REINCARNATION
There is a good deal of talk indulged in, on the subject of
Reincarnation—talk of a rather cheap character. One does not quite see
what is the use of saying that the _ego_ will be reincarnated again some
day, unless one has some sort of idea what one means by the _ego_, and
unless one has some understanding of the sense in which the word
“reincarnation” is used. If it is meant that your local and external
self, approximately as you and your friends know it to-day—including
dress, facial outline, professional skill, accomplishments, habits of
mind and body, interests and enthusiasms—is going to repeat itself
again in five or five hundred years, or has already appeared in this
form in the past; one can only say “impossible!” and “I trust not!” For
all these things depend on date, locality, heredity, surrounding
institutions, social habits, current morality, and so forth,
which—though they have certainly played their part in the spirit’s
growth—must infallibly be different at any other period (short of the
whole universe repeating itself). And anyhow to have them repeated again
_da capo_ at some future time would be terribly dull. But if you say “Of
course I don’t mean anything so silly as _that_,” it becomes incumbent
on you to say what you do mean.
Supposing, for instance, you had been planked down a baby in the Arabian
desert, and grown up to maturity or middle age there, instead of where
you are, would any of your present-day friends recognize you? Where
would be your charming piano-playing, your excellent cricket, your
rather sloppy water-color painting, your up-to-dateness in the
theatrical world? Where your morality (with three wives of course) or
your religion (something about “Christian dogs”), or where your British
_sang froid_ and impeccability? And if it is obvious that in such a case
as this you would, owing to the changed conditions, be changed out of
all recognition, much more—one might say—would this be the case if you
had been born five hundred years ago, or were to be born again five
hundred years hence. Your whole outlook on life, and its whole impress
on you, would be different.
Of course I am not meaning, by these remarks, to say that reincarnation
is in itself impossible or absurd; that would be prejudging the
question. All I mean at present is that if we are going to study this
subject, or theorize upon it, it is really necessary to define in some
degree the terms which we use. I do not say that you, the reader, might
not be reincarnated, but I think it is clear that if you were, we should
have a good deal of trouble in following and finding you! It is clear
that the _you_, so reappearing, would not be your well-known local and
external self, but some deep nucleus, difficult perhaps for your best
friend to recognize, and possibly even unknown or unrecognized by
yourself at present. And similarly of some friend that you love for a
thousand little tricks and ways. We all have such friends, and at times
cherish a sentimental romance of their being restored to us in some
future æon habited in their old guise and with their well-worn frocks
and coats. But surely it is no good playing at hide-and-seek like that.
The common difficulties about the conventional heaven—the difficulty
about meeting your old friend who used to be so good at after-dinner
stories, about meeting him with a harp in his hand and sitting on a damp
cloud—is no whit the less a difficulty whatever future world may be the
_rendezvous_. He would be changed (externally) and we should be changed,
and it might well happen that if we did seem to recall any former
intimacy we should both feel like strangers, and be as shy and tentative
in our approaches to each other as school-children.
What do we mean by the letter “I”? and what do we mean by the word
Reincarnation? These two questions wait for a reply.
The first is a terribly difficult question. It lies (though neglected by
the philosophers themselves) at the root of all philosophy. Perhaps
really all life and experience are nothing but an immense search for the
answer. What do we mean by the Ego? It is a sort of fundamental
question, which it might be supposed would precede all other questions,
but which as a matter of fact seems to be postponed to all others, and
is the last to be solved. All we can at the outset be sure of in the way
of answer is the enormous extent and depth of the being we are setting
out to define. We sometimes think of the _ego_ as a mere point of
consciousness, or we think of the ordinary self of daily life as a
fragile and ephemeral entity bounded by a few bodily tissues and a few
mental views and habits. But even the slight discussion of the subject
in former chapters of this book (chapters vi., vii., and so forth) has
revealed to us the vast underlying stores and faculties which must be
included—the wonderful powers of memory, the subtle capacities of
perception at a distance, or without the usual organs of sight and
hearing, the power of creating images out of the depths of one’s mind,
and of impressing them telepathically upon others, the faculty of
clairvoyance in past and future time, and so forth. The more we try to
fathom this ego, with which we supposed ourselves so familiar, the more
we are amazed at its labyrinthine profundity, and the more we are
astonished to think that we should ever have ventured to limit it to
such a petty formula and conventional symbol as we commonly do—not only
in our judgment of friends, but even in our estimate of ourselves.
