Theosophical University Press Online Edition
Character -- that sum-total of a soul, which is not merely the thoughts that ever it had, and the emotions under which it ever worked, and the source of all the deeds both good and ill that ever it did: character is something more than all these. Reference is not here made so much to the etymological or historical use of this word 'character,' but rather to that essential thing or being of which it is one of the most precise names. This something other is the inner flow of a spiritual life, a stream of consciousness, which it is more customary, when considered as an individual, to figurate forth in speech as a center, or force, from which emanate the original motives resulting in action, as well as the intelligence, consciousness, and moral impulses, which are component parts or rather aspects of the 'stream' just spoken of. Hence, the 'character' of a being or entity is that being or entity's self, visible to the inner eye of inspection as dual in manifestation but unitary in essence: the essential stream of consciousness, and the composite fabric of thought and emotion and consequent impulse born or evoked as reactions from the impact of the forces of the essential center upon the environing universe in which it lives and moves and has its being, and, as so often said in these pages, of which it is an integral and therefore inseparable portion.
Using the word character, however, in the more limited sense, which likewise is more familiar, as signifying the color of individuality which manifestation evokes from the essential self, and which therefore makes one being or entity 'characteristically' different from some other being or entity, it becomes evident enough that 'character' thus used, is psychologically located in the evolved products of experience which form the web and woof of the manifesting Monad, and therefore very largely is the aggregated karmic consequences of past lives. Thus it is that not even two trees in all the forests and woods of the earth are identic, for each one has its color of individuality which distinguishes it from all other trees, and even from all others of its own nearest biological relatives; nay, not even two leaves of any single tree are absolutely identic -- obviously, for if they were identic they would not be two leaves but one leaf. Every tree, or every plant, or every beast, indeed every atom or even molecule has its own 'character' in this sense of the word, precisely as man has his 'character' which 'character' distinguishes him from all other men. In all these cases this 'character' is the karman of the man's or entity's past; so that in very truth a man is his own karman -- i. e., the aggregate, karmic composite of the consequences of all his past lives and existences. Exactly the same thing may be said of all other beings and entities in the Universe, high or low, great or small, relatively evolved or relatively unevolved.
The great Greek, Plato, was absolutely right in ascribing all knowledge, all wisdom, all innate learning, to reminiscence, re-collection, re-remembering, of the things that we did, the thoughts that we had, and of the things both ideal and material that we made a part of ourselves in other lives, and which thus have become parts of our very soul -- that is to say, parts of our particular character. These memories we bring over with us from previous lives in a general form as our character; for the character of a man actually is composed of, or more accurately is, the source of all his capacities, talents, genius, aptitudes, tendencies, likes, dislikes, loves, hatreds, instincts, attractions, and repugnances.
Now let us ask ourselves the very pertinent question in this connexion: Whence came all these elements of our character? Did they just happen to be because we were born? What kind of argument is this 'just-happened-so' argument? Are we children who have not yet learned to think, or to be conscious of our own psycho-mental processes, that we are to be put off by side-stepping balderdash of that sort? Such things do not 'just happen'; and to say that they do is no explanation at all, and is simply repeating in other words the fact which we already know and of which we demand an explanation. An 'explanation' which merely repeats in other words what we already know in one form of words is simply a confession of ignorance; and we again ask whence came all these biases, tendencies, and attributes of character? Certainly they did not 'just happen,' for the very reason that we live in a world of order, of strict causational activity by which consequences follow upon previous originating causes: in which chain, act follows act in an endless concatenation of causation throughout eternity: one thing producing another thing endlessly, and, in the case of the human being, as strongly and ineluctably as in the cases of all other entities and things.
It is the working of this chain of causation which brings about the building of character, or, expressed far more accurately, the evolution or unfolding or flowing out -- emanation -- of the inmost forces or impulses of one's spirit-soul seeking always new outlets for further expansion in ever-renewed fields of life. It is the aggregate in consequences or results of these powers or forces or impulsive drives which forms what we call character. Character is thus seen to be a growing thing, which manifests itself through biases and tendencies and attributes: through our talents, innate capacities, our genius, our aptitudes, our leanings, our proclivities.
Nothing is so common in human experience as the differences among the men and women whom we know regarding their individual characters -- otherwise their capacities and idiosyncracies, strength and weakness, etc. These are well recognised facts; but how did they arise? Whence came they? We observe again the vast differences existing in the varied conditions of human life that our fellow human beings are born into and become more or less subjected to. One child is born 'with a golden spoon in his mouth,' as the saying goes; another is born to struggle bitterly for a bare livelihood from youth, until death gives him peace and repose; and yet the latter man, so far as the real soul-qualities go, may be and often is the better man by far of the two.
Each one of us humans is following that particular line of life, that particular path of evolution, which for him is necessitated by the directing influences of the entire aggregate collection of all qualities and tendencies gleaned out of his former incarnations and massed together today, as his present character, around the Monadic Self which is the center or core of his being.
As far as concerns those whose life contains more than seems just of sorrow and struggle, we are right to say that these difficulties and causes of suffering are due to, and therefore traceable back to, their own faults of thought and feeling and action in their past incarnations. Deliberate perversity of will, or indifference to the moral law, or neglect of proper exercise of one's other faculties, in those former lives left streaks of imperfection, so to say, in their respective characters; and when they now reincarnate, these karmic results inevitably manifest themselves in the form of imperfections of understanding or of restricted capacity, which infallibly eventuate in bringing about periods of misfortune or of sorrow or of pain.
Yet Nature is fundamentally kindly, for her Heart is Compassion absolute. The whole tendency and urge of Life is a constant pressure to betterment, leading to ultimate if indeed relative perfection through evolution, in the sense of the rolling out or unfolding or emanational manifestation of powers and faculties and attributes inherent and hitherto latent in the Reimbodying Monad. Nature thus gives to us, through the repeated incarnations which follow each other in regular serial order, innumerable chances to learn better and to perfect ourselves by our mistakes and misdeeds, and therefore to round out our characters for a truly glorious future in aeons to come. Life is indeed a Cosmic School wherein we are constantly learning.
Let it be remembered also that it is by no means the poor, or even those who suffer, who are necessarily the most unfortunate in the long run. A child born with a treasure-house of capacity, of talent, or of genius, in its spirit-soul, and possessing therefore a character guided by luminous thought and urged on by noble aspiration, has something which a man less great knows nothing of, although the less great man may be more of a pampered child of fortune, physically speaking, than the former is. This former has something real and of unspeakable value to fall back upon despite whatever trials and pain and grief may come upon him, and that something -- is himself! He has ineffable treasures lying ready for use in his own soul-essence, which may be drawn upon almost at his will. On the other hand, what is popularly called a fortunate life from the standpoint of material prosperity may indeed not be a particularly good thing for a weak soul in view of the almost unending series of opportunities that temptation opens for his going downwards or backwards on life's pathway. In the next incarnation, or in some future one, the chain of causation, of effect following cause in this endless line of concatenated consequences, will lead that weak soul into incarnations to which its degenerate attractions may draw it, and almost infallibly will so draw it. Such a soul, if it has neglected its chances and abused its opportunities, must suffer worse than the other one who forms the contrast in the present picture, and who, on the proper turn of the Wheel of Life, may find himself incarnated into the most fortunate physical environment and 'blessed' with material circumstances the most physically pleasing and seductive.
Nature makes no fundamental or radical mistakes. Reincarnation, all things being properly considered, is but the ineluctable karmic result or consequence of a balancing of the forces in the constitution of human beings, and strictly according to the larger laws governing the rises and falls of the scales of cosmic justice. We sow, and we reap finally just exactly what we have sown; and the reason why a cause set in motion in one life may not manifest in that life, nor perhaps in the next life, is simply that no opening has yet occurred through which such causal impulses may eventuate in characteristic consequential action; but that cause infallibly will rush forth into manifestation as karmic consequences just as soon as the door of expression is opened for it so to do. Thus it is that causes may lie latent in the man's character for one life or two lives or three or even a dozen or more lives, before they find their proper field of manifestation in self-expression.
