INDIAN TRANSMIGRATION AND THE CHRISTIAN HERE AND HEREAFTER
"The dew is on the lotus. Rise, good sun!
And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.
The sunrise comes!
The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.
If any teach Nirvana is to cease,
Say unto such they lie.
If any teach Nirvana is to live,
Say unto such they err."
(Buddha's teaching in Arnold's _Light of Asia_.)
[Sidenote: Over against Transmigration, Christian immortality is
continuity of the individual's memory.]
To appreciate the impact of the Christian idea of the Here and Hereafter
upon the Hindu idea of Transmigration and Absorption, the two ideas must
be more fully examined. Stated briefly, the Christian idea is that after
this life on earth comes an Eternity, whose character has been
determined by the life on earth. The crisis of death terminates our
bodily activities and renders impossible any further action, either
virtuous or sinful, and ushers the soul, its ledger closed, its earthy
limitations cast off, into some more immediate presence of God. If in
communion with God, through its faith in Jesus Christ, the soul is in a
state of blessedness; if still alien from God, the soul is in a state of
utter misery, for its spiritual perception and its recollection of
itself are now clear. That, at all events, seems a fair statement of the
belief of many Protestants, so far as their belief is definite at all.
But over against transmigration, what are the essential and distinctive
features of that Christian belief? Its essentially distinctive feature,
both in the case of the blessed and of the miserable, is a _continuity_
of the consciousness in the life that now is with that which is to come.
The soul in bliss or misery is able to associate its existing state with
its past. Even on earth, as the modern preacher tells us, heaven and
hell are already begun. Over against the Hindu idea of transmigration,
accordingly, we define the Christian idea of immortality as the
continuity of our consciousness, or the immortality of the individual
consciousness.
[Sidenote: Transmigration is essentially dissolution of the individual's
memory.]
Per contra, the distinguishing feature of the Hindu doctrine of
transmigration or rebirth is the interruption of consciousness, the
dissolution of memory, at the close of the present existence. In the
next existence there is no memory of the present.
"The draught of Lethe" does "await
The slipping through from state to state."
The present life is a member of a series of lives; there are said to be
8,400,000 of them, each member of which is as unconscious of the
preceding as you are of being I. As a seed develops into plant and
flower and seed again, so the soul in each new member of the series
develops a conscious life, lapses from consciousness, and hands on a
germinal soul for a new beginning again. As the seed transmits the type,
and also some variation from the type, so is the germinal soul
transmitted through unconsciousness, ennobled or degraded by each
conscious existence it has lived. At each stage the germinal soul
represents the totality, the net outcome of its existences, as in each
generation of a plant the seed may be said to do. So far, the doctrine
of transmigration is a doctrine of the evolution of a soul, a
declaration that in a sense we are all that we have been, that virtue
and vice will have their reward, that in a sense "men may rise on
stepping stones of their dead selves." It does not leave hard cases of
heathen or of reprobates to the discernment and mercy of God; it offers
them, instead, other chances in subsequent lives. A not unattractive
doctrine it is, even although the attractive analogy of the evolution of
a plant breaks down. For in the scientific doctrine of evolution,
individuals have no immortality _at all_; it is only the species that
lives and moves on. But in Hinduism, as in Christianity, we are thinking
of the continuity of the _individual_ souls.
[Sidenote: The end of transmigration is absorption into Deity.]
[Sidenote: The saint Ramkrishna's obliviousness of self.]
To proceed with the statement of the doctrine of transmigration. The
climax of the transmigrations is Nirvana or extinction of the individual
soul, according to the Buddhist, and union with or absorption into
Deity, according to the Hindu.[111] Buddhism has gone from the land of
its birth, as Christianity and even Judaism from Palestine, and I pass
from the Buddhist doctrine. The Hindu climax, of absorption into Deity,
is reached when by self-mastery personal desire is gone, and by profound
contemplation upon Deity a pure-bred soul has lost the consciousness of
separation from Deity. The distinction between _I_ and the great _Thou_
has vanished; the One is present in the mind not as an objective
thought, but by a transformation of the consciousness itself. The words
of Hindus themselves in the _Advanced Text-book of Hindu Religion_ are:
The human soul (the Jivatmic seed) "grows into self-conscious Deity."
