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Reincarnation: A Study of the Human Soul

By J.A. Anderson

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The Composite Nature Of The Soul

THUS far, in our study, we have spoken of that which J^ reincarnates in man under the generic term of Soul. It now becomes necessary to use a more specific expression, in order that we may determine just what portion of man reincarnates, and what does not. This can only be accomplished by a study of that composite nature of man's soul which is evidenced by the complex character of his conscious functioning.

All systems of philosophy, with the sole exception of that which passes for a philosophy under the name of modern Materialism, recognize the complex nature of man, and all classify this complexity as a necessary step in any philosophic analysis of his being. In the Kabala, Gnosticism and Buddhism, the division is into seven Principles or basic elements entering into his composition; in Vedantin Brahmanism and the teachings of Lao-Tse, there are five; in Christianity, three the body, soul and spirit, of Paul; while Materialism alone recognizes but one, the "matter" of his body, and of which all his other faculties are, according to it, but properties.

Without pausing to examine wherein other systems agree or disagree with the theosophic classification, we will take up that as being identical with the exoteric enumeration of several great religions, and as agreeing esoterically with all of them. This is the seven-fold division, and corresponds with other great septenates in nature. It separates man into Body (Sthula Sharira);
Astral Body (Linga Sharira) ; Vitality (Prana) ; Animal Soul (Kama); Human Soul (Manas); Spiritual Soul (Buddhi); and Spirit (Atman). The words in parentheses are the Sanscrit originals, of which the English equivalents are attempted translations.
From this classification it is at once apparent that " soul " may be defined as any vehicle for consciousness, as was shown in the opening sentences of this work; and the necessity for an accurate technology is seen to be imperative. For in the above enumeration there are three Principles classed as
" souls," each being a vehicle for a higher expression of consciousness, while the Body and Astral Body fall, strictly speaking, under the same category, both being also but vehicles for other states of consciousness.

Let us begin this necessarily brief examination with the lowest principle, or the Body. Under the evolutionary and philosophic necessity, as previously pointed out, of higher, more developed centers of consciousness, using matter already the seat of consciousness in lower expressions of form, it is at once seen that the Body represents in its molecular constitution hosts of these lower lives. Every cell is a synthesized group of such lives; every organ, a synthesized group of cells; every system, a synthesized group of organs; every Body, a synthesized group of systems. Now, a synthesis demands and demonstrates a synthesizer. So it is evident that man, even in his lowest, most material aspect, or Body, represents hosts of such synthesizing
centers of consciousness. That each cell is an entity, even science freely admits. Green, for example, in his "Pathology and Morbid Anatomy," states:

" Bver since Schwann discovered the cellular nature of animals, and established the analogy between animal and vegetable cells, there has been a gradually increasing conviction among physiologists, which has now become a universally accepted physiological and pathological doctrine, that the cell is the seat of nutrition and function ; and, further, that each individual cell is itself an independent organism, endowed with those properties and capable of exhibiting those active changes which are characteristic of life. Bvery organized part of the body is either cellular, or is derived from cells, and under no circumstances do they originate de novo" 

This is directly confirmatory of Weismann's theory of an immortal cell handed down from parent to offspring, from modifications of which, by the countless elemental lives actively engaged in the construction, maintenance and repair of his body, all that magnificent structure is formed.
It has an important bearing, as will be shown when deal- ing with the Reincarnating Ego, upon the karmic relation of the Thinker to his body; this immortal cell being the actual physical basis for the transmission of physical heredity.
The Body, then, is simply a molecular and cellular as- sociation of lower " lives," of various degrees of consciousness, synthesized and used by the Thinker, the true Reincarnating Ego, as a necessary bundle of sense organs to relate its higher consciousness to this lower plane.
The Linga Sharira, or Astral Body, is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body; the location of the centers of sensation; and the vehicle of Prana, the
Life Principle, upon one side, and of Kama or desire, upon the other. The philosophic and logical necessity for such a body is abundantly demonstrable, yet space limits to the consideration of phenomenal proof alone. These consist in dreams, in " dopplegangers," in "materializations," in "repercussions" of injuries in- flicted during "materializations," in the "physical manifestations" of mediums in (low) clairvoyance, in "ghosts," "wraiths," and apparitions, etc. The complete hypothetical proof of the existence, by necessity, of such a body is to be found in certain phenomena of hypnotism. It is well known that hypnotizers can prevent their subjects from seeing any person or object which the hypnotizer designates by simply willing or "suggesting" that upon awakening they can not. This prohibition may be made to extend to any or all of the senses, at pleasure.

