Theosophy - Reincarnation by R. Machell - as published in "Theosophical Siftings" Volume 7 - [1894-1895]
REINCARNATION
by R. MACHELL
as published in “Theosophical Siftings” Volume
7 [1894-1895]
[Page 12] LIFE
on this particular globe and in this particular portion of it is so very unsatisfactory to a large number of
us that we, naturally enough, continually ask, "What
is the good of it ? Why are we here at all and what is to be the next move? " And the religion of the
country says, ''It is the Will of God, who created Man to glorify Himself". And the next move for the
wicked man who declines to praise the works of this God is Hell, which is not satisfactory, and smacks of priestly
invention, besides leaving the question where it was. Others tell us we are a product of a tendency of atoms
to congregate and form complex beings, and that we are going nowhere in particular for no particular reason — and
this is not comforting either.
Then the doctrine of Reincarnation is put before us, and a good many
of us jump at it and are sure that now we know all about it and it is quite easy and simple. We are here because
we want to be, and we don't enjoy it much because we have tried to have a good time in previous lives, and
have to bear the reaction now, like a man who gets gloriously drunk one day and realises next day that life
is an empty fraud and a police cell is lacking in comfort. Then we see that by skilful avoidance of evil in
this life, we may contrive to get a pretty comfortable time in the succeeding life, just as the good young
man avoids getting drunk because of the headache to follow. But somehow this view of life is not ennobling
either, and though egotism tells us in the name of common-sense that it is enough to live and be happy, yet
there is an unsatisfied yearning in our nature for something more, a nobler, fuller life. But why ? Having
learned the doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma, and seeing for ourselves that morality ensures a comfortable
life: why not live and be moral and make comfortable Karma for future lives ? It seems good enough, and admirably
suited to the commercial instincts of the noble British nation. There is this little trouble about it. We cannot be
satisfied. Experience teaches that very soon, and only when one has abandoned hope and expectation can any
satisfaction come. All this of course only applies to those in whom the thinking mind has begun to work, for
the others, whose minds (?) are mere reflectors as yet, do not ask questions but simply seek their daily food
and comfort ,and for them almost any simple form of superstition is enough, whether it be called Religion or
Science, and the priests of either class will provide all the creeds that are required. Sometimes, however,
the whole mass of a race seems to outgrow its creeds, and the priesthoods who always lead from behind, keeping
[Page 13] well in the rear of the march of evolving mind, find themselves out of
tone with even the rearguard of their followers (?) and then there is trouble, and a new set of creeds has
to be fixed up. Fortunately the great thinkers are always ready to grant the priesthoods the loan of some cast
off doctrines, and so the game goes on, and the wheel of Evolution rolls heavily round. But the man who has
begun to think for himself rejects all creeds, seeking to know the why and the how of Life and the reason of
his own existence and of his apparently useless aspirations. Then if he study Theosophy he finds light on these
points. He finds that his own high aspirations are accounted for by the theory of a high Spiritual Entity overshadowing
and endeavouring to completely incarnate in that centre of forces which appears as his mind and body. His efforts
to reach up are the reflected efforts of this Entity to express itself on the earth plane, and then the failure
to respond to these efforts results in unhappiness, dissatisfaction and the necessity of the repeated attempts
at reincarnation made by this Entity. He learns that Humanity is indissolubly united in its essence and that
it is eternally evolving, and that the men and women of today are but the outer garments of the same Spiritual
Beings whose efforts and failures have peopled the past ages with human beings, and that the object of Life
on this globe is to bring the whole of the race into a fitting state to pass on to a better sphere of action,
and that to accomplish this object one thing is absolutely necessary, Brotherhood amongst men. And so he finds
the starting point of all progress is also the final word, Brotherhood, and on that all the ethics of the world
are built. The recognition of the synthesising force is Love, the watchword of the great Saviours of the World.
Then the doctrine of Re-incarnation becomes of more importance and
the thinker begins to see not merely a way to escape suffering temporarily, but the way to become a conscious
and active instrument in the evolution of the race.
Now the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy make man a complex being — and
this complexity is classified under seven heads, these divisions being called his principles. But as only a
part of these seven is active in ordinary mankind, he is in reality, perhaps, represented as a three-fold being
during life. Then we might say that the two extremes which we may call Spirit and Matter are only active when
united by the really active energy of the middle one — the Soul — which is the incarnating Ego.
This Ego, however, appears to be more a bundle of qualities, or characteristics, than a simple entity, Thus
we have certain peculiar characteristics which make each of us distinguishable from one another to those who
are acquainted with us, and again for ourselves, apart from the fundamental consciousness of "I am I” which
makes our individual existence a certainty to each of us, there is memory which alone enables us to identify
the I of today with the I of yesterday, or of an hour ago. [Page
14]
So I would say, that there is an inherent sense of individuality which is inseparable from a man, and may be the man himself, and there is memory, an attribute of the man by
which he links a certain series of experiences together and so builds up a personality which, is the outward
expression of the inherent feeling of individuality.