Reincarnation, as we have already said, can hardly be the reappearance,
in a new life on earth (or even in some other sphere), of the very local
and superficial traits which we know so well in ourselves and our
friends—which are mainly a response to local and superficial
conditions, and which mainly constitute what we call our personalities.
If reincarnation does occur, it must obviously consist in the
reappearance or remanifestation of some such very interior self as we
have just spoken of—some deep individuality (as opposed to
personality), some divine æonian soul, some offshoot perhaps of an
age-long enduring Race-soul, or World-self—and in that sort of sense
only shall I use the word in future.
In that sense the idea is feasible and illuminative. It explains the
obvious limitations and localism of our personalities, as being more or
less passing and temporary embodiments of our true selves; and it
represents the latter as immense storehouses of experience from all
manner of places and times, and similarly as centres of world-activity
operating in different fields of time and space. At the same time, it
presents various difficulties. For one thing, it poses the difficulty
that for each of us this vast interior being is, as a rule, so deeply
buried that both oneself and one’s friends are only faintly
conscious—if at all—of its true outline. And if one does not recognize
this being, of what use is it to us? It is true that we sometimes meet
people who at first sight give us a strong impression of far-back
intimacy; but this is only a vague impression and hardly sufficient to
afford proof of pre-existence. The only way of meeting this difficulty
seems to be to suppose, as residing in this inner being or true self,
another order of consciousness, faint intimations of which we even now
have, and by which, as it grows and develops, we may some day clearly
recognize our true selves and true nature.
Another difficulty is that (as already said) for any satisfactory sense
of survival continuity of memory is needed; and we should have to
suppose that the memory of each earth-life was continued into and stored
up in this deeper soul or æonian self. Memory would not normally pass
from one embodiment or incarnation to another, but each stream would
flow into the central self and there be stored. And I think we may admit
that this is by no means impossible. Indeed there are not a few facts
(some already mentioned) with regard to the recovery of memory which
make the mater probable. Though any given earth-life in a given form
could not be repeated, the _memory_ of such an earth-life, fresh and
clear, may survive for an indefinite time in the crystal mirror of the
deeper consciousness.[127] And it is perhaps allowable to suppose that
in this way, and with the lifting of the opaque veil of our present
consciousness, we may some day come clearly into the presence of friends
we have lost.
Here again, however, one has to be on one’s guard. The mere fact of
remembering (or thinking one remembers), in this our terrestrial life
and with our terrestrial consciousness, some detail or other of a
previous terrestrial life proves little—for, for aught we know, quite
apart from our psychic selves, a streak of memory of more physical
origin from some ancestor may have come down even several generations,
and may be surviving in one’s brain.[128] Indeed it is extremely
probable that all organic matter carries memory with it, and not
unlikely that inorganic matter does so too. If you thought, for
instance, that you remembered seeing Charles the First beheaded—if you
had a rather distinct picture in your mind of the scene at Whitehall,
which you afterwards found by investigation to be corroborated in its
details, you might at first jump to the conclusion that you had really
lived at that time, and witnessed the scene. But after all it might
merely be that an ancestor of yours had been there, and that the vividly
impressed picture had somehow persevered in some subterranean channel of
memory and emerged again in your mind. Even then you might contend that,
since it was _your_ memory, _you_ must have been there—or at any rate
some fraction of yourself in the ancestor, which now has become
incorporated in your personality. There are a good many stories of this
kind going about, which point to the possibility of the transmission of
shreds of remembrance through hereditary channels, and suggest the idea
of an active Race-memory, or Earth-memory, in itself continuous—a
storehouse of experiences, but fed continually by the individuals of the
race, and coruscating forth again in other individuals.[129] Indeed one
can hardly withhold belief in the existence of such a larger life, or
identity, ‘reincarnated’ if one likes to use the expression, in
thousands or millions of individuals; but to be satisfactorily assured
of the reincarnation of one distinct and individual person is another
thing, and would almost demand that there should be forthcoming not only
shreds and streaks of remembrance, but a pretty continuous and
consistent memory of a whole former life.