Men and women of our day, and of the Occidental world especially, unused to introspection in the true sense, seem to think that only the things which have relation to the physical senses of the body are the things which are of real value. But in reality they are the least in real values; and everyone of normal mind, knows it perfectly well, by instinct if not otherwise. What is a dollar in comparison with an idea? What is the poet and where does he stand; and what is the money-grubber, and where does he stand? Which of the twain moves the more powerfully in and upon his environment and indeed upon the world? Nor is this last comparison brought forth in any wise to cast any unfairly adverse reflexion whatsoever upon the honest and proper accumulation of this world's goods, provided that such accumulated wealth be used for high purposes and is not prostituted to evil or merely selfish doing.
Who is the philosopher? Who is the Savior and who is the Revealer? Are they men and women who have lost themselves in the mad whirl of the physical life? Or are they men and women who react positively against the madding swirl of physical existence, and thus make a mark upon the world because of and from the indomitable genius that lives and works within them and through them?
The great men, the great women, are always they who have lived the inner life and who have drunk of the Pierian springs of the Spirit-drinking from the inexhaustible fountains of experience gained in almost innumerable past lives on this globe and in other Spheres and Worlds. Character is in its essence the Self, or perhaps, more accurately stated, it is the clothing which the Self weaves around itself, partly composite of the essence of the Self, and partly of the robes of experience and knowledge garnered in former lives. Character in its manifestation in earth-life is thus, at least in part, that which is evolved forth from the Self and in part the treasury of knowledge and experience. This unfolding growth is the flowing forth into active manifestation of the powers and attributes of the spirit, and this manifestation becomes fixed and rendered permanent because of the building or composition of inner and invisible vehicles in the human constitution which in their aggregate are man's psychological or psycho-mental nature. This nature or character, expresses itself through the physical brain, and the physical brain reacts automatically and instinctively to the powers, to the urge, to the drive, of the impulses and incitings from the invisible psychological nature flowing from within forth into self-expression.
The intuitive reader should have by now some general idea not only of the elements working in man's constitution to produce rebirth, but likewise of the incessantly active causes brought over from preceding births which bring about new reimbodiments on account of their never-dying urge or impulse to self-expression. However, in order properly to understand more clearly the teaching as to how man is born and repetitively reborn, one should have at least some knowledge as to just what comes back into manifested physical life on this earth. It is not the 'spark' or center of Divinity (which is the spiritual Monadic Essence of the man's constitution) which, without intermediate vehicles or sheaths or garments of consciousness, incarnates in human flesh. This is impossible, for such a solution of continuity between the spiritual and the coarse flesh and blood would be too great a gap; intermediaries are needed; intermediate and transmitting factors are required in order to 'step down' the tremendous Fire of the Spirit so that it may reach by means of its emanated ray the physical brain and body. Furthermore, such fleshly experience the Divine Spark needs not; for it soars, it flies, high above such lowly conditions, which it had evolved through in far-past, long bygone, aeons of evolutionary cyclings in matter in order to become what it now is as an unfolded Monad. The divine spark remains for ever in its own sphere of utter consciousness and bliss, of ineffable light and power. Yet it is the essential core of us, the heart of us, our divine root; which means that each and every man is in his inmost parts illuminated by such an individual Monad: so many Monads in heaven, so many men on earth. It needs no earthly experience, for in all such things it is in itself fully omniscient, and stands aloof from and unattracted by all such phases of gross matter as our Earth contains. Nature makes no useless and foolish gestures. It would be like saying to the Sun: "Come to Earth, and take up your abode here."
Nor, obviously, is it the physical body which reincarnates,(322) for this body is but the instrument, the vehicle, the carriage, the bearer, the organ as it were, through which the reincarnating entity expresses itself on this physical plane and on this Earth; and, moreover, at the end of the last life the then body broke up into its component parts.
There are, as already stated, between the divine-spiritual Monad and the physical body, a number of intermediate portions or planes of the human constitution, and each one of these intermediate planes has its own particular quality, and its characteristic faculties and powers. Each such intermediate plane is the field of manifestation of one of man's consciousness-centers or monadic 'principles.' These powers and energies and faculties manifest themselves as thought, intuition, inspiration, emotions, loves, hates, pride, selfish impulses, desires, and many more such, differing among themselves as noble or ignoble, according as they are high or low; or rather, according as they spring forth from the spiritual or the astral-physical and lower intermediate principles.
To be exact, it is a certain part of this intermediate nature, itself compound, which we may briefly call the psychological nature, which reincarnates or reimbodies itself in human flesh in life after life; for it is the fountain whence springs into self-conscious functioning what is popularly called the 'personal entity,' which takes up again in the new physical body the threads of its destiny on this Earth, these threads having been dropped or rather indrawn at the death of the preceding physical frame in the last past life. In each new incarnation, this learning psychological entity meets and learns the lessons which in future will make it grander and greater and nobler in type.
How long is it before the reincarnating entity returns to this Earth for its new incarnational imbodiment here? It depends upon a number of circumstances or rather factors; it depends not on chance at all, for chance is non-existent; but it does depend on certain 'laws,' to use the popular term. The average length of human life, taking the number of human beings at any time existent on our globe as between 1,800,000,000 and 2,000,000,000, is about fifteen years. This is an average, and based on the law of averages, although no claim is made that it is exact or strictly accurate. Babies who die by the hundreds of thousands, and men and women who live to be very aged, more or less balance each other as regards averages. Taking account of accidents and what not, diseases and what not: in short, death from all its various causes, such as wars, epidemics, etc., and striking the average which includes the entire range of human society everywhere, it is probably correct enough to state that this 'average' comes to about fifteen years in our present age.
There is a law or rule in Occultism, based entirely on the operations of Nature, that the human being does not normally reincarnate under one hundred times the number of years that the said human being has last lived on Earth. This law or rule is imperfectly known to the main body of Theosophical students; it seems to be correctly understood only by the few. Taking then the 'average' of human life in the present age as being of fifteen years' duration only, and multiplying this by one hundred, we see that the average period of time between death and the next rebirth on Earth is fifteen hundred years -- as just stated, fifteen multiplied by the constant one hundred.(323)
It may seem strange to many, and especially to the most thoughtful minds, that there should be such a great difference between the relatively small amount of time spent by a man in earth-life on the one hand, and the much larger time-period he passes in the invisible worlds between earth-lives, especially so when one remembers that the periods of Universal or Cosmic Day and Night, or respectively Manvantara and Pralaya, are said to be more or less exactly equal; nevertheless the analogy is perfect if one knows how to apply it to the case in point. When we speak of Manvantara and Pralaya we speak in intention of visible and physical things; but when we come to consider a man as a manifestation we are reminded of the strange paradox that a man as an evolving soul is more highly evolved or unfolded than is the Earth on which he lives. Therefore, albeit in his own smaller consciousness-sphere, more than does the spirit of the Earth does a man have dreams of beauty, yearnings of unevolved selflessness, hopes cherished through years and years of earth-life, and all too often disappointed wonderful dreams and intuitions of spiritual and intellectual sublimity which no human earth-life is long enough to bring to fulfilment. Consequently, with these spiritual aspirations and intellectual longings filling his being, he requires, according to Nature's law or habit, a longer time of rest and recuperation, of unfettered spiritual-mental activity in which to give them a chance for flowering -- however mayavi or illusory such flowerings may be in themselves. They are very real and intensely 'felt' by the ego in whose consciousness these dreams take place.
For such is what the Devachan really is: a period of spiritual and loftily intellectual flowering of inhibited energies, producing their effect on the fabric of character of the dreaming entity which experiences them and who, indeed, thus 'assimilates' and 'digests' them. Thus it is that in the Devachan character is more strongly molded or modified by reason of these spiritual and intellectual expansions of consciousness than even in the earth-life, which thus is seen to be a 'world of causes,' while the Devachan is a 'world of effects.'
