Part 10
THEO. I did not “confess” it was a fancy. I simply said that physiologists and scientists in general regard such reminiscences as hallucinations and fancy, to which _learned_ conclusion they are welcome. We do not deny that such visions of the past and glimpses far back into the corridors of time, are abnormal, as contrasted with our normal daily life experience and physical memory. But we do maintain with Professor W. Knight, that “the absence of memory of any action done in a previous state cannot be a conclusive argument against our having lived through it.” And every fair-minded opponent must agree with what is said in Butler’s _Lectures on Platonic Philosophy_—“that the feeling of extravagance with which it (pre-existence) affects us has its secret source in materialistic or semi-materialistic prejudices.” Besides which we maintain that memory, as Olympiodorus called it, is simply _phantasy_, and the most unreliable thing in us.[31] Ammonius Saccas asserted that the only faculty in man directly opposed to prognostication, or looking into futurity, is _memory_. Furthermore, remember that memory is one thing and mind or _thought_ is another; one is a recording machine, a register which very easily gets out of order; the other (thoughts) are eternal and imperishable. Would you refuse to believe in the existence of certain things or men only because your physical eyes have not seen them? Would not the collective testimony of past generations who have seen him be a sufficient guarantee that Julius Cæsar once lived? Why should not the same testimony of the psychic senses of the masses be taken into consideration?
ENQ. But don’t you think that these are too fine distinctions to be accepted by the majority of mortals?
THEO. Say rather by the majority of materialists. And to them we say, behold: even in the short span of ordinary existence, memory is too weak to register all the events of a lifetime. How frequently do even most important events lie dormant in our memory until awakened by some association of ideas, or aroused to function and activity by some other link. This is especially the case with people of advanced age, who are always found suffering from feebleness of recollection. When, therefore, we remember that which we know about the physical and the spiritual principles in man, it is not the fact that our memory has failed to record our precedent life and lives that ought to surprise us, but the contrary, were it to happen.
WHY DO WE NOT REMEMBER OUR PAST LIVES?
ENQ. You have given me a bird’s eye view of the seven principles; now how do they account for our complete loss of any recollection of having lived before?
THEO. Very easily. Since those “principles” which we call physical, and none of which is denied by science, though it calls them by other names,[32] are disintegrated after death with their constituent elements, _memory_ along with its brain, this vanished memory of a vanished personality, can neither remember nor record anything in the subsequent re-incarnation of the EGO. Re-incarnation means that this Ego will be furnished with a _new_ body, a _new_ brain, and a _new_ memory. Therefore it would be as absurd to expect this _memory_ to remember that which it has never recorded as it would be idle to examine under a microscope a shirt never worn by a murderer, and seek on it for the stains of blood which are to be found only on the clothes he wore. It is not the clean shirt that we have to question, but the clothes worn during the perpetration of the crime; and if these are burnt and destroyed, how can you get at them?
ENQ. Aye! how can you get at the certainty that the crime was ever committed at all, or that the “man in the clean shirt” ever lived before?
THEO. Not by physical processes, most assuredly; nor by relying on the testimony of that which exists no longer. But there is such a thing as circumstantial evidence, since our wise laws accept it, more, perhaps, even than they should. To get convinced of the fact of re-incarnation and past lives, one must put oneself in _rapport_ with one’s real permanent Ego, not one’s evanescent memory.
ENQ. But how can people believe in that which they _do not know_, nor have ever seen, far less put themselves in _rapport_ with it?
THEO. If people, and the most learned, will believe in the Gravity, Ether, Force, and what not of Science, abstractions “and working hypotheses,” which they have neither seen, touched, smelt, heard, nor tasted—why should not other people believe, on the same principle, in one’s permanent Ego, a far more logical and important “working hypothesis” than any other?
ENQ. What is, finally, this mysterious eternal principle? Can you explain its nature so as to make it comprehensible to all?
THEO. The EGO which reincarnates, the _individual_ and immortal—not personal—“I”; the vehicle, in short, of the Atma-Buddhic MONAD, that which is rewarded in Devachan and punished on earth, and that, finally, to which the reflection only of the _Skandhas_, or attributes, of every incarnation attaches itself.[33]
ENQ. What do you mean by _Skandhas_?
