Theosophy - Reincarnation: A study in human evolution [The resurrection of the body and The Reincarnation of the Soul by Th.Pascal - Part 1 of 2
REINCARNATION
-A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
The Resurrection of the Body and The Reincarnation of the Soul
by Dr Théophile Pascal
Translated by Fred Rothwell
The Theosophical Publishing Society - London 1910
Part 1 of
2 - Click here to go to Part 2 [proof-reading]
“Were
an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to
answer him - It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible
delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is
his first
entrance into life”.
Schopenhauer - (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol 2, Chap 15)
SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE
[Page
5] Théophile
Pascal was born on the 11th of May, 1860, at Villecroze, a village in
the South of France. His childhood was spent amid the pleasant
surroundings of a country life. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, a relative
of his, a Catholic priest ministering in Toulon, seeing that the youth
showed
considerable ability, sent for him and presided over his studies in this large
maritime center. Before many years elapsed, he entered the Naval Medical
School of the town, which he left at the age of twenty-two, with first-class
honors. In his professional capacity, he took several trips on vessels
belonging to the
Mediterranean squadron. Four years afterwards he married, resigned active
naval service, and devoted himself to building up a practice on land, becoming
a homeopathic physician in the great seaport itself. It was about this
time that the
young doctor became interested in Theosophy, owing to the kindly services of
a former patient, Commander Courmes. The closest [Page 6] friendship and
sympathetic interest in theosophic thought thus began, and continued during
their common labors subsequently in Paris.
Dr.
Pascal entered the Theosophical Society in 1891, and during the course of
the following year wrote a series of articles for the Revue Théosophique
Française. These were continued year after year,
and dealt with the most varied subjects: Psychic Powers; The Fall of the Angels;
Kâma-Manasic Elementals;
Thought Forms; Christianity, Prehistoric Races, and many others.
The young doctor had previously made a deep study of human magnetism,
which proved a most fertile ground for the sowing of the seed of the Ancient
Wisdom.
In 1898 attacks of serious nervous depression became frequent, forcing him to
cease work of every kind. Mrs. Besant persuaded him to accompany her to India,
where his general health was gradually restored, and he was enabled to return to
France in the following year.
He
decided to leave Toulon, where he had built up a considerable practice,
and to settle in Paris, hoping to provide for the needs of himself and
his family — his
wife and only daughter — by the exercise of his profession, and at the same time
to fight the good fight for Theosophy in the capital itself.[Page 7]
The
French Section of the Theosophical Society was founded in 1900, and Dr.
Pascal was elected General Secretary. Throughout the next two years a
number of thoughtful articles and publications appeared from his pen. The
incessant labor and attention, however, which he bestowed on the spreading
of theosophic instruction began to have its effect on a naturally delicate
constitution,
and in July, 1902, when attending the meetings of the British Convention in
London, he was prostrated by an attack of congestion of the brain. The most
devoted care was lavished on him, both in London and in Paris, the result being
that a rapid, though only temporary, recovery took place. Had he relaxed his
efforts somewhat, the cure might have been a permanent one, but Dr. Pascal,
with the penetrating vision of the mystic, saw how pressing were the needs
of the age, and how few the pioneers of this new presentation of the Truth,
so that, at
whatever cost of personal sacrifice, he plunged once more into the midst of
his arduous toil.
In
1903 a series of very fine articles on the Laws of Destiny appeared in the
Revue Théosophique, to be followed immediately by
publication in volume form. Two years afterwards appeared the present
volume — REINCARNATION: A
STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION; a work considered the most complete of any
that have so far appeared in France [Page
8] on this subject, and the most popular of Dr. Pascal's publications.
In 1906 some of the nerve centres controlling the organs of speech became
affected, but not sufficiently to compel him to remain absent from the
International Theosophical Congress held that year in Paris under the presidency
of Colonel Olcott. It was on this occasion that Dr. Pascal received from the hands
of the President-Founder the Subba Rao medal, awarded to members of the
society whose literary labours in the promulgation of the truths of Theosophy
have proved eminently useful.
Twelve months afterwards he attended the Congress at Munich, under the
presidency of Mrs. Besant, but was obliged to leave before the termination of the
meetings. This may be regarded as Dr. Pascal's last public appearance as an
active theosophist, for his subsequent prolonged stay in the South of France
effected no radical improvement in the state of his health.
Returning
to Paris in March, 1908, and realising how impossible it was for him to fulfil
the duties incumbent on a General Secretary, he decided to resign his post.
His colleagues, however, insisted on his continuing as Honorary General
Secretary. From this time onward his health became gradually worse, and his
physical life terminated on the 18th [Page 9] of April, 1909, his body being cremated
three days afterwards at the Cemetery of Père Lachaise.
What
was most striking about Dr. Pascal, in both public and private life, was
his intense earnestness — the index of a well-grounded habit of concentration — and
the calm strength of his convictions. It was impossible to be in his presence
for any length of time without feeling the power that emanated from him,
and
recognising that here was a mighty soul struggling for expression.
Other characteristics were his extreme modesty, and his continual endeavour to
accord praise and merit to those working for the cause so dear to his own heart.
When questioned on many of the intricate points raised in a lecture or in
conversation on some abstruse theosophical subject, he made no pretence at
knowledge he did not possess; on such occasions his confession of ignorance
would be charming, even touching in its naïveté.
But
the qualities he seemed to feel it his special object to awaken in the
minds of others — as will be acknowledged, I think, by those who knew him best — may be
inferred from his continual insistence on the double duty, incumbent on students
of Theosophy, of practising on all occasions the utmost tolerance, refusing
not only to condemn but even to judge harshly the opinions or actions of
others, and
of seizing every opportunity to help [Page 10] another because of the recognition of
the One Life throughout the world. May we who read the following pages catch
somewhat of the deep earnestness and enthusiastic spirit breathing through
them, and may the joy of service dissipate all meaner motives, taking as our
watchword also the only key to true growth, the very heart of altruism, that
exhortation he never wearied of repeating: Aidez! Aidez toujours!
F. R.
AUTHOR’S
PREFACE
It will soon be 1500 years since the decision of the Council of 543 A.D. [This
council came to the following decision - Whosoever shall teach the pre-existence
of the soul and the strange opinion of its returns to earth, let him be anathema!]
condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have been carefully
preserved and handed down to future generations as a beacon amid social reefs;
teachings that would have uprooted that frightful egoism which threatens to
annihilate the world, and instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being
crushed beneath the wheel of the cosmic law, by showing them the scales of
Justice inclining to the side filled with their iniquities of bygone times; teachings
which would have been welcomed by the masses, and the understanding of
which would not have called for any lofty intellectual culture.
It was one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen the races of the
West, more especially [Page 12] the European, that they were thus deprived for
centuries of this indispensable knowledge. We look upon it as a duty, following
on so many others, to offer it anew, this time in the clear, logical, illuminating
form presented in theosophic teachings. The necessity thereof is all the more
imperative when we consider the growth of scepticism and materialism amongst
the more intellectual classes, whilst the mass of the people have forsaken their
blind faith only to succumb to religious indifference.
To every awakened soul the question comes:
Why does evil exist ?
So long as the enigma remains unsolved, Suffering remains a threatening
sphinx, opposing God and ready to devour mankind.
The key to the secret lies in Evolution, which can be accomplished only by
means of the continual return of souls to earth.
When
once man learns that suffering is the necessary result of divine manifestation;
that inequalities of conditions are due to the different stages which beings
have reached and the changeable action of their will; that the
painful phase lasts only a moment in Eternity, and that we have it in our power
to hasten its disappearance; that though slaves of the past, we are masters
of the
future; that, finally, the same glorious goal awaits all [Page 13] beings — then,
despair will be at an end; hatred, envy, and rebellion will have fled away,
and peace will reign over a humanity made wise by knowledge.
Were this modest work to hasten forward this time by a few years, we should feel
sufficiently rewarded.
The subject will be divided into four chapters:
(1) The Soul and the bodies.
(2) Reincarnation and the moral law.
(3) Reincarnation and science.
(4)
Reincarnation and the religious and philosophical consensus of the ages. [Page 15]
CHAPTER I
THE SOUL AND THE BODIES
In a book dealing with the resurrection of bodies and the reincarnations
of the Soul, a chapter must be devoted to the fundamental elements of the
question.
We will give the name of Soul to abstract Being, to the Unknown, that
unmanifested Principle which cannot be defined, for it is above all definition.
It is the Absolute of Western philosophers, the Parabrahm of the Hindus, the Tao
of the ancient sages of China, the causeless Cause of all that has been or ever
will be manifested in concrete time and space.
Some
feeble idea of it may perhaps be obtained by comparing it with electricity,
which, though the cause of various phenomena: heat, movement, chemical
action, light, is not, per se, any one of these phenomena, undergoes no
modification from their existence, and survives them when the apparatus through
which they manifest disappears. [Page 16]
We shall set up no distinction between this Soul, which may be called the
universal Soul, and the individual soul, which has often been defined as a ray, a
particle of the total Soul, for logically one cannot imply parts to the Absolute; it is
illusion, limitation on our part, which shows us souls in the Soul.
Bodies are “aspects” of
the Soul, results of its activity — if, indeed, the Infinite
can be said to be either active or passive; words fail when we attempt to express
the Inexpressible. These bodies, or, more precisely, the varied forms assumed
by force-matter [Which is nothing but an unknown “aspect” of
abstract Divinity] are aspects of the Soul, just as light
or chemical action are aspects of electricity, for one cannot suppose anything
outside of infinite Being, nor can anything be imagined which is not a manifestation
of the abstract Whole.
Let us also define Consciousness.
Taken absolutely, it is Being, the Soul, God; the uncaused Cause of all the states
which, in beings, we call states of consciousness.
This
limited consciousness may be defined as the faculty a “centre of life” possesses
of receiving vibrations from its surroundings. When, in the course of evolution,
a being is sufficiently developed to become conscious of a separation
between its [Page
17] “ I ” and the object which sends it vibrations, consciousness
becomes self-consciousness. This self-consciousness constitutes
the human
stage; it appears in the higher animals, but as it descends the scale of being,
gradually disappears in non-individualised consciousness.
In a word, absolute Consciousness is one, though, as in the above example, it is
manifested differently, according to the differences in the vehicles which express
it in the concrete world in which we live.
The Soul, per se, is beyond the reach of beings who have not finished the
pilgrimage of evolution. To know it, one must have attained to the eternal Centre,
the unmanifested Logos. Up to that point, one can only, in proportion as one
ascends, feel it in oneself, or acknowledge it by means of the logic which
perceives it through all its manifestations as the universal Mover of forms, the
Cause of all things, the Unity that produces diversity by means of the various
vehicles which serve it as methods of expression.
Science says that intelligence, or, to be more generic, consciousness, results
from the action of matter. This is a mistake.
Consciousness
does not change in proportion as the cells of the body are renewed; rather
it increases with physical unconsciousness, as in
somnambulism. [Page 18]
Thought is not the fruit of the brain; it offers itself to the latter, ready
made, so to speak; the loftiest intellectual or artistic inspirations are flashes which
strike down into the awaiting brain, when maintaining that passive expectant
attitude which is the condition in which a higher message may be received.
The senses are not the thinking principle. They need to be controlled by
consciousness; thus, people blind from birth, when suddenly made to see,
cannot judge either distance or perspective; like animals and primitive men, they
see nothing but colors on a surface.
Science
says also: the organ is created for the function it has to perform; again
a mistake. The eyes of the foetus are constructed in the darkness of the womb.
The human germ, notwithstanding its unconsciousness and its simplicity of
structure, develops a body that is complex and capable of a considerable degree
of consciousness; though itself unintelligent, it produces prodigies of intelligence
in this body; here, consequently, the effect would be greatly superior to the
cause, which is absurd. Outside of the body and the germ is a supreme
Intelligence which creates the models of forms and carries out their construction.
This Intelligence is the Soul of the world.
If
Consciousness per se, or the Soul, is above all [Page 19] direct proof at the
present stage of human evolution, the vehicles through which it functions are
more or less apparent to us provided they are capable of affecting the brain.
At the present stage of human evolution, this is the case only with the astral
body;
the other bodies are too fine to manifest through the nervous system such
characteristics as are calculated to furnish scientists with a proof of their
existence; they can only be felt and proved in and by Yoga [Present-day man
possesses four bodies of increasing fineness, the elements of which
interpenetrate. Proceeding from the most dense, these are: The physical, the
astral, the mental, and the causal body. In certain conditions they are capable
of disassociation, and they last for a longer or a shorter time. The astral
body, also
called the body of desire, animal soul (Kâma-rûpa, in Sanskrit) is the seat of
sensation. Evolution has in store for us higher bodies still — the buddhic body, the
atmic body, etc. . . . but these need only be mentioned at this point.
Yoga — Sanskrit, union — is a training of the different bodies of man by the will;
its object is to make of these bodies complete and perfect instruments, capable
of responding to the vibrations of the outer universe as well as to those of
the individual soul. When this process is accomplished, man can receive,
consciously and at will, in any one of his bodies, vibrations received by the
soul primarily in one of the others; for instance, he may feel in the physical
brain the
direct action of his astral or higher bodies; he may also leave the physical,
and feel directly in his astral body the action of the mental body, and so
on.
Yoga can be practiced only under the guidance of a Master, i.e., a highly
developed being, capable of guiding the student safely through the dangers
incidental to this training]
It
is not without importance, however, to set forth [Page 20] the proofs of the
existence of a vehicle of consciousness immediately above the physical, for
it affords us a wider horizon and throws far more light on the rest of the
subject.
PROOFS OF THE ASTRAL BODY
Certain
normal and abnormal or morbid phenomena in man have proved the existence
of this vehicle, which we will call the higher consciousness, for it is
far greater than normal, waking consciousness, that of the brain. In the
somewhat rare cases in which this consciousness is expressed in the physical
world, it is forced to make use of the brain. Now, in the majority of men,
the latter is still incapable of vibrating harmoniously with the matter which
forms the astral
vehicle; this is because the density of the atoms of the brain cells which
preside over thought is incapable of reproducing the rapid vibrations of
the finer matter
belonging to the body immediately above it. By special training (the yoga of the
Hindus), by a particular constitution of body (sensitiveness], by certain special
methods (hypnotism), or in certain maladies (somnambulism), the brain may
become receptive to these vibrations, and receive from them an impression,
though always an imperfect one. The rarity of this impression, its imperfection,
and especially the necessity for the [Page 21] vibration of the physical brain that it
may be manifested in our environment; all these have made it very difficult
to prove the existence of this higher vehicle; still, there are certain considerations
which show that it exists, and that it alone is capable of explaining the most
characteristic phenomena of the higher consciousness.
Let us first define these two states of consciousness rather more completely, and
fix their limits.
Normal
consciousness is that which functions during waking hours, when the brain
is in full physiological activity, freely and completely related to the
outer
physical world. This consciousness is more or less developed according to the
individual, but its component parts — sensation, emotion, sentiment, reason,
intelligence, will, intuition — do not exceed known limits; for instance, we do not
find clairvoyance, the prophetic faculty, and certain other abnormal faculties,
which we shall class under the higher consciousness.
The
higher consciousness works in the astral body, whether externalised or not;
it seldom manifests itself, and then incompletely; it is accompanied by the
more or less complete inhibition of the senses, and by a kind of sleep in
which the
relations of the subject with the physical world are wholly or partially suspended.
The characteristics of this state are greater keenness of the normal [Page 22]
faculties, and the appearance of new ones, which are often inexplicable and
extraordinary and the more remarkable in proportion as sleep is more profound,
the brain calmer, or the physiological state more abnormal.
How
can we explain the paradox that faculties shown by a brain in a state of
inactivity cover an extent of ground which the brain in a state of activity
cannot
approach ? The reason is that the brain, in this case, is not an instrument
moved directly by the cause of consciousness, the soul, but a simple recipient, which the
soul, then centered in the astral body, impresses on returning to the physical
body (if it has been far away) or impresses directly when, whilst acting in the finer
vehicle, the latter has not left the body.[When the astral body is externalised,
the subject cannot speak; he must await its return; when only partially
externalised or not at all, and consciousness is centered in it, the subject
can speak and relate what he sees afar off, for astral vision is possible at
enormous
distances. Such cases as these are frequently met with]
In other words, the brain, by reason of its functional inactivity, vibrates little or not
at all in its higher centers; it plays the part of a sounding-board at rest, capable of
vibrating sympathetically under the influence of a similar board placed by its side.
The
necessity of cerebral quiet, if the higher consciousness [Page 23] is to make an
impression, is now easy to understand; the finer vibration of the astral body
cannot be impressed upon the brain when the latter is already strongly vibrating
under the action of normal consciousness. For this reason also, the deeper
the sleep of the physical body the better the higher consciousness manifests
itself.
In ordinary man, organic quiet is scarcely ever complete during sleep; the brain,
as we shall see shortly, automatically repeats the vibrations which normal
consciousness has called forth during the waking state; this, together with an
habitual density of the nervous elements, too great to respond to the higher
vibration, explains the rarity and the confused state of the impression of astral
consciousness on the brain.
The facts relating to the higher consciousness are as numerous as they are
varied. We shall not enter into full details, but choose only a few phenomena
quoted in well-known works.
MANIFESTATIONS
OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS
DURING THE
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SLEEP
Normal
dream. During normal sleep there exists a special consciousness which
must not be confounded either with waking consciousness or [Page 24] with that of
the astral body. It is due to the automatic, cerebral vibration which continues
during sleep, and which the soul examines on its return to the body — when
awake. This dream is generally an absurd one, and the reason the dreamer
notices it only on awaking is that he is absent from the visible body during
sleep.
The
proof of the departure of the astral body during sleep has been ascertained
by a certain number of seers, But the absurdity of the commonplace dream is
a rational proof thereof, one which must here be mentioned. As another rational
proof of the existence of a second vehicle of consciousness, we must also notice
the regular registering of the commonplace dream, because it takes place in
the
brain, and the habitual non-registering of the true dream experience, because
this latter takes place in the externalised astral body.
Why does the astral body leave the physical during sleep ? This question is
beyond our power to answer, though a few considerations on this point may be
advanced.
Sleep
is characterised by the transfer of consciousness from the physical to the
astral body; this transfer seems to take place normally under the influence
of bodily fatigue. After the day's activity, the senses no longer afford
keen
sensations, and as it is the energy of these sensations [Page 25] that keeps the
consciousness “centered” in the brain; [In 1876, in a Leipzig hospital, there was
a patient possessed of neither sensibility nor muscular sense. He had only
sight in the right eye and hearing in the left ear. If this eye and ear were
closed, the
patient immediately fell asleep. Neither by being touched nor shaken could
he be awakened; to effect this, it was necessary to open his eye and unstop
his ear.
(Archiv für die ges Physiologie, vol 15, p 573), this consciousness, when the
senses are lulled to sleep, centers in the finer body, which then leaves the
physical body with a slight shock.
It
is, however, of the real dream — which is at times so intelligent
that it has been called lucid, and at all events is reasonable, logical,
and coordinate — that we
wish to speak. In most cases this dream consists of a series of thoughts due
to the soul in action in the astral body; it is sometimes the result of seeing
mental
pictures of the future [These pictures are often visible
in the astral world; they explain the prophetic faculty of ordinary seers] or else it represents quite
another form of animistic activity, as circumstances and the degree of the
dreamer's
development permit.
It
is in the lucid dream — whether belonging to normal or to abnormal sleep — that
occur those numerous and well-known cases of visions past or future to be found
in so many of the books dealing with this special subject.
To
these same states of higher consciousness are due such productions as Walter
Scott's Ivanhoe. The author, suffering from fever, wrote this work whilst in
a kind of delirious condition; Ivanhoe was printed before the recovery of the
author, who, on reading it at a later date, had not the slightest recollection
that it
was his own production. (Ribot's Maladies de la Mémoire, p 41.)