s, is one instance, the "subject" was made unable to see the .body of a person present, but was permitted to see his hat. This resulted in an apparent movement of a hat through space without any perceptible cause, greatly to her astonishment and dismay. Now, it is at once apparent that if the centers of sensation are located in the physical cells of either retina, optic nerve, or thalami, nothing but an actual physical interposition of matter upon their own plane can possibly inhibit their action. Given that physical cells convey the result of a vibratory impact along physical nerve tracts to physical ganglia, and we have a physical sequence that only physical means can possibly disturb. This, too, without noting the further factor in the problem of purely mechanical motion having been transmuted into terms of sensation an impossible phe- nomenon with a purely physical circuit. Nothing but
degenerative disease, or the surgeon's knife, can interpose any barrier between the vibration and its translation into terms of sensation, if the whole sequence have actually been limited to the physical plane. Therefore, when phenomena force us to admit the fact of such inhibition we are also forced to postulate this "inner man " as the only possible explanation. Its presence, also, is, as we have seen, proven by hosts of other phenomena, and it is thus not compelled to rest its claims for recognition solely upon a hypothetical necessity. But given a Linga Sharira, having within it centers of sensation for the reception and transmutation of molecular vibrations, which centers respond and yield to the will, then a stronger will can interpose between the soul and such centers of sensation, with the results brought out by hypnotism, the phenomena of which is thus satisfac- torily explained. This will be more fully seen in the chapter devoted to the bearing of hynotism and Mesmerism upon the phenomena of consciousness.

The Linga Sharira is formed of "matter" immediately above or "within" that of the physical earth. It dis- integrates with the body, of which it is, as stated, an ethereal counterpart, whose office is to furnish a connecting link between man's inner Ego and the coarser physical molecules.
The third human Principle is Prana; vaguely recognized by science as " vitality," because of the constant occur- rence within the human organism of phenomena exceeding the possibility of being explained by any " natural"-
i. ., materialistic law. It is the phenomenal aspect of the universal Life Principle in the Universe ; or of that which Eastern philosophers call Jiva. Jiva is but one of many terms for the Force-Aspect of the Causeless Cause; the latter being objectivized as the " Light" the " Life," or the
creative power of the Logoi. There is no point in space where this Jiva, or "Light," is not potentially present; when it becomes a potency, it is transmuted into Prana.
Thus Prana is not the life principle in man alone, but also that of every entity in the material universe, whether that entity be ensouled in the mineral kingdom as a stone, in the vegetable as a plant, or in the animal or human kingdoms as individual members of these natural divisions. Jiva and Prana are one; Jiva becomes Prana when apparently refracted and differentiated by matter or Substance. The fourth human principle is Kama, or desire. Like
all the others, this is also an universal principle in nature.
It finds its point of grossest and most material expression upon the fourth plane of the Cosmos, and upon the seventh sub-plane, or the human-animal plane. In its highest aspect, Kama is that pure, untainted spiritual Compassion-Desire which brings the objective universe into activity, that it may again permit subconscious entities to take up their evolution towards freedom from limitation. In its lowest aspect, it is reflected in the "loves of the atoms" by which molecular association be- comes possible. In animals and animal-man, it is a raging, irrationalized, insatiable selfishness ; the cause of that
apparently cruel " struggle for existence," which we observe in the kingdoms below us; and which, alas! is also but too evident in that of man.
All entities in the Cosmos, at some stage in their becoming, reach and pass through this intensely kamic plane a plane only in the sense that, being a real " property" of matter, entities having reached it exhibit in the matter with which they clothe themselves this quality of Rajas, or passion. As we can not believe in any deliberate cruelty in nature, the kamic stage must therefore be a necessary and beneficent one. It may be the means of so concentrating and individualizing centers of conscious- ness and nascent souls as to permit of their being lifted as individualities to higher planes. It certainly affords an efficient school of instruction in the Pairs of Opposites of Eastern Philosophers, and thus permits and enforces the widening of man's conscious area. As it will be further dealt with in connection with the Reincarnating Ego, it is passed by for the present.
The four principles enumerated, and which are com- monly classed as the Lower Quaternary, are thus seen to belong equally to man and to the kingdoms below him. In them alone there is nothing to distinguish man from the animals, nor does this Quaternary reincarnate in the specific sense in which we speak of the reincarnation of the human soul. Upon the death of a man, as the microcosm of the Macrocosm, he of necessity goes into a pralaya, or subjective existence, corresponding accurately to that of the Cosmos. For when the Great Cycle is completed, when the hour of universal dissolution strikes, the "body" of the Cosmos, or matter upon this molecular plane, first disintegrates. The consciousness ensouled by it becomes
subjective, or " latent"; a bare potentiality of again manifesting, when similar conditions again present an opportunity. Next, plane after plane of entities ensouled with higher conscious centers is reached by the touch of Brahma-Siva, and each in turn becomes also a bare potentiality during the eons of Non-Being which constitutes the Great Pralaya. At last those are reached which have evolved to the point of eternal self-consciousness. The latter, therefore, pass consciously into these eternally subjective planes. An analogy might be thought of thus: 

