Section 3

When tiie illuminating concepts of the Wisdom Religion shed their flood of light over the world, dis- persing its obscurity and revealing the absolute Jus- tice which is working under all the apparent incon- gruities, inequalities and accidents of life, is it any wonder that our hearts should go out in gratitude unspeakable to the Great Ones — blessed be They! — who hold up the Torch of Truth in the murky dark-
29
ness, and free us from the tension that was straining us to breaking-i^oint, the helpless agony of witnessing wrongs that semed irremediable, the hopelessness of Justice, the despair of Love :
Ye are not bound! the Soul of Things is sweet,
The Heart of Being is celestial rest ; Stronger than woe is will: that which was Good
Doth pass to Better — Best.
*****
Such is the Law which moves to righteousness ^\hich none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is Love, the end of it
Is Peace and Consununation sweet. Obey.
We may perhaps gain in clearness if we tabulate the threefold results of the activity of the Soul that go to the making up of Karma as Cause, regarded in principle rather than in detail. Thus we have during a life-period:
Plane. Material. Result.
Spiritual Akasha Akashic Images
forming Karmic Eecord
{Mental Images, remaining in creator's eon- sciousness.
Man creates on
Psychic
{Astro - mental Images, active entities on psy- chic plane.
30
The results of these will be tendencies, capacities, ac- tivities, opportunities, environment, etc., chiefly in future life-periods, worked out in accordance with definite laws.
The Making of Karma in Detail.
The Soul in Men, the Ego, the Maker of Karma, must be recognized by the student as a growing entity, a living individual, who increases in wisdom and in mental stature as he treads the path of his seonian evolution; and the fundamental identity of the High- er and Lower Manas must be constantly kept in mind. For convenience sake we distinguish between them, but the difference is a difference of functioning ac- tivity and not of nature ; the Higher Manas is Manas working on the spiritual plane, in possession of its full consciousness of its own past ; the Lower Manas is Manas working on the psychic or astral plane, veiled in astral matter, vehicled in Kama, and with all its activities intermingled with and colored by the desire-nature ; it is to a great extent blinded by the astral matter that veils it, and is in possession only of a portion of the total manasic consciousness, this por- tion consisting — for the vast majority — of a limited selection from the more striking experiences of the one incarnation then in progress. For the practical purposes of life as seen by most people, the Lower Manas is the "I" and is what we term the Personal- Ego; the voice of conscience, vaguely and confusedly
31
regarded as super-natural, as the voice of God, is for them the only manifestation of the Higher Manas on the psychic plane, and they quite rightly regard it as authoritative, however mistaken they may be as to its nature. But the student must realize that the Lower Manas is one with the Higher, as the ray is one with its sun; the Sun-Manas shines ever in the heaven of the spiritual plane, the Ray-Manas pene- trates the psychic plane; but if they be regarded as two, otherwise than for convenience in distinguishing their functioning, hopeless confusion will arise.
The Ego then is a growing entity, an increasing quantity. The ray sent down is like a hand plunged into water to seize some object and then withdrawn, holding the object in its grasp. The increase in the Ego depends on the value of the objects gathered by its outstretched hand, and the importance of all its work when the ray is withdrawn is limited and con- ditioned by the experiences gathered while that ray has been functioning on the psychic plane. It is as though a laboror went out into a field, toiling in rain and in sunshine, in cold and in heat, returning home at night; but the laborer is also the proprietor, and all the results of his labor fill his own granaries and enrich his own store. Each Personal-Ego is the im- mediately effective part of the continuing or Individ- ual-Ego, representing it in the lower world, and nec- essarily more or less developed according to the stage at which the Ego, as a totality or an Individual, has arrived. If this be clearly understood the sense of
32
injustice to the Personal-Ego in its succession to its karmic inheritance — often felt as a difficulty by the young student of Theosophy — will disappear; for it will be realized that the Ego that makes the Karma reaps the Karma, the laborer that sowed the seed gathers in the harvest, though the clothes in which he worked as sower may have worn out during the in- terval between the sowing and the reaping; the Ego's astral garments have also fallen to pieces between seed-time and harvest, and he reaps in a new suit of clothes ; but it is " he ' ' who sowed and who reaps, and if he sowed but little seed or seed badly chosen, it is he who will find but a poor harvest when as reaper he goes forth.
In the early stages of the Ego's growth his pro- gress will be extremely slow*, for he will be led hither and thither by desire, following attractions on the physical plane; the Mental Images he generates will be mostly of the passional class, and hence the Astro- mental Images will be violent and short-lived rather than strong and far-reaching. According as manasic elements enter into the composition of the Mental Image will be the endurance of the Astro-mental. Steady, sustained thought will form clearly defined Mental Images, and correspondingly strong and en- during Astro-mental Images, and there will be a dis- tinct purpose in the life, a clearly recognized Ideal to which the mind is constantly recurring and on which it continually dwells; this Mental Image will * See Birth and Evolution of the Soul.
