Each grand period, including within it all the minor evolutions, covers
311,040,000,000,000 human years; under a single Manu the human years
come and go, 306,720,000 in number, and the lesser yugas--or ages--more
immediately concerning us, comprise of solar years 4,320,000. During
these solar revolutions the human races sweep round and round this
planet. Cave-dwellers, lake-dwellers and those of a neolithic or any
other age appear and disappear over and over again, and in each of those
we who now read, write and think of them were ourselves the very Egos
whose past we are trying to trace.
But, going deep into geological strata, the doubt of man's existence
contemporaneously with the plesiosaurus arises because no fossil _genus
homo_ is discovered in the same stratum. It is here that the theories of
the Theosophist come in and furnish the key. Those hold that before man
developed any physical body he clothed himself with an astral form; and
this is why H. P. Blavatsky writes in her _Secret Doctrine_: "it teaches
the birth of the _astral_ before the _physical_ body, the former being
the model for the latter." At the time of the huge antediluvian animals
they absorbed in their enormous bodies so much of the total quantity of
gross matter available for frames of sentient beings that the astral man
remained without a corporeal frame, as yet unclothed "with coats of
skin." For this reason he could exist in the same place with those huge
birds and reptiles without fear. Their massive proportions inspired him
with no terror, and by their consumption of food there was no lessening
of his sustenance. And, therefore, being of such a composition that he
left no impression upon mud or plastic rock, the death of one astral
body after another left no fossil and no mark to be unearthed by us in
company with the very beasts and birds which were his contemporaries.
Man was all this time acquiring the power to clothe himself with a dense
frame. He threw off astral bodies one after another, in the ceaseless
pursuit, each effort giving him a little more density. Then he began to
cast a shadow, as it were, and the vast, unwieldy animal world--and
others as well--felt more and more the draughts made upon it by the
coming man. As he thickened they grew smaller, and his remains could not
be deposited in any stratum until such time as he had grown to
sufficient hardness. But our modern anthropologists have not yet
discovered when that was. They are ready enough to make definite
statements, but, learned as they are, there are surprises awaiting them
not so far off.
While, therefore, our explorers are finding, now and then, the remains
of animals and birds and reptiles in strata which show an age far
greater than any assigned to the human race, they never come upon human
skeletons. How could man leave any trace at a stage when he could not
press himself into the clay or be caught by soft lava or masses of
volcanic dust? I do not mean, however, to say that the period of the
plesiosaurus is the period of the man of astral body devoid of a
material one. The question of exact period may well be left for a more
detailed account; this is only to point to the law and to the
explanation for the non-appearance of man's remains in very early
geologic strata. But the Theosophic Adepts insist that there are still
in the earth bony remains of man, which carry his first appearance in a
dense body many millions of years farther back than have yet been
admitted, and these remains will be discovered by us before much time
shall have rolled away.
One of the first results of these discoveries will be to completely
upset the theory as to the succession of ages, as I may call it, which
is given and accepted at the present time, and also the estimation of
the various civilizations that have passed from the earth and left no
trace except in the inner constitution of ourselves--for it is held that
_we are those very persons_, now in different bodies, who so long ago
lived and loved and died upon the planet. We began to make Karma then
and have been under its influence ever since, and it seems fitting that
that great doctrine should be taken up at another time for a more
careful examination.
XV.
The Oriental doctrine of reward and punishment of the human Ego is very
different from the theological scheme accepted throughout Christendom,
since the Brahmins and Buddhists fix the place of punishment and
compensation upon this earth of ours, while the Christian removes the
"bar of God" to the hereafter. We may not profitably stop to argue upon
logic with the latter; it will be sufficient to quote to them the words
of Jesus, St. Matthew, and the Psalmist. "With what measure ye mete, it
shall be measured unto you again," said Jesus; and Matthew declares that
for every word, act, and thought we shall have to answer, while David,
the royal poet, sang that those who serve the Lord should never eat
beggar's bread. We all know well that the first two declarations do away
with the vicarious atonement; and as for the Jewish singer's notion, it
is negatived every day in any city of either hemisphere.
Among the Ceylonese Buddhists the name of the doctrine is Kamma; with
the Hindûs it is Karma. Viewed in its religious light, it "is the good
and bad deeds of sentient beings, by the infallible influence or
efficacy of which those beings are met with due rewards or punishment,
according as they deserve, in any state of being."[A] When a being dies,
he emits, as it were, a mass of force or energy, which goes to make up
the new personality when he shall be reïncarnated. In this energy is
found the summation of the life just given up, and by means of it the
Ego is forced to assume that sort of body among those appropriate
circumstances which together are the means for carrying out the decrees
of Karma.
