CHAPTER IV.

REINCARNATION AND THE RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHIC CONSENSUS OF THE AGES.

In the rapid review we are now about to make of the religion and

philosophy of the past, we shall find that, under many and divers

names and veils, the doctrine of Rebirths has been taught from the

farthest antiquity right up to the present time. There is not a nation

that has not preserved clear traces of this doctrine; not a religion

that has not taught it, either openly or in secret, or, at all events,

retained the germ of the teaching; and if we count only those peoples

of whose national religion it forms part, _i.e._, Hindus and

Buddhists, the number of believers in Reincarnation may be summed up

in round figures at 540 millions of the present population of 1400

millions throughout the world. The greatest of philosophers, both

ancient and modern, have regarded palingenesis as the basis of life,

but whereas in the past the pledge of initiation prevented its

details from being promulgated, in our days, along with the flood of

light which this cycle has brought us, the veil of secrecy has been

partially lifted, and theosophy has been privileged to set forth this

glorious teaching in its main outlines and its most important details.

INDIA.

Northern India was the cradle of the present race--the fifth--the Eden

of our humanity, our physical, moral, mental, and spiritual

mother.[81] From her womb issued the emigrant hordes that peopled

Europe after spreading over Egypt, Asia Minor, and Siberia; it was her

code of ethics that civilised Chaldæa, Greece, Rome, and the whole of

the East; our own code is full of traces of the Laws of Manu, whilst

both the Old and New Testament are, in many respects, an abridged and

often almost a literal copy of the sacred Books of ancient Aryavarta.

The presence of the doctrine of reincarnation in the Vedic hymns has

been disputed; this proves nothing more than the present fragmentary

condition of the Vedas. Nothing, indeed, could be more absurd than to

find that the sacred Scriptures of India had maintained silence on a

doctrine which, along with that of Karma, form the two main columns of

the Hindu temple; for the Brâhman as well as for the Buddhist--who is

only a member of a powerful offshoot of Hinduism--these two laws rule

throughout the whole Universe, from the primordial kingdoms up to the

gods, including man; and the principal, nay, the only goal of human

life is Moksha--salvation, in Christian terminology--liberation from

the chain of rebirths.

In this land, in which, along with strict obedience to the rules of

conduct set forth by its great Teachers, there existed the most

complete freedom of opinion, and where the most divergent and numerous

philosophic sects consequently developed, there has always been

perfect unanimity regarding the doctrine of rebirth, and in that

inextricable forest of metaphysical speculations two giant trees have

always overtopped the rest: the tree of Karma and the tree of

Reincarnation.

In spite of the intentional obscurity in which we are left as to the

teachings regarding rebirth from the time of the decadence of India,

it is no difficult matter, with the aid of theosophy, to discover its

main points. Thus we find in them the return of the "life-atoms"[82]

and animal souls[83] to existence in new physical bodies; the rebirths

of the human Egos are indicated in their main phases; but here, the

deliberate omission of certain points which had long to remain

incomprehensible--and consequently dangerous--to the masses, makes

obscure, and at times absurd, certain aspects of transmigration. I

have heard a great Teacher clearly explain these points to some of the

most enlightened of the Hindu members of the Theosophical Society, but

I do not feel authorised to repeat these explanations, and so will

leave this portion of the subject under a veil, which the reader will,

with the aid of intuition, be able to lift after reflecting on the

following pages.

The Sages of ancient India, then, teach three distinct phases in the

return-to-birth process: Resurrection, Transmigration or

Metempsychosis and Reincarnation properly so-called.

RESURRECTION.

The human body is a species of polyp colony, a kind of coral island

like those that emerge above the waves of the Pacific, by reason of

the collective efforts of lower organisms.

The most numerous of the compounds of the human aggregate are known to

physiology as microbes, bacteria, and bacilli; but amongst them our

microscopes discover only comparative monsters, "those that are to the

ordinary infinitesimal organisms as the elephant is to the invisible

infusorium."[84]

Each cell is a complete being; its soul is a vital ray of the general

life of our planet; its body consists of molecules that are attracted

and then repelled, whilst the cellular soul remains immutable in the

ceaseless fluctuations of its corporeal elements.

The molecules, too, are animated by a vital soul, connected with the

cellular soul, which, in turn, is subordinate to a higher[85] unit of

the collective life of the human body.

The most infinitesimal of these beings--often called

"lives"--penetrate the body freely; they circulate in the aura[86] and

in each plexus of the organism; there they are subjected to the

incessant impact of the moral, menial, and spiritual forces, and

become impregnated with a spirit of good or of evil, as the case may

be. They enter the cells and leave them with intense rapidity, for

their cycles of activity as well as of passivity are being incessantly

repeated.

We are all the time emanating millions of "lives," which are at once

drawn into the different kingdoms of Nature to which they carry the

energies they have gathered in us; they impress on their new organisms

the tendencies we have given them, and in this way become ferments of

regeneration or of decay; they aid or retard, pollute or purify, and

it is for this reason that it is not a matter of indifference whether

one lives in town or country, with men or animals, the temperate or

the intemperate, the wicked or the good. The animal gains from

association with human beings, man loses from association with

animals; the disciples of the great schools of initiation, at a

certain stage of their discipline, are carefully isolated from any

inferior contact.

It is these subtle forces that are at play in the physical

accomplishment of an action.[87] "For material sins," says Manu,

"one[88] passes into mineral and vegetable forms." When, at death,

the outer sheath of man disintegrates, these "life atoms" are thrown

back into the general surroundings of the earth, where they are

subjected to the magnetic currents around; these currents either

attract or repel them, and thus bring about that wise selection, which

directs them to organisms in affinity with them.

The doctrine of metempsychosis[89] is true only for the atoms or

emanations sent out by man after death or during the whole course of

life. The hidden meaning of the passage from Manu, where we read that

"he who slays a Brâhman enters into the body of a dog, a bear, an ass,

a camel, &c.," does not apply to the human Ego, but only to the atoms

of his body, _i.e._, to the lower triad[90] and its fluidic

emanations, as H. P. Blavatsky says, and she adds:

"The Hîna-yana, the lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist, is

as little comprehended as the Mahâ-yâna, its highest form, and,

because Sâkya Muni--the Buddha--is shown to have once remarked to his

Bhikkus--Buddhist monks--while pointing out to them a broom, that it

had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out the Council

room, hence was reborn as a broom,(!) therefore the wisest of all the

world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and

understand the true meaning of the figurative statement before

criticising? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvia a

something, a stuff or a substance, invisible and imponderable though

it be?... The mesmeric or magnetic fluid which emanates from man to

man, or even from man to what is termed an inanimate object, is far

greater. Indeed, it is 'life atoms' that a man in a blind passion

throws off unconsciously. Let any man give way to any intense feeling

such as anger, grief, &c., under or near a tree, or in direct contact

with a stone, and many thousands of years after that any tolerable

psychometrist will see the man and sense his feelings from one single

fragment of that tree or stone that he has touched. Why then should

not a broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity

of the building where the lazy novice lived--a shrub, perhaps,

repeatedly touched by him while in a state of anger, provoked by his

laziness and distaste of his duty--why should not a quantity of his

life atoms have passed into the materials of the future broom, and

therein have been recognised by Buddha owing to his superhuman (not

supernatural) powers?"[91]

Such is the meaning of the Resurrection of the body, taught in the

Christian church in a form that is repellent to reason, for it kills

the spirit of the doctrine and leaves this latter like a corpse from

which the life has gone.

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

After the disintegration of the body, the kâmic[92] elements continue

for some time, us a "shade"[93] or a "phantom,"[94] in the finer and

invisible atmosphere;[95] then they, in turn, become disintegrated by

the various forces of this environment,[96] and are lost in the strata

of matter from which they have been taken. Like the physical elements

(_life-atoms_), they whirl about in their environment and there submit

to the same law of attraction and repulsion as that which controls

universal selection; they are drawn towards the kâmic elements of men

and animals, and it is here that we ought to place the list of those

misdeeds, by reason of which these elements pass into bodies of

animals or men of inferior development. "A drunken priest becomes a

worm," says Manu, "a stealer of corn, a rat; the murderer of a

Brâhman, a dog, a tiger, or a serpent"--and this means that those

elements which, in man, serve as a basis for the passions, at death,

pass over into the bodies of animals that possess the same passions or

experience the same needs.

The transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals is still

generally accepted amongst the less intelligent Hindus; it has

contributed, perhaps more than anything else, to that wonderful

respect for life one meets with all over India. The thought that some

ancestor or other might happen to be in the body of an animal prevents

its destruction; even the sacrifice of his life offered by a man to

one of his brothers in the animal world is regarded as a sublime

virtue, and legend tells us of the Buddha, the Lord of Compassion,

giving himself up as food for a famishing tigress, that she and her

cubs might not perish of hunger.

REINCARNATION.

The process of disintegration[97] which, after disincarnation,

destroys the physical, astral, and mental bodies of the man leaves

the Soul--or, to be more exact, the causal body, for the soul is not

the causal body any more than it is any of the other human

vehicles--intact. Indeed, the causal body is at present the only

vehicle that resists the cyclic dissolution of the human compound;

this it will be subjected to only when the divine spark which

constitutes the Soul--an eternal spark in its essence, since it is a

fragment of God, and immortal as an "ego," once it has attained to

individualisation, the goal of evolution--has formed for itself a new

and superior body with the substance of the finer planes above the

mental; but ages will pass before the masses of mankind reach this

point.

After thus throwing off, one after the other, all its sheaths, the Ego

finds that it has ended a "life-cycle," and is preparing to put on new

bodies, to return to reincarnation on earth. On Reincarnation properly

so called, the Hindu scriptures are so precise and complete, so

generally accepted, than it is unnecessary to quote from them in

detail. A few extracts will suffice.

These we will take from the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, that glorious episode in

the mighty civil war which shattered India, and left her defenceless

against the successive invaders who were to complete her fall. This

great epic poem introduces to us Arjuna, a noble prince, about to take

part in the strife. The two armies, arrayed for battle, are on the

point of engaging, arrows have already begun to pierce the air. In the

opposing ranks Arjuna sees cherished relatives, dear friends, and

revered teachers, whom destiny has placed in hostile array, thus

giving to the battle all the horrors of parricide and fratricide.