Suppose a cold wave were to gradually pass from the poles to the equator, freezing every plant, animal, and man into a stony rigidity, but not destroying their potentiality of again manifesting all their former activities should the cold wave pass away and permit the old climatic conditions to be restored. Let us suppose this frigid condition to last for ages, after which it does pass away and again permits of the resumption of active life by
the inhabitants of each successive zone as the wave of cold recedes northward. If we further conceive of this process of successive suspension and regaining of consciousness as eternally repeated, and that entities overtaken below trie plane of subjective self- consciousness have no conception of the interval passed in the frozen condition, we may dimly imagine that which takes place upon all the ' planes below self- consciousness at the out-breathing and in-breathing of the " Great Breath," or the great Cycles of Being and Non-Being. Only that in this pralaya it is consciousness which must be thought of as frozen or latent, if below the plane of subjective self-consciousness; and not form, as in the illustration given, for all form disappears under the power of the In-Breathing of Brahm.
/""""Similarly, upon the death of the body, the cell-forms disintegrate, and the entities ensouled by them become
"
frozen," or latent. Their Great Pralaya has struck; their Prana re-becomes Jiva; their ''matter," now the abode of lower, unsynthesized lives alone, enters the general store- house of nature, or, rather, returns to the plane from which it had .been temporarily lifted by this association, and may be and is used over and over again for similar pur-poses by other entities. The Linga Sharira, which is but finer ethereal matter, surrenders its Prana, and is similarly resolved back into its component lower "lives." The higher kamic " elementals," those which synthesize the various " organs" of the body, are next reached by the " inbreath," and become latent changing into those skandhas of Vedantin philosophy which await the return of the soul to incarnation, which is their manvantara, or opportunity for renewed conscious manifestation.

