CHAPTER VIIL

REINCARNATION (Continued).
Tut ascending stages of consciousness through which the Thinker passes as he reincarnates during his long cycle of lives in the three lower worlds are clearly marked out, and the obvious necessity for many lives in which to experience them, if he is to evolve at all, may carry to the more thoughtful minds the clearest conviction of the truth of reincar- nation.
The first of the stages is that in which all the ex- periences are sensational, the only contribution made by the mind consisting of the recognition that con- tact with some objects is followed by a sensation of pleasure, while contact with others is followed by a sensation of pain. These objects form mental pic- tures, and the pictures soon begin to act as a stimu- lus to seek the objects associated with pleasure, when those objects are not present, the germs of memory and of mental initiative thus making their appearance. This first rough division of the exter- nal world is followed by the more complex idea of the bearing of quantity on pleasure and pain, already referred to.
At this stage of evolution memory is very short-
TH^ NE:cESSITY for MANY LIV^S 209
lived, or, in other words, mental images are very transitory. The idea of forecasting the future from the past, even to the most rudimentary extent, has not dawned on the infant Thinker, and his actions are guided from outside, by the impacts that reach him from the external world, or at furthest by the promptings of his appetites and passions, craving gratification. He will throw away anything for an immediate satisfaction, however necessary the thing may be for his future well-being; the need of the moment overpowers every other consideration. Of human souls in this embryonic condition, numerous examples can be found in books of travel, and the necessity for many lives will be impressed on the mind of any one who studies the mental condition of the least evolved savages, and compares it with the mental condition of even average humanity among ourselves.
Needless to say that the moral capacity is no more evolved than the mental; the idea of good and evil has not yet been conceived. Nor is it possible to convey to the quite undeveloped mind even an ele- mentary notion of either good or bad. Good and pleasant are to it interchangeable terms, as in the well-known case of the Australian savage mentioned by Charles Darwin. Pressed by hunger, the man speared the nearest living creature that could serve as food, and this happened to be his wife; a Euro- pean remonstrated with him on the wickedness of his deed, but failed to make any impression ; for from the reproach that to eat his wife was very bad 14
210 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
he only deduced the inference that the stranger thought she had proved nasty or indigestible, and he put him right by smiling peacefully as he patted himself after his meal, and declaring in a satisfied way, "She is very good." Measure in thought the moral distance between that man and S. Francis of Assisi, and it will be seen that there must either be evolution of souls as there is evolution of bodies, or else in the realm of the soul there must be constant miracle, dislocated creations.
There are two paths along either of which man may gradually emerge from this embryonic mental condition. He may be directly ruled and controlled by men far more evolved than himself, or he may be left slowly to grow unaided. The latter case would imply the passage of uncounted millennia, for, without example and without discipline, left to the changing impacts of external objects, and to friction with other men as undeveloped as himself, the inner energies could be but very slowly aroused. As a matter of fact, man has evolved by the road of direct precept and example and of enforced discipline. We have already seen that when the bulk of average humanity received the spark which brought the Thinker into being, there were some of the greater Sons of Mind who incarnated as Teachers, and that there was also a long succession of lesser Sons of Mind, at various stages of evolution, who came into incarnation as the crest-wave of the advancing tide of humanity. These ruled the less evolved, under the beneficent sway of the great Teachers, and the
SENSATION AS RUL^R 211
compelled obedience to elementary rules of right living — very elementary at first, in truth — much hastened the development of mental and moral facul- ties in the embryonic souls. Apart from all other records the gigantic remains of civilizations that have long since disappeared — evidencing great engi- neering skill, and intellectual conceptions far beyond anything possible by the mass of the then infant hu- manity— suffice to prove that there were present on earth men with minds that were capable of greatly planning and greatly executing.
Let us continue the early stage of the evolution of consciousness. Sensation was wholly lord of the mind, and the earliest mental efforts were stimulated by desire. This led the man, slov/ly and clumsily, to forecast, to plan. He began to recognize a defi- nite association of certain mental images, and, when one appeared, to expect the appearance of the other that had invariably followed in its wake. He began to draw inferences, and even to initiate action on the faith of these inferences — a great advance. And he began also to hesitate now and again to follow the vehement promptings of desire, when he found, over and over again, that the gratification demanded was associated in his mind with the subsequent hap- pening of sufifering. This action was much quick- ened by the pressure upon him of verbally expressed laws; he was forbidden to seize certain gratifica- tions, and was told that suffering would follow dis- obedience. When he had seized the delight-giving object and found the suffering follow upon the pleas-
212 rut ANCIENT WISDOM
ure, the fulfilled declaration made a far stronger im- pression on his mind than would have been made by the unexpected — and therefore to him fortuitous — happening of the same thing unforetold. Thus con- flict continually arose between memory and desire, and the mind grew more active by the conflict, and was stirred into livelier functioning. The conflict, in fact, marked the transition to the second great stage.
