Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Reincarnation: A Study of the Human Soul
By J.A. Anderson
Objections To Reincarnation
The chief objection to reincarnation is that we do notremember our past lives, as we ought to do if our" I am I" is a permanent center of consciousness, andmerely passes from body to body upon the death of these. This at first sight seems a valid objection, for memoryis a necessary link in constituting true self-consciousness. One chief argument advanced in proof of the existence ofa soul is that there is a central something which binds states of consciousness into a continuous and connected unity, and without which unifying center they would ofnecessity remain simply states of consciousness; those present having no memory of nor hold upon those past, nor anticipation of those in the future. Therefore, weought to remember our past if that past has been really continuous, and the objection is fatal unless the loss of the memory of our various personalities is fully explained. This explanation is found in the compound nature ofman. We have seen that the Higher Ego is onlyincarnated in a human-animal body for the purpose ofdescending to this plane of molecular consciousness; that there are really three evolutionary processes going onsimultaneously in man a physical, an intellectual or manasic, and a spiritual or monadic.
With this third process the divine Monad is alone concerned. The sec- ond, or intellectual evolution, is that of the Higher Ego.The third appertains to the Lower Quaternary. Whilein man these three distinct streams of evolution are inex tricably interblended, because to a greater or lesser degree each process is a factor in both the others, still they are distinct enough without being separate to fully ac- count for non-remembrance of the one upon the plane of the other. Memory has been variously divided and classfied by psychologists, which divisions do not require analysis here. The one essential in any act of memory is the recording of a conscious experience. This record will and must differ with each plane of consciousness. The manasic plane being that of true self-consciousness, it takes here the self-conscious form; upon the physical, it records itself in other changes, which are physical rather than mental. None the less, however, are these changes the records of memory because below the self-conscious plane. The physical form and psychic characteristics, which represent the infinite variations in the entities upon the material plane of the Universe, constitute the memory of the conscious experiences of each entity recorded in these physical modifications. In the physical body of man is thus recorded each conscious experience undergone since he occupied that mass of jelly-like substance which we have reason to suspect was his first body, al- though the great mass of these experiences have of necessity been below the self-conscious plane. Here, then, lies the secret of our not remembering our past lives.
They have been and are entirely too much upon the physical plane to find other record than in those physical and lower psychic modifications of form and passional characteristics which lie too far below it to have any record upon the plane of manasic or true self- consciousness. The most of our conscious experiences are almost purely animal and while they are temporarily recorded as separate experiences upon the brain cells ofeach body, this record is of necessity destroyed as a self- conscious register at death, and is only preserved uponthe corresponding register of its own plane that of evolutionary modification. The record is destroyed as a self- conscious register for the reason that the personality hasno true self-consciousness. The feeling of " I am I" ofour ordinary conscious experiences is reflected there bythe Higher Ego, as was explained in the chapter dealingwith that portion of the subject, and passes away entirelyeither at or briefly following death. All those ambitions," successes," and even intellectual achievements, no matterhow colossal they appear, if only intellectual, and not spiritualized, fall within the fatal line of non-permanency.
The life of a Napoleon, or of a Bacon, represents only thelower animal faculties intensely intellectualized, to besure, but having no greater claim to the spiritual remembrance of the Higher Ego than the humblest events in the life of a clodhopper. One must live upon the planeof the Higher Manas to have a truly self-conscious memory; otherwise, he can and ought to expect the oblitera- tion of his personal memory after devachanic existenceceases and his next reincarnation occurs. And just in proportion as one does live in his higher Principles will each personality live in the memory of the Higher Ego;and, also, in proportion to his ability to reach this divineplane of truly continuous self-consciousness while in thebody will he remember his past lives. Those conscious experiences which represent the borderland, as it were, between the higher and lower Manas,or between the Individuality and Personality, are carried forward as devachanic memories; but, being semi-spirit ual only, they are lost as self-conscious experiences upon reincarnation. They have all the permanence to which their mixed nature entitles them in the illusory but very happy recalling of them while in this subjective state. For the chief happiness of this condition lies in the power of the soul to take an earth memory or desire and make it the text, so to speak, upon which a series of thought pictures are constructed and which carry the unrealized desire or interrupted happiness to its highest ideal termination.