Thus the whole question which we are discussing is baffled and rendered
the more complex by the doubt as to what is meant by the word “I.” It is
clear, from what we have already said, that one person may use it to
indicate (1) the quite local and superficial self; while another may
have in mind (2) a much profounder being (the underlying self) whose
depths and qualities we have by no means fathomed; while others, again,
may be thinking (3) of the self of the Race or the Earth, or (4) the
All-self of the universe.
I present these questions and doubts, not—as I have said—for the
purpose of discrediting the possibility of Reincarnation, but by way of
showing how complex and difficult the problem is, and how much _some_
exact thought and definition is needed in dealing with it. At the same
time, in pleading for exact thought I would also urge that in avoiding
the whirlpools of sentimentalism we should be careful not to fall upon
the rocks of a dry and barren formalism. Systems of hard and fast
doctrines on these subjects—even though issued with all the authority
of ancient tradition, and enunciated in a long-dead jargon—are the most
unfruitful and uninspiring of things. They seem to contain no germ of
vitality and are liable to paralyze the mind that feeds upon them.
Besides the drawback—as I have pointed out before—that all such
systems are inevitably false. Nature does not, in any department, work
upon a cut-and-dried system; and while at the outset of an investigation
we often seem to discern something of that kind, further study
invariably discloses an astounding variety of order and method. It may
be well therefore to be prepared to find a general principle of
Reincarnation in operation in the world, but worked out, in actual fact,
in a great variety of ways.
Certainly there comes into our minds, at a certain grade of their
development, a deep persuasion of the truth, in _some_ sense, of
reincarnation—that “the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
hath had elsewhere its setting.” It blossoms, this persuasion, in a
curious way, in the very depths of the mind; and in moments of inner
illumination, or deep feeling, is discerned in a way that seems to
leave no room for doubt. At the same time, it not only has this
intuitive sanction, but it commends itself also to the intellect,
because at a certain stage we perceive very clearly both how vast is
the whole curve of progress which the soul has to cover from its first
birth to its final liberation, and how tiny is the arc represented by
a single lifetime—the two thoughts almost compelling us to believe
in a succession of lives as the only explanation or solution. We are
compelled towards a practical belief in Reincarnation, and yet (as
above) we have to confess that our conception of what it really is,
or what we mean by it, is only vague. This, however, is no more than
what happens in a hundred other cases. The young bird starts building
a nest for the first time, driven by some strange instinct to do so,
and yet it can only have a very dim notion of the meaning and uses
the nest will subserve when finished. And _we_ found our lives on
deep intuitions—of social solidarity, of personal responsibility, of
free will, and so forth—and yet it is only later and by degrees that
we learn what these things actually mean.
Referring, then, to the four alternative forms of the self given two
or three pages back, and taking the last first, we may say definitely,
I think, that as far as the self of each one of us is identified (4)
with the All-self of the universe, its reincarnation is assured.
Its reincarnation indeed is perpetual, inexhaustible, multitudinous
beyond words, filling all space and time. Though the consciousness
of this self is deeply buried, yet it is there, in each one of us.
Occasionally—if even only for a moment—it rises to the surface,
bringing a sense of splendor and of joy indescribable—the absolute
freedom and password of all creation, the recognition of oneself
everywhere and in all forms. But this phase of the self—I need hardly
say—is for the most part hidden; and more common is it perhaps for the
Race-self (3) to rise into our consciousness with more or less distinct
assurance that we live again and are re-embodied in other members of
the race to which we belong. The common life of the race carries us
away and overmasters us with a strange sense of identity and community
of being. Heroisms and devotions—as of men dying for their country,
or bees for their hive—spring from this; and superb intoxications of
joy. The whole of the life of primitive races and tribes, and the life
of the animals and insects, illustrates it—in warfares, migrations,
crusades, frantic enthusiasms, mad festivals—the genius of the race
rushing on from point to point, inspiring its children, incarnating
itself without end in successive individuals.
