice.
Nothing
can strike a man that he has not deserved, but his absence of memory does not
cause a failure in the working of the law. We thus learn that our desires in
their action on ourselves produce our desire-nature, and through it largely
affect our physical bodies in our next birth; that they play a great part in
determining the place of rebirth; and by their effect on others they help to
draw around us our human associates in future lives.
The
third great class of energies, appearing on the physical plane as actions, generate
much karma by their effects on others, but only slightly affect directly the
Inner Man. They are effects of his past thinkings and desires, and the karma
they represent is for the most part exhausted in their happening. Indirectly
they affect him in proportion as he is moved by them to fresh thoughts and desires
or emotions, but the generating force lies in these and not in the actions themselves.
Again,
if actions are often repeated, they set up a habit of the body (Page
255) which acts as a limitation to the expression of the Ego in the
outer world; this, however, perishes with the body, thus limiting the karma
of the action to a single life so far as its effect on the soul is concerned.
But it far otherwise when we come to study the effects of actions on others,
the happiness or unhappiness caused by these, and the influence exercised by
these as examples.They
link us to others by this influence and are thus a third factor in determining
our future human associates, while they are the chief factor in determining
what may be called our non-human environment. Broadly speaking, the favourable
or unfavourable nature of the physical surroundings into which we are born depends
on the effect of our previous actions in spreading happiness or unhappiness
among other people. The physical results on others of actions on the physical
plane work out karmically in repaying to the actor good or bad surroundings
in a future life.
If
he has made people physically happy, by sacrificing wealth or time or trouble,
this action karmically brings him favourable physical circumstances conducive
to physical happiness. If he has caused people wide-spread physical misery,
he will reap karmically from his action wretched physical circumstances conducive
to physical suffering. And this is so, whatever may have been his motive in
either case – a fact which leads us to consider the law that :
Every force works on its own plane. If a man sows happiness for others on the
physical plane, (Page 256) he will
reap conditions favourable to happiness for himself on that plane, and his motive
in sowing it does not affect the result . A man might sow wheat with the object
of speculating with it to ruin his neighbour, but his bad motive would not make
the wheat grains grow up as dandelions. Motive is a mental or astral force,
according as it arises from will or desire, and it reacts on moral and mental
character or on the desire-nature severally.
The
causing of physical happiness by an action is a physical force and works on
the physical plane. “By his actions” man affects his neighbours on the physical
plane; he spreads happiness around him or he causes distress, increasing or
diminishing the sum of human welfare. This increase or diminution of happiness
may be due to very different motives – good, bad, or mixed. A man may do an
act that gives widespread enjoyment from sheer benevolence, from a longing to
give happiness to his fellow creatures.
Let
us say that from such a motive he presents a park to a town for the free use
of its inhabitants; another may do a similar act from mere ostentation, from
desire to attract attention from those who can bestow social honours (say, he
might give it as purchase-money for a title); a third may give a park from mixed
motives, partly unselfish, partly selfish. The motives will severally affect
these three men’s characters in their future incarnations, for improvement,
for degradation, for small results.
But
the effect of the action is causing happiness to large numbers of people does
not depend on the motive of the giver; (Page
257) the people enjoy the park equally, no matter what may have prompted
its gift, and this enjoyment, due to the action of the giver, establishes for
him a karmic claim on Nature, a debt due to him that will be scrupulously paid.
He will receive a physically comfortable or luxurious environment, as he has
given widespread physical enjoyment, and his sacrifice of physical wealth will
bring him his due reward, the karmic fruit of his action.
This
is his right. But the use he makes of his position, the happiness he derives
from his wealth and his surroundings, will depend chiefly on his character,
and here again the just reward accrues to him, each seed bearing its appropriate
harvest. (see Karma, Pages 50 to 51) Truly, the ways of Karma are equal.
It does not withhold from the bad man the result which justly follows from an
action which spreads happiness, and it also deals out to him the deteriorated
character earned by his bad motive, so that in the midst of wealth he will remain
discontented and unhappy.
Nor
can the good man escape physical suffering if he cause physical misery by mistaken
actions done from good motive; the misery he caused will bring him misery in
his physical surroundings, but his good motive, improving his character, will
give him a source of perennial happiness within himself, and he will be patient
and contented amid his troubles. Many a puzzle maybe answered by applying these
principles to the facts we see around us.
These
respective effects of motive and of the (Page
258) results (or fruits) of actions are due to the fact that each
force has the characteristics of the plane on which it was generated, and the
higher the plane the more potent and the more persistent the force. Hence motive
is far more important than action, and a mistaken action done with a good motive
is productive of more good to the doer than a well-chosen action done with
a bad motive. The
motive, reacting on the character, gives rise to a long series of effects, for
the future actions guided by that character will all be influenced by its improvement
or its deterioration ‘ whereas the action, bringing on its doer physical happiness
or unhappiness, according to its results on others, has in it no generating
force, but is exhausted in its results.
If
bewildered as to the path of right action by a conflict of apparent duties,
the knower of karma diligently tries to choose the best path, using his reason
and judgment to the utmost; he is scrupulously careful about his motive, eliminating
selfish considerations and purifying his heart; then he acts fearlessly, and
if his action turn out to be a blunder he willingly accepts the suffering which
results from his mistake as a lesson which will be useful in the future. Meanwhile,
his high motive has ennobled his character for all time to come.
This
general principle that the force belongs to the plane on which it is generated
is one of far-reaching import. If it (Page
260) be liberated with the motive of gaining physical objects, it
works on the physical plane and attaches the actor to that plane. If it aim
at devachanic objects, it works on the devachanic plane and attaches the actor
thereto. If it have no motive save the divine service, it is set free on the
spiritual plane, and therefore cannot attach the individual, since the individual
is asking for nothing.
The
Three Kinds of Karma
Ripe
Karma is that which is ready for reaping and which is therefore inevitable.
Out of all the karma of the past there is a certain amount which can be exhausted
within the limits of a single life; there are some kinds of karma that are so
incongruous that they could not be worked out in a single physical body, but
would require very different types of body for their expression; there are liabilities
contracted towards other souls, and all these souls will not be in incarnation
at the same time; there is karma that must be worked out in some particular
nation or particular social position, while the same man has other karma that
needs an entirely different environment.
Part
only, therefore, of his total karma can be worked out in a given life, and this
part is selected by the Great Lords of Karma – of whom something will presently
be said – and the soul is guided to incarnate in a family, a nation, a place,
a body, suitable for the exhaustion of that aggregate of causes which can be
worked out together. This aggregate of causes fixes the length of that particular
life; gives to the body its characteristics, its powers, and its limitations;
brings into contact with the man the souls incarnated within that life-period
to whom he has contracted (Page 260)
obligations, surrounding him with relatives, friends, and enemies; marks
out the social conditions into which he is born, with their accompanying advantages
and disadvantages; selects the mental energies he can show forth by moulding
the organisation of the brain and nervous system with which he has to work;
puts together the causes that result in troubles and joys in his outer career
and that can be brought into a single life.
All
this is the “ripe karma,” and this can be sketched out in a horoscope cast by
a competent astrologer. In all this the man has no power of choice; all is fixed
by the choices he has made in the past, and he must discharge to the uttermost
farthing the liabilities he has contracted.
The
physical, astral and mental bodies which the soul takes on for a new life-period
are, as we have seen, the direct result of his past, and they form a most important
part of this ripe karma. They limit the soul on every side, and his past rises
up in judgment against him, marking out the limitations which he has made for
himself. Cheerfully to accept these, and diligently to work at their improvement,
is the part of the wise man, for he cannot escape from them.
There
is another kind of ripe karma that is of very serious importance – that of inevitable
actions. Every action is the final expression of a series of thoughts; to borrow
an illustration from chemistry, we obtain a saturated solution of thought by
adding thought after thought of the same kind, until another thought – or even
an impulse, a vibration, from (Page 261)
without – will produce the solidification of the whole; the action which expresses
the thoughts. If
we persistently reiterate thoughts of the same kind, say of revenge, we at last
reach the point of saturation, and any impulse will solidify these into action
and a crime results. Or we may have persistently reiterated thoughts of help
to another to the point of saturation, and when the stimulus of opportunity
touches us they crystallise out as an act of heroism.
A
man may bring over with him some ripe karma of this kind, and the first vibration
that touches such a mass of thoughts ready to solidify into action will hurry
him without his renewed volition, unconsciously, into the commission of the
act. He cannot stop to think; he is in the condition in which the first vibration
of the mind causes action; poised on the very point of balancing, the slightest
impulse sends him over. Under
these circumstances a man will marvel at his own commission of some crime, or
at his own performance of some sublime act of self-devotion. He says: “ I did
it without thinking,” unknowing that he had thought so often that he had made
that action inevitable. When a man has willed to do an act many times, he at
last fixes his will irrevocably, and it is only a question of opportunity when
he will act.
So
long he can think, his freedom of choice remains, for he can set the new though
against the old and gradually wear it out by the reiteration of opposing thoughts;
but when the next thrill of the soul in response to a stimulus means action,
the power of choice is exhausted. (Page 262)
Herein lies the solution of the old problem of necessity and free will; man
by the exercise of free will gradually creates necessities for himself, and
between the two extremes lie all the combinations of free will and necessity
which make the struggles within ourselves of which we are conscious.
We
are continually making habits by the repetitions of purposive actions guided
by the will; then the habit becomes a limitation, and we perform the action
automatically. Perhaps we are then driven to the conclusion that the habit is
a bad one, and we begin laboriously to unmake it by thoughts of the opposite
kind, and, after many an inevitable lapse into it, the new thought-current turns
the stream, and we regain our full freedom, often again gradually to make another
fetter.
So
old thought-forms persist and limit our thinking capacity, showing as individual
and as national prejudices. The majority do not know that they are thus limited,
and go on serenely in their chains, ignorant of their bondage; those who learn
the truth about their own nature become free. The constitution of our brain
and nervous system is one of the most marked necessities in life; these we have
made inevitable by our past thinkings, and they now limit us and we often chafe
against them. They can be improved slowly and gradually; the limits can be expanded,
but they cannot be suddenly transcended.
Another
form of this ripe karma is where some past evil-thinking has made a crust of
evil habits around a man which imprisons him and makes an (Page
263) evil life; the actions are the inevitable outcome of his past,
as just explained, and they have been held over, even through several lives,
in consequence of those lives not offering opportunities for their manifestation.
Meanwhile the soul has been growing and has been developing noble qualities.
In one life
this crust of past evil is thrown out by opportunity, and because of this the
soul cannot show his later development; like a chicken ready to be hatched,
he is hidden within the imprisoning shell, and only the shell is visible to
the external eye. After a time that karma is exhausted, and some apparently
fortuitous event – a word from a great Teacher, a book, a lecture – breaks the
shell and the souls comes forth free.
These
are the rare, sudden, but permanent “conversions,” the “miracles of divine grace,”
of which we hear; all perfectly intelligible to the knower of karma, and felling
within the realm of the law. The accumulated karma that shows itself as character
is, unlike the ripe, always subject to modifications. It may be said to consist
of tendencies, strong or weak, according to the thought-force that has gone
to their making, and these can be further strengthened or weakened by fresh
streams of thought-force sent to work with or against them.