Hence hell is not a mythical place or condition after death in some
unknown region specially set apart by the Almighty for the punishment of
his children, but is in very truth our own globe, for it is on the
earth, in earth-lives experienced in human bodies, that we are punished
for bad deeds previously done, and meet with happiness and pleasure as
rewards for old merit.
When one sees, as is so common, a good man suffering much in his life,
the question naturally arises, "Has Karma anything to do with it, and is
it just that such a person should be so afflicted?" For those who
believe in Karma it is quite just, because this man in a previous life
must have done such acts as deserve punishment now. And, similarly, the
wicked man who is free from suffering, happy and prosperous, is so
because in a previous existence he had been badly treated by his fellows
or had experienced much suffering. And the perfect justice of Karma is
well illustrated in his case because, although now favored by fortune,
he, being wicked, is generating causes which, when he shall be reborn,
will operate then to punish him for his evil-doing now.
Some may suppose that the Ego should be punished after death, but such a
conclusion is not logical. For _evil deeds committed here on the
objective plane could not with any scientific or moral propriety be
punished on a plane which is purely subjective_. And such is the reason
why so many minds, both of the young and old, have rejected and rebelled
against the doctrine of a hellfire in which they would be eternally
punished for commission of sin on earth. Even when unable to formulate
the reason in metaphysical terms, they instinctively knew that it would
be impossible to remove the scene of compensation from the very place
where the sin and confusion had been done and created. When the
disciples of Jesus asked him if the man who was born blind was thus
brought into the world for some sin he had committed they had in mind
this doctrine of Karma, just as all the Hindûs and Buddhists have when
they see some of their fellows crippled or deformed or deprived of
sight.
The theory above hinted at of the person at death throwing out from
himself the new personality, so to speak, ready to await the time when
the Ego should return to earth seeking a new body, is a general law that
operates in a great many other instances besides the birth or death of a
being. It is that which is used by the Theosophists to explain the
relations between the moon and the earth. For, as the moon is held by
them to be the planet on which we lived before reaching the earth and
before there was any such earth whatever; and that, when our so-called
satellite came to die, all the energy contained in it was thrown out
into space, where in a single vortex it remained until the time came for
that energy to be again supplied with a body--this earth--so the same
law prevails with men, the single units in the vast aggregate which is
known among advanced Theosophists as the great Manu. Men being, as to
their material envelope, derived from the moon, must follow the law of
their origin, and therefore the Buddhist priest says, as quoted: "At the
death of a being nothing goes out from him to the other world for his
rebirth; but by the efficacy--or, to use a more figurative expression,
by the ray--of influence which Kamma emits, a new being is produced in
the other world very identical with the one who died away," for in this
"new being" is held all the life of the deceased. The term "being," as
applied to it may be taken by us with some qualification. It is more
properly a mass of energy devoid of conscience and crowded with desires
of the person from whom it emanated; and its special province is to
await the return of the individuality and form for that the new body in
which it shall suffer or enjoy. Each man is therefore his own creator
under the great Cosmic laws that control all creations. A better term in
place of "creation" is "evolution," for we, from life to life, are
engaged in evolving out of the material provided in this _Manvantara_
new bodies at every turn of the wheel of rebirth. The instruments we use
in this work are desire and will. Desire causes the will to fix itself
on objective life; in that plane it produces force and out of that comes
matter in its objective form.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The Rev. T. P. Terunnanse, High-Priest at Dodanduwa, Ceylon.
XVI.
Very many Western people say that this Oriental doctrine of Karma is
difficult to understand, being fit only for educated and thoughtful
persons. But in India, Ceylon and Burmah, not to mention other Asiatic
countries, the whole mass of the people accept and seem to understand
it. The reason for this lies probably in the fact that they also firmly
believe in Reïncarnation, which may be said to be the twin doctrine to
Karma. Indeed, the one cannot be properly considered without keeping the
other in view, for Karma--whether as punishment or reward--could have no
actual or just operation upon the Ego unless the means for its operation
were furnished by Reïncarnation.
Our deserts are meted out to us while we are associating in life with
each other, and not while we are alone, nor in separateness. If being
raised to power in a nation or becoming possessed of wealth is called a
reward, it would lose all value were there no people to govern and no
associated human beings with and upon whom we could spend our wealth and
who might aid us in satisfying our manifold desires. And so the law of
Reïncarnation drags us into life again and again, bringing with us
uncounted times the various Egos whom we have known in prior births.
This is in order that the Karma--or causes--generated in company with
those Egos may be worked out, for to take us off separately into an
unknown hell, there to receive some sort of punishment, or into an
impossible serio-comic heaven to meet our reward, would be as impossible
as unjust. Hence, no just-hanged murderer absolved by priest or praising
Jesus can escape. He, together with his victim, must return to this
earth, each to aid the other in adjusting the disturbed harmony, during
which process each makes due compensation. With this doctrine we restore
justice to her seat in the governance of men, for without it the legal
killing of the murderer after condemnation is only a half remedy, since
no provision is made by the State for the being hurled out of the body
nor for the dependants he may have left behind, and, still further,
nothing is done for those who in the family of the murderer survive him.
