safety of the species is at stake. Humanity, which is hardly emerging
from its infancy, or has only just attained the dangerous period of
adolescence (it would be about sixteen or seventeen years of age,
according to Dr. Jaworski’s well-supported and striking historic
parallel), has already passed the limit of the inventions which it
is able to assimilate or endure without incurring the risk of death.
Almost all of them, from the subjection of steam and the still dubious
taming of electricity, have done it incomparably more harm than good.
Explosives, for example, which have helped it to build a few roads--a
work which the Romans, for that matter, did quite as well as we do--to
open up a few mines, to pierce a few tunnels, have cost it millions of
young lives.
Perhaps it is time, not to check the investigations of science, but
to control its discoveries and to reserve, as the occultists wisely
did, for a select circle of Initiates, rigorously tested and bound by
inviolable oaths, the secret of those too perilous energies around
which we are feeling our way and which are on the point of revealing
themselves and becoming public property. Our moral evolution is several
centuries behind our scientific evolution; and it is more than probable
that the latter, being too swift and too intensive, may disastrously
impede the former. It will profit no one to travel in three hours from
Paris to Pekin, from Pekin to New York and from New York to Calcutta,
if these repeated and miraculous journeys leave those who take them
in the same frame of mind on their arrival as on their departure.
We are more or less in the same position as Russia, whose heart and
spirit were not steadfast enough, not resolute enough, to bear what the
head had too quickly and too artificially stored up. Nothing is more
quickly disseminated or more readily assimilated than the results of
science; nothing, on the other hand, is more slow, more painful or more
precarious than moral evolution; and yet it is upon this alone, as we
are realizing more and more clearly, that man’s happiness and future
depend.
KARMA
XVIII
KARMA
1
Stripped of its innumerable and inextricable oriental complications,
which may possibly correspond with realities but which cannot be
verified, Karma, the infallible Law of Retribution, is, when all is
said, what we, speaking more vaguely and without believing in it
unduly, call Immanent Justice. Our Immanent Justice is a somewhat
idle shadow. True, it often manifests itself after monstrous actions,
great vices, sins or iniquities; but we rarely have the opportunity
of seeing it intervene in the thousand petty acts of injustice,
cruelty, weakness, dishonesty and baseness of ordinary life, though
the aggregate of these paltry but incessant misdeeds may weigh heavier
than the most notorious crime. In any case, its action being more
dispersed, more diffuse, slower and more often moral than material,
nearly always escapes our observation; and, as, on the other hand, it
appears to cease at the moment of death, it hardly ever has time to
demand its due and usually arrives too late at the bedside of a sick
or dying man, who has lost consciousness or no longer has the time to
expiate his offences.
Karma then, if you will, is Immanent Justice; only, it is no longer
an inconstant goddess, inconsistent, incoherent, impotent, erratic,
capricious, inexact, forgetful, timid, inattentive, sluggish, evasive,
intangible and bounded by the tomb, but a god, vast and inevitable as
Destiny, a god who fills up each outlet, each horizon, each crevice
of every existence and who is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent,
infallible, impassible and incorruptible. He is in us, as we are in
him. He is ourselves. He is more than we: he is what we are, while
he is still what we were and is already what we shall become. We
are small, evanescent and ephemeral; he is great, imperturbable,
immovable, eternal. Nothing escapes him of that which escapes us and
no doubt will escape us even beyond the tomb. Not an action, not a
wish, not a thought, not the shadow of an intention but is weighed more
strictly than it was weighed by the forty-two posthumous judges who
awaited the soul on that further shore of which we are told in one of
the most ancient texts in the world, the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_.
All is set down, dated, valued, verified, classified, entered as debit
or credit, as reward or expiation, in the immense and eternal index
of the astral records. There can be nothing that he does not know,
because he has taken part in all that he judges; and he judges us not
from the depth of our present ignorance, but from the height of all
that we shall learn much later. He is not only our intelligence and our
consciousness of to-day, which are hardly waking and no longer count
their errors; he is even now, for they already dwell within us, though
they be inactive, impotent, dumb and blind, our intelligence and our
consciousness to come, when they shall have attained, in the course of
the ages and of the innumerable developments, expiations and ascents,
the loftiest summits of Wisdom and Discernment.
At the hour of our death the account seems closed; but he is simply
asleep and will resume his hold of us again. He will slumber perhaps
for hundreds, nay, thousands of years in “Devachan,” that is to say, in
the state of unconsciousness which prepares us for a new incarnation;
but, when we awake, we shall find the assets and liabilities added up
beyond recall; and our Karma will merely continue the life which we
have laid aside. It will continue to be ourselves in that life and to
see the consequences of our faults and our deserts burst into flower
and afterwards to see other causes bear fruit in other effects, until
the consummation of the ages when every thought born upon this earth
ends by losing sight of it.
