Copyright © 1977 by Theosophical University Press. All rights reserved.
The philosophical principles, or the laws of nature, which lie behind the processes leading to the formation and the eventuation of the human species are a copy in miniature of what takes place in the universe, the cosmos; the reason being that this universe in which we live is guided from within and acts outwards, and this guidance is by law, that is, by perfect consistency in action.
Given definite circumstances, certain operations of nature always follow the same courses; and these being universal laws, they must therefore likewise affect everything in the universe in which they operate, because everything therein is a part of that universe, a part of its composition, a part of its constitution. Hence, since we ourselves are a part of that universe, we have everything in us that the universe contains, either latent or active. We have all capacities and faculties, developed or undeveloped as the case may be, for understanding it; and we follow those same laws because being a part of that universe we cannot do otherwise. From this fact, so simple, so easily understood, depends the doctrine of cycles as carried out in the evolutionary development of the human kingdom -- as indeed of all the kingdoms of universal nature.
Let us recapitulate the main points regarding the doctrine of cycles. A thing has its beginning, proceeds along its course to its culmination, and then, as the life forces, as the cosmic forces, as the human forces -- or whatever it may be that is at the time subject to this cyclic law -- as such forces pass their point of culmination, they begin to recede, they begin to lose the resiliency of their inner parts, the instant response which belongs to childhood and youth; and finally, there come decrepitude, then decay, then death, then rest; and then a beginning anew, but on a higher plane of the universe than before and towards nobler ends.
Why? Because the entity which had gone to its rest and now reappears for a new course of life had learned certain lessons in the former imbodiment, in the former existence, and with this increase of its intellectual and psychic stock it begins its new evolutionary cycle. When it in its turn is ended, then again comes rest, and after the rest then another life anew; and so forth throughout the eternities, throughout endless duration. But each new life cycle following each period of rest is always on planes and in spheres superior -- from the evolutionary standpoint -- to the preceding. Throughout all periods of past time has any entity so done; forwards into the future will it do so endlessly, for there are no ultimates, no endings.
Have you ever reflected over the idea of nothingness? Have you ever thought of the meaning of the words "an utter end"? Have you ever tried to realize the meaning of the notion that something had a definite beginning somewhere, somewhen, coming out of somewhere, without object or aim, and vanishing again into an infinite nothingness -- a useless and futile course of life? Something springing out of the past, no one knows how or when? These ideas are mere plays of the fancy, nor is there anything real on which they rest; for everywhere we look around us we see law, so called, that is, consistent operations of the universe. And if the universe is a consistent whole, how can something appear in it from nowhere, run for a while a crazy course, and then vanish into the nothingness whence it came?
It is amazing how thinking men allow their thoughts to be led astray by the phantasms of the imagination, the reason being that they have no psychological knowledge of themselves; they have no key to the mysteries of their own inner life. They have forgotten whence they came; they do not know why we are here; they in consequence do not know whither we go at the great change that men call death. Yet all our common sense, as well as our intuition, tell us that we are here for purposes, obviously so. We came here in response to an operation of nature.
The secret of the origin of the making of man lies in the making of the universe, in the making of the worlds. We, children of the universe, intrinsic and inseparable parts of it, must ineluctably follow its course, yet in following the general courses of the universe in which we live, likewise do we follow, each one for himself, his own particular life cycle.
In man, then, the evolutionary cyclic course is carried on by means of repeated incarnations. When the period of death or rest has been achieved and run through, and rest no more is needed, then we return to this earth in order to take up again our interrupted work, further to develop, further to evolve. This advancing, this unfolding and pouring forth of the energies of the inner generating life is what we mean by evolution. In similar fashion do all things evolve in appropriate spheres and during appropriate time periods.
It is through the lessons which each incarnated entity learns in and on this material earth that evolution actually takes place. I may add that death itself, which follows a hid process, is actually another school of evolutionary progress by which the soul, passing along its pathway of experience, also learns.
Throughout a single lifetime we do certain acts, using the forces innate in us, and reacting against the stimuli of nature around us; and thus we lay by seeds of action in our characters which become modified by such use of the powers within us. These seeds must some time fructify and bring forth their fruit, even as we here today are the fruits of former actions, former thoughts, former aspirations that we followed or did not follow. Either of the two cases is equally important, because our sins of omission are often as serious in their effects upon our character and the lives of others as are our sins of commission, and in both cases we are responsible.
