Theosophy - When a Man Dies, Shall He Live Again? - Annie Besant - Adyar Pamphlets No. 61
Adyar
Pamphlets No.61
WHEN
A MAN DIES, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?
By Annie Besant
Theosophical Publishing House. Adyar. Madras. India
January 1916, Reprinted November 1917
[Page
1] I
HAVE taken as the title of this lecture a famous and well-known question: “When
a man dies, shall he live again?” Yet we, as
Theosophists, should at once traverse that question by saying that the man
never dies. The form in which this question is phrased is, of course, well-known,
although that conception of man as being subject to death is as false as anything
can possibly be. If you look at death as a gateway separating one world from
another, then you may truly say that a man passes through the gateway of death.
But the man himself does not die; and when we speak of a man dying, it reminds
one of another phrase, the question: “Has man a soul?†which is couched
on very much the same idea of a man: That he is a body and has a soul — whereas
the true view of a man is that he is a soul and has a body; the body being
simply a passing incident in his everlasting life. So that my very first statement
with, regard to death will be a negation of part of the title. The man does
not live again, he is ever living, and death has no power to take away from
him the life which is inherent in his nature.
This question as
to the life on the other side of death is one of perennial interest, and
when we [Page
2] remember that death is certain
to each of us it is strange how little many of us know what lies on the other
side. While the religions of the world have always spoken of the life beyond
death's gateway, they have rarely given any definite information about it,
and for the great majority death hides an unknown country. Now surely that
ought not to be so. Surely a condition into which we are passing by
thousands day by day ought to be a condition of which some definite
knowledge can be gained. And we find, when we look at the religions of the
world, that their founders have always been people who have claimed to
possess first-hand knowledge of what lies beyond death. It is said of
the Founder of the Buddhist faith that He remarked that if you ask a man
the way to a particular village, who has never been to that village, he cannot
accurately describe to you the road; and that it is useless to ask a man
who has never visited them about the other worlds. And He went on to say
that He Himself knew those worlds as the people around Him knew their
own villages, and, knowing the worlds beyond death, He was able to tell
them of the way, and of the happenings in those worlds. But He is by no
means alone in that claim. The early teachers of Christianity, you will find,
speak in a similar way of exact knowledge; and they have the idea, in
common with other religions, that a man can separate soul and body during
his physical life, and that death should not be the first time in which body
and soul are consciously separated from each other. Nay, in some of the
religions of the world people go much further, and say that every night of
our lives we leave our body when we go to sleep, and that sleep is nothing
more than the process of the man leaving the physical body, and that death
is nothing more than a sleep, the only difference between sleeping [Page
3]
and dying being that in the
sleep of death the man does not return after he has left the body, and
that the link between the body and the man is broken which remains unbroken
during sleep. And if the people realize that, something of the fear which
presses on many people with regard to the act of dying will pass away.
If people realize that they are continually going through that experience
of parting soul and body, then the fear of the mere act of dying would
entirely pass away. As a matter of fact there is no suffering in death.
Even in the case of the sudden striking away of the physical body there
is no suffering. And that is not simply the testimony of those who speak
from occult investigation; for questions addressed to people who have
met with very serious accidents, which have left them senseless (so that
if they had truly passed away from the body they would have passed on to
the other side without again coming into physical life), have elicited
the reply that so far as the blow that struck them senseless was concerned
there was no kind of pain. These answers confirm the testimony of the occult
student, that the mere act of dying is unaccompanied with pain.
Passing from that,
let us ask whether there is any difference, and if so what, between sleep
and death. There is a slight difference, but not one in which feeling is
mixed up at all. When you go to sleep, the soul leaves the body, clothed
in what we call the astral body, a body of much subtler material than the
physical. Now in death there is a slight difference; for in the process of
dying the subtler part of the physical body (which we call the
etheric double) is separated from the denser part, and this does not
normally happen when a person goes to sleep; although it occurs in cases
of trance, whether it be [Page
4] under
chloroform, ether, mesmeric influence, or in the trance which is connected
with mediurnship. Where a medium goes into trance, this separation of the
dense and etheric parts of the physical body takes place, and the latter serves
as the basis for materializations. In this, again, there is no pain.
