CHAPTER III.

THE INCARNATION OF LIFE.
Where there is progression there must be ret- rogression, or at the least, the possibility of it.
Persons who hold strongly to the idea of eter- nal progress are generally skeptical as regards reincarnation, some of them regarding it with positive disgust.
That the ruler of beasts, aye, and of men, should be compelled to enter in the form of an animal and thus pass another life period on the earth shocks the sensibilities and arouses the most de- termined dissent.
But there is no compulsion about it. A man is what he delights in, no matter what his form ; and he who delights in doing what gratifies the animal is already fashioning within himself the brute body he will enter and live in with pleasure, when the fullness of time frees him from the hu- man body.
Beasts devour each other, the little fish are the
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE. 4 1
prey of the big ones. Men take advantage of the weakness of their fellows to rob and slay them, and doubtless would devour them bodily if the helpless animals were not more easily kept and fattened. If progression were the only law, then some men — shall I say many men ? — would certainly show forth its truth if elevated into the body and life of the brute creation.
Retrogression is as much a truth as progres- sion, and the words are interchangeable with evo- lution and involution. If man by his own acts and thought involves himself in a network of circumstances which prove his ruin, the law oper- ates just as surely as it does in the case of the one whose network of circumstances are the evo- lution of noble thought and action. One destroys while the other creates. One retrogrades while the other progresses. To create pain, sorrow, loss, and humiliation is retrogressive, becoming involved in that which disintegrates and de- stroys, and whose ultimate is change into in- ferior forms.
It is no punishment for one who is already in the life of a dog to take on the form of a dog, nor would a lamb or a dove be spiritually elevated
42 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
by taking on the form of man. Slaves can only exhibit and use the degree of freedom attained, and the highest degree of freedom is forfeited by a violation of the great law of love. When man abuses this law of his spiritual nature his soul trembles, arrested in its upward progress, and slowly turns toward descent by gradual loss of the power of thought and the germination of ideas.
In evolution the horizon of the mind continu- ally expands, the light flows in in greater volume and brilliancy as the heavens roll away as a scroll, revealing new worlds, new natures, and new pow- ers, of which the animal man cannot so much as conceive. These are for him who hath eyes to see the things of the spirit.
No one can get out of himself, nor be other than his thought makes him ; he may get out of his human body and still be in his own life, and that life creates a body corresponding to its nature.
It does not follow that when a soul begins to retrograde it will go to the lowest deep, or that it must continue to descend, for a man may change the quality of his thought as he may his acts, and this change may be quickly or slowly made, in
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE. 43
accordance with his orbit and velocity of revo- lution.
To think, with some, is the same as to act, so far as the spiritual nature is concerned ; with the coarser, slower nature a change of thought and its corresponding act is more difficult and labori- ous. Thought moves the will, but the will is feebly connected with gross forms of matter and slowly vibrating motions of mind.
Reincarnation is not demonstrable by material facts, or testimony, for memory of previous con- ditions of being dies away from the soul, in a manner similar to the decay and death of the body. No one remembers the events of infancy. Yet all have been babies, and the form as then inhabited is not that in which the mature man manifests. So that the fact that we have no rec- ollection of a previous incarnation proves nothing against its probability.
There is no sharp distinction between the hu- man and animal kingdom such as the " missing link" of Darwin suggests. Man has a survival in his nature of all the animal instincts, habits, and passions, and to suppose retrogression along those lines until submerged in the animal king-
44 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
dom is surely more in accord with the justice and love which we name Divine than to suppose that creative power is exercised in a way to make eter- nally wretched a large majority of the human family. The degenerates so well known in crim- inal jurisprudence are in the vortex of retrogres- sion, and are being rapidly whirled downward to the animal kingdom, where alone they are at home and wholly satisfied. What is the purpose of the creeping, crawling, swimming, walking, and flying life of the planet ? These creatures of such tran- sient being are all sentient, capable of pain and of bliss ; they exist for a brief season, multiply their kind, and disappear in the vortex of change. The purpose of the existence of these sparks of life is, on the whole, progression ; their goal is perfection. The perfect includes the all, and the spark of life can become perfect only when asso- ciated with all life, when each separate being con- tains within itself all that is. If man has evolved through all grades of being from the mineral atom to the human plane, he must hold in his composi- tion the spirit or residuum of knowledge thus gained. Being thus a combination of energies, it behooves him to hold fast to his gains nor pause
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE. 45
in the ascent lest retrogression set in, soul forces scatter, and he become again involved in all the elements of animal life, forced to climb again, slowly and laboriously, the ladder which leads to the stars.