Listen also to the words of Swami Vivekananda, in the Parliament of
Religions, Chicago, about his master, Ramkrishna Paramhansa's growing
into self-conscious Deity: "Every now and then strange fits of
God-consciousness came upon him.... He then spoke of himself as being
able to do and know everything.... He would speak of himself as the same
soul that had been born before as Rama, as Krishna, as Jesus, or as
Buddha, born again as Ramkrishna.... He would say he was ... an
incarnation of God Himself." Again Swami Vivekananda tells us: "From
time to time Ramkrishna would entirely lose his own identity, so much so
as to appropriate to himself the offerings brought for the goddess" (to
the temple in which he officiated). "Sometimes forgetting to adorn the
image, he would adorn _himself_ with the flowers."[112] Transmigration
is not necessarily bound up with the pantheistic view of the world, but
in _Hinduism_, transmigration is only a ladder towards the realisation
of the One.
[Sidenote: Contrasts--"Born again" and a spiritual aristocracy of long
spiritual descent.]
[Sidenote: Heaven and Hell not necessary ideas in Transmigration.]
Radical differences from Christian thought emerge. In the Hindu
conception, the acme is reached only by a spiritual aristocracy of long
spiritual descent; for the common multitude there is no gospel of being
born again in Christ, no guiding hand like that of Our Lord towards the
Father's presence. The upward path, according to the Hindu idea, is the
path of philosophical knowledge and of meditation, not the power of
union with Jesus Christ to make us sons of God. Most striking difference
perhaps of all--in the Hindu philosophical system there is no place for
even the conceptions of heaven and hell except as temporary
halting-places between two incarnations of the soul, which practical
necessity requires. For the soul, this world is the plane of existence;
union with omnipresent Deity is the climax of existence that the Hindu
devotee seeks to attain; yet not in a Hereafter, but as he sits on the
ground no longer conscious of his self. "The beatific vision of
Hinduism," says a recent pro-Hindu writer, "is to be relegated to no
distant future."[113] Heaven and Hell are mocked at as absurdities by
the new sect of the [=A]ryas in the United Provinces and the Punjab, who
retain the doctrine of transmigration.[114]
[Sidenote: Several heavens and hells in popular Hinduism.]
Hindus are divided as to the existence of these temporary halting-places
between the successive incarnations of the soul. The _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_, already referred to, speaks unhesitatingly about their place
in the Hindu system. The [=A]ryas, on the other hand, hold that the
instant a soul leaves its body it enters another body just born. The
soul is never naked--to employ a common figure. Of course in popular
Hinduism it is not surprising to find not merely the ideas of Heaven and
Hell, but even that each chief Deity has his own heaven and that there
are various hells. In the Tantras or ritual books of modern Hinduism,
there is frequent mention of such heavens and hells, and when the idea
of rebirths is also met with, the rebirths are regarded as stages
towards the reward or punishment of the _individual conscious_ souls. It
is the popular idea of heaven that has given rise to the common
euphemism for _to die_, namely, to become a deva or inhabitant of
heaven.
[Sidenote: Transmigration, associated with pessimism and pantheism, is
likewise yielding.]
We have observed the pessimistic mood of India yielding before the
improved conditions of life, and the brahmanical pantheism before the
thought of God the Father. Bound up as the idea of transmigration has
been with the pessimism and pantheism of India, we are prepared to find
that it too is yielding. Of that we now ask what evidence there is in
the ordinary speech and writings of educated India, apart from
controversy or professedly Hindu writings, in which the accepted Indian
orthodoxy would probably appear.
[Sidenote: Educated Hindus speak of the dead as if their former
consciousness continued.]
From the ordinary speeches and writings of educated Hindus regarding the
dead, no one would infer that their doctrinal standpoint was other than
that of the ordinary religious Briton, namely, that the dead friend has
returned to God or has been called away by God, or the like. A native
judge in Bengal, one of the most distinguished leaders of the Hindu
Revival, writes as follows: The beatitude which the new
Radha-Krishnaites aspire to "is not the Nirvana of the Vedantists, the
quiescence of Rationalism. Nirvana and quiescence are merely negatives.
The beatitude [of the new Radha-Krishnaites] is a positive something.
They do not aspire to unification with the divine essence. They prefer
hell with its torments to such unification."[115] A few years ago, at a
public meeting in Calcutta, the acknowledged leader of Hinduism,
speaking of a Hindu gentleman whose death we were lamenting, said: "God
has taken him to himself"--certainly not a Hindu statement of the
passing of a soul. Similarly, in 1882 we find one nobleman in Bengal
writing to another regarding his mother's death: "It is my prayer to God
that she may abide in eternal happiness in heaven."[116] Generations of
Hindu students I have known to find pleasure in identifying themselves
with Wordsworth's views of immortality:
"Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home,"
and
"The faith that looks through death."
[Sidenote: Transmigration now no more than a conventional explanation of
how misfortunes befell one.]
Somewhat dreamlike Wordsworth's views may be, but his belief is clearly
not in transmigration. To the educated Hindu, who may not consciously
have rejected the idea of transmigration, the doctrine is really now no
more than a current and convenient explanation of any misfortune that
has befallen a person. "Why has it befallen him? He must have earned it
in some previous existence. It is in the debit balance of the
transactions in his lives." Such are the vague ideas floating in the
air. Upon any individual's acts or plans for the future, the idea of
transmigration seems to have no bearing whatever beyond a numbing of the
will.[117] For in theory, the Hindu's fate is just. In strict logic no
doubt the same numbing effect might be alleged about the Christian
doctrine of predestination. Even when misfortune has overtaken an
educated Hindu, I think I am justified in saying that the more frequent
thought with him is now in keeping with the new theistic belief; the
misfortune is referred to the will of God. As already said, it is a
commonplace of the unfortunate student who has failed, to ascribe his
failure to God's will.
[Sidenote: Transmigration and Predestination more properly contrasted.]
[Sidenote: Illustration from actual fact.]
There is room for the Christian thought of the Hereafter, because in
reality, as theologians know, the doctrine of transmigration stands over
against the Christian doctrine of predestination rather than over
against the Christian doctrine of the Here and Hereafter. Transmigration
is a doctrine of what has gone before the present life rather than of
what will follow. Every educated Anglo-Indian whom I have consulted
agrees that in a modern Hindu's mouth transmigration is only a theory of
the incidence of actual suffering. Here is the doctrine of _karma_
(works), that is of transmigration or merited rebirth, in the actual
life of India--transmigration and the pessimistic helplessness of which
I have spoken? In the last great famine of 1899-1900, in a village in
South-western India, a missionary found a victim of famine lying on one
side of the village street, and not far off, upon the other side, two or
three men of the middle class. The missionary reproached them for their
callousness. What might be answered for them is not here to the point;
their answer for themselves was, "It is his _karma_." The missionary did
what he could for the famine sufferer, and then when repassing the group
could not forbear remarking to them, "You see you were wrong about his
_karma_." "Yes, we were wrong," they replied. "It was his _karma_ to be
helped by you." The same views of karma and of transmigration, as
referring to the past, not the future, are apparent in a recent number
of _The Inquirer_, a paper conducted in Calcutta for the benefit of
Hindu students and others. I take the following from the question
column: "Do Christians believe in the doctrine of reincarnation? If not,
how do you account for blindness at birth?" The questioner's idea is
plain, and the coincidence with the question put to Christ in St. John's
Gospel, chapter ix, is striking. Hindus thus have room for an idea of
the _future_ of the soul, as Christians, on their side, have for a
theory of the soul's origin.
[Sidenote: The idea of the Hereafter not dynamical with Christians at
present.]
The Christian idea of the Hereafter cannot, as yet, be called a strongly
dynamical doctrine of Christianity in the sense that the Person of Our
Lord has proved dynamical. Not that interest in the subject is lacking.
I have referred to questions put by educated Hindus in _The Inquirer_.
Out of fifty-seven questions I find eight bearing on the Christian
doctrine of the Hereafter or the Hindu doctrine of Transmigration. In
the _Magazine of the Hindu College_, _Benares_, out of fourteen
questions I find four bearing on the same subject. The want of force in
the Christian doctrine no doubt reflects its want of force for
Christians themselves in this present positive age. For even Tennyson
himself was vague:
"That which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home."
