Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The nineteenth century, as yet unforgotten but in no wise regretted, has left to its child the twentieth century a legacy from which the world is still suffering; but from whose unholy domination, spiritual, intellectual, and moral, there are signs on every hand heralding a liberation and distinctly announcing -- at least to sensitive, percipient minds -- a rising into not only a freer but a nobler atmosphere. It was a hard and bitter century, the nineteenth of the Christian Era, so called, one in which every decent instinct of the human soul had to pay heavy toll to man's more or less elemental lower nature.
There is probably in past known history no single term of one hundred years which has been so heavily scored with the records of moral failures, and so blackened by the almost unchecked surging to the front in all human affairs of the business of unadulterated selfishness and scramble for power, as against the common weal and benefit of mankind. It was a self-satisfied, smugly content and very egoistic age, in which men imagined that they had reached the acme, or nearly so, of all possible knowledge in religion, philosophy, and science; and all this was brought about very largely by the subordination of spirituality and moral instincts to a struggle for a merely material prosperity and a heartless commercialism, hand in hand with national and political self-seekings, which resulted in the terrible and vicious struggles of man against man, nation against nation, race against race, culminating in the nearly world-wide psychical conflagration of 1914.
The intense concentration of all human attention, particularly in Western lands, upon personal benefit and profit as contrasted with the common good was but a logical outcome of the highly immoral principles which had come to prevail in all branches of human society. (331)
It was otherwise a strange century, too, full of striking contrasts and impossible contradictions, which marched together shoulder to shoulder, elbowing their way through human life, and managing, in what to us men of the twentieth century seems to be an impossible situation, to keep in some sort of peaceable accord -- all which has furnished one of the mysterious riddles of human psychology. Perhaps at no time in human history have there ever existed side by side such intellectual and moral contradictions, almost universally accepted as being perfectly natural and complementary; and the consequence was what even then was foreseen by certain unusual and brilliant minds -- a crashing of the house built upon the sands of unfounded theory, especially scientific, which left clouds of dust and infinite heart-ache and regrets.
As one looks back and studies the psychological factors involved in nineteenth-century life, one can only stand amazed that such incongruous elements could have existed together for several scores of years in human consciousness, and their utter incompatibility not have been discovered or uncovered before, and exposed in all their hollowness and various perversities.
It was an age when the average man, whom suffering had not yet awakened and taught to think with at least some clearness, carried or accepted certain misunderstood religious beliefs in one portion of his brain, and in another portion of his brain harbored and cultured scientific theories and hypotheses which were as unproved as were the religious ideas, but which were wholly incompatible with these religious ideas and therefore irreconcilable therewith. Possibly the worst defect of the entire nineteenth century was its emphasis upon the unreal values of material things, despite the intuited realization, though usually left unvoiced, that the things of the spirit, running directly counter to the things of matter, were nevertheless those that had permanent value in human life.
It was this psychological sense of irreconcilable contradictions which was the worst 'defect' mentioned above, because it brought about, through man's unconscious struggle to have inner mental peace, a condition of mind which crystallized itself into the various ugly forms of Hypocrisy and Cant. Man's nature was split, divided against itself, by these dimly perceived intimate contradictions which yet most people refused frankly to face -- whether through moral cowardice or through a species of fear at finding negations, remains still an interesting problem to solve.
Among the other chief evils of the nineteenth century was its worship at the altar of Violence or Force, however much such worship was cloaked or disguised with the ready patter and hypocritical assumptions and preachments of impeccable moral virtue, and the parrot-like repeatings of the noble ethical teachings of the great Avatara Jesus as to the need of the practice of brotherly love and kindly and unflinching justice towards all -- especially the weaker! The teaching of impersonal or brotherly love was on the lips of everybody; but the practices, as well in international affairs as in national and social and political relations, ran violently counter to the noble doctrine. It was indeed a century in which the worship of Violence, however disguised, was seen on every hand; and although man constantly said that 'Right is Might,' nearly always the practice was 'Might is Right.' Yet any sane man of today can see clearly that the only saving grace in the relations of man to man and nation with nation is the inflexible will to do kindly justice towards all, irrespective of one's own self-interest, and that this policy pursued without counting any temporary loss -- in other words, the following of the doctrine of impersonal Love -- is the only one which will bring peace upon earth, good-will to all men, and insure stable foundations for any civilization worthy of the name. The reasons are obvious: such impersonal love, which has nothing whatsoever of mawkish sentimentalism about it, is unifying because attractive, not divisive because dispersive as selfishness and hate are: and philosophically speaking, it is the only course for any philosophically-minded man to follow, because it is based upon the irrefragable and ineluctable laws of Kosmic Harmony. (332)
To the theosophical student who lives in the twentieth century and who possesses a reflective mind capable of some clearness and of logical reasoning, and having a philosophical bent, there probably could exist no clearer picture of the facts contained in the foregoing paragraphs than that which may be found in a careful study of the remarkable series of documents contained in the book The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Here he will find a really extraordinary and extremely unusual and, because of this, fascinating situation made by two of the great Teachers of mankind who did their utmost to sow at least a few seeds of spirituality into the minds of two average men of the nineteenth century, to wit: Mr. A. P. Sinnett and Mr. A. O. Hume -- and of the twain, Mr. A. P. Sinnett was perhaps the superior, at least slightly so, in point of spiritual discernment, if we may call it such; while Mr. A. O. Hume was perhaps slightly the superior from the standpoint of intellectual capacity. Two typical men of the nineteenth century, with all the intellectual vices combined with the relatively few virtues of their age, were in quasi-intimate correspondence with two Mahatmans, two Masters of Wisdom and Compassion; and nothing could be more interesting than to observe the amazing and patient kindliness of the Teachers on the one hand, striving with the utterly unconscious yet incredibly egoistic self-sufficiency and smug egoisms of their two 'lay chelas' on the other hand, who in their turn did their utmost both by an unyielding attitude of mind and by persuasions in argumentative speech to bend the will of the two Masters to their own ideas of what the world then most greatly required from the treasury of Ancient Wisdom which they believed, or half believed, or after all perhaps nearly doubted, that the Masters possessed. Their attitude was one of almost continuous insistence that the Message was to be delivered in accordance with the framework of thought and outlook which in their self-sufficient egoism they laid down as the channel through which the delivery of the said Message to men should flow. (333) They insisted that time would be gained (but as the great Teachers said, would be lost) by the working of what then was so quaintly called 'phenomena,' their idea being that by the working of material marvels an intensely egoistic and self-satisfied world would be almost forcibly converted to belief in the Esoteric Wisdom; and when the two Teachers pointed out that this was precisely the worst manner possible in which to build the foundation of the future superstructure of spiritual and intellectual philosophy, it was impossible for the two 'lay chelas' to understand what we now know to have been not only most eminently reasonable but in fact the only proper answer to return to their pleas for 'phenomena' to be inevitably followed by ever more 'phenomena.' When, further, the Mahatmans flatly declared that it were better for the tenets of the archaic Wisdom to remain for ever secret and unknown to the world at large than to be founded upon such shifting sands of psychology, the two typically nineteenth-century disciples showed clearly by their own writings that in their view morals or ethics were but convenient, albeit highly proper, conventions or rules of human society and had no real basis in natural law; and therefore they felt that the conditions placed around the delivery of the sublime Message by the Masters were both unnecessary and arbitrary and, in the last analysis, were not far from being foolish in a worldly-wise sense. A strange spectacle!
