REINCARNATION
Reincarnation
By
Annie Besant
Reincarnation
By
Annie Besant
First
Published 1892
PREFACE
FEW words are needed in sending this little book out into the
world. It is the second of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public
demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained
that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive
for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed
in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned;
it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first
glimpse of its teachings,, there may be a few who will be led by them to
penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion,
facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's
ardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student, whom no
initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of
the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great truths that
render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the
Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object
than to serve our fellow-men.
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Meaning of
Reincarnation
What it is that
Reincarnates
What it is that does
not Reincarnate
The Method of
Reincarnation
The Object of Reincarnation
The Cause of
Reincarnation
The Proofs of
Reincarnation
Objections to Reincarnation
A Last Word
INTRODUCTION
IF it be difficult for a new truth to gain a hearing amid the
strife of tongues that marks our modern civilisation it is yet more difficult
for a truth to make itself heard which has become new only by force of age. If
our eye could sweep over the intellectual history of the race, unrolled before
us for centuries of millenniums, then a gap in the dominance of some world-wide
idea, stretching over some few hundreds of years among a small number of the
nations, would but slightly impress us. But when that gap-a mere partial
fissure in an immemorial past-includes the intellectual development of
Now Reincarnation is a truth that has swayed the minds of
innumerable millions of our race, and has moulded the thoughts of the vast
majority for uncounted centuries. It dropped out of the
European mind during the Dark Ages, and so ceased to influence our
mental and moral development-very much, be it said in passing, to the injury of
that development. For the last hundred years it has from time to time flashed
through the minds of some of the greater Westerns, as a possible explanation of
some of life's most puzzling problems: and during recent years, since its clear
enunciation as an essential part of the Esoteric Teaching, it has been
constantly debated, and is as constantly gaining ground, among the more
thoughtful students of the mysteries of life and of evolution.
There is, of course, no doubt that the great historical religions
of the East included the teaching of Reincarnation as a fundamental tenet. In
1Josephus, Antig., xviii. i., § 3, says the virtuous "shall
have power to revive and live again."
some former sin of his own. The Zohar, again, speaks of souls as
being subjected to transmigration. "All souls are subject to revolution
(metempsychosis, a'leen b'gilgoolah), but men do not know the ways of the Holy
One; blessed be it! they are ignorant of the way they have been judged in all
time, and "before they came into this world and when they have quitted
it."1 The Kether Malkuth evidently has the same idea as that conveyed by
Josephus, when it says: " If she (the soul) be pure, then shall she obtain
favour and rejoice in the latter day; but if she hath been denied, then shall
she wander for a time in pain and despair," 2 So also, we find the
doctrine taught by eminent Fathers of the Church, and Ruffinus 3 states that
belief in it was common among the primitive Fathers. Needless to say that the
philosophic Gnostics and Neo-Platonists held it as an integral part of their
doctrine. If we glance to the
1 Zohar, ii., fol. 99, b. sq. Quoted in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 198. 2
Quoted in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 198.
3 Letter to Anastasius, quoted by E. D. Walker, in Reincarnation :
A Study of Forgotten Truth.
their deeply interesting connection in language and symbolism with
ancient
It could scarcely be expected that a teaching of such vast
antiquity and such magnificent intellectual ancestry should fade out of the
mind of mankind; and accordingly we find that the eclipse it suffered a few
centuries ago was very partial, affecting only a small portion of the race. The
ignorance that swamped
But while a fact of Nature may in some part of the world for a time
be ignored it cannot be destroyed, and, submerged for a moment, it will again
reassert itself in the sight of men. This has been demonstrated anew in the
history of the doctrine of Reincarnation in
When Christianity first swept over
1 E. D.
The reader of Schopenhauer will be familiar with the aspect taken
by Reincarnation in his philosophy. Penetrated as was the great German with
Eastern thought from his study of the Upanishads, it would have been passing
strange had this corner-stone of Hindu philosophy found no place in his system.
Nor is Schopenhauer the only philosopher from the Intellectual and mystical
German people who has accepted Reincarnation as a necessary factor in Nature.
The opinions of Fichte, of Herder, of Lessing, may surely claim to be of some
weight in the intellectual world, and these men see in Reincarnation a solution
for problems otherwise insoluble. It is true that the intellectual world is not
a despotic State, and none may impose his opinion on his fellows by personal
authority; none the less are opinions weighed there rather than counted, and
the mightier and more instructed intellects of the West, though they be here in
a small minority, will command respectful hearing for that which they
deliberately advance, from all whose minds are not so hide-bound by modern
tradition as to be unable to appreciate the value of arguments addressed to the
support of an unfashionable truth.
It is interesting to note that the mere idea of Reincarnation is no
longer regarded in the West- at least by educated people-as absurd. It
is-gradually assuming the position of a possible hypothesis, to be considered
on its merits, on its power of explaining puzzling and apparently unrelated
phenomena. Regarding it myself as, to me, a proven fact, I am concerned rather
to put it forward on these pages as a probable hypothesis, throwing more light
than does any other theory on the obscure problems of man's constitution, of
his character, his evolution, and his destiny. Reincarnation and Karma are said
by a Master to be the two doctrines of which the West stands most in. need; so
it cannot he ill done for a believer in the Masters to set forth an outline,
for the ordinary reader, of this central teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy.
THE MEANING OF REINCARNATION
Let us start with a clear understanding of what is meant by
Reincarnation. So far as the derivation of the word is concerned, any repeated
entering into a physical, or fleshly covering, might be included
THE MEANING OF REINCARNATION
thereunder. It certainly implies the existence of something
relatively permanent that enters into and inhabits successive somethings
relatively impermanent. But the word tells us nothing of the nature of these
relatively permanent and impermanent somethings, save that the impermanent
habitations are of " flesh ". Another word, often used as synonymous
with Reincarnation, the word Metempsychosis, suggests the other side of the
transaction; here the habitation is ignored, and the stress is laid on the
transit of the Psyche, the relatively permanent. Putting the two together as
descriptive of the whole idea, we should have the entry of a Psyche or "
soul" into successive " bodies " of flesh; and though the word
" soul " is open to serious objections, from its looseness and its
theological connotations, it may stand for the moment as representing in the
minds of most people a form of existence which outlasts the physical frame with
which it was connected during a life on earth.
In this general sense, apart from any special exoteric or esoteric
teaching, Reincarnation and Metempsychosis are words which denote a theory of
existence, according to which a form of visible matter is inhabited by a more
ethereal principle, which outlives its physical encasement, and, on the death
of the latter, passes on, immediately or after an interval, to dwell in some
other frame. Never, perhaps, has this doctrine, in its loftiest form, been put
more clearly or more beautifully than in the famous encouragement of Arjuna by
These bodies of the embodied One, who is eternal, indestructible
and boundless, are known as finite. . . He who regardeth this as a slayer, and
he who thinketh he is slain, both of them are ignorant. He slayeth not nor is
he slain. He is not born, nor doth he die; nor having been, ceaseth he any more
to be; unborn, perpetual, eternal and ancient, he is not slain when the body is
slaughtered. Who knoweth him indestructible, unborn, undiminishing, how can
that man slay, O Partha, or cause to be slain ? As a man, casting off worn-out
garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out
bodies, entereth into others that are new. Weapons cleave him not, nor fire
burneth him, nor waters wet him, nor wind drieth him away. Indivisible he,
incombustible he, and indeed neither to be wetted nor dried away; perpetual,
all-pervasive, stable, immovable, an-cient, unmanifest, unthinkable, immutable,
he is called; therefore knowing him as such thou shouldst not grieve.1
The theory of Reincarnation, then, in the Esoteric Philosophy,
asserts the existence of a living and individualised Principle, which dwells in
and informs the body of a man, and Which, on the death of the body, passes into
another body, after a longer or
1 From the translation by Annie Besant, Discourse ii, 18-25.
WHAT IT IS THAT REINCARNATES
shorter interval. Thus successive bodily lives are linked together
like pearls strung upon a thread, the thread being the living Principle, the
pearls upon it the separate human lives.
WHAT IT is THAT REINCARNATES
Having grasped the idea that Reincarnation is the indwelling of a
living something in a succession of human bodies, we naturally make the
inquiry: What is this living something, this persistent reincarnating Principle
? As our understanding of the whole teaching hinges on thorough understanding
of the answer to this question, it will not be wasted time to dwell a little on
the circumstances which led up to and surrounded the first incarnation of this
living Principle in the human form. To make this incarnation thoroughly
intelligible, we must trace the steps of the evolution of man.
Those who have read the first of these Manuals will remember that
the Monad or Atma-Euddhi is described as the " mainspring of all
evolution, the impelling force at the root of all things." 1 Those to whom
the technical name is unfamiliar will
1 P. 63.
seize the idea conveyed by the name to the Theo-sophist, if they
will think of the Universal Life, the Root of all that is, gradually evolving
as its own manifestation the various forms which make up our world. We cannot
here retrace our earth's story in former stages of its aeonian evolution: that
will, I hope, be done in one of this series of Manuals. But here we must be
content to pick up the thread at the beginning of the present stage, when the
germ of what was to become man had appeared, as the result of previous
evolution, on this, our globe. H. P. Blavatsky, in the volumes of The Secret
Doctrine, has drawn the evolution in detail, and to that work I must refer the
earnest and thorough student. Let it suffice to say that the physical form of
what was to be man was slowly and very gradually evolved, two great Root-Races
passing through their full development, and a third Root-Race having run half
its course, before humanity had reached completion so far as its physical, or
animal, nature was concerned. This nature, rightly called animal, because it
contains that which man has in common with the brute- a dense physical body,
its etheric double, its vitality, its passions, appetites and desires-this
nature was built up by terrestrial and other cosmic forces through millions of
years. It was brooded over, enveloped in, permeated by, that Universal Life
which is " the Force back of Evolution ", that life which men have in
all ages called Divine.
An Occult Commentary, quoted in The Secret Doctrine? speaking of
this stage of evolution, mentions the forms, technically called " astral
doubles", which had evolved into the physical bodies of men, and thus
describes the situation at the point we have reached:
Rupa (Form) has become the vehicle of Monads (Seventh and Sixth
Principles) that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding
Kalpas (Rounds). Then they (the astral doubles) become the men of the first
Human Race of the Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless.
Here were, we may say, the two poles of the evolving
Life-manifestation: the Animal with all its potentialities on the lower plane,
but necessarily mindless, conscienceless, errant aimlessly over the earth,
unconsciously tending onwards by reason of the impelling force within it that
drove it ever forward: this force, the Divine, itself too lofty in
1 Vol. i, 235, 1962 Edition.
its pure ethereal nature to reach consciousness on the lower
planes, and so unable to bridge the gulf that stretched between it and the
animal brain it vivified but could not illumine. Such was the organism that was
to become man, a creature of marvellous potentialities, an instrument with
strings all ready to break into music; where was the power that should make the
potentialities actual, where the touch that should waken the melody and send it
forth thrilling into space?
When the hour had struck, the answer came from the mental or
manasic plane. Whilst this double evolution above described, the monadic and
the physical, had been going on upon our globe, a third line of evolution,
which was to find its goal in man, had been proceeding in a higher sphere. This
line was that of intellectual evolution, and the subjects of the evolution are
the lower of the Sons of Mind (Manasaputra), self-conscious intelligent
entities, as is implied by their name. The Manasa-putras are spoken of under
many different names: Lords of Light, Dhyan Chohans, Kumaras, Dragons of
Wisdom, Solar Pitris, etc., etc., allegorical and poetical names, that become
attractive and familiar to the student in the course of his reading, but which
cause much trouble and confusion to the beginner, who cannot make out whether
he is dealing with one class of beings or with a dozen. As a matter of fact the
name covers many grades. But the one thing that the beginner needs to grasp is
that, at a certain stage of evolution, there entered into, incarnated in men.
certain self-conscious intelligent entities, with a long past of intellectual
evolution behind them, who found in physical man the instrument ready, and
fitted, for their further evolution.