Overwhelmed with grief and pity, his heart moved to its inmost depths,

Arjuna drops his bow on the ground and thus addresses his Teacher, the

divine Krishna:

"Seeing these my kinsmen arrayed, O Krishna, eager to fight,

"My limbs fail and my mouth is parched, my body quivers and my hair

stands on end.

"Gândîva (Arjuna's bow) slips from my hand, and my skin burns all

over; I am not able to stand, and my mind is whirling.

"And I see adverse omens, O Keshava (hairy one). Nor do I foresee

advantage by slaying kinsmen in battle.

"For I desire not victory, O Krishna, nor kingship nor pleasures; what

is kingship to us, O Govinda (Thou who knowest all that is done by our

senses and organs), what enjoyment or even life?

"Those for whose sake we desire kingship, enjoyments, and pleasures,

they stand here in battle, abandoning life and riches.

"Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, mothers' brothers,

fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and other relatives.

"These I do not wish to kill, though (myself) slain, O Madhusûdana

(slayer of Madhu, a demon), even for the sake of the kingship of the

three worlds (the habitations of men, gods, and semi-divine beings);

how then for earth?

... "I will not do battle."

The divine Krishna then smiled upon his well-beloved disciple, and

said to him:

"Thou grievest for those that should not be grieved for, and speakest

words of wisdom (words that sound wise but miss the deeper sense of

wisdom). The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

"Nor at any time verily was I not, nor thou, nor these princes of men,

nor verily shall we ever cease to be hereafter.

"As the Dweller in the body seeketh in the body childhood, youth, and

old age, so passeth he on to another body; the well-balanced grieve

not thereat....

"These bodies of the Embodied One, who is eternal, indestructible, and

boundless, are known as finite. Therefore fight, O Bhârata.

"He who regardeth This (the Dweller in the body) as a slayer, and he

who thinketh it is slain, both of them are ignorant. It slayeth not,

nor is it slain....

"Who knoweth It indestructible, perpetual, unborn, undiminishing; how

can that man slay, O Pârtha, or cause to be slain?

"As a man casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the

Dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others

that are new.

"Weapons cleave It not, nor fire burneth It, nor waters wet It, nor

wind drieth It away....

"Further, looking upon thine own Dharma,[98] thou shouldst not

tremble, for there is nothing more welcome to a Kshattriya than

righteous war."

Here are other extracts of this wonderful teaching:

"Many births have been left behind by Me and by thee, O Arjuna. I know

them all, but thou knowest not thine, Parantapa."

"He who thus knoweth My divine birth and action, in its essence, is

not born again, having abandoned the body, but he cometh unto Me, O

Arjuna."

"Having attained to the worlds of the pure-doing, and having dwelt

there for eternal years, he who fell from Yoga is reborn in a pure and

blessed house.... There he obtaineth the complete yogic wisdom

belonging to his former body, and then again laboureth for perfection,

O joy of the Kurus!"

"But the Yogî, verily, labouring with assiduity, purified from sin,

fully perfected through manifold births, he treadeth the supreme

Path.... He who cometh unto Me, O Kaunteya, verily he knoweth birth no

more."

The daily life of Hindu and Buddhist is so entirely based on

Reincarnation and on its foundation, the law of Causality, that this

faith gives them patience in the present and hope for the future; for

it teaches that man, every moment he lives, is subject to the

circumstances he has created, and that, though bound by the past, he

is yet master of the future.

Why cannot we, in this troubled Europe of ours, accept this belief as

the solution of the distressing problem of the inequality of

conditions, for to the weak in rebellion against oppression it would

come as a soothing balm, whilst the strong would find in it a stimulus

to devoted pity such as wealth owes to poverty and happiness to

misfortune? Herein lies the solution of the whole social problem.

EGYPT.

If we pass from India to Egypt, the land of mystery, we again find the

world-wide doctrine of palingenesis hidden beneath the same veil.

According to Egyptian teaching, the theory of the "fall of the angels"

was accepted; the fallen angels were human souls[99] who had to become

reincarnated till they reached a state of purification; fallen into

the flesh, subjected to its vicissitudes and passions, these souls had

to evolve, in successive rebirths, until they had developed all their

faculties, obtained complete control over the lower nature, and won

back their original purity; then this latter would no longer be the

unconscious purity of youthful innocence, but the conscious purity of

mature age, _i.e._, of the soul that has known both good and evil in

the course of its experiences, has overcome the serpent of matter, the

tempter, and voluntarily chosen the life of virtue.

The "Judgment" of the after-life is determined by the degree of

purity that has been attained; if insufficient, the soul returns to

earth, there to inhabit a human, an animal, or a vegetable form, in

accordance with its merits or demerits.

These lines prove that Egyptian teaching has come down to us, covered

with gross dross and slag, as it were, which must be subjected to

careful sifting; when this is done, we see that it also sets forth the

transmigrations to which the elements of the various vehicles are

subjected,[100] the physical ternary[101] rises from the dead, the

animal man[102] transmigrates; and man, properly so-called,[103]

reincarnates, but the details of these processes have been so confused

in such fragments of Egyptian palingenesis as we possess that it is no

easy matter to find the traces of this classification.

For instance. Herodotus tells us:

"The Egyptians were the first to hold the opinion that the soul of man

is immortal and that when the body dies it enters into the form of an

animal which is born at the moment, thence, passing on from one animal

into another until it has circled through the forms of all the

creatures which tenant the earth, the water, and the air, after which

it enters again into a human form and is born anew. The whole period

of the transmigration is (they say) three thousand years."[104]

This passage evidently refers to the resurrection of the "life atoms."

H. P. Blavatsky, in the _Theosophist_, vol. 4, pages 244, 286,

confirms this in the following words:

"We are taught that for 3000 years, at least, the 'mummy,'

notwithstanding all the chemical preparations, goes on throwing off to

the last invisible atoms, which, from the hour of death, re-entering

the various vortices of being, go indeed 'through every variety of

organised life forms.' But it is not the soul, the fifth,[105] least

of all, the sixth[106] principle, but the life atoms of the Jiva,[107]

the second principle. At the end of the three thousand years,

sometimes more, sometimes less, after endless transmigrations, all

these atoms are once more drawn together, and are made to form the new

outer clothing or the body of the same monad (the real soul) which

they had already been clothed with two or three thousands of years

before. Even in the worst case, that of the annihilation of the

conscious personal principle,[108] the monad, or individual

soul,[109] is ever the same, as are also the atoms of the lower

principles,[110] which, regenerated and renewed in this ever-flowing

river of being, are magnetically drawn together owing to their

affinity and are once more reincarnated together...."

Certain authors have stated that belief in Resurrection was the origin

of embalming, because it was thought that after three thousand years

the soul returned to the same body, that it immediately rose again,

when the body had been preserved, whereas if such had not been the

case, it entered wherever it could, sometimes even into the body of a

lower creature. Herodotus, however, says that after the cycle of three

thousand years the soul enters a new body, not the mummified

one,[111] and this would lead one to imagine that there were other

reasons for the process of embalming. Indeed, it became general only

during the decline of Egypt; at the beginning, it was reserved for the

hierophants alone, with the object of allowing their physical

molecular elements to pass into the still coarse bodies of the masses

and help forward ordinary souls by the powerful influence of the

magnetic potency with which they were charged. It is also for this

reason that the body of a Yogî, in India, is interred, whilst in the

case of other men cremation is the rule.

On the other hand, among the multitude of beliefs left in Egypt by

degenerate traditions, there were found some which hinted, more or

less clearly, at occult truths, and which might have perpetuated or

generalised this practice. It was supposed, according to Servius, that

the transmigrations[112] began only when the magnetic bond between the

soul and its remains had been broken by the complete disintegration of

the corpse; consequently they did all in their power to preserve this

latter.

This belief may readily be connected with theosophic teaching which

says that the affinity existing between the visible corpse and the

soul clad in its kâmic (astral) body, the animal soul in Kâmaloka

(Purgatory), is capable, in certain cases, of detaining this soul on

earth, after its disincarnation, and thus delaying, for a longer or

shorter period, the disintegration of the elements of the passional

body. It is these elements, not the soul, that pass over into animal

bodies, and, contrary to the opinions set forth in Egyptian

exotericism, it is to the interest of the soul to free itself from

terrestrial attraction and from its kâmic (astral) vehicle, and not to

remain bound down to earth. Consequently, embalming was a mistaken

action, the result of an error of doctrine, or at all events of

teachings that were incomplete, imperfectly transmitted, and

misunderstood.

Egypt multiplied her symbols of palingenesis. Resurrection--in the

sense of re-birth in general--was symbolised by the toad which then

became the goddess Hiquet. This animal was chosen because it lives in

air and in water,[113] because it can remain imprisoned a very great

number of years without either air or food[114] and afterwards come

back to life. G. Maspero, in his _Guide du Visiteur au Musée de

Boulac_, tells us that the early Christians in Egypt had adopted this

symbolism, and that the lamps in their churches were formed in the

shape of a toad, and bore the inscription, "I am the Resurrection," in

the Greek language. This goddess-toad may still be seen in the museum

of Boulac.

The Scarabeus, or beetle,[115] symbolised the "personality," the

expansion of the mental substance, projected, so to speak, by the

higher mental body, at each incarnation, into the new kâmic (astral)

body; a certain number of them were always deposited with the mummies,

and the beetle was represented standing on an ear of corn, a symbol of

the attainments acquired during the past earth life. Indeed, the

development of the Ego is effected by that of the personality it sends

on to the earth each incarnation; it is the new mental body which

controls the new astral and physical bodies of each incarnation, and

which is, in very truth, the flower and the fruit of the labour of

life.

Sacred Egyptology tells us that the scarabeus requires to be

"osirified," united to its "living soul," or Ego, which sent it forth.

I will now give the reason for this emanation.