Freedom is of choice and will. It begins in an idea, around which the being revolves persistently throughout aeons of time and in countless forms, gaining little by little the freedom it seeks, free- dom to choose and will to execute.
Man is a creator in proportion to his freedom of choice and power to execute, for energy flows swiftly and strongly in the union of these prin- ciples.
The incomplete, the angular, the unnatural man cannot escape the indrawing force of incarnation if he would, for could he emerge into a sphere where all motion is rapid and powerful as the re- volving world's, where violence is unknown, where all is order and harmony of motion, legs, arms, and all useless appendages, all angularities of form would be whirled away, leaving nothing but the spherical head to show that an undeveloped man had prematurely entered that sphere.
One revolution would be sufficient, for use de-
46 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
termines the organs of form, and with no earth on which to stand, no need for food, no desire to grasp, no opposition to arouse, of what use are arms, legs, hands, fists, stomachs, and bowels ? When the diplomat and the politician find their occupation gone, the part of the mind engaged in the arts or tricks of statecraft is decayed and useless. The so-called great would find them- selves out of balance and gladly return to the angular form in which their angularities of mind can best be accommodated.
They who hunger for wealth, or worldly place and power, will naturally and inevitably return to their treasures, which are of and on the earth.
Swedenborg saw into the astral world, or invis- ible life of this angular nature, but he did not see beyond the present form of man, when he de- clared that " the whole universe is in the form of man." His eyes were not opened to the eternal progression of forms until the perfect form, the sphere was reached. The all of nature is divided into parts. In one it crawls, in another it flies, in another it swims. There is a nature which takes root in the ground and is stationary, moving only with the revolution of the earth which breeds it,
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE. 47
and another, although fast at the roots, sways with each passing breeze and indraws the spirit of life in its own peculiar manner, as it vibrates with life.
The nature of man differs from all these, but it is by no means certain that he is of the highest nature of all. The earth which gives birth to and supports these varied products is of quite a dif- ferent nature. Spherical in form, she moves in her orbit without wings, she swings through space without shudder, she breathes without lungs, she digests without a stomach. She has absorbed, indrawn all angularities of form and is in perfect harmony with her environment. Can she come under the laws of retrogression or has she evolved beyond their action ? She has reached perfection of form, and the harmonious adjustment of her forces points to a condition of eternal progression, but what finite mind can grasp and measure the destiny of worlds!
A seed planted in the soil is involved in it, and the process of growth is carried on by the inward drawing, or attraction, exerted by the seed on the elements in which it is involved.
The evolutionary force which pushes the plant out of the soil is not as strong as the forces in
48 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
the seed which attract moisture and nourishment. The tiny plant stands erect, boldly stretching forth its arms and clutching as with hands the vital energy it needs for development.
The earth, air, water, sunlight are the condi- tions in which plant life is involved, and from which it extracts nourishment and perfects itself. If it bear fruit the spherical is the more common form, indicating the tendency toward perfection.
Man differs little from vegetable life save in his power of freedom. The conditions surrounding him are soil, moisture, and heat, from which he reaches out with thought which lays hold on the stars, which lift him up among them, and he be- comes a god. The conditions which surround him are his horizon, above which rise the con- stellations of hope, ambition, pride, or despair, as lights to cheer or shadows to depress.
Man has been called the child of circumstance, the plaything of fate ; but the truth is that man owns himself, and the circumstances which sur- round and enfold him shift and change as the wind blows. The man who governs himself shapes and fashions the conditions which are about him, through which his journey leads. Every motion
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE. 49
he makes is a new event evolved from himself, which makes another point of light in some con- stellation glowing in the firmament of his life.
Energy does not enter from without except it be attracted by something within, even if that something be only a vacuum. The conditions surrounding a man are parts of his organization ; they were present at his birth as a body awaiting the entrance of a soul, but they are not fixed.