But the Theosophical sages of all ages push the doctrine of Karma beyond
a mere operation upon incarnated men. They view all worlds as being
bound together and swayed by Karma. As the old Hindû book, the
_Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, says, "all worlds up to that of Brahmâ are subject to
Karma." Hence it acts on all planes. So viewing it, they say that this
world as it is now conditioned is the actual result of what it came to
be at the beginning of the _pralaya_ or grand death which took place
billions upon billions of years ago. That is, the world evolves just as
man does. It is born, it grows old, it dies, and it is reïncarnated.
This goes on many times, and during those incarnations it suffers and
enjoys in its own way for its previous evolutions. For it the reward is
a greater advance along the line of evolution, and the punishment is a
degraded state. Of course, as I said in a former article, these states
have man for their object and cause, for he is the crown of all
evolution. And, coming down from the high consideration of great cosmic
spaces and phenomena, the Theosophist is taught to apply these laws of
Karma and Reïncarnation to every atom in the body in _especial_ and
apart from the total Karma. Since we are made up of a mass of lives, our
thoughts and acts affect those atoms or lives and impress them with a
Karma of their own. As the Oriental thinkers say, "not a moment passes
without some beings coming to life in us, acquiring Karma, dying, and
being reïncarnated."
The principal divisions of Karma are three in number. One sort is that
now operating in the present life and body, bringing about all the
circumstances and changes of life. Of this we see illustrations every
day, with now and then strange climaxes which throw upon the doctrine
the brightest light. One such is immortalized in India by a building
erected by the favored son of fortune, as we would say, and thus it came
about. A Rajah had a very strange dream, so affecting that he called
upon his soothsayers for interpretation. They said that their horoscopes
showed he was required next day to give an immense sum of money to the
first person he should see after awaking, their intention being to
present themselves at an early hour. Next day the King arose unusually
early, stepped to his window, threw it open, and there before him was a
chandalah sweeping up the dirt. To him he gave a fortune, and thus in a
moment raised him to affluence from abject poverty. The chandalah then
built a huge building to commemorate his sudden release from the
grinding chains of poverty.
Another class of Karma is that which is held over and not now in
operation because the man does not furnish the appropriate means for
bringing it into action. This may be likened to vapor held in
suspension in the atmosphere and not visible to the eye, but which will
fall as rain upon the earth the moment conditions are ripe.
The last chief class is that Karma which we are making now, and which
will be felt by us in future births. Its appropriate symbol is the arrow
shot forward in the air by the archer.
XVII.
The spirit is not affected by Karma at any time or under any
circumstances, and so the Theosophical Adepts would not use the terms
"cultivation of the Spirit." The Spirit in man, called by them
_Ishwara_, is immutable, eternal and indivisible--the fundamental basis
of all. Hence they say that the body and all objects are impermanent and
thus deluding to the soul whenever they are mistaken for reality. They
are only real on and for this plane and during the time when the
consciousness takes them up here for cognition. They are therefore
relatively real and not so in an absolute sense. This can easily be
proved from dreams. In the dream state we lose all knowledge of the
objects which while awake we thought real and proceed to suffer and
enjoy in that new state. In this we find the consciousness applying
itself to objects partaking of course of the nature of the experiences
of the waking condition, but at the same time producing the sensations
of pleasure and pain while they last. Let us imagine a person's body
plunged in a lethargy extending over twenty years and the mind
undergoing a pleasant or unpleasant dream, and we have a life just of
that sort, altogether different from the life of one awake. For the
consciousness of this dreamer the reality of objects known during the
waking state is destroyed. But as material existence is a necessary evil
and the one in which alone emancipation or salvation can be obtained, it
is of the greatest importance and hence Karma which governs it and
through whose decrees emancipation may be reached must be well
understood and then be accepted and obeyed.
Karma will operate to produce a deformed or deficient body, to give in a
good body a bad disposition or _vicè versâ_; it will cause diseases,
hurts or annoyances, or bring about pleasures and favorable situations
for the material frame. So we sometimes find with a deformed or
disagreeable body a most enlightened and noble mind. In this case the
physical Karma is bad and the mental good.
This leads us to the sort of Karma that works upon the mental plane. At
the same time that an unfavorable Karmic cause is showing forth in the
physical structure another and better sort is working out in the mind
and disposition or has eventuated in conferring a mind well balanced,
calm, cheerful, deep, and brilliant. Hence we discover a purely physical
as compared with an entirely mental Karma. Purely physical would be that
resulting, say from a removal from the ground of fruit peel which might
otherwise cause some unknown person to fall and be hurt. Purely mental
might be due to a life spent in calm, philosophical thought and the
like.