When, after disincarnation, the purgatorial life begins, the Ego

endeavours to throw off the kâmic (astral) body, to pass into the

higher world--the mental plane--which is its home, there to enjoy the

delights of heaven. Thereupon a veritable battle begins. On the one

hand, the Ego endeavours to withdraw the mental body, which, at the

beginning of the incarnation, it sent into the kâmic body, and to take

it to itself; on the other hand, the passional body[116]--which

instinctively feels its life bound to that of the mental element,

which gives it its strength, vital activity, and personal

characteristics--tries to keep back this centre of individual life,

and generally succeeds in doing so up to a certain point. When desire,

during incarnation, has regularly gained the victory over the will,

the passional body, or Kâma, maintains the supremacy beyond the grave,

and the Ego, in endeavouring to rescue its mental projection from the

kâmic bonds, yields up a more or less considerable fragment thereof,

and this fragment is restored to liberty only when the passional body

of the deceased has become disintegrated by the forces of the astral

world. This has been called the _fire_ of purgatory.

On the other hand, when the Ego, during life, has always refused the

appeals of the lower nature, it easily withdraws, after death, from

the net of passion, the substance it has infused therein, and passes

with this substance into that part of the mental plane which is called

"heaven."

Such is the struggle that Egypt committed to her annals when she

inscribed upon papyrus or engraved upon stone the journeyings of the

soul into the world of shades. The soul--the mental personality--which

demands "osirification," and invokes the Ego, its god and projector,

beseeching him to draw it to himself that it may live with him, is the

lower "I." This "I" has not exhausted the "desire to live" on earth;

its desire is impressed on the germs it has left in the causal body,

and brings the Ego back to incarnation; this is the reason it prays

and desires the resurrection[117] of its "living soul," the Ego.

Denon, in his _Journeyings in Egypt_, has made known to us the Sha-En

(the book of metamorphoses), written in hieratic signs and republished

in Berlin, by Brugsch, in the year 1851. Explicit mention is here made

of reincarnations, and it is stated that they are very numerous.

The third part of the _Book of the Dead_ sets forth a detailed account

of the resurrection of an Osiris; the identification of the departed

one with Osiris, God of Light, and his sharing in the life, deeds, and

power of the God; in a word, it is the final reintegration of the

human soul with God.

The loftiest and most suggestive of Egyptian palingenetic symbols is

unquestionably that of the egg. The deceased is "resplendent in the egg

in the land of mysteries." In Kircher's _Oedipus Egyptiacus_[118] we

have an egg--the Ego freed from its vehicles--floating over the mummy;

this is the symbol of hope and the promise of a new birth to the soul,

after gestation in the egg of immortality.[119]

The "winged globe," so widely known in Egypt, is egg-shaped, and has

the same meaning; its wings indicate its divine nature and prevent it

from being confused with the physical germ. "Easter eggs" which are

offered in spring, at the rebirth of Nature, commemorate this ancient

symbol of eternal Life in its successive phases of disincarnation and

rebirth.

CHALDÆA.

It is said that the Magi taught the immortality of the soul and its

reincarnations, but that they considerably limited the number of

these latter, in the belief that purification was effected after a

restricted number of existences on the soul returning to its heavenly

abode.

Unfortunately we know nothing definite on this special point in

Chaldæan teaching, for some of the most important sources of

information were destroyed when the library of Persepolis was burnt by

the Macedonian vandal, Alexander the Great, whilst Eusebius--whom

Bunsen criticises so harshly[120]--made such great alterations in the

manuscripts of Berosus, that we have nothing to proceed upon beyond a

few disfigured fragments.[121] And yet Chaldæism comprises a great

mass of teachings; he whom we know as "the divine Zoroaster" had been

preceded by twelve others, and esoteric doctrine was as well known in

Chaldæa as in Egypt.

The descendants of the Chaldæans--Fire-worshippers, Mazdeans, Magi,

Parsees--according to the names they received at different

periods--have preserved the main points of palingenetic instruction up

to the present, and, from time to time, have set them forth in the

most charming style of Oriental poetry. Book 4 of the great Persian

poem, _Masnavi i Ma'navi_, deals with evolution and its corollary,

reincarnation, stating that there is one way of remembering past

existences, and that is by attaining to spiritual illumination, which

is the crown of human evolution and brings the soul to the threshold

of divinity.

"If your purified soul succeeds in escaping from the sea of ignorance,

it will see, with eyes now opened, 'the beginning' and 'the end.' Man

first appeared in the order of inorganic things; next, he passed

therefrom into that of plants, for years he lived as one of the

plants, remembering naught of his inorganic state, so different from

this, and when he passed from the vegetable to the animal state he had

no remembrance of his state as a plant.... Again the great Creator, as

you know, drew man out of the animal into the human state. Thus man

passed from one order of nature to another, till he became wise and

intelligent and strong as he is now. Of his first soul he has now no

remembrance, and he will be again changed from his present soul. In

order to escape from his present soul, full of lusts, he must rise to

a thousand higher degrees of intelligence.

"Though man fell asleep and forgot his previous states, yet God will

not leave him in this self-forgetfulness; and then he will laugh at

his own former state, saying: 'What mattered my experiences when

asleep, when I had forgotten the real state of things, and knew not

that the grief and ills I experienced were the effect of sleep and

illusion and fancy?'"

These lines are concise, but they sum up the whole of evolution, and

render it unnecessary to quote at greater length from Chaldæan

tradition on this point. Still, those who desire other passages

relating to the same doctrine may find them in the "Desatir."[122]

THE CELTS.

Sacerdotal India--and perhaps also Atlantis--in early times sent

pioneers into the West to spread religious teachings amongst their

energetic inhabitants; those who settled in Gaul and the British Isles

were the Druids. "I am a serpent, a druid," they said. This sentence

proves that they were priests, and also the Atlantæan or Indian origin

of their doctrines; for the serpent was the symbol of initiation in

the sacred mysteries of India, as also on the continent of Atlantis.

We know little of their teaching, which was entirely oral, though it

covered so much ground that, according to Cæsar, not less than thirty

years of study were needed to become a druid. The Roman conquest

dispersed them by degrees; then it was that their disciples, the

bards, committed to writing more or less imperfect and mutilated

fragments of the teachings of their masters. Their "triads"[123] are

undoubtedly akin to Hindu teachings; Evolution results from the

manifestation of the Absolute, it culminates in man, who possesses a

maximum of individualisation, and terminates in the personal,

conscious union of the beings thus created with the ineffable All.

The Absolute is "Ceugant"; manifestation, or the Universe, is "Abred";

the divine state of freed souls is in "Gwynvyd"; these are in the

three circles.[124]

In "Ceugant" there is only the Unknowable, the rootless Root. Souls

are born and develop in "Abred," passing into the different kingdoms;

"Amwn" is the state through which beings pass only once, which means

that the "I," when once gained, continues for ever. "Gwynvyd" is the

world of perfect and liberated souls, eternal Heaven, great Nirvâna.

During this long pilgrimage, the Monad--the divine fragment in a state

of incarnation--undergoes an endless number of rebirths, in myriads of

bodies.

"I have been a viper in the lake," said Taliesin, the bard[125]; "a

spotted adder on the mountain, a star, a priest. This was long, long

ago; since then, I have slept in a hundred worlds, revolved in a

hundred circles."

It was their faith in rebirth that gave the Gauls their indomitable

courage and extraordinary contempt of death:

"One of their principal teachings," said Cæsar,[126] "is that the soul

does not die, but passes at death into another body--and this they

regard as very favourable for the encouragement of valour and for

inculcating scorn of death."

Up to a few years ago, belief in the return of the soul to earth was

still prevalent in those parts of Brittany in which civilisation had

not yet exercised its sceptical, materialising influence; there even

existed druids--probably degenerate ones--in Great Britain and France;

in the Saône-et-Loire district, they seem to have been called the

"Adepts of the White Religion"[127]; both in them and in their

ancestors, belief in rebirth remained unshakable.

ANCIENT GREECE (_Magna Græcia_).

In Greece, the doctrine of Rebirths is met with in the Orphic

tradition, continued by Pythagoras and Plato. Up to the present time,

this tradition has probably found its best interpreter in Mr. G. R.

S. Mead, an eminent theosophist and a scholar of the first rank. We

recommend our readers to study his _Orpheus_, if they desire a

detailed account of this tradition.

Its origins are lost in antiquity, only a few obscure shreds

remaining; Pherecydes, however,[128] when speaking of the immortality

of the soul, refers to the doctrine of Rebirths; it is also presented

very clearly by both Pythagoras and Plato.

According to the Pythagorean teaching, the human soul emanates from

the Soul of the World, thus affirming, at the outset, the divine

nature of the former. It teaches subsequently that this soul assumes

successive bodies until it has fully evolved and completed the "Cycle

of Necessity."[129]

Pythagoras, according to Diogenes of Laertius,[130] was the first in

Greece to teach the doctrine of the return of souls to earth. He gave

his disciples various details of his past lives; he appears to have

been the initiate Oethalides, in the times of the Argonauts; then,

almost immediately afterwards, Euphorbus, who was slain by Menelaus at

the siege of Troy; again he was Hermotimus of Clazomenæ, who, in the

temple of Juno at Argos,[131] recognised the shield he was carrying

when his body was slain as Euphorbus, and which Menelaus had given as

an offering to the goddess[132]; at a later date he was Pyrrhus, a

fisherman of Delos, and, finally, Pythagoras.

In all likelihood this genealogy is not correct in every detail, it

comes to us from the disciples of the sage of Samos, who were not very

trustworthy in their reports.

Empedocles, one of the early disciples of Pythagoras, said that he

inhabited a female body in his preceding existence. Saint Clement of

Alexandria quotes a few lines of his, in which we find the philosopher

of Agrigentum teaching the general evolution of forms.

"I, too, have been a boy, a maiden, a star, a bird, a mute fish in the

depths of the sea."

Iarchas, the Brâhman chieftain, said to the great Apollonius:

"In bygone ages thou wert Ganga, the famous monarch, and, at a later

date, captain of an Egyptian vessel."[133]

The Emperor Julian said that he had been Alexander the Great.[134]

Proclus affirmed that he had been Nichomachus the Pythagorean.[135]

The works of Plato are full of the idea of rebirth, and if the

scattered fragments of the teaching are gathered together and

illumined with the torch of theosophy, a very satisfactory _ensemble_

will be the result.