If
we find in ourselves tendencies of which we disapprove, we can set ourselves
to work to eliminate them; often we fail to withstand temptation, overborne
by the strong out-rushing stream of desire, but the longer we can hold out against
it, even though (Page 264) we fail
in the end, the nearer are we to overcoming it. Every such failure is a step
towards success, for the resistance wears away part of the energy, and there
is less of it available for the future. The karma which is in the course of
making has been already studied.
Collective
Karma
When
a group of people is considered karmically, the play of karmic forces upon each
member of the group introduces a new factor into the karma of the individual.
We know that when a number of forces play on a point, the motion of the point
is not in the direction of any one of these forces, but in the direction which
is the result of their combination. So the karma of a group is the resultant
of the interacting forces of the individuals composing it, and all the individuals
are carried along in the direction of that resultant.
An
Ego is drawn by his individual karma into a family, having set up in previous
lives ties which closely connect him with some of the other Egos composing it;
the family has inherited property from a grandfather who is wealthy; an heir
turns up, descended from the grandfather’s elder brother, who had been supposed
to have died childless, and the wealth passes to him and leaves the father of
the family heavily indebted; it is quite possible that our Ego had had no connection
in the past with this heir, to whom in past lives the father had contracted
some obligation which has resulted in this catastrophe, and yet he is threatened
with suffering by his action, being involved with family karma.
If,
in his own individual past, there was a wrong-doing which can be exhausted by
suffering caused by the family karma, he is left involved in it; if not, he
is by some “unforeseen circumstances” lifted out of it, perchance by some benevolent
stranger who feels an impulse to adopt and educate him, the stranger being one
who in the past was his debtor.
Yet
more clearly does this come out, in the working of such things as railway accidents,
shipwrecks, floods, cyclones, etc. A train is wrecked, the catastrophe being
immediately due to the action of the drivers, the guards, the railway directors,
the makers or employees of that line, who thinking themselves wronged, send
clustering thoughts of discontent and anger against it as a whole. Those who
have in their accumulated karma – but not necessarily in their ripe karma –
the debt of a life suddenly cut short, may be allowed to drift into this accident
and pay their debt; another, intending to go by the train, but with no such
debt in his past, is “providentially” saved by being late for it.
Collective
karma may throw a man into the troubles consequent on his nation going to war,
and here again he may discharge his debts of his past not necessarily within
the ripe karma of his then life. In no case can a man suffer that which he has
not deserved, but, if an unforeseen opportunity should arise to discharge a
past obligation, it is well to pay it and be rid of it for evermore.
The
“Lords of Karma” are the great spiritual (Page
266) Intelligences who keep the karmic Records and adjust the complicated
workings of karmic law. They are described by H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine
as the Lipika, the Recorders of Karma, and the Mahārājas (The Mahādevas,
or Chaturdevas of the Hindus) – and Their hosts, who are “the agents of Karma
upon earth.” The Lipika are They who know the karmic record of every man, and
who with omniscient wisdom select and combine portions of that record to form
the plan of a single life; They give the “idea” of the physical body which is
to be the garment of the reincarnating soul, expressing his capacities and his
limitations; this is taken by the Mahārājas and worked into a detailed
model, which is committed to one of Their inferior agents to be copied; this
copy is the etheric double , the matrix of the dense body, the materials for
these being drawn from the mother and subject to physical heredity.
The
race, the country, the parents, are chosen for their capacity to provide suitable
materials for the physical body of the incoming Ego, and suitable surroundings
for his early life. The physical heredity of the family affords certain types
and has evolved certain peculiarities of material combinations; hereditary diseases,
hereditary finenesses of nervous organisation, imply definite combinations of
physical matter, capable of transmission.
An
Ego who has evolved peculiarities in his mental and astral bodies, needing special
physical peculiarities for their expression, is guided to parents whose (Page
267) physical heredity enables them to meet these requirements.
Thus an Ego with high artistic faculties devoted to music would be guided to
take his physical body in a musical family, in which the materials supplied
for building the etheric double and the dense body would have been made ready
to adapt themselves to his needs, and the hereditary type of nervous system
would furnish the delicate apparatus necessary for the expression of his faculties.
An
Ego of very evil type would be guided to a coarse and vicious family, whose
bodies were built of the coarsest combinations, such as would make a body able
to respond to the impulses from his mental and astral bodies. An Ego who had
allowed his astral body and lower mind to lead him into excesses, and had yielded
to drunkenness, for instance, would be led to incarnate in a family whose nervous
systems were weakened by excess, and would be born from drunken parents, who
would supply diseased materials for his physical envelope. The guidance of
the Lords of Karma thus adjust means to ends, and insures the doing of justice;
the Ego brings with him his karmic possessions of faculties and desires, and
he receives a physical body suited to be their vehicle.
As
the soul must return to earth until he has discharged all his liabilities, thus
exhausting all his individual karma, and as in each life thoughts and desires
generate fresh karma, the question may arise in the mind : “How can this constantly
renewing bond be put an end to ? How can the soul attain his (Page
268) liberation?” Thus we come to the “ending of karma,” and have
to investigate how this may be.
The
binding element in karma is the first thing to be clearly grasped. The outward
going energy of the soul attaches itself to some object, and the soul is drawn
back by this tie to the place where that attachment may be realised by union
with the object of desire, so long as the soul attaches himself to any object,
he must be drawn to the place where that object can be enjoyed. Good karma binds
the soul as much as does bad, for any desire, whether for objects here or in
Devachan, must draw the soul to the place of gratification.
Action
is prompted by desire, an act is done not for the sake of doing the act, but
for the sake of obtaining by the act something that is desired, of acquiring
its results, or, as it is technically called, of enjoying its fruit. Men work,
not because they want to dig, or build, or weave, but because they want the
fruits of digging, building, and weaving, in the shape of money or of goods.
A barrister pleads, not because he wants to set forth the dry details of a case,
but because he wants wealth and fame, and rank.Men
around us are labouring for something, and the spur to their activity lies in
the fruit it brings them and not in the labour. Desire for the fruit of action
moves them to activity, and enjoyment of that fruit rewards their exertions.
Desire is, then , the binding element in karma, and when the soul no longer
desires any object in earth or in heaven, his tie to the wheel of reincarnation
(Page 269) that turns in the three
worlds is broken. Action itself has no power to hold the soul, for with the
completion of the action it slips into the past. But the ever-renewed desire
for fruit constantly spurs the soul into fresh activities, and thus new chains
are continually being forged.
Nor
should we feel any regret when we see men constantly driven to action by the
whip of desire, for desire overcomes sloth, laziness, inertia – (the student
will remember that these show the dominance of the tāmasic guna, and while
it is dominant men do not emerge from the lowest of the three stages of their
evolution) – and prompts men to the activity that yields them experience. Note
the savage, idly dozing on the grass; he is moved to activity by hunger, the
desire for food,, and is driven to exert patience, skill, and endurance to gratify
his desire. Thus
he develops mental qualities, but when his hunger is satisfied he sinks again
into a dozing animal. How entirely have mental qualities been evolved by the
promptings of desire, and how useful have proved desires for fame, for posthumous
renown. Until man is approaching divinity he needs the urgings of desires, and
the desires simply grow purer and less selfish as he climbs upwards. But none
the less desires bind him to rebirth, and if he would be free he must destroy
them.
When
a man begins to long for liberation, he is taught to practise “renunciation
of the fruits of action”; that is, he gradually eradicates in himself the wish
to possess any object; he at first voluntarily and (Page
270) deliberately denies himself the object, and thus habituates
himself to do contentedly without it; after a time he no longer misses it, and
he finds the desire for it is disappearing from his mind. At this stage he is
very careful not to neglect any work which is duty because he has become indifferent
to the results it brings to him, and he trains himself in discharging every
duty with earnest attention, while remaining entirely indifferent to the fruits
it brings forth.When
he attains perfection in this, and neither desires nor dislikes any object,
he ceases to generate karma; ceasing to ask anything from the earth or from
Devachan, he is not drawn to either; he wants nothing that either can give him,
and all links between himself and them are broken off. This is the ceasing of
individual karma, so far as the generation of new karma is concerned.
But the soul has to get rid of old chains as well as to cease from the forging
of new, and these old chains must be either allowed to wear out gradually or
must be broken deliberately. For this breaking, knowledge is necessary, a knowledge
which can look back into the past, and see the causes there set going, causes
which are working out their effects in the present.
Let
us suppose that a person, thus looking backward over his past lives, sees certain
causes which will bring about an event which is still in the future; let us
suppose further that these causes are thoughts of hatred for an injury inflicted
on himself, and that they will cause suffering a year hence (Page
271) to the wrong-doer; such a person can introduce a new cause to
intermingle with the causes working from the past, and he may counteract them
with strong thoughts of love and goodwill that will exhaust them, and will thus
prevent their bringing about the otherwise inevitable event, which would, in
its turn, have generated new karmic trouble. Thus he may neutralise forces coming
out of the past by sending against them forces equal and opposite, and may in
this way “burn up his karma by knowledge.” In similar fashion he may bring to
an end karma generated in his present life that would normally work out in future
lives.
Again,
he may be hampered by liabilities contracted to other souls in the past, wrongs
he has done to them, duties he owes them. By the use of his knowledge he can
find those souls, whether in this world or in either of the other two, and seek
opportunities of serving them. There may a soul incarnated during his own life-period
to whom he owes some karmic debt; he may seek out that soul and pay his debt,
thus setting himself free from a tie which, left to the course of events, would
have necessitated his own reincarnation, or would have hampered him in a future
life. Strange and puzzling lines of action adopted by occultists have sometimes
this explanation – the man of knowledge enters into close relations with some
person who is considered by the ignorant bystanders and critics to be quite
outside the companionships that are fitting for him; but that occultist is quietly
working out a karmic (Page 272)
obligation which would otherwise hamper and retard his progress.
Those
who do not possess knowledge enough to review their past lives may yet exhaust
many causes that they have set going in the present life; they can carefully
go over all that they can remember, and note where they have wronged any or
where any has wronged them, exhausting the first cases by pouring out thoughts
of love and service, and performing acts of service to the injured person, where
possible on the physical plane also; and in the second cases sending forth thoughts
of pardon and good will. Thus they diminish their karmic liabilities and bring
near the day of liberation.
Unconsciously,
pious people who obey the precept of all great Teachers of religion to return
good for evil are exhausting karma generated in the present that would otherwise
work out in the future. No one can weave with them a bond of hatred if they
refuse to contribute any stands of hatred to the weaving, and persistently neutralise
every force of hatred with one of love. Let a soul radiate in every direction
love and compassion, and thoughts of hatred can find nothing to which they can
attach themselves.
“The
Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me.” All great Teachers knew
the law and based on it Their precepts, and those who through reverence and
devotion to Them obey Their directions profit under the law, although they know
nothing of the details of its working. An ignorant man who carries out faithfully
the instructions given him by (Page 273)
a scientist can obtain results by his working with the laws of Nature, despite
his ignorance of them, and the same principle holds good in worlds beyond the
physical. Many who have not time to study, and perforce accept on the authority
of experts rules which guide their daily conduct in life, may thus unconsciously
be discharging their karmic liabilities.
In
countries where reincarnation and karma are taken for granted by every peasant
and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of inevitable troubles
that conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary life. A man overwhelmed
by misfortunes rails neither against God nor against his neighbours, but regards
his troubles as the results of his own past mistakes and ill-doings.