It is not so uncommon, I say, for us to be able to identify ourselves
with this great Race-self, and to feel its thrill and pulse within
our veins. And it might well be thought that, with these two forms of
reincarnation (3) and (4) and the immense joy they bring, we should
be content: even as all the tribes of the animals and the angels are
content.
But it seems that man—when the civilization-period sets in, and after
that—is not content. The little individual soul, now first coming to
the consciousness of its own separateness, sets up a claim for an
immortality and a reincarnation of its very own—apart from the
Race-self, apart even from the Divine self. It demands that its _ego_
should continue indefinitely into the farthest fields of Time—a
separate entity, perpetually re-embodied. Can such a claim—in the light
of what has been said above—be possibly conceded?
Certainly not. We have seen the absurdity of supposing that the local
and superficial self (1) can ever recur again or be re-embodied in that
form, except as a mere matter of memory (or possibly of a repetition of
the whole universal order). And as to the underlying self (2), whatever
exactly it may be, there are a thousand reasons for seeing that _as a
wholly separate entity_ the same must be true of that. I may refer the
reader to _The Art of Creation_, the whole argument of which is to show
that even the mere attempt to _think_ of itself as a separate entity
involves the human soul in hopeless confusion and disintegration; and I
may remind the reader that we know nothing in the whole universe which
is thus separate and apart, and that the conception, whether from a
physical point of view or a psychological point of view, is impossible
to maintain. That being so, there remains only to consider the
possibility of the underlying self or individual soul being
re-embodied—not as an absolutely separate entity, but as affiliated to
some greater Life which shall afford the basis of successive
incarnations. The problem is narrowed down, practically to the question
whether the individual may not obtain some kind of individual
reincarnation through the Race-self, or possibly through the All-self of
the universe.
And here I will state what I personally think and believe about this
problem, leaving the reasons for the present to commend themselves. I
think that in the early stages—in animal and primitive human life—the
Race-self is paramount; that each individual self proceeds from it, in
much the same way as a bud proceeds from the stem of a growing plant, or
even as a single cell forms part of the tissue of the stem; and is
absorbed into it again at death. There are no individual and
death-surviving souls produced, apart from the Race-soul. In the great
race or family of bunny-rabbits, for instance—though there are
certainly individual differences of character—just as there are
differentiations of tissue-cells in the stem of a plant—it is difficult
to believe that there are individual and immortal souls. Each little
self springs from the race, and is an embodiment of it, representing in
various degree its characteristics; and at death—in some way which we
do not yet quite understand[130]—returns thither, yielding its
experiences to the stores of the race-experience. The same is probably
true of the great mass of the higher animals, even up to the primitive
and earliest Man. The Race-self in all these cases moves onward,
upgathering the experiences of the individuals, wise with their united
knowledge, and rich with their countless memories. And these tracts
again, of experience, knowledge and memory, largely in a vague and
generalized form, but sometimes in sharp, individualized and detailed
form, are transmitted from the Race-self to its later individuals and
offshots. Thus a kind of broken reincarnation occurs, by which streaks
of memory and habit pass down time from one individual to another, and
by which perhaps—in us later races—the persistent ‘intimations of
immortality’ and persuasions of having lived before are accounted for.
I think that this process, of mixed and broken reincarnation, may go on
for countless generations—the animal or animal-human souls so
differentiated from the race-soul returning continually to the latter at
death. But that a period may come when the Race-self (illustrated by the
growing plant-stem) may exhibit distinct _buds_—the embryos, as it
were, of independent souls—which will not return and be lost again in
the race-soul, but will persevere for a long period and continually
attain to more differentiation and internal coherence and sense of
identity. In such cases any reincarnations that occur connected with
these buds—though mingled with the race-life—will become much less
broken than before, and more distinctly individual; till at last a phase
is reached when such a soul-bud, almost detached from the race-life, may
be reincarnated (or let us say ‘re-embodied’) as a separate entity, with
a kind of immortality of its own.