Walter Scott remembered nothing, because Ivanhoe was the fruit of the astral
consciousness impressed upon a brain which fever had rendered temporarily
receptive to the higher vibrations.
There are certain peculiarities of the real dream which prove almost
mathematically the superior nature of the vehicle which gives expression to it.
This dream, for instance, is never of a fatiguing nature, however long it may
appear to last, because it is only an instantaneous impression made upon the
brain by the astral body, when the latter returns to the physical body, on awaking.
On the other hand, the cerebral ideation of the waking state is fatiguing if intense
or prolonged, or if the nervous system of the thinker is deprived of its normal
power of resistance (in neurasthenia); the commonplace (brain) dream is also
fatiguing if prolonged or at all vivid.
Another
peculiarity is that a, dream — the real [Page 27] dream — which would
require several years of life on earth for its realization, can take place
in a second. The dream of Maury (Le Sommeil et le RĂŞve, p. 161), who in half a
second lived through three years of the French Revolution, and many other
dreams of the same nature, are instances of this. Now, Fechner has proved,
in his Elemente der Psychophysik, first, that a fraction of a second is needed for the
sensorial contact to cause the brain to vibrate — this prevents our perceiving the
growth of a plant and enables us to see a circle of fire when a piece of glowing
coal is rapidly whirled round; secondly, that another fraction of a second
is needed for the cerebral vibration to be transformed into sensation. We might
add
that a third fraction of a second is needed for sensation to be transformed
into ideation, proving that in these special dreams there can have been no
more than
an instantaneous, mass impression of all the elements of the dream upon the
brain, [In such cases, by association of ideas or any other influence, the
soul dramatizes the physical impression which calls forth the dream, and creates
the
long phantasmagoria of this dream in so short a time as to be scarcely
appreciable. Between the sleeping physical body and the externalised astral
body there is so close a degree of sympathy that the latter is conscious of
everything that takes place in the former. This explains why the astral body
returns so rapidly to the physical when a noise, light, or any other sensation
impresses this latter] and that the dream itself has [Page 28] been produced by the
imaginative action of the soul in the astral body, an extremely subtle one,
whose vibratory power is such as to transform altogether our ordinary notions
of time
and space.
The death - bed dream. In dying people, the bodily senses gradually lose their
vitality, and by degrees the soul concentrates itself within the finer vehicle. From
that time signs of the higher consciousness appear, time is inordinately
prolonged, visions present themselves, the prophetic faculty, is sometimes
manifested, and verified cases are related of removal to a distance, like that of
the Alsatian woman dying on board ship. During the final coma she went to Rio
de Janeiro and commended her child to the keeping of a fellow-countryman.
(D'Assier's L'humanité posthume, p. 47.) Similar instances are found in The Night
Side of Nature, by C. Crowe, as well as in other works of the same kind.
The
dream of intoxication. Under the influence of soporifics the same transfer of
consciousness is produced, and we meet with more or less remarkable
phenomena due to the higher consciousness. Opium smokers and eaters of
hashish are able to form ideas with such rapidity that minutes seem to them
to be years, and a few moments in dreamland delude them into the idea [Page 29] that
they have lived through a whole life. (Hervey's Les rêves et les moyens de les
diriger)
The
dream of asphyxia. During asphyxia by submersion the higher
consciousness enters into a minute study of the life now running to its close.
In a few moments it sees the whole of it again in its smallest details.
Carl du Prel
(Philos der Mystik) gives several instances of this; Haddock (Somnolism and
Psychism, p. 213) quotes, among other cases, that
of Admiral Beaufort. During two minutes' loss of consciousness in a drowning
condition, he saw again every
detail of his life, all his actions, including their causes, collateral circumstances,
their effects, and the reflections of the victim on the good and evil that
had
resulted therefrom.
Perty's
account (Die Mystischen Erscheinungen der Menschlichen Natur)
of Catherine Emmerich, the somnambulist nun, who, when dying, saw again
the
whole of her past life, would incline one to think that this strange phenomenon,
which traditional Catholicism appears to have called the “Private Judgment”, and
which theosophy defines with greater preciseness is not limited to asphyxia
by submersion, but is the regular accompaniment of life's ending.[Page
30]
MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN VARIOUS
CASES OF MENTAL FACULTIES LOST
TO NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS
A rather large number of people born blind have images in dreams, and can see
with the higher consciousness, when placed in a state of somnambulism. This
proves that the higher consciousness possesses the power of vision on its own
plane, and can impress images thereof on the brain.
That
this impression may be translated into the language of the physical plane,[We
say “language of the physical plane” because the soul, in the astral
body, sees in four dimensions, i.e. all the parts of an object at once, as though
these parts were spread out on a two-dimensional plane. Consequently, the
higher vision needs interpretation in order to be expressed on the physical
plane] it must evidently take place in one of the physical centres of vision
which make
possible three-dimensional sight; these centres may be intact even when the
external visual apparatus does not exist or is incapable of functioning.
A
deaf and dumb idiot became intelligent and spoke during spontaneous somnambulism
(Steinbach's Der Dichter ein Seher). This is a case which
appears to us difficult to explain fully; indeed, if the impression of the
higher vibration on that portion of the brain which presides over intelligence [Page 31] and
thought can be understood, it is not easy to see how tongue and lips could
suddenly utter precise sounds which they had never produced before. Another
factor must have intervened here, as was the case with the child prophets of
the
Camisards. (V. Figuier's Histoire du merveilleux, etc.)
Young
Hébert, who had gone mad as the result of a wound, regained full
consciousness, the higher consciousness, during somnambulism. (Puysegur's Journal du traitement du jeune HĂ©bert?)
Dr.
Teste [Manuel pratique du magnétisme animal] came across madmen who became
sane just before death, i.e when consciousness was passing into the astral body.
He also mentions a servant girl, quite uneducated and of ordinary intelligence,
who nevertheless became a veritable philosopher during mesmeric
somnambulism and delivered learned discourses on lofty problems dealing with
cosmogony.
This proves that the vibratory scale of the finer vehicle extends far beyond that of
the physical, and that the soul cannot impress on this latter vehicle all that it
knows when functioning in the former. By this we do not mean that it is
omniscient as soon as it has left the visible body; this opinion, a current one, is
contrary to the law of evolution, and will not bear examination.[Page 32]
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS
UNDER THE FORM
OF MEMORY
The memory that is lost by the brain is preserved in its entirety by the
finer vehicle.
A musician, a friend of Hervey's, once heard a remarkable piece of music; he
remembered it on awaking, and wrote it down, regarding it as his own inspiration.
Many years afterwards, he found it in an old parcel of music where he knew it
had been long before; he had totally forgotten it in his normal consciousness.
(Hervey's Dreams.)
Coleridge tells of a servant girl who, when in a state of delirium, would recite long
passages of Hebrew which she had formerly heard from the lips of a priest in
whose service she had been. In the same way, she would repeat passages from
Latin and Greek theological books, which she had heard under the same
circumstances; in her normal state, she had no recollection whatever of all this.
(Dr. Carpenter's Mental Physiology, p. 437, 1881 edition.)
Ricard
(Physiologie et Hygiène du MagnĂ©tisme, p. 183) relates the case of a young man,
possessed of an ordinary memory, but who, in somnambulism, could repeat
almost word for word a sermon he had heard or a book he had read.
Mayo, the physiologist, states that an ignorant young girl, in a state of
somnambulism, wrote whole [Page 33] pages of a treatise on astronomy, including
figures and calculations, which she had probably read in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, for the treatise was afterwards found in that work. ( Truths in Popular
Superstitions)
Ladame (La
Névrose hypnotique, p. 105) mentions a woman who, having only on
one occasion been to the theatre, was able, during somnambulism, to sing the
whole of the second act of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, an opera of which she knew
nothing whatever in her waking state.
During experiments with the inhaling of protoxyde of azote, H. Davy said that
normal consciousness disappeared, and was followed by a wonderful power of
recalling, past events. (Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions, p. 162.)
MANIFESTATIONS
OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS
IN PHENOMENA OF
DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS
The “strata
of memory” met
with in many cases also prove the existence of the second vehicle of consciousness
which we are trying to demonstrate.
Certain dreams continue night after night, beginning again just where they
stopped the previous night; this is noticed in the case of those who talk in their
sleep and in spontaneous or forced somnambulism. [Page 34]
The memory of one intoxicated, or in a state of fever delirium is lost when
consciousness returns from the astral to the physical body; it comes back on the
return of the delirium or the intoxication.
The same thing takes place in madness; at the termination of a crisis, the
patients take up the past just where they left it. (Wienholt's Heilkraft) Kerner
relates that one of these unfortunate persons, after an illness lasting several
years, remembered the last thing he did before the crisis happened, his first
question being whether the tools with which he had been cutting up wood had
been put away. During the whole of the interval he had been living in his higher
consciousness.
Ribot (Maladies
de la Mémoire p. 63) has noted the fact that the same thing
happens with those who fall into a state of coma after having received a hurt or
wound.
MANIFESTATIONS
OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS,
INDICATING NOT ONLY THAT IT EXTENDS FARTHER THAN NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS,
BUT DOMINATES,
AND IS SEPARATED FROM IT, RECOGNISING THAT ITS
VEHICLE
—THE
BODY - IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN INSTRUMENT
The Soul functioning in the finer body sees the physical body in a state of coma.
Dr. Abercromtiie relates the case of a child aged four, who was [Page 35]
trepanned as the result of fracture of the skull, and whilst in a state of coma. He
never knew what happened. At the age of fifteen, during an attack of fever, the
higher consciousness impressed itself upon the brain, and he remembered every
detail of the accident; he described to his mother where he had felt the pain, the
operation, the people present, their number, functions, the clothes they wore, the
instruments used, etc. (Kerner, Magikon, vol. 3, p. 364.)
The Soul, in the finer body, during somnambulism, is separated both from the
physical body and from normal consciousness, it calmly foresees the illness or
the death of the denser body on which it sometimes imposes serious operations.
Such facts were numerous in the case of magnetisers in olden days.
Deleuze
(Histoire critique, du magnétisme animal, volume 2, page 173) had a patient who, in a state
of somnambulism, held moral, philosophical, and religious opinions quite contrary
to those of his waking state.
Charpignon
(Physiol,
médecine. et métaphys. du magnétisme, p. 341)
tells of a patient who, when awake, wished to go to the theatre, but
during somnambulism refused to do so, saying: “She wants to go,
but / don't want”. On Charpignon
recommending that she should try to turn her aside [Page
36] from her purpose,
she replied: “ What can I do ? She is mad! ”
Deleuze
(Instructions pratiques sur le magnétisme animal, page 121) says that many somnambulists
look into their body when the latter is ill; that they are often indifferent
to its sufferings, and sometimes are not even willing to prescribe remedies
to cure it.
Chardel
(Esquisse de la nature humaine expliquée par le magnétisme animal, page 282) relates
that many somnambulists are unwilling to be awakened so as not to return to
a
body which is a hindrance to them.
There
are many madmen who speak of their body in the third person. (Ladame,
La Névrose, p. 43). They function in the non-externalised
finer vehicle. Some explain their use of the third person as follows: — “ It is
the body; it is I who am the spirit”.
MANIFESTATION
OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS
IN THE PHENOMENA
OF POSSESSION AND MATERIALIZATION
In
these strange phenomena, not only manifestations of the higher consciousness,
analogous with or similar to those just cited, have been noted,
but also a number of facts which prove, to some extent, the casual presence
in a normal human body or in materialized abnormal forms, of beings other [Page 37]
than that which constitutes the personality of the one possessed, or of the
medium who conditions these materializations. On this point, we would mention
the well-known investigations of Sir W. Crookes (Katie King), those of Colonel de
Rochas (Vincent, Un cas de changement de personnalité - Lotus Bleu, 1896), and
similar experiments of other savants.
“Incarnation
mediums” have
often lent their physical bodies to dis-incarnated human entities, whose
account of what happened or whose identity it has been
possible to verify. Here I will mention only one case amongst several others.
I heard it from my friend, D. A. Courmes, a retired naval captain, a man
who is
well-informed in these matters, thoroughly sincere, and of unquestioned veracity.
In
1895, he happened to be off Algiers, on a training vessel. A boat had sunk
in the
harbour, and a man was drowned. His body had not been recovered. On the
evening of the accident, my friend, accompanied by a doctor, a professor,
and
the vice-president of the Court of Algiers, attended a spiritualistic meeting
in the town. One of these “incarnation mediums” happened to be present.
M. Courmes suggested that the drowned man should be called up. The latter
answered to the call, entered the medium, whose voice and attitude [Page
38]
immediately changed. He gave the following account of what had
taken place: “ When the boat sank, I was on the ladder. I was hurled down,
my right leg passed between two bars, occasioning fracture of the leg, and
preventing me from releasing myself. My body will be found caught in the ladder
when the boat is brought to the surface. It is useless to seek elsewhere”.
This account was shortly afterwards confirmed.
These phenomena are more frequent than one would imagine; a sufficient
number might be given to show that, judging from the theory of probabilities,
serious consideration should be given to them.
MANIFESTATIONS
OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN APPARITIONS
A
final group of phenomena to which I wish to call attention is the one which
goes under the name of apparitions. A considerable number of these are to
be found;
we will confine ourselves, however, to referring the reader to a volume entitled
Phantasms of the Living, due to the patient investigations of a distinguished body
of foreign savants. Here we find, first of all, proof of the transmission of
thought to a distance. An examination into the conditions under which
most of these cases
took place has convinced several students of [Page 39] the existence of the finer body which we are here endeavouring to
demonstrate, as well as of the possibility of its instantaneous transference
to a great distance. As the proofs afforded by apparitions are not mathematical, i.e.,
indisputable, and as they give room for a variety of opinions, we will make
no attempt to detail them, preferring to pass on to a final proof — the least important,
perhaps, from a general point of view, since it is limited to the individual
possessing it; the only absolute and mathematical one, however, to the man
who
has obtained it: — the personal proof.
There
are persons — few in number, true — who, under divers influences, have
been able to leave the physical body and see it sleeping on a couch. They have
freely moved in an environment — the astral world — similar to our physical one in
some respects, though different in many others, and have returned again to
the body, bringing back the memory of their wanderings. These accounts have
been
given by persons deserving of credence and not subject to hallucinations.
There
are other individuals, though not so numerous — of whom we have the
pleasure of knowing some personally — who are able to leave their physical
bodies and return at will. They travel to great distances with the utmost rapidity
and bring back a complete memory of their journeying.[Page 40]
D'Assier gives a typical case in his work. (L’Humanité
posthume, p. 59.)
Such
is the proof we look upon as irrefutable, as complete and perfect. The man
who can thus travel freely in his finer body knows that the physical body is
only a vehicle adapted to the physical world and necessary for life in this
world; he
knows) that consciousness does not cease to function, and that the universe
by no means provides the conditions for a state of nothingness, once this
body of
flesh is laid aside.
At
this stage of his evolution man can, in addition, make use of his astral
body at will, and obtain on the astral plane, first by reason and intuition,
afterwards by
personal experience, proof of another vehicle of consciousness — the
mental body. At a further stage he obtains the certainty of possession of the
causal body, then of higher bodies, and from that time he can no longer doubt
the teachings of the Elder Brothers, those who have entered the higher evolution,
the worlds that are divine. He knows, beyond all possibility of doubt, that
what the
ordinary man expresses in such childish language regarding these lofty
problems, what he calls the Absolute and the Manifested, God and the Universe,
the soul and the body, are more vitally true than he imagined; he sees that
these words are dense veils [Page
41] that conceal the supreme, ineffable, infinite Being,
of whom manifested beings are illusory “aspects”, facets of the divine Jewel.[There
are other proofs of the existence of the causal body, the reincarnating vehicle
; the principal one is given in the middle of Chapter 3. It is there shown
that the physical germs explain only a very small portion of heredity, and
that logic imperiously demands the existence of an invisible, durable body,
capable of gathering up the gems which preserve the moral and intellectual
qualities of
man]
With
this introduction, we will plunge at once into the heart of the subject.
[Page 42]
CHAPTER II
REINCARNATION AND THE MORAL LAW
The Goodness, Justice, and Omnipotence of God are the guarantees of
Providence.
It is absolutely impossible that the faintest breath of injustice should ever disturb
the Universe. Every time the Law appears to be violated, every time Justice
seems outraged, we may be certain that it is our ignorance alone that is at work,
and that a deeper knowledge of the net-work of evolution and of the lines of
action created by human free will, sooner or later, will dissipate our error.
For
all that, the whole universe appears to be the very incarnation of injustice.
The constellations as they come into manifestation shatter the heavens with
their titanic combats; it is the vampirism of the greatest among them that
creates the
suns, thus inaugurating egoism from the very beginning. Everywhere on earth
is heard the cry of pain, a never-ending struggle; sacrifice is everywhere,
whether
voluntary or forced, offered [Page 43] freely or taken unwillingly. The law of the
strongest is the universal tyranny. The vegetable kingdom feeds upon the
mineral, and in its turn forms nourishment for the animal; the giants of the
forests spread ruin in every direction, beneath their destructive influence
the spent,
exhausted soil can nourish nothing but weeds and shrubs of no importance. In
the animal kingdom a war to the death is ever being waged, a terrible destruction
in which those best armed for the fray pitilessly devour the weak and
defenseless. Man piles up every kind and method of destruction, cruelty and
barbarity of every sort; he tears away gold from the bowels of the earth, mutilates
the mighty forests, exhausts the soil by intensive culture, harasses and tortures
animals when unable to utilize their muscular strength, and, in addition, kills
them when their flesh is eatable; his most careful calculations are the auxiliaries
of his
insatiable egoism, and, by might or cunning, he crushes everything that hinders
or inconveniences him. Finally, from time to time, the Elements mingle their
awful voice in this concert of pain and despair, and we find hurricanes and
floods,
fires and earthquakes pile up colossal wreck and ruin in a few hours, on which
scenes
of destruction the morrow's calm and glorious sun sheds his impassive beams.
And
so, before reaching individual evil and [Page
44] apparent
injustice, there rises up before us at the very outset the threatening spectre
of universal evil and
injustice. This problem is so closely bound up with our subject that we are
compelled to spend a short time in considering it.
WHY
DOES PAIN EXIST?
To
admit, as do certain ignorant fatalists, that the Universe was created by
the stroke of some magic wand, and that each planet, kingdom, and being is
condemned, so to speak, to a definite crystallization in the state in which
it has
pleased God to fix it; to admit that the mineral will remain a mineral throughout
eternity, that the vegetable will ever reproduce the same types, that the animal
will definitely be confined to his instincts and impulses, without the hope,
some day, of developing the superior mentality of his torturers in human
form; to admit
that man will never be anything but man, i.e a being in whom the passions
have full play whereas the virtues are scarcely born; to admit that there is
no final goal — perfection, the divine state — to crown man's labor;
all this is to refuse to recognize evolution, to deny the progress everywhere
apparent, to set divine below human justice; blasphemy, in a word.
It
has been said by unthinking Christians that [Page
45] evidently
God created human suffering, so that those might gain Heaven who, but for
this suffering,
would have no right to it. To speak thus is to represent the Supreme Goodness
in a very unworthy aspect and to attribute the most gratuitous cruelty
to Divine
Justice. When, too, we see that this absurd reasoning explains neither the
sufferings of animals, which have no right to enjoy the felicity of heaven,
they say, nor the fact [Fortunately, this is a fact only
in the imagination of those who
are blinded by faith] that “there are many called but few
chosen”, nor the saying that “outside the Church there is no salvation”, although
for ages past God has caused millions of men to be born in countries where
the Gospel has not been preached, we shall not be astonished to find that those
who arrogate to themselves a monopoly of Truth bring forward none but arguments
of childish folly in support of their claims.