Here began to show itself the germ of will. De- sire and will guide a man's actions, and will has even been defined as the desire which emerges triumphant from the contest of desires. But this is a crude and superficial view, explaining nothing. Desire is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by the attraction of external objects. Will is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by the conclusions drawn by the rea- son from past experiences, or by the direct intuition of the Thinker himself. Otherwise put: desire is guided from without, will from within. At the be- ginning of man's evolution, desire has complete sov- ereignty, and hurries him hither and thither; in the middle of his evolution, desire and will are in con- tinual conflict, and victory lies sometimes with the one, sometimes with the other; at the end of his evolution desire has died, and will rules with unop- posed, unchallenged sway. Until the Thinker is sufficiently developed to see directly, will is guided by him through the reason; and as the reason can draw its conclusions only from its stock of mental
CONFLICT IS THE RULE 213
images — its experience — and that stock is limited, the will constantly commands mistaken actions. The suffering which flows from these mistaken ac- tions increases the stock of mental images, and thus gives the reason an increased store from which to draw its conclusions. Thus progress is made and wisdom is born.
Desire often mixes itself up with will, so that what appears to be determined from within is really largely prompted by the cravings of the lower nature for objects which afford it gratification. Instead of an open conflict between the two, the lower subtly in- sinuates itself into the current of the higher and turns its course aside. Defeated in the open field, the de- sires of the personality thus conspire against their conqueror, and often win by guile what they failed to win by force. During the whole of this second great stage, in which the faculties of the lower mind are in full course of evolution, conflict is the normal condition, conflict between the rule of sensations and the rule of reason.
The problem to be solved in humanity is the put- ting an end to conflict while preserving the freedom of the will; to determine the will inevitably to the best, while yet leaving that best as a matter of choice. The best is to be chosen, but by a self-ini- tiated volition, that shall come with all the certainty of a foreordained necessity. The certainty of a com- pelling law is to be obtained from countless wills, each one left free to determine its own course. The solution of that problem is simple when it is known,
214 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
though the contradiction looks irreconcilable when first presented. Let man be left free to choose his own actions, but let every action bring about an in- evitable result; let him run loose amid all objects of desire and seize whatever he will, but let him have all the results of his choice, be they delightful or grievous. Presently he will freely reject the ob- jects whose possession ultimately causes him pain; he will no longer desire them when he has experi- enced to the full that their possession ends in sorrow. Let him struggle to hold the pleasure and avoid the pain, he will none the less be ground be- tween the stones of law, and the lesson will be re- peated any number of times found necessary; rein- carnation offers as many lives as are needed by the most sluggish learner. Slowly desire for an object that brings suffering in its train will die, and when the thing offers itself in all its attractive glamour it will be rejected, not by compulsion but by free choice. It is no longer desirable, it has lost its power. Thus with thing after thing; choice more and more runs in harmony with law. "There are many roads of error; the road of truth is one;" when all the paths of error have been trodden, when all have been found to end in suffering, the choice to walk in the way of truth is unswerving, because based on knowledge. The lower kingdoms work harmoniously, compelled by law; man's king- dom is a chaos of conflicting wills, fighting against, rebelling against law; presently there evolves from it a nobler unity, a harmonious choice of voluntary
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 215
obedience, an obedience that, being voluntary, based on knowledge and on memory of the results of dis- obedience, is stable and can be drawn aside by no temptation. Ignorant, inexperienced, man would always have been in danger of falling; as a God, knowing good and evil by experience, his choice of the good is raised forever beyond possibility of change.
Will in the domain of morality is generally entitled conscience, and it is subject to the same difficulties in this domain as in its other activities. So long as actions are in question which have been done over and over again, of which the consequences are famil- iar either to the reason or to the Thinker himself, the conscience speaks quickly and firmly. But when un- familiar problems arise, as to the working out of which experience is silent, conscience cannot speak with certainty; it has but a hesitating answer from the reason, which can draw only a doubtful inference, and the Thinker cannot speak if his experience does not include the circumstances that have now arisen. Hence conscience often decides wrongly ; that is, the will, failing clear direction from either the rea- son or the intuition, guides action amiss. Nor can we leave out of consideration the influences which play upon the mind from without, from the thought- forms of others, of friends, of the family, of the community, of the nation.* These all surround and penetrate the mind with their own atmosphere, distorting the appearance of everything, and throw-
* Chapter II, on "The Astral Plane."
216 THE ancie:nt wisdom
ing all things out of proportion. Thus influenced, the reason often does not even judge calmly from its own experience, but draws false conclusions as it studies its materials through a distorting medium.
The evolution of moral faculties is very largely stimulated by the affections, animal and selfish as these are during the infancy of the Thinker. The laws of morality are laid down by the enlightened reason, discerning the laws by which Nature moves, and bringing human conduct into consonance with the divine Will. But the impulse to obey these laws, when no outer force compels, has its root in love, in that hidden divinity in man which see'ks to pour itself out, to give itself to others. Morality begins in the infant Thinker when he is first moved by love to wife, to child, to friend, to do some action that serves the loved one without any thought of gain to himself thereby. It is the first conquest over the lower nature, the complete subjugation of which is the achievement of moral perfection. Hence the im- portance of never killing out, or striving to weaken, the affections, as is done in many of the lower kinds of occultism. However impure and gross the affec- tions may be, they offer possibilities of moral evo- lution from which the cold-hearted and self-isolated have shut themselves out. It is an easier task to purify than to create love, and this is why "the sinners" have been said by great Teachers to be nearer the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisees and scribes.