Now the ordinary memory employed by us is a faculty that almost entirely
deals with the experiences of the body we are using for this particular lifetime, and as we mostly assume that
all which comes to us in the form of memory really does only refer to this one life, it matters little whether
it is really the case or not. But the result of this limitation of the memory is that we make in this manner
a one-life personality, which is at the same time confused by the ever-present sense of I am, which makes us
feel that we are not temporary products of memory alone, but permanent entities; we cannot indeed think of
the time when we did not exist, although we may be intellectually convinced that there was such a time, and
will be again a time when we shall cease to be.
Consequently, when we begin to consider the Re-incarnation theory,
and ask “What is it of all these principles and qualities and so on, that really continues, that incarnates
and re-incarnates", we find that the answer is naturally, that it is that principle in which the individualizing
faculty or tendency exists, and this is called Manas — we readily see that the ordinary memory being
concerned with things of one life only, cannot give any clue to the events of preceding lives, and that the
memory of such lives must reside in a faculty which is independent of the life of the body and bodily mind
and memory.
But now comes a difficulty. If the re-incarnating Ego is this individualizing
tendency, it implies that this too is but a quality or characteristic of something beyond; and as moreover
we find upon enquiry of each and all that, when closely pressed home, the question " What are you ?" meets
with the same answer in the end, "I am I", then we naturally ask "Is there only one ultimate I ? " and
is that the same I in all, or is the sense of / am in one different to the sense of / am in another.
The differences being all in the qualities, attributes, appearances and limitations of the experiences of I and not in it itself, for it still remains simply I under all circumstances.
Now here is the difficulty, how are we to say that the I of a past
life is the I of today, and not an appearance on the face of the one great I which speaks and declares
itself in each one ? How are we to understand the teaching that is given in Theosophical writings to the effect
that a human being is an individual who carries his own character and progresses or retrogresses through countless
lives on this one earth, on the one hand, and the teaching that all that is, is but the appearance to
itself of the One Reality. I do not pretend to offer an explanation of this problem, but merely point [Page
15] out that if That which is unchangeable and undifferentiated
is the One Reality, then obviously the stronger the sense of separate existence becomes, the farther away is
it from the One Reality. And at the same time the apparent contradiction must be true, that the stronger the
sense of individual permanence and immutability, the nearer the realization of the Great Unity. And this is
not so hard to see, for if the Unity of the Universe be a fact (and it seems a necessity of thought to me that
it should be so), then that fact must be eternally and universally present in every centre of consciousness
in the universe, as its latent and fundamental reality; and it is perhaps this ever present abstraction which
baffles us in our efforts to find the individuality in man, and to say it is this or it is that.
But leaving that question, we may take it that there is the greater
/ which is back of all individuality, and which remains apparently unchanged and the spectator of actions done
by its reflections or shadows, the separate individualities, then let us assume that there are a number of
differentiated individualities which are the re-incarnating Egos of our Humanity, and let us try to see what
relation these Egos bear to the personalities they produce and the bodies the latter wear as their outward
garments.
Now in this philosophy we find the law of Karma and the law of cycles,
which in modern science are, I suppose, represented by the law of the conservation of energy and the law of
periodicity. And these laws, or theories, are very important in considering this question of Re-incarnation.
Why are we today here in this spot, in this body, and with this character ?
First, there seems to be the desire for sentient existence, which
impels the Ego to leave its home of spiritual passivity, and, like the knights of old legends, to seek adventure
in the world of matter and sensation.
Now there are two ways of regarding this "descent into matter",
this fall of the angels, this incarnation of Spirit in matter — we may either say that the Ego seeks
experience and goes out to get it, or we may say that the Spiritual Ego looks down on the chaos of matter,
and in the spirit of divine compassion descends from its pure state to bring light into darkness and order
into the conflicting elements; in fact, to make a cosmos out of chaos. Both these views seem to me to be true,
but there is an apparent contradiction in them.
I think that if we push our thought back to its beginning, we have
to accept the idea that our first emergence from a state of passive rest into one of active experience is caused
by a "desire for sentient existence". because we cannot in thought get behind the origin of thought,
so we start with what appears manifest, and we say the Ego seeks experience. Well, the Egos get that, and become
so interested in the experiences of the sense world that they forget all about their spiritual origin, and
become [Page 16] almost as material as the beings of the lower planes, so returning
to a stage passed through in previous cycles of evolution. Then the Egos who have safely passed through the
stage of the material world, looking down, see the failure of their brothers and go down to their rescue, and
take on such bodies as are available for the purpose, and these bodies being produced by inferior Egos for
lower purposes, may fail to work well in the hands of purer spirits, and so perhaps the attempt may be a failure,
and the result may be a genius doing and saying magnificent things in an aimless and rather useless manner,
and while wrapt in spiritual abstraction allowing the body to run wild in every kind of excess — or else
the personal mind of the man is so elated by the flashes of inspiration, that he asserts himself and takes
such possession of his own personality as to shut out the light of his own real genius by his own vanity; or
perhaps it might be truer to say that the Ego in doing his work identifies himself with his instrument and
forgets his real nature and purpose, so looking on himself as a separate entity, and losing his way as others
have done.
