Section 10

More than this is needed to bridge over the gulf be- tween life and life ; to carry memory through day and night unbrokenly merely means that the astral body is functioning perfectly, and that the links between it and the physical are in full working order. If a man is to bridge over the gulf between life and life he must do very much more than act in full consciousness in the astral body, and more than act consciously in the mind body; for the mind body is composed of the materials of the lower planes of the manasic world, and reincar- nation does not take place from them. The mind body disintegrates in due course, like the astral and physical vehicles, and cannot carry anything across. The whole
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question on which memory of past lives turns is this: Can the man, or can he not function on the higher planes of the manasic world in his causal body ? It is the causal body that passes from life to life ; it is in the causal body that everything is stored ; it is in the causal body that all experience remains, for into it the consciousness is drawn up, and from its plane is the descent made in- to re-birth. Let us follow the stages of the life out of the physical world, and see how far the sway of King Death extends. The man draws himself away from the dense part of the physical body; it drops off him, goes to pieces, and is restored to the physical world ; nothing remains in which the magnetic link of memory can in- here. He is then in the etheric part of the physical body, but in the course of a few hours he shakes that off, and it is resolved into its elements. No memory then connected with the etheric brain will help him to bridge the gulf. He passes on into the astral world, remaining there till he similiarly shakes off his astral body, and leaves it behind as he had left the physical ; the ' ' astral corpse," in its turn, disintegrates, restores its materials to the astral world, and breaks up all that might serve as basis for the magnetic links necessary for memory. He goes onward in his mind body and dwells on the rupa levels of Devachan, living there for hundreds of years working up faculties, enjoying fruit. But from this mind body also he withdraws when the time is ripe, taking from it to carry on into the body that endures the essence of all that he has gathered and assimilated. He leaves the mind body behind him, to disintegrate
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after the fashion of his denser vehicles, for the matter of it — subtle as it is from our standpoint — is not subtle enough to pass onward to the higher planes of the manasic world. It has to be shaken off, to be left to go back into the materials of its own region, once more a resolution of the combination into its elements. All the way up the man is shaking off body after body, and onl}^ on reaching the arupa planes of the manasic world can he be said to have passed beyond the regions over which the disintegrating sceptre of Death has sway. He passes finally out of his dominions, dwelling in the causal body over which Death has no power, and in which he stores up all that he has gathered. Hence its very name of causal body, since all causes that effect future incar- nations reside in it. He must then begin to act in full consciousness on the arupa levels of the manasic world in his causal body ere he can bring memory across the gulf of death. An undeveloped soul, entering that lofty region, cannot keep consciousness there; he enters it, carrying up all the germs of his qualities; there is a touch, a flash of consciousness embracing past and fu- ture, and the dazzled Ego sinks downwards toward re- birth. He carries the germs in this causal body and throws outward on each plane those that belong to it; they gather to themselves matters severally befitting them. Thus on the rupa levels of the lower manasic world the mental germs draw round them the matter of those levels to form the new mind body, and the matter thus gathered shows the mental characteristics given to it by the germ within it, as the acorn develops into an
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oak by gathering into it suitable materials from soil and atmosphere. The acorn cannot develop into a birch or a cedar, but only into an oak, and so the mental germ must develop after its own nature and none other. Thus does Karma work in the building of the vehicles, and the man has the harvest of which he sowed the seed. The germ thrown out from the causal body can only grow after its kind, attracting to itself the grade of mat- ter that belongs to it, arranging that matter in its char- acteristic form, so that it produces the replica of the quality the man made in the past. As he comes into the astral world, the germs are thrown out that belong to that world, and they draw round themselves suitable astral materials and elemental essences. Thus reappear the appetites, emotions, and passions belonging to the desire-body, or astral body, of the man, reformed in this fashion on his arrival on the astral plane. If then con- sciousness of past lives is to remain, carried through all these processes and all these worlds, it must exist in full activity on that high plane of causes, the plane of the causal body. People do not remember their past lives because they are not yet conscious in the causal body as a vehicle; it has not developed functional ac- tivity of its own. It is there, the essence of their lives, their real ' ' I, " that from which all proceeds, but it does not yet actively function; it is not yet self-conscious, though unconsciously active, and until it is self-con- scious, fully self-conscious, the memory cannot pass from plane to plane and therefore from life to life. As the man advances, flashes of consciousness break forth that
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illumine fragments of the past, but these flashes need to change to a steady light ere any consecutive memory can arise.