The whole of Devachan is thus largely composed of these dramatized realizations of desires arising out of conscious experiences while in the body. It is only nec- essary that they should rise above the plane of gross animality for them to become the objects of this devachanic dramatizatipn and realization. That man's conscious experiences upon earth are so largely recorded upon the physical plane and in these karmic modifications of physical heredity, is a most beneficient provision of nature. So full of mistakes, errors, sins, and crimes is the past of, perhaps, every one of us, that the actual memory of it all carried forward in detail to each new life would overwhelm the soul with despair at the very outset. Nor is it essential to the conviction of our having lived before that we should remember each incident in our past lives, or even that we have lived before at all. Who remembers the first two or three years of his infancy ? The fact that we were the same individual during this period of forgotten existence that we are now, none of us doubt, yet we would be sorely put about if we were required to furnish proof of this from memory.
And even after this portion, how much do we remember of our life history if we attempt to recall it day by day, in all its trifling minutiae ? Of the three score years and ten of human existence in the body, few can accurately recall the events of as many days nay, hardly of as many minutes. All, except prodigies of memory, have practically forgotten nine hundred and ninety-nine of every thousandincidents of all their past. And yet the fact does not dis- turb us at all. We know that we are the result of this experience we have come through; that our identity is the same with that of the infant, the school boy, the youth, the over-confident youn man, the earnest, wiserone of middle life, the tranquil, saddened one of old age. Through it all the use of memory, being so largely physical, has been to link results together rather than inci- dents ; to enable us to benefit by the past rather than to be able to remember each particular portion of it. This is the surest memory the knowledge that the crystallized results of what we have experienced are fully and completely expressed in what we are now. Are weprone to anger, and find it difficult to control fits of passion ? Here is the memory of many a deed of violence done under the dominance of our lower nature long ago. Do we turn with horror away from injustice or extortion ? Be assured we are remembering the time when we ourselves were the sufferers from similar unjust acts.
And so on, through all the most delicate intricacies of our being. We are the creation of our past; and the nature wehave evolved is its memory. If we have gathered wisdom from the experiences of our lives, it is enough; in just what the experience consisted is of little moment.We may feel sure that under the guidance of the divine law of Karma no experience has touched or ever cantouch us which we have not deserved in some capacity, either in our individual, our family, our racial, or our national relations with our fellow-men. Even before death, if we live to be old, nature antici- pates the process by which she prepares us for new experiences, and we become again as little children. Our life work is done. All the knowledge which we can assimilate in this incarnation has been acquired, and so we re- turn to the devachanic condition of childhood; and the mystery of involution, or the assimilating of the net re- sults of experience, begins because the time for it has come and death has temporarily passed us by.
Another objection made from a purely emotional standpoint is that reincarnation separates us forever from those we have loved in this life. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this, for exactly the opposite occurs. Reincarnation, in common with every other phenomenon in nature, proceeds under the law of karma, or cause and effect, and we ourselves set up the causes whose effects are our rebirth not only in regard to time, but also as to those with whom we will find ourselves associated. These causes are largely, if not wholly, mental, and originate in the acts, emotions, and thoughts of our daily life. They, therefore, relate us karmically to those with whom we are thus daily associated, who are the subjects or objects of such thoughts or acts, and in exact proportion to the in- tensity of our feeling toward each of these, be that feeling either of love or of hatred. We can not set up causes which will bind our future life to those whom we have never met, nor have even known of mentally. This would be an absurd view to take of the law. We are, therefore, bound to those and to those only with whom we are most closely associated in either the bonds of love or hatred, for attraction and repulsion are but opposite poles or modes of motion of the same impersonal force, and are of equal strength.
