Theosophical University Press Online Edition
When we investigate what, after all, has so charmed the genius of the greatest minds of the ages that they all collaborated in teaching the doctrine of Reimbodiment or Reincarnation, may we not assume from the historic facts before us that, in addition to the inspiration and guidance which each of them received from the majestic and fundamental PHILOSOPHY, which has given the title to the present work, the Esoteric Tradition, their source of inspiration was likewise the roots of the individual spiritual essence in each of these greatest minds, which essence gave vivid life and substantial form to that which they brought forth as their respective systems of philosophy and religion? Assuming this, is it not evident that these roots of the individual spiritual essence in each, i. e., the inner and motivating power of the impulses of their souls, were the divine-spiritual links of each individual teacher with the Cosmic Spirit and thereby with the Boundless All? For, indeed, each one was or is of necessity a spiritual center of Kosmic Space -- as every being or entity is of necessity in his or its Monad: that Monad which is the deathless, ageless, and therefore immortal and undying as well as incorruptible center within. Conclusion in affirmation seems to be logically inescapable, when all the philosophic factors of such inspiration are analytically considered and properly weighed in the scales of thought.
Continuance in and by repetitive finite existences of the Reimbodying Monad in various encasements or bodies, or rupas, to use the Sanskrit word, is the essence of the doctrine of reimbodiment, of rebirth, which in the case of man, because occurring in bodies of physical flesh, is called reincarnation or reinfleshing, as already set forth.
A human soul in former lives did certain acts, thought certain thoughts, had and followed certain emotions, and all of these affected other people as well as the man himself, lightly or heavily, weakly or strongly, as the case may be. As even our modern scientists will tell us, all these various motions of man's intermediate or psychological nature are the resultant action of causal forces having their seat in the intermediate nature, and therefrom not only controlling and governing and shaping man's thoughts and actions and emotions, but likewise, because of the impact, powerfully affecting even the atoms of the physical body in which the soul at any time lived. Then when death came there was release from physical bondage of this intermediate nature, and the human spirit-soul gathered into itself this intermediate nature and returned to the spiritual realm whence it is destined in good time to reissue, in order anew to inhabit another physical body. In that spiritual realm the intermediate nature, resting in the bosom of its parent-Monad or spirit-soul, has repose and ineffable bliss; and therein it follows likewise the process of recuperation, and, so to say, undertakes the mental digesting of the lessons that in the life just last passed it had learned, and of the ideas that it then had; for the after-death state -- this state of repose and recuperation, of mental assimilation and digestion -- is also the time and opportunity for a full flowering, albeit temporary, of all that the human soul when last in incarnation, i. e., in its last earth-life, held dearest and highest and purest, and which in that last earth-life it had had no adequate possibility of experiencing in fulness.
This after-death state or condition, as has already been set forth in previous chapters of this work, is known in modern Theosophy under the name of Devachan, a Tibetan term of which the Sanskrit equivalent is Sukhavati, which latter term may be paraphrased in translation as 'Happy Land.' The reader is reminded that precisely because the states or conditions of the consciousness of excarnate egos are very many, i. e., because such states or conditions are of various grades or types, therefore the Devachan -- which is no locality but a descriptive appellation gathering together or generalizing the entirety of such states or conditions of consciousness -- obviously is itself to be considered as consisting of a hierarchical range or 'ladder' running downwards from the highest or most spiritual, by steps or degrees, to the least spiritual states or conditions, and melting slowly into the highest or most ethereal or quasi-spiritual realms of the Kama-loka.
Thus the 'soul,' or excarnate human ego, rests in blissful repose in those various and always appropriate realms of the Devachan which correspond with its own degree or stage of consciousness, and, for the period of its stay there in the Devachan, it is unutterably happy. Its entire experience in these 'regions' of spiritual peace and blissful recuperation is roseate beyond all means of adequate expression, and is unspoiled by the remotest or slightest suggestion of contrarieties or unhappiness of any kind. Then, when its cycle in those realms, or rather when its term in such states or conditions of consciousness, comes to an end, it slowly at first, and later more rapidly, descends the hierarchical series of stages or grades and finally enters into a new earth-incarnation. It is, so to say, psycho-magnetically drawn back to the sphere -- in this case our Earth -- where it had lived before. It cannot at this period or stage of its post-mortem adventure go elsewhere; it can go only whither its attractions then draw it, for the operations and facts of Nature (and the after-death state is included of course in the category of natural events) do not 'just happen,' helter-skelter, fortuitously, but take place only in accordance with the strictest functions of what human metaphor in this connexion calls 'law and order.' Effect inevitably follows cause, consequence infallibly follows its originating action, and this Chain of Causation lasts from eternity to eternity, as a concatenation of interlinked 'events' succeeding each other in regular and unbroken serial order: an endless chain in Nature of action and reaction, belonging to each peregrinating being or entity, a chain which, precisely because it is made by the being or entity itself, and is indeed itself, is ethically absolutely just and, considered as consequences, is compensatory or retributive from its beginning to its end.
The entire process as thus briefly outlined is a systematic and compensatory interplay of forces, psychological and other, the forces predominating in each individual case being those which the individual 'soul' is most used to, because they originate in that soul itself. Hence it is those forces which are most familiar to it that the soul follows or obeys most easily; and in consequence these are the forces, now acting as impulsive causes, which at that period -- that is to say, when the 'soul's' devachanic rest and recuperation are ended -- attract it back to the scene of its former activities, our Earth. It is also to be remembered very carefully that the forces thus operative as impulsing causes are they which were originally, i. e., formerly, sown as seeds in the fabric of the 'soul' when it last lived on this earth; and their springing into action towards the end of the devachanic period is equivalent to saying that they feel the attraction of the earth where previously, in the last life and in former lives, they had been evoked and 'born' as seeds of future causes.
As the 'Prodigal Son' of the parable in the Christian New Testament is said to have returned to his home: the dear memories of his childhood and of his youth bringing him back there because of the sway of their strong yet subtil influence over his mind and heart: so does the reimbodying Monad, at the end of its devachanic period, by a reversal of the metaphor, return to earth-life, because on earth it formerly had sowed the seeds of the actions that it did, of the thoughts that it had had, and of the emotions that it had felt, each one of these three psychological elements in turn becoming causal, producing effectual results, which begin to manifest themselves towards the end of the devachanic period, and which find their proper field of flowering on the Earth where in former lives they had been engendered as psychological seeds.