2
Karma, as we see, is, when all is said, the immortal entity which man
fashions by his deeds and thoughts and which follows him, or rather
envelops and absorbs him, through his successive lives and changes,
even as he incessantly changes, while preserving every previous
impress. Man’s thoughts, as this doctrine very truly says, build up his
character; his deeds make his environment. What man has thought, that
he has become; his qualities and natural gifts adhere to him as the
results of his ideas. He is, in all truth, created by himself. He is
in the fullest sense of the word responsible for all that he is. He is
contained in the net of all that he has done. He can neither undo nor
destroy the past; but, so long as the effects of the past are yet to
come, it is possible for him to alter them or to divert them by fresh
exertions. Nothing can affect him that he has not set in movement;
no evil can befall him that he has not deserved. In the infinite
evolution of the eternities he will never find himself in the presence
of any judge other than himself.
3
It is certain that the idea of this supreme judge, who is our
consciousness uninterrupted throughout the centuries and the
millenaries, who is each one of us grown more and more enlightened,
more and more incorruptible and infallible, leads to the highest,
sincerest and purest system of morals that it is possible to conceive
or to justify here below. The judge and the defendant are no longer
face to face; they are one within the other and form but one and the
same person. They can hide nothing from each other; and both have the
same urgent interest in discovering the least fault, the slightest
shadow and in purifying themselves as quickly and as completely as
possible, in order to put an end to the reincarnations and to live at
last in the One Being. The best, the saintliest are near doing so from
the moment when they quit this life; but, detached from all things,
they do not cease to act for the good of all men, for already they know
all things. They go farther than the mystic Christian who expects a
reward from without: they are their own reward. They go farther than
Marcus Aurelius, the great type of the man without illusions, who
continues to act without hoping that his action can profit others: they
know that nothing is useless, that nothing can be wasted; it is when
they no longer need anything whatever that they work with the greatest
ardour.
Contrary to what is too generally believed, this system of morals which
leads to absolute repose extols activity. Hear, in this connection,
the great teachings of the _Bhagavad-Gita_, the Lord’s Song, which
is perhaps, as its translators, not without good reason, think, the
most beautiful, that is to say, the most exalted book known up to the
present time:
“Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; so let
not the fruit of action be thy motive.... Perform action ... dwelling
in union with the divine, renouncing attachments and balanced evenly
in success and failure.... Pitiable are they who work for fruit....
Man winneth not freedom from action by abstaining from activity, nor
by mere renunciation doth he rise to perfection.... Perform thou
right action, for action is superior to inaction; and, inactive, even
the maintenance of thy body would not be possible. The world is bound
by action, unless performed for the sake of sacrifice....
“He who seeth inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise
among men, he is harmonious, even while performing all action. Whose
works are all free from the moulding of desire, whose actions are
burned up by the fire of wisdom, him the wise have called a sage.
Having abandoned attachment to the fruit of action, always content,
nowhere seeking refuge, he is not doing anything, although doing
actions.... He should be known as a perpetual ascetic, who neither
hateth nor desireth; free from the pairs of opposites ... he is
easily set free from bondage....”
And remember that this, which forms part of the _Mahabharata_, the
greatest epic on earth, was written four or five thousand years ago.
4
Whatever we may think of the plausibility of the doctrine or
revelation, we cannot dispute that this morality and this justification
of justice are the most ancient and at the same time the most beautiful
and reassuring that the mind of man has imagined. But they are based
upon a postulate which we are perhaps too much inclined to refuse
blindly. It asks us in fact to admit that our existence does not end at
the hour of our death and that the spirit, or the vital spark, which
does not perish, seeks an asylum and reappears in other bodies. At
first the postulate seems monstrous and unacceptable; but on closer
examination its aspect becomes much less strange, less arbitrary
and less unreasonable. It is, to begin with, certain that, if all
things undergo transformation, nothing perishes or is annihilated in
a universe which knows no nothingness and in which nothingness alone
remains absolutely inconceivable. What we call nothingness could
therefore be only another mode of existence, of persistence and of
life; and, if we cannot admit that the body, which is only matter,
is annihilated in its substance, it is no less difficult to admit
that, if it were animated by a spirit--which it is hardly possible to
dispute--this spirit should disappear without leaving a trace of any
kind.