33
become a dominating influence in the mental life, and the energies of the Soul will be largely directed by it.
Let us now study the making of Karma by way of the Mental Image. During a man's life he forms an innumerable assemblage of IMental Images; some are strong, clear, contiiuially reinforced by repeated mental impulses; others are weak,vague, just formed and then as it were forsaken by the mind; at death the Soul finds itself possessed of myriads of these Mental Images, and they vary in character as well as in strength and definiteness. Some are of spirit- ual aspirations, longings to be of service, gropings after knowledge, vows of self-dedication to the Higher Life ; some are purely intellectual, clear gems of thought, receptacles of the results of deep study; some are emotional and passional, breathing love, compassion, tenderness, devotion, anger, ambition, pride, greed ; some are from bodily appetites, stimu- lated by uncurbed desire, and represent thoughts of gluttony, drunkenness, sensuality. Each Soul has its own consciousness, crowded with these Mental Images, the outcome of its mental life ; not one thought, how- ever fleeting, but is there represented ; the Astro- mental Images may in many cases long have perished, may have had strength enough to endure but for a few hours, but the Mental Images remain among the possessions of the Soul, not one is lacking. All these Mental Images the Soul carries away with it, when it passes through death into the astral w^orld.
34
The Kama Loka, or Place of Desire, is divided into many strata as it were, and the Soul just after death is encumbered with its complete body of desire, or Kama Rupa, and all the Mental Images formed by Kama-Manas that are of a gross and animal nature are powerful on the lowest levels of this astral world. A poorly developed Soul will dwell on these Images and act them out, thus preparing itself to repeat them again physically in its next life ; a man who has dwelt on sensual thoughts and made such Mental Images will not only be drawn to earth-scenes connected with sensual gratifications, but will constantly be repeating them as actions in his mind, and so setting up in his nature stronger and stronger impulses towards the future commission of similar offences. So with other Mental Images formed from materials supplied by the desire-nature, that belong to other levels in Kama Loka. As the Soul rises from the lower levels to the higher, the Mental Images built from the materials of the lower levels lose these elements, thus becom- ing latent in consciousness, or what H. P. Blavatsky used to call "privations of matter," capable of exist- ing but out of material manifestation. The kama- rupic vesture is purified of its grosser elements as the Lower Ego is drawn upwards, or inwards, towards the devachanic region, each cast-off "shell" disin- tegrating in due course, until the last is doffed and the ray is completely withdrawn, free from all astral en- casement. On the return of the Ego towards earth- life, these latent images will be thrown outwards and
35
will attract to themselves the appropriate kamic ma- terials, which make them capable of manifestation on the astral plane, and they will become the appe- tites, passions and lower emotions of his desire-body for his new incarnation.
AVe may remark in passing that some of the Men- tal Images encircling the newly arrived Soul are the source of much trouble during the earlier stages of the post-mortem life; superstitious beliefs presenting themselves as ]\Iental Images torture the Soul with pictures of horrors that have no place in its real sur- roundings.* All the Mental Imag(?s formed from the passions and appetites are subjected to the process above described, to be remanifested by the Ego on its return to earth-life, and as the writer of the Astral Plane says: —
The LiPiKA, the great Karmic deities of the Kosmos, weigh the deeds of each personality ^Yhen the final separation of its principles takes place in Kama Loka, and give as it were the mould of the Linga Sharira exactly suitable to its Karma for the man's next birth. t
Freed for the time, from these lower elements, the Soul passes on into Devachan, where it spends a time proportionate to the wealth or poverty of its Mental Images pure enough to be carried into that region. Here it finds again every one of its loftier efforts,
* See The Astral Plane, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 24, 25. t lUd., p. 61.
36
however brief it may have been, however fleeting, and here it works upon them, building out of these ma- terials powers for its coming lives.