In a solar system, for instance in its manvantara and pralaya, the Cosmic Day equals the Cosmic Night; for here we deal in intention with physical things in which the scales are balanced. This statement is in no wise intended to convey the idea that the Cosmic Universe or Solar System has no spiritual or invisible parts or portions, for the exact and precise contrary of this is the truth. What is here alluded to is the distinction made between the Cosmic Day and the Cosmic Night on the one hand, and the life-periods of the entire human constitution, on the other hand, with its spiritual and intellectual nature immensely more evolved or unfolded than man's physical body is.
Our human 'day,' our earth-life, is, in the case of the average human being, so filled with spiritual yearnings and intellectual aspirations and longings for beauty and peace and love and knowledge and wisdom, that no lifetime on Earth is in any sense long enough to bring them to fulfilment on earth; but because they are intense spiritual and intellectual forces seeking their respective expressions in function and action, and usually thwarted in so doing, we have the openings for these expressions in the rest-time after human death, in the Devachan. For the Devachan is an illusory fulfilment -- yet extremely real to the entity who experiences them -- of all things of sublimity and of beauty and of grandeur that the earth-life just lived could not bring to pass. It takes a long time to fulfil these aspirations and longings even in the consciousness of dreams. Yet it is a matter of importance to note and to remember that it is just these things, these aspirations and longings, originally born of our earth-life, and which therefore psycho-magnetically are connected with our earth-life, that attract and thus bring the incarnating Ego back to Earth when its devachanic dream-period is ended; in other words, it is just these things originally born out of the experiences of our earth-life which attract us back to Earth.
These aspirations and longings, as already stated, can never be fulfilled in any one earth-life, nor indeed in a series of such. It is impossible. But when we recollect that the continuity of consciousness is unbroken always, because man essentially is a stream or flow of consciousness, and that objective consciousness occurs to us at periodical intervals when we come back to earth and take unto ourselves again a human body, then it is clear that these aspirations and longings and yearnings and hopes, however much they may have been fulfilled or partially fulfilled in the Devachan, return with us each time, as it were with a little more chance of fulfilment, each time somewhat better understood. As we look forward into the future, and when we remember how these reimbodiments of the Ego will continue as long as our Planetary Chain endures in the present Manvantara, we realize more clearly that we shall return to Earth hundreds and hundreds of times, and that at each return, if our karman permit, we are better fitted, readier, stronger, to make these aspirations and spiritual and intellectual longings more intimate parts of the fabric of our being, to imbody them in the unrolling of time into our character, which thus steadily is improved and ennobled as the aeons pass.
Yet one must add this: What we humans look upon as so dear, so sweet and beautiful, are very imperfect when compared with the aspirations, with the ideals, with the yearnings, with the longings and inspirations and intuitions of sublimity and of grandeur and of beauty, that the gods have. The aspirations and longings of a savage, for instance, who lives in primitive fashion upon the easily gathered fruits of the earth and on the products of the chase, and who drinks as a luxury, when he can, his tin of stolen train-oil: the dreams and yearnings and aspirations that the untutored savage has -- how imperfect they seem to us more civilized humans! But yet to him they are very real. The truth is that in time we outgrow even our quondam highest, and our quondam highest are replaced in our hearts and minds by other things sweeter far, grander, sublimer in every way. The yearnings of the little child at its mother's knee seem to us infantile, but how real they are to the little one! Grownups forget sometimes that little children feel keenly, and that they have their yearnings and hopes and aspirations and loves, which are all the keener because they are so frequently unexpressed. They do not know how to express them to the often dull ears and uncomprehending minds of father and mother. To the father and the mother the child's aspirations or hopes or yearnings or dreams of beauty and glory are small and unimportant. It is a matter of relative values.
So it is with us humans. The things that we hold so dear and cherish so greatly, in the eyes of Beings far more advanced in evolution than we are, seem very unimportant -- nay, even trivial; and it is good that we should recognise this fact because in it is great consolation. When a man realizes that the things which he has not and which he yearns to have, and which make him unhappy because he has them not, are after all of relatively small importance, the realization changes greatly his outlook on life; and he gains a new perspective of intrinsic values. There is real spiritual beauty in this thought, and it contains true comfort, the while it instills into his being greater kindliness towards others -- a kindliness born of a greater understanding. Such realization makes him sympathetic with those who suffer, kindlier towards those in pain, because he is now illumined by a more understanding heart.
Indeed it may even be said that our highest and sublimest dreams do not ever come true, because in the process of realization they continually expand and evolve to something grander and higher still. How often is this fact illustrated in the case of the growing child, who when a lad, no longer hankers after the things of the nursery, and who when a man puts aside the things of youth.
In the preceding paragraphs a good deal has been written about the higher sort or kind of human beings, spiritually and intellectually speaking, and the nature of their succeeding devachanic period; but relatively little has been written with regard to the post-mortem destiny of human beings who are of more gross and materialistic type, whether in thought or in feelings and emotional impulses. The higher a human being stands in the evolutionary scale, the longer the Devachan is, as a rule; whereas the more grossly material the human being is, the shorter is his Devachan. Thus it happens that grossly-minded human beings reincarnate very quickly, relatively speaking; and, as just stated, spiritually-minded human beings remain much longer in the invisible worlds. Why? Because their souls are native there, and their larger spiritual awakening makes them feel more strongly their affinity with those worlds. This gross material sphere in which our earth-life is, is in a sense a foreign country to their souls. It has little attraction for the spiritually-minded man; but the case is the opposite for the grossly-minded one. For, just as a man in any one incarnation on Earth lives a life more or less fully directed and controlled by the karman of that man, thus fixing a term to that life within reasonable bounds of variation, just so after death is the devachanic period limited or lengthened by the karman of the earth-life just lived, conjoined with the remaining karman, unexpended, of previous lives. If the individual has been of lofty spiritual character, one whose idealistic yearnings have not, while in earth-life, received more than a modicum of fulfilment: if there are yearnings and hopes of a spiritual kind to which the last incarnation gave no full opportunity for expression, then the high probability is, as already explained, that the devachanic interlude will be a long one before the next rebirth on Earth. If on the contrary, the man during the last incarnation has lived a grossly material life, or an evil life, in either case a life enwrapped in the things of this material sphere: if he hungers after sensation and after more sensation, craving for it and longing for it, until the craving becomes a very disease of the soul: then the attraction of this material sphere on the excarnate devachanic entity will be a very strong one; and, therefore, just as soon as the small portion of spiritual yearnings and unfulfilled spiritual hopes has been satisfied, i. e., when their energy has been expended in the Devachan, then will the strong attraction earthwards prevail. In such cases the devachanic period is a very short one.
A man like Plato might pass (did not other conditions enter into the problem to complicate it) many thousands of years in the Devachan. Contrariwise, a character working evil in the world and upon his fellows, like some of the unfortunate and degenerate criminals whom we sometimes read about, and if not an absolutely soulless entity,(324) would have a Devachan of exceedingly short duration. As a matter of fact, the average man is neither very lofty, spiritually and intellectually speaking, nor very grossly material. He is average; and the consequence is that the multitude of men, the great majority of men, have a period of devachanic existence which we may call of medium length. An averagely good man, who has lived to old age -- let us say eighty-five years -- a man with averagely fine inspirations and noble and beautiful thoughts and unsatisfied spiritual yearnings, will remain for thousands of years in the invisible realms of life, according to the rule above stated: therefore some eighty-five times one hundred -- eighty-five hundred years. A man who dies at the age of forty, and who is a man of the same general type as the one just spoken of, may pass four thousand years more or less in the invisible realms before he returns to Earth. Yet, as stated with some emphasis in previous pages, this rule should not be applied in too rigid and iron-clad a manner. The cases of men vary enormously, when they are considered as individuals, with very complicate and intricate karman in each case; so that while the rule is true when applied to statistical averages, it may be very greatly modified, and almost certainly will be, where individuals are concerned.