The evidence with regard to the life after
death which it is most easy for the enquirer to obtain is that which comes
along the line of spiritualistic investigation; and although I am not a
spiritualist, and consider that along that line there are certain dangers
to be carefully guarded against, still it would not be right to speak on
evidence available on this subject without acknowledging the enormous debt
that everyone owes to the spiritualistic investigators, for the way in which
they have made available evidence which appeals to the majority of
people through the physical senses. There are a large number of
people who will only recognize a fact when the fact carries with
it some physical demonstration, and I venture to say that everyone
who has looked carefully and at first hand into spiritualistic
evidence will be ready to say that even when you have put on one side every
case where challenge may fairly be made, there remains an irreducible
minimum of fact which it is impossible to deny. For I find the people
most positive that there is no evidence to be found in Spiritualism
are mostly those who have not taken the trouble to investigate. Along this
line, then, may be obtained evidence addressed to the physical senses,
and I do not know any other way along which such evidence can be
obtained: because when you are going to deal with conditions in which
the physical body has been dropped, the only way of gaining evidence
appealing to the physical [Page
5] body
of others is by persuading the entity who has dropped his body to utilize
the body of someone else. And for those who are purely materialists, I can
conceive no better first step in the direction of certainty than that which
they may gain from a carefully chosen spiritualistic séance; and,
for those who do not want to investigate personally, there is available literature
of the most satisfactory character; and any one who will read Sir William
Crookes' investigations, and see the scientific character of the tests to
which he submitted his phenomena, will, if human testimony is to be regarded
as valuable, be prepared to accept that as a proof of survival after death.
Now
and then the complaint is made that certain conditions are not imposed.
But those who know anything of scientific investigations will be aware
that no early experiments can be carried on under what are called strict
test conditions — for the simple reason that no one knows in the earlier
stages of experiments what are the conditions under which successful
experiments can take place. No one, when first experiments were made in
electrical science, insisted on laying down conditions, and said that no
manifestations of electricity could be satisfactory unless they appeared in
an atmosphere permeated with moisture ! If that ridiculous condition had
been laid down the results would never have appeared. But would that
have proved that electrical science was impossible ? Or would it only have
shown that it is Nature that lays down the conditions for the happening of
phenomena, and that we are to accommodate ourselves to Nature ? Every
scientific man knows that he must make his experiments all over the place,
observing everything that happens, until he has found out Nature's
conditions; then, conforming himself to those, he can bring about results
without fear of failure. [Page
6] I say
this in order to defend many unfairly judged people, who are attacked by scientific
men in a most unscientific way.
Permit me to
repeat here a story which is exceedingly instructive for the scientific
man: it is the story of the conditions supposed to be imposed on photography
in China, before photography was known there. A photographer is said to
have gone into the middle of China, and to have offered to take pictures
by sunlight. Everyone laughed at him; for how was it possible for the sun
to make pictures ? It was clear he was a fool. But further examination into
his methods showed that he was less a fool than a knave. The whole of his
procedure was an endeavor to delude the people. The first thing he did for
his picture making was to put a black cloth over the box ! and it was clear
he could easily introduce under that cloth any number of pictures ready made.
The fact that he insisted on putting it over the camera showed that he desired
to cheat. He further insisted on bringing in a closed case, which nobody
was allowed to open to see whether pictures were not concealed within. He
would not let anyone look at that case to prove there were no pictures
there, and he insisted on putting it into the camera under the black cloth.
Of course, you can see at once that he cannot make pictures unless he
puts them into his little case beforehand, and slips them into the
camera when nobody is allowed to look ! Clearly he is a fraud. And
then, when he pretends he has got his pictures, what does he do ? Does
he open the box and show them ? No; he wraps up his little case in the
black cloth and carries it off into a room where no sunlight is allowed to
enter, although he pretends he is making the pictures by the sun.