We change bodies, but the change is first within ourselves, rather than in the external con- ditions. The attractive force is changed, so that the elements we do not desire no longer hover around and enter in the secret places of our loves and our will. We are more involved in our own acts and the conditions they create than in the acts of others, because we have begotten them.
The experiences of life are all the store of real knowledge we have, and this knowledge involved in the consciousness becomes our spiritual life, thus entering into and becoming part and parcel of ourselves. We grow physically by the indraw- ing of air in the lungs and the essence of food in the body, and we grow mentally by indrawing thought, which is given birth by our acts.
5
The spirit of man is of similar nature and quality as his thought. He is not made of foreign substances, but of that to which he is closely related and with which he is in thorough accord, viz., that which he thinks about most constantly.
He is involved in the things of his thought, and his only way of escape from that which he recognizes as evil is by becoming friends with it, by forgiving it, thus indrawing the force which at- tracts evil by putting it to sleep, or hypnotizing it. To indraw a passion, or a faculty of mind, is not to destroy it, but to render it inert, innocuous.
Everything is of use if rightly placed. Legs are useful on the earth, but in the spiritual state where the will is the means of locomotion the legs, being useless, are indrawn. So it is with all irregularities of mind and character ; they are not lopped off, excised, but are indrawn, transmuted into the sphere, which is the form of the perfect man.
In its proper place, performing its function of sentinel, fear is good ; but when it becomes a hypnotic power, injurious to health and happi- ness, the wise ruler of his house will silence
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE, 5 I
it, and by putting it to sleep indraw it. Next to love, fear has the greatest influence over the souls of men. Love is life, joy, warmth ; fear chills, paralyzes, destroys, and is in league with death itself. It is a fearful bondage, the exact opposite of that freedom of spirit which is of God. It has no place in the kingdom of heaven, and hence its transmutation is essential to the evolution of the perfect symmetrical man.
Fear closes the door to that inner kingdom of heaven which no one has ever been scared into. The influence of fear may make more law-abiding citizens, but in proportion as the soul is appre- hensive of the wrath of God does it take hold on death, the very thing that it fears.
The force which alone can indraw fear is love.
The moral nature is the training-school of the spirit, and fear is the sentinel at the door to debar the wild beast nature from entering there. It restrains the untamed animal nature, but when that nature is thoroughly regenerated, not cast out but indrawn or transmuted, it disappears between the " lamb and the lion " which " lie down together."
Violence is sometimes necessary to repel vio-
52 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
lence, but anger and cruelty are never necessary. They are abnormal or inflamed activities of force, and are the result of torpid justice and charity. The awakening of the love element absorbs or indraws the fierceness of the animal in man and arouses the charity which subdues and transmutes it. Love projected from the soul is replaced by that peace " which passeth all understanding."
Difficulties are overcome by the evolution of energy into the conditions which surround us, thus improving our environments, but it is by the soul that feels rather than by any other agency that the change is effected. Ambition to be and to become more and more nerves us to effort and improvement.
Love is the great equalizer, the universal sol- vent, a reservoir which is never full, a fire which devours all lesser forces, passions, and desires. He who is capable of evolving love from himself need fear no evil, for he is involved in good which is the germinating principle of immortality.
The expansion and rounding out of being must be accomplished from within. It is not an exter- nal work except by the reactions of external con- ditions, for action affects less than reaction.
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE. 53
We are involved in the reactions of previous lives. We find conditions already prepared when we are born into this physical world. Tendencies to disease or crime we call heredity, thereby removing something of the sting by putting the responsibility on our ancestors — and on the Creator, as is the way of the fatalist. This is cowardly if we consider on whom we place the burden, and it is also a mistake if we fancy we derive our being from something foreign to our- selves.
There is nothing foreign to infinitude, and we are infinite being. Time never began and can never end. The soul is always in time, has always been, and will be forever. Sometimes it is inert in rock or mineral. Sometimes in the life of the vegetable or the animal kingdom ; it may be a sunbeam has held it, or the dewdrop on a flower, or some wild beast of the jungle, or some glad bird whose native element is air. To and fro, out and in, has the soul passed through- out aeons of time, ignorant of whence it came or whither it was bound.
Beginning and end there is none, and of the experiences of this eternity of being, of living and
54 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
dying we know nothing, although we are in it and of it, and cannot escape from its enfold- ment.