In addition to the foregoing types, there are also what in old-fashioned times it was customary to speak of as the very saintly men; and beyond these again, men of still higher spiritual and evolutionary rank -- the truly Great Ones and the very great ones, the Buddhas and the Christs. These last are so highly evolved, or spiritually unfolded, that they do not need, as do all less men, the post-mortem rest and peace and period of recuperative assimilation of the lessons and experiences of the life last past. Hence it is that the post-mortem destiny of this last class, or of the last two classes, is different from that of the bulk of mankind. They return quickly to Earth as a rule, and do so solely at their own wish and obeying their own will, and motivated by a holy desire to help the evolutionary progress of their fellow-men who are less evolved than they. For when we analyse the devachanic state closely, and thus arrive at some really clear idea of what it is and what it means, we must come to recognise that, however beautiful and spiritual it may be, and however much of a true rest and opportunity for recuperation it is, it nevertheless is a state of spiritual isolation for the time being, and therefore is, essentially at least, a selfish state. Yet for the great majority of human beings the Devachan is a necessary spiritual interlude in the present stage of average human evolution, and this is so precisely because it is a period of recuperation and undisturbed peace in which occurs a rebuilding of the inner substance of the constitution through the assimilation and 'digestion' of the experiences of the life just closed. Granting all this, nevertheless it is essentially a selfish existence because so wholly isolated from surrounding life and the individual existence of other beings. For the hundreds or perhaps thousands of years that are passed in the Devachan, the devachanic entities are immersed in roseate dreams of ineffable happiness and peace, and the world left behind may be going to perdition, nor do the entities in Devachan know it or care about it. If they did know it and did care about it, this would introduce unspeakable distress and misery into the condition, which is de facto an utter impossibility, for then it would no longer be the Devachan.
Now such is not the condition or state of mind or of spirit of the glorious Buddhas of Compassion, whose whole being, both collectively as a hierarchy and as individuals of that hierarchy, is devoted in utter and purely unselfish service to the benefit and forward progress of all other beings irrespective of type, evolutionary grade, or spiritual and moral standing. Thus it is, as this comparison shows clearly enough, that it is love, impersonal love, which loves all things both great and small, that will free us even from the glorious dreams of the Devachan; and it is just this spirit of impersonal love, love for all beings and things, a yearning to help all, without distinction and yet entirely in accordance with Cosmic Law and Harmony, which is the very core of the spirit ruling the Buddhas of Compassion.
The time is coming in the far, far, distant future, as the revolving ages bring forth their secrets, in evolution and otherwise, when human beings as a body will have so greatly unfolded the spiritual attributes and powers and faculties which now lie latent within most of them, that all mankind will then have evolved into or become exemplars of the spirit which rules the hierarchy of the Buddhas of Compassion; which is but another way of saying that in those distant times of the future all mankind will have become themselves Buddhas of Compassion, albeit occupying necessarily differing grades or stages in that sublime hierarchy. It is towards this great consummation of evolution that humanity is steadily marching, although quite unconsciously to itself in our own materialistic times; yet not unconsciously so, as far as the Mahatmans and their chelas or disciples are concerned. In the Great Brotherhood, as exemplified in the lives and teaching of its members, the same spirit lives and works that guides and controls the Hierarchy of Compassion; for the Great Brotherhood is the representative on this earth of this Hierarchy. Therefore the training of the chelas or disciples of the Masters or Mahatmans is one which is deliberately framed and pursued in order to stimulate, as far as it is possible under karmic law so to do, the spiritual and intellectual faculties and instincts of the chelas or disciples so that they may run the evolutionary race more rapidly than the average of mankind, and thus reach the Great Goal, or at least come more rapidly towards its initial stages, than do or can the great majority of mankind, who are not yet sufficiently awakened, spiritually, morally, or intellectually, even to care for what to the chela or disciple becomes the consummation of all his loftiest dreams and highest hopes.
One of the methods of this training is an endeavor to bring about at least the shortening of the devachanic period so that, outside of all other factors in the situation, more time may be gained by the chela or disciple in actual self-conscious striving and beneficent activity, which it is obvious becomes impossible of accomplishment when the Reimbodying Ego is immersed or engulfed in the inexpressibly happy dreams of the Devachan.
Thus it is that for a certain number of lives the chela or disciple does everything in his power, under the guidance and instruction and help of his teacher, in order to shorten the period of devachanic rest, and he does this by following methods which are the only ones that can have a positive and energetic effect after death claims a worn-out physical body. These methods, then, comprise among other things the following: An intense spiritual and mental concentration on evoking and practising an impersonal love for all that lives, which includes an equally intense desire to aid all beings whatsoever to grow spiritually and intellectually greater. This striving or effort thus changes the locus of the chela's consciousness from the ordinary or lower place that it occupies in the human constitution, upwards and into a higher and more spiritual and therefore more impersonal part of his inner being, and if the attentive reader have understood the factors involved which make the Devachan what it is, he will instantly see and realize that this removal to higher planes of the disciple's consciousness cuts at the root of the causes which produce or bring about Devachan, gradually making the need for Devachan continuously weaker. The idea is that the disciple is placing his self-conscious active faculties in a part of himself which no longer needs or calls for the devachanic period of rest and recuperation.
It is the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom and their spread in the world which especially should be the thought-center of the one so aspiring. The reasons for this are evident enough, having in view the impersonal nature of these teachings and their immensely powerful impersonalizing effect on the students and followers of them. This aspiration brings into spiritual operation the higher desire-energies which in their activity reach beyond the death and dissolution of the physical body. Being rooted as they are in the spiritual realms, although having their field of action on Earth, they are in consequence constantly working to bring about, even during earth-life, a locating of the self-conscious center in the spiritual realms, and thus again they raise the practitioner of this only true spiritual Yoga far above the call and the need of the devachanic post-mortem interludes.
Let the matter be worded in another way. The man who craves or who longs for peace for himself, who longs for spiritual joy for himself, who yearns to gain knowledge for himself, or perhaps who lives in a religious or musical or philosophical or poetical or scientific or other similar world of his own and without the overmastering desire to help others -- such a man is the man whose Devachan obviously will be the longest, the most definite in character, and in consequence the most intense. Why? Because his main spiritual and intellectual energies are centered around the desire to gain light and peace and happiness, etc., for himself, and such a psychological character is typically of the devachanic kind.
The reader should not grossly misconstrue the foregoing words to signify that application to spiritual joy or knowledge or to religion or music or philosophy or poetry or science are in themselves wrong, for most emphatically they are not wrong. The reader who so misunderstands the thought misses the point entirely. The idea is that it is the concentration of the self -- the human self -- in these things for one's own individual gratification and delight, that brings about the devachanic fruition in inexpressible bliss of what was longed for on Earth and for which no single earth-life is in any wise sufficiently long to attain adequate accomplishment or fulfilment thereof. It is precisely these thwarted yearnings for accomplishment in beauty and in high thinking, and in spiritual delights, for the individual, which produce the Devachan after death.
Thus when the disciple or chela is in training under proper instruction as to the way to follow all that is noblest and best and most elevating and grand in human life in a manner which ultimately becomes universally impersonal, and is no longer concentrated on the individual self, then, because of the growing knowledge within him, he rises above the plane in which the Devachan in its myriad conditions or states of consciousness takes place. Thus the disciple begins by shortening his devachanic periods, and finally passes beyond the need of experiencing any Devachan whatsoever; and when this stage is reached, he is then a Master of Life, a 'graduate' disciple, and virtually therefore a Mahatman.
Therefore, the secret of this process lies in cultivating every day an enlarging love for all humanity, and indeed for all that is, which leads one, at first slowly and then rapidly, to forget the self and the self-loves, however beautiful these loves in their higher forms may seem to be, or indeed may be. This practice in the only true and real spiritual Yoga also gives definite direction in wisely practical application to the intense desire to help others. In other words, again, the secret lies in becoming ever more and more impersonal, even to the beings and the things that one loves best; for when all is said it is the intense personal hopes of a lofty and beautiful kind, which make for a long devachanic rest. A man, then, in order to shorten his devachanic period must turn his back on, refuse to follow any more, the personal bondage to these self-born yearnings and longings;(325) and instead, impersonally yearn and long to give to others without distinction all the best that is in him: yearn and long to help others to grow to be of the same character as himself: yearn and long to help the world in its sorrow and pain: and above all things yearn and long to bring Light and Peace and consequent betterment and progress to the thousands of millions of striving human beings suffering dumbly as most of them do, in ignorance of the true Way.