Thus are hearts reunited on Earth which have formerly loved each other on Earth, and it is on Earth that minds which have genuinely understood each other meet again in sympathetic understanding and intercourse. For verily, those who have loved once will meet again. In fact they cannot do otherwise. Love is the most magnetic thing in the Universe; love attracts love; its whole essence implies and signifies union and reunion, reuniting, bringing together anew. The impersonal Eros of the Universe is the cosmic energy which holds the stars and their respective planets aggregated and coherent in their courses, and it governs the building and the structure of atoms. It is all-permeant and in consequence all-powerful. It is the cause of the energy which works in such myriad forms and everywhere, operative alike in star and in atom, holding them together in inescapable embrace; yet, marvelous paradox, it is this same power which guarantees the individual integrity of every cosmic Unit. It is also the mystic and wonderful magnetic sympathy which brings together human beings, man to man as brothers, woman to woman as sisters, and, in one of its human fields of action, in the merely human sphere, man to woman and woman to man in a genuine marriage. Love is likewise the only true basis of friendship.
It is to be distinctly understood, that the love here spoken of is the entirely impersonal Love of the Cosmic Divinity, which, nevertheless, just because it is all-permeant, and no smallest particle in the Universe can be outside of its spheres of mighty influence, it is likewise in its most material manifestations the causal force which often to us humans takes erratic, apparently irregular, and reprehensible forms. It is not the cosmic essence, obviously enough, however, which is to be reprehended, for its action is invariably impersonal; but human beings, because possessing their modicum of free will and choice, can misuse this cosmic energy to ignoble ends and in ignoble actions -- and by this very same cosmic energy, such misuse is impersonally and almost automatically reactive in the production of suffering, pain, and often disease. Yet even here, because the Heart of Nature is infinite compassion, such suffering and pain are the means by which human beings learn to do better. (316)
It is through and by means of reincarnation that human souls meet each other again, come together again, for their weal or for their woe, as the case may be. One looks into the eyes of a stranger, that is, a stranger to this body, in this life, and the eyes, intuitively as it were, see an old friend. Instant comprehension, quick understanding, and magnetic sympathy are there.
Reincarnation does not separate, as it has been quite mistakenly supposed to do by superficial critics; on the contrary, it unites. Were reincarnation not a fact in Nature, human beings obviously would not be brought together again; and they constantly and continuously are reunited in the lives that follow each other in serial order, albeit it is quite possible that, due to karmic causes, the same individuals may not be reunited on every occasion when reimbodiment takes place. There is, therefore, another and far more comprehensive and universal teaching than is that of the doctrine of reimbodiment. This teaching regards the ultimate reunion of all entities in the Divine Essence, when the universal period of manifestation -- or the Cosmic Manvantara -- shall have completely run or fulfilled its course. During this essential reunion, each entity, each spirit, while becoming at one for the long time being with the Divine Essence, will nevertheless retain its monadic individuality or seed-individuality, yet will in addition to its own sense of individual being feel a cosmic sense of complete oneness and of unity with all the multitudes of others: a verity which is almost indescriptible in feeble and halting human words, but which nevertheless is easily enough understood when the mind rises above the limitations of personality into the clear intellectual ether of impersonal understanding. Our modern mentality, beclouded with personal fogs and distorted with emotions and passions as it always is, cannot easily comprehend this; but it is the fundamental significance or meaning of the teaching so common in the higher Oriental philosophies in which reference is made to the individual's becoming 'absorbed' in the Paramatman, or Brahman, or Cosmic Spirit. Such 'absorption,' which is 'absorption' only in the sense of full and complete self-identification with the Cosmic Self, the while retaining the deathless seat of Monadic Individuality, is the regeneration, or indeed the 'expansion,' of one's own self-consciousness, now become divine, into the instant and continuous realization of utter oneness in love and peace and bliss and consciousness with everything else; and this lasts as long as the 'absorption' continues, which may be for aeons upon aeons of cosmic time, or in the case of a less lucky Jivanmukta, may last, as in almost all cases it does, till the end of the Cosmic Manvantara.
The word lucky, as just used, should not be construed as meaning the reception of favoritism of any kind, but should be understood solely in the sense of long past accumulated karmic merit, spiritually speaking, enabling such 'freed Monad' or Jivanmukta, to remain out of the lower spheres of manifestation for the long duration of time mentioned.
The thoughts that we think in one incarnation affect us powerfully, because of karmic reaction, in the next incarnation, and indeed in all succeeding reimbodiments. It is by and through thoughts, speaking generally, that we grow, unfold, which means evolve. We think thoughts and we are affected, impressed, by them, strongly or weakly as the case may be. They stamp themselves indelibly upon the fabric of our being, of our consciousness. We are like a wonderful magical picture-gallery in all parts of our constitution, visible and invisible. Our entire constitutional being, both as a whole and in its parts, i. e., collectively as well as distributively, is like an immensely sensitive photographic film constantly renewed and constantly receiving and retaining impressions -- in one sense like a palimpsest, receiving imprint upon imprint, each imprint remaining indelibly and yet being magically modified although overlaid by all succeeding imprints. Everything that passes in front of the 'film' is instantly stamped upon it, psycho-photographed; and the 'film' is we. Each one of us is such a psycho-photographic 'film'; and it is thus that our characters are builded, framed, shaped, and therefore of course affected, by the thoughts that we think, by the emotions that we experience, by the passions that guide or misguide us, and even by the actions that all these produce. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, so to regulate especially our lower thinking-apparatus, the inferior manasic faculty, that the thoughts which we allow to travel through our minds leave behind them impressions of an elevating and permanently helpful kind.
Thoughts are energies, imbodied energies, elemental energies. They do not originate in a man's mind. These elemental entities pass through the sensitive transmitting-apparatus which our mind is, and each one of us colors the thoughts as they pass through our minds, thus giving a new direction, a new karmic impulse to them. No thought was ever created in a human brain. The inspirations of genius, the loftiest productions of the human spirit, simply come to us through lofty and great minds, capacious channels which could transmit so sublime a flow.
A man can become degenerate by constantly thinking low and degenerate thoughts; and, contrariwise, a man can raise himself to the gods by exercising his spiritual will and by coincidently opening his nature to receive the impressions of only those inspiring, lofty, and sublime thoughts, which leave impressions upon the fabric of our being of a kind which automatically themselves become active as an unceasing flow of inspiration; and he can bar the way to thoughts of the other kind so that they do not impress themselves upon him in any permanent manner.