Generally,
however, it is original sin that is advanced as the cause of suffering.
The
absurdity of this doctrine is so apparent that it has lost all credence by
enlightened members of the Christian faith. First of all, it does not explain
the sufferings of animals, which have had no participation in this sin, nor
does it
account for the unequal [Page
46] distribution of pain amongst men themselves.
This sin being the same for all at birth, [Before men had
sinned individually on earth] punishment ought to have been
equally severe for all, and we ought not to see such frightful disproportions
as are to be found in the condition of children who have not attained to the
age of reason, i.e of responsibility. Saint Augustine
felt the weight of this consideration; he reflected long on this torturing problem:
“When
I come to consider the sufferings of children”, he says, “believe
me, I am in a state of terrible perplexity. I have no wish whatever to
speak only of the
punishment inflicted on them after this life by eternal damnation to which
they are of necessity condemned if they have left their bodies without
receiving the
sacrament of Christ, but of the pains they endure in this present life, under
our very eyes. Did I wish to examine these sufferings, time would fail
me rather than
instances thereof; they languish in sickness, are torn by pain, tortured by
hunger and thirst, weakened in their organs, deprived of their senses,
and sometimes
tormented by unclean beings. I should have to show how they can with justice
be subjected to such things, at a time when they are yet without sin. It
cannot be
said that they suffer [Page
47] unknown to God or that God can do nothing against
their tormentors, nor that He can create or allow unjust punishment. When men
suffer, we say they are being punished for their crimes, but this can be applied
only to adults. As children have in them no sin capable of meriting so terrible
a punishment, tell me what answer can be given? ”
The
answer, indeed, cannot be made that original sin is capable of explaining
this unequal retribution; but then, ought not the very absurdity of the
consequences
due to such sin to justify one in refusing to examine this argument ? What
soul could admit that the innocent should be punished for the guilty ?
Does human
justice, in spite of its imperfection, punish the offspring of criminals ?
Can the millions of descendants of the mythical Adam have been chastised
for a crime in
which they have had no share ? And would this chastisement, multiplied millions
of times without the faintest reason, never have stirred the conscience of
the Church ? Saint Augustine could not make up his mind to accuse God of
injustice; so, to avoid disputing the truth of the Christian teaching in
which he wholly believed, he invented his famous theory of “generation”,
often called “translation”.
Men
suffer because of original sin, he says, but it would not be just of God
to punish them for this, [Page
48] had they not shared therein [De corruptione
et gratia, chap 7, No 19; Cont. .Jul Pelag, Book 4, chap 3, No
16, et De Peccat. merit.
et remiss., Book 3, chap 4, No 7]; this, indeed, they
have done, for the soul of a man was not created directly, by God, at the moment
of the birth of the body; it is a branch taken from the soul of his father,
as the latter's comes from that of his
parents; thus, ascending the genealogical chain, we see that all souls issue
from that of the common father of mankind: Adam. [ “Omnes
illae unus homo fuerant”. De Peccat. merit. et remiss. , Book
1, chap 10, No 11. Theologians pass over St Augustine’s adoption of this
theory, giving one to understand that he abandoned his error shortly before
his death. (Dictionnaire de Théolologie by Abbé Berger;
volume viii, article x “Traduciens” )]
So
that Saint Augustine preferred to deny the creation of souls and to derive
them from the soul of Adam, through a successive progeny of human vehicles,
rather than to allow God to be charged with injustice. We are not called upon
to demonstrate the falsity of his hypothesis, which the Church has been
forced to
condemn, though without replacing it with a better theory; all the same, if
human souls suffer from a sin in which they have not individually and consciously
participated — and such is the case, for even granting that translation
be a fact, these souls existed in Adam only potentially [Page
49] , as unconscious,
undeveloped germs, when the sin took place — their punishment is none
the less arbitrary and revolting. Saint Augustine believed he was justifying
Providence; he succeeded only in deceiving his own reason and revolted sense
of justice, but he
preferred by suggestion to deceive himself to such an extent as to believe
in the reality of his desire rather than enrol himself against the Church.
In
order to reconcile divine Justice with the injustice of punishing all for
the fault of one alone, the theologians also said: “Adam sinned, his sin
has been distributed over the whole of his race, but God, by sending down
his son, instituted baptism; and the waters of the sacrament wash the stains
of original sin from the souls of men”.
This
reply is as childish as the former. As a matter of fact, according to the
Church, about four thousand years intervened between the sin of Adam and the
coming of the Redeemer, and so only after that interval did the souls of the
just, who were waiting in the Life Beyond for the coming of the Messiah,
enter Paradise!
Would
not this delay in itself be an injustice ? Ought not baptism to have been
instituted immediately after the sin, and should it not have been placed within
the reach of all ? Besides, do we not see that even in our days, two thousand
years after [Page
50] the coming of the Christ, millions of human beings are
born and die without ever having heard of the existence of this sacrament.
This part of the argument is too puerile to dwell upon at length, but we
will spend a few moments on it to show definitely how powerless this theory
is to explain evil.
Before
teaching the doctrine of “Limbo”, the Church accepted the idea of the
damnation of children who died without being baptized, as we have just seen
in the case of Saint Augustine.[See also, on this subject,
his letter to Sixtus, before the latter became Pope. Chap vii, No 31, and
chap vi, No 27] Bossuet,
with incredible blindness, also accepted it; and, sad to relate, his reason
did not feel called upon to furnish an explanation which would justify Providence,
as was
the case with Saint Augustine. He rejected “translation”, and discovered nothing
with which to veil the blasphemy.
On
this point the following is a faithful résumĂ© of his letter
to Pope Innocent XII.
The
damnation of children who have died without being baptized must be firmly
believed by the Church. They are guilty because they are born under the wrath
of God and in the power of Darkness. Children of wrath by nature, objects
of hatred
and aversion, hurled into Hell with the rest of the damned, they will remain
there
for all eternity punished by the horrible vengeance of the Demon.[Page
51]
Such
also are the decisions of the learned Denis Pétau, the most
eminent Bellarmin, the Councils of Lyons, of Florence, and of Trent; for these
things are not decided by human considerations, but by the authority of tradition
and of the Scriptures.
Such
logic makes one really doubt human reason, and reminds one of the spirit
with which the courts of the Holy Inquisition were inspired. Where in Nature
can there be found such lack of proportion between cause and effect, crime
and punishment ? Have such arguments ever been justified by the voice of
conscience ?
Official
Christianity remains powerless to explain suffering. Let us see what we can
learn from the philosophies and religions of the past and the greatest of
modern philosophers, as well as from the admirable résumés of
Teachers of theosophy.
The
problem of suffering is one with that of life, i.e with that of evolution
in general. The object of the successive worlds is the creation of millions
of centers of consciousness in the germinal state (souls} and the
transformation of these germs into divinities similar to their father, God.
This is the divine multiplication, creating innumerable “gods”, in God.
To
produce divine germs, homogeneous Unity must .limit its immensity and create
within itself [Page
52] the diversity of matter, of form. This can be obtained
by the creation of “multiplicity” and by the “limitation” of what might be
called a portion of Divinity. Now, limitation implies imperfection, both general
and individual, i.e suffering; and multiplicity implies diversity of
needs and interests, forced submission to the general law i.e suffering
again. That the divine germs may evolve, their potentialities must be awakened
by their surroundings; in other words, by the action of the “opposites”,
and sensation must come into being; the action of the opposites on sensation
is also a cause of pain.
Outside
of the unknown Being — which will be known at the end of
evolution — nothing can be. Everything is in Him, He is all; the
worlds, time and space are “aspects” which He assumes from time to time [ The
movements of “creation” and “absorption”, which are called in Hindu
symbolism the outbreathing and the inbreathing of Brahmâ];
for this reason it has been said that the Universe is an illusion, which may
be expressed more clearly by saying that it is an illusion to believe that what
exists is not one form of divine activity, an “aspect” of God.
That
anything may exist, or rather that aspects of God may appear, there must
be manifested in [Page
53] Him a special mode of being, to call forth what we
designate as multiplicity.
That
multiplicity [Creation] may be manifest,
differences must be produced in Unity; these differences in the world are
the “pairs of opposites” — the contraries.
These contraries are everywhere.
Matter
is the fulcrum of force — both of these terms being “aspects” of
God — and
without a fulcrum no force can manifest itself; there is no heat without cold,
and when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in the southern.
There
is no movement that does not depend upon a state of rest, no light without
shadow, no pleasure without the faculty of pain, no freedom that is not founded
upon necessity, no good that does not betoken an evil.
The
following are a few examples of duality taken from nature. The current
of electricity is polarised into a positive and a negative current. It
is the same with
the magnet; though you break a bar into a hundred pieces, you bring into being
a hundred small magnets, each possessing its positive and negative side;
you will
not have destroyed the “duality”, the opposites.
Like
the magnet, the solar spectrum forms two [Page
54] series,
separated by a neutral point, the blue series and the red one, united by the
violet. [After violet
and red there stretches quite another spectrum, invisible to the human eye;
it is because violet is at the beginning of our known spectrum, that one might
think it
was not the neutral point thereof]
|
Violet |
|
Indigo |
|
Yellow |
Blue |
|
Orange |
Green |
|
Red |
The terms of the two series are respectively complimentary to each other; the
violet dominates the two groups of opposites and is a visible member of the axis
formed by the colors that might be called neutral.
Duality appears in every shape and form.
Symbolically,
we may say with the Hindus that the Universe begins and ends with two opposite
movements: an emanation from Brahmâ, it is born when the breast
of God sends forth the heavenly outbreathing, it dies, reabsorbed, when the
universal inbreathing takes place. These movements produce attraction and
repulsion, the aggregation and dissolution to be found everywhere. It is the
attraction of a force-center, the “laya center” of Theosophy, which permits
of the atomic condensation that gives it the envelope whose soul it is; when [Page
55] its
cycle of activity ends, attraction gives place to repulsion, the envelope is
destroyed by the return of its constituent elements to the source from which
they were drawn, and the soul is liberated until a future cycle of activity
begins.
Even the rhythm of pulmonary respiration, the contraction and dilation (systole
and diastole) of the heart, the ebb and flow of the tides, as also day and night,
sleeping and waking, summer and winter, life and death, are all products of that
law of contraries which rules creation.
These “opposites” are
the very essence of cosmic life, the twin pillars of universal equilibrium;
they have been represented in Solomon's symbolical
temple — here, the Universe — by Jakin and Boaz, the white and the black
columns; they are also the interlaced triangles of “Solomon's Seal”, the six-pointed
star, the two Old Men of the Kabbalah, the white Jehovah and the black Jehovah;
Eros and Anteros, the serpents of Mercury's caduceus, the
two
Sphinxes of the car of Osiris, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau,
the Chinese “Yang” and “Yin”, the goblet and staff of Tarot, man and woman.
All these images represent the same law.
Multiplicity,
the fruit of the contraries, makes its appearance in the forms born in infinite,
homogeneous Being; its goal is the goal of creation; [Page
56] the
production, in infinite Being, of centers which are developed by evolution
and finally become gods in God. These centers, or “souls”, these points in
the supreme Point, are divine in essence, though, so far, they have no share
at all in the perfection “manifested” by God; they are all “centers”, for
God is a sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere, but
they have not developed consciousness which is as yet only potential in them.
Like cuttings of willow which reproduce the mother-tree, these points, veritable
portions of God,
are capable of germinating, growing up, and becoming “I's”, self-conscious
beings, intelligent and endowed with will-power, and finally gods, having
developed the entire potentialities of the All by their repeated imprisonment
in the series of forms that make up the visible and invisible kingdoms of nature.
Every
form, i.e aggregate of substance-force, reflects within itself one of these
points of Divinity. This point is its Monad, its center of consciousness, or
soul; it is the cause which is manifested as qualities in the envelopes,
and these give it the
illusion of separateness for a certain period,[The soul believes itself distinct
from the All, because it is subjected to the illusion engendered by its body] just as a soap-bubble momentarily acquires a fictitious individuality [Page 57] and appears
separate from the atmosphere — of which it forms part — so long as its illusory
envelope endures.
Thus do men imagine themselves separate from one another, when all the time
their soul is nothing more than a drop of the divine Ocean, hidden momentarily in
a perishable body.
The
“contraries” are
the anvil and the hammer which slowly forge souls by producing what might
be called sensation in general, and sensation is a fertile
cause of suffering each time the vehicles of consciousness receive vibrations
that greatly exceed their fundamental capacity of sensation. Without sensation
however — consequently without suffering — the body could neither
walk, [Without the aid of the eyes, walking is impossible
to those suffering from plantar anaesthesia] nor see, nor hear, nor show any
disturbance brought to bear upon
it; there would exist no possible relation between the Universe and the “I”,
between the All and the parts, between bodies and souls; there would be no
consciousness, or sensation of being, since no vibration from without would
find an echo in the incarnated “centres” of
life; no knowledge would be possible; man would be, as it were, in a state
of nothingness; and, without suspecting it,
his body might at any moment be crushed to the ground by the forces of Nature.[Page
58]
But
these material necessities are not by any means the only ones that demand
sensation; without it, one of the principal objects of evolution — the
development of “Egos” — would be impossible. As an example borrowed from
the domain of physical sensation, we need only call to memory a well-known
experience in childhood.
All
who have been at a boarding school know how heavy and fetid is the atmosphere
of a dormitory in the early winter morning, when fifty boys have been
breathing the same air again and again during the whole of the night. And yet,
who suspected this until he had gone out for a few minutes and then returned
to the bed-room? It needed the “contrary”, the pure outside air, to make
known the state of the atmosphere inside. The contrast produced sensation — that
nauseous, suffocating impression of foul, mephitic air; suffering [Pleasure,
like every other form of sensation, produces the same results, though perhaps
with
less force] generated knowledge of the vitiated air; as the result of this
influence, the “centre of consciousness” felt itself an “I” distinct from its surroundings,
and its “self-consciousness” received a slight increase.
What
might be called passional sensibility — desire, emotion, impulse — is, like
physical sensation, another indispensable factor in evolution; it is the special
element in the development of the animal [Page 59] kingdom as well as of the less
evolved portion of the human kingdom.
The
young souls of mankind must receive the comparatively simple lessons of
sensation, desire, and passion, before beginning the far more complicated study
of mentality. But for desire, a host of needs could not be manifested, numberless
functions would remain inactive; the body would not feed itself, and would
die, were it not for hunger; danger would not be fled from, but for the
instinct of self-preservation; nor without this would there be any propagation
of the species.
None the less is this life of sensation the source of many evils; desire and
passion amongst human beings create terrible misery, fill prisons and hospitals,
and are at the root of all kinds of moral suffering. In its turn, intelligence — that
sensation so characteristic of the human state — is both an indispensable
necessity and the most fertile source of evil, so long as it has not experienced
a yearning for that inner “divinity”, deep in the heart of man, which calls
to it. A powerful lever of progress, it might convert this earth into a paradise,
whereas
it is the weapon which the strong, in their egoism, use to crush the feeble,
a terrible
weapon which either creates or intensifies all the evils under which the people
writhe in despair. Once it becomes the instrument of a [Page 60] regenerate
humanity, that is to say, when men have become compassionate, loving, and
devoted, then the social question will cease to exist, and the old instrument
of
torture will become a pledge of general happiness.
Even
spiritual sensibility is a cause of suffering to some noble souls who have
developed it, for however deep the joy of loving and giving oneself, intense
too is the pain of witnessing the cruel drama of life, that fratricidal struggle
in which
passion strikes without mercy, whilst illusion and ignorance deal blows even
more terrible, for into the wounds they make they instill the poison of revolt
and
despair.
The
action of multiplicity, and of its creators, the “contraries”, engenders still
other causes of suffering. Every being lives both for others and at their expense.
For instance, physical bodies are obliged to replace with food and nourishment
those particles which the various functions of life cause them to lose. The
vegetable kingdom takes its constituent elements from the mineral kingdom,
and itself serves as food for large portions of the animal kingdom; up
to this point
physical pain has not manifested itself, though there is a momentary arrest
of evolution for the animistic essence which represents the individual
in the
destroyed vegetable. A portion of the animal kingdom feeds on [Page 61] its own
members; man, too, extorts from this same kingdom a very heavy tribute; here,
the arrested evolution of the victims is all the more important, inasmuch as
their stage of evolution is higher, and the existence of a nervous system brings
the
possibility of suffering, suffering which certain influences [A magnetic
effect or an emotion. All travelers who have escaped from the attacks of wild
beasts
mention this effect of inhibition, manifested by the absence of fear and pain
at the moment of attack] either diminish or suppress altogether, when caused
by animal
destructiveness, but which may become intense when it is man who is the
sacrificer.
Among
the causes of pain, arising from multiplicity there is also the physical,
mental, and moral action exercised by the solidarity of all beings. By exchanging,
with those that come into contact with us, the products thrown off by our visible
and invisible bodies, we are the dispensers of good or ill-health. Everyone,
for instance, is aware of the far-reaching effects of an evil intellectual
and moral
example; physical contagion, in spite of the torture it inflicts, is far less
to be dreaded than moral contagion. The spiritual qualities alone do not
form a leaven
of evil; they are not the double-edged instruments we meet with elsewhere.
The reason of this is that they belong to the plane of [Page 62] Unity. But it is none the
less true that, though the presence of a highly developed soul is a help to
younger souls within its reach and influence, its powerful vibrations may,
from certain points of view, prove fatiguing to those still at the foot of
the ladder of
evolution. This is one of the many reasons that have given rise to the saying
that it is dangerous prematurely to enter the “circle of the ascetics”.
But
the most powerful causes of pain, due to multiplicity, are the ignorance
and the will of beings who have reached the human stage. Man can employ his
mental faculties for good or evil, and so long as he does not know definitely
that
he is the brother of all beings, i.e until his divine faculties have been developed,
and love and the spirit of sacrifice have taken possession of his heart, he
remains a terrible egoist, more to be dreaded than the criminal dominated by
a momentary burst of passion, for he acts in cold blood, he evades or refuses
to
recognize the law of humanity, he dominates and destroys. This man is at the
stage of ingratitude; he no longer possesses the harmlessness of childhood,
nor has he yet acquired the wisdom of advanced age. Our Western race has reached
this critical stage, whereof the menacing demands of the suffering masses are
a
striking testimony. Here, too, God could not do otherwise [Page 63] wise; He might
create bodies blindly obedient to his law, mere automata, but it would be
impossible for Him to cause divine germs to evolve into “gods” without putting
them through the school of evolution which teaches them, first, of the “ego”, the
root of all egoism, then knowledge by ignorance, liberty by necessity, good
by evil, and the perfect by the imperfect.
It may at this point just be mentioned that though human egoism appears to have
free play and to be unrestrained in its cruelty, divine Law never allows innocence
to suffer for the errors of evolving souls, it punishes only the guilty, whether their
faults or misdeeds be known or unknown, belonging to the present life or to past
ones.
Such, briefly, is the cause of pain and suffering in evolution; in the following
pages we will set forth the causes of the unequal distribution of this suffering.
THE
PROBLEM OF THE INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS
If
suffering in general is the child of Necessity — since it is born of multiplicity and
the limitation of the Infinite, without which the Universe could not exist — it would
seem that we ought to find it falling upon all beings without distinction,
in uniform, [Page 64] regular,
and impartial fashion. Instead of this, it is every moment losing its character
of impersonality; it respects those who are guilty on a large scale;
and, without any visible cause, strikes fiercely the most innocent of persons;
noble souls are born in the families of criminals, whilst criminals have fathers
of the utmost respectability; we find parricides, and brothers hostile
to each other;
millionaires die of surfeiting alongside of paupers dying of hunger; we find
giants by the side of dwarfs; the healthy and well-formed near the crippled
or those
wasted away by terrible diseases; Apollos contrast with Quasimodos; men of
genius are met with, cheek by jowl with idiots; some children are stillborn,
others blind or deaf and dumb from birth. Extremely different races people
the earth — on
the one hand, unintelligent and cannibal Negroes; on the other, the proud,
handsome, and intelligent, though selfish and cruel white race. Again, from
a moral standpoint, who can explain congenital tendencies to crime, the
vicious by
birth, the wicked by nature, the persons with uncontrollable passions ?