The third great stage of consciousness sees the
ABSTRACT IDEAS 217
development of the higher intellectual powers; the mind no longer dwells entirely on mental images ob- tained from sensations, no longer reasons on purely concrete objects, nor is concerned with the attributes which differentiate one from another. The Thinker, having learned clearly to discriminate between ob- jects by dwelling upon their unlikenesses, now be- gins to group them together by some attribute which appears in a number of objects otherwise dis- similar and makes a link between them. He draws out, abstracts, his common attribute, and sets all objects that possess it apart from the rest which are without it; and in this way he evolves the power of recognizing identity amid diversity, a step toward the much later recognition of the One underlying the many. He thus classifies all that is around him, developing the synthetic faculty, and learning to con- struct as well as to analyze. Presently he takes an- other step, and conceives of the common property as an idea, apart from all the objects in which it ap- pears, and thus constructs a higher kind of mental image than the image of a concrete object — ^the image of an idea that has no phenomenal exist- ence in the worlds of form, but which exists on the higher levels of the mental plane, and affords material on which the Thinker himself can work. The lower mind reaches the abstract idea by rea- son, and in thus doing accomplishes its loftiest flight, touching the threshold of the formless world, and dimly seeing that which lies beyond. The Thinker sees these ideas, and lives among them
218 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
habitually, and when the power of abstract reasoning is developed and exercised the Thinker is becoming effective in his own world, and is beginning his life of active functioning in his own sphere. Such men care little for the life of the senses, care little for external observation, or for mental application to images of external objects; their powers are indrawn, and no longer rush outwards in the search for satis- faction. They dwell calmly within themselves, en- grossed with the problems of philosophy, with the deeper aspects of life and thought, seeking to under- stand causes rather than troubling themselves with effects, and approaching nearer and nearer to the recognition of the One that underlies all the diversi- ties of external Nature.
In the fourth stage of consciousness that One is seen, and with the transcending of the barriers set up by the intellect the consciousness spreads out to embrace the world, seeing all things in itself and as parts of itself and seeing itself as a ray of the Logos, and therefore as one with Him. Where is then the Thinker? He has become Consciousness, and, while the spiritual Soul can at will use any of his lower vehicles, he is no longer limited to their use, nor needs them for this full and conscious life. Then is compulsory reincarnation over and the man has de- stroyed death ; he has verily achieved immortality. Then has he become *'a pillar In the temple of my God and shall go out no more."
To complete this part of our study, we need to understand the successive quickenings of the vehicles
QUICKENING THE VEHICLES 219
of consciousness, the bringing them one by one into activity as the harmonious instruments of the human Soul.
We have seen that from the very beginning of his separate life the Thinker has possessed coatings of mental, astral, etheric, and dense physical matter. These form the media by which his life vibrates out- wards, the bridge of consciousness, as we may call it, along which all impulses from the Thinker may reach the dense physical body, all impacts from the outer world may reach him. But this general use of the successive bodies as parts of a connected whole is a very different thing from the quickening of each in turn to serve as a distinct vehicle of conscious- ness, independently of those below it, and it is this quickening of the vehicles that we have now to con- sider.
The lowest vehicle, the dense physical body, is the first one to be brought into harmonious working order ; the brain and the nervous system have to be elaborated and to be rendered delicately responsive to every thrill which is within their gamut of vibra- tory power. In the early stages, while the physi- cal dense body is composed of the grosser kinds of matter, this gamut is extremely limited, and the physical organ of mind can respond only to the slowest vibrations sent down. It answers far more promptly, as is natural, to the impacts from the ex- ternal world caused by objects similar in materials to itself. Its quickening as a vehicle of conscious- ness consists in its being made responsive to the
220 rut ancie:nt wisdom
vibrations that are initiated within, and the rapidity of this quickening depends on the co-operation of the lower nature with the higher, its loyal subordi- nation of itself in the service of its inner ruler. When, after many, many life-periods, it dawns upon the lower nature that it exists for the sake of the soul, that all its value depends on the help it can bring to the soul, that it can win immortality only by merging itself in the soul, then its evolution pro- ceeds with giant strides. Before this, the evolution has been unconscious ; at first, the gratification of the lower nature was the object of life, and, while this was a necessary preliminary for calling out the ener- gies of the Thinker, it did nothing directly to render the body a vehicle of consciousness ; the direct work- ing upon it begins when the life of the man establishes its centre in the mental body, and when thought com- mences to dominate sensation. The exercise of the mental powers works on the brain and the ner- vous system, and the coarser materials are gradually expelled to make room for the finer, which can vi- brate in unison with the thought-vibrations sent to them. The brain becomes finer in constitution, and increases by ever more complicated convolutions the amount of surface available for the coating of nervous matter adapted to respond to thought-vibrations. The nervous system becomes more delicately bal- anced, more sensitive, more alive to every thrill of mental activity. And when the recognition of its function as an instrument of the Soul, spoken of above, has come, then active co-operation in per-
PERSONALITY AS SERVANT 221
forming this function sets in. The personality be- gins deliberately to discipline itself, and to set the permanent interests of the immortal individual above its own transient gratifications. It yields up the time that might be spent in the pursuit of lower pleasures to the evolution of mental powers; day by day time is set apart for serious study; the brain is gladly surrendered to receive impacts from within instead of from without, is trained to answer to con- secutive thinking, and is taught to refrain from throwing up its own useless disjointed images, made by past impressions. It is taught to remain at rest when it is not wanted by its master; to answer, not to initiate vibrations.* Further, some discretion and discrimination will be used as to the food-stuffs which supply physical materials to the brain. The use of the coarser kinds will be discontinued, such as animal flesh and blood and alcohol, and pure food will build up a pure body. Gradually the lower vibrations will find no materials capable of respond- ing to them, and the physical body thus becomes more and more entirely a vehicle of consciousness, delicately responsive to all the thrills of thought and keenly sensitive to the vibrations sent outwards by the Thinker. The etheric double so closely follows the constitution of the dense body that it is not neces-
* One of the signs that it is being accomplished is the cessa- tion of the confused jumble of fragmentary images which are set up during sleep by the independent activity of the physical brains. When the brain is coming under control this kind of dream is very seldom experienced.