On the cosmic-scale, the mystical picture-gallery of eternity is the Astral Light; and there is a part of our constitution -- in fact ninety-nine percent of the totality of our constitution -- which in modern Esoteric Theosophy is called the Auric Egg -- an esoteric term which here cannot be further elaborated -- which like every other portion of the human constitution is a perfect picture-gallery, and of an amazing kind. To change the figure of speech: it is not only a receiving-station, but a sending-station, for inner 'radio-signals,' for 'radio-messages' of every kind. Everything that happens around us, therefore, is indelibly stamped upon the Auric Egg, if we allow our consciousness to cognise and to receive the happenings. But by our will and by inner magical processes that each one of us instinctively, albeit mayhap unconsciously, follows, we can strengthen the Akasic barrier which automatically keeps out evil thoughts, so that they make no lasting impression upon us; that is, they find no harbor or lodgment in our being; and consequently their effect on the Reincarnating Ego is virtually nil. But if we allow them to affect us, the impression made remains for eternity.
It is indelibly stamped on the fabric of our consciousness and thereafter we have to work so to smooth over or to modify, or to spiritualize, the impressions, that when the automatic reproduction comes forth in the next rebirth it will do so no longer as a reproduced cause for evil-doing, and in consequence will have very little causal power in the new incarnation.
The processes of individual reimbodiment take place because of the action which never sleeps during the Cosmic Manvantara of that other law inherent in Nature, commonly called the law of cause and effect: that is to say, that a cause once born or evoked inevitably is followed, sooner or later, by its strictly correspondential consequences; these consequences or effects in turn instantly becoming new causes producing other consequences, which again instantly become in their turn newly operative causal energies. And so forth, endlessly, because this chain of causation stretches from manvantara to manvantara, and indeed from eternity to eternity; but the entities evolving under its sway and within its scope -- which is equivalent to saying everywhere -- move always forwards under the still larger karmic law which governs the enclosing entities of which the former entities are component parts. Thus we have in this picture 'wheels within wheels': the greater enclosing the less; and the less, while following strictly their own karmic destiny, at the same time being under the still more masterful sway of the larger karman of the greater wheel of life.
Karmic action, all karmic action both in the general and in the particular, takes place according to another fundamental operation of Nature, the Law of Cycles; and yet, examining the matter shrewdly, we see that this 'ever fundamental operation of Nature,' to wit, the Law of Cycles, is but itself a phase of Cosmic Karman itself. Indeed, cyclical or repetitive action in Nature manifesting everywhere, in the great as in the small, is but one of the modes by which cosmic karman expresses itself or works out its mysterious ends. Nature repeats herself constantly and continuously -- uninterruptedly and without solutions of continuity -- so that the great is mirrored in the small and the small is but a reflexion of the great; and hence whatever is in the great, is in the small in miniature. This fact is expressed in the Esoteric Philosophy by alluding to another fundamental fact of Cosmic Being, which is called Universal Analogy.
Now why is Nature everywhere and continuously repetitive in her operations and works and structure? The answer is found in the fact that all operations of Nature always and ineluctably follow, must follow, grooves of action previously made; which is equivalent to saying pathways of force or energy, lines of least resistance. We see this manifestation of universal periodicity operative around us everywhere: day and night, summer and winter, springtime efflux, autumnal reflux, are familiar examples in point. All the planets of our solar system follow the same general orbital course; growth proceeds according to cyclic or periodic laws; diseases follow cyclical laws likewise. The teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy is that such cyclical action is universal and without exception, did we know enough and were we skilled sufficiently to see the working of natural activity in periodic terms throughout Nature's structure. The period of the sunspots is still another instance of cyclical periodicity. In fact, periodicity prevails everywhere throughout Mother Nature; and this not merely on our physical plane alone, but equally so on and in the invisible planes and in and throughout the invisible spheres as much as in the physical.
In fact it is not going an iota too far nor wandering from the facts of Nature by a hair's breadth to state that everything that happens, whether in the great or in the small, whether in the visible or invisible, is cyclical in character and is the reproduction of itself that went before -- and of other things that went before it which likewise are equally cyclical in type. Hence it is that death and birth for human beings are equally cyclical or periodical. We humans are no exception to Nature's cosmic modes and functions. Why should we be -- how could we be? We are not different from the Universe, for we are inseparable and integral parts thereof. We are not out of it nor apart from it, nor can we ever be so. Man cannot free himself from the Universe; nothing can. Whatever he does, he does of necessity, but not by Fate; first because he himself is the creator of his own destiny, which, precisely because it is throughout time progressively enacted and unfolded in the bosom of the Universe, of necessity, therefore, is continuously swayed and governed by the inherent laws of periodicity ruling therein. Everything everywhere is subject likewise to the same over-ruling Habit of Nature -- a habit which men, adopting human analogical expressions, call law. Periodical or cyclical action may truly be called a Habit of Nature; and just so are human habits acquired; by repetition, until finally the entity concerned follows the habit automatically: for the time being it is 'law' controlling his action. Death and birth, therefore, are actually ingrained habits of the reincarnating entity; and this habit of reincarnation will continue through the ages until it is slowly broken by growing distaste for material life on the part of the reincarnating ego, in other words, because the attraction towards this sphere and this plane slowly loses its hold on that reimbodying ego. It is all part of the natural and general processes of unending evolutionary growth, as the Reimbodying Monad passes in its evolvings and revolvings during its peregrinations through the Worlds and Spheres of Cosmic Life.
Sometimes the minds of men are bitter and obstinate against their own best interests. They will oppose and fight what they themselves know to be the better thing, and choose the worse. Thus they sow seeds which they must reap at some time as fruits, but having reaped, they will then sow other seeds infallibly, for they can do no otherwise; and thus it is that however low a man may 'fall,' as we say: no matter what 'sins,' as we say, he may have committed: always he has another chance and other chances for self-recovery, ad infinitum. Does anyone think that this doctrine opens the door to licentious practices or to selfish and evil works, be they in morals or otherwise? If such be his thought he has not understood the Law. Bitter always are the fruits of retribution, the infallible and unerring consequences of retributive justice, for what men call 'retribution' is but a generalizing of the Doctrine of Consequences, or Karman, as applied to results evolving from and upon evil acts. There is no escape from the consequences of an act once done, of a thought once thought, or of an emotion once liberated; for exactly what ye sow that shall ye reap again, (317) until ye learn through bitter experiences the fundamental lesson of life, which is the bringing of the self into ever greater harmony with the Cosmic Self which in its ethical aspect we may likewise speak of as impersonal Cosmic Love.
