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Theosophy - How we remembers our past lives AND other Essays on reincarnation by C.Jinarajadasa
HOW
WE REMEMBER OUR PAST LIVES
by C.Jinarajadasa
and OTHER ESSAYS ON REINCARNATION
First Edition 1915
The Theosophical
Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai(Madras), India 600 020
TO
THE CAPTAIN OF OUR SALVATION
IN FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE
Full moon of Chaitra, 1912
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HOW WE REMEMBER OUR PAST LIVES
Among the many ideas
which have lightened the burden of men, one of the most serviceable
has been that of Reincarnation. It not only explains why one man is
born in the lap of luxury and another in poverty, why one is a genius
and another an idiot, but it also holds out the hope that, as men
now reap what they have sown in the past, so in future lives the poor
and wretched of today shall have what they lack, if so they work for
it, and that the idiot may, life after life, build up mentality which
in far-off days may flower as genius.
When
the idea of reincarnation is heard of for the first time, the student naturally
supposes that
it is a Hindu doctrine, for it is known to be a fundamental part of
both Hinduism and Buddhism. But the strange fact is that reincarnation
is found everywhere as a belief, and its origin cannot be traced to
Indian sources. We hear of it in far-off Australia (
See The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, by Baldwin Spencer
& F.G. Gillen, 1904, page 175, et seq.)
and there is a story on record of an Australian aborigine who went
cheerfully to the gallows, and replied on being questioned as to his
levity :”Tumble down black-fellow, jump up white fellow, and
have lots of sixpences to spend!” It was taught by the Druids
of ancient Gaul, and Julius Caesar tells us how young Gauls were taught
reincarnation, and that as a consequence they had no fear of death. Greek
philosophers knew of it; we have Pythagoras telling his pupils that in his
past
lives he had been a warrior at the siege of Troy, and later was the
philosopher Hermotimus of Galzomenae. It is not utterly unknown to
Christian teaching, if we take the simple statement of Christ, when
questioned whether John the Baptist was Elijah or Elias reborn: “If
ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come,” and
He follows up the statement with the significant words: “He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” In later Jewish tradition,
the idea is known, and the Talmud mentions several cases of reincarnation.
There are many to whom reincarnation appeals forcibly, and Schopenhauer
does but little exaggerate when he says: “I
have also remarked that it is at once obvious to everyone who hears of it
for the first
time”. Some believe in the idea immediately; it comes to them
like a flash of light in thick darkness, and the problem of life is
clearly seen with reincarnation as the solution. Others there are
who grow into belief, as each doubt is solved and each question answered
There
is one, and only one, objection which can logically be brought against reincarnation,
if correctly understood as Theosophy teaches it. It lies in the question: “If, as you say, I have lived on earth in other bodies, why
don’t I remember the past?”
Now if reincarnation is a
fact in Nature, there surely will be enough other facts which will
point to its existence. No one fact in Nature stands isolated, and
it is possible in divers ways to discover that fact. Similarly it
is with reincarnation; there are indeed enough facts of a psychological
kind to prove to a thinker that reincarnation must be a fact of Nature
and not a theory.
In answering the question why we do not remember
our past lives, surely the first necessary point is to ask ourselves
what we mean by “memory”. If we have some clear ideas
as to the mechanism of memory, perhaps we may be able to understand
why we do not (or do) “remember” our past days or lives.
Now, briefly speaking, what we usually mean by memory is a summing
up. If I remember today the incidents of my cutting my finger yesterday,
there will be two elements in my memory: first the series of events
which went to produce the pain - the misadventure in handling the
knife, the cut, the bleeding, the sensorial reaction in the brain,
the gesture and so on; and second, the sense of pain.
As
days pass, the causes of the pain recede into the periphery of consciousness,
while the
effects, as pain, still hold the centre. Presently, we shall find
that even the memory of the pain itself recedes into the background,
leaving behind with us not a direct memory as an event, but an indirect
memory as a tendency – a
tendency to be careful in the handling of all cutting implements. This process
is continually taking place; the cause is forgotten (though recoverable under
hypnosis from the subconscious mind), while the effect, transmuted into tendency,
remains.
It is here that we are specially aided by the brain. We are apt to
think of the brain as a recorder of memory, without realizing that
one of its most useful functions is to wipe out memories. The brain
plays the dual function of remembering and forgetting. But for our
ability to forget, life would be impossible. If each time we tried
to move a limb, we were to remember all our infantile efforts at movement,
with the hesitation and doubt and perhaps even pain involved, our
consciousness would be so overwhelmed by memories that the necessary
movement of the limb would certainly be delayed, or not made at all.
Similarly,
it is with every function now performed automatically, which was once consciously
acquired; it is because we do forget the process of acquiring, that
we can utilize the faculty resulting therefrom.
This is what is continuously
taking place in consciousness with each one of us. There is a process
of exchange, similar to copper coins of one denomination being changed
to silver coins of smaller bulk representing them, then into gold
coins of smaller weight still, and later bank notes representing their
value, and last of all to a piece of paper, a cheque, whose intrinsic
worth is nil. Yet we have but to write our signature on the cheque,
to put into operation the whole medium of exchange. It is a similar
process which takes place with all our memories of sensations, feelings
and thoughts. These are severally grouped into categories, and transmuted
into likes and dislikes, and finally into talents and faculties.
Now
we know that as we manifest a like or dislike, or exhibit any capacity, we
are remembering
our past, though we cannot remember one by one in detail the memories
which contributed to originate the emotions or faculty. As I write
these words in English on this page, I must be remembering the first
time I saw each word in a reading book, and looked up its meaning
in a dictionary as I prepared my home lessons; but it is a kind of
transmuted memory. Nevertheless, I do remember, and but for those
memories being somewhere in my consciousness (whether in touch with
some brain cells or not is not now the point ) I should not be able
to think of the right word to express my thought, nor shape it on
this paper so that the printer will recognize the letters to set them
up in print. Furthermore, we know as a fact that we do forget these
causative memories one by one; it would be foolish if, as I write
a particular word, I were to try to call up the memory of the first
time I saw it. The brain is a recording instrument of such a kind
that, though it registers, it does not obey consciousness when it
desires to unroll the record, except in certain abnormal cases. The desire to remember
is not necessarily followed by remembrance, and we have to take this
fact as it is.
Here it is that Bergson has very luminously pointed
out that “we
think with only a small part of the past; but it is with our entire past,
including the original bent of our soul,
that we desire, will, and act.” Clearly then it would be useless
to try to remember our past lives by the mere exercise of the mind; though
thought can remember something of the past, it is only a fraction of the whole.
But on the other hand, let us but feel
or act, and then at once our feeling or action is the resultant
of all the forces, of the past which have converged on our individuality.
If, therefore, we are to trace the memories of our past lives in our
present normal consciousness, we must note how we feel and act, expecting
to recover little of such memories in a mere mental effort to remember.
Every
feeling and act, then, can be slowly traced to its component parts of impressions
from
without and reactions from within. So much is this the case with each
one of us, that we can construct for ourselves what has been another's
past, as we watch that other feel and act, provided he does both in
an average fashion. But if he manifests a mode that is not
the average mode of thought or feeling, then he becomes incomprehensible
to us and needs explanation. Since, then, the average feelings and
actions can be readily explained as the result of average experiences,
unusual feeling and actions must be explained as having an unusual
causation. If the present writer were to deliver a lecture in English
in India, where so many can speak English, each of his listeners would
take for granted that he had been to school and college, without perhaps
enquiring further when and where. But
were he, instead of speaking English, to speak Italian, than at once each listener
would be curious to know how and when that faculty of speaking Italian
had been grown. Furthermore, if an Italian were present in the audience,
then judging from the speaker’s phrasing and intonation, he
would know that the speaker must have lived in Italy, or must have
spent a considerable time among Italians. Wherever there is any manifestation
of feeling or action — as indeed, too, of some expressions of
thought — which has something of the quality of the expert,
then we must postulate for that faculty a slow growth through experiences,
which are the result of experiments along that particular line.
Now
each one of us has many qualities of an average kind, as also a few
of an expert kind. The former we can account for by experiences common
to all. Let us examine some of the latter, and see if we can account
for them on any other hypothesis than that of reincarnation.
Now
one of the principal things which characterizes men is their likes and dislikes.
Sometimes
these might be called rational, that is, they are such likes and dislikes
as an average individual of a particular type might be said normally
to possess at his stage in evolution. We can account for these normal
likes and dislikes, because they are such as we ourselves manifest
under similar conditions. But suppose we take the case of an extraordinary
liking, such as is termed “love at first sight.” Two people
meet in the seeming fortuitous concourse of human events, sometimes,
it may be, coming from the ends of the earth. They know nothing of
each other, and yet ensues the curious phenomenon that as a matter
of fact the do know a great deal of each other. Life would be a happy
thing if we could go out with deep affection to all whom we meet;
but we know we cannot, for it is not in our nature. Why then should
it be in our nature to “fall in love” with a particular
individual? Why should we be ready to sacrifice all for this person
whom, in this life at least, we have met but a few times? How is it
that we seem to know the inner workings of his heart and brain from
the little which he reveals at our conventional intercourse at the
beginning? “ Falling in love” is indeed a mysterious psychological
phenomenon, but the process is far better described as being dragged
into love, since the individual is forced to obey and may not refrain.
Now
there are two logical explanations possible: one is the ribald one of the
scoffer, that
it is some form of hysteria or incipient insanity, due it may be to
“complexes”; the other is that, in this profound going
forth of one individual as an expert in feeling towards another, we
have not at first meeting but the last of many, many meetings which
took place in past lives. Where or when were these meetings is of
little consequence to the lovers; indeed Rudyard Kipling has suggested
in his “Finest Story in the World” that it is only in
order that we might not miss the delicious sensation of falling in
love with our beloved, that the kindly Gods have made us drink of
the river of forgetfulness before we returned to life on earth again.
The principal thing to note, in this emotional mood of being in love,
is that the friendship is not as one that begins, but as one that
is continued; and in that psychological attitude of the two
lovers we have the remembrance of past lives, when they met and loved
and sacrificed for each other.
Not
dissimilar to this unusual liking which constitutes falling in love, is the
unusual disliking
which is not so very rare in human experience. Certain normal dislikes
we can readily account for; but take the case of two individuals
meeting for the first time, it may be knowing nothing even
by hearsay of each other, and then we have sometimes the striking
phenomenon of one of the two drawing back from the other, not
outwardly by gesture, but inwardly by a feeling or an intuition. In
all such cases of drawing back, the curious thing is that there is
no personal feeling; it is not a violent feeling of “I do not
like you”, but far more an impersonal state of mind where almost
no feeling manifests, and which may be paraphrased into “It
is wise to have little to do with you.” Sometimes we follow
this intuition, but usually we brush it aside as unjust, and then
turn to understanding our acquaintance with the mind. Not infrequently,
it then follows that we begin to like him, perhaps even love him.
We forget our “first
impression”, or we put it aside as mere irrational impulse.
Now there are many such revulsions that are purely irrational impulses,
but there is a residue of cases where after-events show that the dislike
was not an impulse but an intuition. For it may happen, after years
have passed of intercourse with out friend, that suddenly without
any warning he, as it were, stabs us in the back and deals us a mortal
blow; and then in our grief and humiliation we remember that first
impression of ours, and wish that we had followed it.
