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Reincarnation: A Study of the Human Soul
By J.A. Anderson
The Individualization Of The Soul
Considering Consciousness, then, as an essential aspect of the Causeless Cause, we have to postulate it as inhering potentially in every stratum or possible subdivision of the Substance-Aspect of the same Causeless Cause, and as becoming a potency only by virtue of this association. In like manner, matter may be said to be a potentiality in all spirit or consciousness, and as also becoming potent (evolving form) only by and because of this association.
As neither can manifest upon the finite plane without the aid of the other, it is useless to speculate as to their relative superiority. Because the consciousness which we recognize as self-con- sciousness in our thinking, feeling and willing Ego is evi- dently very greatly superior in function to the material form or body with which it is associated, it does riot fol- low that on their own plane the matter and consciousness of the cells out of which this body is constructed are in any similar degree of relative superiority and inferiority, nor that the material basis in which our Ego has its own proper habitation is in a relatively inferior state. Our Egos, as will presently be shown, are now using these bodies to bring themselves into sense relations with the material plane, similarly as a scientist uses the microscope to open up avenues of knowledge otherwise unattainable.
Matter of some degree is the great register upon which the Conscious-Aspect of the Causeless Cause records its experiences. Without this association, continuity of conscious experiences could not be assured unless we as- sume consciousness without any material basis whatever to be a possibility in nature, which position must always remain an assumption because unverifiable, unthinkable, and analogically unwarrantable from all phenomena to which we have present access. The immortality of that conscious center we recognize as our " I am myself" depends entirely, from its material aspect, upon the relative permanency or impermanency of the material tablets upon which it records its conscious experiences. And the " Primordial Substance" of Western philosophy, as well as the " mulaprakriti," or " root of matter," of the
Eastern Vedantins the Substance-Aspect of this study is but the great and eternal tablet upon which Infinite Consciousness inscribes its finite experiences.
If, then, at the dawn of a new awakening to material existence, we have the re-emerging, in obedience to the law of cyclic activity, of consciousness clothed in material form, we may picture such consciousness as a bare potency only. It IS, but it can not be said to have any other attributes. It has clothed itself with appropriate Substance, under another great law of the Absolute unto itself that of Cause and Effect. Passing by, for the present, those infinite variations of appropriate form re- sulting from the degrees of becoming attained by differ- ing entities during past manvantaras, let us take up that which we may term monadic or (to us) undifferentiated virgin substance it has imposed upon itself a limitation.
It has acquired the widening of consciousness resulting from this association, and can never again return to its for- mer condition of bare subjectivity. Let us suppose that this association, which for want of a better we may term elemental, continues for a manvantara. At that period, if no sooner, the bond would be dissolved and the conscious- ness freed, to take a new clothing and attain a farther ex- perience at the next great awakening of the Cosmos.
This time it can not re-enter just the same class or degree of substance it did before, for it has something added to it which makes it greater than before this addition.
Therefore, it must, under the stress of that which we term natural evolution, seek higher avenues, and this plainly and simply because of the mathematical axiom that the lesser can not contain the greater. It seeks, then, a higher expression, and clothes itself, let us say, with that which we know as mineral, or inorganic, matter. It re- mains another planetary or minor manvantara in this form until freed by another planetary or minor pralaya.
Under the same law it can not at a new world-birth re- clothe itself in mineral matter; it must seek the vegetable kingdom. Thence it rrvust pass to the animal, and from thence be pushed to the human ; and all this under the necessity of natural law governing evolution of form, this u natural law" being that primal impress upon it by the Logoi at the great manvantaric dawn.
This is a general view of the process from its purely material aspect. It of necessity only pictures half the reality, as all one-sided views must. ' There is also a .con- scious aspect, which must not be left out of consideration. Retracing our steps to pick this up, let us pause to reflect consciousness. It represents as nearly as we can imagine pure, subjective potentiality of becoming. Yet in this first clothing of itself in its counterpart pure, unimpressed, upon what must take place when bare, subjective consciousness has been released from its first association with a material vestment. We have seen, under the law that the lesser can not contain the greater, that it can not re- clothe itself with the same undifferentiated matter again.