There is indeed such a thing as a man's falling so low in the scale of manifested life, because of a continued course of evil thinking and doing pursued through a number of consecutive earth-lives, that he finally no longer can be considered to be a human being, strictly speaking, because the Spiritual Monad within him has withdrawn its inspiring fire; and when this happens, such a being, no longer truly human, although, it may be, having a human shape, then passes out of the human sphere, that is to say, out of humanity into lower realms, where it nevertheless has always a chance for self-recovery -- at least until the last feeble ray of inspiration from the Spiritual Monad vanishes. But such cases are so rare that we need do no more than merely refer to them. It is greatly to the credit of the human kind that such cases of human beings choosing evil for the love of evil are so rare indeed that one may merely note them in passing in order to round out the teaching. It is likewise proper to state that the vast majority of men and women at all times keep sufficient of the holy Light burning in their breasts to safeguard them from such a fearful destiny.
Always onwards is the general law, and therefore is the general rule; which means that normal human beings grow greater continuously, albeit in some cases very slowly: grow always nobler, albeit with steps that are often halting and insecure; grow deeper in sympathies and vaster in intellectual powers; grow greater and wider in their aspirations, reaching out ever more widely in their sympathy to their fellows, and indeed, for all that is: because these high qualities follow upon unfolding growth. As the ancient Buddhist scripture, the Dhammapada, has it, "as the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the ox" (318) -- a beautiful metaphor which applies equally to the consequences following upon evil doing.
In our Occidental countries during the last two or three hundred years, there have been but two alternative explanations of man's interior nature and of his outer nature, as well as of man's origin and destiny. These are the Christian theological, and the scientific, theories respectively. The former of these two holds, or has held for centuries, that man has an 'eternal' soul, which nevertheless was created at birth or thereabouts in time, and which at death will suffer one of two irrevocable destinies: eternal damnation in the flames of a never-ending hell, "in an asbestos-like body" as certain of the Church-Fathers have put it, or an endless existence in a 'heaven' in which the soul shall sit on the right hand of Almighty God, singing hymns of praise to the Eternal forever and forever. In neither case has it ever been shown that the human soul could have earned such a destiny, because, in the first place, to have merited eternal damnation in endless torture, the soul assuredly, if we may gage by any measure of justice, must in its life on this earth have committed infinite sin or sins, so grave, so deeply staining it, that an eternity of suffering cannot purge it. Or, on the other hand, that the human soul must have been so supremely and divinely strong and good from its 'creation' that an eternity of alleged felicity would be a reward barely sufficient for such ineffable virtue!
The alternate effort at an explanation of man's constitution, that of recent but not of modern science apparently, that man is naught but a physical body, and that when this body dies all is ended, seems to the thoughtful and reflective mind to be as wilfully arbitrary as is the former or theological one. Fortunately it is now commonly realized to be but the fad of a by-gone age of speculation; although certainly no really great and outstanding scientific luminary was ever caught by this theoretic nightmare of a vacuous but once extremely vocal materialism. Be this as it may, there would seem to be something almost preferable in the idea of annihilation, when contrasted sharply with the empty and uninspiring heaven of the old theology or its equally uninspiring, but thoroughly repulsive, hell. One is irresistibly reminded of an exclamation attributed to Voltaire in this connexion: "Meme le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon! "Even annihilation is not without its good!"
Ah! man, a thinker, an entity who feels, who aspires, who has intuitions and intimations of supremely grand and lofty verities, and who can exemplify noble ideals in his conduct by a self-sacrifice which at times is truly divine and godlike; who has spiritual and intellectual powers and faculties which never are able to manifest themselves in their fulness in any one earth-life; who can love with a love which is noble beyond words to express, and who can likewise hate with a hate which is both strong and malignant; whose recognitions of and yearnings towards lovely and impersonal things are never fully satisfied; whose hunger for truth and beauty never receives in any one earth-life full satisfaction: does man, does such a being, who is a bundle or sheaf of such forces and qualities and attributes incessantly seeking their outlet in adequate self-expression -- does he express all these and show their various energies, noble or ignoble as the case may be, merely to have them disappear or vanish at death in an inexplicable manner before these various forces or energies are satisfied? There is something about the picture which revolts not only one's logical instincts, but likewise what one has been taught even in one's scientific studies and what one recognises to be one of the commonest phenomena of Nature, to wit: that a fountain of force or energy is not annihilated because its channels of expression have been blocked or diverted. It would seem obvious that blocking such a self-generating and ever-active source or fountain of force or energy would not annihilate it, but would infallibly for a time dam back the flow therefrom, which, accumulating in time, would cause it to break out or force for itself a path elsewhere. Otherwise there would be violated a fundamental law of Nature to the effect that a cause once engendered, or a force or energy once loosed, must and will run on to exhaustion unless held in check by some control more powerful than itself, in which last case the weaker bides its time and bursts forth again as soon as the restraining influence is withdrawn or overcome. The idea of such utter and virtually instantaneous annihilation of a well-spring of cosmic energy -- which is what a man actually shows himself to be -- is not only unreasonable, but, what is worse, is thoroughly unphilosophical. One is driven to the conclusion that the two alternative explanations of man's constitutional nature and of his destiny, until recently offered in Occidental countries, fail woefully to meet the conditions of the case on the one hand, and to satisfy the intellect on the other hand.
The forces or energies and matters of which man's entire constitution or being is composed are the forces or energies and matters of universal Nature likewise;, and to suppose, on the one hand, that these forces and matters can violate their own essential characteristics, and he be driven to go either to an eternal hell or to an eternal heaven by the mandate of some supposititious and dictatorial creative entity -- neither of which destinies the struggling and limited man can have in justice merited, and for either of which there is not the slightest attraction for the ensouling Monad; or, to suppose, on the other hand, that such an entity as man, who is an inseparable portion of Mother Nature: full of unsatisfied and unexhausted forces and powers, and moreover an obviously growing and learning and developing being in the womb of Universal Nature: to suppose that such a being is wiped out of existence by a mere change of condition or state and by the dissolution of its lowest and most fluid and composite part, the body, is, one can only suppose, the unprovable hypothesis of minds blinded by enthusiastic partisanship for theoretical speculation as to the intrinsic nature of matter and energy. Assuredly, to the man who is capable of thinking clearly for himself, and who refuses to take the say-sos or hypotheses of other men as being established facts of Nature, the notion is as amply unsupported by substantial proof as it seems to be likewise a violation of well-established scientific principle.
