Who does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in
Britain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king,
surrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel of
his Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a bird
flew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight,
and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian
priest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the
transitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the
soul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into the
darkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious
world. Out of the darkness, through the open window of Birth, the life
of a man comes to the earth; it dwells for a while before our eyes;
into the darkness, through the open window of Death, it vanishes out
of our sight. And man has questioned ever of Religion, Whence comes
it? Whither goes it? and the answers have varied with the faiths.
To-day, many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin, there
are more people in Christendom who question whether man has a spirit
to come anywhence or to go anywhither than, perhaps, in the world's
history could ever before have been found at one time. And the very
Christians who claim that Death's terrors have been abolished, have
surrounded the bier and the tomb with more gloom and more dismal
funeral pomp than have the votaries of any other creed. What can be
more depressing than the darkness in which a house is kept shrouded,
while the dead body is awaiting sepulture? What more repellent than
the sweeping robes of lustreless crape, and the purposed hideousness
of the heavy cap in which the widow laments the "deliverance" of her
husband "from the burden of the flesh"? What more revolting than the
artificially long faces of the undertaker's men, the drooping
"weepers", the carefully-arranged white handkerchiefs, and, until
lately, the pall-like funeral cloaks? During the last few years, a
great and marked improvement has been made. The plumes, cloaks, and
weepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse is
almost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with
flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and
women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in
shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how
miserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial
discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne,
and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to
natural human grief.
In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding
Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted
as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening
figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking
an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round
this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with
his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern
Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent
diction to surround with horror the figure of Death.
The other shape,
If shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode....
... So spoke the grisly terror: and in shape
So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform....
... but he, my inbred enemy,
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out _Death!_
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded _Death_.[1]
That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers
of a Teacher said to have "brought life and immortality to light" is
passing strange. The claim, that as late in the history of the world
as a mere eighteen centuries ago the immortality of the Spirit in man
was brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the face
of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands.
The stately Egyptian Ritual with its _Book of the Dead_, in which are
traced the post-mortem journeys of the Soul, should be enough, if it
stood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous a claim.
Hear the cry of the Soul of the righteous:
O ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your
arms, for I become one of you. (xvii. 22.)
Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Light, dwelling in the mighty
abode, in the bosom of the absolute darkness. I come to thee,
a purified Soul; my two hands are around thee. (xxi. 1.)
I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have
knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am
in possession of my arms, I am in possession of my legs, at
the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at
the gates of Amenti. (xxvi. 5, 6.)
Not to multiply to weariness quotations from a book that is wholly
composed of the doings and sayings of the disembodied man, let it
suffice to give the final judgment on the victorious Soul:
The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower
divine region, he shall never be rejected.... He shall drink
from the current of the celestial river.... His Soul shall
not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation
to those near it. The worms shall not devour it. (clxiv.
14-16.)
The general belief in Re-incarnation is enough to prove that the
religions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in the
survival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example a
passage from the _Ordinances of Manu_, following on a disquisition on
metempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from
rebirths.
Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self [should be
translated, knowledge of the _Self_, Atmâ] is said (to be)
the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences,
since from it immortality is obtained.[2]
The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is
shown by the following, translated from the _Avesta_, in which, the
journey of the Soul after death having been described, the ancient
Scripture proceeds:
The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at
(the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the
second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the
third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of
the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal
Lights.
To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art
thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshy dwellings,
from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither
to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the
imperishable, as it happened to thee--to whom hail!
Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for)
he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the
separation of body and soul.[3]
The Persian _Desatir_ speaks with equal definiteness. This work
consists of fifteen books, written by Persian prophets, and was
written originally in the Avestaic language; "God" is Ahura-Mazda, or
Yazdan:
God selected man from animals to confer on him the soul,
which is a substance free, simple, immaterial, non-compounded
and non-appetitive. And that becomes an angel by improvement.
By his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he
connected the soul with the material body.
If he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good
knowledge and religion he is _Hartasp_....
As soon as he leaves this material body, I (God) take him up
to the world of angels, that he may have an interview with
the angels, and behold me.