He
accepts them resignedly and makes the best of them, and thus escapes much of
the worry and anxiety with which those who know not the law aggravate troubles
already sufficiently heavy. He realises that his future lives depend on his
own exertions, and that the law which brings him pain will bring him just joy
as inevitably if he sows the seed of good. Hence a certain patience and a philosophic
view of life, tending directly to social stability and to general contentment.
The
poor and ignorant do not study profound and detailed metaphysics, but they grasp
thoroughly these simple principles – that every man is reborn on earth time
after time, and that each successive life is moulded by those that precede it.
To them rebirth is as sure (Page 274)
and as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun; it is part of the course
of nature, against which it is idle to repine or to rebel.
When
Theosophy has restored these ancient truths to their rightful place in western
thought, they will gradually work their way among all classes of society in
Christendom, spreading understanding of the nature of life and acceptance of
the result of the past. Then too will vanish the restless discontent which arises
chiefly from the impatient and hopeless feeling that life is unintelligible,
unjust, and unmanageable, and it will be replaced by the quiet strength and
patience which come from an illumined intellect and a knowledge of the law,
and which characterise the reasoned and balanced activity of those who feel
that they are building for eternity.(Page
275)
CHAPTER
X
THE LAW OF SACRIFICE
The
study of the Law of Sacrifice follows naturally on the study of the Law of Karma,
and the understanding of the former, it was once remarked by a Master, is as
necessary for the world as the understanding of the latter. By an act of Self-sacrifice
the LOGOS became manifest for the emanation of the universe, by sacrifice the
universe is maintained, and by sacrifice man reaches perfection. (The Hindu
will remember the opening words of the Brihadāranyakopanishad,
that the dawn is in sacrifice; the Zoroastrian will recall how Ahura Mazda came
forth from an act of sacrifice; the Christian will think of the Lamb – the symbol
of the LOGOS – slain from the foundation of the world.) Hence every religion
that springs from Ancient Wisdom has sacrifice as a central teaching, and some
of the profoundest truths of occultism are rooted in the law of sacrifice.
An
attempt to grasp, however feebly, the nature of the sacrifice of the LOGOS may
prevent us from falling into the very general mistake that sacrifice is an essentially
painful thing; whereas the very essence of sacrifice is a voluntary and glad
pouring forth of life that others may share in it; and pain (Page
276) only arises when there is discord in the nature of the sacrificer,
between the higher whose joy is in giving and the lower whose satisfaction lies
in grasping and holding.It
is that discord alone that introduces the element of pain, and in the supreme
Perfection, in the LOGOS, no discord could arise; the One is the perfect chord
of Being, of infinite melodious concords, all tuned to a single note, in which
Life and Wisdom and Bliss are blended into one keynote of Existence.
The
sacrifice of the LOGOS lay in His voluntarily circumscribing His infinite life
in order that He might manifest. Symbolically, in the infinite ocean of light,
with centre everywhere and with circumference nowhere, there arises a full-orbed
sphere of living light, a LOGOS, and the surface of that sphere is His will
to limit Himself that He may become manifest, His veil ( This is the Self-limiting
power of the LOGOS, His Māyā, the limiting principle by which all
forms are brought forth. His Life appears as “Spirit,” His Māyā as
“Matter,” and these are never disjoined during manifestation.)in which He incloses
Himself that within it a universe may take form.
That
for which the sacrifice is made is not yet in existence; its future being lies
in the “thought” of the LOGOS alone; to him it owes its conception and will
own its manifold life. Diversity could not arise in the “partless Brahman” save
for this voluntary sacrifice of Deity taking on Himself form in order to emanate
myriad forms, each dowered with a spark of His life and therefore with the power
evolving into His image. (Page 277)
“The primal sacrifice that causes the birth of beings is named action (karma),”
it is said (Bhagavad Gîtâ, viii,3.), and this coming forth into activity
from the bliss of perfect repose of self-existence has ever been recognised
as the sacrifice of the LOGOS.
That
sacrifice continues throughout the term of the universe, for the life of the
LOGOS is the sole support of every separated “ life “ and He limits His life
in each of the myriad forms to which He gives birth, bearing all the restraints
and limitations implied in each form. From any one of these He could burst
forth at any moment, the infinite Lord, filling the universe with His glory;
but only by sublime patience and slow and gradual expansion can each form be
led upward until it becomes a self-dependent centre of boundless power like
Himself.
Therefore
does He cabin Himself in forms, and bear all imperfection till perfection is
attained, and His creature is like unto Himself and one with Him, but with its
own thread of memory. Thus this pouring out of His life into forms is part of
the original sacrifice, and has in it the bliss of the eternal Father sending
forth His offspring as separated lives, that each may evolve an identity that
shall never perish, and yield its own note blended with all others to swell
the eternal song of bliss, intelligence and life.
This
marks the essential nature of sacrifice. Whatever other elements may become
mixed with the central idea; it is the voluntary pouring out of life that others
may partake of it, to bring others into life and to (Page
278) sustain them in it till they become self-dependent, and this
is but one expression of divine joy. There is always joy in the exercise of
activity which is the expression of the power of the actor; the bird takes joy
in the outpouring of song, and quivers with the mere rapture of singing; the
painter rejoices in the creation of his genius, in the putting into form of
his idea; the essential activity of the divine life must lie in giving, for
there is nothing higher than itself from which it can receive; if it is to be
active at all – and manifested life is active motion – it must pour
itself out.
Hence
the sign of the spirit is giving, for spirit is the active divine life in every
form.
But
the essential activity of matter, on the other hand, lies in receiving; by receiving
life-impulses it is organised into forms; by receiving them these are maintained;
on their withdrawal they fall to pieces. All its activity is of this nature
of receiving, and only by receiving can it endure as a form. Therefore it is
always grasping, clinging, seeking to hold for its own; the persistence of the
form depends on its grasping and retentive power, and it will therefore seek
to draw into itself all it can, and will grudge every fraction with which it
parts. Its joy will be in seizing and holding; to it giving is like courting
death.
It
is very easy from this standpoint, to see how the notion arose that sacrifice
was suffering. While the divine life found its delight in exercising its activity
of giving, and even when embodied in form cared not if the form perished by
the giving, (Page 279) knowing
it to be only its passing expression and the means of its separated growth;
the form which felt its life-forces pouring away from it cried out in anguish,
and sought to exercise its activity in holding, thus resisting the outward flow.
The sacrifice diminished the life-energies the form claimed as its own; or even
entirely drained them away, leaving the form to perish.
In
the lower world of form this was the only aspect of sacrifice cognisable, and
the form found itself driven to slaughter, and cried out in fear and agony.
What wonder that men, blinded by form, identified sacrifice with the agonising
form instead of with the free life that gave itself, crying gladly :”Lo! I come
to do thy will, O God; I am content to do it.” What wonder that men – conscious
of a higher and a lower nature, and oft identifying their self-consciousness
more with the lower than with the higher – felt the struggle of the lower nature,
the form, as their own struggles, and felt that they were accepting
suffering in resignation to a higher will, and regarded sacrifice as that devout
and resigned acceptance of pain.
Not
until man identifies himself with the life instead of with the form can the
element of pain in sacrifice be gotten rid of. In a perfectly harmonised entity,
pain cannot be, for the form is then the perfect vehicle of the life, receiving
or surrendering with ready accord. With the ceasing of struggle comes the ceasing
of pain. For suffering arises from jar, from friction, from antagonistic movements,
and where the whole nature works in perfect harmony (Page
280) the conditions that give rise to suffering are not present.
The
law of sacrifice being thus the law of life - evolution in the universe, we
find every step in the ladder is accomplished by sacrifice – the life pouring
itself out to take birth in a higher form, while the form that contained it
perishes. Those who look only at the perishing forms see Nature as a vast charnel
house; while those who see the deathless soul escaping to take new and higher
form hear ever the joyous song of birth from the upward springing life.
The
Monad in the mineral kingdom evolves by the breaking up of its forms for the
production and support of plants. Minerals are disintegrated that plant-forms
may be built out of their materials; the plant draws from the soil its nutritive
constituents, breaks them up, and incorporates them into its own substance.
The mineral forms perish that the plant forms may grow, and this law of sacrifice
stamped on the mineral kingdom is the law of evolution of life and form. The
life passes onward and the Monad evolves to produce the vegetable kingdom, the
perishing of the lower form being the condition for the appearing and the support
of the higher.
The
story is repeated in the vegetable kingdom, for its forms in turn are sacrificed
in order that animal forms may be produced and may grow; on every side grasses,
grains, trees perish for the sustenance of animal bodies; their tissues are
disintegrated that the materials comprising them may be assimilated by (Page
281) the animal and build up its body. Again the law of sacrifice
is stamped on the world, this time on the vegetable kingdom; its life evolves
while its forms perish; the Monad evolves to produce the animal kingdom, and
the vegetable is offered up that the animal forms may be brought forth and maintained.
So
far the idea of pain has scarcely connected itself with that of sacrifice, for,
as we have seen in the course of our studies, the astral bodies of plants are
not sufficiently organised to give rise to any acute sensations either of pleasure
or of pain. But as we consider the law of sacrifice in its working in the animal
kingdom, we cannot avoid the recognition of the pain there involved in the breaking
up of forms. It is true that the amount of pain caused by the preying of one
animal upon another in “the state of nature “ is comparatively trivial in each
case, but still some pain occurs.
It
is also true that man, in the part he has played in helping to evolve animals,
has much aggravated the amount of pain, and has strengthened instead of diminishing
the predatory instincts of carnivorous animals; still, he did not implant those
instincts, though he took advantage of them for his own purposes, and innumerable
varieties of animals, with the evolution of which man has had directly nothing
to do, prey upon each other, the forms being sacrificed to the support of other
forms, as in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms.
The
struggle for existence went on long before man appeared on the scene, and accelerated
the evolution alike of life and of forms, while the pains (Page
282) accompanying the destruction of forms began the long task of
impressing on the evolving Monad the transitory nature of all forms, and the
difference between the forms that perished and the life that persisted .
The
lower nature of man was evolved under the same law of sacrifice as ruled in
the lower kingdoms. But the outpouring of divine Life which gave the human Monad
came a change in the way in which the law of sacrifice worked as the law of
life. In man was to be developed the will, the self-moving, self-initiated
energy, and the compulsion which forced the lower kingdoms along the path of
evolution could not therefore be employed in his case, without paralysing the
growth of this new and essential power.
No
mineral, no plant, no animal was asked to accept the law of sacrifice as a voluntarily
chosen law of life. It was imposed upon them from without, and it forced their
growth by a necessity from which they could not escape. Man was to have the
freedom of choice necessary for the growth of a discriminative and self-conscious
intelligence, and the question arose : “How can this creature be left free to
choose, and yet learn to choose to follow the law of sacrifice, while yet he
is a sensitive organism, shrinking from pain, and pain is inevitable in the
breaking up of sentient forms?”
Doubtless
eons of experience, studied by a creature becoming ever more intelligent, might
have finally led man to discover that the law of sacrifice is the fundamental
law of life; but in this, as in so much else, he was not left to his own unassisted
efforts. (Page 283) Divine Teachers
were there at the side of man in his infancy, and they authoritatively proclaimed
the law of sacrifice, and incorporated it in a most elementary form in the religions
by which They trained the dawning intelligence of man.