222 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
sary to study separately its purification and quicken- ing; it does not normally serve as a separate vehicle of consciousness, but works synchronously with its dense partner, and when separated from it either by accident or by death, it responds very feebly to the vibrations initiated within. Its function in truth is not to serve as a vehicle of mental consciousness, but as a vehicle of Prana, of specialized life-force, and its dislocation from the denser particles to which it conveys the life-currents is therefore disturbing and mischievous.
The astral body is the second vehicle of conscious- ness to be vivified, and we have already seen the changes through which it passes as it becomes or- ganized for its work.* When it is thoroughly organ- ized, the consciousness which has hitherto worked within it, imprisoned by it, when in sleep it has left the physical body and is drifting about in the astral world, begins not only to receive the impressions through it of astral objects that form the so-called dream-consciousness, but also to perceive astral ob- jects by its senses — that is, it begins to relate the impressions received to the objects which give rise to those impressions. These perceptions are at first confused, just as are the perceptions at first made by the mind through a new physical baby-body, and they have to be corrected by experience in the one case as in the other. The Thinker has gradually to discover the new powers which he can use through this subtler vehicle, and by which he can control the
* See Chapter IL, on "The Astral Plane."
THE MENTAL VEHICLE 223
astral elements and defend himself against astral dangers. He is not left alone to face this new world unaided, but is taught and helped and — until he can guard himself — protected by those who are more ex- perienced than himself in the ways of the astral world. Gradually the new vehicle of consciousness comes completely under his control, and life on the astral plane is as natural and as familiar as life on the physical.
The third vehicle of consciousness, the mental body, is rarely, if ever, vivified for independent ac- tion without the direct instruction of a teacher, and its functioning belongs to the life of the disciple at the present stage of human evolution.* As we have already seen, it is rearranged for separate function- ingf on the mental plane, and here again experience and training are needed ere it comes fully under its owner's control. A fact — common to all these three vehicles of consciousness, but more apt to mislead perhaps in the subtler than in the denser, because it is generally forgotten in their case, while it is so ob- vious that it is remembered in the denser — is that they are subject to evolution, and that with their higher evolution their powers to receive and to re- spond to vibrations increase. How many more shades of a color are seen by a trained eye than by an untrained. How many overtones are heard by a trained ear, where the untrained hears only the sin- gle fundamental note. As the physical senses grow
* See Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent."
t See Chapter IV., on "The Mental Plane."
224 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
more keen, the world becomes fuller and fuller, and where the peasant is conscious only of his furrow and his plough, the cultured mind is conscious of hedgerow flower and quivering aspen, of rapturous melody down-dropping from the skylark and the whirring of tiny wings through the adjoining wood, of the scudding of rabbits under the curled fronds of the bracken, and the squirrels playing with each other through the branches of the beeches, of all the gracious movements of wild things, of all the fra- grant odors of field and woodland, of all the chang- ing glories of the cloud-flecked sky, and of all the chasing lights and shadows on the hills. Both the peasant and the cultured have eyes, both have brains, but of what diff"ering powers of observation, of what differing powers to receive impressions. Thus also in other worlds. As the astral and mental bodies begin to function as separate vehicles of conscious- ness, they are in, as it were the peasant stage of re- ceptivity, and only fragments of the astral and mental worlds, with their strange and elusive phe- mena, make their way into consciousness ; but they evolve rapidly, embracing more and more, and conveying to consciousness a more and more accurate reflection of its environment. Here, as everywhere else, we have to remember that our knowledge is not the limit of Nature's powers, and that in the astral and mental worlds, as in the physical, we are still children, picking up a few shells cast up by the waves, while the treasures hid in the ocean are still unexplored.