Souls are older than bodies, he says in _Phædo_; they are ever being

born again from _Hades_ and returning to life on earth; each man has

his daimon,[136] who follows him throughout his existences, and at

death takes him to the lower world[137] for Judgment.[138] Many souls

enter Acheron,[139] and, after a longer or shorter period, return to

earth to be incarnated in new bodies. Unpardonable sins fling the soul

into Tartarus.[140]

"Know that if you become worse you will go to the worse souls, or if

better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you

will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of

like...."[141]

According to Plato, the period between two incarnations is about a

thousand years.[142] Man has reminiscences of his past lives that are

more or less distinct; they are manifested rather by an intuitive

impression than by a definite memory, but they form part of the

individual,[143] and at times influence him strongly. "Innate ideas"

are only one aspect of memory, often it is impossible to explain them

by heredity, education, or environment; they are attainments of the

past, the store which the soul takes with it through its incarnations,

which it adds to during each sojourn in heaven.

There can be no doubt that Plato would appear to have taught

metempsychosis, _i.e._, the possibility of a human soul passing into

the body of an animal:

"Men who have followed after gluttony and wantonness and drunkenness,

and have had no thought of avoiding them, would pass into asses and

animals of that sort. And those who have chosen the portion of

injustice and tyranny and violence will pass into wolves or hawks or

kites, and there is no difficulty in assigning to all of them places

according to their several natures and propensities."[144]

Under the heading of _Neoplatonism_, we shall show that, beneath these

coarse symbols, Plato concealed truths which it was then necessary to

keep profoundly secret; which, even nowadays, it is not permitted to

reveal to all.

OLD TESTAMENT.

H. P. Blavatsky tells us that the _Old Testament_ is not a homogeneous

composition; that _Genesis_ alone is of immense antiquity; that it is

prior to the time when the Libra of the Zodiac was invented by the

Greeks, for it has been noticed that the chapters containing the

genealogies have been touched up so as to adapt them to the new

zodiac, and this is the reason that the rabbis who compiled them twice

repeated the names of Enoch and Lamech in the Cain list. The other

parts seem to be of a comparatively recent date and to have been

completed about 150 B.C.

The first part of the _Book of God_--as the Scriptures were then

called--was written by Hilkiah, jointly with the prophetess Huldah; this

disappeared at a later date, and Ezra had to begin a new one which was

finished by Judas Maccabæus. This was recopied some time after, with the

object of changing the pointed letters into square ones, and in this way

was quite disfigured. The Masoretes ended by mutilating it completely.

The result is that the text we now possess is one not more than nine

hundred years old, bristling with premeditated omissions,

interpolations, and perverted interpretations.[145]

By the side of this initial difficulty we find another, quite as

important. Almost every page of the _Old Testament_ contains veiled

meanings and allegories, as is frankly confessed by the rabbis

themselves.

"We ought not to take literally that which is written in the story of

the Creation, nor entertain the same ideas of it as are held by the

vulgar. If it were otherwise, our ancient sages would not have taken

so much pains to conceal the sense, and to keep before the eyes of the

uninstructed the veil of allegory which conceals the truth it

contains...."[146]

Does not Saint Paul, speaking of the hidden meaning of the Bible, say

that Agar is Mount Sinai?[147] Origen and Saint Augustine are of the

opinion that the _Old Testament_ must be regarded as symbolical, as

otherwise it would be immoral; the Jewish law forbade anyone to read

it who had not attained the age of thirty years; Fénelon would have

liked it to be thrust away in the recesses of the most secret

libraries; the Cardinal de Noailles says that Origen, so full of zeal

on behalf of the Holy Scriptures, would not allow anyone to read the

_Old Testament_, unless he were firmly anchored in the practice of a

virtuous life; he affirms too that Saint Basilius, in a letter to

Chilon, the monk, stated that the reading of it often had a harmful

influence; for the same reasons, the _Index expurgatorius_ forbids the

publication of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, and orders that no one

be allowed to read it without the written permission of his

confessor.[148]

A third difficulty arises from the fact that the Old Testament--its dead

"letter" and its commandments, at all events--is no longer suitable to

our own race. It was intended for a nation that was composed of young

souls, at a low stage of evolution, for whom nothing more than the

rudiments of instruction were necessary, and on whom stern rules of

morality, suitable for advanced souls, ought not to be imposed. This is

why divorce,[149] polygamy,[150] slavery,[151] retaliation, _lex

talionis_,[152] the blood of sacrifice[153] are instituted; it is the

reason God is represented as a being to be dreaded, punishing those who

do not obey him, wicked, jealous, bloodthirsty.[154] Bossuet understood

all this when he said that the primitive Hebrew race was not

sufficiently advanced to have the immortality of the soul taught to it.

This, too, is the only explanation we can find for the sensual

materialism of _Ecclesiastes_.[155]

Consequently one need not be astonished to find that the Old Testament

nowhere deals--directly, at all events--with the doctrine of Rebirth.

All the same, here and there we come across a few passages that point

in this direction. For instance, we read in _Genesis_, chapter 25,

regarding the birth of Jacob and Esau:

"And the children (of Rebecca) struggled together within her.

"And the Lord said unto her: Two nations are in thy womb, and two

manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one

people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall

serve the younger.

"And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold there were

twins in her womb."

This passage has been the occasion of lengthy commentaries on the part

of certain Fathers of the Church--more especially of Origen. Indeed,

either we must acknowledge divine injustice, creating, without any

cause, two hostile brothers, one of whom must submit to the rule of

the other, and who begin to strive together even before birth, or we

must hark back to the pre-existence of the human soul and to a past

Karma which had created inequality in condition.

David begins the ninetieth _Psalm_ with a verse which only a belief in

reincarnation can explain:

"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations...."

The dwelling-place of the soul, at death, is in heaven, whence it

returns to earth when the hour of rebirth has struck; thus, in all

generations, that is, from life to life, "the Lord is our

dwelling-place."

In Chapter 8 of the _Book of Wisdom_, Solomon says in more explicit

language:

"For I was a witty child, and had a good spirit, yea, rather, being

good, I came into a body undefiled."

This clearly points to the pre-existence of the soul and the close

relation that exists between the conditions of its rebirth and the

merits or demerits of its past.

Verse 5 of the first chapter of _Jeremiah_ is similar to verse 23 of

the twenty-fifth chapter of _Genesis_:

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest

forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a

prophet unto the nations...."

It is the deeds done in the past lives of Jeremiah that accompany him

on his return to earth; God could not, in an arbitrary fashion, have

conferred on him the gift of prophecy had he not acquired it by his

efforts in a past life; unless, here too, we altogether abandon reason

and go back to a capricious or unjust--consequently altogether

impossible--God.

THE KABALA.

Contact with the Babylonians, during the Captivity, brought about a

rapid development in the Hebrews, who were at that time far more

advanced souls than those that animated the bodies of their

fathers,[156] and taught them many important details of religious

instruction. It was then that they learned the doctrine of rebirth and

that the Kabala came into being.[157]

In it the cycle of rebirths is called Gil'gool'em[158] or the

"revolving of the Incorporeal" in search of the "promised land." This

promised land, the Christian Paradise, or Buddhist Nirvâna, was

symbolised by Palestine; the soul in its pilgrimage was brought to

this abode of bliss,[159] and, according to the allegory, "the bodies

of Hebrews buried in a foreign land contained an animistic principle

which only found rest when, by the 'revolving of the Incorporeal,' the

immortal fragment had returned to the promised land."[160]

There are other aspects from which this "revolution of souls" may be

regarded. Certain Kabalists speak of it as a kind of purgatory in

which, by means of this "revolving," the purging of the soul is

brought about before it enters paradise.

In this connection, H. P. Blavatsky states that in the language of the

Initiates the words "soul" (_âme_) and "atom" were synonyms, and were

frequently used for each other. She says that the "revolution of

souls" was in reality only the revolving of the atoms of the bodies

which are continually transmigrating from one body to another

throughout the various kingdoms of nature. From this point of view, it

would seem that "Gil'gool'em" is more especially the cycle of atomic

transmigration: _Resurrection_.

The doctrine of the reincarnation of the human soul, however, is

clearly set forth in the _Zohar_:

"All souls are subjected to the tests of transmigration; men know not

the designs of the Most High with regard to them; they know not how

they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world

and when they leave it; they have no knowledge of the mysterious

transformations and sufferings they must undergo, or how numerous are

the spirits who coming; into this world never return to the palace of

their divine King; they are ignorant of the revolutions to which they

are subjected, revolutions similar to those of a stone when it is

being hurled from a sling. And now the time has come when the veil

shall be removed from all these mysteries.... Souls must in the end be

plunged back into the substance from which they came. But before this

happens, they must have developed all the perfections the germs of

which are implanted within them; if these conditions are not realised

in one existence, they must be born again until they reach the stage

that makes possible their absorption in God."[161]

According to the Kabala, incarnations take place at long intervals;

souls completely forget their past, and, far from being a punishment,

rebirth is a blessing which enables men to develop and to attain to

their final goal.

The Essenes taught reincarnation and the immortality of the soul.

Ernst von Bunsen,[162] speaking of this sect, says:

"Another marked peculiarity of the doctrine of the Essenes was the

doctrine concerning the pre-existence of souls. They exist originally

in the purest ether, which is their celestial home. By a natural

attraction they are drawn towards the earth and are enclosed in human

bodies, as in a prison. The death of the body causes the return of the

soul to its heavenly abode. The Essenes can, therefore, not have

believed in the resurrection of the body, but of the soul only, or, as

Paul says, of the 'spiritual body.' This is positively asserted by

Josephus."[163]

ROME.

Although Rome, above all else, was a warlike republic, and religion

principally a State cult, that allowed but slight opportunity for the

outer expression of spirituality, none the less did it inherit the

beliefs of Egypt, Greece, and Persia; the Bacchic mysteries, previous

to their degradation, were a copy of the Orphic and Eleusinian

mysteries. In the reign of Pompey, Mithraism, a cult borrowed from

Persia, was spread throughout the empire. Consequently, we need not be

surprised at finding the doctrine of Rebirth mentioned by the great

Latin writers.

We will quote only from Virgil and Ovid.

