How man has come to be the complex being that he is and why, are
questions that neither Science nor Religion makes conclusive answer
to. This immortal thinker having such vast powers and possibilities,
all his because of his intimate connection with every secret part of
Nature from which he has been built up, stands at the top of an immense
and silent evolution. He asks why Nature exists, what the drama of
life has for its aim, how that aim may be attained. But Science and
Religion both fail to give a reasonable reply. Science does not pretend
to be able to give the solution, saying that the examination of things
as they are is enough of a task; religion offers an explanation both
illogical and unmeaning and acceptable but to the bigot, as it requires
us to consider the whole of Nature as a mystery and to seek for the
meaning and purpose of life with all its sorrow in the pleasure of a
God who cannot be found out. The educated and enquiring mind knows that
dogmatic religion can only give an answer invented by man while it
pretends to be from God.
What then is the universe for, and for what final purpose is man the
immortal thinker here in evolution? It is all for the experience
and emancipation of the soul, for the purpose of raising the entire
mass of manifested matter up to the stature, nature, and dignity of
conscious god-hood. The great aim is to reach self-consciousness; not
through a race or a tribe or some favored nation, but by and through
the perfecting, after transformation, of the whole mass of matter as
well as what we now call soul. Nothing is or is to be left out. The
aim for present man is his initiation into complete knowledge, and
for the other kingdoms below him that they may be raised up gradually
from stage to stage to be in time initiated also. This is evolution
carried to its highest power; it is a magnificent prospect; it makes of
man a god, and gives to every part of nature the possibility of being
one day the same; there is strength and nobility in it, for by this no
man is dwarfed and belittled, for no one is so originally sinful that
he cannot rise above all sin. Treated from the materialistic position
of Science, evolution takes in but half of life; while the religious
conception of it is a mixture of nonsense and fear. Present religions
keep the element of fear, and at the same time imagine that an Almighty
being can think of no other earth but this and has to govern this one
very imperfectly. But the old theosophical view makes the universe a
vast, complete, and perfect whole.
Now the moment we postulate a double evolution, physical and spiritual,
we have at the same time to admit that it can only be carried on by
reïncarnation. This is, in fact, demonstrated by science. It is shown
that the matter of the earth and of all things physical upon it was at
one time either gaseous or molten; that it cooled; that it altered;
that from its alterations and evolutions at last were produced all
the great variety of things and beings. This, on the physical plane,
is transformation or change from one form to another. The total mass
of matter is about the same as in the beginning of this globe, with
a very minute allowance for some star dust. Hence it must have been
changed over and over again, and thus been physically reformed and
reëmbodied. Of course, to be strictly accurate, we cannot use the
word reïncarnation, because “incarnate” refers to flesh. Let us say
“reëmbodied”, and then we see that both for matter and for man there
has been a constant change of form and this is, broadly speaking,
“reïncarnation”. As to the whole mass of matter, the doctrine is that
it will all be raised to man’s estate when man has gone further on
himself. There is no residuum left after man’s final salvation which in
a mysterious way is to be disposed of or done away with in some remote
dustheap of nature. The true doctrine allows for nothing like that, and
at the same time is not afraid to give the true disposition of what
would seem to be a residuum. It is all worked up into other states,
for as the philosophy declares there is no inorganic matter whatever
but that every atom is alive and has the germ of self-consciousness,
it must follow that one day it will all have been changed. Thus what
is now called human flesh is so much matter that one day was wholly
mineral, later on vegetable, and now refined into human atoms. At a
point of time very far from now the present vegetable matter will have
been raised to the animal stage and what we now use as our organic or
fleshy matter will have changed by transformation through evolution
into self-conscious thinkers, and so on up the whole scale until the
time shall come when what is now known as mineral matter will have
passed on to the human stage and out into that of thinker. Then at
the coming on of another great period of evolution the mineral matter
of that time will be some which is now passing through its lower
transformations on other planets and in other systems of worlds. This
is perhaps a “fanciful” scheme for the men of the present day, who are
so accustomed to being called bad, sinful, weak, and utterly foolish
from their birth that they fear to believe the truth about themselves,
but for the disciples of the ancient theosophists it is not impossible
or fanciful, but is logical and vast. And no doubt it will one day be
admitted by everyone when the mind of the western race has broken away
from Mosaic chronology and Mosaic ideas of men and nature. Therefore
as to reïncarnation and metempsychosis we say that they are first to
be applied to the whole cosmos and not alone to man. But as man is
the most interesting object to himself, we will consider in detail its
application to him.