rut CAUSAL VEHICLE 225
The quickening of the causal body as a vehicle of consciousness follows in due course the quickening of the mental body, and opens up to man a yet more marvellous state of consciousness, stretching back- wards into an illimitable past, onwards into the reaches of the future. Then the Thinker not only possesses the memory of his own past and can trace his growth through the long succession of his incar- nate and excarnate lives, but he can also roam at will through the storied past of the earth, and learn the weighty lessons of world-experience, studying the hidden laws which guide evolution and the deep secrets of life hidden in the bosom of Nature. In that lofty vehicle of consciousness he can reach the veiled Isis, and lift a corner of her down-dropped veil; for there he can face her eyes without being blinded by her lightning glances, and he- can see in the radiance that flows from her the causes of the worlds' sorrow and its ending, with heart pitiful and compassionate, but no longer wrung with helpless pain. Strength and calm and wisdom come to those who are using the causal body as a vehicle of con- sciousness, and who behold with opened eyes the glory of the Good Law.
When the buddhic body is quickened as a vehicle of consciousness the man enters into the bliss of non-separateness, and knows in full and vivid reali- zation his unity with all that is. As the predominant element of consciousness in the causal body is know- ledge, and ultimately wisdom, so the predominant element of consciousness in the buddhic body is bliss 15
226 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
and love. The serenity of wisdom chiefly marks the one, while tenderest compassion streams forth inex- haustibly from the other; when to these is added the godlike and unruffled strength that marks the func- tioning of Atma, then humanity is crowned with divinity, and the God-man is manifest in all the pleni- tude of his power, of his wisdom, of his love.
The handing down to the lower vehicles of such part of the consciousness belonging to the higher as they are able to receive does not immediately follow on the successive quickening of the vehicles. In this matter individuals differ very widely, according to their circumstances and their work, for this quick- ening of the vehicles above the physical rarely occurs till probationary discipleship* is reached, and then the duties to be discharged depend on the needs of the time. The disciple, and even the aspirant for discipleship, is taught to hold all his powers entirely for the service of the world, and the sharing of the lower consciousness in the knowledge of the higher is for the most part determined by the needs of the work in which the disciple is engaged. It is neces- sary that the disciple should have the full use of his vehicles of consciousness on the higher planes, as much of his work can be accomplished only in them ; but the conveying of a knowledge of that work to the physical vehicle, which is no way concerned in it, is a matter of no importance and the conveyance or non-conve>'ance is generally determined by the effect that the one course, or the other would have * See Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent."
SHARING knowledge: 227
on the efficiency of his work on the physical plane. The strain on the physical body when the higher con- sciousness compels it to vibrate responsively is very great, at the present stage of evolution, and unless the external circumstances are very favorable this strain is apt to cause nervous disturbance, hyper- sensitiveness with its attendant evils. Hence most of those who are in full possession of the quickened higher vehicles of consciousness, and whose most im- portant work is done out of the body, remain apart from the busy haunts of men, if they desire to throw down into the physical consciousness the knowledge they use on the higher planes, thus preserving the sensitive physical vehicle from the rough usage and clamor of ordinary life.
The main preparations to be made for receiving in the physical vehicle the vibrations of the higher con- sciousness are : its purification from grosser mate- rials by pure food and pure life; the entire subjuga- tion of the passions, and the cultivation of an even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the turmoil and vicissitudes of external life; the habit of quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the mind away from the objects of the senses, and from the mental images arising from them, and fixing it on higher things ; the cessation of hurry, especially of that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps the brain continually at work and flying from one subject to another; the genuine love for the things of the higher world, that makes them more attractive than the objects of the lower, so that the
228 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
mind rests contentedly in their companionship as in that of a well-loved friend. In fact, the preparations are much the same as those necessary for the con- scious separation of "soul" from "body," and those were elsewhere stated by me as follows : The student
"Must begin by practising extreme temperance in all things, cultivating an equable and serene state of mind: his life must be clean and his thoughts pure, his body held in strict subjec- tion to the soul, and his mind trained to occupy itself with noble and lofty themes ; he must habitually practise compassion, sympathy, helpfulness to others, with indifference to troubles and pleasures affecting himself, and he must cultivate courage, steadfastness and devotion. In fact, he must live the religion and ethics that other people for the most part only talk. Hav- ing by persevering practice learned to control his mind to some extent, so that he is able to keep it fixed on one line of thought for some little time, he must begin in more rigid training by a daily practise of concentration on some difficult or abstract subject, or on some lofty object of devotion ; this concentration means the firm fixing of the mind on one single point, without wandering, and without yielding to any distractions caused by external objects, by the activity of the senses, or by that of the mind itself. It must be braced up to an unswerving stead- iness and fixity, until gradually it will learn so to withdraw its attention from the outer world and from the body that the senses will remain quiet and still, while the mind is intensely alive with all its energies drawn inwards to be launched at a single point of thought, the highest to which it can attain. When it is able to hold itself thus with comparative ease it is ready for a further step, and by a strong but calm effort of the will it can throw itself beyond the highest thought it can reach while working in the physical brain, and in that effort will rise to and unite itself with the higher consciousness and find itself free of the body. When this is done there is no sense of sleep or dream nor any loss of consciousness; the man finds
REINCARNATION OR CREATION 229
himself outside his body, but as though he had merely slipped off a weighty encumbrance, not as though he had lost any part of himself; he is not really 'disembodied,' but has risen out of his gross body 'in a body of light,' which obeys his sUghtest thought and serves as a beautiful and perfect instrument for carrying out his will. In this he is free of the subtle worlds, but will need to train his faculties long and carefully for reUa- ble work under the new conditions."
