REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS
Life is the most elusive thing with which science has to deal but we
have learned much about both life and matter in recent years, and it is
a noteworthy fact that the more we learn the thinner become the ranks of
the materialists. The only scientist of note who still declares his
philosophy of materialism is Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has
written, "He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the
nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's almost deserted ground
in the scientific world, he declares that his voice "is as the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an
advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still
bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his
comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic
direction."
Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism being deserted by all
progressive scientists. While we do not yet know a great deal about
life, science has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and
principles from which conclusions may be logically drawn and working
hypotheses constructed. Sir Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the
great English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's most eminent
scientists, speaking of his conception of life, says that "It is
dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation
to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but
otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that its essential
existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with
matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is
subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to
it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state."[J]
Later in the same work he expresses the opinion "that life is something
outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and
energy; though it can nevertheless control and direct material
forces...."
In closing his volume on _Life and Matter_ this distinguished scientist
says:
"What is certain is that life possesses the power of
vitalizing the complex material aggregates which exist on
this planet, and of utilizing their energies for a time to
display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it
seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is
perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it
is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the
animated material body moves about and strives after many
objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a
certain individuality, a certain character. It may realize
itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and
spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind
which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the
material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the
environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit.
Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent
soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth,
goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent
value, or a work of art or of literature; it may enter the
region of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest
kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may
soar till it is almost divine.
"Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own
unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired
this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas?
There are some who try to think that it is. There are
others who recognize in this extraordinary development a
contact between this material frame of things and a
universe higher and other than anything known to our
senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry;
but utilizing the interactions of matter for its own
purpose; a universe where the human spirit is more at home
than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a
universe capable of infinite development, of noble
contemplation and of lofty joy, long after this
planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled
its present sphere of destiny, and retired cold and
lifeless upon its endless way."
Such a conception of life carries us very far from the old popular view
of the origin of the race, but it is a conception that brings science
and religion into perfect agreement and will enable us to understand
human evolution and explain facts in life that would otherwise remain
incomprehensible.
The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal life, was taught
and commonly accepted in the early Christian period. If we accept the
fact of evolution at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape
from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed, not even
materialism can save one from the necessity of accepting the
pre-existence of the individualized consciousness that we call a human
being.
Let us consider the human infant as we see it at birth. Whence came
it--how can we account for it in a universe of law and order? We can
understand it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse of
physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few months. But its mind,
its consciousness, its emotions, what of them? The average man replies
that God made them and they constitute the soul. But how and when were
they "made"? Even the material part of this infant did not spring
miraculously and instantaneously into existence. How much less possible
is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made it" we have explained
nothing. But it is not necessary to deny that God creates the soul in
order for us to move toward an understanding of how the soul came to be.
It is only necessary to say that the process of its creation was
evolutionary. Nobody denies that the earth was created by evolution,
although men may differ in opinion on the matter of a divine
intelligence guiding its evolutionary development. The same principle
must apply to the human intelligence.
Lodge wrote _Life and Matter_ as a reply to Haeckel's _Riddle of the
Universe_, which presented the latter's philosophy of materialism. But
Lodge did more than demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not
an inch of scientific ground to support his theory. The English
scientist raised questions that have not been answered, and cannot be
answered, by the scientific materialist. He points out that the
materialist's philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary
rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully
endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century."[K]
With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the scientific materialist
speechless; for all scientists are evolutionists, and it is impossible
to account for "_the extraordinary rapidity of development_" by the laws
of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary age of anything
depends upon its complexity. A simple form is comparatively young while
a complex one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The earth is
simple compared to a human being. If, then, it has required ages to
evolve the earth to its present stage how long did it take to evolve the
wonderfully complex mental and emotional nature of the human being that
inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge bottles Haeckel up on his own
premises and shows that the very evolutionary principles to which the
German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He practically says to
Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir, fails to show how it is possible for the
vacuous mind of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
in thirty or forty years." In other words, if the infant is nothing but
the form we see it would be utter absurdity to say that that mass of
matter can evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years when
it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary gain.
Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its face. One might as well
search the surface of a squash for some indication of intelligence. But
wait only a little while and you shall have evidence not merely of
intelligence but of emotions possible only to the highest order of life.
Clearly, here is not something evolved within a brief period from a mass
of material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific as the popular
belief in miraculous creation at which the scientific materialist
scoffs. The swift change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the
intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a century" is not
the creation of something but its _manifestation_--_the coming through
into visible expression of that which already exists_. The soul, the
consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole of the mental and
emotional nature, which has been built up through thousands of years of
evolution, is coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in a
material body.