As if the sunlight that makes the pictures should not be allowed to enter
in at all![Page
7]
So, in order to prove that
he was able to take a picture by sunlight, they laid down as the test conditions
that he should do it in an open box, and that everybody might take out
and examine his plates to show that there were no pictures concealed. Nor
must he go into a dark room, and talk to them about developing. They were
far too clever people to be cheated in that barefaced manner, and he was
a miserable fraud. Such was the decision; but, of course, under those
test conditions they did not get any pictures. Apply that nearer home,
and you will find it an exceedingly good illustration of the way in which
people who know nothing about the conditions under which phenomena happen,
lay impossible conditions down, and then insist on the production of, phenomena.
The Theosophist,
however, does not usually make use of Spiritualism for finding out what lies
on the other side of death, because he does not think it a good thing for
those who are passing onwards to be brought back into the earth-life; it
is better for them to lose the clinging to these lower interests, and try
to pass on into higher conditions. Moreover, Theosophists do not think the
results which are likely to be obtained in this way are results which can
be thoroughly reliable. They are not sufficiently wide. Granted that you
may receive statements as to what is happening on the other side; but they
will, for the most part, be drawn from a comparatively limited circle. And
that, I think, is for the very simple! reason that it is only those who are
comparatively near to the physical world who can thus return and communicate
with those who are still in the body. It is as though you were receiving
from people traveling in a foreign land, without introductions (so to speak)
to the wider interests of that land, [Page
8] reports
from their own narrow circle of experience. They do not furnish us with
enough information to give us a definite certainty as to the conditions of
the higher planes.
As you probably
know, Theosophy says that the best way of finding out what happens on the
other side of death is to train yourself to investigate, by yourself leaving
your body and passing into those wider realms, studying the conditions there,
and bringing back definite knowledge which may be confirmed by further experiment.
Now
what is the first thing that strikes the investigator when he studies the
conditions into which he temporarily passes? The first thing that strikes him
is that the men and women who pass through death are not changed by
the passing; that the mere dropping of the physical encasement has not
changed the people themselves. Their affections, their thoughts, their
emotions, their interests, are all the same. He is struck with overwhelming
force by the continuity of life. We shall be the same on the other side as
we are here. Death works no miracle. If a man goes out of the world with
all his interests here, with all his passions and appetites potent, all
his interests and passions will still be the same when he awakens on the
other side. And when that is recognized, we begin to be able to judge our
condition there by what we know of our condition here. There is not one
of you who could not forecast your experiences there by analyzing the things
that interest you most here, and seeing how much of these you can carry
to the other side. It is this fact which makes the knowledge of the other
side so imperatively necessary for us — for that life is terribly handicapped
by the ignorance prevailing amongst the majority of us as to its conditions.[Page
9]
The way in which you pass
out of the body conditions your immediate experience on the other side,
and for that reason you must thoroughly realize that there is nothing to
fear; for that dread which is in men's minds here possesses them on the
other side, and makes the first obstacle to peace and happiness that has
to be overcome. There is nothing more troublesome on the other side than
the state of the people who go out of this life believing in eternal torture.
The idea springs up in the mind when they find that they have left the
earth: and though there be nothing to justify it, the thought they have
carried with them tortures them, until they can be persuaded that it is
not true. So that if you can get rid of that idea on this side, you will
be taking one step towards truth on the other. I know very well that this
nightmare is gradually dying out of popular belief; I know that many Christian
clergymen are preaching the gospel of hope instead of the gospel of despair;
but still some believe it, and you should get rid of that terrible superstition
before you leave the body, so that you may not have that specter to face
on the other side of death.
The
next thing I must say is that, following out the law which cannot be broken,
there is nevertheless in many cases temporary suffering. But no one need
go through that suffering unless, by folly here, the conditions are made
that assert themselves as suffering there. If you allow your appetites
to overcome you, if you live a life of profligacy, gluttony, or drunkenness,
or give way to violent passions — if you pass out of the body with
those evil things unconquered, it is true that you must suffer for a time
on the other side of death. The suffering is inevitable, although not everlasting.