"Freedom from the body may be obtained in other ways : by the rapt intensity of devotion or by special methods that may be imparted by a great teacher to his disciple. Whatever the way, the end is the same — the setting free of the soul in full consciousness, able to examine its new surroundings in regions beyond the treading of the man of flesh. At will it can return to the body and re-enter it, and under these circumstances it can impress on the brain-mind, and thus retain while in the body, the memory of the experiences it has undergone."*
Those who have grasped the main ideas sketched in the foregoing pages will feel that these ideas are in themselves the strongest proof that reincarnation is a fact in nature. It is necessary, in order that the vast evolution implied in the phrase, "the evolution of the soul," may be accomplished. The only alter- native— putting aside for the moment the material- istic idea that the soul is only the aggregate of the vibrations of a particular kind of physical matter — is that each soul is a new creation, made when a babe is born, and stamped with virtuous or with vicious tendencies, endowed with ability or with stupidity, by the arbitrary whim of the creative power. As the Mohammedan would say, his fate is hung round his
* "Conditions of Life after Death," Nineteenth Century, November, 1896.
230 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
neck at birth, for a man's fate depends on his char- acter and his surroundings, and a newly created soul flung into the world must be doomed to happiness or misery according to the circumstances environing him and the character stamped upon him. Predes- tination in its most offensive form is the alternative of reincarnation. Instead of looking on men as slowly evolving, so that the brutal savage of to-day will in time evolve the noblest qualities of saint and hero, and thus seeing in the world a wisely planned and wisely directed process of growth, we shall be obliged to see in it a chaos of most unjustly treated sentient beings, awarded happiness or misery, knowledge or ignorance, virtue or vice, wealth or poverty, genius or idiocy, by an arbitrary external will, unguided by either justice or mercy — a veritable pandemonium, irrational and unmeaning. And this chaos is supposed to be the higher part of a cosmos, in the lower regions of which are manifested all the orderly and beautiful workings of a law that ever evolves higher and more complex forms from the lower and the simpler, that obviously ''makes for righteousness," for harmony, and for beauty.
If it be admitted that the soul of the savage is des- tined to live and to evolve, and that he is not doomed for eternity to his present infant state, but that his evolution will take place after death and in other worlds, then the principle of soul-evolution is con- ceded, and the question of the place of evolution alone remains. Were all souls on earth at the same stage of evolution, much might be said for the con-
MANY WORLDS IN TURN 231
tention that further worlds are needed for the evolu- tion of souls beyond the infant stage. But we have around us souls that are far advanced, and that were born with noble mental and moral qualities. By parity of reasoning, we must suppose them to have been evolved in other worlds ere their one birth in this, and we cannot but wonder why an earth that offers varied conditions, fit for little-developed and also for advanced souls, should be paid only one flying visit by souls at every stage of development, all the rest of their evolution being carried on in worlds similar to this, equally able to afford all the conditions needed to evolve the souls at different stages of evolution, as we find them to be when they are bom here. The Ancient Wisdom teaches, in- deed, that the soul progresses through many worlds, but it also teaches that he is born in each of these worlds over and over again, until he has completed the evolution possible in that world. The worlds themselves, according to its teaching, form an evolu- tionary chain, and each plays its own part as a field for certain stages of evolution. Our own world offers a field suitable for the evolution of the min- eral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, and therefore collective or individual reincarnation goes on upon it in all these kingdoms. Truly, further evolution lies before us in other worlds, but in the divine order they are not open to us until we have learned and mastered the lessons our own world has to teach.
There are many lines of thought that lead us to
232 THK ANClDNT WISDOM
the same goal of reincarnation, as we study the world around us. The immense differences that separate man from man have been already noticed as implying an evolutionary past behind each soul; and attention has been drawn to these as differen- tiating the individual reincarnation of men — all of whom belong to a single species — from the reincar- nation of monadic group-souls in the lower king- doms. The comparatively small differences that sep- arate the physical bodies of men, all being ex- ternally recognizable as men, should be contrasted with the immense differences that separate the low- est savage and the noblest human type in mental and moral capacities. Savages are often splendid in physical development and with large cranial con- tents, but how different their minds from that of a philosopher or of a saint!
If high mental and moral qualities are regarded as the accumulated results of civilized living, then we are confronted by the fact that the ablest men of the present are overtopped by the intellectual giants of the past, and that none of our own day reaches the moral attitude of some historical saints. Fur- ther, we have to consider that genius has neither parent nor child; that it appears suddenly and not as the apex of a gradually improving family, and is itself generally sterile, or, if a child be born to it, it is a child of the body, not of the mind. Still more significantly, a musical genius is for the most part born in a musical family, because that form of gen- ius needs for its manifestation a nervous organiza-
INFANT PRODlGlSiS 233
tion of a peculiar kind, and nervous organization falls under the law of heredity. But how often in such a family its object seems over when it has pro- vided a body for a genius, and it then flickers out and vanishes in a few generations into the obscurity of average humanity. Where are the descendants of Bach, of Beethoven, of Mozart, of Mendelssohn, equal to their sires? Truly genius does not descend from father to son, like the family physical types of the Stuart and the Bourbon.