Out of himself the Great God creates, and what he creates is within him, for he is the Bound- less, the All, and we are limited reflections of him. So alternately in rest and motion, rising and fall- ing, spirit and matter, visible and invisible, but always within ourselves, we revolve, we evolve, and as certainly involve the being we are, in the spirit of the acts we commit. As vapor becomes steam, steam becomes water, and water becomes ice, so does spirit, passing through experiences of which we are ignorant, by unknown proc- esses become thought and action, and by the same process inertia becomes motion, and mat- ter is transmuted into spirit. Whether active or inactive, conscious or unconscious, in the trans- mutation of all force / am between the opposing elements, superintending and controlling all man- ifestations.
Thus / am connected with everything living or dead ; they are mine and I am theirs ; I have made them and their reactions have made me. Jesus was crucified for a statement of this truth,
THE INCARNATION OF LIFE.
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" If ye have seen Me at any time, ye have seen the Father. I and my Father are One."
The idea of blood relationship is the falsehood of the ages, — a falsehood in which man has been involved throughout all historical time.
Out of it has sprung the divine right of kings, the superiority of the firstborn, the bondage of aristocracies and of caste. It has set man against man, and involved the race in animosities and bloody warfare. The intrinsic idea in the hered- ities of "blue blood" is, "I am first, therefore better than you, and entitled to all that is best."
Transmission of qualities from ancestry is true, but it is a partial truth only, for the secret of good blood, as of any good, lies in the love of good, not in pride of ancestry. The best inher- itance of blood can be vitiated by evil actions. Blood does not make the man, but the man makes the blood. Because a man comes into this existence by the way of a certain man's blood does not condemn him to be involved in it all his life. Each man is here because he chooses to be here ; he impels his parents to the act which made his advent possible. " The thought is father to the act."
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The thought and will of the incarnating germ is the moving force of its manifestation, but the parents did not hold that eternal ego in mind until they became associated with it in physical life. Association is the greater part of blood relationship.
The race is involved in blood until the very heavens are lurid with war. The orthodox atone- ment is one of blood, but the only purifier of blood is love, which evolves the Christ spirit into our environment, in which he who loves is in- volved, as in the kingdom of God, which is peace and good will. This is the work of every man, and his only way of salvation.
We are involved in self-sufficiency, which holds at arm's length each one of us, — a thick darkness in which nothing is visible to each one but him- self. To ourselves we appear immense, — so im- mense as to imagine we can influence the Great God by prayers. To own, to hold large posses- sions of material things, to be at the head of the procession of society, is the grand aim. Thrones are established and palaces built, from which to rule, not ourselves, but others, for our own satis- faction and glory. This spirit prevails in halls of
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legislation, on the bench of justice, in the pulpit, and in the courts alike.
To strive for equality is manly and laudable. To be free, self-poised, and self-supporting is evidence of spiritual life evolving within us ; but to aim to rule another involves us in perpetual strife. Great wealth is apt to involve one in the spirit of pride and domination, with the acts which flow from that spirit. Lust for money is degrad- ing and destructive.
To think kindly of others, to mingle with them in fellowship and friendly appreciation and for- bearance, to grieve with those who mourn, to give of our strength to the weak, — this is to involve ourselves in the spirit and acts which evolve true and noble manhood and womanhood. Although this spirit will build no thrones and erect no pal- aces, it will so equalize conditions that the whole earth may become a paradise, when all false dis- tinctions would cease forever. Freedom, which is the native air of the soul, is found in the whole, not in isolation or the separation of parts; but this oneness must exist first in each individual before it can be perfected in the mass.
All worlds are free in the universal ether, for
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each moves in its orbit of its own volition, with- out restraint or constraint. Man is free only when he has the good of every other human being at heart and evolves that good into the universal life. He is only self-poised and free in the good in which he is involved. Good action affects the universal spirit, and affects every man in accord with his conditions, but each may be affected differently by the same influx. That which is a great good for one may be a lesser good for another, and an evil to a third ; for the power of receiving and appropriating virtue is always and everywhere an individual possession. Every one is free to appropriate that only which appeals to him.
There is no real freedom on the animal plane of development, only a love of it ; and this love does not include freedom for others, not even for the wife of a man's bosom.
THE POWER OF LOVE. 59