THEO. Just what I said: “attributes,” among which is _memory_, all of which perish like a flower, leaving behind them only a feeble perfume. Here is another paragraph from H. S. Olcott’s “Buddhist Catechism”[34] which bears directly upon the subject. It deals with the question as follows:—“The aged man remembers the incidents of his youth, despite his being physically and mentally changed. Why, then, is not the recollection of past lives brought over by us from our last birth into the present birth? Because memory is included within the Skandhas, and the Skandhas having changed with the new existence, a memory, the record of that
## particular existence, develops. Yet the record or reflection
of all the past lives must survive, for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha, the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him ... and any one who attains to the state of _Jhana_ can thus retrospectively trace the line of his lives.” This proves to you that while the undying qualities of the personality—such as love, goodness, charity, etc.—attach themselves to the immortal Ego, photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was, his material Skandhas (those which generate the most marked Karmic effects) are as evanescent as a flash of lightning, and cannot impress the new brain of the new personality; yet their failing to do so impairs in no way the identity of the reincarnating Ego.
ENQ. Do you mean to infer that that which survives is only the Soul-memory, as you call it, that Soul or Ego being one and the same, while nothing of the personality remains?
THEO. Not quite; something of each personality, unless the latter was an _absolute_ materialist with not even a chink in his nature for a spiritual ray to pass through, must survive, as it leaves its eternal impress on the incarnating permanent Self or Spiritual Ego.[35] (See On _post mortem_ and _post natal_ Consciousness.) The personality with its Skandhas is ever changing with every new birth. It is, as said before, only the part played by the actor (the true Ego) for one night. This is why we preserve no memory on the physical plane of our past lives, though the _real_ “Ego” has lived them over and knows them all.
ENQ. Then how does it happen that the real or Spiritual man does not impress his new personal “I” with this knowledge?
THEO. How is it that the servant-girls in a poor farm-house could speak Hebrew and play the violin in their trance or somnambulic state, and knew neither when in their normal condition? Because, as every genuine psychologist of the old, not your modern, school, will tell you, the Spiritual Ego can act only when the personal Ego is paralysed. The Spiritual “I” in man is omniscient and has every knowledge innate in it; while the personal self is the creature of its environment and the slave of the physical memory. Could the former manifest itself uninterruptedly, and without impediment, there would be no longer men on earth, but we should all be gods.
ENQ. Still there ought to be exceptions, and some ought to remember.
THEO. And so there are. But who believes in their report? Such sensitives are generally regarded as hallucinated hysteriacs, as crack-brained enthusiasts, or humbugs, by modern materialism. Let them read, however, works on this subject, pre-eminently “Re-incarnation, a Study of Forgotten Truth” by E. D. Walker, F.T.S., and see in it the mass of proofs which the able author brings to bear on this vexed question. One speaks to people of soul, and some ask “What is Soul?” “Have you ever proved its existence?” Of course it is useless to argue with those who are materialists. But even to them I would put the question: “Can you remember what you were or did when a baby? Have you preserved the smallest recollection of your life, thoughts, or deeds, or that you lived at all during the first eighteen months or two years of your existence? Then why not deny that you have ever lived as a babe, on the same principle?” When to all this we add that the reincarnating Ego, or _individuality_, retains during the Devachanic period merely the essence of the experience of its past earth-life or personality, the whole physical experience involving into a state of _in potentia_, or being, so to speak, translated into spiritual formulæ; when we remember further that the term between two rebirths is said to extend from ten to fifteen centuries, during which time the physical consciousness is totally and absolutely inactive, having no organs to act through and therefore _no existence_, the reason for the absence of all remembrance in the purely physical memory is apparent.
ENQ. You just said that the SPIRITUAL EGO was omniscient. Where, then, is that vaunted omniscience during his Devachanic life, as you call it?
THEO. During that time it is latent and potential, because first of all, the Spiritual Ego (the compound of Buddhi-Manas) is _not_ the Higher SELF, which being one with the Universal Soul or Mind is alone omniscient; and, secondly, because Devachan is the idealized continuation of the terrestrial life just left behind, a period of retributive adjustment, and a reward for unmerited wrongs and sufferings undergone in that special life. It is omniscient only _potentially_ in Devachan, and _de facto_ exclusively in Nirvana, when the Ego is merged in the Universal Mind-Soul. Yet it re-becomes _quasi_ omniscient during those hours on earth when certain abnormal conditions and physiological changes in the body make the _Ego_ free from the trammels of matter. Thus the examples cited above of somnambulists, a poor servant speaking Hebrew, and another playing the violin, give you an illustration of the case in point. This does not mean that the explanations of these two facts offered us by medical science have no truth in them, for one girl had, years before, heard her master, a clergyman, read Hebrew works aloud, and the other had heard an artist playing a violin at their farm. But neither could have done so as perfectly as they did had they not been ensouled by THAT which, owing to the sameness of its nature with the Universal Mind, is omniscient. Here the higher principle acted on the Skandhas and moved them; in the other, the personality being paralysed, the individuality manifested itself. Pray do not confuse the two.
ON INDIVIDUALITY AND PERSONALITY.[36]
ENQ. But what is the difference between the two? I confess that I am still in the dark. Indeed it is just that difference, then, that you cannot impress too much on our minds.