It is easily understood. [Page
10] You
must have heard sometimes how a drunkard suffers if he cannot obtain strong
drink when the moment of craving comes over him. Time after time it is
said by the drunkard: “I
would break the habit if I could, but when the craving comes it carries me
off my feet; the suffering is so terrible that I must satisfy it at all risks”.
My answer, now that I know what lies on the other side, is clear and simple:
“You must face that suffering at one time or another; better face it on this
side of death, where every advantage is with you, than on the other side,
when the difficulties will be enormously greater For the body in which
the man is living on the other side is composed of much subtler matter, and
the same force in the subtler body is very much more effective than when
it is moving the heavy physical matter. The same amount of energy has more
effective powers as craving, and it cannot be gratified. During my own
experience I have known an explanation of this kind given to a drunkard
enable him to break the chains of that terrible habit; for when he once
realized that he could not escape the struggle, he fought the battle and
killed his enemy on this side of death, instead of leaving the terrible combat
to the other side. There you have a means of helping those who are under
the chain of some evil physical habit. You can encourage them to break it
here, instead of under conditions of keener suffering hereafter. For it must
be broken ! Every living soul is essentially divine; and it may not remain
in that bondage, tied by the fetters of drunkenness, gluttony, or lust. They
are too much against its inherent divine nature; they are too much against
the aspirations which no soul, by virtue of its divinity, is utterly without.
And every fetter of sense which degrades the soul is better broken off during
the physical life than in the post-mortem existence.[Page
11]
The
next thing we notice is that a great many people find their life on the
other side exceedingly dull for a long time — and that is one of the
reasons why they try to get into touch with the earth again. All their
interests were here; they had no interests here which they could carry on
with them, and the result is they have to wear out the interests, and it takes
a very considerable time. Over and over again we notice that souls are
held in bondage here by these ties to the earth, instead of passing onwards
to conditions far happier. That is, perhaps, the commonest stage on the
other side — a period of weariness and of lacking interests. Very much
of the help that is given on the other side is given to those who are under
these conditions, in persuading them to face for a time the weariness, for
the sake of the greater happiness that lies beyond; to work through the tie
which they have rendered inevitable, so that they may pass onwards aa
quickly as may be, and reap the harvest which is waiting for them a little
farther on.
The
recognition of the law will give you many hints for the choice which you
may exercise in this life, especially in your hours of leisure, in utilizing
those for the higher part of you and not only for the lower. Out of the
many forms of pleasure placed before young men and women, they might well
exercise a wise choice, choosing the pleasures that tend rather to elevate
the emotions than those which degrade and animalize them. Here, of course,
you come into a question of profound interest—the question of the
amusements of the great masses of the people. So long as these
amusements are of the most trivial and stupid kind; so long as the music
offered to them is only music by courtesy, and nothing else; so long as that
is what the caterers of amusement [Page
12] offer
to the public — you cannot
blame those who seek amusement for taking what they can get, if there is
nothing else available for them. I am not speaking against amusements which
are really a relaxation and not; another form of study, but I do say
that in those amusements there might be something of beauty, something of
art, something of taste, something of refinement, so that young men and.
women who go into a music-hall should come out of it the better for the amusement
and not the worse. You may say: “ What has that to do with the life after
death ? A great deal, because all these young people have to pass through
that life after death, and they can take with them something that will last.
Mere jingle and folly cannot be carried on to that side; but the refining
of the emotions which comes from listening to music which may be tuneful,
melodious, and beautiful, and yet by no means silly — such an amusement
will give them something that they can carry on to that other side. For there
also is music, beautiful beyond anything that the earth can give; there also
is beauty of the most entrancing kinds; but it is beauty that appeals to
the nobler emotions, and those ought to be. cultivated on this side of death.
Having once gone the round of those amusements myself, in order to see what
really did amuse the people, I found there was glad and eager response where
some noble or tender sentiment lay beneath the song and the melody; I found
that these were more responded to than the mere vulgar rattle, and that there
was an answer of the emotional nature where the opportunity for that answer
was afforded. When I suggest that it would be well to prepare for life after
death I do not mean it in that gloomy sense in which some people say: Prepare
for death, “Prepare to meet your Godâ€;
but I say: Prepare in a rational, thoughtful, sensible manner, and do it [Page
13] by the cultivation of the
nobler emotions, and not simply by the satisfaction of the lower animal tastes.
