Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00073)

OCEAN9.TXT ~The Ocean of Theosophy~ - W.Q.Judge

CHAPTER IX

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 preexistence 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 A.D. 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
favorable 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
divergences. For while investigations on the line of heredity
have recorded many transmitted traits, they have not done so in
respect to divergences 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 in character 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 someone
else. But in every life it is the same person. When we come
again we do not take up the body of someone 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 self-same
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 sub-conscious 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 China year after
year many thousands have been carried off by flood. Statistics
of famine have not been made. We do not know by how many
thousands the deaths in Africa exceed the births in any year.
The objection is based on imperfect tables which only have to do
with western lands. 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.


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