Matters connected with life and death were particularly interesting to both Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume; they knew nothing really about either, and in their hearts they realized this. Yet so distorted and crystallized were their brain-minds by their miseducation in both religion and science, and by the spirit of their age, that they took no small pains to argue with the Great Teachers not only as to what was most needed by and in the world, but as to the manner in which what they considered to be most needed should be delivered unto men. When they were told plainly, both directly and by indirection in elucidation of difficult thoughts, that the teachings dealing with the so-called 'mysteries of death' were in most instances given only to chelas or disciples who had pledged themselves beyond possibility of retreat, they were so greatly the children of their own age, that they argued and labored the point with their accepted instructors, and not infrequently became 'righteously indignant' because of the imposition of conditions for which in the first place they saw no need and therefore had no sympathy for, and of which conditions in the second place they had not the slightest sense of the value.
Indeed, being just ordinary men of the nineteenth century, whose fortunate karman had thrown them into a situation where they could have helped the Great Ones even more largely than they did -- and for what they did do we are all sincerely thankful -- it is highly probable that to them life and death were two distinct and radically contrasted things, instead of being, as they most certainly are, two aspects of the same thing: a passage of the evolving and revolving or peregrinating Human Monad into the earth-sphere and out again. In other words, death is but one of the functions of Life; and the proper contrast with death is not 'life' but birth. One is the entrance into, and the other is the exit from, the sphere of earth-attractions. The intense concentration of human thought, imagination, and activity, on the affairs of material physical life almost wholly, which was characteristic of the nineteenth century in all branches of human society, and the almost utter neglect of those faculties of the human soul which belong to man's higher nature, were causally responsible for this attitude of mind.
Today, human outlooks have changed enormously, far more so than even the average man of our still fairly young twentieth century has any true conception or realization of. The casting aside of old scientific inhibitions and prejudiced views, which had reached their maximal efflorescence in the closing years of the nineteenth century, has opened up to discoverers in modern scientific research-work such new and hitherto untrod fields of thought and investigation that an entirely new psychology prevails today as compared with what existed forty years ago, thirty years, nay, even twenty years.
Some of the most justly famed of modern scientific thinkers today are uttering such thoughts and giving voice to such speculations concerning the nature of matter and the elemental forces and substances of the Universe, that thoughtful students of the Esoteric Philosophy feel that Science is today rapidly approaching the acceptance of certain ones at least of the fundamental teachings or tenets of the Archaic Wisdom. Chief among the ideas or conceptions of not a few among these ultra-modern and most progressive scientists, is that the essence of Being is Mind-stuff, as some call it, or Cosmic Consciousness as we may perhaps with justice otherwise call it. This is indeed an enormous advance over the all-denying and all-negating materialism which was almost universally accepted at the close of the nineteenth century. Talk of a 'Cosmic Mathematician' or of a 'Cosmic Artist,' while exceedingly imperfect language, is an approach to the far profounder conception in this respect of the Esoteric Tradition, and is a grand stride forwards in what students of the Esoteric Philosophy feel to be in the right direction; and it would seem easy to believe that with the passage of a few more years, these truly great scientific men, mathematicians or other, will come still closer in their ideas to what we may call the frontiers of thought of the Ancient Wisdom of the Gods. (334)
The nineteenth century of unholy memory, however, was not the only age in which men's ideas concerning the nature of the so-called 'problem' of life and death were mixed and very curiously confused; nor the only period in which the influence of a materialistic human psychology led men, even against their own best intuitions, to proclaim that life was one thing, a sentient existence, and that death was but its cutting short and the consequent finale or annihilation of the sentient being that was. For many ages there have existed in the world similar ideas, generally running to the effect that life and death are fundamentally or essentially distinct and contrasted things -- 'life' being sentience and consciousness, and death the opposite, ending both, although it is probable that in no age was this idea so universally hammered home into human consciousness as in the nineteenth century.
European scientists and thinkers, theologians even and probably all philosophers, have looked upon 'life' as a process -- the building up of a body and the existence and operation of the vital functions which that body manifests: in the case of man, as recently said, through the protoplasm of the twenty-six trillion cells, more or less, of which the average human body is supposed to be builded; and they have looked upon 'death' as the breaking down or disintegration or dissolution or falling to pieces of that sheaf or bundle of forces which, during life -- that is physical life on earth of any animate entity -- form what is called a 'living being.'