Passing from that
kind of preparation, let us see what else we can do to make richer and fuller
that life on the other side of death. It is a life of progress. You start
where you left this world, but you climb onwards and onwards for long ages
of peace and joy. And you progress by that which you take with you as a starting-point;
for you cannot make it there fresh starting-points. You can carry on anything
you have begun here, but complete initiation of a new line of mental and
emotional activity is not possible on the other side of death. You will have
as material for your progress, all that you have thought on this side; and
if you want to ensure on the other side of death centuries of happy, peaceful
progress, now is the time for making the material which will render that
progress inevitable. Every great aspiration that for a moment has illuminated
your heart, every desire for human service, every kindly wish for the helping
of a fellow creature, every hope and struggle and endeavor that you have
made for human good, come back to you there as the material out of which
your progress will be fashioned. Think what it means ! So many of you have
hearts larger than your opportunities, feelings which go beyond your
practical capacities. Do not let your heart break, you who are tender to the
sorrow of the world. Sympathize as much as you can; feel as much as you
can; be sorry for the sorrowful; and do not shrink from the pain of human
sympathy. For every feeling that you have had during your earth-life will
come back to you in your life in the heavenly places; and you will build it,
not into futile hope as you may have thought, but into capacity to achieve;
when your time comes to be born again in the world, you [Page
14] will
come back to it with your heart and your brain full of schemes for human
welfare that you will be able to carry out, every hope turned into a power,
and every pulse of sympathy into a faculty to help. Not one throb of sorrow
will be lost; you will find it in the treasure-house of heaven to work into
power — power to conceive and to bless. That is part of the good news
we bring from the other side — and how good it is only those know whose
hearts have almost broken in facing the misery of the world. Not one of you
need pass through death's gateway without carrying with you material of
that splendid kind which, in the heavenly places, you will thus weave into
faculty and power.
And
so also with every emotion that you have so often on this side of death.
Emotions of love give, perhaps, as much pain as pleasure — sometimes
even more. Do not shrink from the pain which comes from a noble love, even
though it be unrequited. The love of the mother for the son who almost breaks
her heart, the love of the father for the daughter who has wandered far from
home, the love of husband for wife, or wife for husband, where due return has
not been given, the love of friend for friend outliving even neglect and betrayal — those
loves come back to us in the higher worlds and enrich and glorify our heaven.
For there is not one human soul for whom we have kept our love untouched and
unbroken, not one human soul that here we may seem to have lost, that there
we shall not find. All souls that love each other find each other out in heaven,
for the bond of love is a bond over which the icy hand of death has no power;
love is immortal, love is divine; and the son that has broken his mother's
heart in his manhood, loved his mother when he was a little boy playing round
her knees: and that love-tie is only submerged, and will [Page
15] re-assert
itself on the other side of death. So that where your love becomes a pain
instead of a joy, cling to it and clasp it to your heart, and it will bring
you to the place of joy. And in that world of love and of peace the power to
love will grow with the loves which here have been disappointed; and every
disappointed love is a jewel which will be worked up into the great mosaic
of faculty that we shall make in heaven.
Pass from the emotions
that deal with love, and think of the artistic emotions. These are part of
the soul and not of the body. There is much frustrated art in this world;
so many who can do a little but nor, much, for lack of faculty; so many with
great ambitions and poor achievements; so many who dream more than they can
realize. Let them still have the courage and dream on; let them dream of
the Beauty that they cannot reproduce, of the Music and the Painting and
the Sculpture that only gleam to them in visions, which their hands are unable
to fabricate. The power to achieve will be made from the aspiration. Practice
whatever power you have; do not be ashamed of it because it is small; cultivate
it, water it, let the sun shine on it: and, in the grander world beyond,
that seed of art will flower into genius, and none of the efforts will be
wasted.