Where, then, will it find material for its next and higher expression? Evidently, it can only do this by creating for itself vestments out of matter already the seat of consciousness in its own former and lower expression. So, if this lower expression be pictured in some inconceivable way as transcendentally atomic using this term "atom" in its ordinary scientific acceptation, then it must synthesize and collect these transcendental atoms into, let us suppose, transcendental molecules, and of these build its higher habitation. By so doing it not only does not in- terfere with the evolution of form and the becoming in consciousness going on in these primitive atoms, but also actually aids and hastens this process by its own presence, and consequent imparting, to a degree at least, its own essence to this atomic consciousness with which it is thus, as it were, molecularly associated.
This lifting up of lower consciousness by the presence and surrounding of higher is the spiritual aspect of the great evolutionary process, and one which the scientist resolutely refuses to recognize, although obeying its commands inTTis 'associa- tion with, and impress imparted to, the cells of his body every moment of his life. It has been called the Divine Law of Compassion, and an attribute of the very Absolute itself. Thus it is that the higher must help the lower; unconsciously in the lower kindoms, consciously in the higher or try to oppose the highest law in nature, and perish ! In this fact lies the oft-repeated assertion of Theosophists that altruism is the law, and the only means of progress, upon the higher human planes at least. For man has become a self-conscious factor in that great scheme of evolution which has for its basis Divine compassion.
Recognizing, then, the dual aspect of that which we term evolution, but which is only an evolution of form and a becoming in consciousness, let us once more retrace our steps somewhat in our study of the becoming of the human soul. Yet in all this we must not lose sight of the fact that " every entity in the Universe either is, was, or prepares to become, a man."* We must not view man for one instant as apart from nature as a whole, or as* not
subject to her every law in common with all other entities whether of high or low degree. We have seen, in a general way, how the process of evolution, which has been well termed the Cycle of Necessity, forces entities into progressively higher forms of matter; that, in fact, every descent or involution of spirit, or consciousness, in matter is the exact equivalent of an evolution of material form.
For the new descent compels the building of higher forms to contain, or to allow expression for, the entities crowded out if the term be allowable of their old habitations by the incoming guests. We have seen, also, that consciousness is at first monadic using this term in its true sense of One-ness, and which is quite different from that in which we speak of the human Monad and is only very gradually impressed with the stamp of any individual
experience. It might be likened to the crude gold nuggets, which are simply gold at first, and indistinguishable from other nuggets until they become coins of different values under the various individualizing processes and stamps received in the mint. If, now, we remember that this which we have termed a Great Manvantara, or objective arc of the Universe, is interrupted by an almost infinite number of minor pralayas, or subjective cycles of rest,
of equally infinite degrees of incompleteness, we shall at length be in a position to appreciate evolution as we perceive its action in nature about us. For under the general view, with which this chapter was prefaced, it would seem to have been inferred that only Great Pralayas, or times of Universal Rest, allowed of the liberation of consciousness and its consequent progression in future manvantaras.
This is By no means the case. These pralayas extend from the unthinkable periods contemplated by the Brahmanical classification, and represented arithmetically by fifteen places of figures, to periods of perhaps less than a second, as in the case of the death and renewals of the molecules composing the cells of our bodies. The death of a human body is only a .pralaya or rest for the soul, affording another opportunity, after this rest is over, for further conscious experiences. The death of a planet is its pralaya; and so on for a cell, a sun, or any entity whatever.