What becomes of those forces that were in action, now that we know that 'energy' or 'force' is but another word for ethereal matters or substances? What becomes of these which at death were merely beginning, so to say, to exhaust themselves? It is obvious that no man works out all the results of the thoughts he has had and of the deeds he has done, of the good he has wrought, and of the mischief he has caused, in one lifetime. Whither have these unexhausted forces gone? Are they annihilated? If so, by what, and what brought about such annihilation, and what proof is there that such annihilation has occurred beyond speculative hypothesis? Do we human beings simply make futile gestures on the stage of life and then die into nothingness, at which point of time all is ended for ever? This notion is so utterly unsupported by any kind of reliable fact that it is like the dream of a lunatic, and seems to us to be profoundly unscientific as well as illogically inconsequential.
Every one of us is weighed momently, nay instantly, in the scales of ever active and unerring natural justice through the sleepless working of cosmic laws. It would seem to be obvious enough that we cannot disturb equilibrium in Nature, nor alter even by our dying her streams of cause and effect, without having something happen to us in return. Every act we do; every good act, every evil act; every good thought we think, every evil thought that we allow to find lodgment in our minds, thereby affecting our conduct: each must have its inevitable consequent effect, which is strictly proportionate to the force which gives it birth; and the only point to emphasize here is: Where does that force or energy express itself in results? After death only, or in future lives? The answer is both, but mostly the latter, in future lives on Earth, because an earth-force can find no effectual manifestation of itself in spheres not of earth. A cause must have its consequent or necessary results where its action lies, and nowhere else. Otherwise, to take a simple example, it would be logically possible for a man to enter an automobile for a trip to town and in an instant find himself flying over the Pacific towards China! Such things do not happen. Living men give birth to thoughts, give birth to acts, and only living men can reap the consequences thereof -- although it is perfectly true, on the other hand, that those thoughts and acts affect the fabric of the actor's being to such an extent that even post-mortem states are more or less modified by what has been done during life, and this is because such thoughts and acts profoundly modify or change the substance or body of the will and intelligence from which they originally flowed forth -- i. e., man's constitution. Indeed, the energies within us which have manifested as intimations of higher things, of inner energic operations, do survive and find at least partial expression in the after-death state; they can do no otherwise, being manifestations of pure energy which is deathless, and therefore more akin to the spiritual spheres than to the physical sphere, our Earth, in which our lower propensities find their full expression.
We see, then, that a man is born and reborn, and many times, not by the command or mandate of anyone outside of himself, nor through any merely automatic action of soulless substance, which is an utterly unfounded notion and violative of its own premiss; but solely from the causes set up by himself within himself, which causes, acting as effects or consequences, impel him to return to the fields whereon he labored in other lives on earth. In this our present life, all of us are setting in motion causes in thought and action which will bring us back to this earth in the distant future. We shall return to physical incarnation at some future time because in this present life we are sowing the causes that will eventually impel us to return to a new life in human form on this our Mother-Earth. We shall then reap the harvest, the fruitful consequences, of the seeds of thought and of emotion and of action that we are in this present life planting in the fields of our inner constitution -- which is equivalent to saying in ourselves.
This is that Chain of Necessity, that Web of Destiny, which each man and woman, which each soul, forges link by link, as the days fly by: the unbroken and in truth unbreakable chain of Cause and Effect, of Action and Consequence, which the Theosophical Philosophy briefly calls Karman. When death comes to us in any one life, the seeds of those causes previously sown by us when alive on Earth, and which have not yet come forth into blossom and full-blown flower and fruit, remain in our interior and invisible parts as impulses lying latent and sleeping, as it were: lying latent like sleeping seeds for future flowerings into action in the next life and in succeeding lives. They are psychological impulse-seeds lying dormant until their appropriate times for awakening into action arrive. In those post-mortem states of the interior parts of us they have no call nor impulse nor attraction to manifest themselves fully for they are not all seeds of that kind; there is in the post-mortem states no physical body appropriate for their coming forth into action and manifestation. Being causal seeds called into being in and through the physical body and its own inferior and interior economy, in those invisible realms in which the psychological nature of us after death lies asleep, of course they cannot manifest themselves. But -- and here is the real point to remember: When the human soul in its post-mortem period of unspeakable bliss and peace has finished its rest-time, its period of the recuperation of its own forces: when it is there fully refreshed as after a long and lovely sleep, and then begins to awaken, as it were, those seeds immediately begin to feel the new state or condition in which they find themselves: they begin to sense the growing tide of vitality from the human soul which is now awakening; they quiver with the incoming tide of impulses arising in and flowing from these very seeds themselves which were sown in the past life and which are now beginning to rise into activity. They, those seeds, themselves then begin to germinate into ever-growing tendencies towards self-expressions. It is this steadily growing tide of awakening lower forces or energies, brought over from the past life and hitherto sleeping in seed-form, which attracts or perhaps pulls the soul downwards into a new earthly incarnation in human flesh.
In this passage it is automatically drawn towards the family on Earth which in its atmosphere and environment is the most akin to its own aggregated total of personal impulses and tendencies and attributes, and thus it is that in this sympathetic field it incarnates itself as a human infant -- i. e., it enters once more a human womb. Once the connexion with the human germ is made -- concerning which one could tell a most fascinating story of esoteric character, but which need find no place here -- from that moment the lower elements of the Reimbodying Soul begin to form and shape, through growth, its body to be. And, once the child is born, and once the days of childhood have passed, the processes of the then developing higher nature within the lower nature imbodied in the physical frame become visible enough to all who have the eyes to see and the mind to observe and to understand. Every man or woman who has examined the psychological processes of his or her own thoughts and feelings, realizes that as the years pass bringing about the changes from childhood to adulthood there is an unceasing and progressive series of inner revelations, the beginnings and enlargements of new understandings, of which the normal human being, if at all of observant character, is often keenly conscious and which he knows to come from within himself and from nowhere else.
It is a matter of some import, at least to those who take a genuine interest in this most fascinating episode in human existence, that the different spiritual, moral, mental, and psychical phases passed through by the human being growing and unfolding from childhood to adulthood, is an analogy and indeed a repetition or reproduction in the small -- the individual man -- of what takes place in the far larger destiny of the Reimbodying Monad as it journeys or peregrinates through time and space, from its first appearance as an un-self-conscious god-spark in the beginning of the Cosmic Manvantara to its present stage or status of self-conscious human being. Indeed, what is known in biological studies of the physiological changes followed by the embryo in its development from germ to child, is again another illustration of the marvelous manner in which Nature follows habits or grooves of action in both the great and in the small.