In the speech addressed by Anchises to Æneas, his son, the Trojan

prince deals with the life beyond death, the tortures endured by souls

in expiation of their misdeeds, their purification, their passing into

Tartarus,[164] into the Elysian Fields,[165] then their return to

earth after having drunk of the river of forgetfulness. In Book VI. of

the _Æneid_, we find Æneas visiting the lower regions:

"After having for a thousand years turned the wheel (of existence),

these souls come forth in a mighty troop to the Lethean stream to

which God calls them that they may lose the memory of the past, see

the higher regions,[166] and begin to wish to return into bodies."

Ovid, in his _Metamorphoses_ also deals with the teaching of

Pythagoras, his master, on the subject of palingenesis:

"Then Death, so-called, is but old matter drest

In some new figure, and a varied vest;

Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies,

And here and there th' embodied spirit flies,

By time, or force, or sickness dispossest,

And lodges, when it lights, in man or beast.

Th' immortal soul flies out in empty space

To seek her fortune in some other place."

NEW TESTAMENT.

The _New Testament_ is far more explicit than the _Old_, even though

we find the teachings of reincarnation indicated in only a vague,

indirect fashion. All the same, it must not be forgotten that the

canonical Gospels have suffered numerous suppressions and

interpolations. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the

early Fathers of the Church made use of gospels that are now either

lost or have become apocryphal.[167] It has been proved that neither

Jesus nor his disciples wrote a single word, and that no version of

the Gospels appeared earlier than the second century.[168] It was at

that time that religious quarrels gave birth to hundreds of gospels,

the writers of which signed them with the name of an apostle or even

with that of Jesus, after forging them in more or less intelligent

fashion.

Celsus, Jortin, Gibbons, and others have shown that Christianity is

directly descended from Paganism; it was by combining the doctrines of

Egypt, Persia, and Greece with the teachings of Jesus that the

Christian doctrine was built up. Celsus silenced all the Christian

doctors of his time by supplying evidence of this plagiarism; Origen,

the most learned doctor of the age, was his opponent, but he was no

more fortunate than the rest, and Celsus came off victorious.

Thereupon recourse was had to the methods usual in those days; his

books were burnt.

And yet it is evident that the author of the _Revelation_ was a

Kabalist; and the writer of the _Gospel of Saint John_ a Gnostic or a

Neoplatonist. The _Gospel of Nicodemus_ is scarcely more than a copy

of the _Descent of Hercules into the Infernal Regions_; the _Epistle

to the Corinthians_ is a distinct reminiscence of the initiatory

Mysteries of Eleusis; and the Roman Ritual, according to H. P.

Blavatsky, is the reproduction of the Kabalistic Ritual.

One gospel only was authentic, the secret or Hebrew _Gospel of

Matthew_, which was used by the Nazareans, and at a later date by

Saint Justin and the Ebionites. It contained the esoterism of the

One-Religion, and Saint Jerome, who found this gospel in the library

of Cæsarea about the end of the fourth century, says that he "received

permission to translate it from the Nazareans of Beroea."

These considerations prove that interested and narrow-minded writers

selected from the mass of existing traditions whatever seemed to them

of a nature to support their spiritual views as well as their material

interests, and that they constructed therefrom not only what has come

down to us as the four canonical gospels, but also the whole edifice

of Christian dogma.

Consequently, we need not be surprised to find in the _New Testament_

only unimportant fragments dealing with reincarnation; but even these

are not to be despised, for they prove that the doctrine was, to a

certain extent at all events, known and accepted in Palestine.

_Reincarnation in the Gospels._

_Saint Mark_, Chapter 6.

v. 14. And King Herod heard of him; and he said, That John the Baptist

was risen from the dead....

v. 15. Others said, That it is Elias; and others said, That it is a

prophet, or as one of the prophets.

v. 16. But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John whom I

beheaded; he is risen from the dead.

_Saint Matthew_, Chapter 14.

v. 1. At that time, Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus.

v. 2. And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is

risen from the dead....

_Saint Luke_, Chapter 9.

v. 7. Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him; and he

was perplexed because it was said of some that John was risen from the

dead.

v. 8. And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of

the old prophets was risen again.

v. 9. But Herod said, John have I beheaded; but who is this of whom I

hear such things?

The account here given proves that the people as well as Herod

believed in reincarnation, and that it applied, at all events, "to the

prophets" and to those like them.

_Saint Matthew_, Chapter 16.

v. 13. When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, he asked

his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?

v. 14. And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some,

Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

The same account is given in _Saint Luke_, chapter 9, verses 18, 19.

_Saint Matthew_, Chapter 17.

v. 12. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew

him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall

also the Son of man suffer of them.

v. 13. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John

the Baptist.

He continued in _Saint Matthew_, Chapter 11.

v. 7. Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What

went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?

v. 8. But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment?

Behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses.

v. 9. But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you,

and more than a prophet.

v. 14. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.

Here we have a distinct declaration: Reincarnation is a fact; John is

the rebirth of Elias.[169]

Judging from these texts, one might be tempted to think that

reincarnation was confined to the prophets or to people of importance,

but Saint John shows us that the Jews, though perhaps ignorant that it

was a law of universal application, recognised, at any rate, that it

might happen in the case of any man.

_Saint John_, Chapter 9.

v. 1. And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his

birth.

v. 2. And his disciples asked him, saying: Master, who did sin, this

man or his parents, that he was born blind?

v. 3. Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents;

but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Here we are dealing with a man _blind from birth_, and the Jews ask

Jesus if he was blind because he sinned; this clearly indicates that

they were referring to sins committed in the course of a former

existence[170]; the thought is, therefore, quite a natural,

straightforward one, referring to something well known to everyone and

needing no explanation.

As one well acquainted with this doctrine of Rebirth, without

combating it as an error or as something doubtful which his disciples

ought not to believe, Jesus simply replies:

"Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents; but that the works of

God should be made manifest in him."

And yet it appears as though this answer must have been distorted, as

so many others have been, otherwise it would mean that the only reason

for this man's blindness was the caprice of the Deity.

_Reincarnation in the Apocalypse._

The _Apocalypse_, an esoteric book _par excellence_, confirms the

doctrine of Reincarnation, and throws considerable light on it:

"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and

he shall go no more out...."[171]

In another verse it is stated that to him who overcometh "I will give

the morning star."[172] In the language of theosophy, this means: He

who has overcome the animal soul, shall, by mystic Communion, be

united to the divine soul, which, in the _Apocalypse_, is the symbol

of the Christ:

"I, Jesus, am the bright and morning star."[173]

Another verse clearly characterises the nature and the cost of

victory:

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and I

will give him a _white stone_, and in the stone a new _name_ written,

which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."[174]

The hidden manna is the ambrosia of the Greeks, the _kyteon_ of the

mysteries of Eleusis, the _soma_ of the Hindus, the eucharist of the

Christians, the sacred drink offered to the disciples at Initiation,

which had the Moon as its symbol, conferred the gift of divine

clairvoyance and separated the soul from the body.

The "white stone" is none other than the _alba petra_, the white

cornelian, the chalcedony, or stone of Initiation. It was given to the

candidate who had successfully passed through all the preliminary

tests.[175] The "Word" written on the stone is the _sacred Word_, the

"lost Word" which Swedenborg said was to be sought for amongst the

hierophants of Tartary and Tibet, whom theosophists call the Masters.

"He who overcometh" is, therefore, the disciple ready for initiation;

it is of him that "a pillar in the temple of God" will be made. In

esoteric language, the column signifies Man redeemed, made divine and

free, who is no longer to revolve on the wheel of Rebirths, who "shall

no more go out," as the _Apocalypse_ says, _i.e._, shall not again

leave Heaven.

If we examine the text of both _Old_ and _New Testament_ by the light

of esoteric teaching, the dead letter, often absurd and at tunes

repellent and immoral, would receive unexpected illumination, and

would fully justify the words of the great rabbi, Maimonides, quoted a

few pages back.[176]

Origen, the most learned of the Fathers of the Church, adds in his

turn:

"If we had to limit ourselves to the letter, and understand after the

fashion of the Jews or the people, what is written in the Law, I

should be ashamed to proclaim aloud that it was God who gave us such

laws; I should find more dignity and reason in human laws, as, for

instance, in those of Athens, Rome, or Sparta...." (_Homil 7. in

Levit._)

Saint Jerome, in his _Epistle to Paulinus_, continues in similar

fashion:

"Listen, brother, learn the path you must follow in studying the Holy

Scriptures. Everything you read in the divine books is shining and

light-giving without, but far sweeter is the heart thereof. He who

would eat the nut must first break the shell."

It is because they have lost the Spirit of their Scriptures that the

Christians--ever since their separation from the Gnostics--have

offered the world nothing more than the outer shell of the World

Religion.

NEOPLATONISM.

The great philosophic body that formed a bridge, as it were, between

the Old World and the New was the famous School of Alexandria, founded

about the second century of our era by Ammonius Saccas and closed in

the year 429 A.D. through the intolerance of Justinian. Theosophical

in its origin, this school had received from Plato the esoteric

teaching of Egypt and the East, and the dogma of Rebirth was secretly

taught in its entirety, though its meaning may have been travestied by

the ignorance of the masses to whom only the grosser aspects of the

teaching were given.

"It is a dogma recognised throughout antiquity," says Plotinus,[177]

"that the soul expiates its sins in the darkness of the infernal

regions, and that afterwards it passes into new bodies, there to

undergo new trials."

"When we have gone astray in multiplicity,[178] we are first punished

by our wandering away from the path, and afterwards by less favourable

conditions, when we take on new bodies."[179]

"The gods are ever looking down upon us in this world, no reproach we

bring against them can be justifiable, for their providence is

never-ending; they allot to each individual his appropriate destiny,

one that is in harmony with his past conduct, in conformity with his

successive existences."[180]

The following is a quotation from the same philosopher, dealing with

metempsychosis, and which, when compared with the foregoing sentences,

appears strangely absurd. We make no comment here, as this obscure

question will be dealt with a few pages farther on.