Wherefore are thrift and foresight lacking in so many men, who are consequently
condemned to lifelong poverty and wretchedness ? Why this excess of
intelligence, used mainly for the exploiting of folly ? It is useless to multiply
examples, one has only to look around at hospitals [Page 65] and prisons, night-shelters, palaces and garrets; everywhere suffering has taken
up its abode. Can no reply be given to this terrible charge brought against
Divinity? Is man to
remain in a state of dejection and discouragement, as though some irreparable
catastrophe had befallen him ?
According
to the Church, all this is the work of the soul which God gives at the
birth of a man — a soul that is good or bad, prudent or foolish, one which damns
or saves itself according as its will can, or cannot, dominate its passions,
its intelligence discover the way to heaven or not; according as grace
or rejection
predestine it to heaven or to hell.
Is it not the depth of profanity to represent God as watching over conceptions in
order to create souls so unfairly endowed, most of whom will never hear the
Gospel message, and consequently cannot be saved, whilst the rest are destined
to animate the bodies of savages and cannibals, devoid of moral consciousness
? Is it not an act of sacrilege thus to convert God, Who is all Wisdom and Love,
into a kind of accomplice of adulterers and lewd persons or the sport of
Malthusian insults. Unconscious blasphemers are they who would offer this Dead
Sea fruit as the true manna of Life!
There is also another theory, often advanced in certain quarters, on which we
must say a few words, for though it contains only a minimum of truth, and [Page 66]
consequently cannot withstand serious examination, it has led astray more than
one earnest thinker. Inequalities of suffering, it has been said, arise from
inequalities of social conditions. Intelligence, morality, will, in fact all human
faculties, develop more or less according to their environment; men are born
equal; they become unequal as the result of different environment; pay the same
care and attention to all and they will remain equal, and if they are equal, the
theory seems to imply, evil will disappear from the face of the earth.
This is not so.
Inequality
of suffering does not result from inequality of condition. Many a poor tiller
of the fields enjoys a degree of peace and happiness that those favoured
by
birth or fortune would envy. Disease visits poor and rich alike; moral suffering
is more especially the appanage of the so-called higher classes, and if obscurity
and poverty render certain troubles specially severe, wealth and rank play
the
same rôle in afflictions of another kind; there is a dark side to every picture. More
than this, inequality of condition is one of the fundamental factors of social
equilibrium; without it, many urgent and even indispensable functions would
be neglected, numerous general needs would remain unsatisfied; so-called menial
work, which, in a state of society that is still imperfect and consequently [Page 67]
selfish, is performed only in the hope of remuneration, would never be done at
all; every man would have to provide for the whole of his necessities; no one
could find time for self-improvement or for flinging himself entirely into
those divers branches of activity which, if personal interest were absent,
would make
life infinitely better and progress extremely rapid. The partisans of this
theory rely on diversity of tastes to fill the diversity of functions that
are necessary in social
life.- another illusion. The inferior, painful, or difficult tasks will never
find sufficient workers, whilst easy or honourable posts will always be overcrowded.
To
believe the contrary would be to shut one's eyes to the present imperfection
of men; it would mean the belief that they were noble and lofty beings, eager
for
self-sacrifice, demanding only to work for the happiness of all, without a
single thought of their personal preferences; it would mean seeing, in present-day
humanity, that of the future in which each individual has attained to such a
degree of perfection that not a single idle, ill-disposed, or stupid person
is to be found amongst them, for each one would regard himself as the brother
and
helper of all, and the universal standard of life would be: Each for all and
all for each! How ardently we desire that this were so; how eagerly we pray
for that
future, so far away, when [Page 68] we shall have grown to this nobler stature, and
the present fratricidal struggle shall have given place to a lasting peace,
the offspring of a higher, spiritual, universal love. Anxiously do we await
it; like lost
travelers, we fix our eyes on the dark horizon to catch the first faint streaks
of light, harbingers of the dawn. We greet with joy and gratitude all such
as believe
in that blessed future and endeavour to hasten its coming, all who impersonally
and in sincerity aim at the social Unity towards which the heart aspires, and
especially those whose aim it is to advance in accordance with that continuous,
progressive evolution based on the physical, moral, mental, and spiritual
amelioration of men, for it is they who have learned the secret of Nature.
Indeed, evolution shows us that, the more souls grow, the nearer they approach
that
perfection to which progress destines them, and happiness exists only in
perfection.
To return to other aspects of the subject.
Men are born equal, we are told.
A single glance at the differences in the moral and intellectual qualities of races
and individuals, at the differences between young children, even at the
differences in the instincts of infants at the breast, is sufficient to prove the
contrary.
There
are savages in whom no trace whatever of the moral sense can be discovered.
Charles [Page
69] Darwin in one of his works relates a fact, which Mrs.
Besant has quoted, in illustration of this. An English missionary reproached
a Tasmanian with having killed his wife in order to eat her. In that rudimentary
intellect, the reproach aroused an idea quite different from that of a crime;
the
cannibal thought the missionary imagined that human flesh was of an unpleasant
flavour, and so he replied: “But she was very good! ”
Is it possible to attribute to the influence of surroundings alone a degree of moral
poverty so profound as this ?
Many a mother has been able to find out that souls are not equal, in other words,
that they are of different ages, by the discovery of diametrically opposite qualities
and tendencies in two children born under the same conditions; in twins, for
instance.
Every schoolmaster has noticed the same fact in the pupils under his charge.
Mrs. Besant says that amongst the 80,000 children who came under her
inspection in the London schools she would often find side by side with gentle,
affectionate little beings others who showed criminal tendencies from birth.
Looking
at the question from another point of view, are we not continually finding
in schools and educational establishments pupils who, for no [Page 70] explicable reason, show a disposition for one branch of instruction only ?
They shine in this, but are dunces in every other subject.
As a final example, do not infant prodigies prove that men are not born equal ?
Young, who discovered the undulatory theory of light, could read with wonderful
rapidity at the age of two, whilst at eight he had a thorough knowledge of six
languages.
Sir W. R. Hamilton began to learn Hebrew when he was three, and knew it
perfectly four years later. At the age of thirteen he knew thirteen languages.
Gauss,
of Brunswick — the greatest mathematician in Europe, according to
Laplace — solved problems in arithmetic when only three.
No, men are not born equal. Nor does environment cause the inequalities we
find; it favours or checks the development of qualities, but has no part in their
creation. Still, its influence is sufficiently important for us to give it due
consideration.
We are linked to one another by the closest bonds of solidarity, whether we wish
it and are conscious thereof or not. Everything absorbs and throws off, breathes
in and breathes out, and this universal exchange, if at times bad, is none the less
a powerful factor in evolution. The atom of carbon, on entering into the
combinations of the human body, is endowed with a far higher power [Page 71] of
combining than the one which has just left the lump of ore; to obtain its new
properties, this atom has had to pass through millions of vegetable, animal, and
human molecules. Animals brought into .close contact with man develop mentally
to a degree that is sometimes incredible, by reason of the intellectual food with
which our thoughts supply them. The man who lives alone is, other things being
equal, weaker physically, morally, and mentally than he who lives in a large
social environment; it is for this reason that the mind develops far more rapidly in
large centers of life than in the country. And what is true of good is, unfortunately,
true also of evil qualities.
Consequently, environment has an undeniable influence, and it is perfectly true
to say that the social conditions under which individuals are born favor or impede
the development of their faculties. There its influence stops; it can intensify
inequality, but does not create it.
Inequality
of condition arises, above all else, from the continuity of what might be
called creation. Atoms are incessantly being formed in the womb of the Virgin
Mother, [Primordial matter which has not yet entered into any combination and
is not differentiated] by the might of the divine vortex perceived by seers
in ecstatic vision, and [Page 72] which theosophy has named the Great Breath;
ceaselessly are these atoms entering into multitudes of organisms ceaselessly
is the plan of evolution being worked — some ending, others beginning the great
Pilgrimage. It is the existence of this circuit which creates and keeps complete
the hierarchy of beings, brings into existence and perpetuates the known and
the unknown kingdoms of Nature; souls ascend slowly from one kingdom to another,
whilst the places they leave are filled by new-comers, by younger souls.
A
second cause of human inequality is the difference in effort and deed accomplished
by the will of human beings who have reached a certain point in
evolution. As soon as this will is guided by intelligence and the moral sense,
it hastens or delays individual evolution, makes it easy when it acts in
harmony
with divine Law — by doing what is called “good” — or disturbs evolution by pain,
when it opposes this Law, by doing “evil”. By modifying the direction of the Law,
the Soul engenders beneficent or maleficent forces, which, after having played
in the universe within the limit the law has imposed on them, return to their
starting
point — man. From that time, one understands that the balance of the scales in
different individuals becomes unequal. These effects of the will influence
to a noticeable degree the life during which [Page 73] they have originated; they are
preserved in a latent condition after death, and appear again in future returns
to
earth.
Thus
are men born laden with the results of their past and in possession of the
capacities they have developed in the course of their evolution. Those whom
the difficulties of life have filled with energy in the past return to existence
on earth
possessed of that might which the world admires; now it is perseverance or
courage; now patient calm or violence, which is the stronger, according to
the aspect of the energy developed. Others, again, are born feeble and devoid
of
energy; their former lives have been too easy. Men are philosophers or
mathematicians, artists or savants, from the very cradle.
Objections
have been brought against the doctrine of Rebirth by opponents who have looked
only on one side of the individual life, and so have been unable to
explain apparent anomalies, especially in those cases where it is seen that
the effect does not immediately follow the cause. In reality, every force
that emerges
from a center of will [A soul] describes
an ellipse, so to speak, which travels through a net-work of other ellipses
generated by thousands of other centers [Page
74] of
energy, and is accelerated or retarded in its course, according to the
direction and nature of the forces with which it is connected. It is for
this reason
that certain actions meet with their reward or their punishment almost
immediately. Then the people say: “It is the finger of God!” In other cases,
again, and these are the most numerous, the reaction is postponed; the noble-hearted
man, who has made sacrifices the whole of his life, seems to receive in exchange
nothing but misfortune and pain, whilst close by the wicked, selfish
man prospers and thrives exceedingly. Thereupon the ignorant say: “There is
no God, for there is no justice”.
Not
so! It is impossible to defeat Justice; though, in the interests of evolving
beings, it may allow the forces around to accelerate or retard its progress.
Nothing is ever lost; causes that have not fructified remain potential; and,
like the grain of corn gathered thousands of years ago, grow and develop
as soon as
favorable soil and environment are offered them. Debts are still recorded,
when the perishable sheaths of our physical bodies have been cast off; they
come up
for future payment, often in the next life. But this next life may not wipe
off the whole of the liabilities, so the process is continued for several
successive
existences, and this has given rise to the [Page 75] saying that the sins of the
parents [In these cases, the soul] are visited upon the children [The
personalities or new bodies created by the soul, on each return to earth] unto
the
seventh generation. [That is to say, the seventh incarnation]
Such is the truth.
Souls, equal in potentialities whilst dormant as germs in the womb of Being,
become unequal, as soon as they are born into existence in the manifested
Universe, for they find predecessors, elder souls in front of them; inequality is
intensified when they have reached the human stage, where intelligence and will
come into play, for henceforth, inequality in the actions of individuals, variations
of what might be called merit and demerit, set up a second factor in the inequality
of conditions. Evolution treasures up the causes that have not been able to
germinate in one existence, and, by successive returns to earth, realizes the
aims and ends of that Justice which governs the Universe, the designs of that
Love which makes for progress and leads to perfection.
OBJECTION
An apparently serious objection to the doctrine of Rebirth is constantly being
made. It is unjust [Page 76] and useless, people say, to be punished for
misdeeds that are forgotten. As this objection has reference to moral proofs, we
must deal with it here.
Does forgetfulness efface faults or destroy their consequences ? Could the
assassin, who has lost all memory of the crime committed the previous evening,
change his deed or its results in the slightest degree ? Rebirths are nothing more
than the morrows of former lives, and though the merciful waters of Lethe have
effaced their memory, the forces stored up in the soul, during the ages, perform
their work all the same in the future.
On
the other hand, injustice would exist, and that under a very cruel aspect,
were memory to continue; for the painful vision of a past always full of
weaknesses,
even when free from the stain of crime, would be a continual one. And if, too — as
our opponents would prefer — man knew why he was punished, i.e if he knew that
each of these past errors and faults, ever present before his eyes, would carry
with it a particular fruit, and that strict payment would be exacted at every
step in his new life, would not the punishment be far greater than the sin
? Would there
not rise from every human heart an outcry of blasphemy against a God who, by
means of memory, transformed life into an endless torment,[Page 77] destroying all activity or initiative in the anxiety of expectancy, in a word,
stifling the present beneath the heavy nightmare of the past ?
Men, though so unjust and little disposed to pity, have always refused to inflict on
a man condemned to death the torture of anticipation; only at the last moment is
he informed of the rejection of his appeal for mercy. Could divine Law be less
compassionate than human law ?
Is it not rash for us, in our profound ignorance, to criticize the workings of a
boundless Wisdom ? He who takes only a few steps along the pathway of
Knowledge, or enters, however slightly, into the secret of the works of God,
obtains the proof that Providence leaves no part of the Cosmos, no being
anywhere, deprived of its fatherly care and protection. When, in our blindness,
we imagine injustice, a void or an imperfection of any kind, a radiant beam of
light shows us the omnipresent Life, bestowing love on all its children without
distinction, from the slumbering atom to the glorious planetary Spirit, whose
consciousness is so vast as to enfold the Universe.
It
is more especially after death that the soul, set free from its illusory
sheaths, makes an impartial review of its recent incarnation, attentively
following its
actions and their consequences, noting its errors and failures, along with
their motives and [Page 78] causes. In this school it grows in knowledge and power; and
when, in a future incarnation, the same difficulties present themselves anew,
it is better equipped for the struggle; what has been learned, is retained
within the
soul; it knows, where formerly it was ignorant, and by the “voice of conscience”, tells the personality [Waking consciousness] what its duty is. This wisdom,
sifted from the panorama of a thousand past images, is the best of all memories,
for on those numerous occasions when a decision must be arrived at on the spur
of the moment it would not be possible to summon forth from the depths of the
past such groups of memories as refer to the decision to be reached, to see
the events over again, and deduce therefrom a line of conduct. The lesson must
have been learnt and thoroughly assimilated during the enlightened peace and
calm of the Hereafter; then only is the soul ready to respond without delay,
and
its command is distinct; its judgment, sure; do this, avoid that.
When
a soul, in the course of evolution, has succeeded in impressing its vibration — its thought — on a brain which it has refined and made responsive by
a training which purifies the entire nature of the man, it is able to transmit
to the incarnated consciousness the memory of its past lives; but this [Page 79] memory
then ceases to be painful or dangerous, for the soul has not only exhausted
the greater part of its karma of suffering, it also possesses the strength
necessary to
sustain its personality, whenever a foreboding of what we call misfortune comes
upon it.
In the divine work everything comes in its own time, and we recognize the
perfection of the Creator by the perfect concatenation of all creation.
Reincarnation is so intimately bound up with the Law of Causality, and receives
from it such powerful support, that this chapter would be left in a very incomplete
form were we not to say a few words on Karma.
THE
LAW OF CAUSALITY (Karma).
Karma
is the Law of the Universe, the expression of divine Will. Its seemingly
essential attributes are Justice and Love; it neither punishes nor rewards,
but
adjusts things, restores disturbed balance and harmony, brings back evolving
souls to the right path and teaches them Law.
When a man acts against the Law, he is like a swimmer, struggling against the
current of a rapid river; his strength fails, and he is borne away.[Page 80]
So does God bear away, in spite of all their efforts, those who, whether
ignorantly or consciously, fight against the Law, for it is His love that wills
evolution, i.e the making human beings divine; so he brings them back to the
path, in spite of themselves, every time they wander astray.
“God
is patient because He is eternal”, it
has been said. The sentence is incomplete and must be changed, since it
attributes to Divinity a vindictive
nature. The Law is patient because it is perfect in Wisdom, Power, and Love.
This Law is the divine Will which moves all things and vibrates everywhere; it is
the music of the spheres, the song of glory and harmony, which murmurs in the
heart like the rippling of a waterfall, the chant of life and joy that eternally
triumphs in its never-ending creation of beings, who, after revolving for a moment
in the universe, have become perfect.
Its glorious strains resound in the heart of man, when the soul has found peace
in the Law, and we are told that, when once heard, its divine accents continue for
ever, like an ineffable whisper which brings us back to hope and faith, when we
are sunk in the depths of despair.
God
limited himself in order to become incarnate in the Universe: He is the Soul
of the world. His will is exerted everywhere, it finds its reflection in [Page 81] every
creature; and man, a portion of divinity in course of evolution, possesses
a germ of will that is infinite in its essence, and consequently capable of
limitless
development; God respects this will in His creatures, and submits to violence,
in order to teach them His will, which is supreme Love. Like a stone that falls
into a
tranquil lake, a human action creates, all round, concentric ripples which
continue to the very shores or limits of the Universe; then the wave is thrown
back upon
itself, returns to its starting-point, and the man who began the first movement
receives a recoil exactly equivalent to the original impetus. Reaction is equal
to action; obstacles on the way may delay its return or break up its energy,
but the
time comes when the fractions return to the center that generates the
disturbance, which thus receives from the Law a perfectly just retribution.
The
principal element in actions is thought. Every thought is a form in a state
of vibration — a ray of intelligence which unites itself with subtle
matter [Those who
have studied thought know that it is capable of being incorporated in divers
states of astral and mental matter] and forms a being, of
which this matter is the body, and thought, the soul. This being, often called
a “thought-form”, possesses
form, duration, and strength that bear a strict relation [Page
82] to the energy of the
thought that created it; if it embodies a soul of hatred, it will react on
the man who harbours this thought, and on all who come into contact with him,
as a leaven of
destruction, but if it is guided by love it will be, as it were, the incarnation
of some
beneficent power.
In
certain cases its action is expressed visibly and rapidly; for instance,
a venomous thought may [If the divine law allows it] cause
the death of the
person against whom it is directed — this is one aspect of the “evil
eye” — as
also it may [If the divine law has not allowed the action
to take place] return to its starting-point and kill the one who generated
it, by the recoil. Every mental projection of a criminal nature, however, by
no means necessarily reaches the
object aimed at; a sorcerer, for instance, could no more injure one who was
positive, consciously and willingly good, than he could cause a grain of corn
to sprout on a block of granite; favourable soil is needed to enable the seed
of evil
to take root in a man's heart; otherwise, the evil recoils with its full force
upon the one who sent it forth and who is an irresistible magnet, for he is
its very “life-center”.
Thoughts cling to their creator and attract towards this latter those of a similar
nature floating [Page 83] about in the invisible world, for they instinctively come to
vitalize and invigorate themselves by contact with him; they radiate around
him a contagious atmosphere of good or evil, and when they have left him, hover
about, at the caprice of the various currents, impelling those they touch towards
the goal to which they are making. They even recoil on the visible form of
their
generator; it is for this reason that physical is closely connected with moral
well-being, and most of our diseases are nothing else than the outer expression
of the hidden leaven of passion. When the action of this latter is sudden and
powerful,
diseases may be the immediate consequence thereof; blinded by materialism,
certain doctors seldom acknowledge their real cause; and yet instances of hair
turning white in a single night are too numerous to be refuted, congestion
of the brain brought on by a fit of anger, jaundice and other grave maladies
caused by
grief and trouble, are to be met with continually.