Whence came
this first impression? Reincarnation offers a solution, which is that
the injured had suffered in past lives at the hands of his injurer,
and that it is the memory of that suffering which flashes into the
mind as an intuition.
More striking still are those cases where there
exist at the same time both like and dislike, both love and resentment.
I well remember a lady describing her attitude to a friend to whom
she was profoundly attached in the following words : “I love
him, but I despise him!” I wonder how many wives say this daily
of their husbands, or husbands of their wives. Why should there be
this incomprehensible jumble of contradictory feelings?
The clue is strikingly
given by W.E. Henley in his well-known poem:
Or
ever the knightly years were gone
With
the old world to the grave,
I
was a king in Babylon,
And
you were a Christian slave.
The
poet goes on to tell us how the king “saw and took,” and toyed with the
maid and, as is a man’s way, finally cast her aside. Yet she
loved him well, but, heart-broken at his treatment, committed suicide.
Now it is obvious that the girl dies full of both love and resentment,
and since what we sow we reap, each of the two in the rebirth reaps
in emotional attitude the result of past causes. For, this time the
man loves again, and desires to possess her; she too loves him in
return, and yet does not permit him to have his heart’s desire.
So the lover cries out :
The
pride I trampled on is now my scathe,
For
it tramples me again;
The
old resentment last like death,
For
you love, and yet you refrain;
I
break my heart on your hard unfaith,
And
I break my heart in vain.
Henley
sees with is poetic vision that the present situation between the two cannot
remain
the same throughout eternity; there must be a true loving and understanding
of each other at the long last; and so the poem ends with the man’s
pride in his past, and resignation in the present, with a hint of
some good from a past which need not be “undone” as of
no worth at all.
Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
The
deed beyond the grave
When
I was a king in Babylon
And
you were a virgin slave.
There can only be one
ending, that of the fairy tale, since it needs must be a universe
where there is but One who loves, that,
Journey’s
end in lover’s meeting.
Every
wise man’s son doth know.
We
have been so far been considering the manifestations of an individual’s emotional
nature, and it is obvious that, because of his own experiences, he
will be able to understand the emotions of others, so long as such
emotions are in the main like what he has known. But what of those
individuals who thoroughly understand such experiences as have not
come to them? Shakespeare
understands the working of a woman's heart and mind, and, too, all
the intricate mental and emotional processes of the traitor ; Dickens
knows how the murderer feels after committing the crime.
Furthermore,
some gifted men and women, when experiencing emotions, generalize
from them to what is experienced by all, while one not so gifted,
though “once
bitten” is not “twice shy”, nor
is made appreciably wiser by the same experience coming to him over
and over again. The gifted few, on the other hand, will fathom the
universal quality in a single experience, and they will anticipate
from it many experiences of like nature; for themselves, and sometimes
for others too, they will state their experiences, reducing them as
it were to algebraical formulae, and each formula including one general
statement all particular cases. Their thoughts and feelings are like
aphorisms, with the transmutation of many experiences into one Experience.
Now,
to generalize from our individual emotions is as rare a gift as to originate
a philosophy
from the particular thoughts which we gain about things. Yet it is
this generalization from particular emotions that is characteristic
of a poet, and the more universal are his generalizations, the greater
is he as a poet. Why then should an individual here and there have
this wonderful ability of seeing particular men as representatives
of types, and particular emotions as expression of universal emotions?
We say that such a man is a genius, but the word genius merely describes
but does not explain. There are geniuses in every department of life
- religion, poetry, art, music, statesmanship, the drama, in war and
in commerce, and in many other phases of life. These geniuses are
characterized by many abnormal qualities; they are always men of the
future and not of their day and each genius is a lawgiver to future
generations in his own department of activity; and above all, they
live emotionally and mentally in wide generalizations. Whence
comes this wonderful ability?
One explanation offered is Heredity. But how
far does heredity
really explain genius? According to the ordinarily accepted theory
of heredity, each generation adds a little to a quality brought from
the generation before, and then transmits it to the next; this in
turn adds a little, and passes on the total of what it has received,
plus its own contribution; and so on generation after generation,
till we arrive at a particular generation, and to one individual of
it, in whom the special quality in some mysterious way gets concentrated,
and that individual is thereby a genius. According to this popular
theory, some remote ancestor of Shakespeare had a fraction of Shakespeare’s
genius, which he transmitted through heredity to his offspring; this
offspring then, keeping intact what was given him by his parent, added
to the stock from his own experiences, and then passed on both to
his child; and so on in successive generations, each generation treasuring
what was given to it from all previous generations, and adding something
of its own before transmitting it to the next. Shakespeare then is
as the torrent from a reservoir which has slowly been dammed up, but
bursts its sides when the pressure has passed beyond a certain point.
Such a conception of heredity is based upon the assumption that what
an individual acquires of faculty, as a result of adaptability to
his environment, is passed on to his offspring. Such indeed is the
conclusion that the Darwinian school of biologists came to, from their
analysis of what happens in Nature. But biological research during
the last twenty-five years, has been largely directed to testing the
validity of the theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics.
Not only has not one indisputable instance been found, but all experiments
in breeding and crossing, on the other hand, accumulate proofs to
the contrary.
The
new school of biologists known as the Mendelians have therefore come to theories
about heredity
which are not only novel but startling. According to them, structural
characteristics, upon which must depend the mental and moral capacities
of an individual, exist, in every ancestor in their fulness;
and further, they must all have been in the first speck of living
matter. Nothing has been added by evolution to this original
stock of capacities in protoplasm. Every genius whom the world has
known or will know existed potentially in it, though he had to wait
millions of years before there arose the appropriate arrangement of
the “genetic factors” to enable him to appear as a genius
on the evolutionary stage. Nature has not evolved the complex brain
structure of Shakespeare out of the rudimentary brains of the mammals;
that complexity existed “in a pin-head of protoplasm”.
Nature has not evolved the genius; she has merely released
him from the fetters which bound him in the primordial protoplasm,
by eliminating, generation after generation, such genetic factors
as inhibited his manifestation. Bateson sums up these modern theories
when he says:
“I
have confidence that the artistic gifts of mankind will prove to be due not
to something
added to the makeup of an ordinary man, but to the absence of factors
which in the normal person inhibit the development of these gifts.
They are almost beyond doubt to be looked upon as – “releases”
– of powers normally suppressed. The instrument is there,
but it is stopped down.” (Presidential Address, British
Association, 1914).
Time alone will show
how far the Mendelian conception will need to be modified by later
discoveries; but it is fairly certain already that the older Darwinian
conception of heredity is untenable, and that if a man is a genius
he owes very little to the intellectual and emotional achievements
of his ancestors. If, however, we admit with the Mendelians that a
genius is “released” merely by the removal of the inhibiting
factors, and is not the result of slow accumulations, we still leave
the original mystery unsolved, and that is to explain the synthetic
ability of the genius. We are therefore no nearer really explaining
the nature of genius along Mendelian lines than along the Darwinian;
the theories of science merely tell us under what conditions genius
will or will not manifest, but nothing more.
The only rational theory
of genius, which accepts scientific facts as to heredity and also
explains what genius is, comes from the conception of reincarnation.
If we hold that an individual is a soul, that is an imperishable and
evolving Ego, and manifests through a body appropriate to his stage
of growth and to a work which he is to do in that body, then we see
that his emotional and mental attributes are the results of experiences
which he has gained in past lives. But
since he can express them only through a suitable body and brain, these must
be of such
a kind as Nature has by heredity selected for such use. The manifestation
of any capacity, then, depends on two indispensable factors; first,
an Ego or consciousness who has developed the capacity by repeated
experiments in past lives; and second, a suitable instrument, a physical
body of such a nature structurally as makes possible the expression
of that capacity. When therefore we consider the quality of genius,
if on the one hand the genius has not a body fashioned out of such
genetic factors as do not inhibit his genius, he is “stopped
down”, to use Bateson’s simile, and his genius is unreleased.
But on the other hand, if Nature were to produce a thousand bodies
that were not “stopped down”, we should not ipso facto
have a thousand geniuses. Two
lines of evolution must therefore converge, before there can manifest any
quality that
is not purely functional. The first is that of the evolution of an
indestructible Consciousness, which continually experiments with life
and slowly becomes expert thereby; and the second is the evolution
of the physical structure, which is selected by heredity to respond
to a given stimulus from within.
If with this is clue as to what is
happening in Nature, we examine the various geniuses whom the world
has produced, we shall see that they are remembering their past lives
as they exhibit their genius. Take for instance, such a genius as
the young violinist, Mischa Elman, who a few years ago began his musical
career; he was then but a lad, and yet even at that age he manifested
marvellous technical ability. Now we may perhaps legitimately account
for this technical ability along Mendelian lines, as being due to
a rare confluence of genetic factors; but by no theory of physical
heredity can we explain what surprised the most exacting of musical
critics - Mischa Elman’s interpretation of
music.
For
it is just in this interpretation that a music lover can see the soul of the
performer,
whether that soul is a big one or a little, whether the performer
has known of life superficially or has touched life's core.
Now Mischa Elman’s interpretation, absolutely spontaneous as
it was, and un-imitated from a teacher, was that of a man and not
that of a boy. Little wonder that many a critic was puzzled, or that
the musical critic of the London Daily Telegraph should write
as follows:
“Rain beat
noisily upon the roof and thunder roared and rattled, but Mischa
Elman went calmly on with his prescribed Paganini and Bach and Wieniawski.
Calmly is the word, be it noted, not stolidly. We have had stolid
wonder-children on our musical platforms; Mischa is not one of them.
Upon his face, as he plies the bow, rests a great peace, and only
now and then, with a more decided expression, does he lower his
cheek upon the instrument, as though he would receive from it the
impulse of its vibrations and to it communicate his own soul-beats.
The marvel of this boy does not lie in his execution of difficult
passages. If it did, perhaps we should award it but perfunctory
notice, seeing that among the children of our generation there are
so many who play with difficult passages much as their predecessors
did with marbles. We have gone beyond mere dexterity with bowing
and fingering, and can say, in the spirit of one of old time, that
from the babe and suckling comes now the perfection of such praise
as lies within the compass of a violin.”
Asked
to account for this — to explain why Mischa Elman laying cheek to wood,
reveals the insight and feeling of a man who has risen to the heights
and plumbed the depths of human life — we simply acknowledge
that the matter is beyond us. We can do no more than speculate,
and, perhaps, hope for a day in which the all-embracing science
of an age more advanced than our own shall discover the particular
brain formation, or adjustment, to which infants owe the powers
that men and women vainly seek. Those powers may be the Wordsworthian
“clouds of glory”, brought from another world. If so,
what a brilliant birth must that of Mischa Elman have been! The
boy was heard in a work by Paganini and another Wieniawski, both
good things of their meritricious kind, and both irradiated, as
we could not but fancy, by the unconscious genius which shines alike
on the evil and the good, making the best of both. Upon the mere
execution of these works we do not dwell, preferring the charm of
the moments in which the music lent itself to the mysterious emotion
of the youthful player, and showed, not the painted visage of a
mountebank, but the face of an angel!