"Those who have exercised human faculties are reborn as men; those who

have lived only the life of the senses pass into animals' bodies,

especially into the bodies of wild beasts if they have given way to

excesses of anger ... those who have sought only to satisfy their lust

and gluttony, pass into the bodies of lascivious and gluttonous

animals ... those who have allowed their senses to become atrophied,

are sent to vegetate in trees ... those who have reigned tyranically

become eagles, if they have no other vice."[181]

Porphyry says:

"The souls that are not destined for the tortures of hell

(_Tartarus_), and those that have passed through this expiation, are

born again, and divine Justice gives them a new body, in accordance

with their merits and demerits."[182]

The following remarkable lines are from Iamblichus:

"What appears to us to be an accurate definition of justice does not

also appear to be so to the Gods. For we, looking at that which is

most brief, direct our attention to things present, and to this

momentary life, and the manner in which it subsists. But the powers

that are superior to us know the whole life of the Soul, and all its

former lives; and, in consequence of this, if they inflict a certain

punishment in obedience to the entreaties of those that invoke them,

they do not inflict it without justice, but looking at the offences

committed by souls in former lives: which men, not perceiving, think

that they unjustly fall into the calamities which they suffer."[183]

Proclus gave out the same teaching; he affirmed that he had been

incarnated in Nichomachus, the Pythagorean.

In his commentary on the _Golden Verses of Pythagoras_, Hierocles

expresses himself thus:

"The ways of the Lord can be justified only by metempsychosis."[184]

Damascius and Hermias, as also their masters, proclaimed their belief

in Rebirth.

Here a short explanation must be given of what has been said regarding

transmigration or metempsychosis, in order that all misunderstanding

may be removed.

Neither Pythagoras nor Plotinus nor any of the great Teachers of the

past believed in metempsychosis, as it has been described; all their

disciples have affirmed if, and these affirmations, set over against a

line of teaching which seems to contradict them, because it is

incomplete and intended for the less intelligent portion of society at

that time, ought to have reminded its opponents that there might be

hidden reasons capable of explaining the paradox.

We must first remember that a veil of strictest secrecy was flung over

the noblest and most sublime spiritual teachings of the day. According

to Bossuet, the teaching of the immortality of the soul seems not to

have been deemed suitable for the Hebrew race, and, indeed, it is easy

to understand that no double-edged truth should be taught except under

conditions that would safeguard it. Ptolemy Philadelphus exiled

Hegesias,[185] whose eloquent fanaticism had caused some of his

disciples to commit suicide, at Cyrene, after a lesson on immortality.

Ptolemy ordered those schools of philosophy to be closed which

continued teaching this doctrine, for in the case of a people

insufficiently developed, the instinct which binds to physical life,

and the dread of the torture that awaits guilty souls in the

Hereafter, are preferable to doctrines of immortality deprived of the

safeguards with which they should be surrounded.

The doctrine of Rebirths called for even stricter secrecy than that of

immortality, and this secrecy was accorded it in ancient times; after

the coming of the Christ, it grew less rigorous, and the

Neoplatonists, though obliged to keep the esoteric teaching to

themselves, were permitted to throw light on certain points.

Timæus of Locris, one of the masters of Plotinus, hinted at the

existence of a more profound doctrine in the following words:

"Just as by the threat of punishment imperfectly evolved souls are

prevented from sinning, so the transmigration of the souls of

murderers into the bodies of wild beasts, and of the souls of unchaste

persons into the bodies of swine, was taught; and the previous

punishment of these souls in the infernal regions was entrusted to

Nemesis (Karma)."

Certain modern commentators--though imperfectly instructed in the

teachings of palingenesis--have also seen that the masters of

philosophy in the past could not possibly have made a mistake which

less far-seeing minds would have avoided. Dacier[186] says:

"A sure token that Pythagoras never held the opinion attributed to him

lies in the fact that there is not the faintest trace of it in the

symbols we have left of him, or in the precepts his disciple, Lysis,

collected together and handed down as a summary of the master's

teachings."

Jules Simon also speaks as follows regarding Plotinus:[187]

"Here we have the doctrine of metempsychosis which Plotinus found all

around, among the Egyptians, the Jews, the Neoplatonists, his

predecessors, and finally in Plato himself. Does Plato take

metempsychosis seriously, as one would be tempted to believe after

reading the _Republic_? Did he mention it only to ridicule the

superstitions of his contemporaries, as seems evident from the

_Timæus_?[188]

"However important Plato may have considered metempsychosis, it can

scarcely be imagined that Plotinus took it seriously.... Even granting

that this doctrine were literally accepted by Plotinus, the question

would still have to be asked whether the human soul really does dwell

in the body of an animal, or simply enters a human body, which, in its

passions and vices, recalls the nature of that particular animal."

The reasons mentioned by Dacier and Jules Simon form only a trifling

portion of the whole explanation, but if they are added to the

constant protests raised by the disciples of the Masters of the

Pythagorean and Platonic traditions, against those who said that their

instructors taught metempsychosis in all its crudeness, they assume

considerable importance, and show that, although the restrictions of

esoteric teaching travestied by the ignorance of the masses may have

caused it to be believed that the contrary was the case, none the less

the Initiates, from the very beginning, denied that human

transmigration into the bodies of animals ever took place.

On this question many of them have frequently said that it is the soul

which, in such cases, changes its nature, and assumes the passions of

animals into which, as is said exoterically, it transmigrates, though

it does not enter into their bodies.

"He who believes that he transmigrates, after death, into the body of

a beast or a plant," says Hierocles,[189] "is grossly mistaken; he is

ignorant of the fact that the essential form of the soul cannot

change, that it is and it remains human, and only, metaphorically

speaking, does virtue make of it a god, and vice an animal."

"A human soul," adds Hermes, "cannot go back into the body of an

animal; it is preserved from such pollution, for all time, by the will

of the gods."[190]

Mrs. Besant says as follows in a letter dealing with Theosophy and

Reincarnation (_The Theosophist_, April, 1906):

"Even with the wealth of detail given in the Hindu Shâstras, thousands

of facts of the invisible world are omitted, because their statement

would hopelessly bewilder the public mind.

"If all the details are given, ere the main principles are grasped,

hopeless confusion is caused to the beginner.

"When an Ego, a human soul, by vicious appetite or otherwise, forms a

very strong link of attachment to any type of animal, the astral body

(Kâmarûpa) of such a person shows the corresponding animal

characteristics, and in the astral world, where thoughts and passions

are visible as forms, may take the animal shapes; thus, after death,

in _Pretaloka_, the soul would be embodied in an animal vesture,

resembling or approximating to the animal whose qualities had been

encouraged during earth-life. Either at this stage, or when the soul

is returning towards reincarnation, and is again in the astral world,

it may, in extreme cases, be linked by magnetic affinity to the astral

body of the animal it has approached in character, and will then,

through the animal's astral body, be chained as a prisoner to that

animal's physical body. Thus chained, it cannot go onwards to

_Svarga_, if the tie be set up while it is a _Preta_; nor go onwards

to human birth, if it be descending towards physical life. It is truly

undergoing penal servitude, chained to an animal; it is conscious in

the astral world, has its human faculties, but it cannot control the

brute body with which it is connected, nor express itself through

that body on the physical plane. The animal organisation does not

possess the mechanism needed by the human Ego for self-expression; it

can serve as a jailor, not as a vehicle. Further, the "animal soul" is

not ejected, but is the proper tenant and controller of its own body.

S'rî Shankarâchârya hints very clearly at the difference between this

penal imprisonment and becoming a stone, a tree, or an animal. Such an

imprisonment is not "reincarnation," ... the human Ego "cannot

reincarnate as an animal," cannot "become an animal."

"In cases where the Ego is not degraded enough for absolute

imprisonment, but in which the astral body has become very animal, it

may pass on normally to human re-birth, but the animal characteristic

will be largely reproduced in the physical body--as witness the

"monsters" who in face are sometimes repulsively animal, pig-faced,

dog-faced, &c. Men, by yielding to the most bestial vices, entail on

themselves penalties more terrible than they, for the most part,

realise; for Nature's laws work on unbrokenly and bring to every man

the harvest of the seed he sows. The suffering entailed on the

conscious human entity, thus cut off from progress and from

self-expression, is very great, and is, of course, reformatory in its

action; it is somewhat similar to that endured by other Egos, who are

linked to bodies human in form, but without normal brains--those we

call idiots, lunatics, &c. Idiocy and lunacy are the results of vices

different in kind from those that bring about the animal servitude

above explained, but the Ego in these cases also is attached to a form

through which he cannot express himself."

"True reason," says Proclus,[191] "affirms that the human soul may at

times find lodgment in brutes, but that it is possible for it to live

its own life and rise above the lower nature whilst bound to it by the

similarity of its tendencies and desires. We have never meant anything

else, as has often been proved by the reasoning in our commentaries on

_Phædrus_."

There is a note in the _Vâhan_[192] on a passage from _Phædrus_ which

sheds all the light that can be shed on the question of

metempsychosis; in the space of a few lines everything is said that

may be publicly revealed, without trespassing on forbidden ground.

After stating that, on returning from the internal regions, the soul

passes into the "life" of a beast, and that if it were human

previously, it afterwards goes into another human body, the note

continues:

"We must not understand by this that the soul of a man becomes the

soul of a brute, but that by way of punishment it is bound to the soul

of a brute, or carried in it, just as dæmons used to reside in our

souls. Hence all the energies of the rational soul are absolutely

impeded, and its intellectual eye beholds nothing but the dark and

tumultuous phantasms of a brutal life."[193]

This passage contains the explanation of what might be called the

metempsychosis of certain human souls at the present time; we once

heard a great Teacher fully reveal this mystery to a chosen group of

Hindus, but it must for some time to come remain a mystery to the

western world. All that can be said on the matter is that it has

nothing to do with the incarnation of a human soul in the body of an

animal, but rather with a certain temporary karmic bond, in the life

Hereafter, between a human soul and an animal one, a bond intended to

teach many a hard lesson to the one who has brought upon himself so

unpleasant an experience.

Metempsychosis included many other facts in human evolution, facts

that were plainly taught to the disciples in the "inner circles" of

the ancient Schools and passed out to the confused medley of public

teaching.

The astral body, for instance, of a man of an exceedingly passionate

nature, when the soul leaves the physical body, sometimes assumes

forms resembling those of the animals which represent these passions

on the physical plane, and so the disincarnate soul of an assassin has

been said to pass into the body of a wild beast.