When the mental forces which
disturb the physical organs meet with obstacles which prevent their immediate
outlet, they accumulate, like the electric fluid in a condenser, until an unexpected
contact produces a discharge; this condensation often persists for a whole
life in a latent condition, and is preserved intact for a future incarnation;
this is the
cause of original vices, which, incorporated [Page
84] in the etheric double, react
upon the organic texture of the body. This also explains why each individual
possesses an ensemble of pathological predispositions often radically different
from those heredity should have bequeathed to him; it is also, to some extent,
the key to physiognomy, for every single feature bears either the stamp of
our
passions or the halo of our virtues.
Thought
creates lasting bonds between human beings; love and hatred enchain certain
individuals to one another for a whole series of incarnations; many a
victim of the past is to be found again in those unnatural sons who send a
thrill of horror through society when it hears of some heinous crime — they have become
the torturers of their former oppressors. In other cases, it is love which
attracts and unites in renewed affection those who formerly loved one another — they
return to earth as brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands or wives.
But
if we are the slaves of the past, if fate compels us to reap what we have
sown, we yet have the future in our hands, for we can tear up the weeds, and
in their place sow useful plants. Just as, by means of physical hygiene,
we can
change within a few years the nature of the constituents that make up our bodies,
so also, by a process of moral hygiene, we can purify our passions and then [Page
85] turn
their strength in the direction of good. According as we will, so do we
actually become, good or bad; every man who has taken his evolution in hand
notices this rapid transformation of his personality, and sees his successive
“egos” rise step by step, so to speak, throughout his whole life. Speaking generally,
the
first part of life is the expression of the distant past — of former
lives — the second is a mixture of the past and of the energies of the
present incarnation; the end of life is nothing but a sinking into an ever-deepening
rut for those who crystallize in only one direction; the force of habit sets
up its reign, and
man finds himself bound by the chains he himself has forged. This is the reason
an old man does not like the present times; he has stopped whilst time has
advanced, and he is now being carried along like the flotsam and jetsam of
a wreck; the very tastes and habits of his contemporaries violently clashing
with his
beloved past. Speak not to him of progress or evolution, he has brought himself
into a state of complete immobility, and he will discover no favorable field
of action nor will he acquire real energy until he has drunk of the waters
of Lethe in
a rest-giving Hereafter and a new body supplies his will with an instrument
having the obedient suppleness of youth.
H. P. Blavatsky, in the Secret Doctrine, has well [Page 86] described this
progressive enmeshing of man in the net he himself is weaving.
“Those
who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death,
every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider his
web; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible
prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but
too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on
the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of
the invisible affray the stern and implacable Law of Compensation steps in and
takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations of the fight. When the last
strand is woven, the man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own
doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. . . .”
She adds shortly afterwards:
“An
Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of
Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that
nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this as in future
lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer, aye, even to his seventh rebirth,
so long, in
short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest
atom [Page 87] in
the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the
only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute Harmony
in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore,
Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves,
according to
whether we work with, through, and along with nature, abiding by the laws on
which that Harmony depends, or — break them.
“Nor
would the ways of Karma be inscrutable, were men to work in union and harmony
instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways — which
one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while
another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism, and a third, simple chance,
with neither gods nor devils to guide them — would surely disappear, if we would
but attribute all these to their correct cause. . . .
“We
stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddle of
life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring
us. But verily, there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen
day or a misfortune,
that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life.
. . .”
On
the same subject, Mrs. Sinnett says in The Purpose of Theosophy: [Page 88]
“Every
individual is making Karma either good or bad in every action and thought
of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the
Karma bought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see people
afflicted by congenital ailments, it may be safely assumed that these ailments
are
the inevitable results of causes started by the same in a previous birth. It
may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary, they can have
nothing to do with
a past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the ego, the real man, the
individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by which it is re-embodied,
but is drawn by the affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round
it into the current that carries it, when the time comes for re-birth,
to the home best
fitted for the development of those tendencies. . . .
“This
doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated to guide
and assist those who realize its truth to a higher and better mode of life;
for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions, but our thoughts
also, are most
assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good
or for evil our own future; and, what is still more important, the future
of many of our
fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case be only
self-regarding, [Page 89] the effect on the sinner's Karma would be a matter of
minor consequence. The fact that every thought and act through life carries
with it, for good or evil, a corresponding influence on the members of the
human
family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary
to future happiness and progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent
out from the mind, are past recall — no amount of repentance can wipe out their
results on the future. . . .
“Repentance,
if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him
or others from the effects of those already produced, which will most
unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next rebirth”.
We will also quote a few lines from E. D. Walker in Reincarnation:
“Briefly,
the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former
actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There
is
no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or
condemnation except what we ourselves bring about. . . . Because it offers
no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness,
it is less
welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement,
intercessions, forgiveness, and death-bed conversions. . .[Page 90]
“In
the domain of eternal justice, the offence and the punishment are inseparably
connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction
between the action and its outcome.
“It
is Karma, or our old acts, that bring us back into earthly life. “The
spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any
long continuance in
one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed
by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action
be
manifested in physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude
the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the
goal of mankind”.
The
danger of a too brief explanation of the law of Causality consists in the
possibility of being imperfectly understood, and consequently of favouring
the
doctrine of fatalism.
“Why
act at all, the objection will be urged, if everything is foreseen by the
Law ? Why stretch out a hand to the man who falls into the water before
our very eyes ?
Is not the Law strong enough to save him, if he is not to die; and if he is,
have we any right to interfere ? . . .
“Such
reasoning arises from ignorance and egoism.
“Yes,
the law is powerful enough to prevent the man from drowning, and also to
prevent the possibility [Page 91] of his being saved by some passer-by, who has
been moved to pity by the sight; to doubt this were to doubt the power of God. In
the work of evolution, however, God does more than supply man with means of
developing his intelligence; in order to enrich his heart, he offers him
opportunities of sacrificing himself. Again, the innumerable problems set by duty
are for from being solved for us; with difficulty can we distinguish a crime from a
noble action; very often we do wrong, thinking we are doing right, and it not
unfrequently happens that good results from our evil deeds; this is why God
sends us experiences which are to teach us our duty.
“The
soul learns not only during its incarnations, but even more after leaving
the body, [Man, after death, loses in succession his astral
and mental bodies] for life
after death is largely spent in examining the consequences of deeds performed
during life on earth.
“Whenever,
then, an opportunity for action offers itself, let us follow the impulse
of the heart, the cry of duty, and not the sophisms of the lower nature,
the selfish
“ego”, the cold brain, which knows neither compassion nor devotion. Do your
duty, whatever happens, says the Law, i.e do not allege, as your excuse for
being selfish, that God, if He [Page 92] thinks it best, will help your brother in his
trouble; why do you not fling yourself into the fire, with the thought that,
if your hour has not yet come, God will prevent the flames from burning you?
Does not
the man, who commits suicide, himself push forward the hand on the dial of
life,
setting it at the fatal hour ?
“The
threads of karmic action are so wonderfully interwoven, and God, in order
to hasten evolution, makes such marvellous use of human forces, both good and
bad, that the first few glances cast at the mêlée of events are calculated to
trouble the mind rather than reveal to it the marvels of adjustment effected
by divine Wisdom, but no sooner does one succeed in unraveling some of the
entanglements of the karmic forces, and catching a glimpse of the harmony
resulting from their surprising co-operation, than the mind is lost in amaze.
Then,
one understands how the murderer is only an instrument whose passions are
used by God in carrying out the karmic decree which condemned the victim long
before the crime was committed; then, too, one knows that capital punishment
is a legal crime of which divine Justice makes use — yes, a crime, for none but God
can judge; every being has a right to live, and does live, until God condemns
him.
“But
man, by making himself, even ignorantly, the instrument of Karma, acts
against the universal [Page
93] law,
and is preparing for himself that future suffering which results from every
attack made on the harmony of the whole”. [La Théosophie
en quelques chapitres, by the author, pages 31 to 34 ]
On
the other hand, Destiny is not an immutable mass of forces; will can destroy
what it has created, that is a question of time or energy; and when these are
unable, within a given period, to bring about the total destruction of a barrier
belonging to the past, none the less does this barrier lessen day by day, for
the “resultant” of this system of opposing forces changes its direction
every moment, and the final shock, when it cannot be avoided, is always diminished
to a greater
or less degree.
In
the case of those who have attained to a perfect reading of the past, their
knowledge of the hostile forces is complete, and the neutralization of these
forces immensely facilitated. They can seek out, in this world or in the next,
those they wronged in the past, and thus repair the harm done; they can
see the
source of those thoughts of hatred that are sent against them, and destroy
them by the intervention of love; [“Hatred is destroyed only by love”, said the
Buddha. “Return good for evil”, said Jesus.] they can find out the weak points of
their personal armor and strengthen them: it is this that in theosophical language
is [Page 94] called the burning of Karma in the fire of “Wisdom”.
None
the less, there are two points in the law of Causality, which appear to favour
the idea of fatalism, though in reality, they are merely corollaries of Karma.
According to the first, every force is fatal, in the sense that, if left to
itself, it is
indestructible. This is not fatality, for the force can be modified by meeting
with forces differing in character, and if no such encounter takes place,
it finally unites
with the cosmic Law, or else is broken to pieces upon it, according as it moves
with evolution or against it. [It is this that causes the
universal force of opposition - the Enemy or demon - to become
evil only when ignorance or the human will make use of it to oppose evolution:
apart from such cases, it is only the second pillar necessary for the support
of the Temple, the stepping-stone of
the good] Only in one sense, then, is it fatal; it cannot
be destroyed save by an opposing force of the same momentum. For instance,
in order to annihilate an
obstructive force, created in the past, the soul must expend an amount of energy
that is equal and opposite to that force; it meanwhile cannot devote itself
to any other work, thus causing, in one sense, a useless production of energy;
in other
words, evolution will suffer delay, [Perhaps this is only
an apparent delay, for, on every plane, force is correlative, and knowledge
is the fruit of many different kinds of energy. The only real cases in which
there is delay of individual evolution are probably those in which evil
is done in return for evil. Of course, we are
speaking in relative terms and from a relative standpoint] but,
we must repeat, that is not fatality. [Page
95]
Now to the second point.
Thought,
by repetition, gains ever-increasing energy, and when the forces which
thoughts accumulate have become as powerful as those of the will of the
Ego
which created them, a final addition of energy — another thought — alone is
needed for the will to be overcome and the heavier scale of the balance to
incline; then the thought is fatally realized in the action. But so long as
dynamic equilibrium has not been reached, the will remains master, although
its power is
ever diminishing, in proportion as the difference in the forces becomes smaller.
When equilibrium is reached, the will is neutralized; it becomes powerless,
and feels that a fall is only a question of moments, and, with a fresh call
of energy,
the thought is fatally realized on the physical plane; the hour of freedom
has gone and the fatal moment arrived. Like some solution that has reached
saturation point, obedient to the last impulse, this thought crystallizes into
an act.
Many
a criminal thus meets, in a single moment, the fatality he has created in
the course of several incarnations; he no longer sees anything, his reason [Page
96]
disappears; in a condition of mental darkness his arm is raised,
and, impelled by a blind force, he strikes automatically. “What have I done?” he
immediately exclaims in horror “What demon is this that has taken possession
of me?”
Then
only is the crime perpetrated, without there being time for the will to
be consulted, without the “voice of conscience” having been invited to speak. The
whole fatality of automatism is in the deed, which has been carried through
without the man suspecting or being conscious of it; his physical machine has
been the blind instrument of the force of evil he has himself slowly accumulated
throughout the ages. But let there be no mistake; every time a man, who is
tempted, has time to think, even in fleeting fashion, of the moral value of
the impulse which is driving him onward, he has power to resist; and if
he yields to
this impulse, the entire responsibility of this final lapse is added on to
that incurred by past thoughts.
Among
the victims of these actions that have become fatal are often to be found
those who are near the stage of initiation, for before being exposed to the
dangers of the bewildering “Path”, which bridges the abyss — the abyss which
separates the worlds of unity from the illusory and transitory regions of the
Universe — they are submitted to the most careful tests.[Page 97]
There
may even be found souls that tread this path,[When human
evolution is completed, man passes the “strait gate” leading
to superhuman evolution, to the spiritual life, which develops the next
higher principle, Buddhi; this is the Path.
Human evolution develops the mental principle, Manas;
Superhuman evolution develops the spiritual body, Buddhi] bearing
within themselves [Here
we are dealing with faults of a more or less venial nature] some
old surviving residue which has not yet been finally thrown into the physical
plane, and must consequently appear for the last time before falling away and
disappearing for
ever. [For ever, in this case, for the soul is above these
residues, and, so to speak, has given them no vitality for ages past] Mankind,
incapable of seeing the man — the divine fragment gloriously blossoming
forth in these beings — often
halts before these dark spots in the vesture of the great soul, these excreta flung
off from the “center”, belonging to the refuse of the vehicle, not to the soul,
and in its blindness pretends to see, in its folly to judge, loftily condemning
the sins of a brother more evolved than itself!
The
future will bring men greater wisdom, and teach them the greatness of their
error.[In completion of this chapter on the Law of Causality, we refer the reader
to A Besant’s book: Karma]
At
the conclusion of this important chapter, let us repeat that Karma — divine
Will in action — is Love as well as Justice, Wisdom as well as Power, [Page 98] and
no one ought to dread it. If at times it uses us roughly and always brings
us back to the strait way when folly leads us astray, it is only measuring
its strength
against our weakness, its delicate scales balance the load according to our
strength, and when, in times of great anguish or terrible crisis, man is on
the point of giving way, it suddenly lifts the weight, leaves the soul a moment's
respite, and only when it has recovered breath is the burden replaced. The
righteous Will of God is always upon us, filling our hearts with its might;
His Love
is ever about us, enabling us to grow and expand, even through the suffering
he
sends, for it is ourselves who have created this suffering. [Page 99]
CHAPTER
III
REINCARNATION
AND SCIENCE
The
secret of the Universe lies in observation; it is for man to develop his
senses
and patiently to search into the hidden things of Nature.
All
science proceeds thus, and the reason that savants have not unearthed the
precious object for which they seek with such wonderful perseverance is that
the physical senses, even when aided by the most delicate instruments,
are able to
cognise only a portion of the physical Universe — the denser portion. This is
proved by the fact that when man has succeeded in directing into a channel
some subtle force, he remains as ignorant of its essence as he was before
chaining it down, so to speak; he has not the slightest knowledge of it. He
can utilize but he cannot dominate it, for he has not discovered its source.
This
source is not in the physical world, but on the finer planes of being, which
will remain unknown to us, so long as our [Page 100] senses are incapable of
responding to their vibrations.
Because
physical observation reveals only the bark, the outer crust of the Cosmos,
man sees nothing but the surface of the world, and remains in
ignorance of the heart and vital plexus that give it life; consequently, he
calls the disintegration following upon dis-incarnation by the senseless
name of “death”.
He
who has lifted the veil of Isis sees divine Life everywhere, the Life that
animates forms, builds them up, uses them, and finally breaks them to pieces
when they have ceased to be of use; and this Life — God — thus spread about in
numberless forms, by means of its many rays, develops in itself
centers — souls — which gradually grow and awaken their infinite potentialities [Each part possesses in a potential state the properties of the whole] in the
course of these successive incarnations.
Still, though the eye of the god-man alone can penetrate this wonderful
mechanism and study it in all its astonishing details, the savant whose mind is
unprejudiced can judge of the concealed mechanism by examining its outer
manifestations, and it is on this ground we now place ourselves with the object of
setting forth another series of proofs of reincarnation.[Page 101]
THE EVOLUTIONARY SERIES
If
we look attentively at the totality of beings we perceive a progressive
series of forms expressing a parallel series of qualities and states of
consciousness. The portion of this scale we are able to compass extends from
the amorphous state[The kingdoms that are invisible to physical sight are
as interesting as those we see, but we have no occasion to speak of them
here.
Logic compels us to acknowledge them until the time comes when human
development enables them to be discovered and affords direct proof of their
existence] — which represents the minimum of consciousness — up to those
organic complexities which have allowed of a terrestrial expression being given
to the soul of the Saviors of the world. In this glorious hierarchy each step
forms so
delicate a transition between the one preceding and the one following that
on the borders of the different kingdoms it becomes impossible to trace a line
of
demarcation between different beings; thus one does not know whether such or
such a family should be classed among minerals, or vegetables or animals. It
is this that science has called the evolutionary series. [We do not mean to affirm
that evolutionists have not committed serious errors in their theory of
development. But the law they have set prominently forth is one of the
fundamental expressions of the working of God in the Universe] [Page 102]
THE CYCLIC PROCESS OF EVOLUTION
Another
fact strikes the observer: the cyclic march of evolution. After action
comes reaction; after activity, rest; after winter, summer; after day,
night;
after inspiration — the breath of life during which universal Movement works in a
molecular aggregate and there condenses in the form of vitality — expiration — the
breath of death, which causes the individualized life to flow back into the
ocean of cosmic energy; after the systole, which drives the blood into every
part of the
body, comes the diastole, which breathes back the vital liquid into the central
reservoir; after the waking state comes sleep; life here and life hereafter;
the leaves sprout and fall away periodically, with the rising and descending
of the sap; annual plants die at the end of the season, persisting in germinal
state within a bulb, a rhizome, or a root before coming again to the light;
in “metamorphoses”, we find that the germ (the egg) becomes a larva (a worm), and then dies as a
chrysalis, to be reborn as a butterfly.
Ideas
also have their successive cycles of glory and decadence; is not the present
theosophical movement the renaissance of the Neoplatonic movement
which brought the light to Greece and Egypt fifteen hundred years ago? In 1875
H. P. Blavatsky [Page 103] restored it to life, whilst its previous birth took place in
the time of Ammonius Saccas, the theosophist, in the Schools of Alexandria.
Those who have acquired the power to read the cosmic records [The vibratory
impressions that constitute the memory of the Universe. See in Chapter 4, the
final Objection] will easily recognize amongst the present pioneers of theosophy
many a champion who in a former age struggled and fought in the same sublime
cause.
Races
are born and grow up, die and are born again; pass through a state of childhood,
of youth, of maturity, and of old age. They flourish in all their splendour
when the vital movement which animates them is at its height; when it leaves
them and passes to other portions of the globe, they gradually fall into old
age;
then the more developed Egos — those incarnated in these races during their
maturity — come down into the advanced nations, living on the continents
animated by the “life-wave”, whilst the less evolved go to form the so-called
degenerate races vegetating in obscure parts of the world. Look now at the
adolescence of Russia, the youth of America, the old age of France, and the
decrepitude of Turkey. Look backwards at the glorious Egypt of bygone ages;
nothing remains but deserts of sand on, which imperishable structures still
testify
to the greatness [Page 104] of her past; the race that witnessed the majesty of the
Hierophants and the divine Dynasties is now inhabiting other lands.
Continents submit to the same law; history and science show how they pass
through a series of immersions and emersions; after Lemuria, which bore the
third race, came Atlantis, the mother of the fourth; Europe and America now hold
the various branches of the fifth; and later on, when this old land of ours is again
sunk beneath the waters, new lands will have emerged from the ocean depths to
bear the future race; the sixth.
The
very planets, too, come under this law; issuing as nebulae from the great
womb of the Universe at the beginning of the evolution of a solar system they
are absorbed back again when the hour of their dissolution strikes. Finally,
the very
Universes go forth from the breast of Brahmâ when he out-breathes, and return
to him when he in-breathes again.