Therefore, the impersonal law of cause and effect will bring together those bound by bonds of hatred as surely as it will those related by ties of affection. This fact fully explains the otherwise inexplicable appearance of a single black sheep in an otherwise unblemished family, or those so-called " unnatural" hatreds between children and parents, or those which appear in any of the closely related ties of consanguinity. The attraction thus set up between individuals by their associations and mental Attitudes towards each other is as potent and as patent as that which binds atoms into the stable elements, so far beneath the mental plane. It is but another illustration of the unity of law upon all the planes of the Cosmos. So powerful is it that it can both draw souls to or from material existence, else its results would of necessity fail in uniting those karmically bound. We see its action in taking souls from the earth in those common cases where either the wife or husband quickly follows the other to the grave without apparent physiological reason. But more notable, because more opposed to the normal course of nature, are the numerous instances where a mother's death has been followed by so plain a loosening of its hold upon life by her young babe that even ignorant observers have recognized the fact that she was " drawing" it after her. Of course, such cases are exceptions because out of the usual course of nature ; but they are just those exceptions which prove the rule. For in the normal instances those associated would be likely to have subjective or devachanic lives of about the same duration.
Therefore, if in a group of karmically associated souls one were drawn by karma and the closing of its subjective cycle to re- incarnate, the center of attractive force thus transferred to the material plane would be amply powerful to draw to it others whose devachanic cycles were also closing; and the close union, as in marriage, of certain of these might easily set up a center of attraction sufficiently powerful to bring to a close the Devachan of any Ego whose karma demanded its association with such Egos thus incarnated. Were this not the case a Devachan extending over 1,500 years would eternally separate, as far as material associations are concerned, an Ego from one whose spiritual nature entitled it to but 1,200 years in the same state, however close the ties of affection might have been during life on earth. As the length of life upon the earth is very greatly modified by association with others, so is Devachan subject to similar modifications. Racial or national karma may subject us to a death by war, pestilence, or famine which would not have been necessitated by our purely personal karma, and the sanitary conditions of communities, even, shorten or lengthen the lives of the units grouped in such karmic relations. Especially is this so in large cities. San Francisco, for instance, has a certain percentage of deaths due entirely to corrupt governments having permitted peculation and dishonest work in its sewer system. Scores of lives are cut short yearly as a direct karmic result of this community karma.
On the other hand, scores and hundreds of lives are lengthened by wise sanitary measures especially in times of pestilence or epidemics. If life be thus subject to modification on the material plane, it is also subject to the same in Devachan, under the axiom that the action of any law must be universal. It is at least plain that there is nothing in the nature of Devachan to preclude the after association of individuals upon earth; but, on the contrary, that such associations are certain to continue so long as there is any attraction or repulsion between incarnated souls.
This is an infinitely wiser provision attraction and re- pulsion for human happiness than any merely physical ties of consanguinity. It ensures association so long as we desire it; it cuts us loose when we have become indif- ferent to any personality thus grouping souls by. their higher natures rather than upon a physical basis. Werethe physical ties paramount, each child would demand an eternal association with its parents, they in turn with theirs, and so on back to some antediluvian ancestor, for whom the whole vast throng, except his immediate progeny, would feel the most profound indifference, as they also would for each other, except in a similar exceedingly limited relation. But soul attraction brings to each Egoits, own; and as each parent, for instance, returns to in- carnation attracting to it those children it really loved, these in turn, after paying their karmic debt, will attract their beloved, and so the links of human affection will re- main forever unbroken until indifference or development in some new direction severs all old attractions. A further objection to reincarnation, sometimes urged, is that it is unjust for us to suffer in this life the conse- quences of acts done in past ones which we have forgot- ten.
To answer this it is only necessary to point out the absurdity of supposing that the mere forgetting of any act or crime absolves one from its consequences. Under this strange ethical view, it would be only necessary for a murderer to forget the crime he had committed to be re- lieved from all moral and legal responsibility. Could he not succeed in this himself it would only require that a hypnotizer should interpose, and the criminal thus made unconscious of his crime could be dragged off the very gallows itself. The law of cause and effect is impersonal, and, as far as we can conceive of consciousness, acts unconsciously. Often physical diseases are the result of causes set in action during the unconsciousness of sleep, yet the law inflicts the full penalty nevertheless. But the objection does not really deserve the recognition of an answer.
All possible objections to reincarnation must likewise disappear under the light of philosophy and logic, and it is only necessary that such objections be thus examined for the proof that this is an universal factor in nature and the method by means of which evolution proceeds to dawn upon the mind as clearly and convincingly as though one had set himself deliberately to prove its truth; for evolution and reincarnation are but aspects of the one eternal process in nature infinite change.