The thought may occur to the reader after perusing the previous paragraphs, that while the picture thus sketched seems to be logical enough and consistent in its details, it yet seems to leave out what modern biology calls 'heredity.' Yet this supposition, if it do enter into the mind of the reader, arises solely because he has not yet sufficiently grasped the framework of the picture and hence does not realize that what is commonly called 'heredity,' or the supposed transmission from ancestors and parents to children of certain qualities or attributes, physical and otherwise, is not causal but consequential in character. In other words, heredity is no cause whatsoever. The reimbodying entity enters the physiological milieu or environment to which it is most strongly attracted, which is but another way of saying it becomes a child in the family to which its own psycho-mental and vital characteristics draw it most powerfully. Thus 'heredity' is seen to be not a thing in itself, producing as an entity results in the child, but the reimbodying ego in its own constitution possesses certain qualities or attributes which attract it to the family where similar or identic characteristics or attributes are already manifest. Actually therefore, 'heredity,' far from being a causal agent, is merely the continuation of certain types or characters, not passed 'from parent to child' in the usual sense, but continued from parent to child, and such continuance actually is brought about because of the same characteristics and types inhering in or belonging to the reimbodying egos which take birth as children. From the foregoing it seems clear enough that the picture, as outlined in the preceding paragraphs, not only contains the continuing factors in the life-stream which men ignorantly call heredity, but is the natural and truly scientific and philosophical theory which explains what 'heredity' really is.
One sometimes hears men and women who think but by halves, and whose ideas therefore are usually superficial and impulsive, express their disapprobation of the teaching of reincarnation, and say: "My God! am I going to live another life such as the one I now am in? Heaven forefend! I did not put myself here, and heaven knows that I don't want to come back to another such life as this one is!" Well, who put you here, my friend? Somebody else? Then pray tell me who? God, perhaps? Then God is responsible and there is no need for you to struggle any more against the life which you so dislike. According to this idea, God who is omniscient and omnipotent, put you as you are in the life you have, and not only knows all and everything that will happen to you until you die, but deliberately created you, because of his omniscient wisdom and omnipotence, to think and to feel and to do everything that makes your career from birth till death. Hence, ex hypothesi, God is responsible. Since God did it all, it is obvious that God will take it all on his shoulders, and you would do well to compose your soul in patience, and to make the best of it.
According to that theory our supposed Creator made us what we are, created us with a certain amount of force, intellectual and moral, and with certain infallibly consequent impulses, certain yearnings and certain aspirations, and certain appetites; and, being All-Wise, he knew just what we were going to do in every detail, and yet, created us to what -- damnation or heaven? In such case, neither of these could we ourselves have merited or earned, for we were created for one or for the other in divine omniscience and without the slightest choice on our part. This idea the Theosophist rejects entirely, nor is it a doctrine that a sane and well-balanced mind can consider or a logical brain accept. As a theory it is impossible from the standpoint of Philosophy as well as from the standpoint of true Religion; and it is therefore natural that our sense of moral justice and of the innate divine fitness of things should rise in revolt against it.
On the other hand, the Theosophical teaching, which is that of all the past ages, says that every man receives in due course of time throughout duration just what he has builded for himself -- neither more nor less, and that once he learns this sublime truth, and has become convinced of it, he will turn his face towards the rising sun -- which is but a way of saying that he will endeavor to make his life straight and upright; for the sense of moral responsibility will have entered into him and this will guide and control all his future actions. Furthermore, his heart will fill with unquenchable hope because he now knows that what he at present is and has, he himself in the past has earned, and if what he now has and is is small and mean, that he has it in his own power to make it great and sublime: that he can become anything he definitely wills to be in the boundless Universe, for of It he is an integral and therefore inseparable part.
As one life is not long enough, as seems evident enough from what precedes, to allow all the forces, powers, and faculties of the soul to blossom forth into bud and fruit, it is inevitable that man comes again and again to Earth in order that he may bring to a noble consummation his as yet unexhausted aspirations, or, it may be until he has brought to light and overcome all unmanifested tendencies of weaknesses and trouble. When the physical body, tired and worn out, is dropped -- much as we lay aside an old suit of clothing when it is worn out -- the soul then sleeps in unspeakable bliss for a while, takes its rest in roseate happiness, unspoiled by any thought of sorrow or pain. You may call it a dream -- but the sleeper knows not that it is a dream. It is indeed as is a happy dream to the mind of a tired and sleeping man on Earth. He goes to his bed and lays him down and sleeps; and awakes refreshed in the morning-time, and takes up his duties again. Even so does the soul, more strictly and more literally than perhaps the uninstructed reader may imagine, at the end of each physical life.
Just as a man in this present physical body takes up the duties, or follows those attractions, for his own weal or woe as the case may be, which occur to him because of the sum total of his character and his character's impact upon life and environment: even so is the reincarnating ego drawn back to that family, to the mother and father, who give the body to the incoming ego which most closely responds to the vibrating attributes and qualities of the character of the said ego. The reincarnating entity at any birth enters, or more accurately speaking vitalizes or 'overshadows,' a male or a female body in either case by reason of psycho-mental and emotional causes engendered in the last few preceding births on Earth. (319)
Sex is not a radical thing, that is to say it is not something that reaches into the roots of the human constitution, but is the consequences of tendencies and biases which have been built into the structure and fabric of the lower part of the human constitution through a number of lives previously lived. Let us do what little we can to destroy the illusion of the false sex-idea, for in so doing we shall aid in advancing the nobler interests of human happiness and emotional peace. Sex is an effect of former thought-deposits, of emotional and psychical mental tendencies and biases given way to in preceding lives on Earth, so that these tendencies and biases have become, for the time being, relatively strong influences guiding the reimbodying ego to choose, automatically enough, its next reimbodiment on Earth either as a boy-child or as a girl-child; and, as just stated, its originating causes are rooted no deeper in man's constitution than the lower part of the human ego or soul, and therefore are not rooted at all in one of the nobler or higher principles or elements of man's composite constitution.
Usually one or the other sex continues, as a quasi-automatic and relatively unconscious choice of the reincarnating ego, through a few incarnations, and then incarnation in a body of the opposite sex occurs for a certain number of times, the change being action due to a reversal of the biases or tendencies just spoken of. Why and how does this occur? The predominating, and it may perhaps truly be said the main, cause of sex-change in incarnation is strong attraction to the opposite sex during the few -- or in rare cases it may be a fairly large number -- preceding lives on Earth. This attraction, which is the instrumental cause of the tendencies and biases spoken of, arising out of thought and emotional energy, feminizes the life-atoms, or masculinizes them, as the individual case may be; and the natural consequence is incarnation in a body of the sex to which such attraction leads.