It may be asked: Is it possible to encourage the re- currence of such flashes? Is it possible for people to hasten this gradually growing activity of consciousness on the higher planes ? The lower man may labor to this end, if he has patience and courage ; he may try to live more and more in the permanent self, to withdraw thought and energy more and more, so far as interest is concerned, from the trivialities and impermanences of ordinary life. I do not mean that a man should be- come dreamy, abstracted, and wandering, a most in- efficient member of the home and of society ; on the con- trary, every claim that the world has on him will be dis- charged, and discharged the more perfectly because of the greatness of the man who is doing it; he cannot do things as clumsil}^ and imperfectly as the less developed man may do them, for to him duty is duty, and as long as any one or anything has a claim upon him the debt must be paid to the uttermost farthing ; every duty will be fulfilled as perfectly as he can fulfill it, with his best faculties, his best attention. But his interest will not be in these things, his thoughts will not be bound to their results ; the instant that the duty is performed and he is released, his thoughts will fly back to the permanent life, will rise to the higher level with upward-striving energy, and he will begin to live there and to rate at their true worthlessness the trivialities of the worldly life. As he steadily does this, and seeks to train him-
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self to high and abstract thinking, he will begin to vivify the higher links in consciousness and begin to bring into this lower life the consciousness that is himself.
A man is one and the same man on whatever plane he may be functioning, and his triumph is when he functions on all the five planes in unbroken conscious- ness. Those whom we call the Masters, the ''Men made perfect," function in Their waking consciousness, not only on the three lower planes, but on the fourth plane — that plane of unity spoken of in the Mdndukyopani- shad as the Turiya, and on that yet above it, the plane of Nirvana. In them evolution is completed, this cycle has been trodden to its close, and what they are all in time shall be who are climbing slowly upwards. This is the unification of consciousness; the vehicles remain for use, but no longer are able to imprison, and the man uses any one of his bodies according to the work that he has to do.
In this way matter, time, and space are conquered, and their barriers cease to exist for the unified man. He has found in climbing upwards that they are less and less barriers in each stage ; even on the astral plane matter is much less of a division than it is down here, separating him from his brothers far less effectually. Traveling in the astral body is so swift that space and time may be said to be practically conquered, for al- though the man knows he is passing through space it is passed through so rapidly that its power to divide friend from friend is lost. Even that first conquest sets at nought physical distance. When he rose to the men-
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tal world he found another power his; he thought of a place: he was there; he thought of a friend: the friend was before him. Even on the third plane consciousness transcends the barriers of matter, space, and time, and is present anywhere at will. All things that are seen are seen at once, the moment attention is turned to them; all that is heard is heard at a single impression; space, matter, and time, as known in the lower worlds, have disappeared, sequence no longer exists in the ''eternal now." As he rises yet higher, barriers within con- sciousness also fall away, and he knows himself to be one with other consciousnesses, other living things; he can think as they think, feel as they feel, know as they know. He can make their limitations his for the mo- ment, in order that he may understand exactly how they are thinking, and yet have his own consciousness. He can use his own greater knowledge for the helping of the narrower and more restricted thought, identifying himself with it in order gently to enlarge its bounds. He takes on altogether new functions in nature when he is no longer divided from others, but realizes the Self that is one in all and sends down his energies from the plane of unity. With regard even to the lower animals he is able to feel how the world exists to them, so that he can give exactly the help they need, and can supply the aid after which they are blindly groping. Hence his conquest is not for himself but for all, and he wins wider powers only to place them at the service of all lower in the scale of evolution than himself; in this way he becomes self-conscious in all the world; for this
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he learned to thrill responsive to every cry of pain, to every throb of joy or sorrow. All is reached, all is gained, and the Master is the man ''who has nothing more to learn." By this we mean not that all possible knowledge is at any given moment within His con- sciousness, but that so far as this stage of evolution is concerned there is nothing that to Him is veiled, nothing of which He does not become fully conscious when He turns His attention to it ; within this circle of evolution of everything that lives — and all things live — there is nothing He. cannot understand, and therefore nothing that He cannot help.
That is the ultimate triumph of man. All that I have spoken of would be worthless, trivial, were it gained for the narrow self we recognize as self down here ; all the steps, my reader, to which I have been trying to win you would not be worth the taking did they set you at last on an isolated pinnacle, apart from all the sinning, suffering selves, instead of leading you to the heart of things, where they and you are one. The con- sciousness of the Master stretches itself out in any direc- tion in which He sends it, assimilates itself with any point to which He directs it, knows anything which He wills to know; and all this in order that He may help perfectly, that there may be nothing that He cannot feel, nothing that He cannot foster, nothing that He cannot strengthen, nothing that He cannot aid in its evolution; to Him the whole world is one vast evolving whole, and His place in it is that of a helper of evolu- tion ; He is able to identify Himself witli any step, and
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at that step to give the aid that is needed. He helps the elementary kingdoms to evolve downwards, and each in its own way, the evolution of the minerals, plants, animals, and men, and He helps them all as Himself. For the glory of His life is that all is Himself and yet He can aid all, in the very helping realizing as Himself that which He aids.
The mystery how this can be gradually unfolds it- self as man develops, and consciousness widens to em- brace more and more while yet becoming more vivid, more vital, and without losing knowledge of itself. When the point has become the sphere, the sphere finds itself to be the point; each point contains everything and knows itself one with every other point; the outer is found to be only the reflection of the inner; the Reality is the One Life, and the difference an illusion that is overcome.
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