It must be at this stage that the characteristic human soul of the
Civilization-period is evolved—which coheres quite firmly round itself,
which protests and revolts against death, which even largely throws off
its allegiance to the race-soul, and to the laws and solidarities of the
race-life, and which has an enormous and overweening sense of identity
and self-importance, claiming for itself, as I have just said, a kind of
separate persistence. Here ensues, as may be imagined, a terrible period
of confusion and trouble—the whole period of competitive civilization.
The splendid claim of identity and immortality is made; but for the time
being it is spoiled by what we call ‘selfishness,’ the mirror is cracked
through ignorance. The Soul has disowned her allegiance to mere instinct
and the race-self, and has yet not found a firm footing beyond—is only
floundering in the bogs of self-consciousness and anxiety. What kind of
Re-embodiment may belong to this period we shall best perhaps see when
we have considered the further course of the argument.
For at last the process of transition completes itself. The human soul
tossed about beyond endurance at length discovers within itself a divine
Nucleus—a nucleus of growth and life and refuge and security, apart
from its own fragility, quite apart from the race-life, independent of
all the latter’s laws and conventions and sanctions and traditions,
independent of caste or color, of world-period or locality; and from
that moment it (the soul) rests; it ceases (like the little rose of
Jericho) from its desert wanderings; it radiates itself and begins to
grow from a new centre; it is born again; it becomes the beginning of
what may be called a Divine Soul. The man becomes conscious of an
ethereal body forming within, unassailable or at least undestroyable by
Death; and it is probable that, during this period, the subtle organism
which we have already termed the Inner or Spiritual Body (ch. x.) _is_
actually forming and defining and, so to speak, consolidating itself.
The subtle body of a more perfect being is forming—a body which can
pass unharmed through walls, fire, water, which can navigate the air and
the planetary spaces, and which is built on the basis of the ether,
itself the all-pervading life-substance of creation. A divine soul is
coming to expression, an _ego_ indeed, marvellously different and
distinct from all other _egos_, and ever more majestic and unique
growing; but rooted deep in the universal self, and ever from that root
expanding and sharing the life of that self and of all its children.
With the formation of this divine soul, re-embodiment in its complete
and adequate sense commences. The spiritual or subtle body formed within
the gross body retains its characteristics after the death of the latter
(many of which characteristics no doubt hardly gained expression in the
one life just ended)—and passes on to other spheres, there to assume
more or less definitely material bodies according to the sphere and the
conditions in which it may need to move. It may seek re-embodiment on
earth through ordinary heredity and childbirth—in which case presumably
it enters into the growing germ, and moulds the development of the
latter to an adequate, if not to a quite perfect and unsullied,
expression of itself. If the reincarnation is to be into ordinary human
and terrestrial life, this is probably the only available method. And it
would seem that some advanced and well-nigh perfect souls do adopt this
method, appearing as infants with a kind of divinity about them, and a
germinal purity so great as to seem to proceed from an ‘immaculate
conception.’
But to most, in this stage, the toil and tedium of passing through
embryonic life and physical birth and infancy may well appear
intolerable; and since by now they have developed the subtle or
spiritual body and the powers belonging to it, this ordeal is no longer
necessary. The subtle body can—as we have gathered from former
chapters—by a process of condensation clothe itself in a visible or
even tangible vesture,[131] and may function, at any rate for a time, in
such outer or apparitional form without going through all the
_abracadabra_ of birth. If on the earth, such functioning can only be
very temporary, owing to the difficulty here of the conditions, and of
the supply of the necessary condensation-material; but in other and less
ponderous spheres the difficulty is probably much less, and the
formation of suitable bodies comparatively easy. Anyhow, it will be seen
that reincarnation of this second kind is unitary and single in
character instead of being divided or fragmentary; it is unalloyed
instead of being broken and mixed;[132] and a vision rises before us, in
connection with it, of ever-growing forms and more perfect
life-embodiments carrying out, one after another in long succession, the
evolution and expression of each divine soul or separate ray of
universal being.