It
would have been useless to have suddenly demanded from these child-souls that
they should surrender without return what seemed to them to be the most desirable
objects, the objects on the possession of which their life in form depended.
They must be led along a path which would lead gradually to the heights of voluntary
self-sacrifice. To this end they were first taught that they were not isolated
units, but were parts of a larger whole, and that their lives were linked to
other lives both above and below them.
Their
physical lives were supported by lower lives, by the earth; by plants, they
consumed these, and in thus doing they contracted a debt which they were bound
to pay, Living on the sacrificed lives of others, they must sacrifice in turn
something which should support other lives, they must nourish even as they were
nourished, taking the fruits produced by the activity of the astral entities
that guide physical Nature, they must recruit the expended forces by suitable
offerings.
Hence
have arisen all the sacrifices to these forces – as science calls them – to
these intelligences guiding physical order, as religions have always taught.
As fire quickly disintegrated the dense physical, it quickly restored the etheric
particles of the burnt offerings to the ethers; thus the astral particles were
easily (Page 284) set free to be
assimilated by the astral entities concerned with the fertility of the earth
and the growth of plants. Thus the wheel of production was kept turning, and
man learned that he was constantly incurring debts to Nature which he must as
constantly discharge.
Thus
the sense of obligation was implanted and nurtured in his mind, and the duty
that he owed to the whole, to the nourishing mother Nature, became impressed
on his thought. It is true that this sense of obligation was closely connected
with the idea that its discharge was necessary for his own welfare, and that
the wish to continue to prosper moved him to the payment of his debt. He was
but a child-soul, learning his first lessons, and this lesson of the interdependence
of lives, of the life of each depending on the sacrifice of others, was of vital
importance to his growth. Not
yet could he feel the divine joy of giving; the reluctance of the form to surrender
aught that nourished it had first to be overcome, and sacrifice became identified
with this surrender of something valued, a surrender made from a sense of obligation
and the desire to continue prosperous.
The
next lesson removed the reward of sacrifice to a region beyond the physical
world. First, by a sacrifice of material goods, material welfare was to be secured.
Then the sacrifice of material goods was to bring enjoyment in heaven, on the
other side of death. The reward of the sacrificer was of a higher kind, and
he learned that the relatively permanent might be secured by the sacrifice of
the (Page 285) relatively transient
– a lesson that was important as leading to discriminative knowledge.The
clinging of the form to physical objects was exchanged for a clinging to heavenly
joys. In all exoteric religions we find this educative process resorted to by
the Wise Ones – too wise to expect child-souls the virtue of unrewarded heroism,
and content, with a sublime patience, to coax their wayward charges slowly along
a pathway that was a thorny and a stony one to the lower nature.
Gradually
men were induced to subjugate the body, to overcome its sloth by the regular
daily performance of religious rites, often burdensome in their nature, and
to regulate its activities by directing them into useful channels; they were
trained to conquer the form and to hold it in subjection to the life, and to
accustom the body to yield itself to works of goodness and charity in obedience
to the demands of the mind, even while that mind was chiefly stimulated by a
desire to enjoy reward in heaven.
We
can see among the Hindus, the Persians, the Chinese, how men were taught to
recognise their manifold obligations; to make the body yield dutiful sacrifice
of obedience and reverence to ancestors, to parents, to elders; to bestow charity
with courtesy; and to show kindness to all. Slowly men were helped to evolve
both heroism and self-sacrifice to a high degree, as witness the martyrs who
joyfully flung their bodies to torture and death rather than deny their faith
or be false to their creed. They looked indeed for a “crown of glory” in heaven
as a recompense for the (Page 286)
sacrifice of the physical form, but it was much to have overcome the clinging
to the physical form, and to have made the invisible world so real that it outweighed
the visible.
The
next step was achieved when the sense of duty was definitely established; when
the sacrifice of the lower to the higher was seen to be “right,” apart from
all question of a reward to be received in another world; when the obligation
owed by the part to the whole was recognised, and the yielding of service by
the form that existed by the service of others was felt to be justly due without
any claim to wages being established thereby.
Then
man began to perceive the law of sacrifice as the law of life, and voluntarily
to associate himself with it; and he began to learn to disjoin himself in idea
from the form he dwelt in and to identify himself with the evolving life. This
gradually led him to feel a certain indifference to all the activities of form,
save as they consisted in “duties that ought to be done,” and to regard all
of them as mere channels for the life-activities that were due to the world,
and not as activities performed by him with any desire for their results. Thus
he reached the point already noted, when karma attracting him to the three worlds
ceased to be generated, and he turned the wheel of existence because it ought
to be turned, and not because its revolution brought any desirable object to
himself.
The
full recognition of the law of sacrifice, however, lifts man beyond the mental
plane – (Page 287) whereon duty
is recognised as duty, as “what ought to be done because it is owed” – to that
higher plane of Buddhi where all selves are felt as one, and where all activities
are poured out for the use of all, and not for the gain of a separated self.
Only on that plane is the law of sacrifice felt as a joyful privilege, instead
of only recognised intellectually as true and just.
On
the buddhic plane man clearly sees that life is one, that it streams out perpetually
as the free outpouring of the love of the LOGOS, that life holding itself separate
is a poor and a mean thing at best, and an ungrateful one to boot. There the
whole heart rushes upwards to the LOGOS in one strong surge of love and worship,
and gives itself in joyfullest self-surrender to be a channel of His life and
love to the world. To
be a carrier of His light, a messenger of His compassion, a worker in His realm
– that appears as the only life worth living; to hasten evolution, to serve
the Good Law, to lift part of the heavy burden of the world – that seems to
be the very gladness of the Lord Himself.
From this plane only can a man act as one of the Saviours of the world, because
on it he is one with the selves of all. Identified with humanity where it is
one, his strength, his love, his life can flow downwards into any or into every
separated self.
He
has become a spiritual force, and the available spiritual energy of the world-system
is increased by pouring into it of his life. The forces he used to expend on
the physical , astral, and mental planes, seeking things for his separated self,
are now all gathered (Page 288) up
in one act of sacrifice, and, transmuted thereby into spiritual energy, they
pour down upon the world as spiritual life.
This
transmutation is wrought by the motive which determines the plane on which
the energy is set free.
If a man’s motive be the gain of physical objects, the energy liberated works
only on the physical plane; if he desire astral objects, he liberates energy
on the astral plane; if he seek mental joys, his energy functions on the mental
plane; but if he sacrifice himself to be a channel of the LOGOS, he liberates
energy on the spiritual plane, and it works everywhere with the potency and
keenness of a spiritual force. For such a man, action and inaction are the same;
for he does everything while doing nothing, he does nothing while doing everything.
For
him, high and low, great and small are the same; he fills any place that needs
filling, and the LOGOS is alike in every place and in every action. He can flow
into any form, he can work along any line, he knows not any longer choice or
difference; his life by sacrifice has been made one with the life of the LOGOS
– he sees God in everything and everything in God. How then can place or form
make to him any difference? He no longer identifies himself with form, but is
self-conscious Life. “Having nothing, he possesseth all things “ asking for
nothing, everything flows into him. His life is bliss, for he is one with his
Lord, who is Beatitude; and, using form for service without attachment to it,
“he has put and end to pain.”
Those
who grasp something of the wonderful (Page
289) possibilities which open out before us as we voluntarily associate
ourselves with the law of sacrifice will wish to begin that voluntary association
long ere they can rise to the heights just dimly sketched. Like other deep spiritual
truths, it is eminently practical in its application to daily life, and none
who feel its beauty need to hesitate to begin to work with it. When a man resolves
to begin the practice of sacrifice, he will train himself to open every day
with an act of sacrifice, the offering of himself, ere the day’s work begins,
to Him to whom he gives his life; his first waking thought will be this dedication
of all his power to his Lord.
Then
each thought, each word, each action in daily life will be done as a sacrifice
– not for its fruit, not even as duty, but as the way in which, at the moment,
his Lord can be served. All that comes will be accepted as the expression of
His will; joys, troubles, anxieties, successes, failures, all to him are welcome
as marking out his path of service; he will take each happily as it comes and
offer it as a sacrifice; he will loose each happily as it goes, since its going
shows that his Lord has no longer need for it.
Any
powers he has he gladly uses for service; when they fail him, he takes their
failure with happy equanimity; since they are no longer available he cannot
give them. Even suffering that springs from past causes not yet exhausted can
be changed into a voluntary sacrifice by welcoming it; taking possession of
it by willing it, a man may offer it as a gift, changing it by this motive into
a spiritual force. Every human life (Page
290) offers countless opportunities for this practice of the law
of sacrifice, and every human life becomes a power as these opportunities are
seized and utilised.
Without
any expansion of his waking consciousness, a man may thus become a worker on
the spiritual planes, liberating energy there which pours down into the lower
worlds. His self-surrender here in the lower consciousness, imprisoned as it
is in the body, calls out responsive thrills of life from the buddhic aspect
of the Monad which is his true Self, and hastens the time when that Monad shall
become the spiritual Ego, self-moved and ruling all his vehicles, using each
of them at will as needed for the work that is to be done.
In
no way can progress be made so rapidly, and the manifestation of all the powers
latent in the Monad be brought about so quickly, as by the understanding and
the practice of the law of sacrifice. Therefore it was called by a Master, “The
Law of evolution for man.” It has indeed profounder and more mystic aspects
than any touched on here, but these will unveil themselves without words to
the patient and loving heart whose life is all a sacrificial offering. There
are things that are heard only in the stillness; there are teachings that can
be uttered only by “The Voice of the Silence.” Among these are the deeper truths
rooted in the law of sacrifice. (Page 291)
CHAPTER
XI
MAN’S ASCENT
So
stupendous is the ascent up which some men have climbed, and some are climbing,
that when we scan it by an effort of the imagination we are apt to recoil, wearied
in thought by the mere idea of that long journey. From the embryonic soul of
the lowest savage to the liberated and triumphant perfected spiritual soul of
the divine man – it seems scarcely credible that the one can contain in it all
that is expressed in the other, and that the difference is but a difference
in evolution, that one is only at the beginning and the other at the end of
man’s ascent.
Below
the one stretch the long ranks of the sub-human – the animals, vegetables, minerals,
elemental essences; above the other stretch the infinite gradations of the
superhuman – the Chohans, Manus, Buddhas, Builders, Lipikas; who may name or
number the hosts of the mighty Ones? Looked at thus, as a stage in a yet vaster
life, the many steps within the human kingdom shrink into a narrower compass,
and man’s ascent is seen as comprising but one grade in evolution in the linked
lives that stretch from the elemental essence onwards to the manifested God.
We
have traced man’s ascent from the appearance (Page
292) of the embryonic soul to the state of the spiritually advanced,
through the stages of evolving consciousness from the life of sensation to the
life of thought. We have seen him retread the cycle of birth and death in the
three worlds, each world yielding him its harvest and offering him opportunities
for progress. We are now in a position to follow him into the final stages of
his human evolution, stages that lie in the future for the vast bulk of our
humanity, but that have already been trodden by its eldest children, and that
re being trodden by a slender number of men and women in our own day.