THEO. I try to; but alas, it is harder with some than to make them feel a reverence for childish impossibilities, only because they are _orthodox_, and because orthodoxy is respectable. To understand the idea well, you have to first study the dual sets of “principles”; the _spiritual_, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego; and the _material_, or those principles which make up the ever-changing bodies or the series of personalities of that Ego. Let us fix permanent names to these, and say that:—
I. Atma, the “Higher Self,” is neither your Spirit nor mine, but like sunlight shines on all. It is the universally diffused “_divine principle_,” and is inseparable from its one and absolute _Meta_-Spirit, as the sunbeam is inseparable from sunlight.
II. _Buddhi_ (the spiritual soul) is only its vehicle. Neither each separately, nor the two collectively, are of any more use to the body of man, then sunlight and its beams are for a mass of granite buried in the earth, _unless the divine Duad is assimilated by, and reflected in_, some _consciousness_. Neither Atma nor Buddhi are ever reached by Karma, because the former is the highest aspect of Karma, _its working agent_ of ITSELF in one aspect, and the other is unconscious _on this plane_. This consciousness or mind is,
III. _Manas_,[37] the derivation or product in a reflected form of _Ahamkara_, “the conception of I,” or EGO-SHIP. It is, therefore, when inseparably united to the first two, called the SPIRITUAL EGO, and _Taijasi_ (the radiant).
This is the real Individuality, or the divine man. It is this Ego which—having originally incarnated in the _senseless_ human form animated by, but unconscious (since it had no consciousness) of, the presence in itself of the dual monad—made of that human-like form _a real man_. It is that Ego, that “Causal Body,” which overshadows every personality Karma forces it to incarnate into; and this Ego which is held responsible for all the sins committed through, and in, every new body or personality—the evanescent masks which hide the true Individual through the long series of rebirths.
ENQ. But is this just? Why should this EGO receive punishment as the result of deeds which it has forgotten?
THEO. It has not forgotten them; it knows and remembers its misdeeds as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. Is it because the memory of that bundle of physical compounds called “body” does not recollect what its predecessor (the personality _that was_) did, that you imagine that the real Ego has forgotten them? As well say it is unjust that the new boots on the feet of a boy, who is flogged for stealing apples, should be punished for that which they know nothing of.
ENQ. But are there no modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory?
THEO. Of course there are; but they have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists. To what do you attribute intuition, the “voice of the conscience,” premonitions, vague undefined reminiscences, etc., etc., if not to such communications? Would that the majority of educated men, at least, had the fine spiritual perceptions of Coleridge, who shows how intuitional he is in some of his comments. Hear what he says with respect to the probability that “all thoughts are in themselves imperishable.” “If the intelligent faculty (sudden ‘revivals’ of memory) should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and appropriate organization, the _body celestial_ instead of the _body terrestrial_, to bring before every human soul _the collective experience of its whole past existence_ (_existences_, rather).” And this _body celestial_ is our Manasic EGO.
ON THE REWARD AND PUNISHMENT OF THE EGO.
ENQ. I have heard you say that the _Ego_, whatever the life of the person he incarnated in may have been on Earth, is never visited with _post-mortem_ punishment.
THEO. Never, save in very exceptional and rare cases of which we will not speak here, as the nature of the “punishment” in no way approaches any of your theological conceptions of damnation.
ENQ. But if it is punished in this life for the misdeeds committed in a previous one, then it is this Ego that ought to be rewarded also, whether here, or when disincarnated.
THEO. And so it is. If we do not admit of any punishment outside of this earth, it is because the only state the Spiritual Self knows of, hereafter, is that of unalloyed bliss.
ENQ. What do you mean?
THEO. Simply this: _crimes and sins committed on a plane of objectivity and in a world of matter, cannot receive punishment in a world of pure subjectivity_. We believe in no hell or paradise as localities; in no objective hell-fires and worms that never die, nor in any Jerusalems with streets paved with sapphires and diamonds. What we believe in is a _post-mortem state_ or mental condition, such as we are in during a vivid dream. We believe in an immutable law of absolute Love, Justice, and Mercy. And believing in it, we say: “Whatever the sin and dire results of the original Karmic transgression of the now incarnated Egos[38] no man (or the outer material and periodical form of the Spiritual Entity) can be held, with any degree of justice, responsible for the consequences of his birth. He does not ask to be born, nor can he choose the parents that will give him life. In every respect he is a victim to his environment, the child of circumstances over which he has no control; and if each of his transgressions were impartially investigated, there would be found nine out of every ten cases when he was the one sinned against, rather than the sinner. Life is at best a heartless play, a stormy sea to cross, and a heavy burden often too difficult to bear. The greatest philosophers have tried in vain to fathom and find out its _raison d’être_, and have all failed except those who had the key to it, namely, the Eastern sages. Life is, as Shakespeare describes it:—
... but a walking shadow—a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing....”