All these yearnings and longings, being of an impersonal character, and the current of his spiritual and intellectual forces thus being set towards his fellows instead of recurving upon himself, are the immensely strong spiritual energies which after death will infallibly shorten the devachanic rest, and bring the man back to earth again, with as little loss of time as possible.
The thoughtful and perspicacious reader may ask himself what happens in the case of little children who die. In such cases the incarnation has been short, and in the cases of the death of infants, exceedingly short: what then is the nature of the Devachan in these cases, if indeed there is any Devachan? The answer is that a child who dies reincarnates exceedingly quickly, and the reason of such speedy rebirth into earth-life is that during its short or very short span of life it has had no opportunity, no time, to build up a fabric of personal consciousness consisting in large part of unfulfilled aspirations, of unrealized ideals, of thwarted or disappointed hopes, and of many frustrated operations of thought and feeling originating in the higher nature of man.
It does indeed seem a sad and to many minds would seem to be almost a futile thing for a human being to be born into earth-life only to have to abandon it after so brief a span of existence in this sphere. As an English 'divine' once wrote -- was it not the inimitable Isaac Watts? --
If I so soon am done,
For what was I begun?
Doubtless many other millions, living both before and after the author of this quaint little distich, have pondered over the same problem which is of both philosophical and religious character: Why should a child be born apparently only to die after drawing a few faint breaths? Yet everything in Nature takes place according to Nature's infallibly just and beautifully working laws -- laws of harmony and therefore essentially of readjustment. All cases of early death happen from and because of karmic causes originated in past lives. The soul has built up for itself certain barriers, it has failed in making certain accomplishments, failed in certain objectives, and it may happen that in these cases because of the complicate and often contradictory elements of character at work in the individual, there is an attempt to incarnate, but at a wrong time for successful continuation in earth-life. The urge in the Reimbodying Ego to incarnate is so strong that it connects itself with the unborn body of a child at the wrong time for successful continuation in earth-life; or, it may be the case in which a Reimbodying Ego undertakes reimbodiment with a burden of karmic complexities and character on it and in it which will infallibly bring about death.
There are cases also, and very many of them, when people in adulthood die before what really is, or would be without karmic interference, a green old age; but nevertheless all such cases of early death or premature death are due to precedaneous karmic causes working themselves out in the earth-life when the opportunity first occurs for such karmic action. It is necessary to add that no such cases of early or premature decease are arbitrarily caused by, nor are they due to, any extra-cosmic influence or power; and they are all for the ultimate best of the peregrinating and Reimbodying Ego. They are, in the last analysis, finally traceable to Nature's unerringly compassionate and infinitely wise laws of harmony controlling the re-establishment of equilibrium and peace both in Nature herself and in the individual.
It is clear enough, therefore, from a consideration of the preceding paragraphs, that in the cases of the deaths of infants or very young children, there can obviously be no Devachan, because of the fact that in the lives just ended there has been no accumulation of spiritual and intellectual and psychical yearnings and longings storing up a treasury of unexhausted impulses, intellectual or other; hence, and in strict logical sequence of thought to the foregoing statement, because there is no devachanic interlude, such infants or very young children reincarnate almost immediately -- which does not mean in the same hour, nor in the same day, nor necessarily in the same year; but very soon, the time depending in each individual case upon the aggregated karmic causes which originally brought about the thwarted incarnation or imbodiment and their re-forming after the infant-death, in order to produce the reimbodiment anew.
Every case of premature death is followed by a devachanic interlude varying in length and strictly according to the causes originated or set in movement in the individual life just closed. It is therefore impossible to state with any definiteness precisely what length of time in the Devachan will follow in particular cases of premature decease. Each case makes its own conditions for the succeeding Devachan as regards both length of time and quality of the devachanic condition or state. It may, however, be stated that if the premature death occur in youth or early adulthood, the norm or the rule would call for a correspondingly short Devachan. If the premature death occur in the full efflorescence of the manhood or womanhood, the Devachan would be correspondingly longer. The matter is complicated, however, by the further fact, which will occur to any intelligent reader, that certain individuals of highly spiritual and loftily intellectual type, would de facto have a Devachan much longer than a human being of grossly material character; so that even a premature decease in the former of these two classes might be followed by a Devachan longer by far than would be the relatively short Devachan of the human being of gross character who, nevertheless, had lived to a 'green old age.'
There are, furthermore, other types of human beings, congenital idiots, for instance, in whose cases the Devachan is virtually nil, for the reasons already outlined; or cases of suicides, who precisely because they cut short their own life before it has run its normal karmic course, thereby destroy what would have been a continuous accumulation of what we may perhaps call devachanic causes; or again, there are the cases of those dying through violence of other kinds, such as murders, victims of war, or of accident: in all which last cases the same general rules apply that have already been sketched. Another thing to be remembered is that the Devachan can come only when the proper time for its 'coming' arrives, which is but another way of saying when the reimbodying ego has wholly dropped the last vestige of the lowest first, and afterwards the lower, principles, that is to say: first the physical body and its gross animal vitality, and the accompanying Linga-sarira, and then the lowest kama-manasic dregs. In cases of sudden death, as by accident or violence, it should likewise be stated that unconsciousness, immediate and instantaneous, ensues invariably, until a definite period -- the length in time of such unconsciousness -- is ended: and this period or term is exactly equal in length to what would have been the normal term of life of the living physical body, had not the death from accident or violence occurred.
The case of the suicide is somewhat different, and it would seem just as well to speak of this with some emphasis in these pages in order to point out certain at least of the consequences, often frightful, which follow upon self-murder. There is in the world today, or until recently has been, what one may call a growing propensity or mental bias to look upon suicide as in many cases not only ethically permissible, but, as some unfortunate people have even stated it, commendable. Such an idea arises from the Cimmerian mental darkness overlying Western psychology and its ideas concerning man, both alive and 'dead.'
One turns from this psychology and its accompanying outlook with mingled feelings, in which compassionate pity for the individuals combines with disgust of and repulsion from this psychology of suicide. As just stated, the whole situation arises out of profound ignorance, and these unfortunate people know not what they do. They know not, which is their sole excuse; and Nature with her infinite delicacy in balancing accounts, will recognise this fact of ignorance. By her automatic action it will fall into the scales of her unerring justice, and proportionate adjustments will necessarily ensue. Nevertheless, Nature metes out just the reward, just the recompense, just the guerdon, just the retributive consequences, unerringly and infallibly, that the individual man who commits self-murder has earned for himself -- good or bad as the case may be.
Nature's laws are very strict, and there is neither favor nor partiality on the one hand, nor anger and injustice on the other hand, however mysterious and difficult to trace they may be. Suicide is never excusable, because it is an interference with the set and framework of karmic destiny which the man previously had made or builded for himself. In this framework or set of circumstances Nature's laws work with unfailing accuracy and strictest justice to bring out therefrom the best consequences for the man himself, whether these consequences be retributive in character or compensatory. We cannot set these laws aside. We are not wise enough nor good enough even to attempt to do this, for Nature's laws are really the workings or operations of lofty spiritual intelligences in the Cosmic Universe and governing the Universe; and these intelligences know far better than we imperfect humans do as to what is best, ultimately speaking, not only for ourselves, but for the Universe in which we live and move and have our entire being.