Thus the whole of the four lower principles take no part in reincarnation as self-conscious entities. There yet remains that which is termed the Higher Triad to deal with, which completes the Septenary classification. Of these the most important (to us) is the Reincarnating Ego, the Center of Self-Consciousness ; that which Mrs. Annie Besant first termed the Thinker, which is the real basis of man's apparent and (relatively) true individualized
existence. But as this will be dealt with in a separate chapter it will be passed for the present, and the remaining two briefly considered.
Sophists have tried to show that the Causeless Cause of Theosophic Philosophy was an impossibility, because the moment any cause is postulated one antecedent and causal to it, as well as one subsequent, are at once re- quired. The Universe, from this point of view, is but an eternal sequence of causes and effects impossible of inter- ruption or cessation. This is a true view of all finite causes and effects. These are a series in which the cessation of one cause as an effect changes necessarily the rela- tion of this to a future one, so that it becomes in turn a cause. Yet if this is true of finite causes and effects, it none the less demands the postulating, philosophically, of a causal basis which supports the whole finite series without itself being in any way modified or limited by so doing. Thus, if the series of finite causes and effects which we recognize as the manifested or phenomenal Universe be likened to an immense series of arches spanning an ocean, the existence and integrity of each of which truly depends upon its immediate neighbor upon either side, then the Causeless Cause would be the solid rock upon which the piers supporting all the arches rest. That rock is equally undisturbed and unmodified whether piers or arches rest upon it or not. And this non-limitation and non-modification is the same, although a portion
of this rock be used in the construction of both piers and arches. In like manner, the Causeless Cause remains unmodified, although it is both the base upon which phenomenal existence rests and that phenomenal existence itself (as one aspect of its manifestation).

The Atman, the highest human principle, is a Ray from the Causeless Cause, and thus defies definition and eludes analysis. It is the base upon which man's Thinking principle rests its phenomenal existence. It is the pier which supports the arch of a human soul. But it also equally supports and is the base of all things in the Universe as well. It is the Unknowable Something, or No-thing, rather, which binds together those properties which constitute alike Matter, Force, or Consciousness. Thus in gold we have certain properties, as ductility, malleability, weight, cohesion, extension, etc. Now, what has caused these various properties, this malleability, ductility, cohesion, etc., to unite into atomic form as gold? Is it chance, or is there an unifying, synthesizing, causal base, upon which all the properties of any so-called matter can equally rest? Theosophy declares for the latter proposition, and further insists that the varied and multiform qualities and faculties of man's divinely complex mind are also synthesized by and rest upon a Ray from this same Causeless Cause. This Unknowable Ray, then, is Atman, and bestows potentially upon man by virtue of its origin all the Creative,
Preservative, and Destructive (or regenerative) powers we see manifested in the Universe about us. But a Cause without an agent to bring about its effect is inconceivable at least, to all but Western materialistic philosophy. Therefore, as we see in nature an obvious duality in spirit and matter, and
recognize that any absolute law must obtain on all planes of the Cosmos, we must also postulate a material aspect or vehicle for this Atmic Ray. It is as undefinable and metaphysical as Atman itself, but it is an absolutely necessary philosophic hypothesis. It also arises as a perfectly legitimate logical sequence in fol- lowing physical laws into metaphysical domains. This vehicle, for Atman, then, is called Buddhi, and, like Atman, is an universal, indestructible principle potentially present in every conceivable point of space, and, like the latter, its apparent separation in man or nature- an illusion. Yet we would err were we to look upon this base of the material aspect of man's being as being only material.

There is no pure matter in the Cosmos, as there is also no pure spirit. And as each expression of consciousness, under the law of cause and effect, must seek a fitting vehicle, Buddhi, being the vehicle of the Atmic Ray from Absolute Consciousness, is of itself possessed of faculties and powers infinitely superior to man, even in his highest aspect of a Thinking, Reincarnating entity. As the vehicle of Absolute Wisdom and Power, it is called the Knower, in superior contradistinction to that Thinker next it which has to arrive at knowledge and wisdom by thought or reason. As the vehicle of Absolute Consciousness, it corresponds, in its relation to this, to the human brain, or man's physical basis for registering conscious experiences. In
the latter are recorded all his conscious experiences in matter during a physical life. In Buddhi is stored, as corresponding to an eternal, metaphysical brain of the Universe, the conscious experiences of all manvantaras.

To reach the wisdom residing in this Divine Vehicle, to widen one's conscious area to Infinite bounds, is to become immortal in very truth, for it is union with that which is One and Indestructible. Such an union is undoubtedly attainable, but before its attainment stretch such immeasurable vistas of time, such inconceivable experiences in consciousness, that at our present stage speculation upon it seems unwarranted. The union of the lower Personality with the Higher Ego is our present evolutionary task, the relation of which to each other and to nature will be next considered.