The coming of
these Sons of Mind is given in poetical phrase in the Stanzas from the
The Sons of Wisdom, The Sons of Night, ready for rebirth, came
down. . . . The Third Race were ready. " In these shall we dwell,"
said the Lords of the Flame. .... The Third Race became the Vahan (Vehicle] of
the Lords of Wisdom.
These Lords of Wisdom incarnated as teachers, and became the
fathers of the reincarnating Egos of men, while Solar Pitris of a lower grade
became themselves the reincarnating Egos of the leading races; these are the
Mind, or rather Minds, in
1 The Secret Doctrine iii, 168, 179, 1962 Ed.
REINCARNATION
men, the Manas, or Fifth Principle, sometimes described as the
Human or Rational Soul. I prefer to speak of the reincarnating Ego as the
Thinker, rather than as Mind, in man; for the word Thinker suggests an
individual entity, whereas the word Mind suggests a vague generality.
It is interesting and significant that the word man, running
through so many languages, is related back to this Manas, to its root man, to
think. Skeat 1 gives the word in English, Swedish, Danish, German, Icelandish,
Gothic, Latin (mas, for mans), deriving it from the Sanskrit root man, and
therefore defining man as a " thinking animal". So that whenever we
say Man, we say Thinker, and are carried back to that period at which the
Thinkers " came down ", i.e., became incarnate in the physical
vehicle built for their reception, when the senseless animal became the
thinking being, by virtue of the Manas that entered into him andr dwelt in him.
It was then that the Man became clothed in his " coat of skin", after
his fall into physical matter in order that he might eat of the Tree of Knowledge
and thus become a " God."
1 Etymological Dictionary, under " Man ".
This man is the link between the Divine and the Animal, that we
have viewed as essentially connected and yet held apart from close intercommunion.
He stretches one hand upwards towards the Divine Monad, to the Spirit whose
offspring he is, striving upwards, that he may assimilate that loftier nature,
that his intelligence may become spiritual, his knowledge wisdom; he lays his
other hand upon the Animal, which is to bear him to conquest of the lower
planes, that he may train and subdue it to his own ends, and make it a perfect
instrument for manifestation of the higher life. Long is the task that lies
before him; no less than to raise the Animal to the Divine, to Sublime Matter
into Spirit, to lead up the ascending arc the life that has traversed the
descending, and has now to climb upwards, bearing with it all the fruits of its
long exile from its true home. Finally he is to reunite the separated aspects
of the One, to bring the Spirit to self-consciousness on all planes, Matter to
be its perfect manifestation. Such his sublime task for the accomplishment of
which reincarnation is to be his tool.
This Man, then, is our real Human Self, and we err when we think of
our body as " I", and too much exalt our temporary " coat of
skin ". It is as though a man should regard his coat as himself, himself
as a mere appendage of his clothes. As our clothes exist for us and not we for
them, and they are only things rendered necessary by climate, comfort and
custom, so our bodies are only necessary to us because of the conditions that
surround us, and are for our service, not for our subjugation. Some Indians
will never speak of bodily wants as theirs: they say, " My body is
hungry," " My body is tired," not " I am hungry," or
" I am tired." And though in our ears the phrase may sound fantastic,
it is truer to facts than our self-identification with our body. If we were in
the habit of identifying ourselves in thought, not with the habitation we live
in but with the Human Self, that dwells therein, life would become a greater
and a serener thing. We should brush off troubles as we brush the dust from our
garments, and we should realise that the measure of all things happening to us
is not the pain or pleasure they bring to our bodies, but the progress or
retardation they bring to the Man within us; and since all things are matters
of experience and lessons may be learned from each, we should take the sting
out of griefs
by searching in each for the wisdom enwrapped in it as the petals
are folded within the bud. In the light of reincarnation life changes its
aspect, for it becomes the school of the eternal Man within us, who seeks
therein his development, the Man that was and is and shall be, for whom the
hour will never strike.
Let the beginner, then, get firm grip of the idea that the Thinker
is the Man, the Individual, the reincarnating Ego, and that this Ego seeks to
become united to the divine Monad, while training and purifying the animal self
to which it is joined during earth-life. United to that divine Monad, a spark
of the Universal Life and inseparable from it, the Thinker becomes the
Spiritual Ego, the Divine Man.1 The Thinker is spoken of sometimes as the
vehicle of the Monad, the ethereal encasement, as it were, through which the
Monad may act on all planes; hence, we often find theosophical writers saying
that the Triad, or Trinity, in Man, is that which reincarnates, and the
expression, though loose, may pass, if the student remembers that the Monad is
Universal, not particular, and that it is only our ignorance which deludes us
into
1 The Seven Principles of Man, by Annie Besant, p.
60.
separating ourselves from our brothers, arid seeing any difference
between the Light in one and the Light in another.1 The Monad being Universal
and not differing in different persons or individuals, it is really only the
Thinker that can in strictness, be said to reincarnate, and it is with this
Thinker, as the Individual, that we are concerned.
Now in this Thinker reside all the powers that we class as Mind. In
it are memory, intuition, will. It gathers up all the experiences of the
earth-lives through which it passes, and stores these accumulated treasures of
knowledge, to be transmuted within itself, by its own divine alchemy, into that
essence of experience arid knowledge which is Wisdom. Even in our brief span of
earth-life we distinguish between the knowledge we acquire and the wisdom we
gradually-alas! too rarely-distil from that knowledge. Wisdom is. the fruitage
of a life's experience, the crowning possession of the aged. Arid in a much
fuller and richer sense, Wisdom is the fruitage of many incarnations, in which
knowledge has been gained,.
1 Ibid., p. 68. The relation between the three Higher Principles,
is clearly explained in this little book, which appeared originally in Lucifer
as a series of articles, and is supposed to have been, studied by the readers
of the present manual. experience garnered, patience has had her perfect work,
so that at length the divine Man is the glorious product of the centuries
evolution. In the Thinker, then, is our store of experiences, reaped in all
past lives, harvested through many rebirths, a heritage into which each one
shall surely come when he learn to rise above the thrall of the senses, out of
the storm and stress of earthly life, to that purer region, to that higher
plane, where our true Self resides.
WHAT IT IS THAT DOES NOT REINCARNATE
We have seen in the preceding Section, that man's outer "form,
his physical nature, was built up slowly, through two and a half Races, until
it was ready to receive the Son of Mind.1 This is the nature we have called
animal, and it consists of four distinguishable parts or " principles
"; I. the body; II. the etheric double; III. the vitality; IV. the
passional nature-passions, appetites and desires. This is, in very truth, the
animal man, differing from its relatives which are purely animal by the
influence exerted over it by the Thinker, who has
1 See ante, pp. 11, 12.
come to train and ennoble it. Take away the Thinker, as in the case
of the congenital idiot, and you have an animal merely, albeit its form be
human.
Now the Thinker, connected with and informing the animal-man,
imparts to this lower nature such of its own capacities as that animal-man is
able to manifest, and these capacities, working in and through the human brain,
are recognised by us as the brain-mind, or the lower mind. In the West the
development of this brain-mind is regarded as marking the distinction, in
ordinary parlance, between the brute and the human being. That which the
Theosophist looks on as merely the lower or brain-mind, is considered by the
average Western to be the mind itself, and hence arises much confusion when the
Theosophist and the non-Theosophist foregather. We say that the Thinker,
striving to reach and influence the animal-man, sends out a Ray that plays on
and in the brain, and that through the brain are manifested so much of the
mental powers as that brain, by its configuration and other physical qualities,
is able to translate. This Ray sets the molecules of the brain nerve-cells vibrating,
as a ray of light sets quivering the molecules of the retinal nerve cells and
so gives rise to consciousness on the physical plane. Reason, judgment,,
memory, will, ideation-as these faculties are known to us, manifested when the
brain is in full activity- all these are the outcome of the Ray sent forth by
the Thinker, modified by the material conditions through which it must work.
These conditions include healthy nerve-cells, properly balanced development of
the respective groups of nerve cells, a full supply of blood containing
nutritive matter that can be assimilated by the cells so as to supplant waste,
and carrying oxygen easily set free from its vehicles. If these conditions, or
any of them, are absent, the brain cannot function, and thought processes can
no more be carried out through such a brain than a melody can be produced from
an organ the bellows of which is broken. The brain no more produces the thought
than the organ produces the melody; in both cases there is a player working
through the instrument. But the power of the player to manifest himself, in
thought or in melody, is limited by the capacities of the instrument.
It is absolutely necessary that the student should clearly appreciate
this difference between the Thinker and the animal-man whose brain is
played on by the Thinker, for any confusion between the two will render
unintelligible the doctrine of reincarnation. For while the Thinker
reincarnates, the animal-man does not.
Here is really the difficulty which leads to so many other
difficulties. The animal-man is born, .and the true Man is linked to him;
through the brain of the animal-man the true Man works, Incarnation after
incarnation, and remains one. It informs in turn the animal-men Sashital Dev,
Caius Glabrio, Johanna Wirther, William Johnson -let us say-and in each reaps
experience, through each gathers knowledge, from each takes the material it
supplies, and weaves it into its own eternal Being. The animal-man wins his
immortality by union with his true self; Sashital Dev does not reincarnate as
Gaius Glabrio, and then as Johanna Wirther, blossoming out as William Johnson
in nineteenth century England, but it is the one eternal Son of Mind that
dwells in each of these in turn, gathering up from each such indwelling new
experience, fresh knowledge. It is this reincarnating Ego alone that can look
back along the line of its rebirths, remember each earthly life, the story of
each pilgrimage from cradle to grave, the whole drama unrolled act by act,
century after century. Taking my imaginary actors, William Johnson in the
nineteenth century cannot look back on, nor remember, his rebirths, for he has
never been born before, nor have his eyes seen the light of an earlier day. But
the innate character of William Johnson, the character with which he came into
the world, is the character wrought and hammered out by Johanna Wirther in
Germany, Gaius Glabrio in Rome, Sashital Dev in Hindustan, and by many another
of his earthly predecessors in many lands and under many civilisations; he is
adding new touches to this work of the ages by his daily life, so that it will
pass from his hands different from what it was, baser or nobler, into the hands
of his heir and successor on the life-stage, who is thus, in a very real but
not external sense, himself.
Thus the question which arises so naturally in the mind and which
is so often asked: "Why do I not remember my past lives ? " is really
based on a misconception of the theory of reincarnation. " I", the
true "I", does remember; but the animal-man, not yet in full
responsive union with his true Selfs cannot remember a past in which he,
personally, had no share. Brain-memory can contain only a record of the events
in which the brain has been concerned, and the brain of the present William
Johnson is not the brain of Johanna Wirther, nor that of Gaius Glabrio, nor
that of Sashital Dev. William Johnson can only obtain memory of the past lives
linked with his, by his brain becoming able to vibrate in answer to the subtle
delicate vibrations sent down to it through that Ray which is the bridge
between his transient personal self and his eternal SELF. To do this he must be
closely united to that real Self, and must be living in the consciousness that
he is not William Johnson but that Son of Mind, and that William Johnson is
only the temporary house in which he is living for his own purposes. Instead of
living in the brain-consciousness, he must live in the higher consciousness;
instead of thinking of his true Self as without, as something outside, and of
the transitory William Johnson as " I", he must identify himself with
the Thinker, and look on William Johnson as the external organ, useful for work
on the material plane, and to be educated and trained up to the highest point
of efficiency,
WHAT IT IS THAT DOES NOT REINCARNATE
That efficiency including the quick responsiveness of the William
Johnson brain to its real owner.