Nothing in its separate parts, yet of the greatest importance in its collectivity or series of lives. At any rate, almost every individual life is, in its full development, a sorrow. And are we to believe that poor, helpless men, after being tossed about like a piece of rotten timber on the angry billows of life, is, if he proves too weak to resist them, to be punished by a _sempiternity_ of damnation, or even a temporary punishment? Never! Whether a great or an average sinner, good or bad, guilty or innocent, once delivered of the burden of physical life, the tired and worn-out _Manu_ (“thinking Ego”) has won the right to a period of absolute rest and bliss. The same unerringly wise and just rather than merciful Law, which inflicts upon the incarnated Ego the Karmic punishment for every sin committed during the preceding life on Earth, provided for the now disembodied Entity a long lease of mental rest, _i.e._, the entire oblivion of every sad event, aye, to the smallest painful thought, that took place in its last life as a personality, leaving in the soul-memory but the reminiscence of that which was bliss, or led to happiness. Plotinus, who said that our body was the true river of Lethe, for “souls plunged into it forget all,” meant more than he said. For, as our terrestrial body is like Lethe, so is our _celestial body_ in Devachan, and much more.
ENQ. Then am I to understand that the murderer, the transgressor of law divine and human in every shape, is allowed to go unpunished?
THEO. Who ever said that? Our philosophy has a doctrine of punishment as stern as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more philosophical and consistent with absolute justice. No deed, not even a sinful thought, will go unpunished; the latter more severely even than the former, as a thought is far more potential in creating evil results than even a deed.[39] We believe in an unerring law of Retribution, called KARMA, which asserts itself in a natural concatenation of causes and their unavoidable results.
ENQ. And how, or where, does it act?
THEO. Every labourer is worthy of his hire, saith Wisdom in the Gospel; every action, good or bad, is a prolific parent, saith the Wisdom of the Ages. Put the two together, and you will find the “why.” After allowing the Soul, escaped from the pangs of personal life, a sufficient, aye, a hundredfold compensation, Karma, with its army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of Devachan, whence the _Ego_ re-emerges to assume a new incarnation. It is at this moment that the future destiny of the now-rested Ego trembles in the scales of just Retribution, as _it_ now falls once again under the sway of active Karmic law. It is in this re-birth which is ready for _it_, a re-birth selected and prepared by this mysterious, inexorable, but in the equity and wisdom of its decrees infallible LAW, that the sins of the previous life of the Ego are punished. Only it is into no imaginary Hell, with theatrical flames and ridiculous tailed and horned devils, that the Ego is cast, but verily on to this earth, the plane and region of his sins, where he will have to atone for every bad thought and deed. As he has sown, so will he reap. Re-incarnation will gather around him all those other Egos who have suffered, whether directly or indirectly, at the hands, or even through the unconscious instrumentality, of the past _personality_. They will be thrown by Nemesis in the way of the _new_ man, concealing the _old_, the eternal EGO, and ...
ENQ. But where is the equity you speak of, since these _new_ “personalities” are not aware of having sinned or been sinned against?
THEO. Has the coat torn to shreds from the back of the man who stole it, by another man who was robbed of it and recognises his property, to be regarded as fairly dealt with? The new “personality” is no better than a fresh suit of clothes with its specific characteristics, colour, form and qualities; but the _real_ man who wears it is the same culprit as of old. It is the _individuality_ who suffers through his “personality.” And it is this, and this alone, that can account for the terrible, still only _apparent_, injustice in the distribution of lots in life to man. When your modern philosophers will have succeeded in showing to us a good reason, why so many apparently innocent and good men are born only to suffer during a whole lifetime; why so many are born poor unto starvation in the slums of great cities, abandoned by fate and men; why, while these are born in the gutter, others open their eyes to light in palaces; while a noble birth and fortune seem often given to the worst of men and only rarely to the worthy; while there are beggars whose _inner_ selves are peers to the highest and noblest of men; when this, and much more, is satisfactorily explained by either your philosophers or theologians, then only, but not till then, you will have the right to reject the theory of re-incarnation. The highest and grandest of poets have dimly perceived this truth of truths. Shelley believed in it, Shakespeare must have thought of it when writing on the worthlessness of Birth. Remember his words:
“Why should my birth keep down my mounting spirit? Are not all creatures subject unto time? There’s legions now of beggars on the earth, That their original did spring from Kings, And many monarchs now, whose fathers were The riff-raff of their age....”
Alter the word “fathers” into “Egos”—and you will have the truth.
FOOTNOTES: