Spirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through the
vibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind. The individual
ego gathers up from each incarnation--if it is true to itself--some
knowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain. Its
experiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest to
highest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever
known. This is the justice of the great Creator. The king today has
been in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a
moment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might
remember and know how 'tis himself. Men and women of thought, of great
character have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from
the destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results of
labor and effort.
When the practised soul familiarizes itself with the newly-born,
fleshly tabernacle it is to inhabit and use for a long or a short time,
it broods over the unconscious being, and at the first indication of
intelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life,
and what thus comes in is there to stay. The growth of the child, the
development of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of the
brain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its use
upon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, the
environment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons.
The soul, the ego, thus placed, is bound and shackled by its human
heredity. This is inevitable, it has no choice as to its lineaments or
figure. It in a sense bears the "sins of the world"; it can in no way
separate itself, really, from the whole human family.
When the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from any
cause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can no
longer respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is called
death--physical dissolution. But this change is simply the unclothing
of the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to return
again to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to its
previous stock of knowledge. The individual soul in each incarnation
forms for itself ties more or less real and lasting--with the mother,
the fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters upon
its earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may,
or may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; with
family relations; and with friends, public and private. Nearly every
person who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side with
trains of friends to whom he is attached, and whom he will not forget,
and he will stay on and on in his heaven till every claim upon his
love, or service is fully satisfied. No more severing of ties; no more
broken hearts, or disappointed hopes. No injustice, full fruition in
heaven.
This adjustment measured by earthly reckoning may take long reaches of
time, but finally, the soul, stirred by the eternal law of progress, of
unfoldment, repeats its former experience, drinks of the cup of
forgetfulness, and returns again to learn in the great university of
unfolding life on this planet. A vast multitude, it is coming and
going, unceasingly moving on. No two alike; each in its place pressing
forward to the station which the totality of its experiences through
many lives entitles it. There is but one law, but one method that
abides. It is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it;
all who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have
already passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them.
Sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until
it passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience. Whatever
character anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally. It is
the reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth.
Great souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtue
of their many incarnations. Through the great variety of experiences
gained, they have come to know. They have earned the right to be what
they are. There are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance and
hypocracy masquerading as the real thing, but they do not last.
Pretenders are soon unmasked and taken at their true value.
Sometimes the spirit is strong enough to ignore its present
surroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its
material heredity. It depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit
whether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to
the pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and
lose the opportunity for further growth.