As this difficult opening of the man of flesh to influences from
the higher planes is gradually carried on, and as the true Self is increasingly
able to affect its bodily habitation, glimpses of past incarnations will flash
on the lower consciousness, and these will become less like flashes and more
like permanent visions, until finally the past is recognised as " mine
" by the continuous thread of memory that gives the feeling of
individuality,. Then the present incarnation is recognised as being merely the
last garment in which the Self has clothed itself, and it is in no wise
identified with that Self, any more than a coat which a man puts on is regarded
by him as being part of himself. A man does not regard his coat as part of
himself, because he is consciously able to put it off and look at it separated
from himself When the true man does that with his body, consciously on this
plane, certainty becomes complete.
The coat then-the "coat of skin", the etheric double, the
vitality, the passional nature-does not reincarnate, but its elements
disintegrate, and return to those to which they belong in the lower worlds. All
that was best in William Johnson passes on with the Ego into a period of
blissful rest, until the impulse that carried it out of earth-life is
exhausted, and it falls back to earth.
THE METHOD OF REINCARNATION
Having now gained a clear idea of the reincarnating Ego, or
Thinker, and of the distinction between it and the transitory animal-man, the
student must address himself to the understanding of the method of
Reincarnation.
This method will be best appreciated by considering the plane to
which the Thinker belongs, and the Force wherewith it works. The Thinker is
what is called the Fifth Principle in man; and this Fifth Principle in the
microcosm, man, answers to the Fifth Plane of the macrocosm, the universe
outside man. These planes are differentiations of primary Substance, according
to the Esoteric Philosophy, and consciousness works on each plane through the
conditions, whatever they may be, of each plane. Substance is a word used to
express Existence in its earliest objective form, the primary manifestation of
the periodical aspect of the ONE, the first film of the future Kosmos,
in the dim beginnings of all manifested things. This Substance has in it the potentiality of
all, of most ethereal Spirit, of densest Matter. The Esoteric Philosophy posits a primary
Substance, out of which Kosmos is evolved, which at its rarest is Spirit,
Energy, Force, and its densest the most solid Matter, every varying form in all
worlds being of this Substance, aggregated into more or less dense masses,
instinct with more or less Force. A
plane only means a stage of existence in which this Spirit-Matter varies within
certain limits, and acts under certain "laws". Thus the physical
plane means our visible, audible, tangible, odorous, gustable world, in which
we come into contact with
Spirit-Matter-Science calls it Force and Matter, as though separable-by way of
the senses, whether it be as solid, liquid, gas, etc And so on with other
planes, each being distinguishable by the characteristics of its Spirit-Matter.
On each of these planes consciousness
shows itself, working through
the Spirit-Matter of the
plane. One further fact must be added
to this rough and very condensed statement, that these planes are not,
as has been
said, like skins of an
onion, one over the
other, but, like the air and the ether in our bodies, they
interpenetrate each other.
Answering to these are seven principles, which bear relation by
analogy to the seven planes in Kosmos. Of these the Thinker is the Fifth.
Now this fifth principle in man corresponds to the fifth plane in
Kosmos, that of Mahat, the Universal Mind, Divine Ideation, from which proceeds
directly the moulding, guiding, directing Force, which is the essence of all
the differentiations that we call forces on the physical plane. [This plane is
often called the third, because starting from Atma as the first, it is the
third. It does not matter by what number it is called, if the student
understands what it is in relation to the rest.] All the world of form, be the
form subtle or dense, is evolved by and through this Force of the Universal
Mind, aggregating and separating the atoms, integrating them into forms,
disintegrating them again, building up and pulling down, constructing and
destroying, attracting and repelling. One Force in the eye of the philosopher,
many forces to the observation of the scientist, verily one in its. essence and
manifold in its manifestations. Thus from the fifth plane come all the creation
of forms, using creation in the sense of moulding pre-existent material,,
fashioning it into new forms. This Thought Force is, in the Esoteric
Philosophy, the one source of form; it is spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky as The
mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible,
phenomenal results by its own inherent energy.1
As in the fifth plane of Kosmos, so in the fifth principle of man;
in the Thinker lies the Force by which all things are made and it is in this
creative power of thought that we shall find the secret of the method of
reincarnation.
Those who desire to prove to themselves that thought gives rise to
images, to " thought-forms ", so that in most literal truth " a
thought is a thing ", may find what they seek in the records now so widely
scattered of so-called hypnotic experiments. The thought-form of an idea may be
projected on a blank paper, and there become visible to a hypnotised person: or
it may be made so objective that the hypnotised person will see and feel it as
though it were an actual physical object. Again, a " medium " will
see as a " spirit " a thought of a human being in the mind of a
person present, this thought
1 Secret Doctrine, i, 333, 1962 Ed.
being imaged in his aura, the magnetic atmosphere that surrounds
him. Or a clairvoyant, entranced or awake, will recognise and describe an image
deliberately formed by a person present, no word being spoken, but the will
being exercised to outline the image clearly in thought. All persons who "
visualise " much are to some extent clairvoyant, and may prove to
themselves by personal experiment this power to mould subtle matter by the
will. The less subtle astral matter, again, may be thus moulded, as H. P.
Blavatsky, at the Eddy farmhouse, moulded the projected astral image of the
medium into likenesses of persons known to herself and unknown to the others
present. Nor can this be considered strange when we remember how habits of
thought mould even the dense matter of which our physical bodies are composed,
until the character of the aged becomes stamped on the face, their beauty
consisting not in form and colouring but in expression-expression which is the
mask moulded on the inner self. Any habitual line of thought, vice or virtue,
makes its impress on the physical features, and we do not need clairvoyant eyes
to scan the aura to tell if the mental attitude be generous or grasping,
trustful or suspicious, loving or hating. This is a fact so common that it
makes on us no impression, and yet it is significant enough; for if the dense
matter of the body be thus moulded by the forces of thought, what is there
incredible, or even strange, in the idea that the subtler forms of matter
should be equally plastic, and should submissively take the shapes into which
they are moulded by the deft fingers of the immortal Artist, thinking Man?
The position, then, that is here taken is that Manas, in its
inherent nature, is a form-producing energy, and that the succession of events in
the manifestation of an external object is: Manas puts forth a thought, and
this thought takes form on the manasic or mind world; it passes out into the
kama-manasic, there becoming denser; thence to the astral, where, being yet
denser, it is visible to the eye of the clairvoyant; if directed consciously by
a trained will it may pass at once to the physical plane and be there clothed
in physical matter, thus becoming objective to ordinary eyes, whereas in
ordinary cases it remains on the astral plane as a mould which will be built
into objective life when circumstances occur which draw it thitherwards. A
MASTER has written of the Adept being able
To project into and materialise in the visible world the forms that
his imagination has constructed out of inert cosmic matter in the invisible
world. The Adept does not create anything new, but only utilises and
manipulates material which Nature has in store around him and material which
throughout eternities has passed through all the forms. He has but to choose
the one he wants and recall it into objective existence1
A reference to well-known facts on the physical plane may perhaps
help the reader to realise how the invisible may thus become the visible; I
have spoken of a form gradually densifying as it passes from the manasic to the
kama-manasic world, from the latter to the astral, from the astral to the
physical. Think of a glass receiver, apparently .empty, but in reality filled
with the invisible gases, hydrogen and oxygen; a spark causes combination and.
"water" exists there, but in a state of gas; the receiver is cooled,
and gradually a steamy vapour becomes visible; then the vapour condenses on the
glass as drops of water; then the water congeals and becomes a film of solid
ice crystals. So when the manasic spark flashes out it combines subtle matter
into a thought-form; this densifies
1 The Occult
World, 5th ed., p. 88.
Into the kama-manasic form-our analogy is the steamy vapour; this
into the astral-our analogy is the water; and so into the physical-for which
the ice may stand. The student of the Esoteric Philosophy will know that in the
evolution of Nature all proceeds in orderly sequence, and he will be accustomed
to see in the substates of matter on the physical plane analogies to its states
on the different planes of the " invisible" worlds. But for the
non-Theosophist, the illustration is offered only by way of giving a concrete
physical picture of the densifying process, showing how the invisible may condense
itself into the visible.
In truth, however, this process of condensation of rarer into
grosser matter is one of the commonest facts of our experience. The vegetable
world grows by taking in gases from the atmosphere, and transforming their
materials into solids and liquids. The activity of the vital force shows itself
by this constant building up of visible forms out of invisible; and whether the
thought-process named be true or not, there is nothing in it inherently
impossible or even extraordinary. Its truth is a matter of evidence, and here
the evidence of those who can see the thought-forms on the different planes is
surely more valuable than the evidence of those who cannot. The word of a
hundred blind men denying a visible object is of less weight than the word of
one man who can see and who testifies to his seeing it. In this matter the
Theosophist may be content to wait, knowing that facts do not alter for
denials, and that the world will gradually come round to a knowledge of the
existence of thought-forms, as it has already come round-after a similar period
of scoffing-to a knowledge of the existence of some of the facts asserted by
Mesmer at the close of the eighteenth century.
It has been iound, then, that events take their rise on the manasic
or kama-manasic plane, in ideas, or as thought of passion or emotion, etc.;
they then take astral form, and lastly appear objectively on the physical plane
as acts or events, so that the latter are effects of pre-existing mental
causes. Now the body is such an effect, according to the Esoteric Philosophy,
and it is moulded on the etheric double, a term which will, by this time, be
sufficiently familiar to my readers. The idea must be clearly grasped of a body
of etheric matter, serving as a mould into which denser matter may be built,
and if the method of reincarnation is to
THE METHOD OF REINCARNATION
be at all understood, this conception of the dense body as the
result of the building of dense molecules into a pre-existing etheric mould must,
for the moment, be accepted.
And now let us return to the idea of the Thinker, creating forms,
working certainly through the lower manas, or kama manas, in the average man,
since of purely manasic activity we may not hope to find yet awhile many traces.
In our daily life we think and thus create thought-forms:
Man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of
his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and
passions.1
[The consideration of the effect of this on others belongs to the
subject of Karma, to be hereafter dealt with.] These thought-forms remain in
his aura, or magnetic atmosphere, and as time goes on their increased number
acts on him with ever-gathering force, repetition of thoughts and of types of thought
adding to their intensity day by day, with cumulative energy; until certain
kinds of thought-forms so dominate his mental life that the man rather answers
to their impulse than decides anew, and what we call a habit, the outer
reflection of this.
A MASTER in The Occult World, p. 90.
stored-up force, is set up. Thus "character" is built,
and if we are intimately acquainted with any one of mature character, we are
able to predicate with tolerable certainty his action in any given set of
circumstances.
When the death hour comes the subtler bodies free themselves from
the physical, the etheric double disintegrating gradually with the dense frame.
The thought-body resulting from the past life persists for a considerable time and
goes through various processes of consolidation of experiences, assimilation of
much differentiated thoughts, and, handing on its results to the causal body,
it in turn disintegrates. As the period for reincarnation approaches the causal
body, or reincarnating Ego, builds a new mental and a new astral body, while
the Lords of Karma provide a mould suited to express the Karma to be worked
out, and after this the. etheric double is built. Since the brain, in common
with the rest of the dense body, is built into this etheric double, this brain
is by conformation, the physical expression, however imperfect, of the mental
habits and qualities of the human being then to be incarnated, the fitting
physical vehicle for the exercise of the capacities which his experience now enables him to manifest on the physical
plane.