Thus in answer to query two, on an early page of this chapter, we may
say that there are two kinds of reincarnation proper—quite different
from each other:—(1) That of the race-self in which the individual
members of the race share only in a streaky fashion, each going back at
death into the race-soul, and emptying its memories and experiences into
that soul for general sporadic inheritance, but not for transmission in
mass to any one later individual; and (2) that of the individual who has
found his divine soul and evolved his inner body to a point where it
cannot be broken up again; and who is thus reincarnated or re-embodied
complete through successive materializations or condensations, in other
spheres and without again undergoing the ordinary race-birth and death.
But though these two represent the normal forms of reincarnation, a
third kind should be added which represents the transition from one to
the other, and which is important for us because it mainly covers the
period in which we now are—the great period of civilization. We saw how
the soul of the animal is so close to the race-self, and so little
differentiated from it, that it probably returns quite easily into the
race-self at death; and this is likely to be the same with very early or
primitive man. But when the distinctly human soul begins to form and to
shape itself, it does not so easily forget its individuality and
obliterate itself in that from which it sprang. And so we have the
tentative, half-formed human soul, by no means well assured of itself,
or certain of its own powers, and by no means perfect or contented, but
much persuaded of its own importance and anxiously seeking reincarnation
as a separate entity—and seeking this by the only means available to
it, _i.e._ through heredity and birth as a member of the race.
It is a painful situation and experience. The soul, as human and not
animal soul, is longing to separate itself from the race, to mark its
distinction and independence—yet it has not, so far, found the divine
nucleus which alone can give it real independence; and it can only gain
expression and manifestation through the race-self and the ordinary
paraphernalia of birth and death. It has learned no other way. Moreover,
it is not yet completely differentiated from the race-self. It thus
arrives at what can only be a very mingled and broken expression. Some
father-stream and some mother-stream uniting, as it were, in the
psychological neighborhood of this half-formed soul give it the desired
opportunity; and blending itself with them it comes down into the
world—a being of triple nature, embryonic and incompletely formed in
itself, and utilizing as best it can the diverse elements of its
maternal and paternal sources. Its career, consequently, and its life on
earth are marked by a continual inner struggle and conflict—both
physiological and psychological (due to the effort of the soul to bend
the race-life and the elements of corporeal heredity to its own uses),
and in strange contrast both with the hardihood and calm insouciance of
the animals, in whom the race-life is untampered, and with the
transparent health and serenity of those other beings in whom the divine
soul has finally established its sovereignty.
Such, briefly described, are I believe the outlines of the reincarnation
story. To put it in a few words, the whole process by which the
race-self evolves and finally gives birth to myriads of free,
independent and deathless individuals curiously resembles and may well
be illustrated by a certain biological phenomenon common both in the
vegetable and the animal worlds. Some growing stem or portion of tissue,
perhaps of a plant, perhaps of a sponge or higher organism, is at first
of a simple homogeneous character, fairly uniform and undifferentiated:
but after a time it exhibits knobs and inequalities, which presently
define themselves in a sort of _botryoidal_ or clustered bud-like growth
(as, for instance, in the spadix of an arum or the ovary of a mammal);
finally these knobs or buds become entirely distinct and fully formed,
and are thrown off ‘free,’ as seeds (in the case of plants and animals),
or gemmules (in the case of sponges), or spores (in ferns and mosses),
or as fresh and complete individuals in many aquatic creatures—in any
case to enter on the beginnings of a free and independent life of their
own. This kind of process, anyhow, is found in every department of
biology, and it may well be that it extends upward even into the highest
domains. The growing stem—proliferating cells without number, which are
born and die in a kind of even uniformity within the limits of the
stem—corresponds to the race-self in its early stages; the formation of
knobs and buds in various degrees of clustered development corresponds
to the partial growth of human souls out of the race-soul; and the
liberation of the buds and germs corresponds to the liberation of the
human souls into the freedom of a universal life.