Man expresses through his various vehicles, visible or invisible, through his physical vehicle, for instance, his inner forces, thus following the imperative drive of his character. This is evolution, which as a procedure has two aspects: (1) the unfolding or unwrapping of the inner powers in response to (2) the multitude of stimuli arising out of the world around him. It is thus that man learns, ever going step by step higher and higher, until from his present stage of imperfect development, he will finally reach a state of divinity, each ego becoming a fully self-conscious god, a fully self-expressing god.
But is this the end? Is this the final culmination of his destiny through evolution, after which there is nothing more, a complete stoppage of operation of all forces and powers and faculties which he unfolds? No, there is no absolute end, no absolute ultimate.
Man is in his essence a spiritual being, a monad, adopting for purposes of illustration the old Pythagorean term meaning a unit, an individual. Hence he is a consciousness center, a life-consciousness-center, eternal in its essence, because it belongs to those parts of the universe -- the higher worlds of the cosmos -- which die not, nor do they pass away. It is what is called in philosophy pure substance, and is not the composite matter of which our physical universe is built, but belongs to the more ethereal and the invisible parts of our universe which lie within and behind our physical universe of phenomenal appearances. Yet while these inner and invisible worlds are the spheres of its activity, in its own essence it is far higher than these are, for it belongs to the divine in the roots or heart of its being.
Now this monad, this spiritual life-consciousness-center, when the time comes for its reimbodiment after its rest following its preceding life in the lower spheres, is subject to a coarsening or materializing of its outer vestures. Itself remaining always as divinity pure and simple on its own plane, nevertheless it clothes itself in the lower spheres with these vestures of light, as they would seem to our mental and psychical senses. This is not a metaphor, but an actuality, for light is substance, although to us it manifests as an energy merely because it is a substance superior to the matter of our own physical plane.
Thus the real man passes through the spheres intermediate between his physical vestures and the plane of the monad, by means of a ray emanated from the monad. This monadic ray is the ego-self, and it is this ego-self which passes down through these intermediate spheres, and in so doing takes upon itself garments or vestures or vehicles appropriate to these spheres, each to each. These are its intermediate bodies which, using a generalizing term, we may collectively call the "soul"; until finally the moment comes when that soul, as the aggregate activities of these intermediate spheres, is enabled to influence the forces and matters of our physical world. Thus the ray or soul passes into physical incarnation and takes unto itself a physical vehicle or body, much as it took unto itself appropriate vehicles on the intermediate planes through which it passed, each such vehicle or body thus acting as a carrier of the monadic ray or ego-soul.
Think about this outline of the activities of the monad preceding incarnation, and you will marvel at the consistency of the doctrine from beginning to end. There are no lapses of thought, nor anything left for you to imagine as necessary to fill awkward gaps.
It is an obvious truth, is it not, that a purely spiritual being could not live or express itself on a plane of physical matter, for its energies are not appropriate to such a sphere. The monad must have an appropriate vehicle or body in order to manifest itself, and in which it may live and work; in other words, there must be an appropriate temple for the enshrining of our inner god, which the monad is. This is what is meant in the old teaching which, in the combination of two mystical sayings, I make to run as follows: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of Divinity, and that the Divine dwelleth in you?" (I Cor. 3:16).
When man, as an ego-soul or monadic ray, thus passes into physical incarnation he is born into the physical world as a little child, and beginning his career here in this manner, he runs through his life courses on earth. What causes these courses which a man follows? What is it that is behind the things that he does and the things that he leaves undone, thereby making for himself a character which culminates in a destiny? What are all these forces in man? What is the drive behind him? Collectively speaking, it is what he has built into himself in preceding lives, and which is now finding its outlet, now finding its fruitage-ground, and it is in this manner that man works out his karma.
A farmer sows seed in a certain field and the seed takes root and grows, and produces its crop. Where? In some other field? No, but where it was sown. In similar fashion do our thoughts and actions plant seeds of future activities into ourselves, into our characters through the action of karma, the law of cause and effect, which more accurately is expressed as the law of consequences.
Man likewise is greatly affected by the general karma of the race to which he belongs, and by the general law of consequence appertaining to the universe in which he lives. It is the working out of all these latent potentialities that he has inbuilt into himself that makes his life in any one incarnation. It is the working out of these which directs what a man will call his struggles to betterment and his aspirations to higher things. Then, when his course is run in any one lifetime, he passes to his postmortem rest; and when this repose in its turn is ended then he returns to this sphere in a new cycle of activity, yet in each new incarnation he gains fresh experiences. Always does he more largely develop his inner faculties and power; always, therefore, has he evolved to a point farther along the pathway than where he was before. It may be little, or it may be much.