If
along the lines of reincarnation we suppose that Mischa Elman is a soul who
in his past lives has in truth "risen to the heights and plumbed
the depths of human life”, then we have a reasonable explanation
for his genius. There is reflected in each interpretation the summing
up of his past experiences, and he can through his music tell us of
a man’s sorrow or a man’s joy, because as a man in past
lives he has experienced both, and retains their memory in emotional
and intellectual generalizations. This explanation further joins hands
with science, because the reincarnation theory of genius implies the
need by the musical soul of a body with a musical heredity, which
has been “selected” by evolution and built up by appropriate
genetic factors.
Reincarnation alone explains another genius who must
remain a puzzle according to all other theories. Keats is known in
English poetry as the most “Greek” of
all England's poets; he possessed by nature that unique feeling for life which
was the
treasure of the Greek temperament. If he had been a Greek
scholar and steeped in the traditions of Greek culture, we might account
for this anima naturaliter Graeca of the Greek-less Keats.”
But when we consider that Keats had “little Latin and less Greek,”
and began life as a surgeon’s apprentice and a medical student,
we may well wonder why he sings not as a Christian poet should, but
as some Greek shepherd born on the slopes of Mount Etna. The wonder,
however, at once ceases if we presume that Keats is the reincarnation
of a Greek poet, and that he is remembering his past lives as he reverts
to Greek ways of thought and feeling.
With reincarnation as a clue,
it is interesting to see how a little analysis enables us to say where
in the past an individual must have lived. In the culture of Europe
and America, there are three main types of “reversion,” to Rome, to Greece, and to India. Anyone who has studied Roman institutions
and the Roman conception of life finds little difficulty in noting
how the English temperament is largely that of ancient Rome in a modern
garb; the values, for instance in writing history, of such historians
as Gibbon, Macaulay, Hume, are practically the same as those of Roman
historians, Sallust, Tacitus, Livy, and the rest; whereas if we take
the French historians we shall find them scarcely at all Roman in
temperament, and far more akin to Greek. The equation Tennyson = Virgil
is certainly not far-fetched to those who know the quality of both
poets.
We
find the reversion to Greece very clearly in such writers as Goethe, Schiller
and Lessing.
Why should these writers have proclaimed to Germany with unbounded
enthusiasm the message of “back to Greece”, except that
they knew from their own experience in past lives what Greek culture
had still for men? For what is enthusiasm but the springing forward
of the soul to experience a freshness and a delight in life which
it has known elsewhere, and whose call it recognizes again? These
men of enthusiasm, these pioneers of the future, are otherwise than
sports or freaks of Nature; let us but think of them as reincarnated
souls remembering in their enthusiasm their past lives, and they become
not sports but the first-fruits of a glorious humanity that is to
be.
Who that has studied Platonism has not been reminded of Platonic
conceptions when reading Emerson? Though Emerson has not the originality
nor the daring of Plato, yet he is truly “Greek”;
it does not require such a great flight of the imagination to see him as some
Alexandrian follower of Plato. How
natural then too, that Emerson, after entering the Christian ministry to give
his message,
should find himself unable to do it as a Christian minister,
and should strike out a path for himself as an essayist to speak
of the World-Soul! And who that has studied Indian philosophies does
not recognize old Vedantin philosophers in Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and
a Buddhist philosopher in Schopenhauer, all reverting to their philosophic
interests of past lives, and uttering their ancient convictions more
brilliantly than before?
Wherever the deeper layers of a man’s
being are offered to the world in some creation through philosophy,
literature, art or science, there may we note tendencies started in
past lives. For the pageant of the man’s life is not planned
and achieved in the few brief years which begin with his birth, and
he that knows of reincarnation may note readily enough where the parts
of the pageant were composed.
Reincarnation, as it affects large groups
of individuals, is a fascinating study to one with an historical bent
of mind.
I
have mentioned that the English race as a whole is largely a reincarnation
of the ancient
Roman; but here and there we find a sprinkling of Greeks in men like
Byron, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and in those Englishmen and women who
have the Greek feel for life, and hemmed in by English tradition are
as strangers in a strange land. Let such a return Greek, wherever
he be born this life, but go to South Italy or to Greece, and he will
begin to remember his past life in the instinctive familiarity which
he will feel with the hidden spirit of tree and lake and hill. As
none but a Greek can, he will find a joy in the sunshine, in the lemon
groves and vineyards and waterfalls, which in a Greek land give the
message of Nature as in no other land.
Others there are who,
born last life in the Middle Ages somewhere in Europe, perhaps in
Italy or Spain of Germany, where they re-visit the land of their former
birth, will have a strange familiarity with the things that pass before
them. In striking ways, they read into the life of the people, and
understand the why of things. To some, this mysterious sense of recollection
may be strongest in Egypt, or India, or Japan; but wherever we have
the intuitive understanding of foreign people, we have one mode of
remembering our past lives.
It is in the characteristic intellectual
attitude of the French that we see the reincarnation of much that
was developed in later Greece. The French intellectual clarity and
dispassionate keenness to see things “as they are” (whether
they bring material benefits or not) are typically Greek. And perhaps,
could we know more fully of the life of the Phoenicians, we should
see them reborn in the Germans of today. Then the commercial
rivalry between England and Germany for the capture of the markets
of the East would be but the rebirth of the ancient rivalry between
Rome and Carthage for the markets of the Mediterranean.
An eruption
of Greek egos is fairly evident in the United States of America. On
the Pacific Coast especially, there are many men and women of the
simple Greek temperament of the pre-Periclean age, and yet their ancestors
were not infrequently New England Puritans. It is in America too,
that we have the Sophists of Greece in full strength in the “New
Thought” writers who spring up in that land month after month.
In them we have the same characteristics as had the Sophists of Greece
whom Plato denounced — much sound sense and many a useful wrinkle,
an independence of landmarks and traditions, an unbounded confidence
in their own panacea, and a giving of their message of the Spirit
“for a consideration.”
The
lack of distinction in their minds, when in Greece, between Sophism and Wisdom
returns
in the twentieth century as a confusion between the New Thought ideas
of the Divine Life and the real life of the Spirit. Let us hope that
as the Sophists helped to bring in the Golden Age of Greece, so the “New Thought-ers” are the forerunners of that True Thought
that is to dawn, which is neither old nor new.
Here and there in India
we find one who is distinctly not Hindu. For the most part, the modern
Hindus seem scarce to have been in other lands in their late incarnations;
but now and then a man or woman is met with for whom the sacrosanct
institutions of orthodoxy have no meaning, and who takes up western
ideas of progress with avidity. Some of these are “England-returned,”
in this present incarnation, and we can thus account for their mentality.
But when we find a man who has never left India, who was reared in
strict orthodoxy, and yet fights with enthusiasm for foreign ways
of thought, surely we have here a “Europe-returned” ego,
from Greece or Rome or from some other of the many lands of the West.
We must not forget
to draw attention to the egos from Greece who have returned to Europe
to usher in the age of art. To one familiar with Greek sculpture and
architecture, it is not difficult to see the Greek artists reborn
in the Italian masters of painting and architecture. The cult is no
longer that of Pallas Athene and the Gods; there is now the Virgin
Mary and the saints to give them their heavenly crowns. Whence did
the Italian masters gain their surety of touch, if not from a past
birth in Greece? It is striking, too, how the Romans, who excelled
in portraiture, should be reborn in the English school of portrait
painters, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Lawrence and the rest.
Nor must
we forget the band of Greeks who like an inundation swept over the
Elizabethan stage, Marlowe, Beaumont, Fletcher, Peele, Johnson, and
the rest - are they not pagans thinly veiled in English garb? They
felt life in un-English modes; they felt first and then thought out
the feeling. The Greek,
is ever the Greek, whatsoever the language which is given him to speak, and
his touch in literature and art is
not easily veiled.
Strong
impressions made on the consciousness in a past life often appear in the present
in some curious mood or feeling. Sometimes, fears of creeping things,
fires, cutting implements, etc., are thus to be accounted for, though
sometimes these “phobias” may only be sub-conscious reminders
of this life. In the cases where we have no sub-consciousness of the present
body appearing, there is sure to have been some shock, resulting it
may be, in a violent death, in a past life. The after effects appear
now in some uncontrollable fear, or in discomfort in the presence
of the object which caused the shock. More strange is the attitude
of one individual towards another which is brought over from a past
life. Sometimes one sees the strange sight of a girl of ten or twelve
taking care of her mother in a maternal way, as though the positions
were reversed, and almost as if she had the onerous duty of bringing
up her mother in the way she should go. Of a deeper psychological
nature is it when, as sometimes happens, a wife mated to a husband
who causes her suffering, finds charity towards him possible only
when she looks on him not as her husband but as her son. Here we have
a reminiscence of a life when he was indeed her child, and his better
nature came out towards her in the relation which he bore to her then.
A rather humorous instance of a past recollection is found when there
has been between the last life and this a change of sex of the body.
In the West especially, where there is a more marked differentiation
temperamentally between the sexes than in the East, not infrequently
the girl who dislikes playing with dolls, who delights in boy’s
games, and is a pronounced tomboy, is really an ego who has just taken
up a body of the sex opposite to that with which he has been familiar
for many lives. Many a girl has resented her skirts, and it takes
such a girl several years before she finally resigns herself to them.
Some women there are, on whose face and mode of carriage the last
male incarnation seems still fairly visibly portrayed. A similar thing
is to be seen in some men, who bring into this life traces of their
habits of thought and feeling when last they had women's bodies.
A consideration of
the many psychological puzzles I have enumerated will show us that,
as a matter of fact, people do remember something of their past lives.
Truly the memory is indirect, only as a habit or a mood, but it is
nevertheless memory of the past. Now most people who are willing to
accept reincarnation as a fact in life naturally ask the question:
“But why don’t we remember fully ?” To this
there are two answers, the first of which is: “It is best for
us not to remember directly or fully, till we are ready for the memories.”
We are not ready for remembrance so long as we are influenced by the
memories of the past. Where for instance, the memory is of a painful
event, up to a certain point the past not only influences our present
but also our future, and both in a harmful way; and therefore, so
long as we have not gone beyond the sphere of influence of the past,
our characters are weakened and not strengthened by remembrance. Let us take an extreme
case, but one typical nevertheless. Suppose that in the last life
a man has committed suicide as the easiest way out of his difficulties.
As he dies, there will be in his mind much mental suffering, and especially
he will lack confidence in his ability to weather the storm. The suicide
does not put an end to his suffering, for after death it will continue
for some time more acutely still, till it slowly exhausts itself.
There will be a purification through his great suffering, and when
it ends there will be in him a keener vision and a fuller response
to the promptings of his higher nature. When, then, he is reborn,
he will be born with a stronger conscience, as the result of his sufferings.
But he will still retain the lack of confidence in his ability, because
nothing has happened after his death to alter that. Confidence can
be gained only by mastering circumstance, and it is for that very
purpose that he has returned.