But the most manly men, the most womanly women, are they who are attracted the least to the opposite sex. Reference is not here made to cases of sexual degeneracy, which Nature inevitably punishes as violations of one of her fundamental laws. It is the norm, the general rule which in this paragraph is referred to. It is to be hoped that the preceding remark will not be taken amiss by the very large number of human beings, probably composing the majority of the human species, who although understanding and following the attraction of the opposite sex, nevertheless live lives which are more or less successfully controlled by the abstract principles of the moral law innate in the human heart. The idea is, however, that as sex is, when all is said, a physical thing, having its roots in the lower psycho-mental parts of the human constitution, it therefore is not the field wherein flower at their noblest and finest those supremely grand and beautiful attributes of the human being which are rooted in the portions of man's constitution far above any sex-appeal whatsoever, and which really are the ever-flowing fountain of all the inspirations, sense of abstract beauty, impersonal devotion and love, which dignify human life and can even make it godlike.
The field of sex comes in for its appropriate share of this ever-flowing stream from above, but only when the lower passional nature is so well under control that the voice of the divinity within can be heard, and its injunctions and mandates followed. Thus it is that the statement is here repeated that the most manly men and the most womanly women are not those whose attention is largely captured and their emotions enthralled on the field of sex, but they who despite living in bodies of the present character, can rise above these lower fields of human consciousness into the ether of the higher nature. The weakest men and therefore the most unmanly, and the most vacillating women and therefore the most unwomanly, are, it should be obvious from what precedes, just they who are the thralls of the lower parts of the human constitution in the manner above suggested.
Nor should the above be taken in any wise whatsoever as an unfavorable criticism of, and as a philosophical censure of, the proper place which sex plays in human life in man's present evolutionary stage of unfolding development. The truth is quite to the contrary of this; for marriage at the present time, in the case of the majority of men and women, is not only perfectly proper, but is to be recommended, outside of being one of the best safeguards against licentiousness and immorality. The Theosophist is a strong believer in honorable marriage, not only because of the reasons just given, but even more strongly because marriage involves the undertaking of responsibilities and duties and ties of intimacy bringing in their train highly important lessons of self-forgetfulness, and frequently of self-abnegation, in the course of which human character is strengthened, selfishness is undermined, and consideration and unremitting thought for others and desire for their welfare are so continuously instilled into the psychology of men and women as to become habitual and therefore integral portions of character which grows and unfolds the more rapidly thereby.
Finally it may be added, not so much as an after-thought, but in order to round out the framework of the picture, and to fill in some details, that it is the relatively few only who in the present stage of human evolution are able with perfect success deliberately to set aside normal human relations and duties in order to tread the lonely but nevertheless sublime path of chelaship. Yet this is not said in order to discourage anyone from taking the first steps on this sublime path, for anyone can do this whose life is normally decent and upright; but it is said with an eye to those somewhat unstable minds who imagine that a forced celibacy of the body, although the mind may be a cesspool of infamous propensities, is either admirable or to be commended or recommended.
These first steps on the glorious path of chelaship, discipleship, can, as just stated, be taken by anyone, and consist in inner purification, involving both heart and mind, and in cleansing the Augean Stables of the filth, mental or emotional or psychical, which encrusts man's lower mental-passional constitution. It is not the celibate in body whose mind is befouled with evil dreams of sense who is following the path, but the man or woman in whatever station in life, who with vigorous will and rigorous training, takes himself or herself strongly in hand, and begins to do so by rendering the strictest meed of kindliest justice and consideration to those with whom he or she may have ties of honor or duty or bonds of moral obligation of whatever kind.
Strong affection and strong antipathy as well, are psycho-magnetic forces whose play can have a wide range over the lower part of the human constitution, and can sway powerfully the man or woman in whom they exist either to his future well-being, or to his future undoing. It is a psychological singularity, so to speak, that it is as possible for a man to take the downward path through his misdirected affections, as it is for him to follow that path by subordinating his will and his mind to inner strong antipathies to which the man gives residence within him. It was a wise man, and a profound in his understanding, who first said that love and antipathy are fundamentally the same thing, but polarized to pursue different directions. Antipathy or hate is not always repulsive or repellent in its type of action and consequential results, but seems to have as mysterious an aggregating or attractive power as love -- of which hate or antipathy is the nether pole. The analogy of electricity or magnetism with its two poles may probably illustrate the fact.
Consequently, where either love or hate persists over the gap of death, as in virtually every case it does so persist, the karmic causes set up in either event reunite or rejoin those who originally experienced these contrasted feelings, and then they inevitably meet again in later lives; and if either the one or the other feeling has been very strong, incarnation of both individuals in the same family may very readily take place, and in fact often does so. Cases of brothers and sisters, or of brothers and brothers, or of sisters and sisters, and even of parents and children, who are 'inexplicably' antipathetic to each other, are sufficiently common to receive universal recognition; though it is probably the case that they are more uncommon than are the cases of the most admirable brotherly and sisterly friendship and sympathy.
The above passage gives but a single instance of how the especial operation of Nature called 'reimbodiment' works. But what is said as regards causes and their fruitions applies equally well to all cases in connexion with reincarnational rebirth. Man hungers or thirsts for things, he aspires towards things, he yearns for things, be they high or be they low; and he thereby sets in operation natural forces, not only in his own constitution pre-eminently, but likewise in his surrounding environment, which will not be, indeed cannot be, frustrated nor completely gainsaid; for man himself, his whole being, is inwrapped in the Nature which surrounds him, and he can no more escape his destiny -- the destiny which he himself has builded for himself, step by step, through many previous lives -- than can the planets of the solar system escape from the gripping control of their central sun.
Thus it is these inseparable bonds with Nature, and the many intricate strands of destiny, that man, like the spider making her web, weaves around himself in and through his environment, which make his own Web of Destiny as explained in previous chapters; and which thus circumscribe or limit the spheres of action and the fields of performance in which the Monad is bound for the time, and which likewise therefore bring about its return to repetitive rebirths on Earth.
Some people have been known to say: "I don't like the idea of reincarnation, as you Theosophists teach it. It does not seem to me to be true." Ask them why. The answer almost invariably is, among other equally trite and baseless objections: "Because I don't remember my past lives." But why should anyone remember his past lives? Or again, how could anyone remember the details of his past lives? We might well ask such people: "Do you in even this life remember when you first became conscious? Do you remember when you first ate a complete meal and abandoned the nursing bottle and pap? Do you even remember what happened to you this morning so that you can recall the details of it all and in their proper order? Do you remember what happened on this day of the month one year ago? Do you remember on what day Frederick the Great of Prussia died; or on what day Napoleon sailed for St. Helena? Do you remember when Julius Caesar was born or when Antony died? Do you remember the date of the Battle of the Brandywine?"