This is the most ancient of doctrines and is believed in now by more
human minds than the number of those who do not hold it. The millions
in the East almost all accept it; it was taught by the Greeks; a large
number of the Chinese now believe it as their forefathers did before
them; the Jews thought it was true, and it has not disappeared from
their religion; and Jesus, who is called the founder of Christianity,
also believed and taught it. In the early Christian church it was known
and taught, and the very best of the fathers of the church believed and
promulgated it.
Christians should remember that Jesus was a Jew who thought his mission
was to Jews, for he says in St. Matthew, “I am not sent but unto
the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He must have well known the
doctrines held by them. They all believed in reïncarnation. For them
Moses, Adam, Noah, Seth, and others had returned to earth, and at the
time of Jesus it was currently believed that the old prophet Elias was
yet to return. So we find, first, that Jesus never denied the doctrine,
and on various occasions assented to it, as when he said that John the
Baptist was actually the Elias of old whom the people were expecting.
All this can be seen by consulting St. Matthew in chapters XVII, XI,
and others.
In these it is very clear that Jesus is shown as approving the doctrine
of reïncarnation. And following Jesus we find St. Paul, in Romans IX,
speaking of Esau and Jacob being actually in existence before they
were born, and later such great Christian fathers as Origen, Synesius,
and others believing and teaching the theory. In Proverbs VIII, 22,
we have Solomon saying that when the earth was made he was present,
and that, long before he could have been born as Solomon, his delights
were in the habitable parts of the earth with the sons of men. St.
John the Revelator says in Revs. III, 12, he was told in a vision which
refers to the voice of God or the voice of one speaking for God, that
whosoever should overcome would not be under the necessity of “going
out” any more, that is, would not need to be reïncarnated. For five
hundred years after Jesus the doctrine was taught in the church until
the council of Constantinople. Then a condemnation was passed upon
a phase of the question which has been regarded by many as against
reïncarnation, but if that condemnation goes against the words of
Jesus it is of no effect. It does go against him, and thus the church
is in the position of saying in effect that Jesus did not know enough
to curse, as it did, a doctrine known and taught in his day and which
was brought to his notice prominently and never condemned but in fact
approved by him. Christianity is a Jewish religion, and this doctrine
of reïncarnation belongs to it historically by succession from the
Jews, and also by reason of its having been taught by Jesus and the
early fathers of the church. If there be any truthful or logical way
for the Christian church to get out of this position—excluding, of
course, dogmas of the church—the theosophist would like to be shown
it. Indeed, the theosophist holds that whenever a professed Christian
denies the theory he thereby sets up his judgment against that of
Jesus, who must have known more about the matter than those who follow
him. It is the anathema hurled by the church council and the absence of
the doctrine from the teaching now that have damaged Christianity and
made of all the Christian nations people who pretend to be followers of
Jesus and the law of love, but who really as nations are followers of
the Mosaic law of retaliation. For alone in reïncarnation is the answer
to all the problems of life, and in it and Karma is the force that will
make men pursue in fact the ethics they have in theory. It is the aim
of the old philosophy to restore this doctrine to whatsoever religion
has lost it; and hence we call it the “lost chord of Christianity.”
But who or what is it that reïncarnates? It is not the body, for that
dies and disintegrates; and but few of us would like to be chained
forever to such bodies as we now have, admitted to be infected with
disease except in the case of the savage. It is not the astral body,
for, as shown, that also has its term and must go to pieces after
the physical has gone. Nor is it the passions and desires. They,
to be sure, have a very long term, because they have the power to
reproduce themselves in each life so long as we do not eradicate
them. And reïncarnation provides for that, since we are given by it
many opportunities of slowly, one by one, killing off the desires and
passions which mar the heavenly picture of the spiritual man.
It has been shown how the passional part of us coalesces with the
astral after death and makes a seeming being that has a short life
to live while it is disintegrating. When the separation is complete
between the body that has died, the astral body, and the passions
and desires—life having begun to busy itself with other forms—the
Higher Triad, _Manas_, _Buddhi_, and _Atma_, who are the real man,
immediately go into another state, and when that state, which is called
_Devachan_, or heaven, is over, they are attracted back to earth for
reïncarnation. They are the immortal part of us; they, in fact, and no
other are we. This should be firmly grasped by the mind, for upon its
clear understanding depends the comprehension of the entire doctrine.
What stands in the way of the modern western man’s seeing this clearly
is the long training we have all had in materialistic science and
materializing religion, both of which have made the mere physical
body too prominent. The one has taught of matter alone and the other
has preached the resurrection of the body, a doctrine against common
sense, fact, logic, and testimony. But there is no doubt that the
theory of the bodily resurrection has arisen from the corruption of
the older and true teaching. Resurrection is founded on what Job says
about seeing his redeemer in his flesh, and on St. Paul’s remark that
the body was raised incorruptible. But Job was an Egyptian who spoke of
seeing his teacher or initiator, who was the redeemer, and Jesus and
Paul referred to the spiritual body only.
