[Footnote 63: The size of the causal body varies according to its development. It has been named _causal_, because it contains within itself the causes or germs of all the other bodies, with the exception of the denser part of the physical. We say denser because the physical body is double: its etheric part belongs to the causal body, its visible part comes from the parents.]
[Footnote 64: The mental body, which is, as it were, an ephemeral flower of the causal, is born and developed in each incarnation, disintegrating after the _devachanic_ (heavenly) life.]
[Footnote 65: It moves more or less freely on the astral plane, according to the development of the astral body. In men of low development, this body cannot be separated from the physical, under penalty of a nightmare which brings about a waking condition.]
[Footnote 66: The atoms interpenetrate in consequence of their differences of tenuity.]
[Footnote 67: Later on, the centre of consciousness pa.s.ses from the human to the superhuman state and ascends unceasingly until it reaches the centre of the Divinity incarnate in the world.]
[Footnote 68: When this centre is fixed in one of the higher bodies, the buddhic for instance, the man has pa.s.sed into the superhuman stage.]
[Footnote 69: As sand, placed on a plate in a state of vibration, a.s.sumes varying forms.]
[Footnote 70: The soul acting in the mental, the astral, and more especially--in the average man--the physical body. The Individuality is the soul acting in the causal body.]
[Footnote 71: See the diagram in the chapter on the Atom in _The Ancient Wisdom_, by A. Besant.]
[Footnote 72: We have seen that the organs formed by these tissues are the special work of a particular being controlled by lofty Intelligences.]
[Footnote 73: As the building of the body is reaching completion, the Ego (the Soul) begins to make use of the new instrument. It is at about the age of seven years that the development of the nerve centres becomes sufficiently advanced to allow of the brain receiving the vibrations of the soul; up to this point, the real man has scarcely had any influence upon the body, although the mental projection (the mental body) which he has formed can express itself to a certain extent much earlier, from the seventh month of foetal life; up to this time, the instinctive energies of the astral body alone affect the embryo.]
[Footnote 74: In Kamaloka (Purgatory). The desires, in purgatory, cannot be satisfied, because there is no physical body to express them, and this causes a state of suffering which has been compared to a burning fire. This fire burns up the pa.s.sions and leaves behind only the "germs," which the causal body takes up and bequeaths to the future astral body. But for this providential burning away, the pa.s.sions would exist from early childhood in the future incarnation, _i.e._, at a time when the Ego has no hold whatever upon the new personality, and when the latter would be terribly affected by this influx of the forces of evil.]
[Footnote 75: Souls are of different ages: the savage is not so old as the civilised man, while the latter is the younger brother of those strong and wise Souls who compose the vanguard of humanity.]
[Footnote 76: It is impossible for heredity and environment to supply _all_ the conditions that a soul"s evolution calls for, and _nothing but these conditions_; that is the reason Providence intervenes in the interests of justice.]
[Footnote 77: It is in this great body, with which we are in sympathy, though we claim the right to dispute their theories when we regard them as erroneous, that this hypothesis is met with more especially.
True, certain schools of lower occultism teach it also, but they form a minority, and are of no importance.]
[Footnote 78: Harmony is established when there is vibratory synchronism of all the states of matter of the different bodies _i.e._, when each slate of matter in a body vibrates in unison with the a.n.a.logous states of matter of all the other bodies.]
[Footnote 79: When the "life wave" has ended its cycle on this earth, it pa.s.ses in succession over the other planets of our chain and leaves the earth in a state of slumber. This slumber ceases with the return of the "life wave"; it becomes death when the evolution of the chain is accomplished. See A. P. Sinnett"s _Esoteric Buddhism._]
[Footnote 80: At a certain stage on the _Path_, return to earth is no longer obligatory.]
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 Chaldaea, 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 Brahman 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 G.o.ds, including man; and the princ.i.p.al, 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 ma.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sivity 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 r.e.t.a.r.d, 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 a.s.sociation with human beings, man loses from a.s.sociation 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] pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sage from Manu, where we read that "he who slays a Brahman enters into the body of a dog, a bear, an a.s.s, 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 Hina-yana, the lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist, is as little comprehended as the Maha-yana, its highest form, and, because Sakya 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 superst.i.tion. 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 pa.s.sion 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 quant.i.ty of his life atoms have pa.s.sed 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 kamic[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 kamic 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 pa.s.s 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 Brahman, a dog, a tiger, or a serpent"--and this means that those elements which, in man, serve as a basis for the pa.s.sions, at death, pa.s.s over into the bodies of animals that possess the same pa.s.sions 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 Compa.s.sion, 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 const.i.tutes the Soul--an eternal spark in its essence, since it is a fragment of G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s before the ma.s.ses 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 Gita_, 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 n.o.ble 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.