Let us, as an example, take the case of the practice of a vicious
and of a virtuous type of thought, say of a selfish and of an unselfish
character. One person continually gives birth to thought-forms of selfishness,
desires for self, hopes for self, plans for self, and these forms clustering
round him react again upon him, and he tends to become unscrupulous in his
self-service, disregarding the claims of others, and seeking but his own ends. He
dies, and his character has hardened into the selfish type. This persists, and
in due course is given etheric form, as mould for the next dense body. Drawn
towards a family of similar type, towards parents physically able to supply
materials stamped with similar characteristics, the dense body is built into
this etheric mould, and the brain takes the shape physically fitted for the
manifestation of the brute tendencies to self-gratification, with a
corresponding lack of the physical basis for the manifestation of the social
virtues. In an extreme case of persistent and unscrupulous selfishness during
one incarnation, we have the cause of the building of the " criminal type
of brain " for the succeeding one, and the child comes into the world with
this instrument of miserable quality, from which the Immortal Thinker will be
able to draw scarce a note of pure and tender melody, strive as he may. All the
life through the Ray of Manas incarnated in this personality will be dimmed,
broken, struggling through kamic clouds. Sometimes, despite all opposing
circumstances, the glorious radiant quality will illumine and transform to some
extent its physical vehicle, and with anguish and effort the lower nature will
now and again be trampled under foot, and, however slowly, a painful step or
two of progress will be achieved. But all the life through, the past will
dominate the present, and the cup filled in forgotten days must be drained to
the last drop by the quivering lips.
In the second supposed case, a person continually gives birth to
thought-forms of unselfishness, helpful desires for others, loving plans for
the welfare of others, earnest hopes for the good of others. These culster
round him and react on him, and he tends to become habitually selfless,
habitually placing the welfare of others before his own, and so, when he dies,
his character has become
ingrainedly unselfish.
Coming back to earth-life, . the model
form which represents his previous characteristics is drawn to a family fitted
to supply materials of a pure kind, habituated to respond to the promptings of
the Higher
Thus step by step is brought about the evolution of man, character
being moulded in personality-after personality, gains and -losses rigidly
recorded in astral and mental forms, and these governing the succeeding
physical manifestations. Every virtue is thus the outer sign and symbol of a
step forward made, of repeated victories won over the lower nature, and the
"innate-quality", the mental or moral characteristic with which a
child is born, is the indubitable proof of past struggle, of past triumphs, or
of past failures. A distasteful doctrine enough to the morally or mentally
slothful and cowardly, but a most cheering and heartening teaching for those
who do not ask to be pensioners on any charity, human or divine, but are
content to earn patiently and laboriously all they claim to own.
Very nobly has Edward Carpenter put this truth in Towards
Democracy, in the " Secret of Time and Satan."
The art of creation, like every other art, has to be learned;
Slowly, slowly, through many years, thou buildest up thy body,
And the power that thou now hast (such as it is) to build up this
present body, thou hast acquired in the past in other bodies;
So in the future shalt thou use again the power that thou now
acquirest.
But the power to build up the body includes all powers.
Beware how thou seekest this for thyself and that for thyself. I do
not say, Seek not; but, Beware how thou seekest.
For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what fresh
furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he may leave behind;
Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely use
and handle is an impediment to him.
So if thou seekest fame, or ease, or pleasure, or aught for thyself,
the image of that thing which thou seekest will come and cling to thee-and thou
wilt have to carry it about-
And the images and powers which thou hast thus evoked will gather
round and form for thee a new body-clamouring for sustenance and satisfaction.
And if thou art not able to discard this image now, thou wilt not
be able to discard that body then; but wilt have to carry it about.
Beware then lest it become thy grave and thy prison-instead of thy
winged abode and palace of joy.
And seest thou not that except for Death thou couldst never
overcome ?
For since by being a slave to things of sense thou hast clothed
thyself with a body which thou art not master of, thou wert condemned to a
living tomb were that body not to be destroyed. .But now through pain and
suffering out on this tomo snalt thou come; and through the experience thou
hast acquired shah build thyself a new and better body.;
And so on many times, till thou spreadest wings and hast all powers
diabolic and angelic concentred in thy flesh.
And the bodies which I took on yield before him, and were like
cinctures of flame upon me, but I flung them aside;
And the pains which I endured in one body were powers which I
wielded in the next.
Great truths, greatly spoken. And one day men will believe them in
the West, as they believe them, and have ever believed them, in the East.
Through thousands of generations the Immortal Thinker thus
patiently toils at his mission of leading the animal-man upwards till he is fit
to become one with the Divine. Out of a life, he wins perchance but a mere
fragment for his work, yet the final model is of type a little less animal than
the man, whose life-work is therein embodied, was when he came into earth-life.
On that slightly improved model will be moulded the next man, and from him, at
death, is obtained a mould which is again a little less animal, to serve for
the next physical body, and so on and on, again and again, generation after
generation, millennium after millennium; with many retrogressions constantly
recovered; with many failures gallantly made good; with many wounds slowly
healed; yet on the whole, upward; yet, on the whole forward; the animal
lessening, the human increasing: such is the story of human evolution, such the
slowly accomplished task of the Ego, as he raises himself to divine manhood. At
a stage in this progress the personalities begin to become translucent, to
answer to the vibrations from the Thinker, and dimly to sense that they are
something more than isolated lives, are attached to something permanent,
immortal. They may not quite recognise their goal, but they begin to thrill and
quiver under the touch of the Light, as buds quiver in the springtime within
their cases, preparing to burst them open and to expand in the sunshine. This
sense of inborn eternity, and of wondering as to the end, comes out strongly in
one of Walt Whitman's poems:
Facing West from
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere, From Asia, from
the north, from the God, the stage, and the hero, From the south, from the
flowery peninsulas and the spice islands, Long having wandered, since, round
the earth having wandered. Now I face home again, very pleased and joyous. (But
where is what I started for so long ago ? And why is it yet unfound?)
THE OBJECT OF REINCARNATION
We have already seen generally that the object of reincarnation is
to train the animal-man until it becomes the perfect instrument of the Divine,
and that the agent in this training is the reincarnating
Ego. Let us briefly trace
the road by which this goal is reached.
When the Manasaputra come down to ensoul the animal-man, their
habitation is of matter that has not yet reached its maximum of density. The
Thinker, working through this, produces at first what are called psychic
qualities in contradistinction to intellectual; the spiritual, on its first
contact with astral matter, translates itself into the psychic, and only
gradually becomes intellectual, i.e., logical, reasoning, deliberative, by
prolonged contact with matter of the denser type. At first intuitive,
clairvoyant, communicating with its fellows by thought-transference, as it has
to work with denser materials and throw their heavier particles into
vibrations, intuition is transformed to reasoning and thought-transference into
language. The process is best realised by conceiving of vibrations being set up
in ever denser and denser matter, the vibrations in the less dense translating
themselves as psychic, in the more dense as rational qualities. The psychic are
the swifter, subtler, more direct^ faculties, including clairvoyance,
clairaudience, lower forms of intuition, power to transmit and receive
thought-impressions without speech; the rational are slower, and include all
the processes of the brain-mind, their characteristic being deliberative
reasoning, the forging of a local chain, hammering it out link by link, and, as
a necessary condition of this mental labour, the elaboration of language. When
this process has been perfected, and the brain has reached its highest point of
intellection, responding swiftly to the astral impulses as they reach it, and
at once translating them into their intellectual analogues, then the time has
come for the next great step onwards, the training of the brain to respond
directly to the subtler vibrations, and take them into brain-consciousness
without the delaying process of translation.
Then the exercise of psychic faculties becomes part of the
conscious equipment of the developing man, and they are employed normally and
without effort or strain, the brain-mind and the psyche thus becoming unified,
and all psychic powers regained with the "addition of the intellectual
experience. The temporary obscuration, due to the accretion of the densest
matter round the developing man, gradually diminishes as the matter grows
ductile and translucent, and thus gross matter is " redeemed," i.e.,
trained into a perfect vehicle of manifestation for Spirit. " Civilisation
has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic
and spiritual," 1 but without this development animal-man could not become
divine, the " perfect septenary being" whom it is the object of
reincarnation to evolve.
In the human race we are on the ascending arc; intellectuality pure
and simple is reaching its highest possibilities, and on all sides are
appearing signs of psychic activities, which, when developed beyond the
intellect and not behind it, are the marks of the commencing triumph of the spiritual
Man In some men of our race this triumph has been consummated, and these are
they who are spoken of as Arhats, Mahatmas, and Masters, With Them the body is
the mere vehicle of the spiritual Man, who is no longer cabined and confined by
the body he inhabits, but for whom the body is the convenient instrument for
work on the physical plane, obediently answering every impulse of its owner,
and placing at his disposal powers and faculties for use in the world of gross
matter otherwise unattainable by a spiritual Being. A Spirit may be active on
the spiritual plane, but is senseless
1 The Secret Doctrine, iii, 318, 1962 ed.
on all others, being unable to act by its subtle essence on planes
of grosser matter. A spiritual Intelligence may be active on the spiritual and
mental planes, but is still too subtle to work on the grosser. Only, as by
incarnation it conquers matter through matter, can it become active on all
planes, the" perfect septenary being." This is the meaning of
Arhatship; the Arhat is the spiritual Intelligence that has conquered, subdued,
and trained matter, until his body is but the materialised expression of
himself, and he is ready for the step that makes him " Master," or
the Christ triumphant.
Naturally, in such a perfected septenary being are gathered up all
the forces of the universe, spiritual, psychic and material. As man's living
body has in it in miniature the forces found in the physical universe, so, as
the psychic arid spiritual natures make their impulses felt, the forces of the
psychic and spiritual universes can be brought to bear upon the physical. Hence
the apparently " miraculous," the bringing about of effects the
causes of which are hidden, but which are not therefore non-existent; just as
the closing of a galvanic circuit may bring about an explosion many miles from
the point of closure, so may the action of the trained will manifest itself in
material phenomena on a plane far beneath its own. Man's ignorance makes the
supernatural; knowledge reduces all to the natural; for Nature is but one
aspect of the ALL, that aspect which, at the time, is in manifestation.
The question may here arise: And this object attained, what end is
thereby served? At this point, several Paths stretch before the triumphant
spiritual
Never will I seek, nor receive, private individual salvation- never
enter into final peace alone; but for ever, and everywhere, will I live and
strive for the universal redemption of every creature throughout the world.
The nature and purpose of this choice has been told in the Book of
the Golden Precepts, fragments
1 Quoted in Moncure D.
from which have been done into such noble English "by H. P.
Blavatsky. The conqueror stands triumphant; "his mind like a becalmed and boundless
ocean, spreadeth out in shoreless space. He holdeth life and death in his
strong hand." Then the question comes:
Now, he shall surely reach his great reward! Shall he not use the
gifts which it confers for his own rest and bliss, his well-earned weal and
glory-he, the subduer of the great Delusion ?
But the answer rings clearly out:
Nay, O thou candidate for Nature's hidden lore! If one would follow
in the steps of holy Tathagata, those gifts and powers are .not for self. ....
Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge, and the Deva-Wisdom thou hast
won, must, from thyself, the channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another
bed. Know, O Narjol, thou of the Secret Path, its pure fresh waters must be
used to sweeter make the Ocean's bitter waves-that mighty sea of sorrow, formed
by the tears of men. Self-doomed to live through future Kalpas, unthanked and
unperceived by man; wedged as a stone with countless other stones which form
the " Guardian Wall," such is thy future if the seventh gate thou passest.