Now all this is accurate enough, provided, however, that it be clearly understood that the two words 'life' and 'death' stand for or represent but two processes. Everyone knows that living beings are born, take the first step into manifested physical existence, grow, reach maturity -- the full bloom of the powers of whatever the entity may be -- and then enter upon a decline closely connected with decay, eventuating in decrepitude and what is called death, which is a dissolution or breaking up of the living physical body. Both these, life and death, are obviously processes; they are not radical or unchanging states or conditions, or 'things in themselves.' The meaning of these words is a protest against the using of the words 'life' and 'death' as signifying processes only and then darting from this perfectly correct understanding and proceeding to argue as if life and death were 'things in themselves,' and, furthermore, as if the one were radically different from the other. The protest is against assuming a totally unreal and non-existing and therefore false antinomy, or contradiction, here.
Both 'life' and 'death' are distinctly processes brought about by the passage through the physical sphere of the Monadic Center undergoing or experiencing the two events, which, when strictly analysed are really two phases of one event, made up of the changes or various unfoldings of attribute and faculty and body which happen to the Monad as it transits through the physical sphere. In fact by the light which the magnificent teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy shed on these so-called problems, death is seen to be literally but a change into another phase of the life which by this change is brought to its ending as a phase; or, in other words, death is truly to be looked upon as the birth of the evolving and revolving and peregrinating entity into other Worlds -- or, more accurately and speaking now of the death of the physical body only, as the passing into a new phase of the life that was, thus indeed continuing the life that was but in different conditions and in 'new' states of consciousness. A great deal has already been said of these very points in the chapters of this work preceding the present.
'Life' and 'death,' then, are two processes or 'events,' or perhaps better, two forms or phases of experience of the one underlying, directing, and evolving Monadic Force-Substance. So much may at present and here be stated with regard to the peregrinating Monad. As concerns the larger scale, or what we call the manifested Universe, 'life' and 'death' are two aspects or two appearances of the identic working of universal Cosmic Force, which in all periods of evolutionary manifestation takes this dual form. But behind these two processes -- because mere processes are not things-in-themselves -- there is the vital power, the intelligent urge, the conscious driving force or energy, which causes or induces beings and things to follow a pathway of evolutional development, which pathway is already inherent or latent in the germ or seed -- cosmic or particular and individual -- which unfolds by and through evolutionary growth the intrinsic factors of individuality which lie dormant in the beginning in the core or heart of the germ or seed of the entity-to-be.
What is this driving force, or to change the figure speech, what is this intelligent and vital urge behind or within the germ? Speaking in general terms, each such 'germ' or 'seed' is one of the infinite number of monadized Atoms of the Cosmic Life. The words 'Cosmic Life,' are, however, a generalizing term only, a general manner of speaking. When we come to consider the individual being or entity, such as a man, or a beast, or a plant, or a mineral atom, then particularizing becomes necessary, and we see that this driving force or inner urge is the working outwards or expression of the stream or flow of the vital energy arising in the Monad and streaming forth from it, for the Monad is the spiritual center or core of any being or entity. This spiritual center or core of course is an entity itself, a spiritual entity, in which inhere throughout endless time, and thence flow out into evolutional development, into the shaping of the being or thing that is to be, the characteristics or individuality thereof. This in brief is the significance and general meaning of the doctrine of Swabhava as already explained in preceding chapters.
Why is an acorn always the parent of an oak? Why does an apple-seed invariably produce an apple-tree? These questions are not unimportant, nor merely banal repetitions of a fact of common knowledge; they are very pertinent queries, directed pointedly to the intelligence of the reader. May it not be pointed out with some emphasis that so trite a fact of common knowledge as is imbodied in the above two questions has never yet been explained -- except tentative explanations involved in clouds of words -- by any science as yet studied by Western man. It is perfectly futile and useless to say, as has been said of the immortal Topsy, that they are as they are because they 'just growed' that way. There is a fact here of immense and profound philosophical and religious as well as scientific import. It is the doctrine of Swabhava, of the characteristic spiritual-vital Monad, which answers these questions and which states that the acorn or the apple-seed or any other individual germ produces its own kind, and does so invariably, on account of or because of the indwelling characteristic individuality, the Monadic Ray -- the Monadic Characteristic at the heart of the germ of the oak or of the seed of the apple-tree. If things grew helter-skelter, if there were no chain of individualized causation infallibly producing effects or results in accordance with the 'individuality' of precedaneous causes, if there were no law of reproductive individuality in the Universe, then why should not an apple-seed produce a banana-plant, or a peach-seed produce a strawberry-vine, or why could we not discover tiny human infants in the aromatic bosom of a rose-bud? (335)
As said, it is the Monadic Individuality, the Individualized Characteristic, behind and inherent in and vitalizing the germ or seed of the entity-to-be that not only furnishes the drive, the urge, finally bringing out that which is within the germ or seed itself, but governs and controls the nature and kind, racial and otherwise, of the being or entity that later is to be or to become. This vital and intelligent urge or drive is the aggregate of forces of several different kinds latent or dormant in the Monadic Ray issuing forth from the Monad itself, which latter is called in the technical terminology of the Esoteric Philosophy, the jiva. The characteristic individuality inherent in the vital energy of the Monadic Ray forever stamps the working or operation of this Monadic Ray in all its functions, and therefore expresses in time and space, by means of evolutional unfolding, what in the beginning lay infolded or involved in the Monad. This is the true meaning of evolution, a process of the self-expression of the peregrinating being in the Worlds and Spheres of matter, a process taking place in what men call 'death' as well as in what men call 'life.' Each individual Monad, by means of its projected force or Monadic Ray brings out or unwraps or unfolds through and by emanation that particular life-characteristic or characteristic individuality which, coincident with its appearance, stamps its nature on the evolving substance or body in which it may at any time dwell, thus producing the enormously wide variety of races and families and genera and species and variations in the human and beast and vegetable Kingdoms which surround us; and precisely the same apposite illustration of the working of the many Monadic Rays applies to the cause of the appearance in the Mineral Kingdom of those transitory, and to modern science presently perplexing, physical imbodiments which are known today as the ninety-two, more or less, chemical 'elements.'