These
stages have been classified under two headings – the first are spoken of as
constituting “the probationary Path,” while the later ones are included in “the
Path proper” or “ the Path of discipleship.” We will take them in their natural
order.
As a man’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature develops, he becomes more
and more conscious of the purpose of human life, and more and more eager to
accomplish that purpose in his own person. Repeated
longings for earthly joys, followed by full possession and by subsequent weariness,
have gradually taught him the transient and unsatisfactory nature of earth’s
best gifts; so often has he striven for, gained, employed, been satiated, and
finally nauseated, that he turns away discontented from all that earth can offer.
“What doth it profit?” sighs the wearied soul: “All is vanity and vexation.
Hundreds, yea, thousands of times have I possessed, and finally have found disappointment
even in possession.” (Page 293)
“These
joys are illusions, as bubbles on a stream, fairy-coloured, rainbow-hued, but
bursting at a touch. I am athirst for realities; I have had enough of shadows;
I pant for the eternal and the true, for freedom from the limitations that hem
me in, that keep me prisoner amid these changing shows.”
This
first cry of the soul for liberation is the result of the realisation that,
were this earth all that poets have dreamed it, were every evil swept away,
every sorrow put an end to , every joy intensified, every beauty enhanced, were
everything raised to its point of perfection, he would still be aweary of it,
would turn from it void of desire. It has become to him a prison, and, let it
be decorated as it may, he pants for the free and limitless air beyond its inclosing
walls.
Nor
is heaven more attractive to him than earth; of that too he is aweary; its joys
have lost their attractiveness, even its intellectual and emotional delights
no longer satisfy. They also “come and go, impermanent” like the contacts of
the senses; they are limited, transient, unsatisfying. He is tired of the changing;
from very weariness he cries out for liberty.
Sometimes
this realisation of the worthlessness of earth and heaven is at first but a
flash in consciousness, and the external worlds reassert their empire and the
glamour of their illusive joys again laps the soul into content. Some lives
even may pass, full of noble work and unselfish achievement, of pure thoughts
and lofty deeds, ere this realisation of the emptiness of all that is phenomenal
becomes the (Page 294) permanent
attitude of the soul.
But
sooner or later the soul once and for ever breaks with earth and heaven as incompetent
to satisfy his needs, and this definite turning away from the transitory, this
definite will to reach the eternal, is the gateway to the probationary Path.
The soul steps off the highway of evolution to breast the steeper climb up the
mountain side, resolute to escape from the bondage of earthly and heavenly lives,
and to reach the freedom of the upper air.
The
work which has to be accomplished by the man who enters on the probationary
Path is entirely mental and moral; he has to bring himself up to the point at
which he will fit to “meet his Master face to face” : but he very words “his
Master” need explanation. There are certain great Beings belonging to our race
who have completed Their human evolution, and to whom allusion has already been
made as constituting a Brotherhood, and as guiding and forwarding the development
of the race.
These
Great Ones, the Masters, voluntarily incarnate in human bodies on order to form
the connecting link between human and superhuman beings, and They permit those
who fulfil certain conditions to become Their disciples, with the object of
hastening their evolution and thus qualifying themselves to enter the great
Brotherhood, and to assist in its glorious and beneficent work for man.
The
Masters ever watch the race, and mark any who by the practice of virtue, by
unselfish labour for human good, by intellectual effort turned to the (Page
295) service of man, by sincere devotion, piety, and purity, draw
ahead of the mass of their fellows, and render themselves capable of receiving
spiritual assistance beyond that shed down on mankind as a whole. If an individual
is to receive special help he must show special receptivity.
For
the Masters are the distributors of the spiritual energies that help on human
evolution, and the use of these for the swifter growth of a single soul is
only permitted when that soul shows a capacity for rapid progress and can thus
be quickly fitted to become a helper of the race, returning to it the aid that
had been afforded to himself. When a man, by his own efforts, utilising to the
full all the general help coming to him through religion and philosophy, has
struggled onwards to the front of the advancing human wave and when he shows
a loving, selfless, helpful nature, then he becomes a special object of attention
to the watchful Guardians of the race, and opportunities are put in his way
to test his strength and call forth his intuition.In
proportion as he successfully uses these, he is yet further helped, and glimpses
are afforded to him of the true life, until the unsatisfactory and unreal nature
of mundane existence presses more and more on the soul, with the result already
mentioned – the weariness which makes him long for freedom and brings him to
the gateway of the probationary Path.
His
entrance on his Path places him in the position of a disciple or chelâ,
on probation, and some one Master takes him under His care, recognising (Page
296) him as a man who has stepped out of the highway of evolution,
and seeks the Teacher who shall guide his steps along the steep and narrow path
which leads to liberation.
That
Teacher is awaiting him at the very entrance of the Path, and even though the
neophyte knows not his Teacher, his Teacher knows him, sees his efforts, directs
his steps, leads him into the conditions that best subserve his progress, watching
over him with the tender solicitude of a mother, and with the wisdom born of
perfect insight. The road may seem lonely and dark, and the young disciple may
fancy himself deserted, but a “friend who sticketh closer than a brother” is
ever at hand, and the help withheld from the senses is given to the soul.
There
are four definite “qualifications” that the probationary chelâā must
set himself to acquire, that are by the wisdom of the great Brotherhood laid
down as the conditions of full discipleship. They are not asked for in perfection,
but they must be striven for and partially possessed ere Initiation is permitted.The
first of these is the discrimination between the real and the unreal which has
been already dawning on the mind of the pupil, and which drew him to the Path
on which he is now entered; the distinctions grows clear and sharply defined
in his mind, and gradually frees him to a great extent from the fetters which
bind him, for the second qualification, indifference to external things, comes
naturally in the wake of discrimination, from the clear perception of their
worthlessness. (Page 297)
He
learns that the weariness which took all the savour out of life was due to the
disappointments constantly arising from his search for satisfaction in the unreal,
when only the real can content the soul; that all forms are unreal and without
stability, changing ever under the impulses of life, and that nothing is real
but the one Life that we seek for and love unconsciously under its many veils.
This discrimination is much stimulated by the rapidly changing circumstances
into which a disciple is generally thrown, with the view of pressing on him
strongly the instability of all external things.
The
lives of a disciple are generally lives of storm and stress, in order that the
qualities which are normally evolved in a long succession of lives in the three
worlds may in him be forced into swift growth and quickly brought to perfection.
As he alternates rapidly from joy to sorrow, from peace to storm, from rest
to toil, he learns to see in the changes the unreal forms, and to feel through
all a steady unchanging life. He grows indifferent to the presence or the absence
or the absence of things that thus come and go, and more and more he fixes his
gaze on the changeless reality that is ever present.
While he is thus gaining in insight and stability he works also at the development
of the third qualification – the six mental attributes that are demanded from
him ere he may enter on the Path itself. He need not possess them all perfectly,
but he must have them all partially present at least ere he will be permitted
to pass onward.
First
he must (Page 298) gain control
over his thoughts, the progeny of the restless, unruly mind, hard to curb as
the wind. (Bhagavad Gitâ, vi. 34). Steady, daily practice in
meditation, in concentration, had begun to reduce this mental rebel to order
ere he entered on the probationary Path, and the disciple now works with concentrated
energy to complete the task, knowing that the great increase in thought power
that will accompany his rapid growth will prove a danger both to others and
to himself unless the developing force be thoroughly under his control.
Better
give a child dynamite as a plaything, than place the creative powers of thought
in the hands of the selfish and ambitious. Secondly, the young chela must add
outward self-control to inner, and must rule his speech and his actions as rigidly
as he rules his thoughts. As the mind obeys the soul, so must the lower nature
obey the mind. The usefulness of the disciple in the outer world depends as
much on the pure and noble example set by his visible life, as his usefulness
in the inner world depends on the steadiness and strength of his thoughts. Often
is a good work marred by carelessness in this lower part of human activity,
and the aspirant is bidden strive towards an ideal perfect in every part, in
order that he may not later, when treading the Path, stumble in his own walk
and cause the enemy to blaspheme.
As already said, perfection in anything is not demanded at this stage, but the
wise pupil strives towards perfection, knowing that at his best he is (Page
299) still far away from his ideal.
Thirdly,
the candidate for full discipleship seeks to build into himself the sublime
and far-reaching virtue of tolerance – the quiet acceptance of each man, each
form of existence, as it is, without demand that it should be something other
shaped more to his own liking. Beginning to realise that the one Life takes
on countless limitations, each right in its own place and times, he accepts
each limited expression of that Life without wishing to transform it into something
else; he learns to revere the wisdom which planned this world and which guides
it, and to view with wide-eyed serenity the imperfect parts as they slowly work
out their partial lives.
The
drunkard, learning his alphabet of the suffering caused by the dominance of
the lower nature, is doing as usefully in his own stage as is the saint in his,
completing his last lesson in earth’s school, and no more can justly be demanded
from either than he is able to perform. One is in the kindergarten stage, learning
by object-lessons, while the other is graduating, ready to leave his university;
both are right for their age and their place, and should be helped and sympathised
with in their place.
This
is one of the lessons of what is known in occultism as “tolerance.” Fourthly
must be developed endurance, the endurance that cheerfully bears all and resents
nothing, going straight onwards unswervingly to the goal. Nothing can come to
him but by the Law, and he knows the Law is good. He understands that the rocky
pathway that leads up the mountain-side straight to the summit (Page
300) cannot be as easy to his feet as the well-beaten winding highway.
He
realises that he is paying in a few short lives all the karmic obligations accumulated
during his past, and that the payments must be correspondingly heavy. The very
struggle into which he is plunged develop in him the fifth attribute, faith
– faith in his Master and in himself, a serene strong confidence that is unshakeable.
He learns to
trust in the wisdom, the love, the power of his Master, and he is beginning
to realise – not only to say he believes in – the Divinity within his own heart,
able to subdue all things to Himself. The last mental requisite, balance, equilibrium,
grows up to some extent without conscious effort during the striving after the
preceding five.
The
very setting of the will to tread the Path is a sign that the higher nature
is opening out, and that the external world is definitely relegated to a lower
place. The continuous efforts to lead the life of discipleship disentangle the
soul from any remaining ties that may knit it to the world of sense, for the
withdrawal of the soul’s attention from lower objects gradually exhausts the
attractive power of those objects. They “turn away from an abstemious dweller
in the body,” ( Bhagavad Gitâ, ii, 59.) and soon lose all power to disturb
this balance. Thus
he learns to move amid them undisturbed, neither seeking nor rejecting any.
He also learns to balance amid mental troubles of every kind, amid alternations
of mental joy and mental pain, this balance being further taught by (Page
301) the swift changes already spoken of through which his life
is guided by the ever-watchful care of his Master.
These
six mental attributes being in some measure attained, the probationary chelâā
needs further but the fourth qualification, the deep intense longing for liberation,
that yearning of the soul towards union with deity that is the promise of its
own fulfillment. This adds the last touch to his readiness to enter into full
discipleship, for, once that longing has definitely asserted itself, it can
never again be eradicated, and the soul that has felt it can never again quench
his thirst at earthly fountains; their waters will ever taste flat and vapid
when he sips them, so that he will turn away with ever-deepening longing for
the true water of life.
At
this stage he is “the man ready for Initiation,” ready to definitely “enter
the stream” that cuts him off forever from the interests of earthly life save
as he can serve his Master in them and help forward the evolution of the race.