Some people object to the teaching of reimbodiment, which in the case of human beings is called reincarnation; and they so object because they do not understand it. Yet it is such an old teaching, and has had the common consent of universal humanity. Until the last fifteen hundred years or so, all the nations of the earth believed it and taught it, as was the case in the European world at that time; and the doctrine is still believed in and taught by the greater part of the human race.
Some people say: "I do not like the idea of being reincarnated. My life has been very sad. I have suffered deeply; this earth has been the scene of my sorrows; I don't want to come back here again." Others say: "I like reincarnation as a theory; I recognize it as the most logical explanation ever offered to thinking man of the problems of life; but I don't like the idea of coming back into this world and having to go through all that I have been through; and the thought of making the same mistakes over again repels me." But they do not understand.
These people seem to think that they will come back into the same old body that they had before. Unconsciously in their own minds resides the thought that they will have the same old name, be in the same old station of life, and have the same old troubles, and do the same old work. No.
In the first place, reincarnation before eighteen hundred or two thousand years have passed, as our teachers have taught us, is an exceedingly rare thing -- so rare that we may forget the exceptions. So far as that goes, look at the differences in the conditions of life as they exist in our own present world, and what they were around two thousand years ago. Yet few indeed complain of being in this life, and most people seem to cling to it rather fervidly. The objectors forget that the laws of life are not what we at any one particular moment of time may think that they ought to be, or what we in our blindness might wish them to be. We cannot change the courses of existence by our likes and dislikes.
We do not come back into the same old body. We have a new body, obviously. We do not come back into the same old house, which by the time of our return will have become forgotten dust. Our condition in life may, in our next incarnation, be very much better, or it may be very much worse than the present; for if we do not behave ourselves now when we have the chance of bettering conditions, we certainly will have to take the consequences.
This is the meaning of karma, the doctrine of consequence. We reap what we sow, and where we have sown; and if we have sown seeds of good and evil in this life and on this earth, it is only in another life on this earth that we can reap what we have sown. Would not a farmer be considered a lunatic did he sow a field in one part of the county where he lived, and some months later travel to another part of the county, far from where he sowed his seed, in order to reap his crop? So it is with man. He sows seeds of thought and action, and he reaps that crop where he sowed them, which is in himself and in this physical world.
Our universe is ruled by law and order; and this word karma expresses that fact of universal harmony and consistency manifesting as what we call law and order. Everything that we do, everything that we think, is a productive cause, affecting us and those around us, yet leaving the seeds and the fruits of such thoughts and actions in ourself. This is common knowledge. We have laid up for ourself in past lives treasures for happiness; but we may have also laid up for ourself a treasure house of another kind, and we are doing similarly in our present life. We are going to have a body and a character in our next incarnation which will be the exact fruitage or consequence of the entire sum total of what we have thought and done in this life, as modified only by the as yet unexpressed and by the as yet unworked-out consequences of previous lives.
I have heard an objection of another kind, running in the contrary direction, and it is this: "I do not like the idea that I am going to come back and be another person. I want to be myself. I do not want a new body: I am satisfied with this body of mine. It has treated me well, and I have tried to treat it well, and I want this body and not a new one." Those who make this objection also do not understand. As a matter of fact, they are going to keep that same body. Now this sounds like a contradiction of what I have just said, but it is not; it is a paradox. What is a body after all? It is a form, a name, and nothing more. The ancient Sanskrit writings, as outlined in the noble Vedanta philosophy, called it nama-rupa, meaning a "name-form."
The fact is that our body is composed of hosts of lives, of smaller and inferior entities, which are nevertheless learning entities just as we are. And I may add in passing that we too are hosts of smaller lives, smaller and inferior to cosmic entities far greater than we are. But these hosts of lives inferior to us and which compose our bodies -- what are they? Are they for all eternity just standing still as they now are? No, they are evolving even as we are evolving. They came from us originally; they are our own children; they are what we call our life-atoms. They sprang from us; we sent them forth, and we shall have to meet them again when they return to us at our next incarnation, through and by the action of psychomagnetic attraction. They will provide for us when they reaggregate themselves into a physical form for our next incarnation; and we shall have a body consisting of just what we have impressed upon them today and in past lives by our thoughts, by our acts, and by the consequences of our thoughts and acts.
So that the next body that we shall get will be -- not the same old body that we had before; not the same John Smith or Mary Brown, not at all; for John Smith and Mary Brown are but a name and a form. But our new body will be composed of those same life-atoms in which we lived and worked and expressed ourself in the preceding incarnation, which is our present life. And remember that these life-atoms exist not merely on this physical plane where our physical body is, but they exist likewise on the intermediate planes; that is to say, on the astral and emotional planes, as well as on the intellectual and spiritual planes.
It is by means of these life-atoms on all the different planes that the ego-self, emanated from the monad, is able to build for itself new bodies, inner and outer, in the new incarnation. It passes through all the intermediate planes, building up for itself from the same old life-atoms that it before had -- its own children, waiting for it there -- a vehicle or body appropriate to each such plane. Similarly is it on the physical plane where the physical body is. Here we have the original and correct explanation of the much misunderstood Christian doctrine called the Resurrection of the Dead.
Now there are three methods, we are told, by which reimbodiment proceeds, and these three work together in strict harmony. One method is what we commonly call reincarnation, which the mystics among the ancient Greeks spoke of as metensomatosis, that is to say, coming again into body after body, "re-imbodying." This word was taken over from the Greek Mysteries by Clement of Alexandria, one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers, although with certain modifications due to his Christian bias.
The second method is the procedure called metempsychosis, that is to say, coming again into a soul, or psyche -- re-ensouling."
The third method, which the Greeks kept secret in their Mysteries, but which certain of their philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato, Empedocles, and later the Neoplatonists more or less openly hinted at or taught, is the activity of the monad, the spiritual fire at the core or heart of each one of us. This monad manifests our spiritual self, because it is that spiritual self, a consciousness center which is the fountain of our being, whence issue in flooding streams all the nobler energies and faculties of its own character, and which, considered as a unit, furnish the urge or drive or impulse behind all evolutionary progress.
First, then, there is the activity of the monad, the highest. During the process of incarnation the activities of this monad develop the intermediate nature which ensouls soul after soul, and this is the real meaning of this old Greek word metempsychosis; and these souls thus invigorated, inspired, and driven by the ensouling monad, ensoul body after body, which is metensomatosis, or reincarnation, as the word is commonly and properly used.
Hence, evolution proceeds on three general lines: the spiritual, the mental-emotional, and the astral-vital; and the physical body is the channel through which all these inwrapped capacities, tendencies, and powers, express themselves on the physical plane, if the environment at any particular moment or at any particular passage of time be appropriate and fit for the expression of this or that or of some other such attribute, power, or faculty. The combination of these two -- the inner urge, the drive, and a fit and appropriate environment or field -- means the evolving, the coming out into manifestation, the expression, of those inner forces or powers.
As is evident, this includes a far wider and vaster conception of evolution than any that has hitherto been entertained in the ranks of the scientific researchers -- the Darwinists for instance.
The strength of the doctrine of reincarnation lies in itself, in its appeal to our intellectual and logical faculties, in its own persuasiveness, in the manner in which it answers problems, in the hope that it gives, in the light that it sheds upon collateral questions of human life, and indirectly upon the problems of the physical world surrounding us. It is through and by reincarnation as a natural fact, that we learn the beauty of the inner life and thereby grow, developing a larger comprehension, not only of ourselves, but of the loveliness inherent in the harmony of the universal laws. For there is back of all things beauty, and bliss, and truth.
What men call evil and misfortune and accidents, and the disastrous phenomena of the physical world which sometimes occur, arise out of the conflicts of the wills and powers of the various hosts of imperfect but evolving entities, one of such hosts being what we collectively call humanity.
Reimbodiment is a universal fact because it is a law, that is to say, a continuous and consistent operation of nature, running throughout all being. The universe reimbodies itself when its course has been run, and after its period of rest which thereupon follows. Men do likewise; not because reincarnation is for them alone, but because it is the same fundamental law of cyclic beginnings and endings, and in the case of man it means only that he returns to pick up again the threads which he had dropped at a certain turn of that cycle which we call death.
Its procedure is strictly lawful, there is in its working no haphazard chance, no fortuity, no favor; it is merely the succession of state following upon state in strict accordance with cause and subsequent effect. Nobody and nothing operates it. It simply is; and its working is set in motion in every individual case by the action of the will of the entity upon the nature surrounding it. No god created the law of our reimbodiment. It is an intrinsic function of nature, and it acts in that way only because it can act in no other way, being simply a statement of the doctrine of consequences -- of consequences following upon originating causes.