So the first point of the postulate and the most important is of
necessity granted. There remains the second point, that of the
successive reincarnations. Here, it is true, we have only hypotheses
and probabilities. It is necessary that this spirit, this soul, this
vital spark or principle, this idea, this immaterial substance--it
matters little what name we give it--must go or reside somewhere,
must do or become something. It may wander in the infinity of space
and time, dissolve, lose itself and disappear, or at least mingle
and become confused with what it encounters there, and finally
become absorbed in that boundless spiritual or vital energy which
appears to animate the universe. But, of all hypotheses, the least
probable is not that which tells us that, on leaving a body which has
become uninhabitable, instead of escaping and wandering through the
illimitable vast that fills it with terror, it looks about it for a
lodging resembling that which it has lately quitted. Obviously this
is only an hypothesis; but in our complete and terrible ignorance it
presents itself before any other. We have nothing to support it save
the most ancient tradition of humanity, a tradition perhaps prehuman
and in any case absolutely general; and experience tends to show that
at the base of these traditions and these instances of universal assent
there is nearly always a great truth and that they must be accorded
a greater importance and a greater value than have hitherto been
attributed to them.
5
As regards evidence, or rather premonitory suggestions of evidence, we
have scarcely anything beyond the experiments of Colonel de Rochas,
who, by means of hypnotic passes, succeeded in making a few exceptional
mediums retrace not only the whole course of their present lives,
back to their earliest childhood, but also that of a certain number
of previous existences. It cannot be denied that these extremely
serious experiments, which were very scientifically conducted, are most
bewildering; but the danger of unconscious suggestion or telepathy is
not and doubtless will never be sufficiently remote to allow them to
become really conclusive.
We find further, on pursuing the same train of ideas, certain cases of
reincarnation, like that of one of Dr. Samson’s little daughters, as
related in the _Annales des sciences psychiques_ for July, 1913. This
case, which is almost undisputed, is exceedingly curious; but, though
it is not unique, those which resemble it are too rare to allow us to
rely upon them.
There remains what are known as prenatal reminiscences. It happens
fairly often that a man who finds himself in an unfamiliar country, in
a city, a palace, a church, a house, or a garden, which he is visiting
for the first time, is conscious of a strange and very definite
impression that he “has seen it before.” It suddenly seems to him
that this landscape, these vaulted ceilings, these rooms and the very
furniture and pictures which he finds in them are quite well-known to
him and that he recollects every nook and corner and every detail.
Which of us but has, at least once in his life, vaguely experienced
some such impression? But the recollections are often so definite that
the person in whom they occur is able to act as a guide through the
house or park which he has never explored and to describe beforehand
what his party will find in this or that room or at the turn of this
or that avenue. Is it really a recollection of previous existences,
a telepathic phenomenon or an ancestral and hereditary memory? The
same question suggests itself touching certain innate aptitudes or
faculties, by virtue of which we see children of genius, musicians,
painters, mathematicians or simple artisans, who know from the outset,
without learning them, nearly all the secrets of their art or craft.
Who will venture to decide?
This is about all that we can cite in favour of the doctrine of
reincarnation. It is not enough to weigh down the scales. But all the
other suppositions, theories or religions, excepting spiritualism,
which for the rest is perfectly consistent with successive existences,
have less solid foundations and are even, to be truthful, devoid of
any. It would therefore be ungracious on their part to reproach the
supposition which we are considering with the instability of the
arguments whereon it is based.
Once again, how desirable it would be that all this were true! There
would be no more moral uncertainties, no more uneasiness in respect of
justice. And it is so beautiful, so complete, that it is perhaps real.
It is difficult indeed to admit that such a dream is untrue from first
to last, a dream which has been dreamed so long, since the beginning of
the world, by so many thousands of millions of men and which, despite
numerous and far-reaching distortions, has, when all is said, been the
one dream of humanity. It is not possible to prove that it is based
upon truth; but, unlike most of the religions derived from it, it is
not possible either to demonstrate that it is imaginary and fabricated
throughout; and, there being this doubt, why should not reason, which
it never offends, be allowed to accept it and at heart to hope and
act as though it were true, while waiting for science to confirm it
completely, or to invalidate it, or to give us another hypothesis which
it will perhaps never be able to elaborate?
What at first repels many of those who investigate it is the unduly
assured and arbitrary insistence upon a thousand petty details,
probably interpolated, as in all religions, by inferior minds, animated
by a narrow and maladroit zeal. But these details, viewed from a
certain elevation, do not in any way alter the great outlines, which
remain immeasurable, admirable and unspoiled.