Everything,
then, in appearance is born and dies. In reality, each thing springs from
its germ makes an effort — the effort of the divine Will incarnated in this
germ — develops its potentialities up to a certain step in the ladder of evolution,
then garners the acquired qualities and again returns to activity in continuous
cycles of life until its full development is reached. [Page 105]
PROGRESS
The
observer of Nature makes a third discovery. Every fresh cycle of life is
characterized by an advance on the preceding cycle; every stage brings
the
end nearer. This represents progress, and it is seen everywhere; when it does
not appear, it is because our limited vision cannot pierce its veil. Minerals
slowly develop in the bowels of the earth, and miners well know when the
ore is more or
less “ripe” [See L’or et la Transmutation
des métaux., by Tiffereau] and that
certain portions, now in a transition stage, will in a certain number of centuries
have become pure gold; experiments [Such as the one with the
magnet which, if too great a weight is suspended to its armature, loses strength,
and this it only regains by degrees when “fed” with successively stronger charges.
A steel spring that has borne too great a weight loses strength, and may break
if subjected anew to the same weight that “fatigued” it. Pieces of iron break
after being “fatigued” by a weight they easily carried before. Professor Kennedy
made very useful experiments regarding the “fatigue” of metals at the time
when metallic bridges were continually breaking, thus causing great perplexity
in the engineering world] have proved that metals are liable
to “fatigue” from excessive
tension; and that, after a rest, they acquire greater power of resistance than
before; magnets “are fed”, i.e they increase their power
of attraction, by exercise; cultivation improves and sometimes altogether transforms
certain species of [Page
106] vegetables; the rapid mental development of domestic animals
by contact with man is a striking instance of the heights to which progress
may attain when it is aided, whilst the influence of teaching and education
on the development of
individuals as well as of races is even more striking.[There
has been much discussion as to the causes of Evolution.
In his Progress
and Poverty, Henry
George endeavours to show that Evolution is in no way brought about by
individual or collective heredity. He says that the factors of Progress are:
First, the mind, which causes the advance of civilisation when not exercised
solely in
the “struggle for life”, or in frequent conflicts between nation and nation;
second, association or combination, which ensures all the benefits to be derived
from division of work; third, justice, which harmonizes the units of the social
body, and without which civilisation decays and dies.
H. George saw only these elements in evolution; consequently, he could neither
solve the problem of progress nor explain the rise and fall of empires. Indeed,
egoism and war are in no way, as he says they are, the sole causes of the fall
of races: the soil cannot feed a great nation for an indefinite period even
if the
country is prevented by emigration from becoming over-populated; the very
nature itself of the civilisation of the time prevents it from continuing for
ever. Modern western races, for instance, have for centuries past been developing
energy and intelligence; a limit must be fixed to that particular line of progress,
under penalty of destroying equilibrium both in the individual and the race.
If,
indeed, man is to learn strength and intelligence, he must also develop love,
or he will fail. The Elder Brothers behind Evolution control the advance of the
races
in accordance with the plan of God, whose servants they are.
The
real cause of evolution does not lie in environment, as H. George and his school
would have it : it is in the divine Will, incarnate in the Universe. It is God
who creates the world, God [Page 107] who fills it with life, guides it and permits its
development. All the laws of Nature are the expression of the supreme
Intelligence; all progress is nothing but the realization of the possibilities
of the
divine Will.
The evolutionary edifice is based on solidarity, and here environment is
undoubtedly an indispensable factor in development; still, it only acts as the field
or soil, and soil without seed remains barren.
The
mind is also a powerful lever in evolution, but it affects only one side of the
matter. Association or co-operation facilitates only the growth of certain
faculties whilst checking the development of others. Justice calls forth only
certain
individual and social forces, and leaves many of them in a state of stagnation.
In a word, H. George forgets that there is no useless force in the whole of Nature;
that they all collaborate in the general task, and finally that there would be no
progress, were it not for the existence of opposing forces. If, e.g., egoism were
non-existent, those still incapable of working without the hope of personal gain
would lack a powerful incentive to action. True is the saying that evil is the
stepping-stone to good.
Were
the Law of Re-births known, it would prove to be an explanation of the problems
of evolution]
THE
GOAL OF EVOLUTION
THE
FORMATION OF CENTERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS THAT BECOME “EGOS”
Through
innumerable wanderings this general progress traces a clear, unwavering line.
Those capable of following evolution on the planes of finer
matter at once perceive, as it were, wide-spreading centers forming in the
sea of divine Essence, which is projected by the Logos into the Universe.
As the ages
pass, these centers are sub-divided into [Page 108] more restricted centers, into
clearer and clearer “blocks” in which consciousness, that is, the faculty of
receiving vibrations from without, is gradually developed, and when this
consciousness within them reaches its limit, they begin to differentiate from
their surroundings, to feel the idea of the “I” spring up within them. From that time,
there is added to the power of receiving vibrations consciously, that of generating
them voluntarily; no longer are they passive centers, but rather beings that
have become capable of receiving and giving freely, individualities recognizing
and
affirming themselves more day by day; “I's”, who henceforth regard themselves
as separated from the rest of the Universe; this stage is that of the Heresy
of Separateness. Regarding this heresy, however, one may well say: Felix culpa.
Fortunate
error, indeed, for it is the condition, sine
quâ non of future divinity, of
salvation. It is self-consciousness; man is born; man, the center of evolution,
set midway between the divine fragment which is beginning and that which
is ending
its unfoldment, at the turning point of the arc which leads the most elementary
of the various kingdoms of Nature to the most divine of Hierarchies,
This stage is a
terrible one, because it is that which represents egoism, i.e combat, the cause of
every evil that afflicts the world, but it is a necessary evil, [Page 109] for there can
be no individual wisdom, power, and immortality without the formation of an “I”.
This ego is nothing but the first shoot, or bud, of the individual soul; it
is only one of its first faculties; the finest show themselves subsequently.
This bud is to
blossom into a sweet-smelling flower; love and compassion, devotion, and self-sacrifice
will come into manifestation, and the “center
of consciousness”, after
passing through the primitive stages — often called the elemental kingdoms - after
being sheathed in mineral, vegetable, and animal forms, after having thought,
reasoned, and willed in human forms and looked upon itself as separated from
its fellow-creatures, comes finally to understand that it is only a breath
of the spirit,
momentarily clad in a frail garment of matter, recognizes its oneness with
all and everything, passes into the angelic state, is born as Christ and so
ends as a
finished, perfected soul — a World-Saviour
Such is the Goal of life, the wherefore of the Universes, the explanation of these
startling evolutions of souls in the various worlds, the solution of the problem
regarding the diversity in the development of beings, the justification of
Providence before the blasphemy of the inequality of conditions.[Page 110]
A FEW DEDUCTIONS
The Germ
From the facts established in the course of this comprehensive view of
the Universe, we are enabled to draw important deductions.
For
instance, as the basis of every “cycle of life” is found the egg or germ,
that strange microcosm which appears to contain within itself the entire
organism
from which it proceeds and which seems capable of manifesting it in its entirety.
The first embryo logic discovery we make as the result of this study — a discovery
of the utmost importance is that germs are one in essence, and are all endowed
with the same possibilities and potentialities. The only difference that can
be found in them is that the more evolved have acquired the power of developing,
in
the same cycle, a greater number of links, so to speak, in the chain of forms
that proceeds from the atom to the sheath, or envelope, of the Gods-Men. Thus,
the
highest germ which the microscope enables us to follow — the human ovule — is
first a kind of mineral represented by the nucleus (the point, unity) of its
germinal cell; then it takes the vegetable form — a radicle, crowned by two cotyledons
(duality); afterwards it becomes a fish (multiplicity), which is successively [Page
111] transformed into a batrachian, then a bird, afterwards assuming more and
more complex animal forms, until, about the third month of foetal life, it
appears
in the human form.
The
process of transformation is more rapid when Nature has repeated it a certain
number of times; it then represents a more extensive portion of the
ladder of evolution, but, be it noted, the process is the same for all, and
for all the ladder is composed of the same number of steps; beings start
from the same
point, follow the same path and halt at the same stages; nothing but their
age causes their inequalities. They are more than brothers, they are all
representatives of the One, that which is at the root of the Universe, Divinity,
supreme Being.
We
also see that progress, the result of the conservation of qualities, offers
us repeated instances of these stages in the reappearance, at each step of
the
ladder, of the forms preceding it in the natural series. In the course of its
evolution, the germ of an animal passes through the mineral and vegetable forms;
if the animal is a bird, its final embryological form will be preceded by
the animal forms, which, in the evolutionary series, make their appearance
before the avian
type; if we are dealing with a mammifer, the animal will be the summit of all
the lower types; when it is the human germ that we are following in its development,
we see that it also [Page 112] has contained within itself and is successively
reproducing the potentialities of the whole preceding series. The microscope
is able to show only clearly marked stages and the most characteristic types,
for
evolution runs through its initial stages with a rapidity defying the closest
physical observation. If only Nature would slacken her pace in order to humour
our
incapacity, we should see in an even more striking fashion that she preserves
everything she has attained and develops the power of reconstruction with ever-increasing
rapidity and perfection.
True,
each cycle of incarnation realizes only an infinitesimal fraction of the
total progress made, each being advances only one step at a time along
this
interminable series; but then, are not these minor “cycles” in the course of
which beings grow and advance towards the final Goal, the visible, material
expression, the tangible and indisputable proof of the strict, the inexorable
Law of Rebirths ?
What the Germ contains
Now
let us examine a little more carefully this process of physical germination
and attempt to discover an important secret from it; let us see whether the
material germ contains the whole being, or whether, as the ancient wisdom
teaches, [Page 113] the vehicles of the divine Spark in evolution are as numerous
as the germs which respectively effect their development and preservation.
Although here, too, the doctrine of the Christian churches is inadequate, we
cannot altogether pass it by in silence. We will, therefore, state it, recommending
the reader to compare it with the theory of science and the teachings of
theosophy.
The
Churches deny evolution. They say: one single body, one single state of development
for each human being. For the lower kingdoms a state of
nothingness before birth and after death, whatever may have been the fate of
these beings during the short life imposed upon them; for man a single body
for which God creates a single soul and to which He gives a single incarnation
on a
single planet, the earth. [ A
few theologians have feebly affirmed the possibility of human life on other
planets than the Earth, but their voices have either been stifled
or
have met with no echo.
At
the Congress of Fribourg, in Switzerland, August, 1897, evolution was adopted
by an assembly of 700 eminent Catholics — laymen and clergy. Dr. Zahn
said that although creation is possible a, priori it is a posteriori so very
improbable that it ought to be rejected; that those who believe in
this creation rely upon the literal interpretion of Genesis, whilst the contemporary students of the
Bible affirm that the book is allegorical, that God, in the beginning
created the elements and gave them power to evolve in all the forms that characterize
the
organic and inorganic worlds. One voice alone was raised in protest, but it was
drowned beneath the refutations of the rest. The question, however, might be
asked: How is the transition made from one kingdom to another? What is the
missing link? Who is to interpret the Bible if it is an allegorical book? Is
it the Church which has always imposed the letter of the Bible and condemned all who
have attempted to set forth its spirit?] [Page 114]
It is our ardent wish that the signs of the growing acceptance of the idea
of evolution now manifesting themselves in Christian teaching may increase, and
that the Church, whatever be the influence that induces her to take the step, will
in the end loyally hold out her hand to Science. Instead of remaining hostile, the
two will then help each other to mount the ladder of Truth; and divine Life, the
light of all sciences, philosophies, and religions, will illumine the dark path they
are treading, and guide their steps towards that One Truth which is both without
and within them.
Scientific materialism says:
Yes,
everything is born again from its germ — thus is progress made, but that is
the limit of my concessions. Everything is matter; the soul has no existence.
There is evolution of matter, for matter, and by matter. When a form is destroyed,
its qualities, like its power of rebirth, are stored away in a latent condition,
within the germs it has produced during its period of activity. Along with
the
disappearance of matter, everything disappears — qualities, thoughts, “ego” — and passes into a [Page 115] latent state within the germ; along with the return
of the form, qualities and attributes gradually reappear without any hypothetical
soul whatever having any concern in the matter. So long as the form is in its
germ stage, the being is nothing more than a mass of potentialities; when fully
developed its faculties reappear, but they remain strictly attached to the
form, and if the latter changes, the faculties echo the change, so to speak,
with the
utmost fidelity. Matter is the parent of intelligence, the brain manufactures
thought, and the heart distills love, just as the liver secretes bile; such
is the
language of present-day science.
This
theory accepts the idea of universal injustice in its entirety; we shall
shortly prove that, notwithstanding its apparent logic, it explains only
one side of
evolution, and that if matter is the condition sine quâ non of the manifestation of
spirit, it is at least curious that the latter acts so powerfully upon it,
and is, beyond the possibility of a doubt, its real master.[ In hypnosis, indeed, the thought
suggested is strong enough to modify organic life and bring about
hematic extravasion (stigmata), burnings, vomiting, etc.....In certain ecstatic cases, fixity of thought produces analogous effects. No one who has studied
these questions can have the slightest doubt that mind dominates matter]
Modern
Theosophy, as well as the Wisdom of old, says in its turn: [Page
116]
Spirit
is the All, the one Being, the only Being that exists.
Force-matter [We
say force-matter, for there is no force without matter, they are the two
poles of the same thing. Moreover, what is considered force in relation
to
dense matter plays the rôle of matter to subtler forces; electricity, e.g is
force-matter, probably capable of serving as a vehicle for subtler force-matter,
just as it plays the rôle of force in relation to its conductors.
Force is born and dies with matter and vice versâ; both alike
arise from the activity of God] is nothing but the
product of the spirit's activity; in it we find many and divers properties — density,
weight, temperature, volume, elasticity, cohesion, etc because we judge
it from our sense perceptions; but in reality, we know it so little, that the
greatest thinkers have called it “a state of consciousness”, i.e an
impression produced by it within ourselves, [The sensation
it calls forth vary with the forms. That which burns us, gives life to other
beings; water, which suffocates us, enables fishes to live; whilst air suffocates
creatures that live in the water, etc]. It is
the result of the will
of the supreme Spirit, which creates “differences” (forms) in unfathomable
homogeneous Unity, which is incarnated in them and produces the modifications
necessary for the development of its powers, in other words, for the
accomplishment of their evolution. As this evolution takes place in the finite — for
the Infinite can effect its “sacrifice”, i.e its incarnation, [All
this must be taken figuratively. God does not incarnate Himself, He is the
All. To our limited conceptions. He seems to limit Himself, in order to be
the Life of the Universe] only by limiting itself — it
is [Page
117] progressive, proceeding from the simple to
the complex. Each incarnate, divine “fragment” [Here, too,
we are speaking relatively; in reality, there are no fragments of the Absolute.
We describe the process as it seems to us in the world of illusion] at
first develops the simpler
qualities and acquires the higher ones only by degrees; these qualities can
appear only by means of a vehicle of matter, just as the color-producing
properties of a ray of light only become manifest with the aid of a prism.
Form plays the part of the revealer of the qualities latent in the divine germ
(the soul);
the more complex this form becomes, the more atomic divisions it has in a state
of activity; the greater the number of senses it has awake, the greater the
number of qualities it expresses.
In
this process, we see at work, three main factors: Spirit, [Being:
Divinity] awakening within itself vibrations [ Force-matter] which
assume divers
appearances. [Forms].
These three factors are one; force-matter and form cannot exist without the
all-powerful,
divine Will (Spirit), for this is the supreme
Being, who, by his Will, creates force-matter, by his Intelligence gives it
a form, and animates it with his Love.
Force-matter
is the blind giant, who, in the Sankhya philosophy, carries on his shoulders
the lame man who can see — a giant, for it is activity [Page
118] itself; and
blind, because this activity is directed only by the intelligent Will of the
Spirit. The latter is lame, because when it has not at its disposal an
instrument of form-matter, it cannot act, it cannot appear, it is no longer
manifested, having
disappeared with the great periodical dissolution of things which the poetical
East calls the inbreathing of Brahmâ.
Form — all
form — creates a germ which reproduces it. The germ is an aggregate
containing, in a very high state of vitalization, all the atomic types that
will enter into the tissues of the form it has to build up. These types serve
as centers of
attraction for the atoms which are to collect round them when, under the
influence of the “vital fire”, [This movement given to the
germ by the union of its positive and negative forces] creative
activity has been roused in the germ. Each atomic type now attracts from the
immediate surroundings the atoms that resemble it, the process of segmentation
which constitutes germination begins, and the particular tissues represented
by the different atomic types are formed; in
this way the fibrous, osseous, muscular, nervous, epithelial, and other tissues
are reproduced.
The
creative activity that builds up tissues, if left to itself, could create
nothing but formless masses; it must have the help of the intelligence to
organize [Page
119]
the atoms into molecules, the molecules into tissues, and these
again into organs capable of a corporate life as a single organism supplied
with centers of sensation and action. This intelligence cannot proceed from
the mind bodies of the various beings, for the latter manifest their qualities
only when they possess a
fully-developed form — which is not the case with the germs; moreover,
the lower kingdoms show nothing but instinct, and even the superior animals
possess only a rudimentary form of mentality. The most skillful human anatomist
knows nothing more than the eye can teach him regarding the forms he dissects,
though even if he were acquainted with their whole structure, he would none
the less be quite incapable of creating the simplest sense organ. The Form
is the expression of cosmic intelligence, of God incarnated in the Universe,
the Soul of the world,
which, after creating matter, aggregates it into divers types, to which it
assigns a certain duration. The type of the form varies with the stage of development
of the
being (the soul) incarnated therein, for the instrument must be adapted
to the artist's capacity; the latter could not use an instrument either too
imperfect or too perfect for his degree of skill. What could the rudimentary
musician of a savage
tribe do if seated before the complex organ of one of our cathedrals; whilst,
on the other hand, what [Page
120] kind of harmony could a Wagner produce from a
shepherd's pipe ? The Cosmic intelligence would appear to have created a
single, radical form-type, which gradually develops and at each step produces
an apparently new form, until its series has reached the finished type of evolution.
It
stops the evolutionary process of each germ at the requisite point in the scale;
in the case of the most rudimentary souls it allows a single step to be taken,
thus
supplying an instrument that possesses the requisite simplicity; the process
is continued longer for the more advanced souls, but stops just when the form
has
become a suitable instrument. When it does not furnish the fecundated germ
with the “model” which is to serve as a ground-plan for atomic deposits,
segmentation takes place in a formless mass, and in this the tissues are shown
without organization; it is then a môle, a false conception.
It
is the same cosmic Intelligence that decides the period during which the
form shall remain in a state of activity in the world. Until a soul has learnt
the lesson
that incarnation in a form must teach it, this form is necessary, and is given
to it again and again until the soul has assimilated the experience that
form had to
supply; when it has nothing more to learn from the form, on returning to
incarnation it passes into one that is more complex. The soul learns only by
degrees, beginning [Page
121] with the letters of the alphabet of Wisdom, and
gradually passing to more complex matter; thus the stages of evolution are
innumerable and the transition from one to the other imperceptible; modern
science states this fact, though without explaining it, when she says that
“Nature
makes no leaps”.
The
building up of forms is effected by numerous Beings, forming an uninterrupted
chain that descends from the mighty Architect, God, to the
humblest, tiniest, least conscious of the “builders”. [The “builders” are
inferior begins utilized by Nature in every process of germination and development.