This fact, however, in no wise limits or cripples the perfectly free action of man's will, nor does it in any sense inhibit or bar the exercise of free choice; but Nature's laws, which means the surrounding structure and powers and attributes of the Universe, wait upon each selection of man's free will and free choice, and act in strictly consequential co-ordination therewith and to a certain extent in subordination thereto. The reason and causes of this are that man's essential will and his essential intelligence are derivative, not from the co-operative action of the Universe around us, but from the spiritual Essence of the Universe itself. So that as man acts in using his free will or his power of free choice, however little he may have evolved these sublime attributes of his being, he acts from the essential fountain of divinity within himself, and thus in a sense by each such act of free will and free choice, even though intellectually misguided, he rises above all the lower structural framework of the Universe, because, as said, such willing and choosing is cognate and kin to the basic essence of the Cosmos.
Hence, man's free will or free choice is not 'limited' or restricted by the surrounding Universe, but is great or small, more evolved or less evolved, strictly in ratio with the evolutionary status that the man himself has attained. The same rule applies to all beings and entities in the Universe, for every one of them at the core of the core of its being, is allied in identic fashion with the essence of the Universe.' From one point of view it may be said that the gnat, flitting about in apparently wayward fashion on a summer's night, in proportion to its lowly evolutionary standing on the Ladder of Life possesses its modicum of free will or free choice as unfettered in quality and type as is the free will and free choice of one of the divinities of the solar system: the difference between the twain being solely and only, in this matter of free will, one of relatively unevolved and relatively highly evolved -- which means unfolded or unwrapped -- intrinsic or inherent will-power.
To phrase this subtil point somewhat differently and perhaps somewhat more comprehensibly, the gnat equally with the god has its modicum of free will or free choice, which as will or choice enjoys equal freedom in either case, but immense difference in power of action. In each case the will is equally free, however small, however large, the 'amount' of will-power may be; but the divinity, because it is more highly evolved, i. e., having its inner faculties and powers more unfolded, acts, so to say, in greater volume or power of will.(326)
As concerns suicide, it is of course true that every suicide is really temporarily insane -- i. e., in an abnormal condition of emotional intensity and mental distortion; but because an insane man pokes his finger into a fire, is the fire, because of the unfortunate man's insanity, going to stop or change its inherent characteristic of burning? Are the laws of Nature going to be set aside because a person is insane and acts in an insane manner? Even insane people can learn; they are at least conscious in their way; they are not unconscious like logs or stocks. Even imbeciles can learn to a certain degree. It is probably only the congenital entire idiots who cannot learn other things than the merest physical or similar actions.
Nor can it be truthfully said that suicide is what is called an irresponsible act. Every suicide is more or less responsible for his act, precisely because he is more or less actively conscious mentally, however distorted the mentality may temporarily be. The man who shoots himself, or takes poison, or otherwise commits self-murder, commits an act for which he is held accountable to the uttermost iota; for he is responsible, and Nature's laws will react upon him and against his action with the strictest impartiality, for she knows no favor nor fear. Nature's laws cannot be set aside because we do not at any time like their operation; and the truth is that we sometimes do not like them simply because we do not understand them nor their inflexibly just and rigidly automatic operations -- 'automatic' as they usually seem to be to us purblind humans.
A man is born with a certain store of vitality, often alluded to in common parlance as his 'constitution,' and he cannot really die -- i. e., be really 'dead' -- until that store of vitality is exhausted to the last drop or last vibration, or last bit of energy. To borrow a modern illustration: the engine will continue running until the reservoir or reserve of force is completely exhausted; and if the physical body be violently removed by killing it, the man continues in and on interior planes as strongly as before, but in a condition ten times worse than the one he was in when imbodied on Earth, because the man is all there on the inner planes except only the physical body which is now 'dead'; and by his act of suicide he has thrown himself into a condition of consciousness where he will be continuously repeating the suicidal act with an accumulation of increasing mental horror until the time comes when the vital store is exhausted. Then comes blessed oblivion for him, until reincarnation of the sin-stained ego takes place again on Earth.(327)
The reason for such continuation of the suicidal act repeated over and over again is that it is all the working of the consciousness repetitively performing its last self-conscious action on Earth -- the suicidal act; for the killing of the physical body is a tremendous shock to the inner constitution, dislocating the higher part thereof from the lower. It is just this lower part which is involved in the unceasing repetition with its accompanying horror of the act of self-murder.
It is true, of course, that instantaneous unconsciousness, full and complete on all planes, temporarily ensues upon the death of the physical body; precisely as the falling into sleep involves a temporary yet instantaneous unconsciousness before the period of dreaming, uneasy and horrible or peaceful and blissful as the case may be, begins. And just as the dreamer is for the time being subject to the erratic vagaries of consciousness in the dream-world, which is all that can affect the physical brain of the dreamer, just so after death, and its temporary instantaneous unconsciousness, there ensues a period of residence or stay in the Kama-loka in which the lower part of the consciousness has its dreams -- uneasy in the case of evil men, and almost non-existent or imperceptible in the case of the really superior man of highly developed spirituality. The suicide, if he be otherwise a fairly average or normal man with spiritual yearnings and longings, after the temporary unconsciousness of death, and the evil dreaming in the Kama-loka, finally slips or glides into the devachanic condition, wherein he enjoys such peace and bliss and recuperation as his past life has merited. If the suicide was a very evil, gross, and heavily materialistic person, with very little good in him, then the Devachan is correspondingly short. These cases are rare.
There is this also about the matter which may and should give comfort to the sorrowing relatives of a suicide. If the one who has committed suicide is elderly so that the end of physical life would soon have come naturally, and if also this elderly person was of a spiritual type, with kindly and beautiful feelings for others, then the period before the Devachan arrives -- the state in the Kama-loka -- will be short, and the Devachan itself will be correspondingly beautiful, and very restful, as well as of much longer duration.
In the case of the suicides of young people it is seen from the foregoing paragraphs that in the course of Nature, the Devachan cannot begin until a fairly long time has elapsed after the casting aside of the physical body: that is to say the time that would have been naturally lived on Earth if the suicide had not murdered himself.
Of course the motive in the terrible act of suicide plays a part and indeed a very important part in making and affecting the quality and type of the consequences that follow. If the suicidal act was a mistake of judgment, due to a lack of knowledge of Nature's laws, and also to one or more of the many complex emotional affections that afflict modern people, and if there were no strong element of intense selfishness in the act, and it was largely brought about by misplaced and mistaken thoughts for the good of the survivors, then it is obvious that the act of suicide contains much less, in fact very much less, of the heavy moral stigma that would be present if the act of suicide were done merely because the man taking his own life is a coward, or is motivated by any or several other similarly immoral or despicable reasons. In all these cases, without any exception, the suicide and therefore its ensuing consequences are an affair of consciousness and its workings; and hence, if the consciousness during life has been on the whole clean and pure, then the consequences post mortem of the suicide will be correspondingly less dreadful. But if the consciousness is and has been foul with thoughts of earth, or with gross and heavy passion, or with great moral cowardice, or similar infections, then the results or consequences post mortem are correspondingly heavy with dread and ensuing gloom; because -- it must be emphasized again -- it is the consciousness alone which acts and therefore which suffers: which determines the suicide itself in the first instance, and, in the next instance, the nature and quality and character of the consequences and results which follow in the Kama-loka.
All this is clearly seen in the study of the cases of accidents, or sudden death due to violence, like murder or death on the battlefield. The death of a good man in an automobile accident, for instance, or the death of a good man by the act of some murderer, brings no evil consequences to the one who has thus lost his life. On the contrary, there will be finally great and superabundant spiritual recompense in the Devachan. Nevertheless the Devachan cannot ensue or take place until what would have been the natural term of life of the dead man has ended. This is Nature's law, and is caused by the store of vitality inherent in the constitution of the deceased, as before explained. This store of physico-astral vitality must in all cases be exhausted or run out before the Reimbodying Ego can free itself, or cast off the lower parts of the constitution.