The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument of the old
soul--an instrument, as certainly as the violin is the instrument and a
vehicle for the musician's expression. At every turn our materialistic
conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception of nature's truth. It
is because we think of the body as being actually the person, that it
seems improbable that an old soul has entered the infant body. We think
of the power and intelligence of an old soul and then look at the baby
and find no indication of such things. But that is only because the baby
body is such a new and undeveloped instrument that it is at first
useless and only slowly can it be brought under control of the soul and
made to express its intelligence and power. The body is a growing
instrument, not a completed one.
Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as physical bodies do.
Suppose there was a time when the piano was keyless, as a baby is
toothless. Suppose that sounding boards have a period of immaturity and
that the whole mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only
be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play on
such a piano his performance would by no means be an indication of his
ability. A competent critic who could hear the performance but not see
the musician would promptly declare that no really great musician was
touching the keys. And that is precisely the mistake we make in assuming
that the immature body of an infant is capable of expressing the
intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it differently, denying
that a returned, old soul is in possession of the infant body simply
because there is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos
slowly grew to maturity then only when the instrument was mature could
the master musician give a practical demonstration of his skill; and
only when the physical body has reached its maturity can the soul that
is using it fully express itself.
In the early years of the physical body the soul is only very partially
expressed through it. The entrance of the consciousness into the
physical world is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth of a
plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a good one, for a plant is
very little like a human body. It is impossible to find a material
equivalent of the dawning of consciousness on the physical plane.
Beginning about four and a half months before the birth of the physical
body and continuing for a period of several years the soul, or
consciousness, is engaged in the process of anchorage in the physical
world. For a long time the center of consciousness remains above the
material plane and during the early years of childhood the consciousness
is divided between the astral and physical worlds, with the result that
the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments of astral
consciousness into physical life. When the physical body is about seven
years old the consciousness may be said to be centered on the physical
plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's new instrument are
mature has the opportunity come for the fullest expression.
Some of the difficulties commonly associated in the mind with the
thought of the pre-existence and rebirth of the soul will disappear if
we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is a center of
consciousness, which is always consciousness somewhere, but which very
gradually shifts its focus from plane to plane. Its permanent home is in
that body of filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels of
the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws
about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle
of consciousness, that is not permanent but which will serve the purpose
of functioning for a period on that plane. Downward again the energies
are sent, building about the center of consciousness on the astral plane
a temporary body of astral matter, temporary in the same sense that the
physical body is temporary, and which shall serve the consciousness in
the astral, or emotional world, during the whole of the physical plane
life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or downward, the soul
sends its energies till the material world is reached, when it begins to
function partially, and very feebly, through the infant physical body.
For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the physical plane where
certain lessons are to be learned. After the early years of childhood
are over the consciousness is firmly anchored here, where the chief work
is to be done, during the hours of the waking consciousness. During
sleep the ego temporarily lays aside the physical body and functions in
the astral body in the astral world. The material body sleeping here is
merely a deserted and empty vehicle, magnetically connected with the
soul, and awaiting its return.
As childhood, youth, maturity and old age pass, complex experiences
come to the soul thus functioning here. Other souls functioning through
physical bodies are encountered and various relationships are
established. Out of the complexity of social, business, religious and
political activities the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner
or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter. The
gathering of such experience has ceased, not because the soul has
acquired all possible physical world knowledge, but because its
instrument of consciousness here has worn out.
Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection and the
center of its consciousness is then shifted to the astral plane. There
the purgative process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter.
As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free from one grade of astral
matter after another and with the loss of each the man becomes conscious
on a higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but the matter of
the astral body gradually wears away until there is so little left that
the soul has lost connection with the astral world also. This means that
the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental plane, or heaven
world, where the man will function on the lower levels.
There in the mental world, functioning through the vehicle of mental
matter, a very important process goes on. The heaven world life is a
harvest time in which assimilation of experience takes place. The
consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences of life and
extracts the essence from them which is transmuted into faculty and
power for future greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in
wisdom and power through its long evolution.
When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest of experience has
been threshed out and the net gain has been built into the enduring
causal body, the mental body, like the astral, has been completely
dissipated. The end of a cycle of experience--of a day in the
evolutionary school--has come and the physical, astral and mental bodies
have all perished. Nothing remains but the soul, the real man, the ego,
functioning through the causal body which persists. From that the ego
again sends the forces outward, in the first activity toward rebirth,
first forming a new mental body by drawing about itself the matter of
the lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new astral body on
the astral plane and finally taking possession of another infant body in
process of formation on the physical plane, into which it will in due
course be reborn.