In view of the importance of the thoughts imbodied in the doctrine which is above alluded to under the phrase the 'Monadic Ray,' it would seem advisable to enter into some explication of just what is here meant by 'Monadic Ray,' and to give a sketch or outline of how it works or functions in the constitution of an entity, human or other. Although this 'Ray' is spoken of as an Individual, it actually is a sheaf or bundle of spiritual forces aggregated into a unity; but in order to avoid complications in this explanation, it will be just as well to speak of the Ray as being a unit or Individual -- for such indeed it is in the larger sense.
The human constitution is a composite or compound, and may be figurated to the mind's eye, or picturated, as a stream of consciousness flowing forth from the deathless Center or Spiritual Monad, which last is at once the immortal Root of the human being and his Essential Self. The Monad which is thus the highest or inmost or root or core or heart of any entity in manifestation, is the fundamental Individual: the fountain of all consciousness and of all selfhood therein, for consciousness and selfhood emanate from it in a flow or stream passing through all the different grades or steps or degrees of the entity's constitution, which flow or stream is thus at once seen to be the Monadic Ray above spoken of.
We may perhaps employ the symbol familiar to many, and used by more than one ancient School, to wit, a 'Pillar of Light,' as figurating the human constitution considered as a unitary whole. This 'Pillar of Light,' as it emanates or streams 'downwards' or 'outwards' into manifestation from the heart of the Monad, is of dazzling and supernal brilliance and beauty in its highest parts; but as it passes 'downwards' or 'outwards,' or more deeply into matter, its glory or luminosity is progressively dimmed, until at its end, when it reaches the physical sphere, it works or functions invisibly in surroundings which are as 'black as night' -- i. e., in the vital-astral-physical triad of the human constitution, which triad in its lowest aspect is the physical body. In and throughout the entire extent of this 'Pillar of Light,' runs the stream of Essential Selfhood or Monadic consciousness which stream is the Monadic Ray, and which thus is involved or surrounded by the 'Pillar of Light' -- the inner and invisible composite human constitution.
As this Monadic Ray streams downwards and works in and through this 'Pillar of Light,' it makes for itself at appropriate places in the 'Pillar' knots or foci of active consciousness, and these knots or foci are in themselves Minor Monads; so that looking upon the composite human constitution as a unitary whole, each one of these knots or foci of consciousness is seen to be one of the ego-souls of the human constitution. They are in descending order: the Divine Soul, the Spiritual Soul, the Manasic or Human Soul, the Kama-Manasic or Animal Soul, and the Vital-Astral Soul; and each one of these 'souls' may otherwise be called as above a Minor Monad. Through them all, as just stated, nevertheless flows and works and functions the Essential Monadic Ray, which thus is seen to be identic with the Sutratman of Hindu Philosophy, this word Sutratman being a Sanskrit term signifying 'Thread-Self,' which, in consequence of the foregoing, is seen to have its seats, or respective knots or foci, in the aggregated totality of the different subtil sheaths or bodies, the 'souls' above mentioned.
Now, the whole course of evolution during the Cosmic Manvantara consists in a continuous and progressive rising -- or perhaps raising -- of the level of self-consciousness from the lower, upwards and inwards, to the higher, bringing about the consequent and progressively greater manifestation of inherent power and attribute and faculty, as the ages roll on, in the aforesaid 'Pillar of Light,' or composite constitution.
Thus, then, when death supervenes to an entity, a human being in the present connexion, it is a process of progressive involution or infolding: therefore an exact reversal of the process of evolution or unfolding or rolling out that had previously taken place during the building of the structure of the complex constitution or 'Pillar of Light' aforesaid. First the physical body is cast off, with its accompanying gross astral vitality, and this includes of course the model-body or Linga-sarira. After a certain period of time, depending in each case upon the karmic attributes and qualities of the man in his just ended earth-life, the consciousness rises out of the astral worlds into the next succeeding and higher monadic center or knot or focus of consciousness, which in its turn is finally indrawn into the bosom of the Monadic Center higher than the former, i. e., into the bosom of the Spiritual Monad; and here is where the Human Monad, or Human Ego, enters into the devachanic state or condition, wherein it has its amazingly beautiful and blissful devachanic dreams, and undergoes its period of recuperative rest and mental assimilation and digestion of the lessons learned in the earth-life last passed.
When the time comes for the devachanic state to end, and for the Human Monad to awaken from its blissful dreaming and recuperative rest -- because of the awakening of the karmic seeds of attributes and qualities hitherto lying latent in the Human Ego and brought over from the last earth-life -- it feels the attraction earthwards again and automatically, as it were, follows these attractions towards the earth-sphere, 'descending' through the intermediate realms that it had traversed on its upward journey to the devachanic state. Thus it passes 'downwards' from the Spiritual Monad into the more material realms, building for itself at each step appropriate sheaths or subtil bodies in which it may live and manifest on these lower planes, thus re-forming the knots or foci which it had previously infolded into itself, until finally it reaches the earth-sphere and is attracted to the appropriate human womb to which its karmic affinities draw it. It then in due time is born as a human child.
Now here enters a very important matter, to which the earnest attention of the reader is directed. The 'man' that was in the previous earth-life we may speak of as the 'old man'; whereas the 'man' now coming into birth and destined in all probability to grow to adulthood, we may speak of as the 'new man.' This 'new man' is the karman of the 'old man,' because it is all that total, karmically speaking, of the 'old man' who was in the last life; but -- and just here is the important point -- there is in addition to the past karmic total of the 'old man' which is now remanifesting itself as the 'new man,' all the accumulated experiences, the assimilated knowledge, and the new influxes or increments of higher intellectual and spiritual consciousness which the 'new man' has brought back with him from the devachanic condition.
Thus, then, while it is strictly correct to say that the 'new man' in the new earth-life is the karman or exact karmic aggregated consequence or result of the 'old man,' nevertheless this 'new man,' because of these new increments of intellectual and spiritual consciousness, is 'different' from the 'old man': in other words it is not identic with the 'old man' although the 'same' as the 'old man'; 'different' because of the new increments of consciousness gained, and yet the 'same' as the 'old man' because being the exact karmic fruitage of the 'old man.' Just here is where the careful reader of logical mind and clear understanding can see that many of the experiences in the new earth-life that the 'new man' will have to undergo, and which are the strict karmic fruitage of the thoughts and acts and feelings of the 'old man,' are not 'merited' by the 'new man,' because it is obvious that these increments of intellectual and spiritual consciousness were not the ones -- or, in other words, were not the identic entity -- which made the mistakes, committed the sins, were guilty of the follies, of the 'old man' in his last past earth-life. Nevertheless, the 'new man' must meet these karmic consequences which Nature in her unerring justice and equilibrating processes brings to pass, and which the 'new man' thus has to face. Here is where the 'new man' undergoes, mayhap, 'unmerited suffering,' or, equivalently, 'unmerited joys. (336)
From the foregoing it should be clear that the Esoteric Philosophy does not teach the existence of the human being as an unchanging and invariant Ego which passes from life to life merely gaining experience without alteration or modification of itself, as the Christian scheme seems to have it. Much to the contrary: the Ego itself is distinctly an evolving or unfolding knot or focus of consciousness in the 'Pillar of Light' or human constitution aforesaid, and therefore the Human Ego itself is in the never-ending process of undergoing continuous and incessant evolutive change, or, what comes to the same thing, is undergoing continuous growth and expansion of consciousness itself. Hence, the Ego -- and we here are discussing the Human Ego particularly -- is no unchanging entity flitting from birth to birth; and for this reason the reincarnating of this Reimbodying or Human Ego should never be considered to be, as it were, the passage of a spiritual and permanent mannikin from earth-life to earth-life.
To express the matter in other words, each reincarnation of the Reimbodying Ego is not exactly or precisely a continuation of an unchanging Ego coming over from the previous earth-life or earth-lives, but it is in each reimbodiment or reincarnation a reproduction or better still, perhaps, a new production, flowing forth from the knot or focus of consciousness previously spoken of as the evolving or unfolding and therefore continuously changing or growing Minor Monad.
It was for this reason that the Lord Gautama the Buddha stated emphatically that there is no permanent -- i. e., unchanging -- 'ego' or 'soul' in man; and the immensely profound significance of this very true statement has escaped the understanding of all commentators since the Buddha's day -- certainly of all European commentators, and with almost equal certainty of nearly all his otherwise devoted Asiatic followers.
The point is a subtil one, and therefore is somewhat difficult both to explain and to understand; yet there is an analogical illustration of it which may be employed, and which, if carefully studied, should make the matter clear enough. Consider then the case of a human being as he grows from birth, through boyhood, to adulthood, and then passes through senescence and decay to the portals of death. It is obvious that the boy of ten years is not the man of fifty years. Between ten years and fifty years there have been profound modifications or changes of the consciousness of this human being; yet the man of fifty is the fruitage or direct karmic consequence or result, in other words is the karman, of the boy of ten.
Nor again, can it even be said that the Ego of the boy of ten is the same as the Ego of the man of fifty, for it is precisely in this interim of forty years that the consciousness of this human being has undergone profound and far-reaching modifications, because of the growth and expansion of faculty and attributes of consciousness which have taken place. The boy and the man are the 'same,' yet not identic; the 'same' because being the same stream of consciousness; yet not identic, because the consciousness has so greatly grown or evolved or unfolded that to speak of the consciousness of the boy of ten as being the consciousness of the man of fifty is obviously absurd. In fact, it is precisely the Ego or 'soul' which, because of its efflorescence in the man of fifty, cannot be called the identic Ego which was efflorescent in the boy of ten.
Precisely the same is the general case with reincarnation. The 'old man' is the 'same' as the 'new man,' yet not identic; for the 'new man' in the new earth-life has all the added increments gained by the devachanic interim which have become -- with the total karman of the 'old man' -- what we now call the 'new man.'
There is much in this that will, mayhap, not be pleasing to the superficial thinker, but this is only because such thinker does not grasp all the picture. There is something wonderfully and immensely comforting in the thought that the old is not 'continued' unchanged into the new, with all the weaknesses and sins and follies and hypocrisies and stupidities and imperfections of that old. In fact, the whole doctrine is one of immense hope and is sublimely inspiring, for it shows that each new rebirth into earth-life, in normal cases of human reimbodiment, is always a step forwards, comprising a working out, and therefore oblivion of, past errors and sins, and a 'new chance' always recurring for the future.
This does not mean, as above explained, that the 'old' is annihilated, or wiped out, for this is impossible; the 'old' remains as karmic fruitage or heritage until it has been equilibrated or exhausted; but upon this 'old' there comes the continual influx of new spiritual and intellectual increments, thus radically modifying and changing the character; so that as time passes, the old gradually disappears because it exhausts itself, and the new becomes steadily better.
It would be simply horrible to suppose that a man who is a criminal in one life must remain a criminal for all future lives, on a wholly false theory that his center of self-consciousness or Human Ego is permanent and perpetual and does not change.
Here then, as given in the immediately foregoing paragraphs, is the correct picture: the statements, philosophical and ethical, of what is, when all is said, one of the most mysterious doctrines of the Esoteric Philosophy -- that of repetitive reimbodiments brought about by the continuous growth, i. e., change, i. e., evolution, i. e., unfolding, of interior faculty and power seated in the Reimbodying Ego.
Life, therefore, as may readily enough be seen from a consideration of the foregoing observations, is not merely one continuous process of building up or construction of a physical body, which when this building-up has reached a certain term is followed by sudden collapse and consequent dissolution due to entry into the structure of something radically different from life and called 'death.' Death is the logical opposite of birth; indeed, speaking with still stricter accuracy, 'death' is not even an opposite but is another form of 'birth' -- a passing of the Monadic Ray out of the phase of earth-life into its consecutive and consequential phase called 'astral life.'