6
For the rest, whether reincarnation be accepted or rejected, there is
surely such a thing as survival, since death and nothingness cannot be
conceived; and the whole matter is once more reduced to the problem
of continued identity. Even in reincarnation this identity, from our
present, limited point of view, would possess only a relative interest,
seeing that, all memory of previous existences being abolished, it
would necessarily evade us. Let us ask ourselves, moreover, whether
this question of personality without solution of continuity does
really possess the importance which we attach to it and whether this
importance is not a delusion, a temporary blindness of our egoism, of
our terrestrial intelligence. For the fact remains that we interrupt
it and lose it every night without disquieting ourselves. It is enough
for us to be certain that we shall recover it on awaking; and we are
reassured. But suppose that this were not the case and that one evening
we were warned that we should not recover it, that on the following
morning we should have forgotten all our past existence and should
begin a new life, without any memory to connect us with the old. Should
we feel the same terror, the same despair, as if we had been told
that we should never wake again and that we should be hurled into our
death? I do not believe it, I even think that we should accept our lot
fairly cheerfully. It would not greatly matter to us that we should
have to lose the memory of a past, consisting, like the past of all of
us, of more evil than good, provided that life continued. It would no
longer be our life, it would no longer have anything in common with
the life of the day before; nevertheless we should not believe that
we were losing it and we should retain a vague hope of recovering or
recognizing something of ourselves in the existence before us. We
should take pains to prepare for this existence, to insure it against
misfortune and distress, to make it, in advance, as pleasant and as
happy as possible. It might and ought to be so, not only if we believe
in reincarnation, because the case would be almost identical, but also
if we do not believe in it, since a survival of some sort is almost
certain and absolute annihilation is actually inconceivable.
7
Perhaps with a little courage and goodwill it would be possible for us,
even in this life, to look higher and farther, to shed for an instant
that narrow and dismal egoism which refers all things to self, to tell
ourselves that the intelligence or the good which our thoughts and
efforts diffuse in the spiritual spheres are not wholly lost, even
when it is not certain that the little nucleus of trivial habits and
commonplace recollections that we are possesses them exclusively. If
the good actions which we have performed, the noble or merely honest
intentions or thoughts which we have experienced attach themselves and
give value to a life in which we shall not recognize our own, this is
not a sufficient reason to regard them as useless or to deny them all
merit. It is well to remind ourselves at times that we are nothing
if we are not everything and to learn from now onwards to interest
ourselves in something that is not solely ourselves and already to
live the ampler, less personal, less egotistical life which presently,
without any doubt, whatever may be our creed, will be our eternal life,
the only life that matters and the only life for which it is wise to
prepare ourselves.
8
If we do not accept reincarnation, Karma none the less exists:
a mutilated Karma, it is true; a diminished Karma, devoid of
spaciousness, with an horizon limited by death, beginning its work and
doing its best in the brief spell of time which it has before it, but
less negligible, less impotent, less inactive and ineffective than
is supposed. Acting within its narrow sphere, it gives us a fairly
accurate albeit very incomplete idea of what it would accomplish in
the wider sphere which we deny it. But this would lead us back to the
highly debatable question of mundane justice. It is almost insoluble,
because its decisive operations, being inward and secret, escape
observation. Following many others, who, for the rest, have explained
it better than I, I have spoken of it elsewhere, particularly in
_Wisdom and Destiny_ and in _The Mystery of Justice_;[3] but, as Queen
Scheherazade might say, it would serve no useful purpose to repeat it.
9
Let us then return to Karma properly so-called, the ideal Karma. It
rewards goodness and punishes evil in the infinite sequence of our
lives. But first of all, some will ask, what is this goodness, what
is this evil, what is the best or the worst of our petty thoughts,
our petty intentions, our petty ephemeral actions, compared with
the boundless immensity of time and space? Is there not an absurd
disproportion between the hugeness of the reward or punishment and the
pettiness of the fault or merit? Why mix the worlds, the eternities
and the gods with things which, however monstrous or admirable at
first, are not slow, even within the trivial limits of our life,
to lose gradually all the importance which we ascribed to them, to
vanish, to fade into oblivion? That is true; but we must needs speak
of human things in terms of human beings and on the human scale. What
we call good or evil is that which works us good or evil, that which
benefits or harms ourselves or others; and, so long as we live upon
this earth and have not disappeared, we must needs attach to good
and evil an importance which in themselves they do not possess. The
noblest religions, the proudest metaphysical speculations, so soon as
they involve human morality, human evolution and the human future,
have always been obliged to reduce themselves to human proportions, to
become anthropomorphous. This is an invincible necessity, by virtue of
which, despite the horizons that tempt us on every hand, it behoves us
to limit our ideas and our outlook.
10