Built by the hands of many Masters of Compassion, raised by their tortures, by
their blood cemented, it shields mankind, since man is man, protecting it from
further and far greater misery and
.sorrow.....Compassion speaks and saith: " Can there be bliss
when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the
whole world cry? " Now thou hast heard that which was said. Thou shall
attain the seventh step and cross the gate of final knowledge but only to wed
woe-if thou wouldst be Tathagata follow upon thy predecessor's steps, remain
unselfish till the endless , end. Thou art enlightened-choose thy way.
1 Voice of the Silence, w. 283, 285, 289, 290, 293,
307-10.
The choice which accepts incarnation till the Race has reached its
consummation is the crown of the Master, of the perfected
THE CAUSE OF REINCARNATION
The fundamental cause of Reincarnation as of all manifestation, is
the desire tor active life, the thirst for sentient existence. Some deep-lying
essence of nature, obvious in its workings, but incomprehensible as to its
origin and reason, manifests as the " law of periodicity." " An
alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking,
is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is
easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of
the universe."1 The ebb and flow everywhere, the rhythm which is the
systole and diastole of the cosmic' Heart, is manifest on every hand. But the
reason for it escapes us; we cannot say why things should be so; we can only
see that so they are. And in the Esoteric Philosophy this same law is
recognised as extending to the emanation and reabsorption of universes, the
Night and Day of Brahma, the out-breathing and the inbreathing of the Great
Breath.
Hence the Hindus have pictured the God of Desire as the impulse to
manifestation. " Kama, again, is in the Rig Veda (x, 129) the
personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the
fast movement that stirred the ONE, after its manifestation from the purely
abstract Principle, . to create, ' Desire first arose in It, which was the
primal germ of mind; and which sages, searching with their intellect, have
discovered to be the bond whieh connects Entity with Non-Entity.'" 2 Kama
is, essentially, the longing for active sentient
1 The Secret Doctrine, i,
82, 1962 ed.
2 Ibid., iii, 183, 1962 ed.
existence, existence of vivid sensation, tossing tur-"bulence
of passionate life. When spiritual Intelligence comes into contact with this
thirst for sensation, its first action is to intensify it. Says the Stanza:
" From their own essence they filled (intensified) the Kama." 1 Thus
Kama, for the individual as for the Cosmos becomes the primary cause of
reincarnation, and, as Desire differentiates into desires, these chain down the
Thinker to earth and bring him back, time after time, to rebirth. The Hindu and
Buddhist Scriptures are filled with reiterations of this truth. Thus in the
Bhagavad Gita we read:
He whose Buddhi is everywhere unattached, the self subdued, dead to
desires, he goeth by renunciation to the supreme perfection of freedom from
Karma.2
So in the Udanavarga, a Northern Buddhist version of the
Dhammapada, translated from the Tibetan, the same note is struck:
It is hard for one who is held by the fetters of desire to free
himself of them, says the Blessed One. The steadfast, who care not for the
happiness of desires, cast them off, and do soon depart (to Nirvana),3
Again and again seeking for it (existence) they again and again
enter the womb; beings come and go; to one state of being
1 The Secret Doctrine, iii,
168, 1962 ed.
2 Discourse xviii, 49.
3 Trans, by W. W. Rockhill, p. 10.
succeeds another. It is hard to cast off (existence) in this world;
he who has cast off lust, who has pulled up the seed (of existence), will no
more be subject to transmigration, for he has put-an end to lust,1
In the Scriptures of the Southern Buddhist Church stress is
continually laid on the same idea. The disciple is bidden not to be confident
till he has " attained the extinction of desires," and after
describing the way in which desires and passions tie men to earthly life, the
Dhammapada proceeds:
He who has reached the consummation, who does not tremble, who is
without thirst and without sin, he has broken all the thorns, of life: this
will be his last body. He who is without thirst and without affection, who
understands the words and their interpretation, who knows the order of letters
(those which are before and which are after), he has received his last body, he
is called the great sage, the great man. " I have conquered all, I know
all, in all conditions of life I am free from taint; I have left all, and
through the destruction of thirst I am free." '
And so there is the triumphant apostrophe, when Gautama attains
Buddhahood:
Looking for the maker of this tabernacle, I shall have to run.
through a course of many births, so long as I do not find (him); and painful is
birth again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen;
thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy
ridge-pole is sundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained to the
extinction of all desires.
1 Trans, by W. W. Rockhill, p. 15. 2 Chap, xxiv, 351-53. 3 Chap,
xi, 153, 154.
When the nature of desire is realised by the student, he will understand
why its destruction is necessary to the perfecting of the spiritual Man.
Desire must be,
till the harvest of experience
has been gathered, for only by feeding on that harvested experience
can growth be
nourished and sustained. So while experience still is lacking, the
thirst for it remains unslacked, and the Ego will return to
earth again and
again. But its fetters must
fall off one by one as the Ego reaches the perfecting of its tabernacle, for
desire is personal and therefore selfish, -and when desire prompts action the
purity of the action is tainted. The
condition of Arhatship is unceasing
activity without any personal returns; the Arhat must "
give light to all, but take from none." 1 Hence in the upward climbing one desire after another
must be unloosed, desire for personal enjoyment, personal pleasure,
personal gain, personal
loves, personal attainments, and, last and subtlest of all,
desire for personal perfection, for the personal self must be lost in the ONE
SELF, that is the SELF of all that lives. And here two warnings against
misunderstanding are necessary. First:
personal loves are not to be
1 Voice of the Silence, p. 67.
killed out, but are to be expanded till they become universal; we
are not to love our dearest less, but all are to become dear so that the sorrow
of any child of man shall wring our hearts as much as that of our own child,
and stir us into equal activity of help. Loves are to be levelled up, not down.
The heart is not to be frozen, but to be aflame for all. The failure to realise
this, and the tremendous difficulty of the task, when realised, have led to the
stifling of love instead of its growth. Overflowing love, not lovelessness,
will save the world. The Mahatma is the Ocean of Compassion; He is not an
iceberg.
It is easy to see why this widening out must precede the attainment
of Mastership, for the Master holds His powers for the good of all and not for
the elevation of any particular family or nation. He is the Servant of
Humanity, and the way to His help must be need, not kinship. To superhuman
powers He must needs join superhuman impartiality, and personal affection must
never be allowed to weight the scale of Justice. Beyond all other men He must
be a slave to duty, for any swaying from its line would bring about results
proportionate to the greatness of His height.
He is to be a force for good, and the good must flow in the
channels where it is most needed, not in those cut by personal loves or racial
predilections. Hence the long training, the personal asceticism, the isolation,
which are the conditions of chelaship.
Second: action is not to be stopped because the disciple no longer
seeks the fruits of action as reward. " Inaction in a deed of mercy
becomes an action in a deadly sin." 1 " Shalt thou abstain from
action ? Not so shall gain thy soul her freedom. To reach Nirvana one must
reach Self- Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child." 1
But while action must be carried on at the full strain of human powers, desire
for its fruit in personal satisfaction must pass away. A good deed must be done
for the sake of its helpfulness, of its use to others, not for the sake of
praise either of others or of self, nor even for the subtler longing for
self-improvement. Here again the failure to realise the distinction between
action and desire for the fruits of action has led to the stagnation and
passivity characteristic of Eastern nations,
1 Voice of the Silence, p. 31.
'Ibid.
since spiritual selfishness and indifference brought on their
decay.
As this general desire for sentient existence is the cause of
reincarnation universally, so is the determining cause of each individual
reincarnation the renewed longing for the taste of existence on the physical
plane. When a long life on the earth plane has been lived and a store of
experiences has been gathered, this longing for physical existence is satiated
for the time, and the desire turns towards, rest. Then comes the interval of
disembodiment, during which the Ego, re-entering as it were into-himself,
ceases to energise externally on the physical plane, and bends all his energies
to internal activities, reviewing his gathered store of experiences, the
harvest of the earth-life just closed, separating and classifying them,
assimilating what is capable of assimilation, rejecting what is effete and
useless. This is the work of the devachanic period, the necessary time for
assimilation, for gaining equilibrium. As a workman may go out and gather the materials
for his work, and having-collected them may return home, sort and arrange them,
and then proceed to make from them some artistic or serviceable object, so the
Thinker, having; gathered his store of materials from life's experiences, must
weave them into the web of his millennial existence. He can no more be always
busied in the whirl of earth-life than a workman can always be gathering store
of materials and never fabricating from them goods; or than a man can always be
eating food and never digesting it and assimilating it to build up the tissues
of his body. This with the rest needed between periods of activity by all forms
of being, makes Devachan an absolute necessity, and rebukes the impatience with
which ill-instructed Theosophists chafe against the idea of thus " wasting
time." The rest itself is a thing, be it remembered, that we cannot do
without. " The tired and worn-out Manu (thinking Ego) " needs it, and
it is only " the now-rested Ego " ] that is ready and fit for
reincarnation. We have not the energy needed for taking up the burden of the
flesh again until this period of refreshment has enabled the forces of life,
mental and spiritual, to store themselves up once more in the spiritual man. It
is only at the approaching close of the cycle of rebirths that the Ego, grown
strong by his millenniums of
1 The Key To Theosophy,
pp. 139, 141.
experience, is able to gird himself for the awful strain of his
last swiftly recurring lives, " without devachanic break," scaling
those last seven steps of the ladder of existence with the tireless muscles
hardened by the long ascent that lies behind.
One kind of progress-outside the necessary process of assimilation
just spoken of, which is a condition of further progress-may be made in
Devachan. H. P. Blavatsky says:
In one sense, we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can
.develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after during life,
provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal things, such as music,
painting, poetry, etc., since Devachan is merely an idealised and subjective
continuation of earth-life.1
This may explain the marvellous infantile genius sometimes shown,
especially in music, going far beyond any point known to have been reached
before in the history of that art in the Aryan race. However that may be, it is
well to remember that the resolute following of abstract thought, of idealistic
longings, gives a trend to the devachanic state that will make it a state of
active, as well as of passive, progress. While Devachan is essentially the
world of effects, yet, to this extent, it borrows from the world of causes,
though it is also true that
1 The Key To Theosophy, p. 156,
the impulse must be given here which will let the wheel still turn
along that peaceful road. In Devachan is no initiation of cause, no origination
of endeavour, but it allows of continuation of efforts aimed at the highest
planes of being that man can reach from earthly life. Why there should be this
possibility it is easy to see, for the abstract and the ideal heights are
illumined by the manasic radiance, and that brightens, it is not dimmed, when
Manas-Taijasi (the shining or resplendent Manas) soars unfettered to its own
plane.
An interesting question arises at this juncture: when the rest
period is over, the forces that carried the Ego out of earth-life are exhausted,
the longing for sentient physical existence is reviving, and the Ego is ready
to cross " the threshold of Devachan " and pass to the plane of
reincarnation, what now guides him to the special race, nation, family, through
which he is to find his new tabernacle of flesh, and what determines the sex he
is to wear? Is it affinity? Is it free choice? Is it necessity? No questions
fall more readily from an inquirer's lips.
It is the law of Karma that guides him unerringly towards the race
and the nation wherein are to be found the general characteristics that will
produce a body, and provide a social environment, fitted for the manifestation
of the general character built up by the Ego in previous earth-lives and for
the reaping of the harvest he has sown.
Karma, with its army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of
Devachan, whence the ego re-emerges to assume a new incarnation. It is at this
moment that the future destiny of the now rested Ego trembles in the scales of
just retribution, as it now falls once again under the sway of active Karmic
law. It is in this re-birth which is ready for it, a re-birth selected and
prepared by this mysterious, inexorable, but in the equity and wisdom -of its
decrees, infallible LAW, that the sins of the previous life of the Ego are
punished. Only it is into no imaginary Hell, with, theatrical flames and
ridiculous tailed and horned devils, that the Ego is cast, but verily on to
this earth, the plane and region of his sins, where he will have to atone for
every bad thought and deed. As he has sown so will he reap. Reincarnation will
gather around him all those other Egos who have suffered, whether directly or
indirectly at the hands, or even through the unconscious instrumentality, of
the past personality. They will be thrown by Nemesis in the way of the new man,
concealing the " old, the eternal Ego. . . . The new " personality
" is no better than a fresh suit of clothes with its specific
characteristics,, colour, form and qualities; but the real man who wears it is
the same culprit as of old.