There is in one of the Hindû books a strange sentence respecting this
part of the subject, reading: "Perfection of body or superhuman powers
are produced by birth or by herbs or by incantations, penances, or
meditations."
Among mental afflictions esteemed as worse than any bodily hurt or loss
is that Karma from a preceding life which results in obscurity of such a
character that there is a loss of all power to conceive of the reality
of Spirit or the existence of soul--that is, materialism.
The last field of operation for this law may be said to be the psychical
nature. Of this in America we have numerous examples in mediums,
clairvoyants, clairaudients, mind-readers, hysteriacs, and all sorts of
abnormal sensitives. There could be no clairvoyant according to the
Oriental scheme if the person so afflicted, using as I think the proper
term, had not devoted much of previous lives to a one-sided development
of the psychical nature resulting now in powers which make the possessor
an abnormality in society.
A very strange belief of the Hindûs is that one which allows the
possibility of a change of state by a mortal of such a character that
the once man becomes a _Deva_ or lesser god. They divide nature into
several departments, in each of which are conscious powers or entities
called _Devas_, to put it roughly. Yet this is not so far apart from the
ideas of some of our best scientific men who have said there is no
reason why in each ray of the spectrum there may not be beings to us
unseen. Many centuries ago the Hindû thinker admitted this, and pushing
further on declared that a man might through a certain sort of Karma
become one of these beings, with corresponding enjoyment and freedom
from care, but with the certainty, however, of eventually changing back
again to begin the weary round of birth over again.
What might be called the doctrine of the nullification of Karma is an
application in this department of the well-known law in physics which
causes an equilibrium when two equal forces oppose each other. A man may
have in his Karmic account a very unpleasant cause and at the same time
a cause of opposite character. If these come together for expression at
the same time they may so counteract each other as that neither will be
apparent and the equilibrium is the equivalent of both. In this way it
is easy to understand the Biblical verse: "Charity covereth a multitude
of sins," as referring to the palliative effect of charitable deeds as
opposed to deeds of wickedness, and giving a reason for the mediæval
knight devoting some of the years of his life to almsgiving.
In the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, a book revered by all in India, the highest
place is given to what is called _Karma-Yôga_ or the Religion of the
Performance of Works and Duty, and there it is said: "He who, unattached
to the fruits of his actions, performs such actions as must be done, is
both renouncer and devotee; not he who kindles no sacrificial fires and
performs no ceremonies. He who remains inert, restraining the organs of
action, and pondering with his heart on objects of sense, is called a
false pietist of bewildered soul. But he who, restraining his senses by
his heart and being free from interest in acting, undertakes active
devotion through the organs of action, is praiseworthy."
XVIII.
That the doctrine of Karma is unjust, unsympathetic, and fatalistic has
been claimed by those who oppose it, but such conclusions are not borne
out by experience among those races who believe in it, nor will the
objections stand a close examination. The Hindûs and Buddhists
thoroughly believe in Karma, convinced that no one but themselves
punishes or rewards in this or any life, yet we do not find them cold or
unsympathetic. Indeed, in the relations of life it is well known that
the Hindû is as loving and tender as his American brother, and there are
as many instances of heroic self-sacrifice in their history as in ours.
Some go further than this and say that the belief in Karma and
Reïncarnation has made the Hindû more gentle in his treatment of men and
animals than are the Europeans, and more spiritual in his daily life.
Going deeper into their history, the belief in Karma is found side by
side with material works of great magnitude, and whose remains to this
day challenge our wonder, admiration, and respect; it is doubtful
whether we could ever show such triumphs over nature as can be seen at
any time in the rock-cut temples of Hindustan. So it would appear that
this doctrine of ours is not likely to produce bad or enervating effects
upon the people who accept it.
"But," says an objector, "it is fatalism. If Karma is Karma, if I am to
be punished in such and such a manner, then it will come about so
whether I will or not, and hence I must, like the Turk, say 'Kismet,'
and do nothing." Now, although the Mohammedan doctrine of Kismet has
been abused as fatalism, pure and simple, it was not so held by the
Prophet nor by his greatest disciples, for they taught that it was law
and not fate. And neither is Karma amenable to this objection. In the
minds of those who, having vaguely apprehended Karma as applying to one
life only, do not give the doctrine its true majestic, endless sweep,
fatalism is the verdict. When, on the other hand, each man is seen as
the fashioner of the fate for his next fleeting earth personality, there
can be no fatality in it, because in his own hand is the decree. He set
in motion the causes which will inevitably have certain results. Just as
easily he could have made different causes and thus brought about
different results.