Then we get these men and women, who have identified themselves with
their personalities, doing deeds and thinking thoughts which are powerful causes, or seeds sown in the seed
time, and these seeds, being not only their own children, but even more truly their own bodies, are so intimately
connected with them, that they are inseparable, and the ripening of the crop from these seeds implies the presence
of the Ego that planted the seed, for they are of one essence. So that the thought or act is like a seed sown,
not in a field far away, but in our own aura, in our very body of bodies, and there lying latent till the recurrence
of the conditions favourable to its germination and growth.
Now seeds do not all germinate or grow at the same rate, nor come
to maturity at the same season, and the time of germination may be almost indefinitely postponed if the conditions
are favourable to that, — just as we have all heard of the peculiar wheat grown from some grain taken
from the coffin of a five-thousand-year-old mummy. So the thoughts, words, and acts of a man may mature in
his aura under favourable conditions at enormously long periods from their first sowing, and also by altering
the conditions the crop may be hurried and brought to a harvest in a very short time.
Now it seems to me that while the "desire for sentient existence" is
the constant cause of incarnation, yet that is not sufficient alone to account for the special appearance of
a particular Ego in a particular time, place, and condition. But the periodic recurrence of favourable conditions
causes the ripening of the seeds of particular desires, and so draws the Ego back into the net of its own weaving,
and forces it to accept a body which is the expression of a certain bundle of desires and tendencies,
and which form the [Page 17] character of the personality for that life — but
not necessarily at all the real character of the Ego. For the real character of the Ego would be represented
by all the desires, tendencies, aspirations, and so on, of all past lives, and I do not see how it can be possible
for all these to find expression in any one ordinary life time. Nor do I see how all these varying causes set
in motion can all come to maturity in one short life.
Therefore it seems to me that any particular incarnation will represent
only some one side of the real character of the incarnating Ego; and as so very large a part of ordinary life
goes no further than the mere gratification of quite personal desires and wants, I cannot see that there is
very much to be gained by the Ego except a repetition of old experiences, serving only to intensify or gradually
satiate the original desire, and as the next group of qualities come to maturity and forms again a body (astral)
for a new incarnation, a new personality is formed, and the Ego compelled to take up that body finds itself
so strongly bound by old habits that it stupidly repeats the old acts in almost the old manner, and not asserting
itself strongly fails to make any real connection between the life just past and the present one, the only
common factor perhaps being the desire for sensation and the attempt to gratify it.
So there may be thus a number of types of character belonging to each
Ego, and these recurring at definite intervals may perhaps account for the varying time periods said to lie
between each incarnation.
Thus, suppose the real character of the Ego follows the law said to
rule this planet, and arranges itself into seven groups of qualities, these would represent seven personalities
or characters, and be like seven character parts played by an actor, the influence of one upon the other being
only perceptible in the effect made upon the actor, the Ego. Suppose, for instance, we give names to a few
of these characters — Hamlet, Othello, Rosalind, and so on — these may follow each other in pretty
close succession and yet the interval between the appearance on the scene of Hamlet and his return to the stage
of life might be very considerable, and as Hamlet represents really the Hamlet side of the Ego's character,
it would be untrue to say that Hamlet reincarnates as Rosalind, and yet true to say that the Ego has reincarnated
when the next character appears on the scene. And if the Ego has begun to re-assert its supremacy over these
habits of character and to show itself strongly in each one, then the link between these lives becomes stronger
and more manifest, the Ego begins to have a real sway over the life of each, so that they all begin to work
in the same direction, and the energy of the Ego is concentrated and its return is prepared. The prodigal is
on his way home, rich in experience from one point of view, and with soiled garments from another.
If this suggestion has any truth in it, then we can see why man is [Page
18] continually told, "Know thyself", "Look within", "The Kingdom of Heaven
is within you", and so on, for the way to what the religionists call salvation, and the Socialists progress,
and the Theosophists evolution, lies by way of the real Ego and not by way of the personal appearance of it.
It is necessary for the Ego to cease to identify itself with each of its temporary characters and to be true
to itself in all of them, so it recollects its own object and ceases to tread the useless round of repeated
experience.