The period between these successive appearances of the soul in a
succession of physical bodies varies greatly and depends on a number of
things. The length of time spent upon the astral plane has already been
discussed. The time spent in the heaven world depends upon the mental
and moral forces generated during the physical and astral life. If there
is a great harvest of experience it will require a longer time to
transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought little and loved but
little will have a shorter period there, for it is the heart and head
forces that have their culmination in the mental world. The question is
a rather complex one and other factors come into play, including the
intensity of the heaven world life. In general terms, however, it can be
said that the heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will
commonly be a period several times the length of his combined physical
and astral life. Some people will have only two or three hundred years
between incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries and
still others a much longer period.
In getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth, or
reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the soul,
or center of individualized consciousness, is the man and that the
physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
that the causal body is his permanent body for the whole of human
evolution; that the mental plane is his home plane and that from there
he sends forth successive expressions of himself into these lower
planes. With such facts before us there should be no confusion of
thought about the successive personalities of an individual. Yet we
sometimes hear people speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
can be one man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth. Of
course no such thing occurs. An individual remains the same individual
forever. "But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr. Jones, in
England six hundred years ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in
America at this moment? If so is that not a case of being two
individuals?"
It is certainly not a case of being two individuals. It is a case of
one individual being expressed through a physical body six hundred years
ago in England, dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing himself through
another physical body in America at the present time. The confusion of
thought on the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
physical body as being the man. But it is no more the man than the
clothing he wears. It is true that he is known at one period as Jones
and at another as Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
the assumption of an _alias_ by a fleeing criminal changes him. The name
applies exclusively to the physical body, or personality, as
distinguished from the individuality. That body is but the temporary
clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were applied to
his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his body. We
might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and as Mr.
Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name
would in the least degree make him somebody else. The majority of women
change their names in each incarnation. A man may know a certain woman
as Miss Smith when she is a slip of a girl, free from care and with
little serious thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs.
Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of children. She has
changed her name and greatly changed in character, too, but she is the
same individual.
It seems probable that a person may change quite as much between
infancy and old age as between one incarnation and the next. Even the
difference between a youth of twenty years who is an artist and the same
man at three score and ten who has given forty years to scientific study
and research, may be enormous, but the individuality is, of course,
identical. It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and that is just
what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths--steady evolutionary
development of the eternal individual.
The reincarnating process by which the soul evolves is somewhat
analogous to the growth of a young physical body. The process consists
of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. How does
the body of a child grow? It consumes food, the objective activity. It
then digests and assimilates it, the subjective activity. These periods
must alternate or there can be no growth, because neither alone is the
complete process. The one is the complement of the other. So it is in
the evolution of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life is
the food on which the soul grows. The physical plane existence is the
objective period in which the food is gathered. At death the man passes
into the invisible realms where the subjective process is carried on. He
digests and assimilates his experiences and the gist is stored in the
causal body and its growth includes an actual increase in size, just as
in the case of the child's physical body.
The same law governs mental and moral growth as it operates in our
daily affairs. A young man is in college. How does his intellect grow?
By precisely the same process of alternating periods of objective and
subjective activity. In the class room the instructor puts a
mathematical problem on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward
senses of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the student
gathers the food for mental growth. This period of objective activity
comes to an end and he then retires to the privacy of his room and there
the subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the problem. His
material, the food for mental growth, is only a few notes that serve to
keep the experience in his mind. At first all that they signify is not
obvious, but as he turns the various points over and over in his mind
their significance becomes clearer and fuller. It is the subjective
process of digestion. Little by little new light dawns in the student's
mind. Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
principles involved, and the process of assimilation is finished. This
subjective period is the complement of the objective period and they
must go on alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When the
process of digestion and assimilation is finished the student must
return to the classroom for further mental food and when he arrives it
is by virtue of the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that he
is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And precisely so it is
with the reincarnating soul. In the interval between incarnations it so
assimilates the experiences of the last physical life that it comes to
rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take higher and more
difficult lessons than it could previously master.
In the case of both physical growth by eating and mental growth by
instruction there is no possible escape from the law of alternating
periods of objective and subjective activity. When the child has
digested and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing that can
follow--return to his source of supply for another meal. When the
student has digested and assimilated the lesson given to him the only
possibility of further mental growth lies in his return to the
class-room for more material. And so it is with the human soul in its
work of evolving its latent powers and possibilities. There is no other
road forward but the cyclic one that brings it back to the physical life
incarnation after incarnation, but always at a higher point than it
previously touched. The very hunger of the child that insures its return
to the table for more food is analogous to the desire of the soul for
sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.