Henceforth his life is not to be the life of separateness; it is to be offered
up on the altar of humanity, a glad sacrifice of all he is, to be used for the
common good.
The
student will be glad to have the technical names of these stages in Sanskrit
and Pâli, so that he may be able to follow them out in more advanced
books: |
SANSKRIT
(used by Hindus) |
PALI
(used by Buddhists) |
1 |
VIVEKA |
|
discrimination
between the real and the unreal |
1 |
MANODVÂRAVAJJANA |
the
opening of the doors of the mind; a conviction of the impermanence of the
earthly |
2 |
VAIRÂGYA |
|
indifference
to the unreal, the transitory |
2 |
PARIKAMMA |
preparation
for action; indifference to the fruits of action |
3 |
SHATSAMPATTI |
SHAMA |
control
of thought |
3 |
UPACHÂRO |
attention
or conduct; divided under the same headings as in the Hindu |
DAMA |
control
of conduct |
UPARATI |
tolerance |
TITIKSHA |
endurance |
SHRADDHA |
faith |
SANADDGBA |
balance |
4 |
MUMUKSHA |
|
desire for liberation |
4 |
ANULOMA |
direct
order or succession, its attainment following on the other three. |
The
man is then the ADHIKARI |
The
man is then the GATRABHU |
During
the years spent in evolving the four qualifications, the probationary chelâā
will have been advancing in many other respects. He will have been receiving
from his Master much teaching, teaching usually imparted during the deep sleep
of the body; the soul, clad in the well-organised astral body, will (Page
302) have become used to it as a vehicle of consciousness, and will
have been drawn to his Master – to receive instruction and spiritual illumination.
He
will further have been trained in meditation, and this effective practice outside
the physical body will have quickened and brought into active exercise many
of the higher powers; during such meditation he will have reached higher regions
of being, learning more of the life of the mental plane. He will have been taught
to use his increasing powers in human service, and during many of the hours
of sleep for the body he will have been working diligently on the astral plane,
aiding the souls that have passed on to it by death, comforting the victims
of accidents, teaching any less instructed than himself, and in countless ways
helping those who needed it, thus in (Page
303) humble fashion aiding the beneficent work of the Masters, and
being associated with Their sublime Brotherhood as a co-labourer in a however
modest and lowly degree.
Either
on the probationary Path or later, the chelâā is offered the privilege
of performing one of those acts of renunciation which mark the swifter ascent
of man. He is allowed “to renounce Devachan,” that is, to resign the glorious
life in the heavenly places that awaits him on his liberation from the physical
world, the life which in his case would mostly be spent in the middle arūpa
world in the company of the Masters, and in all the sublime joys of the purest
wisdom and love. If he renounce this fruit of his noble and devoted life, the
spiritual forces that would have been expended in his Devachan are set free
for the general service of the world, and he himself remains in the astral region
to await a speedy rebirth upon earth.
His
Master in this case selects and presides over his reincarnation, guiding him
to take birth amid conditions conducive to his usefulness in the world, suitable
for his further progress and for the work required at his hands. He has reached
the stage at which every individual interest is subordinated to the divine work,
and in which his will is fixed to serve in whatever way may be required of him.
He therefore, gladly surrenders himself into the hands he trusts, accepting
willingly and joyfully the place in the world in which he can best render service,
and perform his share of the glorious work (Page
304) of aiding the evolution of humanity.
Blessed
is the family into which a child is born tenanted by such a soul, a soul that
brings with him the benediction of the Master and is ever watched and guided,
every possible assistance being given him to bring his lower vehicles quickly
under control. Occasionally, but rarely a chelâ may reincarnate in a body
that has passed through infancy and extreme youth as the tabernacle of a less
progressed Ego; when an Ego comes to the earth for a very brief life-period,
say for some fifteen or twenty years, he will be leaving his body at the time
of dawning manhood, when it has passed through the time of early training and
is rapidly becoming an effective vehicle for the soul.
If
such a body be a very good one, and some chelâ be awaiting a suitable
reincarnation, it will often be watched during its tenancy by the Ego for whom
it was originally built, with the view of utilising it when he has done with
it; when the life-period of that Ego is completed, and he passes out of the
body into Kāmaloka on his way to Devachan, his cast-off body will be taken
possession of by the waiting chelâ, a new tenant will enter the deserted
house, and the apparently dead body will revive. Such cases are unusual, but
are not unknown to occultists, and some references to them may be found in occult
books.
Whether
the incarnation be normal or abnormal, the progress of the soul, of the chelâ
himself, continues, and the period already spoken of is reached when he is “ready
for Initiation”; through that (Page 305)
gateway of Initiation he enters, as a definitely accepted chelâ, on the
Path. This Path consists of four distinct stages, and the entrance into each
is guarded by an Initiation. Each Initiation is accompanied by an expansion
of consciousness which gives what is called “the key to knowledge” belonging
to the stage to which it admits, and this key of knowledge is also a key of
power, for truly is knowledge power in all the realms of Nature.
When
the chelâ has entered the Path he becomes what has been called “the houseless
man,” (The Hindus call this stage that of Parivrajaka, the wanderer; the Buddhist
calls it that of Srotāpatti, he who has reached the stream. The chelâ
is thus designated after his first Initiation and before his second.) for he
longer looks on earth s this home – he has no abiding-place here, to him all
places are welcome wherein he can serve his Master.
While
he is on this stage of the Path there are three hindrances to progress, technically
called “fetters,” which he has to get rid of, and now – as he is rapidly to
perfect himself – it is demanded from him that he shall entirely eradicate faults
of character, and perform completely the tasks belonging to his condition. The
three fetters that he must loose from his limbs ere he can pass the second Initiation
are: the illusion of the personal self, doubt, and superstition. The personal
self must be felt in consciousness as an illusion, and must lose forever its
power to impose itself on the soul as a reality.
He
must feel himself one with all, all must live and breathe in him and he in all.
(Page 306) Doubt must be destroyed,
but by knowledge, not by crushing out; he must know reincarnation and karma
and the existence of the Masters as facts; not accepting them as intellectually
necessary, but knowing them as facts in Nature that he has himself verified,
so that no doubt on these heads can ever again rise in his mind.
Superstition
is escaped as the man rises into a knowledge of realities, and of the proper
place of rites and ceremonies in the company of Nature; he learns to use every
means and to be bound by none. When the chelâ has cast off these fetters
– sometimes the task occupies several lives, sometimes it is achieved in part
of a single life – he finds the second Initiation open to him, with its new
“key of knowledge” and its widened horizon. The chelâ now sees before
him a swiftly shortening span of compulsory life on earth, for when he has reached
this stage he must pass through his third and fourth Initiations in his present
life or in the next. (The chelâ on the second stage of the path is for
the Hindu the Kutichaka, the man who builds a hut; he has reached a place of
peace. For the Buddhist he is the Sakridāgāmin, the man who receives
birth but once more.)
In
this stage he has to bring into full working order the inner faculties, those
belonging to the subtle bodies, for he needs them for his service in the higher
realms of being. If he has developed them previously, this stage may be a very
brief one, but he may pass through the gateway of death once more ere he is
ready to receive his third Initiation, (Page
307) to become “the Swan,” the individual who soars into the empyrean,
that wondrous Bird of Life whereof so many legends are related. ( The Hindu
calls him the Paramahamsa, beyond the “ I “; the Buddhist names him the Arhat,
the worthy.)
On
this third stage of the Path the chelâ casts off the fourth and fifth
fetters, those of desire and aversion; he sees the One self in all, and the
outer veil can no longer blind him, whether it be fair or foul. He looks on
all with an equal eye; that fair bud of tolerance that he cherished on the probationary
Path now flowers out into an all-embracing love that wraps everything within
its tender embrace. He is “the friend of every creature,” the “lover of all
that lives” in a world where all things live.
As
a living embodiment of divine love, he passes swiftly onwards to the fourth
Initiation, that admits him to the last stage of the Path, where he is “beyond
the Individual,” the worthy , the venerable. ( The Hamsa, he who realises “I
am THAT,” in the Hindu terms; the Anāgāmin, the man who receives birth
no more, in the Buddhist.)Here he remains at his will, casting off the last
fine fetters that still bind him with threads however fragile, and keep him
back from liberation. He throws off all clinging to life in form, and then all
longing for formless life; these are the chains and he must be chainless; he
may move through the three worlds, but not a shred of theirs must have power
to hold him; the splendours of the “formless world” must charm him no more than
the concrete glories of the worlds of form.(Page
308)
Then
– mightiest of all achievements – he casts off the last fetter of separateness,
the “I “ever making faculty –(Ahamkāra, generally given as Māna, pride,
since pride is the subtlest manifestation on the “I” as distinct from others.)
– which realises itself as apart from others, for he dwells on the plane of
unity in his waking consciousness, on the buddhic plane where the Self of all
is known and realised as one. This faculty was born with the soul, is the essence
of individuality, and it persists till all that is valuable in it is worked
into the Monad, and it can be dropped on the threshold of liberation, leaving
its priceless result to the Monad, that sense of individual identity which is
so pure and fine that it does not mar the consciousness of oneness.
Easily
then drops away anything that could respond to ruffling contacts, and the chelâ
stands robed in that glorious vesture of unchanging peace that naught can mar.
And the casting away of that same “I-making” faculty has cleared away from the
spiritual vision the last clouds that could dim its piercing insight, and in
the realisation of unity, ignorance – (Avidyā, the first illusion and the
last, that which makes the separated worlds – the first of the Nidānas
– and that which drops off when liberation is attained.) – the limitation that
gives birth to all separateness – falls away, and the man is perfect, is free.
Then
has come the ending of the Path, and the ending of the Path is the threshold
to Nirvāna. Into that marvellous state of consciousness the (Page
309) chelâ has been wont to pass out of the body while he has
been traversing the final stage of the Path; now, when he crosses the threshold,
the nirvānic consciousness becomes his normal consciousness, for Nirvāna
is the home of the liberated Self. (The Jivanmukta, the liberated life, of the
Hindu; the Asekha, he who has no more to learn, of the Buddhist.) He
has completed man’s ascent, he touches the limit of humanity; above him there
stretch hosts of mighty Beings, but they are superhuman; the crucifixion in
flesh is over, the hour of liberation has struck, and the triumphant “It is
finished!” rings from the conqueror’s lips. See! – he has crossed the threshold,
he has vanished into the light nirvānic, another son of earth has conquered
death.
What
mysteries are veiled by that light supernal we know not; dimly we feel that
the Supreme Self is found, that lover and Beloved are one. The long search is
over, the thirst of the heart is quenched forever, he has entered into the joy
of his Lord.
But
has earth lost her child, is humanity bereft of her triumphant son? Nay! He
has come forth from the bosom of the light, and He standeth again on the threshold
of Nirvāna, Himself seeming the very embodiment of that light, glorious
beyond all telling, a manifested Son of God. But now His face is turned to earth,
His eyes beam with divinest compassion on the wandering sons of men, His brethren
after the flesh; He cannot leave them comfortless, scattered as sheep without
a shepherd. Clothed in the majesty of a mighty renunciation, glorious with the
(Page 310) strength of perfect
wisdom and “power of an endless life,” He returns to earth to bless and guide
humanity, Master of Wisdom, kingly Teacher, divine Man.