To certain readers, this will perhaps appear to be an aberration of the theosophic
imagination, in which case we recommend them to supply us with a better theory
and to believe in that, until the time comes when the functioning of the “inner
senses” takes place in them, and enables them to perceive these beings
in action] God, the universal Spirit, directs evolution, and
could accomplish every detail of it directly; but it is necessary, for their
own development, that the souls,
whatever stage they have reached, should work in the whole of creation, and
therein play the part, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they are
fitted to play. Consequently they are employed at every stage; and, in order
to avoid
mistakes, their activity is guided by more advanced souls, themselves the agents
of higher cosmic Entities, right on up to [Page
122] God, the sovereign controller of
the hierarchies. Consequently there are no mistakes — if, indeed, there
are any real ones at all — in Nature, except those that are compatible
with evolution and of which the results are necessary for the instruction of
souls; but the Law is continually correcting them in order to restore the balance.
Such, in general outline, is the reason for the intervention of beings in the
evolutionary process.
So
far as man is concerned, the highest of these Beings supply the ideal type
of the form which is to give the soul, when reincarnated, the best means
of
expression; others take charge of these models and entrust them to entities
whose sole mission is to keep them before their mental eyes and guide the
thousands of “builders ” who build round them the atoms which are to form the
tabernacle of flesh in its minutest details; these Liliputian builders may
be seen at work by the inner eye; they are as real as the workmen who construct
material
edifices in accordance with an architect's plans.
That
everything may be faithfully reproduced in form the entity that controls
the building must not lose sight of the model for a single moment. Nor does
it do so,
generally speaking, for one may say that this being is, as it were, the soul
of the model, being one with it and conscious only of the work it has to
perform, In
many cases, however, [Page
123] it receives certain impressions before birth from
the mother's thoughts: an influence capable either of forwarding or hindering
its work. The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with this fact when they
assisted
Nature to create beautiful forms by placing in the mother's room statues of
rare plastic perfection, and removing from her sight every suggestion of ugliness.
More than this; certain intense emotions of the pregnant woman are capable
of
momentarily effacing the image of the model which the builder has to reproduce,
and replacing certain of its details with images arising from the mother's
imagination. If these images are sufficiently vivid, the being follows them;
and if they endure for a certain length of time they are definitely incorporated
in the
building of the body. In. this fashion, many birth marks (naevi materni)
are produced; strawberries or other fruit, eagerly desired at times when they
cannot be procured, have appeared on the child's skin; divers objects that
have left a vivid impression on the imagination may have the same effect. The
clearness and perfection of the impression depend on the intensity and continuance
of the
mental image; the part where it is to appear depend on the sense impressions
of the mother coinciding with the desire which forms the image — for
instance, a spot on the body touched rather sharply at the moment.[Page
124]
This
has given rise to the idea that the “longing” is
impressed on that part of the body which the mother is touching during
her desire. When the image
is particularly strong and persistent considerable modifications of the body
have been obtained; in such cases, children are born with animal-like heads,
and
treatises on teratology relate the case of a foetus born with the head detached
from the trunk, because the mother, after witnessing an execution, had been
horribly impressed by the sight of the separated heads of the victims.
Malebranche, in his Recherche
de la Vérité, tells of a
child that was born with broken limbs because his mother had seen the torture
of the wheel. In this case, the image must have been of enormous vibratory
power and of considerable persistence.[Teratological phenomena
attributable to the imagination of the mother are so numerous that they cannot
be refuted. The case mentioned here is taken from Van Helmont's De Injectis Materialibus.
The woman in question had been present at the decapitation of thirteen soldiers,
condemned to death by the Duc d'Alva. In the same work are two other instances
which occurred under similar circumstances: in the first, the foetus at birth
was lacking a hand; and in the second, it was the whole arm that was missing;
whilst, what is perhaps even stranger than this, neither arm, nor hand, nor
head were found, they had been
absorbed by the body of the mother.
A
general or even a local arrest of development is almost always due to the
phenomenon of mental inhibition experienced by the same being; it [Page
125]
definitely ceases to see the plan, evolution stops, and the embryo,
expelled before the time takes on the form of the evolutionary stage it had
reached at that moment; if it ceases to deal with a single detail only that
detail remains in statu
quo, and is often embedded in portions of the organism quite away from
the point where it would have been found had it continued to evolve; certain
cysts belong to this class.
The
third factor, the Spirit, the Soul — or, to be more exact, the incarnated
divine ray — follows a line of evolution parallel to that of the
matter which constitutes its form, its instrument; this parallelism is
so complete that it has deceived observers
insufficiently acquainted with the wonders of evolution. It is thus that scientific
materialism has taken root. We will endeavour to set forth the mistake that
has been made, and call to mind the correctness of the Vedantin symbol, which
represents the soul as lame, incapable of acting without the giant, force-matter;
though the latter, without the guidance of the former, could not advance along
the path of evolution.
This
soul is a “no-thing”, which, in reality, is everything; a ray of the spiritual
sun (God), a divine spark incarnated in the vibration (matter)
produced by the supreme Being, it is a “center”, capable of all its Father's
potentialities. These [Page
126] potentialities, which may be grouped together under three
general heads — power, love, and wisdom — we may sum up in the
one word: consciousness. It is, indeed, a “center of consciousness” in the
germinal state, that is about to blossom forth, realizing all its possibilities
and becoming a being fully aware of its unity with the Being from which it
comes and which it will then
have become.
In
this development the vibrations of outer matter play the part of the steel,
which, on striking flint, causes the life latent within the latter to dart
forth. Each vibration which strikes the soul arouses therein a dormant faculty,
and when all
the vibrations of the universe have touched it, this soul will have developed
as many faculties as that universe admits of, until, in the course of successive
worlds, it becomes increasingly divine in the one Divine Being. In order that
all
the vibrations of which a universe is capable may reach the soul the latter
must surround itself with all the different types of atoms that exist in
the world, for
every vibration is an atomic movement, and the nature of the vibration depends
on the quality of the atoms in motion. Now, the first part of evolution consists
in condensing round vital centers [To be strictly logical,
one should say round the
only center, the one Being, but looked upon from the side of manifestation,
evolution appears as stated] (souls) atoms [Page
127] aggregated in combinations
of a progressively increasing density, on to those that make up the physical
plane; when the soul has thus clothed itself with the elements of all the planes,
the resulting form is called a “microcosm” — a small Cosmos — for
it contains, in reality, all the elements contained in the Universe. During
this progressive development, the soul, which thus effects its “fall” into
matter, receives from all the planes through which it passes and from all the
forms in which it incarnates, varied vibrations which awake within it correspondingly
responsive powers and develop a non-centered, diffused, non-individualized
consciousness.
In
the second phase of evolution, the forms are limited, the vibrations they
receive are transmitted by specialized sensorial groups, and the soul, hitherto
endowed with a diffused consciousness, begins to feel varieties of vibrations
that grow ever more numerous, to be distinguished from the surrounding world,
to separate itself, so to speak, from everything around; in a word, to develop
self-consciousness. This separation first takes place on the physical plane;
it is made easier by hard, violent contacts, and the forms, in their turn,
become more complex, varied, and specialized in proportion as the soul is
the more perfectly individualized. When it has developed all the self-conscious [Page
128] responsive
powers in the physical body, it begins to develop those faculties which have
as their organs of transmission the finer bodies, and as planes of vibration
the invisible worlds.
In
our planetary system the number of the invisible planes is seven.[Hellenbach,
in his book, Magie der Zahlen, says regarding the number seven.
“The law governing the phenomena on which our knowledge is based
decrees that the vibrations of sound and light regularly increase in number,
that they are grouped in seven columns, and that the vibratory elements of
each column have so close a relation to one another that not only can it
be expressed in figures, but it is even confirmed by practice in music and
chemistry.
“The
fact that this variation and periodicity are governed by the number seven
cannot be disputed; it is not a matter of chance: there is a cause and we ought
to discover it”.
In
his table of the elements grouped according to atomic weight, Mendelejef
also acknowledges that the number seven controls what he calls the Law
of periodical
function. He reaches conclusions similar to those of Hellenbach.
Dr. Laycock, in his Articles on
the Periodicity of Vital Phenomena (Lancet)
1842, sums up as follows: —
“It
is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this,
that, in animals, changes occur every 3, 7, 14, 21 or 28 days,
or at some definite
period of weeks” ] Each of them in turn
supplies the soul with a form; thus, when evolution - which in its second phase
successively dematerializes matter, i.e.
disassociates the atoms from their combinations, beginning with the denser
ones - has dissolved the physical plane, the human soul will utilize, as its
normal body,
a finer one which it is at present using us a link between the mental and the [Page
129] physical bodies. Before this dissolution is effected, however,
human beings will have developed, to some extent, several finer bodies, already
existing, though hitherto not completely organized.
The
first of these bodies, the astral — a very inappropriate name, though
here used because it is so well known — is a copy, more or less,
of the physical form in its general aspect; the resemblance and clearness
of the features are pronounced in proportion to the intellectual development
of the person, for thought-vibration has great influence over the building
up of the centres of force and of sensation in this body.[See Man
and his Bodies, by A. Besant]
The
second is an even finer aggregate, composed of mental substance and assuming,
during incarnation, the form of a smaller or larger ovoid — the causal
body — surrounding the physical form. [The size of the
causal body varies according to its development. It has been named causal,
because it contains within itself the causes or germs of all the other bodies,
with the exception of the denser part of the physical. We say denser because
the physical body is double:
its etheric part belongs to the causal body, its visible part comes from the
parents] At its center, and plunged in the astral body during
incarnation, is another kind of ovoid not so large and composed of denser substance
- the mental body [The mental body, which is, as it were,
an ephemeral flower of the causal, is born and developed in each incarnation,
disintegrating after the devachanic (heavenly) life.[Page
130]
Above these states of matter,
at the present stage there appears no form to the consciousness of human beings,
though perfect seers can perceive, within the causal body, still higher grades
of matter, which will only subsequently become centers of self-consciousness.
During
incarnation, the soul, in the majority of men, is clearly conscious of itself
and of its surroundings only when it is functioning through the nervous system
(the brain); when it leaves the denser body, during sleep, its consciousness
is in the astral body, and there it thinks,[It moves more
or less freely on the astral
plane, according to the development of the astral body. In men of low
development, this body cannot be separated from the physical, under penalty
of a nightmare which brings about a waking condition] but
without being conscious of what is taking place around it. After dis-incarnation,
it generally becomes highly conscious in its astral body, where it passes
its purgatorial life; and this latter
endures until the soul leaves the astral body. As soon as the latter is thrown
off, consciousness centers in the mental body; this is the period of Devachan or
Heaven. When the mental body is put off, paradise is at an end, and the soul,
sheathed only in the causal body, finds itself on a very lofty plane, but here,
consciousness is vague, when we are dealing with a man of average
development. Instead of laying aside this garment, as so far it has done with
the rest, it [Page
131] recommences, after the lapse of a certain time, another
descent into the matter of the lower planes and a new incarnation begins.
To
the center of the causal body are drawn atoms from the inner mental plane;
these represent a new mental body.[The atoms interpenetrate
in consequence of their differences of tenuity] When this
latter has been formed, there are attracted to it atoms of the astral plane,
and these form a new astral body; the soul, clothed in these two sheaths,
if one may so express it, is brought into
conscious or unconscious relation, according to its degree of development,
with the two corresponding planes, lives there generally for a short time,
and is
directed to a mother's womb, in which is created the visible body of flesh
within
the center of its astral body.
This
force of atomic attraction has its center in the causal body, a kind of
sensitive plate on which are registered all those vibrations which disturb
or affect human vehicles during incarnation. This body is, in effect, the
present abode of
the soul, it represents the terminal point of human consciousness, [Later
on, the center of consciousness passes from the human to the superhuman state
and ascends unceasingly until it reaches the center of the Divinity incarnate
in the world] the real center of man. [When
this center is fixed in one of the higher bodies, the buddhic for instance,
the man has passed into the superhuman stage] It receives
all the [Page
132] impressions of the plane on which it finds
itself, as well as those which come to it from the lower planes, and responds
to them the more readily as it has now attained a fuller development. It possesses
the power to attract and to repel; a microcosm, it has its outbreathing and
inbreathing, as has the Macrocosm; like Brahmâ, it creates its bodies
and destroys them, although in the vast majority of mankind it exercises this
power more or less unconsciously and under the irresistible impulsion of the
force of evolution — the divine Will. When it attracts, it causes to
recur within itself the vibrations it has received and registered — like
a phonographic roll — during the
past incarnations; these vibrations reverberate in the outer world, and certain
of them attract from this world [As sand, placed on a plate
in a state of vibration,
assumes varying forms] — in this case the mental world — the
atoms capable of responding to them. When they have created the mental body,
other vibrations can be transmitted through this body to the astral world and
attract atoms which will form the body bearing the same name — the astral — and
finally other vibrations, making use of these two bodies as a means of transmission,
will affect the physical plane and attract atoms which will assist in the building
up of the
denser body.
Everywhere
the formative power of vibration is guided by cosmic intelligence, but it
is effected far more easily in the reconstruction of the higher bodies, that
precedes incarnation properly so-called, than in the creation of the new physical
body. Indeed, in the astral and mental bodies, nothing is produced but an atomic
mass, the many elements of which will be aggregated into complete organisms
only during incarnation properly so-called, whilst the construction of the
visible body admits of a mass of extremely delicate and important details.
It is for this reason that we have seen this work of construction entrusted
to special Beings who prepare, control and watch over it unceasingly.
It
is because the causal body registers every vibration the personality [The
soul acting in the mental, the astral, and more especially - in the average
man - the physical body. The Individuality is the soul acting in the causal
body] has
generated or received in the course of its series of incarnations, that the
vices and virtues are preserved, as is the case with the faults or the good
qualities of
the physical body. The man who has created for himself a coarse astral body
by feeding the passions and thoughts which specially vivify the coarser matter
of
this body will on returning to earth find a new astral body composed of the
same elements, though then in a dormant state. He who, by the cultivation
of a [Page
134] lofty intellect, has built up a refined mental body, will
return to incarnation with a like mental body, whilst the one who, by meditation
and the practice of devotion
which bring into being the noblest qualities of the heart, has set vibrating
the purest portions of the causal body and of the divine essence (Âtmâ-Buddhi,
as it is named in Sanskrit), with which it is filled, will return to birth
endowed with those qualities which make apostles and saints, the Saviours of
the world.
In other
words:
Matter
has more remote boundaries than science recognizes; the numberless grades,
of atoms of which it consists, their powers of aggregation, the multiplicity
and duration of the bodies they form, are not even suspected by materialism.
Materialism
sees nothing but the part played by matter; it denies that intelligence
plays any part, and will by no means admit — in spite of evolution and
progress — that above man there exists an almost endless chain of higher
and higher Beings, whilst below him are kingdoms of an increasingly restricted
range of consciousness. By refusing to believe in the multiplicity of the vehicles
which
the human soul uses, it is unable to understand individual survival or to solve
the problem of heredity. Indeed, evolution is only partially explained by the
physical
germ; the latter, in order to act alone and [Page
135] of itself in the development of
the human embryo should possess a degree of intelligence considerably superior
to that of man. This is the opposite of what we find, however, and we are brought
face to face with the absurd fact of a cause vastly inferior to its effect.
Indeed, the intelligence shown by the germ is not its own; it is that of the
cosmic Mind
reflected by mighty Beings, its willing servants. Besides, this germ contains
only the qualities that belong to physical matter, and, as we shall show, the
moral,
mental, and spiritual qualities are preserved by the finer — the causal — body,
which represents the real man at the present time.
THE
PROBLEM OF HUMAN HEREDITY
If
materialism were the whole truth, it ought to explain the whole of heredity;
instead of that it clashes with almost all the problems of life. Physical substance
offers for analysis none but physical phenomena attraction, repulsion, heat,
electricity, magnetism, vital movement; the anatomical constitution of the
highest — the nerve — tissue, presents only the slightest differences
in the animal series, if these differences are compared with the enormous distinctions
in the qualities it expresses. Differences of form, visible to the microscope,
are at times
important, we shall be [Page
136] told, and those that affect the atomic activity and
groupings [See the diagram in the chapter on the Atom, in The
Ancient Wisdom,
by A Besant] are perhaps even more important. That is true,
especially in whatever concerns man.
Intelligence
cannot always be explained by the complexity of the brain — though
this complexity is the condition of faculty, as a rule — insects such
as ants, bees, and spiders, whose brains are nothing but simple nerve ganglia,
display prodigies of foresight, architectural ability and social qualities;
whilst along with these dwarfs of the animal kingdom, we see giants that manifest
only a rudimentary mind, in spite of their large, convoluted brains. Among
the higher animals, there
is not one that could imitate the beaver — which, all the same, is far
from being at the head of the animal series — in building for itself
a house in a river and storing provisions therein.
There
is a vast gulf, in the zoological series, before and after these insects,
as there is before and after the beaver; whilst an even wider gulf separates
the highest specimens of the animal world from man himself.
Nor
do the weight and volume of the brain afford any better explanation of the
difference in intellect than does its structural complexity.[Page
137]
The weight relations between the
brain and the body of different animals have been estimated as follows by Debierre
(La Moëlle et l 'Encéphale): —
Rabbit |
1 of brain for 140 of body |
Cat |
1 of brain for 156 of body |
Fox |
1 of brain for 205 of body |
Dog |
1 of brain for 351 of body |
Horse |
1 of brain for 140 of body |
If matter were the only condition sine
quâ non of intelligence, we should have to
admit that the rabbit was more intelligent than the cat, the fox, the dog, and even
than the horse.
In
the same work the following figures express the average size of the brain
in different races of men.
Pariahs
of India |
1332 cubic centimeters |
Australians |
1338 cubic centimeters |
Polynesians |
1500 cubic centimeters |
Ancient
Egyptians |
1500 cubic centimeters |
Merovingians |
1537 cubic centimeters |
Modern
Parisians |
1559 cubic centimeters |
This
would prove that the people who built Karnac and the Pyramids, who raised
to an elevation of about 500 feet blocks of granite, one of which would require
fifteen horses to drag it along a level road, who placed these enormous stones
side by side without mortar or cement of any kind and with almost invisible
joints,
who possessed the secret of malleable glass and of painting in colors [Page 138] that have not faded even after the lapse of centuries . . . that such a
race of men were inferior to the rude, uncultured Merovingians, and scarcely the
equals of the Polynesians!
Science
also tells us that in a child five years of age the human brain weighs,
on an average, 1250 grammes — this, too, would bear no relation whatever with the
intellectual and moral development of a child of that age and that of an adult
man.
Though Cuvier's brain weighed 1830 grammes, and Cromwell's 2230, that of
Tiedemann, the great anatomist, when placed on the scales, weighed no more
than 1254, and that of Gambetta only 1246,
The
physical body of itself can give no reason for a host of psychological phenomena
on which, however, a flood of light is shed if one recognizes the
existence of other vehicles of consciousness possessing more far-reaching
vibrations, and consequently capable of expressing higher faculties. During
sleep, for instance, which is characterized by the Ego having left his physical
body, reason is absent, and what we call dreams are generally nothing but a
tissue of nonsense, at which the dreamer feels astonishment only when returning
to his body on awaking. On the other hand, as we have seen in Chapter I., when
the Ego succeeds in imprinting on the brain the vibrations of the higher
consciousness, it is able to regain the memory of [Page 139] facts long forgotten
and to solve problems that could not be solved during the waking state. There
are madmen who have ceased to be mad during somnambulism; persons of
rudimentary intelligence have proved themselves to be profound thinkers during
the mesmeric trance; when under somnambulism vision is possible to those born
blind and certain people can see things that are happening a great distance
away, and their reports have been proved correct; certain phenomena of double-consciousness
cannot be explained without the plurality — the duality, at all
events — of the vehicles of consciousness.
To
return to the rôle played
by the germ in the question of heredity, we repeat that the physical germ,
of itself alone, explains only a portion of man; it throws
light on the physical side of heredity, but leaves in as great darkness as
ever the problem of intellectual and moral faculty. If it represented the
whole man, one
would expect to find in any individual the qualities manifested in his progenitors
or parents — never any other; these qualities could not exceed the amount
possessed by the parents, whereas we find criminals from birth in the most
respectable families and saints born to parents who are the very scum of society.