And not only the
emotions, but the intelligence grows there, far more swiftly than it does
here. The man who is eager for knowledge but cramped in the narrow conditions
of his daily life, shall not he also have his harvest on the other side of
death ? Only do not let him lose grip of that desire for knowledge; and
let him steal day by day out of his busy time, if only a few minutes, in
which he may read some great book, in which he may study some great thought.
It may not be much, but [Page
16] perhaps even in the
omnibus or train, passing between his home and his office, he may be able
to snatch a few moments for study. Although he may only read twelve or
fifteen lines a day, those lines will multiply week by week, and month by
month, and year by year, and that mental accumulation that he has made
by his study will be the material with which his intelligence will grow when
he passes to the life on the other side of death.
I want you to
realize, if possible, how much you can do to make that life a life of progress
and of growth. Life here is so narrow and crude. On every side circumstances
wall us in, and we realize that there is no possibility of ever climbing
those walls. Never mind. Death will knock them down, although you cannot
over-climb them. Only keep belief in the divinity of your own nature, and
know that you are destined to grow to perfection, and that it is only a
question of time when that perfection will show itself to the world. And
you can shorten the time by understanding the law; you can prepare for the
progress in the heavenly life by utilizing the little fragments of time
stolen from the pressure of daily life. And this life will become
gladder and stronger when it is full of hope; for no man who has hope
can be utterly miserable; and hope will shed its gleams over the
greyest life and gild even the clouds that too often gather around
us. For the time there is so much more than the time here
- hundreds upon hundreds of years there, and here a few score only. We do
not really belong here; our world is the heavenly world, and we just come
down for a few brief moment's of earth-life to gather what we need for our
true life in heaven. You see sometimes a bird whose life is in the air, a
bright, radiant creature who soars in the sunshine, drop down from [Page
17]
the air to which he belongs into
the water, for the purpose of catching the food on which he is to live;
and just as the bird’s flight in the atmosphere is,
compared to the momentary plunge into the ocean in search of food, so is
our true life in the world of spirit, compared to this brief dash downwards
into the world of matter.
That
is the truth as all know it who can see on the other side of death — a
great and joyful truth; for that is our world rather than this; and this world
is ours for the gathering of experience, or for the doing of service. Those
are the two great objects of the earth-life; to gather experience whereby to
grow; to do service, which is the element of the Christ-growth. No life is
worth the having which is filled only by selfish thought and cold indifference
to the wants of the world around. That life only is fit to grow in the heavenly
places which is a life of sharing, of giving of everything that one has
gathered. And there is this joyous thing about all the real goods of life;
the goods of intelligence, of emotion, of art, of love — all the things
which are really worth the having — they do not waste in the giving;
they grow, the more, the more we give. Those physical things get smaller as
we take away from them, leaving so much less for future use; and so, when it
is a question of sharing the physical things, men calculate and say: “I have
only enough for myself, for my wife, for my child. How can I give any away?â€
All that is matter is consumed in the using; but that is not true of the higher
things, the things of the intelligence, of the heart, and of the Spirit. If
I know something, I do not lose it when teach it. Nay ! it becomes more truly
mine because I have shared it with one more ignorant than myself; so that [Page
18] you have two people enriched
by knowledge, by the sharing of a store that increases, instead of diminishing,
as it is shared. And so with all that is worth having. You need not fear to
lessen your own possessions by throwing them broadcast to your hungry fellow-men.
Give your knowledge, your strength, your love; empty yourself utterly, and
when for a moment you think you are empty, then from the inexhaustible fount
of love, and beauty, and power, more flows down to fill the empty vessel, making
it fuller, and not emptier than it was before.
There
is the secret of a useful life; there the inspiration to noble living — nothing
that I can win that is worth having, which does not grow as I share it
with my fellows. And those who have thus learned, those who see the physical
and compare it, worthless as it is, with the emotional, the intellectual,
the spiritual, they, and they alone, are wise, and know how to live; and
as they live, their lives are a benediction; and when they die, their
lives are a continual progress; and when they return, they bring the fruits
of the progress to share them also with their fellow-men. And so they learn
to be the Servants, the Guides, and the Saviors of the world.
|