THE
OF
THEOSOPHY
A Definitive Work on Theosophy
By
William Quan Judge
CHAPTER
9
Reincarnation
Continued
In the West, where the object of life is commercial,
financial, social, or scientific success, that is, personal profit,
aggrandizement, and power, the real life of man receives but little attention,
and we, unlike the Orientals, give scant prominence to the doctrine of
pre-existence and reincarnation.
That the church denies it is enough for many, with
whom no argument is of any use.
Relying on the church, they do not wish to disturb the
serenity of their faith in dogmas that may be illogical; and as they have been
taught that the church can bind them in hell, a blind fear of the anathema
hurled at reincarnation in the Constantinople council about 500 AD would alone
debar them from accepting the accursed theory. And the church in arguing on the
doctrine urges the objection that if men are convinced that they will live many
lives, the temptation to accept the present and do evil without check will be
too strong. Absurd as this seems, it is put forward by learned Jesuits, who say
men will rather have the present chance than wait for others.
If there were no retribution at all this would be a
good objection, but as Nature has also a Nemesis for every evil doer, and as
each, under the law of Karma -- which is that of cause and effect and perfect
justice -- must receive the exact consequences himself in every life for what
good or bad deeds and thoughts he did and had in other lives, the basis for
moral conduct is secure. It is safe under this system, since no man can by any
possibility, or favor, or edict, or belief escape the consequences, and each
one who grasps this doctrine will be moved by conscience and the whole power of
nature to do well in order that he may receive good and become happy.
It is maintained that the idea of rebirth is
uncongenial and unpleasant because on the one hand it is cold, allowing no
sentiment to interfere, prohibiting us from renouncing at will a life which we
have found to be sorrowful; and on the other, that there appears to be no
chance under it for us to see our loved ones who have passed away before us.
But whether we like it or not Nature's laws go forward unerringly, and
sentiment or feeling can in no way avert the consequence that must follow a
cause. If we eat bad food bad results must come. The glutton would have Nature
permit him to gorge himself without the indigestion which will come, but
Nature's laws are not to be thus put aside.
Now, the objection to reincarnation that we will not
see our loved ones in heaven as promised in dogmatic religion, presupposes a
complete stoppage of the evolution and development of those who leave earth
before ourselves, and also assumes that recognition is dependent on physical
appearance. But as we progress in this life, so also must we progress upon
leaving it, and it would be unfair to compel the others to await our arrival in
order that we may recognize them. And if one reflects on the natural
consequences of arising to heaven where all trammels are cast off, it must be
apparent that those who have been there, say, twenty of mortal years before us
must, in the nature of things mental and spiritual, have made a progress equal
to many hundreds of years here under varied and very favourable circumstances.
How then could we, arriving later and still imperfect, be able to recognize
those who had been perfecting themselves in heaven with such advantages? And as
we know that the body is left behind to disintegrate, so, it is evident,
recognition cannot depend, in the spiritual and mental life, on physical
appearance. For not only is this thus plain, but since we are aware that an
unhandsome or deformed body often enshrines a glorious mind and pure soul, and
that a beautifully formed exterior -- such as in the case of the Borgias -- may
hide an incarnate devil in character, the physical form gives no guarantee of
recognition in that world where the body is absent. And the mother who has lost
a child who had grown to maturity must know that she loved the child when a
baby as much as afterwards when the great alteration to later life had
completely swept away the form and features of early youth.
The Theosophists see that this objection can have no
existence in the face of the eternal and pure life of the soul. And Theosophy
also teaches that those who are like unto each other and love each other will
be reincarnated together whenever the conditions permit. Whenever one of us has
gone farther on the road to
perfection, he will always be moved to help and
comfort those who belong to the same family. But when one has become gross and
selfish and wicked, no one would want his companionship in any life.
Recognition depends on the inner sight and not on outward appearance; hence
there is no force in this objection. And the other phase of it relating to loss
of parent, child, or relative is based on the erroneous notion that as the
parents give the child its body so also is given its soul. But soul is immortal
and parentless; hence this objection is without a root.