You may come across twins, i.e beings born from the same germs, under the
same conditions of time and [Page 140] environment, one of whom is an angel and
the other a demon, though their physical forms closely resemble each other.
Child
prodigies are sufficiently numerous to frequently trouble the thinker with
the problem of heredity. Whence came that irresistible impulse towards poetry
in
Ovid which showed itself from his earliest youth and in the end overcame the
vigorous opposition of his parents?
Pascal
in his youth met with keen opposition from his parents, who forbade him
to think of mathematics and geometry. He besought his father to tell him, at
all events, “what was that science of which he was forbidden to think,
and what it treated of”. The answer was given to him that “it is the method
of making correct figures and finding out the proportions they bear to
each other”. With nothing
more than this information and the aid of reflection, he discovered for himself
the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid by means of “circles and lines” traced
in secret.
Mozart,
at the age of three, learnt the clavecin by watching his sister play; a year
afterwards he composed admirably, at the age of seven he played the violin
at first sight without having had any teacher, and proved himself a composer
of
genius before he reached his twelfth birthday.
Pepito Ariola, the little Spaniard, was only three [Page 141] years of age when,
about ten years ago, he filled with astonishment the Court of Madrid by his
wonderful playing on the piano.
In the lineage of these prodigies has there been found a single ancestor capable
of explaining these faculties, as astonishing as they are premature ? If to the
absence of a cause in their progenitors is added the fact that genius is not
hereditary, that Mozarts, Beethovens, and Dantes have left no children stamped
from birth as prodigies of genius, we shall be forced to the conclusion that, within
the limits it has taken up, materialism is unable to explain heredity.
A few more words must be said on physical heredity to explain why moral
qualities in men of average development are often on a par with the same in their
parents.
In
reality, the physical germs only multiply the organic elements of the ovule,
and as this latter contains the cell-types of all the tissues, it follows
that these cell-types will possess the qualities of the tissues that exist
in the parents. For
instance, germs of sufferers from arterio-sclerosis will supply a vascular
apparatus predisposed to arterio-sclerosis; tuberculous subjects will supply
germs in which the vital vibrations and cellular solidity will be below the
normal, and bring about those degenerate tendencies which characterise the
tuberculous [Page 142] subject; those of sanguine constitution will transmit a faculty for vital
assimilation and considerable corpuscular production, and so on.[We have
seen that the organs formed by these tissues are the special work of a particular
being controlled by lofty Intelligences]
In
this transmission there are two main factors: the male and the female germs.
The former represents force, it imprints on the ovule the initial vital vibration
which is to be that of each of the cells of the organism in course of construction.
The function of this germ may be studied more easily in animals, because their
heredity is not complicated by the individual differences due to the mental
vehicle. The stallion supplies the vital qualities — the blood, i.e the vivacity, brio,
pace; physical resistance comes from the mare. To sum up, the modalities of
matter are supplied by the feminine germ.
Peculiarities
of form proceed from several causes. Phrenology and physiognomy are sciences,
though the studies hitherto known by these names are almost
valueless because they have not been carried on with the necessary scientific
precision. Doubtless Gall and Lavater possessed the gift of penetrating both
mind and heart, as was also the case with Mlle. Lenormand Desbarolles and
the genuine graphologists; but this [Page 143] gift was not the result of mathematical
deduction, but rather a psychometric or prophetic faculty; for this reason
neither they nor their books have produced pupils worthy of the name. The main
features
and lines only of the human form have a known meaning — and not always a very
precise one — for every physical, passional, mental, or spiritual force possesses
an organ of expression in the visible body, and the varieties of form of this
organ enable one to judge of the degrees of force they express on the earth
plane. On
this basis, peculiarities of form mainly stand; and the intensity of certain
defects or qualities is at times expressed so strongly that it completely modifies
the
tendencies it would seem that heredity ought to pass on. The similarity of
form between parent and child is not exact, because it proceeds from the peculiarities
of the individual in incarnation far more than from the collective tendencies
of the
embryonic cells in process of proliferation.
The
being charged with building the body can, in turn, considerably modify its
form, copying specially striking features found in the mother's thought; certain
characteristic family traits, the Bourbon nose, for instance; those belonging
to strangers in continual relationship with the mother, and those that a
babe, fed
and brought up away from home, takes from his nurse or from the surroundings
[Page 144] amid which he lives; all these probably leave their impress in the same
way. In this case, indeed, the “builder” — who, it must be added, ceases the
work of construction only when it is on its way to completion, which happens
about the age of seven — is influenced by the forms of the new surroundings, and
at times copies them, more or less, and we may ask ourselves if the unexplained
fact of Negro children being born to a white woman — the widow of a
Negro — remarried to a white man is in no way connected with the reproduction of
a mental image of the coloured children of a former marriage.
Another
fact: observers have noticed that almost all great men have had as their
mother a woman of lofty character. This preponderance of the maternal influence
will be understood if we remember that the cellular mass that composes the
child's body belongs to the mother, not only because this mass originates from
the proliferation of the ovule, and, consequently, is only the multiplication
of the
maternal substance, but also because the materials that have formed it and
have been transmuted into flesh have been supplied by her; indeed, everything
comes
from this cellular mass, the elements drawn from the amniotic fluid and the
blood, the milk, which, after birth, continues for long months to build up
the child's body
and the [Page 145] magnetic fluid, the “atoms of life”, which are continually
escaping from it and which the babe absorbs whilst receiving incessant attention
from his mother.
This
exchange of atoms is of the utmost importance, for these ultra-microscopic
particles are charged with our mental and moral tendencies as well as with
the physical qualities; personally, I have had many direct proofs of this,
but the most
striking came at a critical period of my life. One day, when nervous exhaustion,
steadily increased by overwork, had reached an extreme stage, a great
Being — not a Mahatma, but a Soul at a very lofty stage of evolution — sent to me
by destiny at the time, poured into my shattered body a portion of his physical
life. Shortly afterwards a real transformation took place, far more of a moral
than of a physical nature, and for a few hours I felt myself the “copy” or
counterpart of that great Soul, and the divine influence lasted twenty-four
hours before
it gradually died away.
I then understood, better than by any other demonstration, the influence of the
physical upon the moral nature and the method of the subtle contagion often
effected by mesmerism. A man is known by the friends he keeps is an old
proverb.
If
atoms of life can have so marked an influence upon a man nearly forty years
of age, i.e at a [Page 146] period when he is in full possession of himself, how much
more powerful is this influence when exercised upon the child — a delicate,
sensitive body, almost entirely lacking the control of the soul ? This is the
reason hired nurses often transmit to the child their own physical features
and countless
moral tendencies which last some time after weaning; orphans, too, morally,
often resemble the strangers who have brought them up. Like physical
tendencies these moral propensities disappear only by degrees, according to
change of environment, and especially to the degree in which the body is
controlled by the reincarnated soul.[ As the building of the body is reaching
completion, the Ego (the Soul) begins to make use of the new instrument. It
is at about the age of seven years that the development of the nerve centers
becomes
sufficiently advanced to allow of the brain receiving the vibrations of the
soul; up to this point, the real man has scarcely had any influence upon the
body,
although the mental projection (the mental body) which he has formed can
express itself to a certain extent much earlier, from the seventh month of
foetal
life; up to this time, the instinctive energies of the astral body alone affect
the embryo]
The
most important, however, of the moral influences at work on the being again
brought into touch with earth-life is connected with the emotions, the passions
and thoughts of those around. The child — and under this name must be included
the embryo and the foetus — possesses bodies the subtle elements of which are
in a dormant state; his [Page 147] mental and sense organisms are scarcely more
than masses of substance that have not yet been vitalized — a sort of collection
of germs of good or of evil, which will yield fruit when they awake.
The passional and mental vibrations of the parents play on the matter capable
of
responding to them in the invisible bodies of the child; they vivify it, attract
atoms of the same nature taken from the finer atmosphere around, and awake
in it
passional and mental centers which, but for them, might have remained latent,
or, at all events, would only have developed at a later stage, when the Ego,
master of its vehicles would be in a position to struggle against the outer
evil influences and not permit them to have effect save within the limits imposed
by
will. In this way, it is possible to bring to birth evil instincts in a
child, and intensify them to a considerable extent, before a single virtue
has succeeded in
expressing itself on the new instrument in course of development. This mental
action is so strong that it colors vividly, if not altogether, the morality
of the little
ones living beneath its influence, and even older children are still so sensitive
to it that whole classes are seen to reflect the moral character of the teacher
who has
charge of them. This influence, too, does not cease with childhood,
it weighs — though far less heavily — on the man during the whole of his life;
and families, nations, [Page 148] nay, even races, each see through the prism of
their own special atmosphere. Mighty and subtle is this illusion which man,
in the course of his pilgrimage towards divine Unity, must succeed in piercing
and
finally entirely dissipating.
Our
responsibility towards children is all the more serious in that, to the deep
impression which thought makes on the subtle, plastic, and defenseless mental
bodies of the little ones, is added the fact that, could one prevent the
development of the germs of evil in the course of one incarnation, these germs,
not having fructified, would transmit nothing to the causal body after death, and
would disappear [ In Kâmaloka (Purgatory). The desires, in purgatory, cannot be
satisfied, because there is no physical body to express them, and this causes
a state of suffering which has been compared to a burning fire. This fire burns
up
the passions and leaves behind only the “germs” which the causal body takes up
and bequeaths to the future astral body. But for this providential burning
away, the passions would exist from early childhood in the future incarnation, i.e. at a
time when the Ego has no hold whatever upon the new personality, and when
the latter would be terribly affected by this influx of the forces of evil] with the disintegration of the matter of which they were composed. Consequently,
with
regard to children especially, we should cultivate none but noble emotions
and lofty thoughts, so as to create centers of pure and worthy activity within
their
vehicles in course of reconstruction, and to turn their early impulses in the
direction of good, [Page 149] their first actions towards duty and their first
aspirations towards the lofty and luminous heights of spirituality.
One
may see from this rapid sketch how numerous and important are the influences
added to and blended with those of physical heredity. This group of
influences, some maleficent, some beneficent, is chosen by the Beings who
control destiny and give to each Ego, on reincarnation, the body and environment
it has merited, or rather that are needed, for the harmonious development of
its faculties. A young soul [Souls are of different ages: the savage
is not so old as
the civilized man, while the latter is the younger brother of those strong
and wise Souls who compose the vanguard of humanity] still at the mercy
of the animal
impulses — necessary impulses at the outset of human development — of its
kamic, i.e desire, vehicle, is sent to parents who will be able to supply its body
with material elements of a particular density without which these impulses
could not manifest themselves. An Ego that is approaching maturity will be
drawn to a
family that is physically and morally pure, in which it will receive both the
finer physical vehicle it needs and that lofty environment which, when it enters
upon
earth life, will develop the centers of expression for its nobler faculties.
Those who are named in the mystic phraseology of the East, the “Lords of Karma”, [Page
150] in their choice of the race, the family, and the environment in which the
reincarnated soul is to appear, seek to give this latter the most favourable
conditions for its evolution. An Ego whose artistic side needs to be developed
will often be born in a family which will supply it with a nervous system accustomed
to the kind of vibrations required, and an environment favourable to the early
development of the physical centres of these faculties; to assist a being whose
scientific, mystical, or metaphysical side needs to be developed, other
environment and parentage will be chosen, and it is this relative parallelism
existing between the moral qualities of the parents and those of the children
which has deceived observers insufficiently instructed in the mystery of heredity,
and made them believe in the influence of the physical germ alone.
It
is an easy matter to supply an Ego of average development with a vehicle;
an ordinary body is all that is needed. There may be extreme difficulty,
however,
when a new instrument has to be found for a lofty soul, and when we think that,
in pressing instance's when the fortune of humanity is at stake and the hour
of destiny has struck, certain great Souls accept very imperfect bodies for
want of
better ones, we shall no longer be astonished at finding that any particular
Messenger, in his compassion for the humanity he has to enlighten and [Page
151]
to direct to the ancient, eternal Source of Truth, has clothed
himself with a body of flesh the ancestry of which was far from being adapted
to the expression of his
lofty faculties; courageous Souls are well able to put on the robe of pain
and to submit to slander and calumny when the world's salvation can only be
achieved
at such a cost. We know scarcely anything of the conditions that control the
return to earth of the Avataras, the “Sons of God”, except that sometimes great
Initiates, after purifying their bodies, voluntarily hand them over to the
“gods”, who come down to earth — a sublime
sacrifice which, like that of the Saviors who consent to come amongst us, shows
forth
that supreme characteristic of divinity:
the gift of oneself.
Nor
is heredity always realized; many a physical characteristic is not reproduced;
in families tainted with dangerous physiological defects, many children escape
the evil, and the diseased tendencies of the tissues remain latent in them,
although they often afflict their descendants. On the other hand, as already
stated, extremely divergent mental types are often met with in the same family,
and many a virtuous parent is torn with grief on seeing the vicious tendencies
of his child. Here, as elsewhere, the hand of Providence, as Christianity
calls it —
the Intelligence that bring's about evolution, the Justice that controls and
the Love that animates it — the
hand of God or of those who, having become divine, collaborate in the divine
plan, comes to make up for the imperfection of the
vehicles, and they permit only what is necessary to come to each one — only what
“he has deserved, as is generally said: this hand can create a physical or a
psychic malady even where heredity and environment could not supply it, just
as it can preserve a pure soul from the moral infection of the surroundings into
which it is thrown.[It is impossible for heredity and environment to supply all the
conditions that a soul’s evolution calls for, and nothing but these conditions; that
is the reason Providence intervenes in the interests of justice]This is the
reason we find that heredity and environment either fail to fulfil their promise
or else give
what was not their's to give.
OBJECTION
Reincarnation is not necessary, it has been alleged; the soul's evolution is
continued after death in the invisible worlds in finer bodies; consequently it is
needless to return to the denser bodies of earth.
In
our opinion, the trials of life, so exhausting to the will, must have given
rise to
this theory, for not only have those who advance it never given the slightest proof [Page 153] of its truth, but it is utterly opposed to the law
of
evolution.
In
a world which prefers the flights of imagination to logical reasoning we
are too accustomed to regard man as a being apart in Nature; we are only
too
prone to make exceptions on his behalf. The patient scientific researches
of all ages have laid down this universally accepted axiom: Nature does not proceed
by leaps. It has not so far entered anyone's mind — we think not at all
events — to teach that the development of the mineral, the vegetable, and
even of the animal kingdom, comes to a sudden halt on this planet, once the
forms in these kingdoms are dispersed, to be completed in finer worlds; but
regarding man other thoughts have prevailed, as though his intelligence and
his heart had learnt all the lessons this earth is capable of teaching! From
the
most undeveloped of savages up to those glorious Spirits that have been
the Manu, the Buddha, and the Christ, we find every step occupied on the long
ladder of humanity. In the lower kingdoms all the stages exist also and are
utilized, each link receiving something from its neighbours and giving them
something in return, thus expressing on the visible plane that gracious unity
which is divine Love: love that is instinctive and imperative in beings
of a low degree of evolution; obeyed by those who, without loving [Page 143] it,
understand its good services, and actually lived by such souls as have entered
upon the path of sacrifice — souls that comprehend the Unity of beings. If this
earth has been capable of teaching the Saviors of the world, why should divine
Wisdom send thereon only for one short life this mass of imperfect men, to
hurl them afterwards on to other worlds, like careless butterflies flitting
from flower to
flower ?
Can
the evolutionary effort be so easy and simple; is divine energy of such
slight value that it can thus be squandered to no purpose; is the process
of creation the
sport of an infant God; is the Logos, sacrificing himself in order to give
life to the Universe, a prodigal, working without rhyme or reason, sending
forth His
intelligence and might in aimless sport and leaving evolution at the mercy
of His caprice; did not Brahmâ, by means of meditation, which, as the Oriental
scriptures tell us, preceded creation, practice the gentlest, the most rapid,
and the easiest method of guiding beings to the Goal? Is it not sheer blasphemy
to
attribute such folly to the Soul of the world ? Does not the study of Nature,
at each step, belie this insensate waste, of which no human being would
be guilty ?
Everywhere with the minimum of force, Nature produces the maximum of effect;
everywhere energy is consolidated with one end in view; and [Page 155] yet, amid
the general order around, is the evolution of man to form a solitary, an
incomprehensible exception ?
No,
we cannot believe it for a moment. American spiritists, [It
is in this great body, with which we are in sympathy, though we claim the
right to dispute their
theories when we regard them as erroneous, that this hypothesis is met with
more especially. True, certain schools of lower occultism teach it also, but
they form a minority, and are of no importance] however — for
it is they who have given out this hypothesis — are not in agreement
with the school of Allan Kardec on this fundamental point, and this fact
is by no means calculated to strengthen the authority for this doctrine.
Did we not know that disincarnate beings are as ignorant in the life beyond
as they were on earth; that they tend to group themselves, as they did
here below, with those who think as they do, whilst remaining aloof from
such as profess hostile opinions; that the Hindu remains a
Hindu, the Christian a Christian, and the Mussulman a Mussulman; that sceptics
are still sceptics; and atheists, atheists; we should think that spirit “communications”
with their incessant contradictions were unparalleled nonsense, since the
“spirits” are
by no means agreed on the very things regarding which they pretend to pronounce
a judgment from which there is no appeal. [Page
156]
Fortunately,
there is a reason for these divergences. Death neither lifts the veil of
Isis nor brings the soul into the presence of omniscient Light; man
remains what he was, with all his former beliefs, opinions, passions, qualities,
sympathies, and antipathies. True, he knows a little more than he did upon
earth; no more has he doubts as to the after-life, he regains a precise
memory of the
whole of his life here, and the recollection of many a forgotten fact comes
back to him; he understands better, for his intelligence is being served
by a much finer
body — but
that is all. Therefore “spirits” reflect both the morality and the mentality
of the nation to which they belonged on earth, and in the other life
are to be found friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers, reincarnationists
and
non-reincarnationists.
Rebirths
can be established only by personal proof, by memory; now, the soul that
has entered the life beyond, after dis-incarnation, has not reached the end
of
its pilgrimage; it is learning that it must, by self-purification, pass from
world to world until it attains to a state of supreme and final rest; but
when this latter has
been reached, it has lost its lower sheaths and the memory they gave it, and
when the Law brings it back to earth, it puts on new bodies, which, having
had no
participation [Page 157] in preceding events, are ignorant of the past.
Remembrance,
we shall see later on, is preserved in the cosmic Memory, but until the soul
has reached a sufficient development, it cannot summon it forth,
and even could it do so, it would succeed in leaving its impress on the brain
only when the physical, the astral, and the mental bodies have submitted
to a process
of purification which harmonizes [Harmony is established when there is vibratory
synchronism of all the states of matter of the different bodies, i.e when each state
of matter in a body vibrates in unison with the analogous states of matter
of all the other bodies] them and binds them closely together. Then only does
man
know that Reincarnation is true, and takes place on earth until this latter
passes into a state of obscuration, [When the “life wave” has ended its cycle on this
earth, it passes in succession over the other planets of our chain and leaves
the earth in a state of slumber. This slumber ceases with the return of the “life wave”;
it becomes death when the evolution of the chain is accomplished. See A P
Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism] or, at all events, until the development of the soul
enables it to utilize for its evolution some environment on the planet, other
than the physical one. [At a certain stage on the Path, return to earth is no longer
obligatory]
We
shall be told that we are now proving what we before denied. No, we are simply
stating an [Page 158] exception which happens in very few cases and only
then to the pioneers of the race — an exception which is nothing but an apparent
one and finds its place in the progressive order which unifies all the beings
in the planetary chain to which we belong.
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