And if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from
vice, I will promote him to the rank of angels.
Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find
a place in the rank of wise men, among the heavens and stars.
And in that region of happiness he will remain for ever.[4]
In China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestors
shows how completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyond
the tomb. The _Shû King_--placed by Mr. James Legge as the most
ancient of Chinese classics, containing historical documents ranging
from B.C. 2357-627--is full of allusions to these Souls, who with
other spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendants
and the welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B.C.
1401-1374, exhorts his subjects:
My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my
ancestors (who are now) the spiritual sovereigns.... Were I
to err in my government, and remain long here, my high
sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me
great punishment for my crime, and say, "Why do you oppress
my people?" If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend
to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with
me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down
on you great punishment for your crime, and say, "Why do you
not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your
virtue?" When they punish you from above, you will have no
way of escape.... Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut
you off and abandon you, and not save you from death.[5]
Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in those
long-past ages, that "the change that men call Death" seems to play a
very small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the Flowery
Land.
These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may
suffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to "light
through the gospel". The whole ancient world basked in the full
sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily,
voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the
gate of Death.
It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously
re-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror of
Death that has played so large a part in its social life, its
literature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has
surrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their
hells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy
Fear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light and
trivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their varied
unpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather than
of creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its
antithesis, and that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodiless
condition too lacking in solidity of comfort; whereas the more dreamy,
mystical East, prone to meditation, and ever seeking to escape from
the thraldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on the
disembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to
unfettered thought.
Ere passing to the consideration of the history of man in the
post-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state the
constitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we must
have in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand their
disintegration. Man then consists of
_The Immortal Triad_:
Atmâ.
Buddhi.
Manas.
_The Perishable Quaternary_:
Kâma.
Prâna.
Etheric Double.
Dense Body.
The dense body is the physical body, the visible, tangible outer form,
composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal
counterpart of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prâna is
vitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physical
molecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is the
life-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal
Life-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence
that we speak of as "a life". Kâma is the aggregate of appetites,
passions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinker
in us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atmâ, the
Spirit, dwells, and in which alone it can manifest.
Now the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternary
is Manas, which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and
functions as Higher Manas and Lower Manas. Higher Manas sends out a
Ray, Lower Manas, which works in and through the human brain,
functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating
intelligence. This mingles with Kâma, the passional nature, the
passions and emotions thus becoming a part of Mind, as defined in
Western Psychology. And so we have the link formed between the higher
and lower natures in man, this Kâma-Manas belonging to the higher by
its mânasic, and to the lower by its kâmic, elements. As this forms
the battleground during life, so does it play an important part in
post-mortem existence. We might now classify our seven principles a
little differently, having in view this mingling in Kâma-Manas of
perishable and imperishable elements:
{ Atmâ.
_Immortal_. { Buddhi.
{ Higher-Manas.
_Conditionally Immortal_. Kâma-Manas.
{ Prâna.
_Mortal_. { Etheric Double.
{ Dense Body.
Some Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this,
declaring Spirit to be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul to
be conditionally immortal, _i.e._, capable of winning immortality by
uniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently mortal. The majority
of uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishes
at Death, and the something--called indifferently Soul or
Spirit--that survives Death. This last classification--if
classification it may be called--is entirely inadequate, if we are to
seek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the
phenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man's
nature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, but
is inadequate to explain many phenomena. The septenary division alone
gives a reasonable theory consistent with the facts we have to deal
with, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will do
wisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the
body, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to
classify its tissues at far greater length and with far more
minuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn the
differences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous,
epithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if he
rebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, it
would be explained to him that only by such an analysis of the
different components of the body can the varied and complicated
phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted
for support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for
absorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own
distinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and
physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is
gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical
terms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to
explain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, I
find myself compelled--contrary to my habit in these elementary
papers--to resort to these technical names at the outset, for the
English language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of
long descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient.
For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the
adherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has
arisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding of
each others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently said
that he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by
Spirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was not
body. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists of
bone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: "Oh! I mean
everything that is not bone." A clear definition of terms, and a rigid
adherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to
understand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful
comparison of experiences.