Thus, say, through a militant personality in one incarnation the
Ego would set up causes tending to draw him for rebirth to a race and nation
passing through a militant period in its history; the Ego of a Roman of the
combative colonising type would be drawn, e.g., to the English nation
1 The Key To Theosophy, pp. 141, 142.
under Elizabeth, a nation and epoch at which physical heredity would
provide a body, and social forces an environment, fitted for the manifestation
of the character built up fifteen centuries before.
Another strand in the rope of Karma, and one of the strongest, is
the dominant tendency and trend of the last-closed life. Dominant tendencies
and the resolute following of any line of thought and action, reappear as
innate qualities. A man of strong will, who steadfastly sets himself to acquire
wealth, who follows this resolve through his life relentlessly and unscrupulously,
will in another incarnation be likely to be one of those men who are
proverbially " lucky," of whom it is said, " Everything he
touches turns to gold." Hence the enormous importance of our choice of
ideals, of our selection of our aim in life, for the ideals of one life become
the circumstances of the next. If they are selfish, base, material, our next
incarnation will bring us into an environment in which they will fall into our
grasp. As an iron will compels fortune here, so it stretches its mailed grasp
across the gulf of death and rebirth, and grips the end it is resolute to gain;
it does not lose tension and force during the devachanic interlude, but gathers
up all its energies and works in subtler matter, so that the Ego finds prepared
for it on its return a tabernacle built by that strong and passionate desire
and fitted for the accomplishment of the foreseen end. As a man sows so he
reaps; he is the master of his destiny, and if he wills to build for temporal
success, for physical luxury, none can say him nay. Only by experience he will
learn that power and wealth and luxury are but Dead-Sea fruit; that with them
the body may be clothed, but the Ego will be shivering and naked; that his true
self will not be satisfied with the husks that are fit food but for the swine;
and at last, when he has full-fed the animal in him and starved the human, he
will, though in the far country whither his wayward feet have carried him, turn
yearning eyes towards his true home, and through many lives he will struggle thitherwards
with all the force once used for dominance now yoked to service, and the strong
man who built his strength for mastery of others will turn it to mastery of
self and to training it into obedience to the Law of Love.
The question, "What determines sex?" is a difficult one
to answer even by a suggestion, and definite information on this point has not
been given out. The Ego itself is sexless, and each Ego, in the course of its
myriad reincarnations, dwells in male and female bodies. As the building up of
the perfect humanity is the object of reincarnation, and in this perfect
humanity positive and negative elements must find complete equilibrium, it is
easy to see that the Ego must by experience develop these characteristics to
the fullest in their appropriate physical subjects, and therefore that an
alternation of sexes is necessary. It is also noticeable, as a matter of
observation, that at this stage of human progress advance is being made in the
synthesising process, and we meet noble types of each physical sex showing some
of the characteristics historically developed in the other, so that the
strength, the firmness, the courage evolved along the male line are welded to
the tenderness, the purity, the endurance, evolved along the female, and we
catch some glimpse of what humanity shall be when the " pairs of
opposites" divorced for evolution are once more united for fruition.
Meanwhile it seems likely that sex-experience constantly redresses the balance
of the evolutionary process, and supplies the qualities lacking at any given
stage, and also that the karmic consequence of the infliction of wrong by one
sex on another will be the drawing' back of the wrong-doers to suffer in the
wronged sex the effects of the causes they initiated.
Thus Karma traces the line which forms the Ego's path to the new
incarnation, this Karma being the collectivity of causes set going by the Ego
himself. In studying this play of karmic forces, however, there is one thing
that ought not to be left out of account-the ready acceptance by the Ego, in
his clearer-sighted vision, of conditions for his personality far other than
the personality might be willing to choose for itself. The schooling of
experience is not always pleasant, and to the limited knowledge of the personality
there must be much of earth-experience which seems needlessly painful, unjust
and useless. The Ego, ere he plunges into the " Lethe of the body,"
sees the causes which ultimate in the conditions of the incarnation on which he
is to enter, and the opportunities which there will be therein for growth, and
it is easy to realise how lightly will weigh in the balance all passing griefs
and pains, how trivial, to that piercing, far-seeing gaze, the joys and woes of
earth. For what is each life but a step in the
Perpetual progress for each incarnating Ego, or divine soul, in an
evolution from the outward into the inward, from the material to the Spiritual,
arriving at the end of each stage at absolute unity with the Divine Principle.
From strength to strength, from the beauty and perfection .of one plane to the
greater beauty and perfection of another, with accessions of new glory, of
fresh knowledge and power in each cycle, such is the destiny of every Ego.
And with such a destiny, what boots the passing suffering of a
moment, or even the anguish of a darkened life ?
THE PROOFS OF REINCARNATION
The proofs of reincarnation do not amount to a complete and general
demonstration, but they establish as strong presumption as can, in the nature
of the case, exist. The theory they support affords the only sufficient
explanation of the growth, and decay of natio'ns, of the facts of individual
evolution, of the varying capacities of man, of recurrent cycles in history, of
unique human characters. I am content-despite my own certain knowledge that
reincarnation is a fact in nature- to present it here as a reasonable working
hypothesis, rather than as a demonstrated theorem 5 for
1 The Key To Theosophy, p. 155.
I am writing for those who are seeking evidence in the facts of
human life and history, and for them it cannot at first rise beyond the
position of a reasonable hypothesis. Those who know it to be true need no
arguments from me.
i. There are some living persons, as well as some not at present in
earth-life, who remember their own past incarnation, and can recall their
incidents as they can recall those of their present lives. Memory-which is the link
between the varying stages of experience of the conscious being, and which
carries with it the sense of individuality and of presonality alike-stretches
for them through the gateways of past births and deaths, and the nights of
death no more break the chain of memory than the nights break it which separate
the days of our ordinary life. Occurrences of their past lives are as real
experiences of their living selves as though they had happened a few years ago,
and to tell them that they did not have these experiences is a view to them as
foolish as if you persisted that the events they passed through ten years ago
happened to somebody else and not to their same selves. They would not debate
the question with you, but would just shrug their shoulders and drop the
subject, for you cannot argue a man's own experience out of his consciousness.
On the other hand, a man's testimony to facts within his own knowledge cannot
demonstrate the reality of those facts to a second person, and therefore this
evidence is not conclusive proof to any one but the experiencer.
It is the final certainty of the truth of reincarnation to the
person whose memory bears this witness to his own past; its value to the hearer
must depend on that hearer's opinion of the intellectual sanity and moral worth
of the speaker. If the speaker be a person of not only ordinary sanity in the
affairs of everyday life, but of supreme intellectual strength; a person of not
only ordinary morality, but of lofty moral purity, veracity and accuracy; under
such circumstances his deliberate statement that he remembers incidents of his
own life happening, say, some centuries ago, and his relation of these
incidents with their local surroundings in detail, would probably have
considerable weight with those familiar with his integrity and ability; it is
second-hand evidence, but good of its kind.
ii. The vegetable, the
animal, the man, all show signs of the working of the "law of
heredity", of the tendency of parents to transmit to their offspring
peculiarities of their own organisation. The oak, the dog, the man, are
recognisable, under superficial divergences, all the world over. All are
generated and grow along definite lines; from two cells, a male and a female,
each proceeds, developing along the lines of the parental characteristics. The
offspring reproduce the specific parental marks, and however widely families of
the same type may differ, we yet recognise the uniting peculiarities. We unite
under the name of" dog " the St. Bernard and the toyterrier, the
boarhound and the Italian greyhound, as we unite under the name of" man
" the Veddah and the Englishman, the Aborigine and the Rajput. But when we
come to deal with intellectual and moral capacities, say in varieties of dogs
and of men, we are struck with a'significant difference. In the dog these vary
between comparatively narrow limits; he may be clever or stupid, vicious or
reliable, but the difference between a clever and a stupid dog is comparatively
small. But in man how huge is the distance which separates the lowest from the
highest, whether intellectually or morally! Some can only count " one,
two, three, many," while others can calculate distances that have to be
reckoned in light-years. In man, and in man only, among all the races that
people the earth, do we find such great physical unity and such vast
intellectual and moral divergence. I admit physical heredity as explanation of
the one, but I need some new factor, not present in the brute, as an
explanation of the other.
Reincarnation, with its persistent intellectual and moral Ego,
learning by experience, developing through millenniums, offers a sufficient
cause; and a cause which also explains why a man progresses while animals
remain stationary, from the mental and moral standpoint, save as artificially
bred and trained by man. As far back as records reach, wild animals have lived
as they live now, beasts of prey, herds of buffaloes, tribes of monkeys,
communities of ants; they live and die, generation after generation, repeating
parental habits, slipping along ancestral grooves, evolving no higher social
life. They have physical heredity as man has, but physical heredity-does
not--for it cannot-give them the accumulated experience which enables the
persistent human Egos to climb onwards, ever building great civilisations,
gathering knowledge, rising higher and higher so that none can trace a limit
beyond which Humanity cannot grow. It is this persistent element, lacking in
the animal and present in the man, that explains why the animal is
comparatively stationary and the man progressive.
There is no individual store-house for the experience gathered by
the animal: but man, storing the essence of his experience in the immortal Ego,
starts life after life with this store as his possession, and so has the
possibility of continued individual growth. For how can intellectual experience
be transmitted, save by consciousness? Physical habits, which modify the
organism, can be physically transmitted, as the tendency to trot in the horse,
to point in the dog, and so on; in animals and in men alike, these facts are
notorious. Equally notorious is the fact of the intellectual and moral
stagnation of the animal as compared with the progressiveness of man. Another
noteworthy fact is that no outside influence can impress on the brains of less
developed humans the elementary moral conceptions, which the brains of the more
advanced assimilate almost immediately on presentation.
Something more than the brain-apparatus is necessary for an
intellectual or moral perception, and no training can give this something;
training may render delicate the apparatus, but the impulse from the Ego is
needed ere that apparatus can answer to the prompting from without. Nor does it
tell against this truth that a European child, shut out of all human
companionship, was found to be brutish and scarcely human on his release; for
the physical organ needs the healthy play upon it of physical influences, if it
is to be used on the physical plane, and if it is disorganised by unnatural
treatment it cannot answer to any promptings from the Ego, any more than a
piano, left to damp and rust, can give out melodious notes from its injured
strings.
iii. Within the limits of a family there are certain hereditary
peculiarities which continually reappear, aud a certain " family likeness
" unites the members of a family. These physical resemblances are patent,
and are looked upon as evidences of the law of heredity. So, far, good. But
what law explains the startling divergences in mental capacity and moral
character that are found within the narrow limits of a single family circle
among the children of the same parents ? In a family of quiet, home-loving
people, settled on the same spot for generations, is born a lad of wild and
rowing spirit, that no discipline can tame, no lure can hold.
How can such a type be found in such surroundings, if the mental
and the moral nature be born of ancestral sources ? Or a " black
sheep" is born in a pure and noble family, wringing the hearts that love
him, dishonouring a spotless name; whence comes he? Or a white blossom of
saintliness unfolds its radiant beauty amid sordid and gross family
surroundings; what dropped seed of that exquisite plant into soil so evil ?