Now
sooner or later, he will be confronted with a situation similar to that before
he failed
in the last life. As difficulties crowd around him in the new life,
once more there will be the old struggle. The fact of committing suicide
will now come as a tendency to suicide once again, as a resignation
to suicide as the easiest way. But on the other hand, the memory of
the suffering after the last suicide will also return in a stronger
urge of conscience that this time the solution must not be through
suicide. In this condition of mental strain, when the man is being
pulled on one side by his past and on the other by his future, if
he were to know, with vivid memory, how he had committed suicide in
the past in a like situation, the probabilities are that he would
be influenced by his past action, and that his lack of confidence
would be intensified, with suicide as a result once again. Forgetfulness of the
nerve-racking details of the past enables him to fight now more manfully.
We little realize how we are being domineered over by our past. It
is indeed a blessing for most of us that the kindly Gods draw a veil
over a record which, at our present stage of evolution, cannot be
anything but deplorable in many ways.
Only so long as we identify
ourselves with our past, that past is hidden from us, except in indirect
modes as faculties and dispositions. But the direct memory will come,
if we learn to dissociate our present selves from our past selves.
We are ever the Future, not the past: and when we can look at our
past — of this life first, and after, of that of other lives
— without heat, impersonally, in perspective as it were, like
a judge who has no sense of identity with the facts before him for
judgment, then we shall begin to remember, directly, the past in detail– but till then, as Tennyson truly says :
We
ranging down this lower track
The
path we came by, thorn and flower,
Is
shadow’d by the growing hour.
Lest
life should fail in looking back.
The second reason for
our not directly remembering our past lives is this : – the
“ I “ who asks the question, “Why don’t I
remember?” has not lived in the past. It is the Soul
who has lived, not this “ I “ with all its limitations.
But is not this “ I “ that Soul? With most people not
at all, and this fact will be evident if we think over the matter.
The average man or woman is scarcely so much a Soul as a bundle of
attributes of sex, creed, and nationality. But the Soul is immortal,
that is, it has no sense of diminution or death; it has no idea of
time, which deludes it to think that it is young, wastes away, and
grows old; it is neither man nor woman, because it is developing in
itself the best qualities of both sexes; it is neither Hindu, nor
Buddhist, nor Christian, nor Muslim, because it lives in One Divine
Life and assimilates that Life according to its temperament; it is
not Indian, nor English, nor American, for it belongs to no country,
even though its outermost sheath, the physical body, belongs to a
particular race; it has no caste nor class, for it knows that all
partake of One Life, and that before God there is neither Brahmin
nor Shudra, Jew nor Gentile, aristocrat nor plebeian.
It is this Soul which
puts out a part of itself, a Personality, for the period of a life,
“as a mere subject for grave experiment and experience.”
Through a persona, a “mask” of a babe, child, youth
or maid, man or woman, bachelor, spinster or householder, old man
or old woman, it looks out into life, and, as it observes, eliminates
the distorting bias which its outer sheath gives. Its personalities
in the past have been Lemurian or Atlantean, Hindu or Roman or Greek,
and it selects the best out of them all and discards the rest. All
literatures, sciences, arts, religions and civilizations are its school
and playground, its workshop and study. Its patriotism is for an indivisible
Humanity, and its creed is to co-operate with “God’s plan,
which is Evolution.”
It is this Soul who
has had past lives. How much of this Soul are we, the men and women
who ask the question, “Why don’t we remember our past
lives?” The questioner is but the personality. The body of that
personality has a brain on whose cells the memories of a past life
have not been impressed ; those memories are in the Divine Man who
is of no time, of no creed, and of no land. To remember the Soul’s
past lives, the brain of the personality must be made a mirror onto
which can be reflected the memories of the Soul. But before those
memories can come into the brain, one by one the various biases must
be removed — of mortality, of time, of sex, of color, of caste.
So long as we are wrapped up in petty thoughts of an exclusive nationalism,
and in narrow beliefs of creeds, so long do we retain the barriers
which exist between our higher selves and our lower. An intellectual
breadth and a larger sympathy, “without distinction of race,
creed, sex, caste or color,” must first be achieved, before
there breaks, as through clouds, flashes of our true consciousness
as Souls. There is no swifter way to discover what we are as Immortals
out of time than by discovering what is our Work in time.
Let but a man or woman
find that Work for whose sake sacrifice and immolation are serenest
contentment, then slowly the larger consciousness of the Soul descends
into the brain of the personality. With that descent begins the direct
memory of past lives. As more and more the personality presses forward,
desiring no light but what is sufficient for the next step on his
path to his goal of work, slowly one bias after another is burnt away
in the fire of purification. Like as the sun dissipates more clouds
the higher it rises, so it is for the life of the personality; it
knows then, with such conviction as the sun has about its own nature
when it shines, that “the soul of man is immortal, and its future
is the future of a thing whose growth and splendor have no limit.”
Then
come back the memories of past lives. How they come those who live
the life know. There are many kinds of knowledge useful for man, but
none greater than the knowledge “that evolution is a fact, and
that the method of evolution is the constant dipping down into matter
under the law of adjustment.” This knowledge is for all who
seek, if they will but seek rightly; and the right way is to be a
Brother to all men, “without distinction of race creed, sex,
caste or color.
THE
VISION OF THE SPIRIT
The history of humanity
is the history of ideas, and the stages through which men have risen
from savage to civilized are distinguishable one from the other by
the influence of certain great doctrines. Among these teachings which
have moulded civilizations, the idea of Evolution stands out as heralding
a new era in the world of thought. Considered at first as of mere
academic interest, soon it was recognized as of practical value, today
it is known as necessary in the understanding of every problem in
every department of being.
Nevertheless it is a fact that the doctrine
of evolution is a theory after all. No one has lived long enough to
see sufficient links in the evolutionary chain to attest that the
charges postulated as having taken place did so actually occur, and
that the chain is not a fancy but a fact. Yet evolution is accepted
by all as a dynamic idea, for like a magic wand it performs wonders
in the world of thought. It
marshals the heterogeneous organisms of nature into orderly groups, and from
inanimate atom to
protoplasm, from unicellular organism to multi-cellular, from invertebrate
to vertebrate, from ape to man, one ascending scale of life is seen; –
And
striving to be man, the worm
Mounts
through all the spires of form
Yet
none can say that evolution is an agreeable fact to contemplate, for there
is a ruthlessness
in Nature’s methods which is appalling. Utterly cruel and wasteful
she seems, creating and perfecting her creatures only to prey on each
other, generating more than can live in the fierce struggle for existence.
“Red in tooth and claw with ravin”, she builds and un-builds
and builds again, one-pointed only in this, that a type shall survive,
reckless of the pleasure or pain to a single life. Men themselves,
proud though they be in a fancied freedom of thought and action, are
nothing but pawns in a game she plays. The more fully evolution is
understood from such facts as scientists have so far gathered, the
more justifiably can men say, with Omar, of their birth, life and
death:
Into
this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor
Whence, like Water - willy-nilly flowing,
And
out of it, like Wind along the Waste
I
know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
Of course this attitude
does not represent that of the majority of men. Millions of men believe
in a Creator, and that “God’s in his heaven, All’s
right with the world!” But it is no exaggeration to say that
their optimism continually receives rude shocks. No man or woman of
sensibility can look about him and not agree with Tennyson's comparison
of life to a play :–
Act
first, this Earth, a stage to gloom’d with woe
You
all but sicken at the shifting scenes
And
yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In
some fifth Act what this wild drama means.
Both
the idea of Evolution and the idea of Divine Guidance, as each is at present
conceived, fail to satisfy fully the needs of men for
an inspiring view of life. The former indeed shows a splendid pageant
of Nature, but it has no message to individual man, except to make
the most of his brief day of life, and stoically resign himself to
extinction when Nature shall have no further use for him. The latter
speaks to men's hearts in alluring accents of a power that maketh
for righteousness, but it sees God as existing only in the gaps of
that pitiless cosmic order which science reveals. It is obvious, therefore,
that any philosophy which postulates an inseparable relation, between
God and evolution, between Nature and man, is worthy of examination,
and this is the view of life which Theosophy propounds, in the light
of one great idea.
This idea is that of
the Evolution of Life. Just as modern science tells us of a ceaseless
change of forms from protoplasm to man, so Theosophy asserts that
there is, pari passu, a changing, growing life. This life does
not originate in the forms, though we see it associated with them;
and of it Theosophy says that first, it is indestructible, and second,
that it evolves.
It is indestructible, in the sense that when an organism
is destroyed, nevertheless all is not destroyed, for there remains
a life which is still conscious. If a rose fades and its petals crumble
and fall to dust, the life of that rose has not therefore ceased
to be; that life persists in Nature, retaining in itself all the memories
of all the experiences which it gained garbed as a rose. Then in due
course of events, following laws which are comprehensible, that life
animates another rose of another spring, bringing to its second embodiment
the memories of its first. Whenever, therefore, there seems the death
of a living thing, crystal or plant, animal or man, there always persists
an indestructible life and consciousness, even though to all appearance
the object is lifeless, and processes of decay have begun.
Further, this life
is evolving, in exactly the same way that the scientist says that
an organism evolves. The life is at first amorphous, and responds
but little to the stimuli from without; it retains only feeble memories
of its experiences which it gains through its successive embodiments.
But it passes from stage to stage, through more and more complex organisms,
till slowly it becomes more definite, more diverse in its functions.
As the outer form evolves from protoplasm to man, so evolves too the
life ensouling it. All Nature, visible and invisible, is the field
of an evolution of life through successive series of evolving forms.
The broad stages of this evolving life are from mineral to vegetable,
from vegetable to animal, and from animal to man.
The doctrine of a life
that evolves through evolving forms answers some of those questions
which puzzle the biologist today. Many a fact hitherto considered
outside the domain of science is seen as illustrative of new laws,
and existing gaps are bridged over to make the doctrine of evolution
more logical than ever. It further shows Nature as not wasteful, and
only seemingly cruel, for nothing is lost, since every experience
in every form which was destroyed, in the process of natural selection,
is treasured by the life today. The past lives in the present, to
attest that Nature’s purpose is not death crushing life, but
life ever triumphant over death to make out of stocks and stones immortal
men.
In each human being is seen this same principle of an imperishable
evolving life. For man is an individual life and consciousness, an
immortal soul capable of living apart from the body which we usually
call “the man.” In each soul, the process of evolution
is at work. At his entrance on
existence as a soul, he is feeble and chaotic in his consciousness,
vague and indefinite in his understanding of the meaning of life,
and capable only of a narrow range of thought and feeling. But he
too evolves, from indefinite to definite, from simple to complex,
from chaos to order.
Man’s evolution is by successive manifestations
in bodies of flesh, passing at the death of one body to begin life
once more in another new one. In this passage, he carries with him
the memory of all experiences which he has gained in the past behind
him. This aspect of the evolution of life as it affects men is called
Reincarnation.
As all processes of Nature are intelligible on the
hypothesis of an evolution of organisms, so all that happens to men
becomes comprehensible in the light of reincarnation. As evolution
links all forms by species and genus, family and order, class and
group, sub-kingdom and kingdom, into one unbreakable chain, so reincarnation
binds all human experiences into one consistent philosophy of life.
How reincarnation explains the mysteries around us and inspires us,
we shall now see.
Imagine
with me that existence is symbolized by a mountain, and that millions are
climbing
to its summit. Let many days be needed before a traveler comes to
his goal. Then, as he climbs day after day, the perspective of things
below him and above him will change; new sights will greet his eyes,
new airs will breathe around him; his eyes will adjust themselves
to new horizons, and step by step objects will change shape and proportion.