Some urge that Heredity invalidates Reincarnation. We
urge it as proof. Heredity in giving us a body in any family provides the
appropriate environment for the Ego. The Ego only goes into the family which
either completely answers to its whole nature, or which gives an opportunity
for the working out of its evolution, and which is also connected with it by
reason of past
incarnations or causes mutually set up. Thus the evil
child may come to the presently good family because parents and child are
indissolubly connected by past actions. It is a chance for redemption to the
child and the occasion of punishment to the
parents. This points to bodily heredity as a natural
rule governing the bodies we must inhabit, just as the houses in a city will
show the mind of the builders.
And as we as well as our parents were the makers and
influencers of bodies, took part in and are responsible for states of society
in which the development of physical body and brain was either retarded or
helped on, debased or the contrary, so we are in this life responsible for the
civilization in which we now appear. But when we look at the characters in
human bodies, great inherent differences are seen. This is due to the soul
inside, who is suffering or enjoying in the family, nation, and race his own
thoughts and acts in the past lives have made it inevitable he should incarnate
with.
Heredity provides the tenement and also imposes those
limitations of capacity of brain or body which are often a punishment and
sometimes a help, but it does not affect the real Ego. The transmission of
traits is a physical matter, and
nothing more than the coming out into a nation of the
consequences of the prior lives of all Egos who are to be in that race. The
limitations imposed on the Ego by any family heredity are exact consequences of
that Ego's prior lives.
The fact that such physical traits and mental
peculiarities are transmitted does not confute reincarnation, since we know
that the guiding mind and real character of each are not the result of a body
and brain but are peculiar to the Ego in its essential life. Transmission of
trait and tendency by means of parent and body
is exactly the mode selected by nature for providing
the incarnating Ego with the proper tenement in which to carry on its work.
Another mode would be impossible and subversive of order.
Again, those who dwell on the objection from heredity
forget that they are accentuating similarities and overlooking divergencies.
For while investigations on the line of heredity have recorded many transmitted
traits, they have not done so in respect to divergencies from heredity vastly
greater in number. Every
mother knows that the children of a family are as
different in character as the fingers on one hand -- they are all from the same
parents, but all vary incharacter and capacity.
But heredity as the great rule and as a complete
explanation is absolutely overthrown by history, which shows no constant
transmission of learning, power, and capacity. For instance, in the case of the
ancient Egyptians long gone and their line of transmission shattered, we have
no transmission to their
descendants.
If physical heredity settles the question of
character, how has the great Egyptian character been lost? The same question
holds in respect to other ancient and extinct nations. And taking an individual
illustration we have the great musician Bach, whose direct descendants showed a
decrease in musical ability leading to its final disappearance from the family
stock. But Theosophy teaches that in both of these instances -- as in all like
them -- the real capacity and ability have only disappeared from a family and
national body, but are retained in the Egos who once exhibited them, being now
incarnated in some other nation and family of the present time.
Suffering comes to nearly all men, and a great many
live lives of sorrow from the cradle to the grave, so it is objected that
reincarnation is unjust because we suffer for the wrong done by some other
person in another life. This objection is based on the false notion that the person
in the other life was some one else. But in every life it is the same person.
When we come again we do not take up the body of some one else, nor another's
deeds, but are like an actor who plays many parts, the same actor inside though
the costumes and the lines recited differ in each new play. Shakespeare was
right in saying that life is a play, for the great life of the soul is a drama,
and each new life and rebirth another act in which we assume another part and
put on a new dress, but
all through it we are the selfsame person. So instead
of its being unjust, it is perfect justice, and in no other manner could
justice be preserved.
But, it is said, if we reincarnate how is it that we
do not remember the other life; and further, as we cannot remember the deeds
for which we suffer is it not unjust for that reason? Those who ask this always
ignore the fact that they also have enjoyment and reward in life and are
content to accept them without
question. For if it is unjust to be punished for deeds
we do not remember, then it is also inequitable to be rewarded for other acts
which have been forgotten.
Mere entry into life is no fit foundation for any
reward or punishment. Reward and punishment must be the just desert for prior
conduct. Nature's law of justice is not imperfect, and it is only the
imperfection of human justice that requires the offender to know and remember
in this life a deed to which a penalty is annexed. In the prior life the doer
was then quite aware of what he did, and nature affixes consequences to his
acts, being thus just.