Here, in every case, reincarnation gives the clue, placing the mental and moral
qualities in the immortal Ego, not in the physical body born of the parents.
Strong physical likeness is found between brothers whose mental and moral
characters are as the: poles asunder. Heredity may explain the one; it cannot
explain the other.1 Reincarnation steps in to fill the gap and so renders
complete the theory of human growth.
iv. This same problem is presented even more strongly in the case
of twins, in which the children have not only identical ancestry, but identical
pre-natal conditions. Yet twins often unite the most complete physical likeness
with strong
1 I am not forgetting "
reversion " nor the question of how these discordant types enter a family
if the Egos are drawn, as said, to suitable surroundings, but these points will
be dealt with under " objections " difference of mental and moral
type. And another matter of significance in connection with twins is that
during infancy they will often be indistinguishable from each other, even to
the keen eye of mother and of nurse. Whereas, later in life, when Manas has
been working through his physical encasement, he will have so modified it that
the physical likeness lessens and the differences of character stamp themselves
on the mobile features, v. Infant precocity demands some explanation at the
hands of science. Why can a Mozart, at four, show knowledge in which none has
trained him? Not only taste for melody, but " instinctive " ability
to produce settings for melodies given him, settings which break none of the
complicated laws of harmony that the musician has to learn by patient study.
" He was born of a musical family." Surely; otherwise it is hard to
see how the delicate physical apparatus neccessary for the manifestation of his
transcendent genius could have been provided ; but if his family gave him the
genius as well as the physical machinery for its manifestation, one would like
to know why so many shared in the possession of the physical musical apparatus,
while none save he showed the power that welled up in the symphonies, the
sonatas, the operas, the masses that flowed in jewelled cascades from that
exhaust-less source. How could effect so mighty flow from cause so inadequate?
For among all the Mozart family there was only one MozART. And many another
case might be quoted in which the child outran its teachers, doing with ease
what they had accomplished with toil, and quickly doing what they could in no
wise accomplish.
vi. Infant precocity is but a form of manifestation of genius, and
genius itself needs explanation. Whence comes it, harder to trace than the
track of birds in the air? A Plato, a Dante, a Bruno, a Shakespeare, a Newton;
whence are they, these radiant children of Humanity? They spring from mediocre
families, the first and the last to make the name immortal, families whose very
obscurity is the definite proof that they possess but average abilities; a
child is born, loved, caressed, punished, educated, like all the others:
suddenly the young eagle soars aloft to the sun from the house-sparrows' nest
beneath the eaves, and the beat of his wings shakes the very air. Did such a
thing happen on the physical plane we should not murmur, " Heredity and a
curious case of reversion; " we should seek the parent eagle, not trace
the genealogy of the sparrows. And so, when the strong Ego stoops to the
mediocre family, we must seek in that Ego the cause of the genius, not look for
it in the family genealogy.
Will any one venture to explain by heredity the birth into the
world of a great moral genius, a Lao-Tze, a Buddha, a Zarathushtra, a Jesus? Is
the divine root whence spring these blossoms of humanity to be dug for in the
soil of physical ancestry, the sources of their gracious lives the small well
of commonplace humanity ? Whence brought they their untaught wisdom, their
spiritual insight, their knowledge of human sorrows and human needs? Men have
been so dazzled by their teaching that they have dreamed it a revelation from a
supernatural Deity, while it is the ripened fruit of hundreds of human lives;
those who reject the supernatural Deity must either accept reincarnation or
accept the insolubility of the problem of their origin. If heredity can produce
Buddhas and Christs, it might well give us more of them.
vii. We are led to the same conclusion by noting the extraordinary
differences between people in the power of assimilating knowledge of various
kinds.
Take two persons of some intellectual power, clever rather than
stupid. Present to each the same system of philosophy. One swiftly grasps its
main principles, the other remains passive and inert before it. Present to the
same two some other system, and their relative positions will be reversed. One
" has a bent" towards one form of thought, the second towards some
other. Two students are attracted to Theosophy and begin to study it; at a
year's end one is familiar with its main conceptions and can apply them, while
the other is struggling in a maze. To the one each principle seemed familiar on
presentation; to the other, new, unintelligible, strange. The believer in
reincarnation understands that the teaching is old to the one and new to the
other; one learns quickly because he remembers, he is but recovering past
knowledge; the other learns slowly because his experience has not included
these truths of nature, and he is acquiring them toilfully for the first time.
viii. Closely allied to this rapid recovery of past knowledge is
the intuition which perceives a truth as irue on its presentation, and needs no
slow process of argument for arrival at conviction. Such intuition is merely
recognition of a fact familiar in a past life, though met for the first time in
the present. Its mark is that no argument strengthens, the internal conviction
which came with the mere perception of the fact; arguments demonstrating its
reality may be sought and built up for the sake of others, but they are not
needed for the satisfaction of the believer himself. That work has been done,
so far as he is concerned, in his own previous experience., and he has no need
to retravel the same road.
ix. Reincarnation solves, as does no other theory of human
existence, the problems of inequality of circumstances, of capacity, of
opportunity, which otherwise remain as evidence that justice is not a factor in
life, but that men are the mere sport of the favouritism of an irresponsible
Creator, or of the blind forces of a soulless Nature. A child is born with a
brain fitted to be the instrument of all animal passions, " criminal
brain", the vehicle of evil desires, brutal instinct; child of a thief and
a harlot, his life-blood flows from a foul and poisoned source; his
surroundings educate him to vicious courses, train him in all evil ways.
Another is born with a nobly moulded brain, fitted to manifest the most splendid
intellect, with small physical substratum as basis and instrument for brutal
passions; child of pure and thoughtful parents, his physical nature is built of
good materials, and his surroundings push him along right paths of conduct,
training him to good and generous action, helping him to repress all base and
evil thoughts. The one by organism and environment is foredoomed to a life of
crime, or at best, if the Divine in him should make itself felt, to a terrific
struggle against enormous odds, a struggle which, even should it end in
victory, must leave the victor exhausted, maimed, heartbroken. The other by
organism and environment is foredoomed to a life of beneficent activity, and
his struggles will be not against the evil that drags him down, but after the
higher good that allures him upwards.
Whence such diverse fates, if these human beings enter for the
first time on life's stage? Shall we say that some conscious and overruling
Providence creates two lives, banning the one to uttermost degradation,
blessing the other to loftiest possibilities? If so, then a wailing and
helpless Humanity, in the grip of a fathomless Injustice, can but shudder and
submit, but must cease to speak of Justice or of Love as being attributes of
the Deity it worships. If a similar result comes about by the blind forces of
Nature, then also is man helpless in the grasp of causes he can neither fathom
nor control, and round his heart, while his race endures, must coil the fanged
serpent of poisonous resentment against injustice, good and evil lots being
ground out of the lottery wheel of blinded Fortune, lots which fall into men's
laps without power of theirs to accept or to reject. But if reincarnation be
true, Justice rules the world and man's destiny lies in his own hands.
The yielding to evil thoughts and acts, the infliction of wrong on
others, the unscrupulous pursuance of selfish ends, these built up for the
reincarnating Man a brain which is the fit instrument for their increased
manifestation, a brain in which all evil tendencies will find grooves ready for
their easy working, and in which good forces will seek in vain physical organs
for their expression. The nature with such evil physical equipment will be
drawn to suitable environment, where opportunities for evil action offer
themselves on every hand, to parents whose poisoned bodies can yield the
physical materials most fitted to serve as substratum for such manifestation.
Terrible? Aye, just as it is terrible that persistent drunkenness should lead
to destruction of body and brain.
But where there is justice, inviolable Law, there is hope, for we
are then no mere straws driven by the wind, but masters of our own. fate, since
by knowledge we can use these laws, which never fail us, and which become our
helpers instead of our foes. For as man may build to evil, he may build to
good, and the reverse of the results just sketched may be brought about.
Resistance of wrong thought and act, patient service of others, scrupulous
devotion to unselfish ends, these build up for the reincarnating Man a brain
which is the fitted instrument for their increased manifestation, in which all
good tendencies will find grooves ready for their easy working, and in which
evil forces will seek in vain physical organs for their expression. Such a
nature is equally drawn to environment where opportunities for good will crowd
around it, to parents worthy to build its physical tabernacle. But in each case
the tabernacle is built on the plan supplied by the architect, the Ego, and he
is responsible for his work.1
1 It must never be forgotten that worldly, rank, wealth, etc., do
not run on all fours with good and evil surroundings. In the first extreme case
sketched in the text, the surroundings are distinctly evil, but in the second
case the Ego might be surrounded by worldly troubles just because it had won
the right to have opportunities of growth.
Again, reincarnation explains to us the extraordinary contrasts
between people's aspirations and their capacities. We find an eager mind imprisoned
in a most inefficient body, and we know it is hampered now by its sloth in
utilising capacities in a previous life. We find another yearning after the
very loftiest attainments, struggling with pathetic eagerness to grasp the
subtlest conceptions, while it lamentably fails to assimilate the most
elementary and fundamental ideas of the philosophy it would master, or to
fulfil the humble requirements of a fairly unselfish and useful life. We
recognise that in the past opportunities have been wasted, possibilities of
great attainments disregarded or wilfully rejected, so that now the Ego's
upward path is hindered and his strength is crippled, and the soul yearns with
pitiful and hopeless eagerness for knowledge, not denied it by any outside
power, but unattainable because it cannot see it, though it lies at its very
feet.
There is another suggestion that may appeal to those who believe in
a personal overruling Providence, who creates the spirits of men. Is it seemly
to imagine Deity as at the beck and call of His creatures in the exercise of
His creative energy, as waiting attendant on the passions and lusts of men to
create a human spirit to inhabit the body which springs from some evil act of
unbridled self-indulgence? This constant creation of new spirits to inhabit
forms dependent for their existence on man's caprice has in it something which
must be repugnant to those who reverence their ideal of a Divine Being. Yet
there is no other alternative, if they believe man is a spirit-or has a spirit,
as they mostly phrase it-and reject reincarnation.
x. Another argument which appeals only to those who believe in the
immortality of man is lhai all which begins in time ends in time. All that has
a beginning has an ending, and the necessary correlative of immortality after
death is eternal existence before birth. This is why Hume declared that
metempsychosis was the only theory of the sou! to which philosophy could
hearken, since " what is incorruptible must be ungenerable ". Thought
which rises to the dignity of philosophy must accept either reincarnation, or
the cessation of individual existence at death.
xi. Yet, again, is it not somewhat irrational, given the
immortality of thq spiritual Intelligence in man, to suppose that such an
Intelligence comes into the world, inhabits, say, the body of a primitive man,
leaves it, and never returns to learn the innumerable lessons this earthly life
can teach, but has not yet taught him? We see how much more of growth, mental
and moral, is possible for a man than that accomplished by an uncivilised man.