At last, on reaching the summit, a vast panorama will extend before
him, and he will see clearly every part of the road which he climbed,
and why it dipped into this valley and circled that crag. Let this
mountain typify existence, and let the climbers up its sides be men
and women who are immortal souls.
Let us now think for a moment of
travelers at the mountain’s base, who are to climb to its summit.
We know how limited must be their horizon, and how little they can
see of the long path before them. Let such travelers
typify the most backward of our humanity, the most savage and least
intelligent men and women we can find today. According to reincarnation,
these are child-souls, just entering into existence, in order to undergo
evolution and to be made into perfect souls. To understand the process
of evolution let us watch one of them stage by stage as he climbs
the mountain.
The first thing which we shall note is that this child-soul
manifests a duality. For he is soul and body; as a soul he is from
God, but as a body he is from the brute.
The
Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of man
And
man said, “Am I your debtor?”
And
the Lord – “Not yet: but make it as clean as you can,
And
then I will let you a better.”
The
body which he occupies has ingrained in it a strong instinct of self-preservation
stamped
upon it by the fierce struggle for existence of its animal progenitors; he
himself, as a soul coming from God, has intuitions as to right and wrong,
but as yet hardly any will. The body demands for its preservation
that he be self-assertive and selfish; lacking the will to direct
his evolution, he acts as the body impels.
THE
VISION OF THE SEPARATED SELF
Hence at this earliest
stage of the soul, his vision of life as he climbs is that of the
separated self. “Mine, not yours” is his principle of
action; greed rules him, and a thirst for sensation drives him on,
and he little heeds that he is unjust and cruel to others as he lives
through his nights and days of selfishness and self- assertion. He
seems strong-willed, for he is able to crush the weaker before him.
But in reality he has no will at all, for he is but the plaything
of an animal heredity which he cannot control. He has no more freedom
of will than the water-wheel which turns at the bidding of the descending
stream. He is but the tool of a “will to live” which accomplishes
a purpose not his own.
Millions of men and women around us are at
this first stage. Their craftiness, hardly deserving the name of intellect,
is that of Falstaff for whom “the
world is mine oyster which I with sword will open.” In their least animal phases, comfort
is their aim in life: “They dressed, digested, talked, articulated
words; other vitality showed they almost none.” The universe
around them is meaningless, and they are scarce capable of wonder: “Let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a creation of the world
happen twice , and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy
or noticeable”. The centre of the circle of the cosmos is in
themselves, and they neither know nor care if another truer centre
is possible.
Yet
when we recognize that each of these souls is immortal, and that his future
is “the
future of a thing whose growth and splendour have no limit,”
we begin to understand why, at this early stage, selfishness plays
such a prominent part in his life. For in stages to come, he must
be capable of standing alone firm on the basis of a coherent individuality;
now is the time for him to develop initiative and strength. He is
quick to retaliate, but the germs of swift decision are grown thereby; he is
domineering and cruel, but the seeds of intelligent enterprise result from
the animal cunning which he displays. Every evil which
he does must some time be paid back in laborious service to his victims; yet
on the whole the evil which he does at this stage is less in quantity and
in force, for all its seeming, than that done in later
stages, where intelligence is keener and emotion more powerful. At
a certain period in human evolution, selfishness has its place in
the economy of things, for selfishness too is a force used to build
the battlements of heaven.
These
souls, whose youth alone is the cause of their selfishness, are in their essence
divine. There is in them no evil of a positive kind ; their vices
are but the result of the absence of virtues, ad their evil “is
null, is naught, is silence implying sound”. Each is a “good
man” who, deep down within him, has a knowledge of “the
one true way” though in his attempts to tread it he seems to
retrograde rather than to evolve. Like plants in a garden, they are
all tended by Him from whom they come; He knows the perfect souls
that He will make out of them by change and growth as the ages pass
by.
Though
still confused his service is unto Me,
I
soon shall lead him to a clearer morning.
Sees
not the gardener, even while he buds his tree,
Both
flower and fruit the future years adorning?
Life
after life, these souls come to birth, now as men and now as women; they live
a life
of selfishness, and they die, and hardly any change will be noticeable
in the character ; but slowly there steals into their lives a dissatisfaction.
The mind is too dull to grasp the relation of the individual to the
whole, and the imagination is too feeble to realize that “man
doth not live by bread alone”. Hence it is that “the thousand
natural shocks that flesh is heir to” are duly marshaled and
employed to ruffle their self-centered contentment. Old age and death
cast over them shadows which have no power to sadden a philosophic
mind; disease and accident lie in wait for them to weight down their
spirits and make them rebel against a fate they do not understand.
Till their hearts shall enshrine a divine purpose, a Hound of Heaven
pursues them, and “naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter
Me.”
Thus are they made ready to pass on to the next stage;
the foundations of abilities have been laid, and the individual is
firm on a basis built through selfishness. Now has come the time to
begin the laborious work of “casting
out of the self”
and so there opens before the soul’s gaze the vision of the
next stage. According to the type of soul, this vision is either the
Vision of the Mind or the Vision of the Emotions.
There are in life two
main types of souls, the one in whom intelligence controls emotion,
and the other in whom emotion sways the mind. One type is not more
evolved than the other ; they are both stages to pass through in order
to grow a higher faculty, that of Intuition. The vision of the third
stage is the Vision of the Intuition, but to it souls come from the
first stage either through intellect or through emotion. Let us first
consider those souls whose evolution is by way of intellect.
THE
VISION OF THE MIND
We
shall see in the past of these souls that much intelligence has been developed
in the
first stage ; their selfishness has made them quick and cunning to
adapt opportunities to minister to their comfort. This intelligence
is now taken up by the unseen Guides of evolution, and the soul is
placed in environments that will change mere animal cunning into true
intellect. The past good and evil sown by him will be adjusted in
its reaping, so as to give him occupations and interests that will
force him to think of men and things around him apart from their relation
to himself. Instead of weighing experiences in terms of personal comfort,
he begins to group them in types and categories ; little by little
he begins to see a material and moral order in the cosmos which is
more powerful than his will. Each law of Nature, when first seen,
is feared by him, for it seems to exist only to thwart him. But later,
with more experience of their working, he begins to trust laws and
to depend upon them to achieve his aim. A love of learning appears
in him, and Nature is no longer a blank page ; he has ceased to be
“a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye”.
At this stage, we shall
see that the selfishness still in him will warp the judgments of his
mind. He will be a doctrinaire, a pedant, combative and full of prejudice
; for all his intellect, his character will show marked weaknesses,
and he will often see and propound principles of conduct which he
will not be able to apply to himself. Again and again he will fail
to see how little he understands the world, since the world is the
embodiment of a life which is more than mind, and whoso understands
it with mind alone will always misunderstand. Excess of intellect
will become in him defect of intelligence, and he will see all things
as through a glass darkly.
Many a life will pass while he slowly gains
experiences through the mind, and assimilates them into a truer conception
of life. By now he will have begun to take part of the intellectual
life of the world and when he is on the threshold of the next stage,
we shall find him as a worker of science, philosophy or literature.
But his intellect has too great a personal bias still, and it must
be made impersonal and pure before the next vision, that of the intuition,
can be his. Once again, we shall see that there enters into his life
a dissatisfaction. The
structure which he builds so laboriously, as the results of years of work,
will crumble
one by one, because Nature reveals new facts to show the world that
his generalizations were only partly true. The world for which he
toiled will forget him, and younger workers will receive the honors
which are his due. He will be misunderstood by his dearest friends,
and “he is now , if not ceasing, yet intermitting to eat his
own heart, and clutches round him outwardly on the Not-me for wholesomer
food”.
But this suffering, though the reaping of sad sowings
of injustice to others through prejudice, brings in its train a high
purification sooner or later. At last the soul learns the great lesson
of working for work’s
sake and not for the fruit of action. Now he knows the joy of altruistic dedication
of himself to the search
for truth. A student of philosophies but slave of none, he now watches
nature “as it is” and in a perfect impersonality of mind
solves her mysteries one by one. Of him now can it be said with Sextus
the Pythagorean that “a great intellect is the chorus of divinity.” Thus dawns for him the Vision of Intuition.
THE
VISION OF THE EMOTIONS
I mentioned when describing
the transition from the first stage to the second, that there were
in the world two main types of souls — those who pass from the
Vision of the Separated Self to the Vision of the Intuition by way
of the mind, and those others who develop along a parallel path and
pass from the emotions to the Intuition. We have just seen how souls
are trained through the intellect to cast out the self ; we shall
now see how the same result is achieved for those in whom emotions
sway the mind.
As the intellectual
type showed in the first stage a marked development of intelligence
of a low kind, so similarly shall we find that the souls whom we are
going to consider show during the same stage a great deal of feeling.
Not that this feeling will be refined or unselfish ; indeed it will
be mostly be lust and jealousy, with perhaps a little crude religious
emotion thrown in. But the character will be obviously easily swayed
by emotions, and this trait in the soul is now taken up, and worked
upon to enable him to pass to the next stage.
Following his emotional
bent, and selfish and oblivious of the feelings of those around him,
the soul will compel others weaker than himself to be the slaves of
his desires. But the passion and the sense of possession which he
has of those who minister to his lusts will link him to them life
after life, till slowly he begins to feel that they are necessary
to his emotional life, and not dispensable at will. Gradually his
impure passions will be transformed into purer affections, and then
he will be brought again and again into contact with them, so that
his emotions shall go out impulsively towards them. But the evil which
he wrought them in the past will now cast a veil over their eyes,
and make them indifferent to him. He will be forced to love on, to
atone for past evil by service, but despair will be his only reward. When
in resentment he tries to break the bond which ties him to them, he will find
he
cannot. He will curse love, only to return again and again to love’s
altar with his offerings.
Though life now becomes full of disappointment
and despair, in his serener moments he will acknowledge that, in spite
of the suffering entailed, his emotional life has slowly opened a
new sense in him. He catches now and then glimpses of an undying youth
in all things, and the world that seems dreary and aging will reappear
under certain emotional stress as he knew it before life became a
tragedy. These glimpses are transitory at first, lasting indeed only
so long as the love emotion colors his being; but there is for him
a time, — `
When all the world is young, lad,
And all the
trees are green,
And every
goose a swan, lad,
And every
lass a queen.
Life
after life, fostered by his transitory loves, this sense will grow
in him till it blossoms into a sense of wonder. The Nature reveals
in all things in life new values, whose significance he can henceforth
never wholly forget. While love sways his being, each blade of grass
and leaf and flower has to him a new meaning ; he sees beauty now
where he saw none before. Everything beautiful around him —
a face, a flower, a sunset, - will link him in mysterious ways to
those he loves; the world ceases to be a blank page.
Love
wakes men once each lifetime each.
They
lift their heavy lids and look;
And
lo! What one sweet page can teach.
They
read with joy, then close the book
And
some give thanks, and some blaspheme.
And
most forget. But either way,
That
and the child's unheeded dream
Is
all the light of all their day.
It
will happen that this sense of wonder is intermittent and that there comes
periods
when the world is veiled ; but the veil is of his own making, and
must be torn asunder if he is to possess the Vision of the Intuition.