If the argument of 'not remembering' is worth anything as used against the fact of reincarnation, then the same rule holds good here, and because we do not remember it, therefore none of these people ever did any such things as those just pointed to: one of them was never born; two of them never died; the questioner never was first conscious, nor did he ever have a time when he ate his first full meal because he doesn't remember it! The argument is worthless because trivial and superficial, and because it never works when tested. Add to this the obvious fact that in each new body there is a new physical brain, which is the instrument of physical memory, and in consequence must be trained in each new incarnation. It is clear that it is no argument to allege against previous existence that the brain does not remember things which took place before it existed, for the simple reason that it was not there to remember what took place. None the less memory does inhere in the interior structure and fabric of the Reimbodying Ego -- and the present writer goes so far as to say that it is possible, although excessively difficult, to dislodge from the strata of consciousness not only past events in their large or general aspect, but likewise in their minute and particular details. But this, very, very fortunately for the vast mass of human beings, is something they cannot do; for one ventures to assert without fear of falling foul of fact, that could one look back into his past lives and see the horrors and wretchednesses, the miseries and crimes, the despairs, the agonies of heart and mind, and so forth, one would shrink from the revelation as from a glimpse into hell, despite the fact that one would certainly likewise find things of great beauty, deeds of high nobility and daring, instances of glorious self-abnegation, and all else which has beautified and made sublime the lives of the past. No one who really knows what 'looking into one's past incarnations' signifies would ever yearn to do so, but would bless his natal star that before birth he passed through the River of Lethe, of blessed oblivion, and is no longer haunted by the gibbering ghosts of evil memories of an ignoble past. Were the corridors of memory to be thrown wide and could one pass through them backwards, there is little doubt that the revelations that the unfortunate investigator of his own past would find, would likely drive him into a madhouse. As one of the Great Brotherhood, the blessed Master K. H., once said in substance: There are those who can look into their past. I for one do not care to do so. (320)
Consider a child's mind, how it develops from infancy through childhood, youth, and manhood. At each stage it acquires new powers and faculties, and takes on new outlooks; and at all stages of this developing or unfolding growth it remembers and then straightway forgets a vast number of things that made no impression of importance on the mind, although the entity passed through them and perhaps suffered from them, or indeed had joy in them. Nevertheless, it is only right to state here that somewhere in the inner constitution of the man everything has been indelibly recorded, yea, even to the minutest details that the eye took in, that the ear heard, that the touch sensed, that the body felt, that the nose or tongue experienced. In the indelible record of the inner constitution nothing is lost. How solemn and indeed thought-provoking a picture this fact lays before us!
A very striking proof, among a number of others that might be cited, that individuality persists through complete loss of memory of personal identity lasting over an indefinite period, occurs in those highly pathetic cases of psychological amnesia. In these cases a man suddenly suffers complete loss of personal memory and indeed of his real identity; he walks into a police-station, or elsewhere, and says that he finds himself in a strange city, walking streets entirely new to him, and that he has no idea where he is or who he is. The newspapers frequently report cases of this kind. Then, after a lapse of time more or less long, lasting for a few hours, days, months, or even years, memory returns perhaps as suddenly as it had left the sufferer, and he finds himself, it may be, in extremely embarrassing situations: perhaps now married to a woman other than his wife; perhaps with a flourishing business or profession; and so forth. According to the 'Don't remember my past lives' theory, such a man never had his former life; he never was his former self; and simply because he has completely forgotten all such events, due to his strange and pitiful malady. This is well worth pondering over; and it is recommended to those who fancy that there is some foundation of reason or of argument in the 'don't remember' idea to give some thought to this matter.
But, furthermore, the argument in objection is otherwise not true: as a matter of fact we do remember, but in generals rather than in particulars; and this, in fact, is also usually the case in any one life in the flesh, as has been shown. We remember the things that have most impressed themselves upon our consciousness in a lifetime: those things which have stamped themselves into our character and which have thus molded it: which have so ingrained themselves on the tablets of the memory, of the mind, of the soul -- call it what you like -- that they have remained with us as indelible and operative facts and functions of consciousness. Our love of truth, even, is the reminiscence or memory of knowledge gained in former lives, albeit such memory be at the time unconscious.
Tennyson, the English poet, wrote a sonnet in his early life, which for some unknown reason is usually omitted from the later editions of his works.
As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more.
So that we say, "All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where."
So, friend, when first I looked upon your face,
Our thoughts gave answer each to each so true --
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each --
That tho' I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either's heart and speech. (321)
Yes, this is one of the things that we consciously bring back with us -- love, recognition of spiritual sympathies, and further, that which is the root of all these, CHARACTER.
FOOTNOTES:
316. The same profoundly mystical and beautiful idea has been grasped at various times and in all countries by intuitive and thoughtful minds. John of the Christians, for instance, in the First Epistle attributed to him, ch. iv, vv. 7-8, has the following:
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of the Divine; and everyone that loveth is born of the Divine, and knoweth the Divine.
"He that loveth not knoweth not the Divine; for the Divine is love."
Or again, the English poet, Spenser, in his An Hymne of Heavenly Love, sang:
"That High Eternall Powre, which now doth move
In all things, mov'd in it selfe by love." (317. The idea is familiar to Western minds, but unfortunately its familiarity, because of lack of understanding it, seems to have brought about a modicum of contempt -- "familiarity breeds contempt." Yet there is no lesson in life that the entire Western World so sorely needs as this: that retributive justice is of the very essence of Cosmic Being; and it is this which accounts for the marvelous order and symmetry and regularity and harmony of structure evident throughout Universal Nature; so that however successful a man may at any time be in apparently escaping the retributive consequences of his evil doing, sooner or later by Nature's automatic habit he will be brought face to face with the living ghosts of what he now thinks is his dead past, and he will be obliged despite himself, consciously or unconsciously, to make amends to the full.Paul of the Christians, as his words have been recorded in the Epistle to the Galatians ascribed to him, spoke truly: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (vi, 7) (318. Ch. i, sl. 1. (319. Perhaps here is as good a place as could be found to state that sex for and in human beings is a transitory evolutionary event in the destiny of the reimbodying ego; primeval humanity was sexless, and humanity of the far future on this Earth will become sexless again, after traversing intermediate stages. (320. To the question asked by Mr. Sinnett: "Have you the power of looking back to the former lives of persons now living, and identifying them?" the Master K. H. answers: "Unfortunately, some of us have. I, for one do not like to exercise it." -- The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 145 (321. Early Sonnets, I. (