Returning
thus to earth, the Master devotes Himself to the service of humanity with mightier
forces at His command than He wielded while He trod the Path of discipleship;
He has dedicated Himself to the helping of man, and He bends all the sublime
powers that He holds to the quickening of the evolution of the world. He pays
to those who are approaching the Path the debt He contracted in the days of
His own chelāship, guiding, helping, teaching them as He was guided, helped,
and taught before.
Such
are the stages of man’s ascent, from the lowest savagery to the divine manhood.
To such goal is humanity climbing, to such glory shall the race attain. (Page
311)
CHAPTER
XII
BUILDING A COSMOS
It
is not possible, at our present stage of evolution, to do more than roughly
indicate a few points in the vast outline of the kosmic scheme in which our
globe plays a part. By “ a kosmos “ is here meant a system which seems, from
out standpoint, to be complete in itself, arising from a single LOGOS, and sustained
by His Life. Such a system is our solar system, and the physical sun may be
considered to be the lowest manifestation of the LOGOS when acting as the centre
of His kosmos; every form is indeed one of His concrete manifestations, but
the sun is His lowest manifestation as the life-giving, invigorating, all-pervading,
all controlling, regulative, coordinating, central power.
Says
an occult commentary :
“Sūrya (the sun), in its visible reflection, exhibits the first or lowest
state of the seventh, the highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure
of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the ever unmanifested SAT (Be-ness).
All the central physical or objective Suns are in their substance the lowest
state of the first Principle of the BREATH, (Secret Doctrine; I, 330, Adyar
Ed.),
are in short, the lowest state of the “Physical Body” of the LOGOS.”
All
physical forces and energies are but transmutations of the life poured forth
by the sun, the Lord ( Page312)
and Giver of life to his system. Hence in many ancient religions the sun stood
as the symbol of the Supreme God – the symbol, in truth, the least liable to
misconstruction by the ignorant. Mr. Sinnett well says :
“The
solar system is indeed an area of Nature including more than any but the very
highest beings whom our humanity is capable of developing are in position
to investigate. Theoretically we may feel sure – as we look up into the heavens
at night – that the whole solar system itself is but a drop in the ocean of
the kosmos, but that drop is in its turn an ocean from the point of view of
the consciousness of such half-developed beings within it as ourselves, and
we can only hope at present to acquire vague and shadowy conceptions of its
origin and constitution. Shadowy,
however, though these may be, they enable us to assign the subordinate planetary
series, in which our own evolution is carried on, to its proper place in the
system of which it is a part, or at all events to get a broad idea of the
relative magnitude of the whole system, of our planetary chain, of the world
in which we are at present functioning, and of the respective periods of evolution
in which as human beings we are interested. “
For
in truth we cannot grasp our own position intellectually without some idea –
however vague it may be – of our relation to the whole; and while some student
are content to work within their own sphere of duty and to leave the wider reaches
of life until they are called to function in them, others feel the need of a
far-reaching scheme in which they have their place, and take an intellectual
delight in soaring upwards to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the whole field of
evolution. This
need has been (Page 313) recognised
and met by the spiritual Guardians of humanity in the magnificent delineation
of the kosmos from the standpoint of the occultist traced by their pupil and
messenger, H.P.Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine, a work that will
become ever more and more enlightening as students of the Ancient Wisdom themselves
explore and master the lower levels of our evolving world.
The
appearance of the LOGOS, we are told, is the herald of the birth-hour of our
kosmos.
“When He is manifest, all is manifested after Him; by His manifestation this
All becomes manifest.” (Mundakopanishad, II, ii, 10).
With Himself He brings the fruits of a past kosmos – the mighty spiritual Intelligences
who are to be His co-workers and agents in the universe now to be built. Highest
of these are “the Seven,” often Themselves spoken of as Logoi, since each in
His place is the centre of a distinct department in the kosmos, as the LOGOS
is the centre of the whole. The
commentary before quoted says:
The
seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the inherent
power in the matrix of Mother-substance …The energy from which they sprang
into conscious existence in every Sun is what some people call Vishnu, which
is the Breath of the Absoluteness. We call it the one manifested Life – itself
a reflection of the Absolute. (Secret Doctrine, I , 331, Adyar ed.)
This
“one manifested Life” is the LOGOS, the manifested God. (Page
314) From this primary division our kosmos takes its sevenfold character,
and all subsequent divisions in their descending order reproduce this seven-keyed
scale. Under each of the seven secondary Logoi come the descending hierarchies
of Intelligences that form the governing body of His kingdom .
Among
These we hear of the Lipika, who are the Recorders of the karma of that kingdom
and of all entities therein; of the Mahārājas or Devarājas, who
superintend the working out of karmic law; and of the vast hosts of the Builders,
who shape and fashion all forms after the Ideas that dwell in the treasure-house
of the LOGOS, in the Universal Mind, and that pass from Him to the Seven, each
of whom plans out His own realm under that supreme direction and all-inspiring
life, giving to it, at the same time, His own individual colouring. H. P. Blavatsky
calls these Seven Realms that make up the solar systems the seven Laya centres;
she says :
The
seven Laya centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same
sense that chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the
scale of reckoning of differentiation begins. From the Centres – beyond which
Esoteric philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of
the “Seven Sons” of Life and Light, the seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all
other philosophies – begins the differentiation of the elements which enter
into the constitution of our Solar System.(Secret Doctrine, I , 195, Adyar
Ed.)
This
realm is a planetary evolution of a stupendous character, the field in which
are lived out the stages of life of which a physical planet, such as Venus,
is but a transcient embodiment. We may speak of the Evolver and Ruler of this
realm as a planetary (Page 315) Logos,
so as to avoid confusion. He draws from the matter of the solar system, outpoured
from the central LOGOS Himself, the crude materials He requires, and elaborates
them by His own life-energies, each planetary Logos thus specialising the matter
of His realm from a common stock. (See in chapter I, on “The Physical Plane”
the statement on the evolution of matter.)
The
atomic state in each of the seven planes of His kingdom being identical with
the matter of a sub-plane of the whole solar system, continuity is thus established
throughout the whole. As H. P. Blavatsky remarks, atoms change “their combining
equivalents on every planet,” the atoms themselves being identical, but their
combinations differing. She goes on : -
“Not
alone the elements of our planet, but even those of all its sisters in the
solar system, differ as widely from each other in their combinations, as from
the cosmic elements beyond our solar limits…Each atom has seven planes of
being, or existence, we are taught. ( Secret Doctrine, Volume1, pages 166
and174, of the 1893 edition or Volume 1, 199, page 205, of the Adyar edition.)
The sub-planes, as we have been calling them, of each great plane. On the
three lower planes of His evolving realm the planetary Logos establishes seven
globes or worlds, which for convenience’ sake, following the received nomenclature,
we will call globes A,B,C,D,E,F,G.
These
are the Seven small wheels revolving, one giving birth to the other spoken of
in Stanza vi, of the Book of Dzyan: He builds
them in the likeness of the older wheels, placing them on the imperishable centres.
(Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, page 64, of the 1893 edition or Volume 1, page 249,
of the Adyar edition.) (Page 316)
Imperishable,
since each wheel not only gives birth to its successor, but is also itself reincarnated
at the same centre, as we shall see.
These globes may be figured as disposed in three pairs on the arc of an ellipse,
with the middle globe at the mid-most and lowest point; for the most part globes
A and G – the first and seventh – are on the Arūpa levels of the mental
plane; globes B and F – the second and sixth – are on the rûpa levels;
globes C and E – the third and fifth – are on the astral plane; globe D – the
fourth – is on the physical plane. These globes are spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky
as “graduated on the four lower planes of the world of formation,”( Secret Doctrine,
Volume 1, page 221, of the1893 edition or Volume 1, page 249, of the Adyar edition-
the note is important, that the archetypal world is not the world as it existed
in the mind of the planetary Logos, but the first model which was made.) i.e.,
the physical and astral planes, and the two subdivisions of the mental (rûpa
and arûpa). They may be figured : - as
(Page
317) This
is the typical arrangement, but it is modified at certain stages of evolution.
These seven globes form a planetary ring or chain, and – if for a moment we
regard the planetary chain as a whole, as, so to say, an entity, a
planetary life or individual – that chain passes through the seven globes as
a whole form its planetary body, and this planetary body disintegrates and is
reformed seven times during the planetary life. The planetary chain has seven
incarnations, and the results obtained in one are handed on to the next.
Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and creation of another lower
and dead chain – its reincarnation, so to say. (Secret Doctrine, Volume
1, page 176, of the 1893 Edition or Volume 1, page 207, of the Adyar
Edition.)
These
seven incarnations (technically called “manvantaras”) make up “the planetary
evolution,” the realm of the planetary Logos. As there are seven planetary Logoi,
it will be seen that seven of these planetary evolutions, each distinct from
the others, make up the solar system. (Mr. Sinnett calls these “seven schemes
of evolution”). In
an occult commentary this coming forth of the seven Logoi from the one, and
of the seven successive chains of seven globes each, is described:
From
one light seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven. ( Secret
Doctrine, Volume1, page 147, of the 1893 Edition or Volume 1, page
180, of the Adyar edition.)
Taking
up the incarnations of the chain, the (Page
318) manvantaras, we learn that these also are sub-divisible into
seven stages; a wave of life from the planetary Logos is sent round the chain,
and seven of these great life-waves, each one technically spoken of as “a round,”
complete a single manvantara. Each globe has thus seven periods of activity
during a manvantara, each in turn becoming the field of the evolving life.
Looking
at a single globe we find that during the period of its activity seven root-races
of a humanity evolve on it, together with six other non-human kingdoms interdependent
on each other. As these seven kingdoms contain forms at all stages of evolution,
as all have higher reaches stretching before them, the evolving forms of one
globe pass to another to carry on their growth when the period of activity of
the former globe comes to an end, and go on - from globe to globe to the end
of that round; they further pursue their course round after round to the close
of the seven rounds or manvantara after manvantara till the end of reincarnations
of their planetary chain is reached, when the results of that planetary evolution
are gathered up by the planetary Logos. Needless to say that scarcely anything
of this evolution is known to us; only the salient points in the stupendous
whole have been indicated by the Teachers.
Even
when we come to the planetary evolution in which our own world is a stage, we
know nothing of the processes through which its seven globes (Page
319) evolved during its first two manvantaras; and of its third
manvantara we only know that the globe which is now our moon was globe D of
that planetary chain. This fact, however, may help us to realise more clearly
what is meant by these successive reincarnations of a planetary chain. The seven
globes which formed the lunar chain passed in due course through their sevenfold
evolution; seven times the life-wave, the Breath of the planetary Logos, swept
round the chain, quickening in turn each globe into life.
It
is as though that Logos in guiding His kingdom turned His attention first to
globe A, and thereon brought into successive existence the innumerable forms
that in their totality make up a world; when evolution had been carried to a
certain point, He turned His attention to globe B, and globe A slowly sank into
a peaceful sleep. Thus the life wave was carried from globe to globe, until
one round of the circle was completed by globe G finishing its evolution; then
there succeeded a period of rest, (technically called a pralaya), during which
the external evolutionary activity ceased.