On what ground, save that of reincarnation, can the "infant prodigy" be accounted for? Take as an instance the case of the child who became Dr. Young, the discoverer of the undulatory theory of light, a man whose greatness is scarcely yet suffi- ciently widely recognized. As a child of two he could read "with considerable fluency," and before he was four he had read through the Bible twice; at seven he began arithmetic, and mastered Walking- ham's Tutor's Assistant before he had reached the middle of it under his tutor, and a few years later we find him mastering, while at school, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, book-keeping, French, Ital- ian, turning and telescope-making, and delighting in Oriental literature. At fourteen he was to be placed under private tuition with a boy a year and a half younger, but, the tutor first engaged failing to arrive. Young taught the other boy.* Sir William Rowan Hamilton showed power even more preco- cious. He began to learn Hebrew when he was * Life of Dr. Thomas Young, by G. Peacock, D.D.
234 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
barely three, and "at the age of seven he was pro- nounced by one of the Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, to have shown a greater knowledge of the language than many candidates for a fellowship. At the age of thirteen he had acquired considerable knowledge of at least thirteen languages. Among these, besides the classical and the modern European languages, were included Persian, Arabic, Sanscrit, Hindustani, and even Malay. ... He wrote, at the age of fourteen, a complimentary letter to the Per- sian Ambassador, who happened to visit Dublin; and the latter said he had not thought there was a man in Britain who could have written such a docu- ment in the Persian language." A relative of his says: "I remember him a little boy of six, when he would answer a difficult mathematical question, and run off gaily to his little cart. At twelve he engaged Colburn, the American 'calculating boy,' who was then being exhibited as a curiosity in Dublin, and he had not always the worst of the encounter." When he was eighteen. Dr. Brinkley (Royal Astron- omer of Ireland) said of him in 1823 : "This young man, I do not say mill be, but is, the first mathe- matician of his age." "At college his career was perhaps unexampled. Among a number of com- petitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in every subject, and at every examination."*
Let the thoughtful student compare these boys with a semi-idiot, or even with an average lad, note how, starting with these advantages, they become *North British Review. September, 1866.
likEne^ss and unlikeness 235
leaders of thought, and then ask himself whether such souls have no past behind them.
Family Hkenesses are generally explained as being due to the 'iaw of heredity," but differences in men- tal and in moral character are continually found within a family circle, and these are left unexplained. Reincarnation explains the likenesses by the fact that a soul in taking birth is directed to a family which provides by its physical heredity a body suit- able to express his characteristics; and it explains the unlikenesses by attaching the mental and moral character to the individual himself, while showing that ties set up in the past have led him to take birth in connection with some other individual of that family.* A ''matter of significance in connection with twins is that during infancy they will often be indistinguishable from each other, even to the keen eye of mother and of nurse; whereas, later in life, when Manas has been working on his physical en- casement, he will have so modified it that the physi- cal likeness lessens, and the differences of character stamp themselves on the mobile features.''^ Phys- ical likeness with mental and moral unlikeness seems to imply the meeting of two different lines of causation.
The striking dissimilarity found to exist between people of about equal intellectual power in assimi- lating particular kinds of knowledge is another "pointer" to reincarnation. A truth is recognized
*See Chapter IX., on "Karma."
"t Reincarnation, by Annie Besant, p. 64.
236 THK ancie:nt wisdom
at once by one, while the other fails to grasp it even after long and careful observation. Yet the very opposite may be the case when another truth is pre- sented to them, and it may be seen by the second and missed by the first. "Two students are at- tracted to Theosophy and begin to study it; at a year's end one is familiar with its main conceptions and can apply them, while the other is struggling in a maze. To the one each principle seemed familiar on presentation: to the other new, unintelligible, strange. The believer in reincarnation understands that the teaching is old to the one and new to the other; one learns quickly because he remembers, he is but recovering past knowledge; the other learns slowly because his experience has not included these truths of nature, and he is acquiring them toilfuUy for the first time."* So also ordinary intuition is "merely recognition of a fact familiar in a past life, though met with for the first time in the present,"! another sign of the road along which the individual has travelled in the past.
The main difficulty with many people in the re- ception of the doctrine of reincarnation is their own absence of memory of their past. Yet they are every day familiar with the fact that they have for- gotten very much even of their lives in their present bodies, and that the early years of childhood are blurred and those of infancy a blank. They must also know that events of the past which have entirely slipped out of their normal consciousness are yet ♦ Ibid. p. 67. t Ibid. p. 67.