These alternating periods with the element of constant return are found
everywhere in the economy of nature. All her evolutionary expressions
are cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed circles. It
represents a spiral. The "evolutionary ladder" that the soul climbs is a
winding stairway. In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it is
always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that
is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral
plane, into the physical and then back through the astral plane into the
heaven world, it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a higher
state of development, than it had previously attained. Each rebirth
finds it abler here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler to digest
and assimilate its experiences, and to comprehend more of the realities
of the life of its home plane.
This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral and mental regions,
is a continuous progressive journey of the soul which began away back at
the dawn of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he gathers experience
in proportion to his alertness and to the opportunities his previous
lives have made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to
be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure in the astral life
and joy and wisdom in the mental region, or heaven world. But he also
does some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates hatred and he
injures others. This will give him distress in the astral life and no
results for soul growth or general progress in the heaven world. If he
does an equal amount of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he
does much good and little evil his progress will be rapid and his
existence happy. If he is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will suffer much in the
astral life.
It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy to be told that
the soul passes through the purgation of the astral plane and goes on
into the heaven world only to return to another incarnation and later to
again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who has
thus been purified be again purified? The astral reactions are the
results of the blunders made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the purgatory that awaits
him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly be any
reaction. As a matter of occult fact the average good man will find the
astral plane life a happy existence and will soon pass on to the
blissful heaven world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only
to his evil deeds. Let us say he has committed murder. When the reaction
of the evil force he has generated is over and he passes on into the
heaven plane it does not mean that he is incapable of future evil. It
means that he has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is very
foolish to take life. But there are many other lessons he has not
learned. When he passes into the heaven world he leaves all evil behind
him. He is as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple. The astral
body, like the physical, has perished and it is the freed soul that
enters the heaven world. But when he returns through the astral plane to
reincarnation he is clothed again in astral matter and this new astral
body is exactly representative of his attainments in evolution. In his
coming incarnation he will have other physical plane experiences and
learn other lessons. The next time probably he will not kill, but
perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard. These errors will
react upon him in the astral life that follows. In a coming incarnation
he will be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor steal; but
perhaps he will be a gossip and work much evil through slander. This in
turn will bring its pain. And so in time he will learn to generate no
evil force at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward
everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed, his life on all
planes will be happy and the painful part of human evolution will be
over.
The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than the fact of evolution.
Evolution is an unfolding process in which the latent becomes the active
and the inner life is more and more fully expressed in outer form. The
development and improvement in form keeps pace with the necessities of
the unfolding life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the form
is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller and fuller expression,
limbs for locomotion and, in due course, the organs for hearing, and
seeing, and the other mechanism of the developing consciousness, are
evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of consciousness comes to its
highest possible form and then evolution goes on in the perfecting of
the physical form. In the process of continually changing the matter of
the body it is possible for the brain to be constantly improved and the
whole body to grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a
better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each
incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and
form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of
intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will be
finished.
The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a god in the
making--not actually, but only potentially a god, a being to whom all
wisdom, perfect compassion and unlimited power are possible; and by the
process of evolution he changes the latent into the active. He is at
first only an individualized center of consciousness within the
All-Consciousness, a mere fragment of the divine life. His relationship
to God is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product of it
that has latent within it all the characteristics of the plant and the
power to become a plant. It is not a plant and neither is man a god; but
when it has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is a plant
in the making; and when the human being has begun to evolve his latent
spiritual qualities he is a god in the making. The theosophical view is
that man is essentially divine.
Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally divine, it is necessary
for him to pass through any evolutionary process. Divinity here
indicates merely the essential nature of the human being, not his
possession of either knowledge or power or any degree of spiritual
perfection. It is as though we should say that the infant son of a great
king is royal. The word "royal," like the word "divine," indicates a
relationship. The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a king in the
making. He has much to learn. He must be educated in statecraft and he
must evolve diplomacy. After much experience and development he will, in
time, be capable of ruling an empire. At present this helpless infant
bears little resemblance to a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his
birth he was as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense the
divinity of man represents potential possibilities rather than an
obvious fact of the moment. Man is an embryo god and, in time, he shall
evolve faculties and powers that his present limited consciousness can
not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature of physical origin
that lives a brief span to catch a glimpse of immortality and perish,
but the deathless son of the living God, and by right divine he walks
the upward way of eternal life.
Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter of course, in a
general way, but they appear unwilling to admit that the race has really
made any evolutionary progress. Even scientific men have sometimes
expressed doubt whether the world is growing better. In a newspaper
interview an English scientist was quoted as saying a few years ago that
the race is just as wicked today as at any time within recorded history.
But if he was correctly reported it must have been a hasty expression of
opinion which a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It is
true that things are still bad enough but they are certainly enormously
better than they were some centuries ago. To say that the world is full
of crime and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact that a
civilized nation has reverted to the wartime practices of savage life
furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to do in
determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality is to
take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective
conscience. How does the world of today view war and how did the world
in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to shock us now but the
very fact that it does shock us is the best evidence of moral progress.
Atrocities were expected and taken as a matter of course some centuries
ago. They are not the rule now but the rare exception and those guilty
of them are likely to make their name a by-word among nations. Well
within the era of recorded history the usages of nations' condemned
prisoners of war to become slaves for life. Now the rule is to feed and
clothe them and at the close of the conflict to send them home. A simple
thing like public sports may be used as a measure of public morals. They
show what the collective conscience approves. In these days there is
very little of brutality in public sports. Professional pugilism still
lingers, but barely lingers, in the most enlightened nations. In less
progressive countries like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular.
That is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment. But
if we look backward to the Roman period we find a cruelty in public
sports that is comparatively shocking. Gladiators were compelled to
fight to the death and offenders were devoured by starving wild beasts
and it all made a Roman holiday. Such "sports" would, of course, be
utterly impossible anywhere in the world today. But at that time they
were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest empire. The
fact that the race has evolved morally and that the collective
conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer than in the
past is too obvious for argument.
Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted for? It will not
do to say that the Christian religion has wrought the change because,
splendid as are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
them and shaped its civilization by them. If it had done so the world
war would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called Christian
nations wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through all their
history but class has been arrayed against class and every gain in
either personal liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by
force from those who profited by the misfortunes of others. In other
words, the particular improvements that should have been brought about
by religion were compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of
Christianity, we are still unable to account for the change in the
common conscience of the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
steadily on since long, long before the coming of the Christ. How then
shall we account for it?
If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress of the race in
morality becomes simple. The majority of the great groups of souls that
constituted the civilized nations in the time when Rome was mistress of
the world have had several incarnations in that time and in each sojourn
on the astral plane have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually change the cruel man
to the merciful man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane as
well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any incarnation
are carried forward into the next life, and thus compassion grows until
there is ultimately perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the
progress of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the
viewpoint of reincarnation.
Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such
evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the pre-existence of
the soul and hold that it is in some way brought into being at the time
of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical position of saying
that the reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman
period is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now
than he created then!
The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or nations, to act in a
way that imitates, or nearly duplicates, what has been done centuries
before by other tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that it
has given rise to the declaration that history repeats itself. The fact
of reincarnation shows why it repeats itself. A nation like the Romans,
or the Carthaginians, are bound together in the subtle ties that are
formed by the intimate relationships of constant association. The group
tends to persist and the members of it are largely drawn together and
regrouped in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond the
level of the previous centuries but the general traits and tendencies
remain and the same general policies are likely to shape the national
affairs. There comes a time in the existence of the great group, or
nation, when the old environment will no longer serve for its further
collective evolution as well as some other country. The majority then
reincarnate elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be
inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence the remarkable
difference in the people of a given nation in different periods. Compare
Rome in the time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or compare
the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt. It is
high-class egos that make a great nation and when a country has no more
lessons to teach them, or rather when another country will serve as a
better environment for their further progress, they return in rebirth to
the more advantageous spot on the earth, and a different set of souls
come into possession of the abandoned environment. The valley of the
Nile, that was once the home of an energetic people with a flourishing
civilization would not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile
civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe because only
that environment, in full touch with the great commercial stream of the
economic world, can serve the purpose. As the world is today what could
a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if born into Egypt?
Nothing but leave it. So they are not reincarnated there, but other
souls that are at the point in evolution where the primitive life of an
isolated country will give the simpler lessons they must acquire,
inherit the abandoned environment. As an individual moves continually
onward in each return to incarnation to professional and business
environments that will enable him to put into effect all the new skill
and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes on to greater and greater
opportunities. Souls that made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and
Rome are now making the greatness of Europe and America. Such facts
explain many things that have seemed puzzling. How, for example, was it
possible for the world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in
Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined--declined because her
people largely reincarnated elsewhere--Europe was inhabited by slightly
civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a few centuries--a mere
passing moment in the great lapse of time required for race
evolution--the civilization today could arise, would be to ignore the
fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand that great groups of
old souls incarnate in the strong physical bodies which the more
primitive peoples could bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid
rise of a great civilization in Europe is solved.