We well know that she will make the effect follow the
cause whatever we wish and whether we remember or forget what we did. If a baby
is hurt in its first years by the nurse so as to lay the ground for a crippling
disease in after life, as is often the case, the crippling disease will come
although the child neither brought on the present cause nor remembered aught
about it. But reincarnation, with its companion doctrine of Karma, rightly
understood, shows how perfectly just the whole scheme of nature is.
Memory of a prior life is not needed to prove that we
passed through that existence, nor is the fact of not remembering a good
objection. We forget the greater part of the occurrences of the years and days
of this life, but no one would say for that reason we did not go through these
years.
They were lived, and we retain but little of the
details in the brain, but the entire effect of them on the character is kept and
made a part of ourselves. The whole mass of detail of a life is preserved in
the inner man to be one day fully brought back
to the conscious memory in some other life when we are
perfected. And even now, imperfect as we are and little as we know, the experiments
in hypnotism show that all the smallest details are registered in what is for
the present known as the subconscious mind. The theosophical doctrine is that
not a single one of these happenings is forgotten in fact, and at the end of
life when the eyes are closed and those about say we are dead every thought and
circumstance of life flash vividly into and across the mind.
Many persons do, however, remember that they have
lived before. Poets have sung of this, children know it well, until the constant
living in an atmosphere of unbelief drives the recollection from their minds
for the present, but all are
subject to the limitations imposed upon the Ego by the
new brain in each life.
This is why we are not able to keep the pictures of
the past, whether of this life or the preceding ones. The brain is the
instrument for the memory of the soul, and, being new in each life with but a
certain capacity, the Ego is only able to use it for the new life up to its
capacity. That capacity will be fully
availed of or the contrary, just according to the
Ego's own desire and prior conduct, because such past living will have
increased or diminished its power to overcome the forces of material existence.
By living according to the dictates of the soul the brain
may at least be made porous to the soul's recollections; if the contrary sort
of a life is led, then more and more will clouds obscure that reminiscence. But
as the brain had no part in the life last lived, it is in general unable to
remember. And this is a wise law, for we should be very miserable if the deeds
and scenes of our former
lives were not hidden from our view until by
discipline we become able to bear a knowledge of them.
Another objection brought up is that under the
doctrine of reincarnation it is not possible to account for the increase of the
world's population. This assumes that we know surely that its population has
increased and are keeping informed of its fluctuations. But it is not certain
that the inhabitants of the globe
have increased, and, further, vast numbers of people
are annually destroyed of whom we know nothing. In
Statistics of famine have not been made. We do not
know by how many thousands the deaths in
It also assumes that there are fewer Egos out of
incarnation and waiting to come in than the number of those inhabiting bodies,
and this is incorrect. Annie Besant has put this well in her
"Reincarnation" by saying that the inhabited globe resembles a hall
in a town which is filled from the much greater population of the town outside;
the number in the hall may vary, but there is a constant source of supply from
the town. It is true that so far as concerns this globe the number of Egos
belonging to it is definite; but no one knows what that quantity is nor what is
the total capacity of the earth for sustaining them.
The statisticians of the day are chiefly in the West,
and their tables embrace but a small section of the history of man. They cannot
say how many persons were incarnated on the earth at any prior date when the
globe was full in all parts, hence the quantity of egos willing or waiting to
be reborn is unknown to the men of today. The Masters of theosophical knowledge
say that the total number of such egos is vast, and for that reason the supply
of those for the occupation of bodies to be born over and above the number that
die is sufficient. Then too it must be borne in mind that each ego for itself
varies the length of stay in the post-mortem states. They do not reincarnate at
the same interval, but come out of the state after death at different rates,
and whenever there occurs a great number of deaths by war, pestilence, or
famine, there is at once a rush of souls to incarnation, either in the same
place or in some other place or race.
The earth is so small a globe in the vast assemblage
of inhabitable planets there is a sufficient supply of Egos for incarnation
here. But with due respect to those who put this objection, I do not see that
it has the slightest force or any
relation to the truth of the doctrine of
reincarnation.
______________________
THE
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An Outline of Theosophy
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Theosophy - What it is How is it Known?
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The Deity
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