All the processes of Nature and its various steps of procedure which follow one another in regular serial order as an unbroken chain of causation, are methodical and continuous and likewise composite. There could be no building-up process without an equivalent functioning of what men call death -- instantly, hourly, and always concurrently. 'Death' is properly but change: the ending of one 'event' in the chain of causation, introducing the next succeeding karmic consequential or resulting 'event.' 'Birth' into earth-life is the exact analog to the 'death' of the physical body, for the birth of the physical body is the 'event' which introduces the peregrinating Monad into that phase or portion of its journey called earth-life. There can be no birth which is not at the same time a 'death' or termination of the event which immediately preceded it; so that, as just said, the birth of the Monad into earth-life is its 'death' in the immediately preceding phase of astral life.
The seed-germ cannot grow unless the physical covering of it, the veils of it, the outer shell, die, so that the germ may sprout. The cell dies in order to give room to two new cells, both of the substance of the mother-cell. The majestic oak, buffeted and swept by the storms of centuries, would not come from the acorn unless the acorn gave up its life to it. Take the physical body as an instance in point: at every step we meet these two processes going on together, hand in hand as it were, to wit: 'life' and 'death' -- twin sisters or twin brothers, absolutely inseparable in their respective activities and working in the strictest co-ordination in order to produce a consequent vital organism. Not a single cell of the body when it is worn out remains, but it disappears into its own progeny, and is replaced from its own substance by a new, possibly a better cell. The vital functions are in very truth equally the mortal functions. Every instant of growth is an instant nearer dissolution, and each step of growth or what men call 'life' is brought about by the 'death' of the immediately preceding link in the chain of existence or 'life.' It is only when the child dies that it is possible for him to become the boy; it is only when the boy dies that he can become the full-grown man; and when the man dies in body, it is then that he becomes -- mayhap the god within, mayhap not! But it is only by casting off the lower vehicles, the body included, that he can come to know the greater secrets of 'life.' There can be no death where there is no life, for in strict literal meaning, life and death are not opposites but one, an identity. Mortality is the fruit of life, precisely as life is the child of death, and precisely again as death or change introduces a new phase of life. (337)
Herbert Spencer, often an accurate thinker, uttered a profound philosophical fallacy when he said that "life" is the "continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." (338) This is one of those plausible and superficially persuasive ejaculations which often fascinate because of their seeming reasonableness, and are attractive because of their brevity. Spencer was a great man in his own day, and in some respects had a deservedly wide reputation; and many people will take a resounding sentence of this kind, when issuing from the mind of some individual of high reputation, as meaning something very profound. But try to analyse it! There is no question that there must be an adjustment between force or energy and the environment in which it works, or, in the case of man and using popular language, between soul and its environment; but is such an "adjustment" LIFE ITSELF? Certainly not, unless taken in the manner in which life has been stated in preceding paragraphs as being a 'process'; but it is obviously a process of some entity or being which initiates and endures the process, and which, however much it may be affected thereby, is nevertheless the origin and cause of the processes of adjustment with the surroundings in which it finds itself. This sentence of Spencer's is therefore descriptive and not explanatory: it is a brief and imperfect description of a process from which the main elements or factors of the equation are omitted, and it in no sense whatsoever tells us anything about the causal or originant actor.
On the other hand, The Encyclopaedia Britannica has an article on 'Life,' which article was written by Dr. Peter Chalmers Mitchell, a well-known authority in his own line, who says:
Until greater knowledge of protoplasm and particularly of proteid has been acquired, there is no scientific room for the suggestion that there is a mysterious factor differentiating living matter from other matter and life from other activities. We have to scale the walls, open the windows, and explore the castle before crying out that it is so marvellous that it must contain ghosts. (339)
There is not a little in this extract from Dr. Mitchell's article which the present writer is in hearty sympathy with. It has always seemed to him that the capital mistake made by European science, even from the time of Newton, has been the supposition that life is an 'absolute,' or a thing-in-itself, which therefore is in essence and fundamentally not merely distinct from matter but radically different therefrom. This is an entirely erroneous supposition which the Esoteric Philosophy repudiates root and branch; for in its teaching, what modern science is accustomed to call 'matter,' whether considered in general or in particular, is an invariable manifestation or flowering of the Cosmic Jiva -- or still more accurately, of the incomputably great numbers of conscious Monads existing in all-various degrees or stages of evolutive development, which not merely inform and vitalize the material sphere, but actually are the material sphere in its bewildering variety everywhere. In other words, the entire range of hierarchical material worlds or spheres, including therefore the Physical Sphere, is a web of interacting or interwoven foci or monadic points of consciousness, each such Monad or Jiva being a center or focus of what ultra-modern scientific thinkers call Mind-stuff. As these Monads or foci of mind-stuff exist and function in incomprehensibly differing grades or states of evolutional development and comprise the totality of all that is, everywhere, it thus becomes evident that even the chemical atom with its infinitesimal electronic foci, is the expression in the mineral sphere of a monadic center. Hence it is that 'life' is not something apart from and different from matter, which acts upon it as an outsider, but that matter itself in all its phases and degrees is but the interacting and interwoven expressions of these hosts of monadic centers -- each such monad being a fountain of vital force.
Therefore it is that the present writer is heartily in sympathy with Dr. Mitchell's statement "there is no scientific room for the suggestion that there is a mysterious factor differentiating living matter from other matter and life from other activities." Quite outside of the fact that Dr. Mitchell would probably refuse, because of his apparent materialistic tendencies, to accept the Theosophical position, this in no wise prevents the Theosophist from recognising a true statement when an eminent scientist makes it, although of course the Theosophist is in no wise bound by any other statement that such scientific authority may favor.