The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal kingdom at a high
level in it. The last phase of evolution in the animal kingdom is the
individualizing of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or
dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution and will be
reborn at the lowest human level. Previous to its individualization it
evolves in a group with others of its kind, animated by a common
ensoulment that has not reached the level of complete
self-consciousness. At that group-soul stage the experience of each
animal in the group adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical
teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to
understand many things that would otherwise remain mysterious. Instinct
has never been explained by science. Some of its best known expressions
are altogether mysterious. Why does a young wild animal hide from the
enemies of its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen either?
A quail a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small stone or
bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws to hide its body, and
remain perfectly motionless at the approach of a human being, but will
take no alarm at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a young
chick know the difference between a crow and a hawk? And why, in remote
places like the antarctic regions, are both young and old birds and
animals unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and simple
explanation of all such phenomena. The youngest have the knowledge of
the oldest because they are attached to the same group-soul, or source
of consciousness. The young quails of this season come back to rebirth
from the group-soul that is the storehouse of the experiences of the
quails that were killed by men in past seasons, and thus all young
things know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred to the
killing proclivities of the human being have not become known and there
is no "instinct" to warn.
An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the group-soul is the
fact, often chronicled but not explained, that when telephone or
telegraph lines are built in new countries the birds fly against the
wires and are killed by thousands, the first season. But when the next
season's birds are hatched they are wise and avoid the wires! If the
group-soul were not a fact in nature it would naturally require a long
time for wire education. No such sudden adjustment would be possible.
Reincarnation represents continuous evolution with no waste of time or
loss of energy. Death is not the sudden break in the life program that
the popular belief pictures it. The common view of death is as erroneous
as the common view of birth. If death were what most people believe it
to be it would constitute a blunder of nature--an irrational
interruption of orderly development. In nature's economy there is
conservation of energy and no loss can arise through the change called
death. If the popular belief that at death we go far away to a totally
different kind of existence were sound then death would usually mean an
enormous waste. A young man is educated for some particular work,
engineering, architecture or statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to
die soon afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting such an
education would be largely lost either if death ends all, or is the
last he will know of the material world. But nature does not thus
blunder. Her law of conservation is always operative. All the skill and
wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and will be used in the
future incarnations.
A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in evolution. The child
cannot get an education in a term nor in a year. He must return often to
the same school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may use new
books with higher lessons but he returns periodically to the same
environment. Continuous attendance would be as unthinkable as finishing
his education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns
periodically to the physical world, or plane, for the same reasons.
Continuous life here until all material experience is gained would be
impossible. Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring and
digesting experience the physical body would become a hindrance to
evolution. Within certain limits the physical brain can respond to the
requirements of the growing soul, but a new body is in time an absolute
necessity to further evolution.
If we give a little thought to the evolutionary progress the ordinary
person must make to raise him to mental and moral perfection, the
absurdity of a single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a moment,
intellectual perfection. It would mean a development of the mind to the
point of genius in many directions. If we combine into one mind the
attainments of the mathematical genius, the musical genius, the
inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on until every line of
intellectual activity is included, we then have only the perfect mental
man. On the moral side we must add to that the combined qualities of the
saints. Then we have the perfected human being, with nothing more to be
learned from incarnation here. His further evolution belongs to
superphysical realms.
In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul, that slowly changes
it life after life from the savage to the civilized state and finally
raises it to perfection, it is helpful to observe how this great work
corresponds to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation. A great
character in history begins with helpless infancy. Steadily he
progresses, unfolding new power at each step. He passes through the
graded schools, slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows
with higher and more difficult mental acquirements. Then he enters
professional life and begins to use his intellect with more and more
initiative. He moves on into public life with increased duties and
responsibilities. From one post of honor he rises to another with
increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is the head of a nation
and has become a world figure. Even so it is in the evolution of the
soul. Life by life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst every
increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In one incarnation we
have conditions that evolve courage. In another we are thrown into
situations that develop tolerance. In still another we acquire patience
and balance. In all of these incarnations we steadily evolve intellect
and strengthen all previously acquired virtues. In each life we find
the new conditions that are necessary for the exercise of our added
abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual insight and
the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves, we move forward to higher
fields of evolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[J] "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120.
[K] Life and Matter.--Lodge, p. 121.