Turning now again to the general theme of the present chapter, another question is often asked in connexion with reimbodiment: Do animals reincarnate? The answer is yes. Animals reincarnate or reimbody themselves just as all other 'animate' entities do, humans included; for an animal has, or rather is, a ray from a reimbodying Monad equally with any other individualized and reimbodying entity, such as a human being. Yet there are certain important differences between human reincarnation and that of beasts. The human is a more or less highly individualized and awakened Ego, which the beast is not; for in the cases of the beasts the awakening egoity, otherwise the functioning of the manasic consciousness, is but in its elemental beginnings. The consequence of this is that human beings, or rather human egos, reincarnate as more or less individualized egos, each with an individual character, therefore with an individual ego-karman, possessing in consequence will-power or free choice, intellectual discrimination, judgment, and the moral instinct directing its definite choices to good or ill, all which faculties exist indeed in the beasts, but latent in them: they are but adumbrated or foreshadowed in the beast.
Indeed, and going lower on the Ladder of Life to an even inferior Kingdom, that of the Plants: even vegetation reimbodies itself; and so also do the atoms in their own particular sphere. But in none of the Kingdoms below the Human are the individual cases of reimbodiment the reincarnation of more or less developed Ego-souls as is the case with individual human beings.
The animal or beast reincarnates as a thickly sheathed and but dimly luminous Monadic Ray, lacking the definite attributes or faculties of a developed individual and more or less moral character, because evolution has not yet brought these attributes or faculties out into self-expression; just as, analogically speaking, in the babe, growth has not yet brought out from within what later become the relatively fully expressed faculties of the adult. Consider for a moment the difference between a fully developed man, and a babe in arms. There are enormous differences here in these cases due merely to growth or rather lack of growth. The individual man or human adult has innate capacity and power to choose his pathway in life, to make definite intellectual and moral decisions, in other words, to take a path to the right or to the left: he chooses his career or profession, builds a home, becomes the head of a firm, or of a widely-flung business, or of a State, or whatever it may be -- or, perhaps, he becomes a mere tramp. The babe in arms does none of these things, although possessing all the potentialities as yet undeveloped of the adult human that it will some day become. Nevertheless both babe and adult man are reincarnations of egoic centers -- reimbodying egos. In very truth, in one sense we may say that the beast is an undeveloped or baby-ego, just as the babe is an undeveloped or baby-human. The plant is still less developed than the beast, the mineral-atom still less developed than the plant. The human is the most developed or evolved of the seven Kingdoms, including Man at one end of the series and the first Elemental Kingdom at the other end or the beginning of the series.
We have thus passed in review, and as openly and frankly as it has been possible to do in view of the highly technical and often esoteric character of the present study, the causes, and the effectual causes which in their turn become prolific causes, that bring about repetitive reimbodiment, and the inescapable and widely differing conditions of the post-mortem existence, including the nature of the Devachan and its corresponding duration. In other chapters, particularly in those dealing with evolving and revolving souls, and the heavens and hells, and likewise Webs of Destiny, various and closely related branches or aspects of the same general theme have been studied with some fulness; but before closing this present study, it seems advisable to call attention to one extremely important fact which may be said to be almost the basis upon which reposes this branch or portion of the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition. It is that man is a focus or center of force of not only a spiritual and intellectual and psychical character, but a focus from which flow into manifestation many forms of the vital, astral, and physical qualities or attributes of the human constitution. Briefly, then, man makes or carves his own destiny, and, as said before, wraps himself into the tangles of the web of his being, of his own self-expressions, thus bringing about for himself not only the aeons-long peregrination or pilgrimage which he makes through the spheres, but likewise producing the bodies or tenements or vehicles into which he enters and in which be dwells in these various Spheres or Worlds.
The point of importance to remember here is, man gets precisely and exactly what he himself desires. He can raise himself in time to godhood, which in fact in the long course of evolution he will some day ultimately attain; but while working towards this grand consummation of human evolution, he can likewise bring himself into all-various depths of ignoble existences. This is what was at the back of the old statement: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he":(328) a declaration so profound and pregnant with significance that its burthen of meaning seems to have escaped the attention of almost everyone. It is the direction in which a man's thoughts and desires are set which invariably and in all cases determines not only his destiny, but the path which he will follow, the pitfalls which he will encounter, or the happiness which will -- not overtake him, but which he will make for himself as he travels through the ages.
So far as the present writer knows, no one has ever expressed this key-thought of the esoteric teaching better than did a very ancient Hindu writer, who is supposed to have lived even before the time of the great Panini. This thinker and writer of ancient history was known by the name of Yaska. Yaska states the matter with both clarity and succinctness in his Nirukta:(329)
Yadyad rupam kamayate devata, tattad rupam devata bhavati:
which translated into English, is: "Whatever body (or form) a divine being longs for, that very body (or form) the divine being becomes." The reader is requested to note the force of the Sanskrit verb bhavati, i.e., 'becomes.' This is the exact idea of the teaching, precisely and accurately expressed.
The Reimbodying Ego in its peregrination through the Worlds and Spheres does not, because it cannot, as is the Occidental and false view, stand apart from the Universe, and therefore merely enter into body after body; but it actually, because of its own past karman, which really is the sum-total of all itself, becomes the beings and things it longed or yearned for. Its longings and yearnings impel it not only to take unto itself bodies and things exactly correspondential in attribute and quality with its own inner impelling urges, thus exemplifying the accurate and strict justice of karman, but it is drawn into and allies itself so straitly with these that it becomes them -- simply because it has longed for them, yearned for them, made itself alike unto them.
This great truth of Nature shows the reason why the latent karmic seeds of impulse, quality and attribute and emotion, coming over from past Manvantaras, impel the peregrinating Monad to undertake its aeons-long journey into the worlds of form and matter, identifying itself thereby with them for ages and ages, until its own self-born and inherent yearnings and longings for higher things, incite it or impel it or attract it back again to the higher Spheres and Worlds of spirit. Here then is the key to the understanding of the reasons why the Spiritual Monad 'falls' into 'matter,' and later rises out therefrom, becoming in time a fully evolved and wholly self-conscious divinity.
In this same subtil and profound teaching are seen the reasons why and how the Reimbodying Ego is drawn, on the one hand to the Heavens, and on the other hand to the Hells, in the manner outlined in the chapters of the present work devoted to this study.(330)
It may be added, finally, that the same rule or law of Nature applies to all beings or entities whatsoever; and the thoughtful and perspicacious reader will likewise see in this fact thus briefly sketched, the cause of the wondrous variety and differentiated activity which makes the Worlds of Manifestation the entrancingly mysterious, often strangely beautiful, and sometimes even dreadful, Spheres or Worlds of life that they are.
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Reimbodiment is the doctrine of 'another chance' for all: for all men; and then still other chances, indeed innumerable chances after other preceding chances. It was through these repeated opportunities and chances, continuously recurring in cyclical or serial order, in life after life of the Reincarnating Ego, giving it repeated opportunities to grow and to evolve through repetitive experience, and the unceasing unfolding of the powers and attributes of the Spiritual Monad within, that the Great Ones became what they were -- and are, for that Holy Brotherhood still exists on Earth, and works among men for their betterment and evolutionary unfolding, albeit working usually silently and unknown to the unthinking public.
As we awaken in the morning on this Earth after a long and refreshing night's sleep, even so does the human soul, the intermediate entity referred to before: it returns again into the spheres of self-born consciousness where formerly it sowed those seeds of previous action in the fields of earthly life. It is drawn back by attraction, personal psycho-magnetic attractions, so to say: psychological attractions pulling it hither, much as the lodestone pulls the iron to it, or vice versa. For whether the Spirit of him temporarily dwell beyond Sirius or the Polar Star, or the outermost bounds of the known spaces, it cannot limit the action of the universal forces; and they will call it back, back, back, to the place of former attraction, which place is the locality where the man sowed the whirlwind or the beautiful weather, as the case may be; and those seeds will blossom in his life when next he returns to this Earth -- or if not in that life then in some subsequent life or lives, when the barriers fall before the pressure for outward expression of inner karmic impulses. These seeds will find their fruition in him, their originator and 'creator.'