Furthermore, the world is weary, and rightly so, of imagining that matter is 'dead,' insensate, essentially unintelligent, and that if we are to search for 'life' we should expect to find it outside of its own habitat -- which habitat is, first, life's own being, and next its efflorescences in material forms. There is no need hunting for 'ghosts,' for the reason that, not understanding the nature and vital essence of matter, we find its functions and characteristics so marvelous that they are inexplicable, and wholly so, on the old materialistic theory.
If we are really to understand Nature herself, and not merely man's imaginings about her, we should therefore once and for all stop thinking in the mental terms and framework of extra-material 'ghosts' and 'souls' which are essentially and absolutely different from the essence of matter. We should replace these meaningless imaginings with actualities and realities based on Nature herself. It was this very unfortunate custom of misusing words, due to ignorance of Nature, and also due to the growing belief among scientists that nowhere could they find any 'soul' or 'spirit' in their studies and researches, that brought on the gross and all-negating materialism of recent European thinking. The pity of it all was that these earlier Western scientists sought for 'soul' or 'spirit' as something apart from, outside of, and in essence absolutely different from, matter itself, instead of realizing that all matter, of whatever kind or type, and all its functions and attributes, are the productions or efflorescence of inner and invisible hierarchies of highly intelligent, quasi-intelligent, and quasi-conscious but 'living' beings and things. In other words, Nature throughout all her kingdoms is motivated and activated from within outwards; and therefore all bodies or vehicles or expressions of these inner and invisible activating and motivating entities are what we call the variety and manifold differentiations of the material spheres. (340)
The foregoing observations do not mean that such things as souls and ghosts and wraiths do not exist. On the contrary, they do exist, but they do not exist as and how they are commonly supposed to exist. Theosophy, with its universal teachings, explains the nature and whereabouts and character of souls and ghosts and wraiths and other similar things, and does so with the precision and philosophical profundity that it brings to bear upon other actualities of Nature.
FOOTNOTES:
331. Some of the greatest, at any rate some of the foremost, of modern scientific and philosophical thinkers, as much the children of the twentieth century as their predecessors were of the nineteenth, are no longer hesitant in stating frankly their own opinion with regard to the defects, and the virtues such as they were, of the last 150 years -- especially of the century recently closed which loved to call itself the 'Century of Progress.'
The following citation from A. N. Whitehead, in his book Science and the Modern World, pp. 256-7, is significant of this change in human psychology and likewise of the forwards drift of human outlook. He writes:
"The watchwords of the nineteenth century have been, struggle for existence, competition, class warfare, commercial antagonism between nations, military warfare. The struggle for existence has been construed into the gospel of hate. The full conclusion to be drawn from a philosophy of evolution is fortunately of a more balanced character. Successful organisms modify their environment. Those organisms are successful which modify their environments so as to assist each other. This law is exemplified in nature on a vast scale. . . . A forest is the triumph of the organization of mutually dependent species. There is something in the ready use of force which defeats its own object. Its main defect is that it bars cooperation. Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants. The Gospel of Force is incompatible with a social life. By force, I mean antagonism in its most general sense." (return to text)
332. The ideas contained in the suggestions just made in the text above are now, thanks to the immortal gods! spreading like wildfire over the world and are finding lodgment in the hearts and minds of thoughtful and intuitive men everywhere, among the most civilized peoples as strongly as among the most backward or barbarous. Books of many kinds, and dealing with many subjects, since the end of the Great War have been written with the same theme as their kernel of thought. The following citation from The Power of Non-violence (1934), pp. 229-30, by Richard B. Gregg, is an instance in point:
"To love is to feel the unity of all life and things, and to feel and realize it so strongly that all people near us, however vaguely, come to sense it too, and thereby come to have a stronger sense of unity and security. To love is also to desire to create new life and more abundant life by the realization of this super-abundant power and unity. To live as if we were eternal would be to live in love. Love gives fearlessness, openness, freedom and truth." (return to text)
333. Nothing in the text above should be considered as animadversions upon the character of the two otherwise very reputable and earnest men whose names are therein mentioned. This note seems necessary because it is one of the most deplorable habits of Western civilization to cast slurs or to throw mud against the characters of men, rather than to point out, should it ever be required, with as much kindliness as possible, the mistakes made, wrong views held, or mischief accomplished. In other words, it is the thing or perhaps the evil that it may be required to designate, but it certainly is always unfair to attack the character of individuals. Few men if any are wise enough or just enough to do this.
Let it therefore be clearly understood that every true Theosophist is sincerely grateful to both Mr. Hume and Mr. Sinnett for the work, excellent in its way at one time, which both did for the Theosophical Society with which they were for a time connected -- Mr. Sinnett for a much longer time than Mr. Hume. What the Theosophist has always objected to was not the characters of these two gentlemen, upon which no Theosophist feels competent to sit in judgment, and certainly has no desire to do so. They were, as said in the text, the children of their age, and it is the vices and defects, the materialism and soul-destroying negations, of their time which are referred to in the text above.
Whatever private views Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume held at any time were of course entirely their own affair, and no one has any right, nor has any Theosophist any desire, to criticize these; all of which certainly does not prevent one from seeing and deeply regretting that they failed to profit more largely than they did from the golden opportunity that was theirs: coming into direct personal intercourse with two members of the Great Brotherhood, a fact so rare that it may almost be described as being as rare an occurrence as the coming of the traditional Phoenix.
Had the attitude of their age, in other words their own attitude, been that of thoroughly willing learners, willing to take truth where they found it without insisting upon the preliminary series of conditions in the framework of which truth must be communicated, they doubtless would have received far more than they did receive. But the spirit of the nineteenth century was aggressively egoistic, self-satisfied in its own sense of high superiority, and thoroughly psychologized with the totally wrong idea that anything further that might be added to the store of knowledge would be merely increments to what was already scientifically known -- all of which was the veriest poppycock.
A later generation of scientists, they who so splendidly lead the vanguard of scientific research-work today, have themselves become the Nemesis of nineteenth century science by introducing a revolution or complete overthrowing of what in the last age was held to be for ever firmly and securely established. (return to text)
334.