The devachanic life is one of assimilation; the ex- periences collected on eartli have to be worked into tlie texture of the Soul, and it is by these that the Ego grows; its development depends on the number and variety of the Mental Images it has formed dur- ing its earth-life, and transmutes into their appro- priate and more permanent types. Gathering together all the Mental Images of a special class, it extracts from them their essence : by meditation it creates a mental organ, and jDours into it as faculty the essence it has extracted. For instance : a man has formed many Mental Images out of aspirations for know- ledge and efforts to understand subtle and lofty reasonings; he casts off his body, his mental powers being of onl}^ average kind ; in his Devachan he works on all these Mental Images, and evolves them into capacity, so that his Soul returns to earth with a higher mental apparatus than it before possessed, with much increased intellectual powers, able to achieve tasks for which before it was utterly inadequate. This is the transformation of the Mental Images, by which as Mental Images they cease to exist ; if in later lives the Soul would seek to see again these as they were, it must seek them in the Karmic Records, where they remain for ever as kashic Images. By this transfor- mation they cease to be Mental Images created and worked on by the Soul, and become powers of the
37
Soul, part of its very nature. If then a man desires to possess higher mental faculties than he at present enjoys, he can ensure their development by deliber- ately willing to acquire them, persistently keeping their acquirement in view, for desire and aspiration in, one life become faculty in another, and the will to perform becomes the capacity to achieve. But it must be remembered that the faculty thus builded is strictly limited by the materials supplied to the architect; there is no creation out of nothing, and if the Soul on earth fail to exercise its powers by sowing the seed of aspiration and desire, the Soul in Devachan will have but scanty harvest.
Mental Images which have been constantly re- peated, but are not of the aspiring character, of the longing to achieve more than the feeble powers of the Soul permit, become tendencies of thought, grooves into which mental energy runs easily and readily. Hence the importance of not letting the mind drift aimlessly among insignificant objects, idly creating trivial Mental Images, and letting them dwell in the mind. These will persist and form channels for fu- ture outpourings of mental force, which will thus be led to meander about on low levels, running into the accustomed grooves, as the paths of least resistance.
The will or desire to perform a certain action, such will or desire having been frustrated, not by want of ability but by want of opportunity, or by circum- stances forbidding accomplishment, will cause Mental Images which — if the action be of a high and pure
38
nature — will be acted out in thought on the deva- chanic plane, and will be precipitated as actions on returning to earth. If the llental Image was formed out of desire to do beneficent actions, it would give rise to the mental performance of these actions in Devachan; and this performance, the reflection of the Image itself, would leave it in the Ego as an in- tensified Mental Image of an action, w^hich would be thrown out on to the physical plane as a physical act, the moment the touch of favorable opportunity precipitated this crystallization of the thought into the act. The physical act is inevitable when the Mental Image has been realized as action on the de- vachanic plane. This same law applies to Mental Images formed out of baser desires, though these never pass into Devachan, but are subjected to the process before described, to be re-formed on the way back to earth. Repeated covetous desires, for in- stance, out of which Mental Images are formed, will crystallize out as acts of theft, when circumstances are propitious. The causative Kama is complete, and the physical act has become its inevitable effect, when it has reached the stage at which another repeti- tion of the Mental Image means its passing into action. It must not be forgotten that repetition of an act tends to make the act automatic, and this law works on planes other than the physical; if then an action be constantly repeated on the psychic plane it will become automatic, and when opportunity offers will automatically be imitated on the physical. How often
39
it is said after a crime, "It was done before I thought," or ''If I had thought for a moment I would never have done it." The speaker is quite right in his plea that he was not then moved by a deliberate thought-out idea, and he is naturally ignor- ant as to preceding thoughts, the train of causes that led up to the inevitable result. Thus a saturated so- lution will solidify if but one more crystal be dropped into it ; at the mere contact, the whole passes into the solid state. AVhen the aggregation of Mental Images has reached saturation point, the addition of but one more solidifies them into an act. The act, again, is inevitable, for the freedom of choice has been ex- hausted in choosing over and over again to make the Mental Image, and the physical is constrained to obey the mental impulsion. The desire to do in one life reacts as compulsion to do in another, and it seems as though the desire worked as a demand upon Nature, to which she responds by affording the oppor- tunity to perform.*
The Mental Images stored up by the memory as the experiences through which the Soul has passed during its earth-life, the exact record of the action upon it of the external world, must also be worked on by the Soul. By study of these, by meditation upon them, the Soul learns to see their inner-relations, their value as translations to it of the workings of the Universal Mind in manifested Nature ; in a sen-
" See the later section on the working out of Karma.
40
tence, it extracts from them by patient thought upon them all the lessons they have to teach. Lessons of pleasure and pain, of pleasure breeding pain and pain breeding pleasure, teaching the presence of in- violable laws to which it must learn to conform itself. Lessons of success and failure, of achievement and disappointment, of fears proving groundless, of hopes failing realization, of strength collapsing under trial, of fancied knowledge betraying itself as ignorance, of patient endurance wresting victory from apparent defeat, of recklessness changing into defeat apparent victory. Over all these things the Soul ponders, and by its own alchemy it changes all this mixture of ex- periences into the gold of wisdom, so that it may re- turn to earth as a wiser Soul, bringing to bear on the experiences of the old. Here again the Mental Images have been transmuted, and no longer exist as Mental Images. They can only be recovered in their old form from the Karmic Records.