[Sidenote: The new sects and the doctrine of Transmigration.]
[Sidenote: The _Text-book of Hindu Religion_.]
[Sidenote: A European's place on the ladder of transmigration.]
Of the sects of recent origin, only the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic
Association rejects the doctrine of transmigration avowedly. We have
already said that the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j or Vedic Theists of the United
Provinces and the Punjab hold strongly to the doctrine. It is noteworthy
that _they_ should do so, the Vedas being their standards wherewith to
test Modern Hinduism, for the doctrine of transmigration is scarcely
hinted at in the Vedas, and in the oldest, the Rigveda, there is said to
be no trace of the doctrine.[118] It appears in the later writings, the
Upanishads, and is manifest throughout the Code of Manu (c. A.D. 200).
Mrs. Besant, chief figure among the Indian Theosophists, now virtually a
Hindu Revival Association, preaches the doctrine, and, in fact, lectured
on it in Britain in 1904. At the same time, transmigration is no part of
the Theosophist's creed. As might be expected, the _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_, of the Hindu College, Benares, gives the doctrine of
transmigration a prominent place, although the explicitness with which
it is set forth is very surprising to one acquainted with the way the
doctrine is generally ignored by the educated. I quote from the _Hindu
Text-book_, published in 1903, that Westerns may realise that in dealing
with transmigration we are not dealing simply with some old-world
doctrine deciphered from some palm-leaf written in some ancient
character. After describing--here following the ancient philosophical
writings, the Upanishads--how the Jivatma or Soul comes up through the
various existences of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms until it
reaches the human stage, the Text-book proceeds to describe the further
upward or downward process. It is declared that the downward movement
(from man to animal) is now much rarer than formerly--that concession is
made to modern ideas--but the _law_ of the downward process is as
follows: "When a man has so degraded himself below the human level that
many of his qualities can only express themselves through the form of a
lower creature, he cannot, when his time for rebirth comes, pass into a
human form. He is delayed, therefore, and is attached to the body of one
of the lower creatures as a co-tenant with the animal, vegetable, or
mineral Jiva [life], until he has worn out the bonds of these non-human
qualities and is fit to take birth again in the world of men. A very
strong and excessive attachment to an animal may have similar results."
Where modern ideas reach in India, one can understand such ideas as
those melting away. A second passage from the Text-book is interesting,
as showing the compiler's idea of the place of a life in Europe in the
chain of existences, although in this case also the statement is made
only about "ancient days." "The Jivatma [soul] was prepared for entrance
into each [Indian] caste through a long preliminary stage _outside_
India; then he was born into India and passed into each caste to receive
its definite lessons; then was born away from India to practise these
lessons; usually returning to India to the highest of them, in the final
stages of his evolution." In other words, people of the outer world, say
Europeans, are rewarded for virtue by being born into the lowest Indian
caste, and then, after rising to be brahmans in India, they go back to
Europe to give it the benefit of their acquirements; and finally crown
their career by reappearing in India as a brahman philosopher or jogi.
Surely we may laugh at this without being thought unsympathetic or
narrow-minded. We recall Mrs. Besant's assertion that she had a dim
recollection of an existence as a brahman pandit in India. According to
the spiritual genealogy of the _Hindu Text-book_, she may hope to be
born next in an Indian child, and become a jogi possessed of saving
knowledge of the identity of self with Deity.
[Sidenote: The women of the middle class and transmigration.]
I asked a lady who had been a missionary in Calcutta for many years, how
far a belief in transmigration was apparent among the women of the
middle class. She could recall only two instances in which it had come
to her notice in her talks with the wives and daughters of educated
India. Once a reason was given for being kind to a cat, that the
speaker's grandmother might then be in it as her abode, although the
observation was accompanied with a laugh. On the second occasion, when
the lady was having trouble with a slow pupil, one of the women present,
sympathising with the teacher, said, "Do not trouble with her; perhaps
next time when she comes back she will be cleverer." The general
conclusion, therefore, I repeat: Transmigration is no longer a living
part of the belief of educated India; the Christian conception of the
Hereafter is as yet only partially taking its place.