Once more there enters into his life a dissatisfaction — a discontent
that love itself is transitory after all. Those whom he loves and
who love him in return will be taken from him just when life seems
in flower ; friends he idealizes will shatter the ideals so lovingly
made for them. Cruel as it all seems, it is but the reaping of sad
sowings in past lives. But the reaping has a meaning, now as always.
He has so far been loving not Love but its shadow, not the Ideal from
which nothing can be taken away, but its counterfeit which suffers
diminution. He must now see clearer and see truer. The character must
be studied, so that it shall not rebound from enthusiasm to depression,
nor be satisfied with a vague mysticism, which prefers to revel
in its own feelings rather than evaluate what causes them.
Hence the
inevitable purification through suffering; the dross of self is burned
away till there remains the gold of divine desire. He then discovers
that the truest feelings are only those which have in them the spirit
of offering. Now for him thus purified in desire, and for that other
type of soul made impersonal in intellect, there dawns the Vision
of the Intuition.
THE
VISION OF THE INTUITION
“Before
the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear,
it must have lost its sensitiveness.” All souls who have come
to this stage have learned by now the bitter lesson that “it
is only in Renunciation that Life, properly speaking, can be said
to begin.” But they have also proved in their own experience
that what once seemed death was but a “repentance unto life.”
They have now discovered the meaning of life — that man is a
child of God come forth to life to be a co-worker with his Father.
It matters not that a soul does not state to himself his relation
to the whole in these terms ; it only matters that he should have
discovered that his part in existence is to be a worker in a Work,
and that nothing happening to himself matters, so long as that Work
proceeds to its inevitable end. He knows that the end of thought and
feeling is action for his fellow-men, and that this action must be
either dispassionate and without thought of reward, or full of a spirit
of grateful offering.
He
possesses now the faculty of intuition, which transcending both reason and
emotion,
yet can justify its judgments to either. He grows past “common
sense,” the criterion for common things, into an uncommon sense; for life is full of uncommon things, of whose existence others
are not aware. In men and women, he discerns those invisible factors
which are inevitable in human relations, and hence his judgment of
them is “not of this world.” In all things, he see and
feels One Life. Whatever unites attracts him ; if intellectual, he
will love to synthesize in science or philosophy; if emotional, he
will dedicate himself to art or philanthropy.
Now slowly for him Many
become the One. The Unity will be known only in the vision of the
next stage ; but, preparing for it, science and art, religion and
philosophy, will deduce for him eternal fundamental types from the
kaleidoscope of life. Types of forms, types of thought, types of emotions,
types of temperament — these
he sees everywhere round him, and life in all its phases becomes transformed,
because it reflects as
in a mirror Archetypes of a realm beyond time and space and mutability.
Everything
of mortal birth
-Is but a type;
What was of feeble worth
-Here becomes ripe.
What was a mystery
-Here meets the eyes;
The Ever-womanly
-Draws us on high.
“The
Ever-womanly” now shows him everywhere one Wisdom. Science tells
him of the oneness of Nature, and philosophy that man is a consciousness
creating his world; art reveals in all things youth and beauty, and
religion whispers to his heart that Love broods over all. His sympathies
go to all, as his will is ever at their service.
Not far now is the
time when for him shall dawn the Vision of the Spirit. But to bring
him to its portal, a dissatisfaction once more enters his soul. No
longer can that dissatisfaction be personal ; the sad reaping of sorrow
for evil done is over, and “only the sorrow of others casts
its shadow over me.” Nor is it caused by any sense of the mutability
of things, for, absolutely, without question, he knows his immortality,
and that, though all things change, there is behind them THAT which
changes never. Yet he climbs to his appointed goal, dissatisfaction
must always be.
It
comes to him now, as a creator. For with intuition to guide him, he
creates in that field of endeavor in which he has trained himself
in past lives. As poet, artist, statesman, saint, or scientist, he
is one of the world’s geniuses. But though his creations are
a miracle to all, yet to him they are only partly true and only partly
beautiful, for he sees the ideal which he would fain bring down to
men, and knows his failure as none others can know. Life is teaching
him “to attain by shadowing forth the unattainable.”
And
thus he grows life after life, scientist, poet, artist and saint now
merge into a new type of being who sees with “larger,
other eyes than ours.” He has regained his integrity of heart and
his innocency of hands, and is become “a little child”; “by pity enlightened”. He is now Parsifal, the “Pure
Fool,” who enters upon his heritage.
Then it is that at its
threshold there meets him One who has watched him climbing for many
a life, and all unseen has encouraged him. This is the Master, one
of that “goodliest
fellowship of famous knights whereof the world holds record”. In
Him the soul sees in realization all those ideals which have drawn him onward
and upward.
Hand in hand with this “Faith in God,” he now treads "the
Way” while the Vision of the Spirit is shown him by his Master.
Who shall describe that Vision but those who have it, and how may
one less than a Master here speak with authority? And yet since Masters
of the Wisdom have moved among men, since Buddha, Krishna and Christ
have shown us, in Their lives something of what that vision is, surely
from Their lives we can deduce what the vision must be.
In that Vision
of the Spirit, the Many is One. “Alone within this universe
he comes and goes; it is He who is the fire, the water He pervadeth
; Him and Him only knowing, one crosseth over death; no other path
at all is there to go.”
Now for the soul who has come to the
end of his climbing, each man is only “the
spirit he worked in, not what he did but what he became”. There is no high nor
low in life, for in all he sees a ray from the Divine Flame. As through
the highest so through the lowest too, to him “God stooping
shows sufficient of His light for us in the dark to rise by.”
Life is henceforth become a Sacrament, and he is its celebrant ; with
loving thoughts and deeds, he celebrates and at-ones man with God
and God with man. He discerns, purifies in himself, and offers to
God “infinite passion and the pain of finite hearts that yearn”. From God on high, he
brings to men what alone can satisfy that yearning.
He has renounced “the will to live,” and
thereby has made its purpose his own; “Foregoing self, the universe grows I.” Yet he knows
with rapture that, that— “I“ is but a tiny lens
in a great Light. Henceforth he lives only in order that a Greater
than he may live through him, love through him, act through him. Evermore
shall his heart whisper, in heaven or in hell, whithersoever his work
may take him ; “him know I, the Mighty Man, resplendent like
the Sun, beyond the Darkness; Him and Him only knowing one crosseth
over death ; no other path at all is there to go.”
Thus do we,
happy few, the precursors of a new age, see life in the light of reincarnation.
As the evolutionist sees all nature linked in one ladder of life,
and sky and sea testify to him of evolution, so do we all men linked
in one common purpose, and their hopes and fears, their self-sacrifice
and their selfishness, testify to us of reincarnation. Life and its
experiences have ceased to be for us—
An
arch wherethro’
Gleams
that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For
ever and ever when I move.
No
longer can the world be for us as the poet sang :
Act
first this Earth, a stage so gloom’d with woe,
You
all but sicken at the shifting scenes.
And
yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In
some fifth Act what this wild Drama means.
The
Fifth Act is here before your eyes. It is that Vision of the Spirit
which is the heritage of every soul, and thither all men are slowly
treading, for “no other path at all is there to go.”
THE
LAW OF RENUNCIATION
The joy of life! Is
it not everywhere? In plant and animal and man, do we not see an instinct
for happiness which impels all creation to rise from good to better,
from better to best? Since God said, “Let there be light!”
are not all men seeking to step out of darkness into light –
blindly, dimly feeling that happiness must be their goal? Yet how
few find happiness in life! It is easy to sing:—
God’s
in his heaven,
All’s
right with the world!
But
to sing so for long, one must be blind to the facts. Life is a tragedy
to many, and far more truly is it described by Tennyson:—
Act
first, this Earth, a stage so gloom’d with woe
You
all but sicken at the shifting scenes,
And
yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In
some fifth Act what this wild Drama means.
Nevertheless
all feel that happiness must be the goal of life, and humanity never
errs in its deepest feelings. But then why should not the attainment
of happiness be easier than it is ?
MAN
AN EVOLVING SOUL
There is a philosophy
of life which holds that man is an immortal soul, living not one life
on earth but many, growing through the experiences which he gains
in them manifold capacities and virtues. This philosophy further postulates
that all men are the children of One father, who has created a universe,
in order that working therein His children may know something
of Him, and come to Him in joy. According to this theory, the purpose
of life is not to achieve a stable condition of happiness for any
individual, but rather to train him to work in a Plan of an Ideal
Future, and find in that work an ever-changing and ever-growing contentment.
From the standpoint of the Theosophist, all men are indeed working
for a foreordained ideal future ; but they work at different stages,
according to their differing capacities. A recognition of these stages,
and the laws of life appropriate to each, makes life less the riddle
that it is. There are three broad stages on the Path of Bliss which
leads to the Highest Good, and they are happiness, renunciation, and
transfiguration.
THE
STAGE OF HAPPINESS
God
calls upon all His children at this stage to co-operate with Him, by offering
them
happiness as the aim of life. He has implanted in them a craving for
happiness, and He provides work for them which shall make them happy.
Love of wife and child and friend, fame and the gratitude of men,
success and ease — these are His rewards for them that serve
Him. Many are the pleasant paths in life for the young souls at this
stage, to reap happinesses as they prove those pleasures.
That
hills and valleys, dale and field,
And
all the craggy mountains yield.
Useful
up to a point as men are in the Great Work at this stage, yet so long as a man
deliberately
seeks happiness, his capabilities as a worker are soon exhausted.
For soon he “settles down in life” ; the precious gift
of wonder slowly fades away, and his happiness ceases to be dynamic.
Self-centred, he calls on the universe to give. But the Path to Bliss
is by work, and if he is to go ever on, he must fit himself for a larger work than has so far fallen to his share. He must enter
on the next stage, but for that he must change utterly. Hither-to
he has measured men and things by the standard of his little self; henceforth
the Great Self must be his measure. He must break the sway of himself, and
realize that evermore what is important in life
is not he, nor his happiness, but a Work. Before this realization
can begin, there must be a conversion.
CONVERSION
In
many ways are men converted from the interests of the little self to the work
of the
Great Self. Some, loving Truth in religious garb, open their hearts
to a Personality who dazzles their imagination. Thenceforth they must
serve Him, and be like Him, and gone forever is the standpoint of
the little self. Some study science and philosophy, and discover a
magnificent plan of evolution, with the inevitable result that they
know that the individual is but a unit in a great Whole, and not the
centre of the cosmos. If they set to study rightly, they see, too,
that there is a Will at work, and that, cost what it may, they must
co-operate with that Will. A few there are to whom comes some mysterious
experience from the hidden side of things, and life speaks to them
a transforming message. Out of the invisible comes a “Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” and a persecutor of Christians
is changed into an Apostle of Christ. Manifold are the ways
of conversion, the same in all lands and in all faiths. One factor
is common : the old personality is disintegrated, and a new one is
reintegrated in the service of a Work.
When, through conversion, the
new personality is ready for a larger work, the tools which he uses
must be made pure. They are his thoughts and feelings, and slowly
a process of purification is begun. Disappointment and pain and grief
are his lot – the sad harvest of a sowing of selfishness in
the unseen past of many lives, for we reap as we have sown. When the
worker is ready, swift is Nature’s response to free him from
the burden of his past, in order that he may be fit to achieve the
great work which she has prepared for him.
THE
MEANING OF PAIN
With some, sorrow hardens
the character, but with those who are ready to enter on the second
stage, it ever purifies. Does not the very texture and the flesh of
a sufferer, who has in patience and resignation borne his pain, seem
luminous and pure, as though through every cell there gleamed the
light of a hidden fire? How much more so is it with mental suffering?
Are we not irresistibly drawn to reverence one who has suffered much
and nobly, and sometimes to love, too?
I
saw my lady weep,
And
Sorrow proud to be advanced so
In
those fair eyes where all perfection keep.
Her
face was full of woe:
But such a woe
(believe me) wins more hearts
Than
Mirth can do with her enticing parts,
Sorrow
was there made fair,
Passion
wise ; tears a delightful thing;
Silence
beyond all speech a wisdom rare.
She
made her sighs to sing,
And
all things with so sweet a sadness move
As
made a heart at once both grieve and love.
THE
STAGE OF RENUNCIATION
Life
seems full of evil days to those who come to the end of the first stage, but
its
lesson is clear. That lesson is, “Thou must go without, go without!”
That is the everlasting song, which every hour, all our life through,
hoarsely sings to us. Truly does Carlyle voice the wisdom of the ages
when he says, “The Fraction of Life can be increased in value
not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator.
Nay, unless my algebra deceive me, unit divided by a zero will give
infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero then ; thou hast the world
under thy feet.”
THE
LAW OF RENUNCIATION
All
great workers know that the Law of renunciation is true, and that “it is only with
renunciation that life, properly speaking can be said to begin”.
There are no great souls who are completely happy, can ever be! Once
more let the great apostle of Work speak to us: “the happy man
was never yet created; the virtuous man, tho’ clothed in rags
and sinking under pain, is the jewel of the Earth, however I may doubt
it, or deny it in bitterness of heart. O never let me forget it! Teach
me, tell me, when the Fiend of Suffering and the base Spirit of the
World are ready to prevail against me, and drive me from this last
stronghold.”
Take whom you will who has done a great work, and
he knows that renunciation is the law. In bitterness of heart Ruskin
cries out : “I
have had my heart broken ages ago, when I was a boy, then mended, cracked,
beaten in, kicked about old corridors,
and finally, I think, flattened fairly out”. But he persevered
in his work all the same. There is no greater name in the world of
art than Michael Angelo, “this masterful and stern, life-wearied
and labor-hardened man”, whose history “is one of indomitable
will and almost superhuman energy, yet of will that had hardly ever
had its way, and of energy continually at war with circumstance”. It is the same with all who have been great.
THE
MEANING OF LIFE
But
through renunciation the soul on the threshold of greatness discover’s life's
meaning. If religious, he will state it, “Thy will be done”
; if scientific or artistic he will say, “Not I, but a Work”. He is now as Faust who sought happiness in knowledge, and failed
; sought it in the love of Marguerite, and reaped a tragedy ; and
only as he planned to reclaim waste lands for men, and lost himself
in the dream of that work, found that long-sought-for happy
moment when he could say, “Ah, tarry a while, thou art so fair!”
So, renouncing live the souls of the second stage, lovers of a Work.
Sad at heart they are; but if they are loyal to their work, then
comes to them in fleeting moments more than happiness ; it is the
joy of creation. Such wonders they now body forth that to themselves
their masterpieces are enigmas. In fitful gleams they see a Light,
and know that now and then it shines through them to the world. Perfect
masters of technique they are now, in religion, in art, in science,
in every department of life. But alas! Just as they have discovered
what it is to live, what it is to create, they are old, and life comes
to a close, before it seems hardly begun. Shall the path of renunciation
bring nothing but despair?
Despair
was never yet so deep.
In
sinking as in seeming;
Despair
is hope just dropp’d asleep
For
better chance of dreaming.
THE
STAGE OF TRANSFIGURATION
“Hope
just dropp’d
asleep for better chance of dreaming” – that, truly, is
death. The great worker leaves life but to return again, with every
dream old and new nearer realization. He returns, with the inborn
mastery of technique of the genius, to achieve now where once he only
dreamed. The joy of creation is now his sure and priceless possession,
that wondrous joy which only those who know can offer all gifts of
heart and mind, and stand apart from them, while a Greater than they
creates through them. “Seeking nothing, he gains al ; foregoing
self, the universe grows I”. Now has he found that life which
he lost in the stage of renunciation ; henceforth, in all places and
at all times is he become “a pillar in the temple of my God,
and he shall no more go out”.
THE
PATH OF BLISS
So life gives of its
best to all — happiness to some, renunciation to others, and,
to a few, transfiguration. What if now most of us, who love Truth,
must “do without”? Let us but dedicate heart and mind
to a Work, and we shall find that renunciation leads to transfiguration.
There is but one road to God , for all to tread. It is the Path of
Bliss. It has steps — happiness, renunciation, and transfiguration.
Whoso will offer up all that he is to a Work, though he “lose
his life” thereby, yet shall he find it soon, and “come
again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”
THE
HIDDEN WORK OF NATURE
Never,
in the history of mankind, has there been a time as to-day when it
could be so truly said that,
The
old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And
God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest
one good custom should corrupt the world.
It
is true that “the man in the street” knows of no such
great change ; life for him moves as of old in its fixed grooves,
and if the world’s progress has multiplied for him life’s
conveniences, it has also multiplied for him life’s needs. Change
to him is largely a matter of a surplus of comforts over pains, and
in this regard the old order has changed but little for him. But the
man in the library, the laboratory, the studio, the pulpit, is aware
of the great change, and he knows that it began with the work of Darwin
and his school.
The importance of the work of modern scientists lies
in the fact that they have marshaled for us the events of nature into
an orderly pageant of evolution. What exoteric religion has not been
able to do, science has achieved, and that is to show Life as one.
Technological trinities of Creator, Creation, and Creature, or dualities
of God and Man, have not unified life for us in the way science has
done. Mysticism
alone, with its truth of the Immanence, has revealed to men something
of that unified existence of all that is, which is the logical deduction
from modern evolutionary theories.
When we contemplate the pageant
of nature, we see her at a work of building and un-building. From
mineral to bacterium and plant, from microbe to animal and man, nature
is busy at a visible work, step by step evolving higher and more complex
structures. Though she may seem at first sight to work blindly and
mechanically, she has in reality a coherent plan of action. Her plan
is to evolve structures stage by stage, so that the amount of time
needed by a given creature for its self-protection and sustenance
may be less and less with each successive generation. The higher the
structure is in its organization and adaptability, the more time,
and hence more energy, there is free for other purposes of life than
sustenance and procreation.
Two elements in life arise from the perfection
of the structural mechanism which the higher order of creatures reveals.
First, they have time for play, for it is in play that such energy
manifests as is not required for gaining food and shelter. The second
element manifests itself only when human beings appear in evolution,
and men begin to show a desire for adaptability. Adaptability
to environment exists in the plant and in the animal, but it is in
them purely instinctive or mechanical; with man on the other hand
there is an attempt at conscious adaptability.
When this desire for
adaptability increases, nature reveals a new principle of evolution.
To the principle of the survival of the fittest by a struggle for
existence, she adds the new one of evolution by interdependence. Therefore
we find human units aggregating themselves into groups, and primitive
men organizing themselves into families and tribes.
Once more this
means a saving of labor and time in the material struggle for existence.
Some of both is now at nature’s
disposal, to train men to discover new ways of life and action. To the play
of the individual, there
is added a communal life which makes civilization possible. For civilization
means that some individuals in a community are dissatisfied with what
contents all the others, and that therefore they are burning with
a zeal for reform, and the spirit of reform sooner or later is inevitable
in evolution. The survival of the fittest can only come about by that
mysterious arrival of the fittest which no scientist can explain. Nature
now ushers in “the fittest” in the few who are planning
for reform. For reform means that organisms will consciously adapt
themselves more and more to the exigencies of environment, for to
each successive change to greater adaptability nature has something
new to give.
Thus individual men and women become nature’s
tools; she works with their hearts and minds and hands to create social
and political activities. Religion and science and art appear among
men; the struggle for existence is no longer nature’s sole
means for bringing to realization her aim ; interdependence of units,
and therewith reform, are the means which she uses now.
Then it is
that nature proclaims to men that message which she has kept for them
through the ages. It is the joy of social service. Strange and unreal,
as yet, to most men is the thought of such joy. But evolution has
only lately entered on this phase of her work, and ages must yet elapse
before social service becomes instinctive in men as are now self-assertion
and selfishness. That
day must inevitably be the handful of reformers today are as the “missing
links” of a chain which stretches forward from man to superman.
As, from the isolation and selfishness of the of the brute, nature
has evolved the interdependence of men, so too, is self-sacrifice
the next logical step in her evolutionary Self-revelation.
A more
inspiring picture there could hardly be than this, of nature at work
on her building and un-building. Yet there are not a few dark shadows
in the picture. So long as the individual lives only the few brief
years of his life, so long as nothing of him remains as an individual
after his death, there is a ruthlessness about nature which is appalling.
Where is today “the
glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome”? Some day there must be an end to nature’s work,
in this planet at least where we live. There are dead suns in space,
and some day our sun will die out, and every satellite of his will
be a frozen world. Careful of the type, nature truly builds form after
form, and will build for many an age yet to come. There
is indeed a far-off event “to which the whole creation moves”,
but it is to that state when living organisms shall lack the warmth
from the sun which they need for life.
So long as we contemplate nature’s visible work only, not the greatest altruist but must now and
then feel the shadow of great despair. That which alone makes life
and self-sacrifice real and inspiring to great souls — the thought
and the feeling that their work will endure forever — is lacking
when we consider nature’s work in the light of modern science
alone. Yet many an altruist would be content to die, and be nothing
thereafter, if he could but feel that nature had some pity for his
fate. Well the poet voices the feeling which arises from the conception
of nature, or of a deity who is as passionless as nature; -
Life
is pleasant, and friends may be nigh,
Fain
would I speak one word and be spared ;
Yet
I could be silent and cheerfully die,
If
I were only sure God cared;
If
I had faith and were only certain
That
light is behind that terrible curtain.
It is here that Theosophy
steps in to continue the work of science, and explain the true significance
of nature’s manifestations. As modern science points to nature’s
visible work, so Theosophy points to a Hidden Work of Nature.
There
is a hidden Light which reveals to men that nature is but one expression
of a Consciousness at work ; that this Consciousness is at work with
a Plan of evolution; and that this Consciousness carries out its
plan through us and through us alone. The moment that we realize the
significance of this message of the Hidden Light, that men are immortal
souls and not perishable bodies, we begin to see that, while careful
of the type, nature is not less careful of the single life too. For
then we see that nature’s
latest phase, a fullness of life through social service, necessarily involves
the recognition of men as souls; for it would be useless for nature slowly
to fashion a reformer, unless she could utilize his ability and experience
for greater reforms
in the future.
That his specialized
abilities shall not be dissipated would surely then be logical, in
a nature for which we postulate an aim which persists from age to
age.
It does not require much profound thought or speculation to deduce
from this view of nature’s
work that men live for ever as souls, and that, through reincarnation, they
become fitter tools in nature’s
hands to achieve her purpose of evolution. Let but reincarnation be
considered a part of nature’s plan, and at once the tragedy
of nature transforms itself into an inspiring and stately pageant.
For then the future is ourselves ; it is we who shall make the glorious
utopias of dreams; we who painfully toil today to fashion bricks
for nature’s beautiful edifice in far-off days; we, and not
others, shall see that edifice in its splendor, and be its very possessors.
Though the spirit of action of the best of us is ever a sic vos
non vobis, “thus ye work, but not for yourselves”,
yet in reality, like bread cast upon the waters, our work shall greet
us ages hence, and we shall then be glad that we have toiled so well
now.
So comes to us the message of the Hidden Light that nature is
consciously going from good to better, from better to best, and that
she works out her splendid purpose through us, who may become her
ministers, or must be her slaves.
The
spirit of reform, then, being a part of the evolutionary process, the next
point to
note is that in all effective reform there are two elements: first
the reform is brought about by individuals working as a group, and
second, the group has a leader. It is fairly easy to understand the
grouping of individuals to co-operate for a common aim as a part of
nature’s evolutionary plan; their united action but expresses
the social instinct. But it is perhaps less easy to see that nature
selects the leader, and sends him to a particular group to
crystallize its dreams and plans into organization and action. Yet
this is the message of the Hidden Light — that a leader does
not appear by a mere concatenation of chance circumstances, but only
because he is selected for a particular work, and is sent to do it.
For a leader does not come in evolution as a “sport” –
a passing variant produced nobody knows how; he is fashioned by a
slow laborious process lasting thousands of years. Life after life, in
a process of rebirth, the would-be leader must earn his future position
by dedication to works of reform ; by little actions for reform as
a savage, by larger actions as a civilized man, he trains himself
for the role which nature has written for him.
If we look at reformers
in the light of reincarnation, we shall see that their present ability
to lead is simply the result of work done in past lives. Since biologists
are agreed that acquired characters are not transmissible, we must
look for that rare inborn capacity to lead, not in the heredity of
the organism, but in a spiritual heredity which is in the life and
in the consciousness of the individual. This is exactly what reincarnation
says ; the individual acquired his ability to lead today only be endeavors
to lead many a past life, and by partial successes at least in so
doing.
Furthermore, the Hidden
Light reveals to us that each present movement for reform was rehearsed
in many a primitive setting long ago, with the present leaders and
their coadjutors as actors. We need but look at the reform movements
for the amelioration of the lot of the working classes in Europe,
to see how the leaders of today in the various countries were tribunes
of the Plebs in Rome, or “demagogues” in Athens, or leaders
of the masses in Carthage. Nay, furthermore, it is not difficult to
note how some of the politicians and statesmen of Greece and Rome
and elsewhere, who worked to abolish abuses and to free the oppressed,
have changed sex in their present incarnations, and are with us today
as leaders of the various suffragist and feminine movements of the
world. Where else but in past lives did these women learn the tactical
strategy and mastery of leadership which they evince in their campaigns
for reform? Why should certain
men and women, and not all, labor and toil for their fellow-men, renouncing
all and coveting martyrdom, unless they had learnt by past experiences
the glory of action for reform? For the born leaders in every reform
are geniuses in their way ; they go unerringly to an aim, with the
conviction of success ; where did they develop this faith in themselves?
They are in reality the “missing links” from men of today
to the supermen of the future, and it is nature herself with her Hidden
Work who has so fashioned them life after life.
So nature plans and
achieves, and the stately pageant moves on. But her purpose is not
achieved slowly and leisurely , adding change to change; she does
not bring about a new order of things by an accumulation of small
changes. Nature goes by leaps, per
saltum; and as in the biological
world crises appear, and nature makes a leap and ushers in new species,
so too is it in the world of human affairs. Though there is a slow
steady upward movement for progress through reform, yet now and then
there is a crisis in the affairs of men. Then things happen, and after
the crisis is over, there is, as it were, a new species of human activity.
Reform takes a new trend, and a whole host of new reforms are ushered
in to make life fuller and nobler.
One such crisis in human affairs
came in Palestine, with the coming of Christ. For though men knew
not that it was a crisis, though Greece and Rome dreamed and planned
of philosophy and dominion without end, a dawn had begun of a new
era, and an age was ushered in, in the heyday of which Greece and
Rome should be mere names. Christ ministered in Palestine, spoke to
peasant and priest, and gave His sermons “on the Mount”,
and a few men knew not then that with his message He gave birth to
new species of idealism in action. But after two thousand years have
elapsed, we of another generation can see that when Christ lived in
Palestine, and the Roman Empire was beginning its day of glory, then
indeed was the beginning too of the end of a world of thought and
action — of that “glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome” – and that Christ gave His message not
so much to the men of His day as to those who were to come.
So too was it in India,
six centuries before Christ ; another “dreamer” appeared,
Siddhartha, Prince of the Satya clan. Men listened to Him and loved
Him and followed Him, but they little dreamed that He was in reality
building an Empire of Righteousness, which even after twenty-five
centuries should embrace within it five hundred millions of souls.
To the critics of His time, he was but another “Teacher”,
one of hundreds then living in India pointing out “The Way.”
It is only after the lapse of centuries that later generations knew
that He was a teacher of teachers, a Flower on our human tree, the
like of which had never been.
Every so often, then, there is a climax
in human affairs, and always such a climax is preceded by an age when
men “dream dreams.” In Palestine, prophet after prophet
dreamed of “the great and dreadful day of the Lord,” before
Christ came, and proclaimed its coming and worked for it. In India,
many a sage and philosopher prepared the way with his solutions for
the message of the Buddha.
In every such climax,
small or great, the resolution of the crisis comes through the intermediary
of a Personality. For as nature weaves the tangled knot of human fate,
“nowise moved except unto the working out of doom,” she
plans too the Solver of the knot. For every crisis which is of her
planning, she has prepared the Man who holds the solution in his heart
and brain.
In this out twentieth century, men dream dreams as never
heretofore. East and West, North and South, the machinery of human
life grates on the ear, and there is not a single man or woman of
true imagination who can say, “God’s in his heaven, All’s
right with the world!” De profundis clamari better describes
the wail of every nation. Millions are spent on armies and navies,
while the poor are clamouring for bread ; and statesmen themselves
are wringing their hands that they cannot give a nation’s wealth
back to the nation in hospitals and schools and fair gardens and clean
habitations. For there are “wars and rumors of wars.”
The spirit of charity grows year by year, but it seems as though charity
but added patches to a rotting garment, and the more the patches which
are put on the more the rents appear. Strife between capital and labor,
race hatred between white and brown and yellow and black, a deadlock
between science and religion, and more than all else, the increasing
luxury of the few and the increasing misery of the many, these are
but a few of the problems facing philanthropists today.
Every reformer realizes,
in whatever department he works, that for lasting reform a complete
reconstruction is needed of the whole social structure, if poverty,
disease and ignorance and misery shall be as a nightmare that has
been but shall never be again. All are eager for reform ; thousands
are willing to co-operate. But none knows where to begin, in the true
reconstruction. Each is indeed terrified, lest in trying to pull one
brick out of the social edifice, to replace it by a better, he may
pull the whole structure down, and so cause misery instead of joy.
This is the crisis present before our eyes, confronting not one nation,
but all. “Out
of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord,”
is true today as never before.
Everywhere, in every department where
men work for reform, mean are looking for a Leader. Where is He whom
nature has selected,in whose mind is the Plan, in whose is the spirit and in
whose hand is the Power? Let
him but appear, let him but say, “This is how you shall work,” and thousands
will flock to Him in joy. And it is this message of the Hidden Light
that He is ready, for when from the hearts of men a cry goes forth,
from the bosom of God a Son shall come. The world is in the birth
throes once again for the coming of the Son of Man, and the young
men who see visions today shall in their prime find Him in their midst,
the Wonderful, the Councillor, the Prince of Peace.
Never
an age, when God has need of him,
Shall
want its man, predestined by that need,
To
pour his life in fiery word and deed,
The
great Archangel of the Elohim.
When
He, whom the world waits for, and whom nature has planned to come
“unto this hour,” shall appear, what will be His work?
What but to carry on nature’s work one step further? The day
is past when men can go forward with competition as their cry of progress
; nothing lasting can now come for men unless it is brought about
by interdependence and co-operation. The best of men today see the
inevitable coming of this new age, when men shall be sons of God in
deed and not merely in name; but their cry for altruism and co-operation
is as a voice cast in the teeth of the tempest. They can but gather
round them here an enthusiast and there a disciple ; but they accomplish
little, for they lack the character which compels the world to listen.
Till comes that Personality who is not of one nation but of all, whose
message is not for this century alone but for all others to come ;
till then the dawn of the new day will drag its slow length along.
But when He comes, then indeed what He says and what He does will
be the proof to us that it is He and not another, whom nature has
planned to be the Shadow of God upon earth to men, the Savior who
is born unto them this day.
Then
once more shall the Hidden Light be revealed to men, that Light that
“shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”
Then science shall be our religion, and religion our art ; then shall
we cease to be nature’s slaves, and enter upon our heritage,
and become her councillors and guides. Then shall we know, not merely
believe, that behind the seeming pitiless plan of nature there is
a most pitiful Mind, careful of the type and
careful of the single life too. Nevermore shall our eyes be blinded
by passionate tears as we look at the misery of men, and feel the
utter hopelessness of its effective diminution ; for we shall know
that nature but veils an Eye that sees, a Heart that feels, and a
Mind that plans, for One shall be with us to be a Martyros,
a Witness, of that Light that shineth in darkness, even when the darkness
comprehends it not.
He
will call on the many to co-operate in all good works “in His
name and for the love of mankind”; He will teach them the next
lesson which nature has planned for them, the joy of neighbourly service.
But to a few He will give the call to follow Him through the ages.
For He comes to usher in a new age ; that age must be tended and fostered
decade after decade, century by century, till the seed becomes the
tree and the tree bears flowers, and by the perfecting of man comes
the fulfillment of God. As He is nature’s husbandman, so will
he need helpers in those fields from whence alone comes the Daily
Bread for men.
The many will love Him for the peace and joy which
He will bring ; but a few will answer the call to follow Him life
after Life, toiling, toiling in a work seemingly without end. To these
few alone will be it given to know the inwardness of the message of
the Hidden Light. It is that nature keeps her diadems not for those
who reap happiness in her pleasant fields and gardens, but for those
who co-operate with her in her Hidden Work, and try “to
lift a little of the heavy karma of the world.” For
this is Nature’s
Hidden Work, to weave a vesture out of the karmas of men which shall
reflect the pattern given her from on high ; and the weaving halts,
unperfected, till through the actions of all men there shall shine
one great Action. When the perfect vesture is woven for him who
desires it, and the karmas of all men act in unison, then, and not
before, will come “that day” when Nature can say to
all men, as now to her God : “I am in my Father, and ye in
me and I in you.” Unto that hour she toils at her Hidden Work,
and it is the Hidden Light which reveals to men her process of evolution
as she shapes in moulds of dust immortal Sons of God.
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