The human soul, i. e., the Reimbodying Ego, cannot escape these attractions of its own previous making; it has woven around itself by its own acts, its own thoughts, its own vibrant emotions, the Web of Destiny in which it is held -- a web of its own former weaving: compacted of thoughts, tendencies, biases, impulses in certain directions, emotions and desires still unexhausted and unfulfilled, which seek expression of their inherent and driving force. All these are what bring it back into physical life; and once the links of connexion with the growing human embryo are knitted firm and strong, that embryo forthwith begins to take the general direction in its development that all these forces impel it to take; and in due course of time those hitherto latent 'seeds' blossom forth into new actions, new thoughts, new impulses, new emotions and new desires, be these good or evil, thus molding his character and making him different from what before he was. Each new rebirth gives to the incarnating soul a new chance to learn new and different lessons; the general result of all of which is a gradual improvement and growth towards greater and nobler intellectual and spiritual manifestation of the Monad at the core of us, which is, when all is said, our Real and Permanent Self.
Life thus considered we see to be in very truth that still, small, path, as the Hindu Upanishads put it, WHICH LEADS HIM WHO FOLLOWS IT TO THE VERY HEART OF THE UNIVERSE; and this mystic journey brings the fulfilment of the Great Quest of all human souls.
FOOTNOTES:
322. Reference here is to the Reimbodying Ego, for it is this Ego, frequently called the Reincarnating Ego, which by means of its projected ray reimbodies and therefore enlivens and inspires and holds together its physical vehicle the body. Nevertheless there is another sense in which it can truly be said that the physical body in one earth-life reincarnates itself or reimbodies itself not in but as the physical body of the next succeeding life. This is because of the migrating and transmigrating and peregrinating life-atoms which, making the body in one earth-life, at the physical dissolution of the body, at death, become freed and pursue their wanderings through the Elements and Kingdoms of Nature. They are attracted together again in order to form the body in the next earth-life by reason of the strong psycho-magnetic attraction exercised upon them by the 'descending' reimbodying ego. This matter will be treated at greater length, and as fully as possible, in a succeeding chapter of the present work. (return to text)
323. As stated in the text above, fifteen years seems to be fairly correct, although no claim is made that it is exactly accurate. The subject is too difficult, because the term as the ages pass, constantly shifts or varies. There are times in human history when the length of average human life may be twenty years or thirty or even forty; but for the last one hundred years and at the present, the estimate seems to be fairly accurate that in view of the highly complicate and intense character of our civilization, the life at least of the average civilized human beings, when averaged over or through tens of millions of human beings, would seem to be about fifteen years.
Hence it has been stated even from H. P. Blavatsky's time that, following the rule given in the text above, the post-mortem interval between death and the next following rebirth is 1,500 years, more or less; and even here this post-mortem period varies greatly, even enormously, in certain cases. There are human beings on Earth even today, who, because of past favorable karmic lives, have arrived in their present incarnation as men and women with strong spiritual biases or yearnings, albeit these yearnings may not be accompanied with an equal development of intellectual or manasic power. Or it may be in other cases such highly spiritual men and women, when they die normally and according to the rule outlined in the text, have a Devachan far longer and more intense than that of the average and more material-minded human being, and this is so however long the life of the physical body in such cases may be. Their Devachan is therefore greatly longer than the 1,500 years which modern Theosophical teaching ascribes, rather arbitrarily to tell the truth, to the average man.
The fact is that the length of time passed in the Devachan is governed by the intensity of spirituality inherent in the man when alive on Earth, rather than by any merely statistical rule of averages, and this should always be remembered. (return to text)
324. Such cases of 'absolutely soulless' beings are, as already elsewhere stated, exceedingly rare. Yet they occur; and they are the cases known of and spoken of in the Esoteric Philosophy as 'lost souls.' The reader should not make the mistake, natural enough in a way, of supposing that every individual who leads a grossly material or even a criminally degenerate life is a 'lost soul'; for as long as there remains even one spiritual aspiration, however feeble the ray and however weak its light, lingering in the constitution of even such beings, they have a chance for inner redemption, and of checking their downward career through the exercise of their own will and choice, and the possibility of a climb upwards again towards the light. Such 'lost souls' can be, and often and perhaps usually are, possessed of no small amount of native intelligence and shrewdness and fertility of brain-power, for such mental energy is, as it were, a quasi-automatic working of the original spiritual-intellectual impulses active in the constitution in former times when it was 'normal' or 'average.' It may perhaps be likened to the case of some machine set running and doing its good work, but which continues to run for a while even after the original motivating power has been shut off. The 'machine' is in this case simply 'running down.' (return to text)
325. Lest there arise a misunderstanding in the minds of some who may, perhaps, unfortunately misconstrue the implications of the text above, it is perhaps here necessary to point out with some emphasis of statement that this turning of the individual in training towards the impersonal and selfless life, does not at any time involve the abandonment or rejection of human obligations already assumed or at any time undertaken. The exact contrary of this is invariably the case. No man can be a true disciple or chela of the Masters who cruelly and wilfully, or to put the matter more mildly, who ungenerously and thoughtlessly, repudiates obligations and duties which he had previously assumed and which are not yet fulfilled. The situation is obvious. Such repudiation or abandonment of duties already undertaken, would be action in direction precisely the opposite of that which the said chela or disciple is striving to follow; for it would be but a new kind of concentration, and in this case a very selfish one, of his wishes and his attention upon himself -- i.e., upon a getting what he himself wants to get, which thus becomes a typically selfish proceeding and running directly contrary to and counter to the impersonal and selfless life, involving forgetfulness of his own personal wishes and desires of which ex hypothesi he has become the pledged opponent.
To give a concrete example: A man who, whatever may be his longings for the impersonal and selfless life, or for chelaship, would refuse to fulfill all his honorable obligations of whatever kind, so that no loss or injury or disappointment come to others, or would abandon those dependent upon him, is not only not putting his feet upon the path of chelaship, but declaring himself to be unfaithful to the first principles governing discipleship.
To some who have not thought sufficiently about the matter, or at any rate who have not thought sufficiently clearly about it, the warning here given may seem far-fetched and perhaps needless; but it is in plain truth neither far-fetched nor needless, as should be evident enough to every reflective mind. (return to text)
326. To make a more concrete picture one may perhaps illustrate the matter by pointing out that the same tint or shade or nuance of color -- red, for instance -- is identic, whether it be a single dot or point of the specified color, or a whole heaven painted with it. It is the identic red in either case, but in one case there is a very small amount of it and in the other case a very large amount of it. Just so with the case of free will or free choice about which so many generations of men have, almost needlessly it would seem, argued and squabbled. The essential quality of freedom is the same in either the gnat or the divinity, but the former possesses, because relatively unevolved, only a small portion of its essential divinity unfolded, whereas the god is far more largely unfolded. (return to text)
327. Briefly the case of the suicide is as follows: The act of self-murder is the temporary loss of spiritual and intellectual grip on himself, undergone by the man who commits the act. The act is committed; instantaneous unconsciousness follows for a shorter or longer time depending upon the individual case; then ensues a slow or rapid awakening in the astral world or Kama-loka, in which the shocked consciousness, stamped with the horror of the last act, repeats in its operation or functioning the suicidal act over and over again; for the consciousness is so imprinted or impressed with the act that it is uppermost and compellingly functional. This repetitive action continues with steadily decreasing intensity, until a period when would have occurred the normal death of the man were he still living on Earth -- i. e., until the exhaustion of his store of vitality spoken of in the text; the entity then sinks again into unconsciousness during which the higher ego, hitherto unconscious on the lower planes, frees itself from the lower portions of the constitution, and gradually glides into or slips into the blissful devachanic condition, wherein it remains in perfect peace and inexpressible bliss, exhausting its store of accumulated spiritual yearnings and longings until the time arrives for its next karmic reimbodiment on Earth. (return to text)
328. Prov., xxiii, 7. (return to text)
329. X, 17, 6. (return to text)
330. Chapters xvii-xviii, 'Heavens and Hells.' (return to text)