Metempsychosis, properly so-called, that is to say, the passing of a

human soul into the body of a brute, did however exist during the

infancy of the human race, when highly developed animal souls were

becoming fit to enter the human kingdom. The bodies of these

newly-born human souls were coarse and rudimentary in their nature,

showing scarcely any difference in form and organic function from the

bodies of the higher animals of that period, for these instruments

were very similar to one another. The improvements subsequently

effected by human bodies did not then exist; the difference, or

distinction, which has now widened into a gulf, was scarcely

perceptible, and in the early incarnations of these rudimentary human

souls back-slidings and falls were so frequent that some of them, thus

enfeebled, might find it to their advantage[194] to become incarnate,

at times, in highly-developed animal bodies. But that was always an

exception, and the exception has long ago become an impossibility.

We think these explanations, along with those given in other portions

of this work, will throw as much light as is permitted publicly on the

subject of metempsychosis--a subject frequently discussed and one that

has hitherto been so obscure. Such illumination as is here given is

due to the teachings of theosophy.

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

The documents to which we have access, dealing with the philosophical

and religious history of Christianity in the first few centuries of

our era, are so questionable, that we can place but faint reliance

upon them, if we would really become acquainted with the thought of

that period. We have already seen that the number of spurious or

counterfeit productions was so great that a strange kind of sorting

out, or selection, took place at the first Council of Nicæa, resulting

in the choice of four so-called canonical Gospels. It is evident, too,

that the copyists, compilers, and translators of the period were

anxious, above all else, to make facts and opinions agree with their

preconceived ideas and personal sympathies or likings. Each author

worked _pro domo sua_, emphasising whatever fitted in with his

personal views and carefully concealing what was calculated to weaken

them; so that at the present time the only clues we have to guide us

out of the labyrinth consist of the brief opinions expressed by a few

historians, here and there, on whose honesty reliance may be placed.

In the present chapter, for instance, it is no easy matter to unravel

the Truth from out of these tangled threads of personal opinions. Some

believe that the early Christians and the Fathers of the Church were

reincarnationists; others say they were not; the texts, we are in

possession of, contradict one another. Thus, whereas Saint Jerome

brings against Origen the reproach of having in his book _De

Principiis_ taught that, in certain cases, the transmigration of human

souls into the bodies of animals, was possible--as, indeed, seems to

be the case--certain writers deny that he ever said anything on the

subject. These contradictory affirmations are easy to explain, once we

know that Ruffinus, when translating into Latin the Greek text of _De

Principiis_, omitted all that referred to this question, that the

conspiracy of silence might be preserved on the matter of Origenian

transmigration.

At the close of his article "_Origen on Reincarnation_," in the

_Theosophical Review_, February, 1906, G. R. S. Mead says:

"It therefore follows that those who have claimed Origen as a believer

in reincarnation--and many have done so, confounding reincarnation

with pre-existence--have been mistaken. Origen himself answers in no

uncertain tones, and stigmatises the belief as a false doctrine,

utterly opposed to Scripture and the teaching of the Church."

Others affirm that Saint Justin Martyr believed in rebirths and even

in the transmigration of human souls into animal bodies. In his book

_Against Heresies_, volume 2, chapter 33, the _Absurdity of the

Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls_ is dealt with; and in the

following chapter, the pre-existence of the soul is denied! Is this

another instance, like the one just mentioned, of tampering with the

writings of this Father of the Church?[195]

At times an author gives two contradictory opinions on the same

subject. In Tertullian's _Apology for the Christians_, for instance,

we find the following:

"If you can find it reasonable to believe the transmigration of human

souls from body to body, why should you think it incredible for the

soul to return to the substance it first inhabited?[196] For this is

our notion of a resurrection, to be that again after death which we

were before, for according to the Pythagorean doctrine these souls now

are not the same they were, because they cannot be what they were not

without ceasing to be what they were.... I think it of more

consequence to establish this doctrine of the resurrection; and we

propose it as more consonant with reason and the dignity of human

nature to believe that man will be remade man, each person the person

he was, a human being a human being; in other words, that the soul

shall be habited with the same qualities it was invested with in its

former union, though the man may receive some alteration in his

form.... The light which daily departs rises again with its original

splendour, and darkness succeeds by equal turns; the stars which leave

the world, revive; the seasons, when they have finished their course,

renew it again; the fruits are consumed and bloom afresh; and that

which we sow is not quickened except it die, and by that dissolution

rises more fruitful. Thus you see how all things are renewed by

corruption and reformed by dying.... How, then, could you imagine that

man, the lord of all these dying and reviving things, should himself

die for ever?"

After such a clear and noble profession of faith, we may well wonder

if it were the same man who, in _De Anima_, could have both refuted

and pitilessly ridiculed the idea of rebirth, and denied the

separation of the soul from the body as well as the influence of the

former upon the latter. We prefer to believe that we are dealing with

two writers, or else that some literary forger, anxious to create a

diversion, deliberately made Tertullian responsible for this strange

contradiction.

Another reason for the difficulty in unravelling the tangled skein of

the religious and philosophical teachings prevalent in the early

centuries of Christianity is the lack of precision in the language of

the writers, the loss of the key to the special vocabulary they used,

and the veils which writers who possessed some degree of initiation,

deliberately threw over teachings which could only be given to the

masses in general terms.

There is one very important point to consider; and this is that in the

earlier centuries, outside the circles of initiation, there was not

that precision which the present-day teaching of theosophy has given

to the doctrine of Reincarnation; this latter, in the mind of the

people, became confused with the doctrine of Pre-existence, which

affirms that the soul exists before coming into the present body, and

will exist in other bodies after leaving this one. This confusion has

continued up to the present time, and we find schools of spiritualism

in England and America, as well as in other countries, teaching that

existence on earth has been preceded and will be followed by a great

number of existences on the invisible planes.

In reality, this is the doctrine of Rebirths, though there is nothing

precise about the teaching. Whether the soul has a single physical

body, or takes several in succession, it is none the less continually

evolving as it passes into material vehicles, however subtle the

matter be; the difference is, therefore, insignificant, unless we wish

to enter into details of the process involved, as was the case in the

West in the early centuries of Christianity.

Did the Fathers of the Church teach Pre-existence? There can be no

doubt on this point. In a letter to St. Anastasius, Rufinus said that

"this belief was common amongst the early Christian fathers."

Arnobius[197] shows his sympathy with this teaching, and adds that St.

Clement, of Alexandria, "wrote wonderful accounts of metempsychosis";

and afterwards, in other passages of the same book, he appears to

criticise the idea of the plurality of lives. St. Jerome affirms that

"the doctrine of transmigration has been secretly taught from ancient

times to small numbers of people, as a traditional truth which was not

to be divulged."[198] A. Franck quotes this passage on page 184 of his

_Kabbale_; Huet, too, gives it in _Origeniana_.[199] The same Father

proves himself to be a believer in Pre-existence, in his 94th _Letter

to Avitus_, where he agrees with Origen on the subject of the

interpretation of a passage from St. Paul,[200] and says that this

means "that a divine abode and true repose are to be found in Heaven,"

and "that there dwell creatures endowed with reason in a state of

bliss, before coming down to our visible world, before they fall into

the grosser bodies of earth...."

Lactantius, whom St. Jerome called the Christian Cicero, though he

opposed pagan doctrines, maintained that the soul was capable of

immortality and of bodily survival only on the hypothesis that it

existed before the body.[201]

Nemesius, Bishop of Emissa in Syria, stoutly affirmed the doctrine of

Pre-existence, declaring that every Greek who believed in immortality

believed also in the pre-existence of the soul.

St. Augustine said: "Did I not live in another body, or somewhere

else, before entering my mother's womb?"[202]

In his _Treatise, on Dreams_, Synesius states that "philosophy assures

us that our past lives are a direct preparation for future lives...."

When invited by the citizens of Ptolemais to become their bishop, he

at once refused, saying that "he cherished certain opinions of which

they might not approve, as, after mature reflection, they had struck

deep root in his mind. Foremost among these, he mentioned the doctrine

of Pre-existence."

Dr. Henry More, the famous Platonist of the seventeenth century,

quotes Synesius as one of the masters who taught this doctrine,[203]

and Beausobre reports a typical phrase of his,[204] "Father, grant

that my soul may merge into Light and be no more thrust back into the

illusion of earth."

St. Gregory of Nysa says it is absolutely necessary that the soul

should be healed and purified, and if this does not take place during

its life on earth, it must be accomplished in future lives.

St. Clement of Alexandria says that, although man was created after

other beings, "the human species is more ancient than all these

things."[205] In his _Exhortations to the Pagans_, he adds:

"We were in being long before the foundation of the world; we existed

in the eye of God, for it is our destiny to live in him. We are the

reasonable creatures of the divine Word; therefore, we have existed

from the beginning, for in the beginning was the Word.... Not for the

first time does He show pity on us in out wanderings. He pitied us

from the very beginning."

He also adds:[205]

"Philolaus, the Pythagorean, taught that the soul was flung into the

body as a punishment for the misdeeds it had committed, and his

opinion was confirmed by the most ancient of the prophets."

As regards Reincarnation, _i.e._, the descent of the human soul into

successive physical bodies, and even its temporary association with

the physical bodies of animals, more than one Christian writer

advocated this teaching.

Chalcidius, quoted by Beausobre in the book just mentioned, says:

"The souls, that are not able to unite with God, are destined to

return to life until they repent of their misdeeds."

In the _Pistis Sophia_, a Christian treatise on the mysteries of the

divine Hierarchies and the evolution of souls in the three worlds, we

find the doctrine of Rebirth frequently mentioned:

"If he is a man who (after passing out of his body)[206] shall have come

to the end of his cycles of transmigrations, without repenting, ... he

is cast into outer darkness."

A few pages earlier, in the same work, we find:

"The disincarnate soul which has not solved the mystery of the

breaking of the bonds and of the seals is brought before the virgin of

light, who, after judging it, hands it over to her agents

(_receivers_), who carry it into a new body."

Let us now see what Origen says on the matter[207]:

"Celsus, then, is altogether ignorant of the purpose of our writings,

and it is therefore upon his own acceptation of them that he casts

discredit and not upon their real meaning; whereas if he had reflected

on what is appropriate[208] to a soul which is to enjoy an everlasting

life, and on the idea which we are to form of its essence and

principles, he would not so have ridiculed the entrance of the

immortal into a mortal body, which took place, not according to the

metempsychosis of Plato, but agreeably to another and higher order of

things."