MEMORY Olf PAST LIVES 237
hidden away in dark caves of memory, and can be brought out again vividly in some form of disease or under the influence of mesmerism. A dying man has been known to speak a language heard only in infancy, and unknown to him during a long life; in delirium, events long forgotten have presented themselves vividly to the consciousness. Nothing is really forgotten; but much is hidden out of sight of the limited vision of our waking consciousness, the most limited form of our consciousness, although the only consciousness recognized by the vast ma- jority. Just as the memory of some of the present life is indrawn beyond the reach of this waking con- sciousness, and makes itself known again only when the brain is hypersensitive and thus able to respond to vibrations that usually beat against it unheeded, so is the memory of the past lives stored up out of reach of the physical consciousness. It is all with the Thinker, who alone persists from life to life; he has the whole book of memory within his reach, for he is the only "I" that has passed through all the experiences recorded therein. Moreover, he can impress his own memories of the past on his physical vehicle, as soon as it has been sufficiently purified to answer to his swift and subtle vibrations, and then the man of flesh can share his knowledge of the storied past. The difficulty of memory does not lie in forgetfulness, for the lower vehicle, the physical body, has never passed through the pre- vious lives of its owner; it lies in the absorption of the present body in its present environment, in its
238 THK ANCIENT WISDOM
coarse irresponsiveness to the delicate thrills in which alone the soul can speak. Those who would re- member the past must not have their interests cen- tred in the present, and they must purify and re- fine the body till it is able to receive impressions from the subtler spheres.
Memory of their own past lives, however, is possessed by a considerable number of people who have achieved the necessary sensitiveness of the physical organism, and to these, of course, reincar- nation is no longer a theory, but has become a matter of personal knowledge. They have learned how much richer life becomes when memories of past lives pour into it, when the friends of this brief day are found to be the friends of the long-ago, and old remembrances strengthen the ties of the fleeting present. Life gains security and dignity when it is seen with a long vista behind it, and when the loves of old reappear in the loves of to-day. Death fades into its proper place as a mere incident in life, a change from one scene to another, like a journey that separates bodies but cannot sunder friend from friend. The links of the present are found to be part of a golden chain that stretches backwards, and the future can be faced with a glad security in the thought that these links will endure through days to come, and form part of that unbroken chain.
Now and then we find children who have brought over a memory of their immediate past, for the most part when they have died in childhood and are reborn almost immediately. In the West such cases
MEMORY AND FACULTY 239
are rarer than in the East, because in the West the first words of such a child would be met with dis- belief, and he would quickly lose faith in his own memories. In the East, where belief in reincarna- tion is almost universal, the child's remembrances are listened to, and where the opportunity serves they have been verified.
There is another important point with respect to memory that will repay consideration. The memory of past events remains, as we have seen, with the Thinker only, but the results of those events em- bodied in faculties are at the service of the lower man. If the whole of these past events were thrown down into the physical brain, a vast mass of experi- ences in no classified order, without arrangement, the man could not be guided by the outcome of the past, nor utilize it for present help. Compelled to make a choice between two lines of action, he would have to pick, out of the unarranged facts of his past, events similar in character, trace out their results, and after long and weary study arrive at some con- clusion— a conclusion very likely to be vitiated by the overlooking of some important factor, and reached long after the need for decision had passed. All the events, trivial and important, of some hun- dreds of lives would form a rather unwieldy and chaotic mass for reference in an emergency that de- manded a swift decision. The far more effective plan of Nature leaves to the Thinker the memory of the events, provides a long period of excarnate existence for the mental body, during which all the
240 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
events are tabulated and compared and their results are classified; then these results are embodied as faculties, and these faculties form the next mental body of the Thinker. In this way, the enlarged and improved faculties are available for immediate use, and, the results of the past being in them, a decision can be come to in accordance with those results and without any delay. The clear quick insight and prompt judgment are nothing else than the outcome of past experiences, moulded into an effective form for use; they are surely more useful instruments than would be a mass of unassimilated experiences, out of which the relevant ones would have to be selected and compared, and from which inferences would have to be drawn, on each separate occasion on which a choice arises.
From all these lines of thought, however, the mind turns back to rest on the fundamental neces- sity for reincarnation if life is to be made intelligi- ble, and if injustice and cruelty are not to mock the helplessness of man. With reincarnation man is a dignified, immortal being, evolving towards a di- vinely glorious end; without it, he is a tossing straw on the stream of chance circumstances, irresponsible for his character, for his actions, for his destiny. With it, he may look forward with fearless hope, however low in the scale of evolution he may be to- day, for he is on the ladder to divinity, and the climbing to its summit is only a question of time; without it, he has no reasonable ground of assurance as to progress in the future, nor indeed any reason-
LAW OR CHANCE 241
able ground of assurance in a future at all. Why should a creature without a past look forward to a future? He may be a mere bubble on the ocean of time. Flung into the world from nonentity, with qualities, good or evil, attached to him without reason or desert, why should he strive to make the best of them? Will not his future, if he have one, be as isolated, as uncaused, as unrelated as his present? In dropping reincarnation from its beliefs, the modern world has deprived God of His justice and has bereft man of his security ; he may be 'lucky" or ''unlucky," but the strength and dignity conferred by reliance on a changeless law are rent away from him, and he is left tossing helplessly on an unnavigable ocean of life.