Why should that Intelligence finally quit earth-life until all its lessons have
been mastered? To send on that inexperienced Intelligence into some higher
sphere of spiritual life is like sending on a boy in the lowest class of a
school to the university. Commonsense bids him return for term after term,
after the rest of the holidays, until he reaches the highest class, and passes
from that, having learned what the school has to teach him, to the wider life
and deeper learning of the college.
xii. Analogy suggests the co-existence of the temporary and
permanent elements in one life-cycle. The leaves of a tree are born, mature,
and fall; during their life they take in nourishment, change it into substances
useful to the tree, transmit the result of their life-energy to the tree,
and-die. They do not rise again, but the tree endures, and puts out with the
new spring a new crop of leaves. So does the personality live, gather in
experience, transmute it into permanent values, transmit it to the enduring
tree whence it springs, and then perish: after the winter passes, the Ego puts
forth the new personality to do similar work, and so to build up and nourish
the growth of the tree of man. And so all through nature we see the temporary
serving the permanent, working for the growth of that more enduring life of
which it is itself but the passing expression.
xiii. The recurring cycles of history point to the reincarnation of
large numbers of persons as it were in bulk. We find at the close of periods of
fifteen centuries the re-emergence of the types of intelligence and of
character that marked the beginnings of such periods. Let the student, with
this idea irr his mind, compare the Augustan period of Roman history with the
Elizabethan period of the English. Let him compare the conquering, colonising,
empire-building type of the Romans with that of the English. Let him compare
the currents of religious thought in the third and fourth centuries after
Christ with those of the eighteenth and nineteenth, and see if he cannot trace
in the prevalence of mystic and Gnostic thought today any re-emergence from the
close of the fourth century. When he has pursued this line of study for a
while, he will begin to see that the statement in Theosophical books that
fifteen centuries is the " average period between incarnations" is
not a mere fancy or guess.
xiv. The rise and decay of
races is best explained on the hypothesis of reincarnation. It is noticed that some races are dying
out, despite the efforts which have been made to check their decay; their women
become afflicted with sterility and so their numbers steadily diminish, their
complete extinction being only a question of time. The reincarnationist says: " The Egos
are leaving that race; all that can be learned through that particular
expression has been learned; the
Egos that once informed its children have gone on into other races;
there are no more baby Egos to puzzle out through it the lessons of their
earliest human experience; hence there is no demand on it from the plane of
causes, .and it must inevitably disappear." So also do we find that when a race has
reached its acme of attainment, slow decline sets in, and synchronously another
race begins its upgrowth and rises as the other falls. For the advanced Egos, having used a racial
type to its utmost possibilities, seek then another type with higher
possibilities before it, and leaving the less advanced Egos to incarnate in the
first type they themselves pass on to a younger race; and so the succession
goes on, less and less advanced Egos incarnating in the first type, which
therefore slowly degenerates, until the stage spoken of above is reached and
signs of approaching extinction are seen. Many another proof of the reality of
reincarnation might be brought forward, but with our limited space these must
suffice. The earnest and painstaking student can add others, as his knowledge
grows.
OBJECTIONS TO REINCARNATION
The statement of objections here adduced is drawn from those raised
by opponents and inquirers, and is merely offered as a sample of those most
frequently met.
i. The Loss of Memory. This is fully dealt with under the heading
WHAT IT is THAT DOES NOT REINCARNATE, and the explanation need not be repeated
here.
ii. The Increase of Population. If the number of Egos, it is asked,
be a fixed number, how do you account for the increase of population? This is
perfectly consistent with a growth in the number of the incarnated Egos, seeing
the small proportion these bear to the total number of Egos out of incarnation.
To reduce the answer to a very concrete form: if, for example, there are three
thousand Egos to be incarnated; one hundred are incarnated, leaving two
thousand nine hundred out of incarnation; a period of fifteen hundred years is
to elapse before the first hundred come into incarnation again, and so with
each successive hundred; a very slight shortening of the period out of
incarnation for seme must vastly increase the incarnated population. Those who
raise this objection generally take it for granted that the proportion of Egos
out of incarnation to those in incarnation is about half and half, whereas the
number out of incarnation is enormously greater than that of the Egos
incarnated. The globe is as a small hall in a large town, drawing the audiences
that enter it from the total population. It may be at one time half empty, at
another crowded, without any change in the total population of the town. So our
little globe may be thinly or thickly populated, and the vast number of Egos on
which it draws to replenish its stock of inhabitants remains practically
inexhaustible.
iii. Reincarnation ignores
the Law of Heredity, On the contrary,
it enforces it on the physical plane.
It admits that the parents in giving the physical materials stamp
these with their own signet, so to speak, and that the molecules built into the
child's body carry with them the habit of vibrating in definite ways and of
associating themselves in particular combinations. Thus will be conveyed
hereditary diseases; thus will be transmitted little tricks of manner, habits,
gestures, etc. " But," the objector proceeds, " this is not all.
Mental likenesses are transmitted, mental peculiarities as well as
physical." This is true within limits, but not to the extent taken for
granted by those who would explain everything by the working of a single law.
Etheric atoms as well as physical are contributed by the parents, as are also
kamic elements -especially by the mother-and these work on the molecules of the
brain as well as on those of the rest of the body, and so cause the
reappearance in the child of vital and passional characteristics of the
parents, modifying the manifestations of the Thinker, the Manas, the
reincarnating Ego. The theory of reincarnation admits all these modes of
influence by the parents on the child, but while allowing to the fullest for
these, it refuses to ignore all the independent actions of which exist proof as
striking as those of parental influence on the Lower Quaternary; and so
Theosophy gives a full explanation of differences and of similarities, whereas,
heredity gives only a partial and one-sided one, laying stress on the
similarities and ignoring the differences.
iv. Reversion is sufficient to explain the differences, is the
answer to the last criticism; genius is explained by reversion, as are all
types wholly different from, the immediate progenitors. But if genius be a case
of reversion then we ought to be able to recognise the ancestor endowed with
it, since it marks out its possessor from the crowd. Genius-should only appear,
however long the intervals, in families in which it has already been
manifested. If Shakespeare be an instance of reversion, to whom did he revert?
The very fact that a genius suddenly renders illustrious a family hitherto
obscure negates, the hypothesis of reversion, since the obscurity is itself the
guarantee of the absence of genius. It may also be remarked that when the birth
of a vicious, child in a virtuous family is put down to reversion, the
explanation is a pure guess without a shadow of proof in its support. If genius
could be established as a reversion, then, by analogy, the other cases might be
similarly argued for, but where the presumption is against this explanation in
the case in which it might easily be verified, if true, little stress can be
laid on it in cases in which verification is almost necessarily impossible.
v. The appearance of a vicious child in a virtuous family, and of a
virtuous child in a vicious family, is against the theory that the Ego is drawn
to those who can give it a suitable body and environment. At the first blush,
this objection seems a strong one, but it leaves out of account the very
important question of karmic ties. The Esoteric Philosophy teaches that the
future destinies of Egos become intertwined by the relations set up between
them in any earth-life. Love and hatred, service and injury, comradeship in
good and evil, all tend to draw the Egos back to earth-life together, for the
joint working out of effects jointly caused. Hence the shocking, and on this
plane unnatural, hatreds found to exist sometimes between parents and children,
brothers and sisters-hatreds as inexplicable as they are malignant, marked with
monstrous features of revenge as for some unremembered but dominating wrong.
Hence, too, the inseverable ties that bind hearts together, out-reaching
distance, out-lasting time, ties whose uncaused strength in this life points to
a genesis beyond the portal of birth.
A LAST WORD
And here must end this imperfect treatment of a theme too vast and
too deep for pen feeble as mine. This sketch can but serve as elementary
introduction to a study of one of the weightiest problems of human existence, a
study more vital, perchance, to our present stage of civilisation than any
other in which the mind of man can engage. All life changes its aspect when
reincarnation becomes a deeply settled conviction, beyond all argument, raised
above all dispute. Each day of life but one page in the great drama of
existence; each sorrow but the fleeting shadow cast by a passing cloud; each
joy but a gleam of sunshine reflected from a swinging mirror; each death but
the moving from a worn-out house. The strength of an eternal youth begins
slowly to pass into the awakening life; the calmness of a vast serenity broods
over the tossing waves of human thought; the radiant glory of the immortal
Intelligence pierces the thick dusky clouds of matter, and the imperishable
Peace that nought can ruffle sheds its pure whiteness over the triumphant
spirit. Pinnacle after pinnacle of
spiritual heights lift themselves into the illimitable ether, steps which climb
the azure immeasurable, and fade into
the infinite distance which shrouds the
Future, immense and unimaginable by the very spirit in man. And then, " blinded by the excess of
light," wrapped in a hope too deep to be joyous, too sure to be
triumphant, too vast to be syllabled, Man entres into the All-consciousness to
which our consciousness is as senselessness, till Eternity again thrills
with the summons: COME FORTH, FOR THE
DAY OF BRAHMA is DAWNING AND THE NEW WHEEL
BEGINS TO TURN !
PEACE TO ALL BEINGS
______________________
Annie
Besant Visits
Annie
Besant and two Theosophical Society officials from
are
greeted by Cardiff Theosophists
at
Annie
Besant was International President of the
Adyar Theosophical Society from 1907 until her
death in 1933
History of the Adyar Theosophical Society
Leading
Theosophists in
Annie Besant,
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (Seated)
and
William Quan Judge in
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1891
Annie Besant and Mohandes K Gandhi
Annie Besant was at one time President of The
Indian National Congress
and put under house arrest for her stand on Indian
Home Rule in 1917.
Her dream of an
after the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre in
Welsh Theosophists Protest Against
Internment of Annie Besant 1917
The Match Girls Strike 1888
Annie Besant, The Social Reformer
On
The Link.
The article, entitled "White Slavery in
about the way the women at Bryant & May were being
treated.
The company
reacted by attempting to force their workers to
sign a statement
that they were happy with their working conditions.
When a group of
women refused to sign, the organisers of the group
was sacked. The
response was immediate; 1400 of the women at
Bryant & May went on strike.
Annie Besant at Le Bourget
Annie Besant arrives in
Croydon Aerodrome on her way back to
visiting
______________________
KARMA
Find out
more about
Theosophy with these links
The Cardiff Theosophical Society Website
The National Wales Theosophy Website
If you
run a Theosophy Group, please feel free
to use any of the
material on this site
The Most Basic Theosophy
Website in the Universe
A quick overview of Theosophy
and the Theosophical Society
If you run a Theosophy Group you
can use this as an introductory handout.
Theosophy Cardiff’s Instant Guide
One liners and quick explanations
H P Blavatsky is
usually the only
Theosophist that most
people have ever
heard of. Let’s put
that right
The Voice of the Silence Website
An Independent Theosophical Republic
Links to Free Online Theosophy
Study Resources; Courses,
Writings,
The main criteria
for the inclusion of
links on this site is
that they have some
relationship (however
tenuous) to Theosophy
and are lightweight,
amusing or entertaining.
Topics include
Quantum Theory and Socks,
Dick Dastardly and Legendary Blues Singers.
A selection of
articles on Reincarnation
Provided in
response to the large
number of enquiries we
receive at
Cardiff
Theosophical Society on this subject
The Voice of the Silence Website
This is for
everyone, you don’t have to live
in Wales to make
good use of this Website
Theosophical
Movement in Wales
High
Drama & Worldwide Confusion
as
Theosophy Cardiff Separates from the
Welsh Regional Association (formed 1993)
Theosophy Cardiff
are in regular communication
with the Theosophical Society in Utah
No
Aardvarks were harmed in the
Quick Blasts of Theosophy
What H P Blavatsky says about;
The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
The Earth Base for Evolutionary Theosophy
A B C D EFG H IJ KL M N OP QR S T UV WXYZ
Complete Theosophical Glossary in Plain Text Format
1.22MB
________________
Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of
Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
Quick
Explanations with Links to More Detailed Info
What is Theosophy ? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
Cosmogenesis
Anthropogenesis
Root Races
Karma
Ascended Masters After Death States
Reincarnation
The Seven Principles of Man Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
The Start of the Theosophical Society
History of the Theosophical Society
Theosophical Society Presidents
History of the Theosophical Society in Wales
The Three Objectives of the Theosophical Society
Explanation of the Theosophical Society Emblem
Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
Try
these if you are looking for a local
Theosophy
Group or Centre
UK Listing of Theosophical Groups
Tell us about your UK Theosophy Group
___________________________
into categories and
presented according to relevance of website.
Web Directory
- Add Link - Submit Article - Online Store - Forum