At
the close of this period, external evolution recommenced, starting on its second
round and beginning as before on globe A. The process is repeated six times,
but when the seventh, the last round, is reached, there is a change. Globe A,
having accomplished its seventh life-period, gradually disintegrates, and the
imperishable laya centre state supervenes; from that, at the dawn of the succeeding
manvantara a new globe A (Page 320)
is evolved – like a new body – in which the “principles” of the preceding planet
A take up their abode. This phrase is only intended to convey the idea of a
relation between globe A of the first manvantara and globe A of the second,
the nature of that connection remains hidden.
Of
the connection between globe D of the lunar manvantara – our moon – and globe
D of the terrene manvantara – our earth – we know little more, and Mr. Sinnett
has given a convenient summary of the slender knowledge we possess in The
system to which we belong. He says:-
The
new earth nebula was developed round a centre bearing pretty much the same
relation to the dying planet that the centres of the earth and moon bear
to one another at present. But in the nebulous condition this aggregation
of matter occupied an enormously greater volume than the solid matter of the
earth now occupies.
It
stretched out in all directions so as to include the old planet in its fiery
embrace. The temperature of the new nebula appears to be considerable higher
than any temperatures we are acquainted with, and by this means the old planet
was superficially heated afresh in such a manner that all atmosphere, water,
and volatilisable matter upon it was brought into the gaseous condition and
so became amenable to the new centre of attraction set up at the centre of
the new nebula.
In
this way the air and seas of the old planet were drawn over into the constitution
of the new one, and thus it is that the moon in its present state is an arid,
glaring mass, dry and cloudless, no longer habitable, and no longer required
for the habitation of any physical beings. When the present manvantara is
nearly over, during the seventh round, its disintegration will be completed
and the matter which it still holds together will resolve into meteoric dust.(Op
.cit., Page 19)
In
the third volume of The Secret Doctrine, in
which are printed some of the oral teachings given by H.P.Blavatsky to her more
advanced pupils, it is stated:
At
the beginning of the evolution of our globe, the moon was much nearer to the
earth, and larger than it is now. It has retreated from us, and shrunk much
in size.(The moon gave all her principles to the earth.) A new moon will
appear during the seventh round, and our moon will finally disintegrate and
disappear. (Op. Cit. III, 562, 1893 Ed.)
Evolution
during the lunar manvantara produced seven classes of beings, technically called
Fathers, or Pitris, since it was they who generated the beings of the terrene
manvantara. These are the Lunar Pitris of the Secret Doctrine. More
developed than these were two other classes – variously called Solar Pitris,
Men, Lower Dhyānis – too far advanced to enter on the terrene evolution
in its early stages, but requiring the aid of later physical conditions for
their future growth.
The
higher of these two classes consisted of individualised animal-like beings,
creatures with embryonic souls, i.e., they had developed the causal
body; the second were approaching its formation. Lunar Pitris, the first class,
were at the beginning of that approach showing mentality, while the second and
third had only developed the kāmic principle.
These
seven classes of Lunar Pitris were the product the lunar chain handed on for
further development to the terrene, the fourth reincarnation of the planetary
chain. (Page 321) As Monads – with
the mental principle present in the first, the kāmic principle developed
in the second and third classes, this germinal in the fourth, only approaching
the germ stage in the still less developed fifth, and imperceptible in the sixth
and seventh – these entities entered the earth-chain, to ensoul the elemental
essence and the forms shaped by the Builders. ( H.P.Blavatsky, in the Secret
Doctrine, does not include those whom Mr. Sinnett calls first – and second-class
Pitris in the “monads from the lunar chain” : she takes them apart as “men,”
as “Dhyān Chohans.” Compare Volume 1, pages 197, 207 and 211 of the 1893
edition; Volume 1, pages 227, 236 and 239 of the Adyar edition)
The
nomenclature adopted by me is that of the Secret Doctrine. In the valuable
paper by Mrs. Sinnett and Mr. Scott-Elliot on the Lunar Pitris, H.P.B.’s
“Lower Dhyanis,” that incarnate in the third and fourth rounds, are taken as
the first and second classes of Lunar Pitris; their third class is therefore
H.P.B.’s first class, their fourth class her second and so on. There is no difference
in the statement of facts, only in nomenclature, but this difference of nomenclature
may mislead the student if it be not explained. As I am using H.P.B’s nomenclature,
my fellow-students of the London Lodge and readers of their “Transaction” will
need to remember that my first is their third, and so on sequentially.
The
“Builders” is a name including innumerable Intelligences, hierarchies of beings
of graduated consciousness and power, who on each plane carry out the actual
building of forms. The higher (Page 323) direct
and control, while the lower fashion the materials after the models provided.
And now appears the use of the successive globes of the planetary chain.
Globe
A is the archetypal world, on which are built the models of the forms that are
to be elaborated during the round; from the mind of the planetary Logos the
highest Builders take the archetypal Ideas, and guide the Builders on the arūpa
levels as they fashion the archetypal forms for the round.
On
globe B these forms are reproduced in varied shapes in mental matter by a lower
rank of Builders, and are evolved slowly along different lines, until they are
ready to receive an infiltration of denser matter; then the Builders in astral
matter take up the task, and on globe C fashion astral forms, with details more
worked out; when the forms have been evolved as far as the astral conditions
permit, the Builders of globe D take up the task of form-shaping on the physical
plane, and the lowest kinds of matter are thus fashioned into appropriate types,
and the forms reach their densest and most complete condition.
From
this middle point onwards the nature of the evolution some what changes; hitherto
the greatest attention had been directed to the building of the form; on the
ascending arc the chief attention is directed to using the form as a vehicle
of the evolving life and on the second half of the evolution on globe D, and
on globes E and F the consciousness expresses itself first on the physical and
then on the astral and lower mental planes through the equivalents of the forms
elaborated on the descending arc.(Page 324)
On
the descending arc the monad impresses itself as best it may on the
evolving forms, and these impressions, and so on; on the ascending arc the Monad
expresses itself through the forms as their inner ruler. On globe
G the perfection of the round is reached, the Monad inhabiting and using as
its vehicles the archetypal forms of globe A.
During
all these stages the Lunar Pitris have acted as the souls of the forms, brooding
over them, later inhabiting them. It is on the first-class Pitris that the heaviest
burden of the work falls during the first three rounds. The second and third-class
Pitris flow into the forms worked up by the first; the first prepare these
forms by ensouling them for a time and then pass on, leaving them for the tenancy
of the second and third classes. By the end of the first round the archetypal
forms of the mineral would have been brought down, to be elaborated through
the succeeding rounds, till they reach their densest state in the middle of
the fourth round. “Fire” is the “element” of this first round.
In
the second round the first-class Pitris continue their human evolution, only
touching the lower stages as the human foetus still touches them today, while
the second-class, at the close of the round, have reached the incipient human
stage. The great work of the round is bringing down the archetypal forms of
vegetable life, which will reach their perfection in the fifth round. “Air”
is the second round “element”. (Page 325)
In
the third round the first-class Pitris becomes definitely human in form; though
the body is jelly-like and gigantic, it is yet, on globe D, compact enough to
begin to stand upright; he is ape-like and is covered with hairy bristles. The
third-class Pitris reach the incipient human stage. Second class solar Pitris
make their first appearance on globe D in this round, and take the lead in human
evolution. The archetypal forms of animals are brought down to be elaborated
into perfection by the end of the sixth round, and “water” is the characteristic
“element.”
The
fourth round, the middle one of the seven that make up the terrene manvantara,
is distinguished by bringing to globe A the archetypal forms of humanity, this
round being as distinctively human as its predecessors were respectively animal,
vegetable, and mineral. Not ill the seventh round will these forms be fully
realised by humanity, but the possibilities of the human form are manifested
in the archetypes in the fourth. "Earth” is the “element” of this round,
the densest, the most material. The first-class solar Pitris may be said to
hover round globe D more or less in this round during its early stages of activity,
but they do not definitely incarnate until after the third great out-pouring
of life from the planetary Logos in the middle of the third race, and then only
slowly, the number increasing as the race progresses, and multitudes incarnating
in the early fourth race.
The
evolution of humanity on our earth, globe D, offers in a strongly marked form
the continual sevenfold diversity already often alluded to. Seven races of men
had already shown themselves in the third round, and in the fourth these fundamental
divisions became very clear on globe C, where seven races, each with sub-races
evolved. On globe D humanity begins with a First Race – usually called a Root
Race – at seven different points, “seven of them, each on his lot.” (Book
of Dzyan (Stanzas of Dzyan, 3: 13). – Secret Doctrine, Volume
2, page 18, of the 1893, edition– Volume 3, page 29, of the Adyar edition.)
These
seven types side by side, not successive – make up the first root-race, and
each again has its own seven sub-races. From the first root-race – jelly-like
amorphous creatures – evolves the second root-race with forms of more definite
consistency, and from it the third, ape-like creatures that become clumsy gigantic
men. In the middle of the evolution of this third root-race, called the Lemurian,
there come to earth – from another planetary chain, that of Venus, much farther
advanced in its evolution – members of its highly evolved humanity, glorious
Beings, often spoken of as Sons of Fire, from Their radiant appearance, a lofty
order among the Sons of Mind. (Manasaputra. This vast hierarchy of self-conscious
intelligences embraces many orders.)
They
take up Their abode on earth, as the Divine Teachers of the young humanity,
some of them acting as channels for the third outpouring and projecting into
animal man the spark of monadic life which forms the causal body. Thus the first,
second, and third classes of Lunar Pitris become individualised – the vast (Page
327) bulk of humanity. The two classes of solar Pitris, already individualised
– the first ere leaving the lunar chain and the second later – form two low
orders of the Sons of Mind; the second incarnate in the third race at its middle
point, and the first come in later, for the most part in the fourth race, the
Atlantean.
The
fifth, or Aryan race, now leading human evolution, was evolved from the fifth
sub-race of the Atlantean, the most promising families being in Central Asia,
and the new race-type evolved, under the direct superintendence of a Great Being,
technically called a Manu. Emerging from Central Asia the first sub-race settled
in India, south of the Himalāyas, and in their four orders of teachers,
warriors, merchants, and workmen, ( Brāhmanas, Kshattriyas, Vaishyas and
Shudras ) became the dominant race in the vast Indian peninsula, conquering
the fourth-race and third-race nations who then inhabited it.
At
the end of the seventh race of the seventh round, i.e., at the close
of our terrene manvantara, our chain will hand on to its successor the fruits
of its life; these fruits will be the perfected divine men, Buddhas, Manus,
Chohans, Masters, ready to take up work of guiding evolution under the direction
of the planetary Logos, with hosts of less evolved entities of every grade of
consciousness, who still need physical experience for the perfecting of their
divine possibilities.
The
fifth, sixth, and seventh (Page 328)
manvantaras of our chain are still in the womb of the future after this fourth
one has closed, and then the planetary Logos will gather up into Himself all
the fruits of evolution, and with his children enter on a period of rest and
bliss. Of that high state we cannot speak; how at this stage of our evolution
could we dream of its unimaginable glory; only we dimly know that our glad spirits
shall “enter into the joy of the Lord,” and, resting in Him, shall see stretching
before them boundless ranges of sublime life and love, heights and depths of
power and joy, limitless as the One Existence, inexhaustable as the One that
Is.
PEACE TO ALL BEINGS
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