"Jeans recognises the breakdown of the mechanistic hypothesis, but he makes no serious attempt to supplement it. He suggests that it may have been 'the finger of God' which started things. But I do not believe that God runs a game of chance. Elsewhere Jeans tells us that matter seems to stream into the spiral nebulae from some unknown dimension of space. But this is mere obscurantism."
Why? On the contrary, one guess in such matters, especially if based on mathematical views, is as good as any other well-founded guess; and Jeans's 'singular points,' referred to here, otherwise the 'laya-centers' of the Esoteric Philosophy, are far more philosophic and reasonable, in view of recent discoveries of the nature of electronic matter, than are philosophic guesses of a more intangible character even if based on certain fine and intuitive statements of the great Plato.
"Again, he falls back on a romantic philosophy which makes the cosmos an unreal show with the human mind as the magician. What is clear is that a mechanistic hypothesis, moulded upon inorganic matter, cannot be a sufficient explanation of the universe. The whole thing hangs dizzily in the air without rational support. It is true that the period allowed for cosmic evolution is enormous compared to our human lives. But this should not blind us to the futility of the whole thing. The mechanistic hypothesis, if taken as a philosophy, lands us in intellectual bankruptcy. It requires a miracle in order to start the world and holds out no promise for the future except universal death." -- God, pp. 107-8 (quoted by the kind permission of the author, J. E. Boodin.)
In this extract from the most readable and interesting work of the now deservedly well-known Professor of Philosophy of the University of California at Los Angeles, Dr. Boodin lays his finger directly on the mortal point -- the weak spot in Achilles' heel -- which all mechanistic theories of the universe fatally imbody. The truth is that the mechanistic hypothesis calls for a 'miracle' more marvelous than the miracles of any religion, because for dead, insensate, soulless matter following crazy fortuitous action to bring forth harmony, law, regularity, consistency, consciousness, intelligence, mind, love, and the moral sense -- and to find these everywhere as hypothesis or theory -- puts a greater strain on our credulity than to suppose that a 'god' or 'gods' builded the universe either out of 'nothing' or out of themselves.
Now the Theosophist admits no possibility of 'miracle' anywhere, if 'miracle' means action or event contrary to universal Nature. Just here is why the Theosophist repudiates, in full sympathy with Professor Boodin, the materialistic or mechanistic hypothesis, and equally repudiates the 'miracle'-theory or creationist-theory of the monotheist. Professor Boodin, as far as he goes, is unquestionably right. One wonders why so brilliant a thinker is not a Theosophist. (return to text)
335. It is necessary to insist upon the point mentioned in the text, that there is an inherent vital urge in every seed or germ bringing about the reproduction of its own kind -- or, as the Esoteric Philosophy would phrase it, each such inherent vital or characteristic urge bringing forth into manifestation its specific type is but the swabhava, emanating from itself or issuing from itself in 'creative' or formative flow, the stream or streams of vital energy which, working in and as the core or heart of such germ or seed, molds it and shapes it in its various stages of growth, embryological or other, in order to reproduce the fit physical vehicle to enshrine itself -- the said emanation or vital flow issuing from the indwelling spiritual Monad.
Quite outside of the fact that here lies one of the secret processes of reimbodiment, or of reincarnation, it likewise explains the continuity of type and the different varieties, species, families, genera, or classes which compose the several Kingdoms of Nature. Furthermore, with this same fact there is intimately involved what has always been a great problem for biological science, to wit, the origin of variation of species. All such origins with their consequent and subsequent variations in space and time arise from the fact that the emanations flow forth into the physical world from the indwelling spiritual monads of the various Kingdoms, each such flow being stamped with its own inherent characteristic type or swabhava. This obviously is the cause of the continuance of types through the ages, subject as of course these types are to the modifications brought about by evolutionary unfolding -- which it should be remembered is strictly emanational unfolding: the unfolding of inner and hitherto dormant characteristics. It is precisely this emanational unfolding which brings about the so-called 'origins' and 'variations' of living creatures.
Furthermore every Monad is a 'creative' or rather emanational center or focus eternally active during a manvantara, so that forth from its heart there poured at least in the beginning of the Manvantara, or period of Cosmic Manifestation, an unending stream of characteristics in germ, each one such germinal characteristic being the starting-point or 'origin' of some new variation, which, if it lived, and prevailed against the various antagonistic factors in the environment, established itself as a 'new' variety or species, or some more comprehensive group.
There is one very important thing to remember in this connexion, however, and it is that just because the Globe-Manvantara on our Earth is now on its upward arc, i. e., already has passed its lowest point of descent and is beginning its ascent, the bewildering numbers of new varieties and types which characterized the entire course of the arc of descent will henceforth grow steadily and constantly fewer, for the whole course of the working of the Life-Waves on the upward arc, or arc of ascent, is towards integration, thus bringing about in the course of the rolling ages a constantly decreasing number of types and families, whereas on the descending arc, the whole effort of Nature was one of differentiation or dispersive activity, i. e., the bringing about of vast numbers of specific variations of the fundamental generalized type, which, because it is monadic, endures perpetually. (return to text)
336. This matter of 'unmerited suffering' has already been dealt with in chapter xv, 'Webs of Destiny.' (return to text)
337. As Paul the Apostle of the Christians wrote in his alleged First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter xv, verses 31, 35, 36, 37, 40, 44:
"I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.
"But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
"Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
"And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
"There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
"It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
It is evident that Paul in his mystical and profound mind, had the same thought, at least in general outline, that is imbodied in the ideas of the text above. (return to text)
338. First Principles, Pt. I, 'The Unknown,' ch. iv. (return to text)
339. Vol. XVI, p. 601 (ed. 1911). (return to text)
340. Even Herbert Spencer had some realization of the cosmic processes as proceeding from intelligently vital activities, for he wrote the following:
"Among the mysteries which become more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will ever remain the one absolute certainty that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite Energy from which all things proceed"
-- and to which all things in due course of the rolling ages finally return for their period of pralayic rest, we may add, later to reissue forth therefrom. (return to text)