Although reïncarnation is the law of nature, the complete trinity of
_Atma-Buddhi-Manas_ does not yet fully incarnate in this race. They use
and occupy the body by means of the entrance of _Manas_, the lowest of
the three, and the other two shine upon it from above, constituting the
God in Heaven. This was symbolized in the old Jewish teaching about the
Heavenly Man who stands with his head in heaven and his feet in hell.
That is, the head _Atma_ and _Buddhi_ are yet in heaven, and the feet,
_Manas_, walk in hell, which is the body and physical life. For that
reason man is not yet fully conscious, and reïncarnations are needed
to at last complete the incarnation of the whole trinity in the body.
When that has been accomplished the race will have become as gods, and
the godlike trinity being in full possession the entire mass of matter
will be perfected and raised up for the next step. This is the real
meaning of “the word made flesh”. It was so grand a thing in the case
of any single person, such as Jesus or Buddha, as to be looked upon
as a divine incarnation. And out of this, too, comes the idea of the
crucifixion, for _Manas_ is thus crucified for the purpose of raising
up the thief to paradise.
It is because the trinity is not yet incarnate in the race that life
has so many mysteries, some of which are showing themselves from day to
day in all the various experiments made on and in man.
The physician knows not what life is nor why the body moves as it
does, because the spiritual portion is yet enshrouded in the clouds of
heaven; the scientist is wandering in the dark, confounded and confused
by all that hypnotism and other strange things bring before him,
because the conscious man is out of sight on the very top of the divine
mountain, thus compelling the learned to speak of the “subconscious
mind”, the “latent personality”, and the like; and the priest can give
us no light at all because he denies man’s god-like nature, reduces
all to the level of original sin, and puts upon our conception of God
the black mark of inability to control or manage the creation without
invention of expedients to cure supposed errors. But this old truth
solves the riddle and paints God and Nature in harmonious colors.
Reïncarnation does not mean that we go into animal forms after death,
as is believed by some Eastern peoples. “Once a man always a man” is
the saying in the Great Lodge. But it would not be too much punishment
for some men were it possible to condemn them to rebirth in brute
bodies; however nature does not go by sentiment but by law, and we,
not being able to see all, cannot say that the brutal man is brute all
through his nature. And evolution having brought _Manas_ the Thinker
and Immortal Person on to this plane, cannot send him back to the brute
which has not _Manas_.
By looking into two explanations for the literal acceptation by some
people in the East of those laws of Manu which seem to teach the
transmigrating into brutes, insects, and so on, we can see how the true
student of this doctrine will not fall into the same error.
The first is, that the various verses and books teaching such
transmigration have to do with the actual method of reïncarnation, that
is, with the explanation of the actual physical processes which have to
be undergone by the Ego in passing from the unembodied to the embodied
state, and also with the roads, ways, or means of descent from the
invisible to the visible plane. This has not yet been plainly explained
in Theosophical books, because on the one hand it is a delicate matter,
and on the other the details would not as yet be received even by
Theosophists with credence, although one day they will be. And as these
details are not of the greatest importance they are not now expounded.
But as we know that no human body is formed without the union of the
sexes, and that the germs for such production are locked up in the
sexes and must come from food which is taken into the body, it is
obvious that foods have something to do with the reïncarnating of the
Ego. Now if the road to reïncarnation leads through certain food and
none other, it may be possible that if the Ego gets entangled in food
which will not lead to the germ of physical reproduction, a punishment
is indicated where Manu says that such and such practices will lead to
transmigration, which is then a “hindrance”. I throw this out so far
for the benefit of certain theosophists who read these and whose own
theories on this subject are now rather vague and in some instances
based on quite other hypotheses.
The second explanation is, that inasmuch as nature intends us to use
the matter which comes into our body and astral body for the purpose,
among others, of benefiting the matter by the impress it gets from
association with the human Ego, if we use it so as to give it only a
brutal impression it must fly back to the animal kingdom to be absorbed
there instead of being refined and kept on the human plane. And as all
the matter which the human Ego gathered to it retains the stamp or
photographic impression of the human being, the matter transmigrates
to the lower level when given an animal impress by the Ego. This
actual fact in the great chemical laboratory of nature could easily be
misconstrued by the ignorant. But the present-day students know that
once _Manas_ the Thinker has arrived on the scene he does not return
to baser forms; first, because he does not wish to, and second, because
he cannot. For just as the blood in the body is prevented by valves
from rushing back and engorging the heart, so in this greater system of
universal circulation the door is shut behind the Thinker and prevents
his retrocession. Reïncarnation as a doctrine applying to the real man
does not teach transmigration into kingdoms of nature below the human.