The teaching of Origen is not easy to set forth clearly, for he is

very reticent about many things, and employs a language to which

present-day philosophy cannot always find the key; still, the teaching

seems full and complete. It comprises pre-existence and even those

special associations of certain human souls with animal souls, which

we have just spoken of and which form one of the chief mysteries of

metempsychosis.

In the following words he explains the existence of souls in previous

worlds:

"The soul has neither beginning nor end....

"Rational creatures existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in

those (ages) which are invisible and eternal. And if this is so, then

there has been a descent from a higher to a lower condition on the

part not only of those souls who have deserved the change, by the

variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to

serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and

invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones, although against

their will. 'For the creature was made subject to vanity, not

willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope'

(_Rom._, chap. 8, v. 20); so that both sun and moon and stars and

angels might discharge their duly to the world, and to those souls

who, on account of their excessive mental defects, stood in need of

bodies of a grosser and more solid nature; and for the sake of those

for whom this arrangement was necessary, this visible world was also

called into being.

"This arrangement of things, then, which God afterwards appointed not

being understood by some, who failed to perceive that it was owing to

preceding causes originating in free will, that this variety of

arrangement had been instituted by God, they have concluded that all

things in this world are directed either by fortuitous movements or by

a necessary fate, and that nothing is in the power of our own

will."[209]

"Is it not rational that souls should be introduced into bodies, in

accordance with their merits and previous deeds, and that those who

have used their bodies in doing the utmost possible good should have a

right to bodies endowed with qualities superior to the bodies of

others?"[210]

All souls will arrive at the same goal;[211] it is the will of souls

that makes of them angels, men or demons, and their fall can be of

such a nature that they may be chained down to the bodies of

animals.[212] Certain souls, on attaining to perfect peace, return to

new worlds; some remain faithful, others degenerate to such a degree

that they become demons.[213]

Concerning bodies, he says:

"The soul, which is immaterial and invisible in its nature, exists in

no material place, without having a body suited to the nature of that

place; accordingly, it at one time puts off one body which was

necessary before, but which is no longer adequate in its changed

state, and it exchanges it for a second."[214]

Although _metensomatosis_ (re-embodiment of the soul), _i.e._, the

true teaching of Origen, was not clearly expounded, it considerably

influenced the early Christian philosophers, and was favourably

received up to the time of its condemnation by the Synod of

Constantinople. It appeared in most of the sects of that time and in

those of the following centuries: Simonians, Basilidians,

Valentinians, Marcionites, Gnostics, Manichæans, Priscillianites,

Cathari, Patarins, Albigenses, Bogomiles, &c....

Chivalry, too, in these ages of darkness and persecution, was an

instrument for the dissemination of esoteric doctrines, including

Reincarnation. The heart of this noble institution consisted of

students of divine Wisdom, pure devoted souls who communicated with

one another by means of passwords.

The Troubadours were their messengers of the sacred Teaching, which

they skilfully concealed in their songs, carrying it from group to

group, from sect to sect, in their wanderings. "Sons of the teachings

of the Albigenses and of the Manichæan-Marcion tradition"[215] they

kept alive belief in the rebirths of the soul, "Izarn the Monk," in

his book _Historie d' un Hérétique_,[216] apostrophised an Albigensian

bishop in the following terms:

"Tell me what school it was in which you learnt that the spirit of

man, after losing his body, passes into an ox, an ass, a sheep, or a

fowl, and transmigrates from one animal to another, until a new human

body is born for it?"

Izarn was acquainted with only so much of the teachings of the

Troubadours as had got abroad and been distorted and misrepresented by

ignorant or evil-minded persons; still, his criticism plainly shows

traces of the teachings of palingenesis in the darkest and most

blood-stained periods of the Middle Ages.

The Inquisition put an end to the Troubadours, though certain of them,

Dante and St. Francis of Assisi, for instance, by reason of their

popularity or the special circumstances of the case, were left in

peace. In Europe the secret teaching was continued by the

Rosicrucians; the _Roman de la Rose_ is pure Hermetic esotericism. The

struggle of official Christianity--that of the letter--against those

who represented the spirit of the Scriptures, raged ever more

bitterly, and the idea of Rebirth disappeared more and more from the

Church; its sole representatives during the Middle Ages were St.

Francis of Assisi, the learned Irish monk, Johannes Scotus Erigena,

and St. Bonaventura, "the Seraphic Doctor." At the present time there

remains nothing more than a disfigured and misunderstood fragment of

this idea: the dogma of the _Resurrection of the Body_.

ISLAMISM.[217]

It has been said that the Arabs believed in Reincarnation before

Mohammed forbade it. Some, however, think that the Koran was written

only after the death of the Prophet, and that the latter committed

nothing to writing, but taught by word of mouth. Besides, it is clear

that Mohammedanism is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism and Christianity.

Like these, it teaches the Unity of the Whole, the divine Presence in

all creatures and things (_Ubiquity_), Predestination, which is only

one form of _Karma_, and Resurrection, which expresses one phase of

Palingenesis.

Mohammed, like all great mystics, had discovered or learnt many of the

truths of esotericism. The verses of the Koran that refer to the

"Companions of the Cave"[218] indicate that he knew more than he

taught in public, and that there may be some ground for certain

Asiatic nations holding the exaggerated belief that he was an

Avâtâr,[219] the tenth incarnation of the _Aum_--the Amed, the

Nations' Desire.[220] He was a Disciple.

Had there not been in the heart of Islamism a strong germ of esoteric

teaching, Sufism could never have sprung from it. The Sufis are the

saints of Mohammedanism, they are those who aspire after the union of

the individual "I" with the cosmic "I," of man with God; they are

frequently endowed with wonderful powers, and their chiefs have almost

always been thaumaturgists.

The _New Koran_, a modern exposition of part of the secret doctrine of

Islam, shows the correctness of this view. In it we find the following

passages on the subject of Palingenesis:

"And when his body falleth off altogether, as an old fish-shell, his

soul doeth welt by the releasing, and formeth a new one instead.

"The disembodied spirits of man and beast return as the clouds to

renew the young streamlets of infancy....

"When a man dieth or leaveth his body, he wendeth through the gate of

oblivion and goeth to God, and when he is born again he cometh from

God and in a new body maketh his dwelling; hence is this saying:

"The body to the tomb and the spirit to the womb....

"This doctrine is none other than what God hath taught openly from the

very beginning....

"For truly the soul of a man goeth not to the body of a beast, as some

say....

"But the soul of the lower beast goeth to the body of the higher, and

the soul of the higher beast to the body of the savage, and the soul

of the savage to the man....

"And so a man shall be immortal in one body and one garment that

neither can fade nor decay.

"Ye who now lament to go out of this body, wept also when ye were born

into it...."[221]

"The person of man is only a mask which the soul putteth on for a

season; it weareth its proper time and then is cast off, and another

is worn in its stead....

"I tell you, of a truth, that the spirits which now have affinity

shall be kindred together, although they all meet in new persons and

names."[222]

In _Asiatic Researches_, Colebrooke states that the present Mohammedan

sect of the _Bohrahs_ believes in metempsychosis, as do the Hindus,

and, like the latter, abstains from flesh, for the same reason.

Thus we find the doctrine of Reincarnation at the heart of all the

great religions of antiquity. The reason it has remained in a germinal

state in recent religions--Christianity and Islamism--is that in the

latter Mohammed did not attain to the degree of a Hierophant, and in

all likelihood the race to which he brought light did not greatly need

to become acquainted with the law relating to the return to earth

life; whereas in the former the real teachings of the Christ were lost

when the Gnostics were exterminated, and Eusebius and Irenæus, the

founders of exoteric Christianity, unable to grasp the _spirit_,

imposed the _letter_ throughout the religion.

THE DOCTRINE OF REBIRTH IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

In antiquity, science and philosophy were scarcely anything else than

parts of religion[223]; the most eminent scientists and the greatest

philosophers alike were all supporters of the established form of

religion, whenever they did not happen to be its priests, for the

temples were the common cradle of science and philosophy. No wonder,

then, that we find these three great aspects of Truth always hand in

hand, never opposed to or in conflict with one another through the

whole of antiquity. Science was for the body, philosophy for the

intellect, and religion for that divine spark which is destined to

flash forth and finally become a "god" in the bosom of the World Soul.

Every intelligent man knew that on this tripod lay the life of the

individual, the life of society, and the life of the world. Divorce

between these took place only at a later date, when the divine

Teachers had disappeared, and mutilated traditions handed down to the

nations nothing but disfigured and incomplete teachings buried beneath

the ruins of temples that had been crumbling away ever since spiritual

Life had left them.

Then followed the era of separation; science and philosophy became

debased and went their own ways, whilst a degenerate religion

reflected nothing higher than the narrow mentality of fallen

ministers. As this degradation continued, there sprang into being

religious wars, monstrosities that were unknown in those times when

Divinity shed illumination and guidance on the nations by means of

those mighty souls, the Adept-Kings: gods, demi-gods, and heroes.

Nevertheless, Truth never remained without her guardians, and when

apostleship had been destroyed by persecutions the sacred treasure

which was to be handed down from age to age was secretly entrusted by

the sages to faithful disciples. Thus did Esoterism pass through fire

and bloodshed, and one of its greatest teachings, the doctrine of

Palingenesis, has left a stream of light in its wake. Now we will give

a rapid sketch of it in modern times, examining the philosophical

teachings of the greatest of recent thinkers. We will borrow mainly

from Walker's work on this subject, quoting only the writers most

deserving of mention, and making only short extracts, for all that is

needed is to plant a few sign-posts to guide the student along the

path.

In the 128th verse of _Lalla Rookh_, Thomas Moore speaks of rebirths:

"Stranger, though new the frame

Thy soul inhabits now, I've traced its flame

For many an age, in every chance and change

Of that Existence, through whose varied range,--

As through a torch-race, where, from hand to hand

The flying youths transmit their shining brand,--

From frame to frame the unextinguished soul

Rapidly passes, till it reach the goal!"

Paracelsus, like every Initiate, was acquainted with it, and Jacob

Böhme, the "nursling of the Nirmânakâyas,"[224] knew that it was a law

of Nature.

Giordano Bruno--also a great Soul--quotes from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_,