Not till this point of return is reached is the true individualising
process begun. It is said that there are seven stages of initiation in occultism, and perhaps at each of these
stages a candidate makes acquaintance with a new aspect of his seven-fold character and conquers it or frees
himself from the habit of that character by taking his stand in his real nature and refusing to be blinded
by the passions and desires of that personality; so robbed of its vitalising essence, the personality becomes
extinct and disintegrates, the causes being met and balanced on the plane of cause and not allowed to reach
the plane of effect, so that no longer will any physical embodiment of that character be produced, and the
Ego gathers to itself the essence of the experience of that character; and when at last the seventh personality
is dissolved and the fruit gathered in, then the Ego is freed from the necessity of rebirth on the physical
plane and the work of redemption is accomplished. The at-one-ment is made, and the higher is united to the
lower, as it is sometimes said.
The teachings of the Theosophy of today for the most part adopt the
plan of speaking of two Egos in man, the Higher and the lower, but I have tried to express the same thing in
different terms, for I do not think we shall ever learn the meaning of any teaching so long as we merely learn
the rules and let the rules become chains to bind us instead of signs to guide as along the path. We must take
all the teachings into account, and the one that is sometimes apt to be forgotten, is that each must think
for himself, and how can he do that if he slavishly bind himself to any formula ? So I think that we should
not hesitate to try and work out by ourselves and with one another, theories developed out of our efforts to
understand these matters.
For we must remember that the whole truth upon spiritual matters could
not be expressed in any form of words or in any terms of thought but could at best be only symbolised by these
forms of expression. And if we wish to know whether we have any understanding of a doctrine which we have learned,
it is a good plan to try and explain the thing in entirely different terms to someone else. For we only know
a thing when we can express it in our own language and in different ways.
Although the method of dividing man into seven principles and then,
crediting him as I have suggested with at least seven personalities and an [Page 19] indefinite
number of incarnations appears complicated, it is only an analytical way of looking at the entity man who is
One eternally as humanity, and in a narrower cycle is one as a conscious individual. And as soon as we have
mastered the seven principles and classified all these things we should then try to look at them all as so
many phases of the one conscious man, to do which we have to imagine a single centre of individuality passing
up and down between and through all these different planes of consciousness, then we must go a step further
and try to realise that all these principles are active at once in their own states of time and no time, which
is so difficult, that after spending some of our time on the effort to realise in thought that we are actually
consciously existing in a state that is not governed by any of our notions of time and space, we shall probably
be more willing to say that in every attempted explanation of any problem of life there must always remain
a balance of the unknown. And then we shall not be so apt to think we know all about it because we have learned
a few rough rules on the general action of the principles.
We are frequently told that all these speculations and reasonings
about these difficult questions are no use, and that Jesus and Buddha taught simple morality and so on that
anybody could understand. Well, in the first place it is not true that the great teachers taught simply morality;
for their followers had most complicated and profound systems of philosophy. But also there is something always
implied which is not true. People say we don't want any intellectual theories and talk about principles and
such things to help us to lead good lives. This implies that people have no intellectual theories and notions
already in their minds and that they do succeed in leading good lives — which in a general way I don't
believe. It is just because our minds are clogged up with mistaken notions about things, about the world we
live in, and about ourselves, that it is necessary to administer more theories and doctrines to enable the
mind to cure itself by the diet that it can best assimilate. Look, for instance, at the result of giving phenomenal
manifestations to people whose psychic faculties are atrophied, why they rise in revolt and take their stand
on their misconceptions of the law of Nature, they call on their conjurors to imitate these phenomena by other
means, and go on their way more than ever convinced of the non-existence of that which you seek to show them.
When a person has been accustomed all his life to recognise other states of being and other beings than the
physical earth and mankind, then it may be possible for a master to teach such a pupil by direct demonstration
of the thing in itself, but so long as we keep our mind lumbered up with formulas, creeds whether scientific
or religious, theories and speculations, we can only clear the ground by studying better theories and by generally
attempting an intellectual clearance before we [Page 20] can even make a fair start
on the road to the gaining of a spiritual perception of the truth about ourselves.
So let us take such a doctrine as this one of Reincarnation and not
erect it as a crystallised dogma, as an object of worship, but try to keep it in a fluid state so that it may
blend with our minds and become a principle in life to us rather than a dogma or creed. Even in its roughest
form and crudest expression the theory of Reincarnation appears to me as a ray of light in the darkness and
a foundation on which to build hope of future progress, hope of a better and greater humanity and a truer and
more intelligent life, than this senseless almost idiotic struggle for existence in which the winner loses
as much as the loser, and death the inevitable is the gate to nowhere, and we live for no purpose and die when
we can't live any longer.
If the life of Madame Blavatsky had served no other purpose than to
bring forward once more this old teaching, even then we should owe her a debt of gratitude which we could only
pay by doing as she did, and striving to give to others the light that has brightened our own lives with hope.