These minor pralayas by no means restore consciousness to its absolute condition, as the Great Pralayas do, but only to relative and infinitely varying states of freedom from material form. Thus, sleep is a pralaya which temporarily frees man's higher principles, while death is similar, but of much higher degree. After the first, consciousness must return to the same body; after the second, it clothes itself with an entirely new one. Minor and incomplete pralayas, such as sleep, are often spoken of as Obscurations Returning from this necessary digression : The consciousness expressed in mineral form, upon its dissociation from any cause from this, could easily re-enter any, or almost any, portion of the entire mineral kingdom. So the lowly forms of vegetable or animal life, respectively, might easily be capable of a wide range of choice among other lowly forms of their kingdoms. But how about that consciousness expressed in the elephant, the tiger, or the stately tree, even? Is it possible to conceive of a magnificent oak, for example, upon the destruction of its cel- lular clothing, re-entering a fungus or a daisy ? or of the carnivorous, cruel tiger reappearing as a dove? These would be but senseless attempts to make the lesser contain the greater; to pour the ocean into the thimble.
It is easy to see that each conscious experience added makes it more" and more difficult, as the ages go by, for a reincarnating entity to even re-enter its own class; and that thus, in its minor degree, it will travel its own cycle of necessity, first as an element, then as a mineral, then a plant, an animal, a man and a god ! It is also comprehensible, if but dimly, howr the beginnings of individuality are thus faintly impressed upon potential centers of consciousness in kingdoms far below the human, or even the animal. How these potential centers themselves originate is not a subject for finite inquiry; it is a mystery per- taining to the Great Unknowable Causeless Cause. Weonly know that they do originate; and, as stated, may, without transcending finite limits, dimly conceive of their after processes. It is within our power, also, to imagine and even to trace a pathway by following which we can perceive that, after unthinkable periods of conscious experiences in lower forms, there would at last come a time when a conscious center forced into a higher kingdom would recognize that this state was unlike former ones and, lo ! the mystery of self-consciousness is achieved, and a human soul has become ! For self-con- sciousness is but the recognition that our consciousness is different from that of entities around us, the differenti- ation of Ego from Non-Ego. This once recognized, all our magnificent introspective or subjective mental processes become only a question of widening phenomenal experience.
Yet the view of man's becoming will still be one-sided if we lose sight of the spiritual aspect of evolution, already referred to. Every advanced entity in the Universe, as we have seen, is forced during the Cycle of Necessity, by this grand law of involution, plus evolution, to clothe itself with entities occupying lower forms of matter. It thus secures its own continued conscious experiences, and mercifully assists those with which it is thus associated to rise in the scale of being. This is the true mystery of man's relation to the bodies in which he is incarnated. He is using lower forms of life to enable him to obtain conscious experiences on the material plane. Until this simple explanation is recognized by Western nations they will continue to grope between the Scylla of materialistic negation and Charybdis of dogmatic superstition.
Once this spiritual aspect of evolution 'is recognized, however, much of the mystery of man's dual nature, of those two souls which Goethe declares strive in every human breast, becomes intelligible. The entities our Higher Egos thus occupying the highly complex molecular associations composing our bodies, light up, by their presence in this form, a reflection of the pure flame constituting their own higher essence. Having thus ration- alized that which was before but physical senses commonto all animals as well as animal man, they or we can now relate themselves to this plane of phenomena throughthis reflection thus imparted by their presence. But, alas, in rationalizing they have not destroyed the desires andpassions of purely animal, sensuous existence. On the contrary, these are strengthened a thousand-fold by beingthus illumined by reason. There has been added to the sensuous delight that of anticipation as well as remembrance. The reasoning, remembering animal now runs riot in its mad chase after sensuous delights.
And to control this fatally beautiful animal, to spiritualize senses thus rationalized, is the hard task set before every humansoul. This is the conflict the two souls within our breast fighting for mastery which has been the theme of manyan inspired poem, from the Bhagavad Gita down to the humble Salvation Army enthusiast who sings, " My Soul, be on thy guard!" Yet this very conflict strengthens, even as the fierce winds only cause the oak to strike more deeply its roots into the earth. It is a necessary part of the great scheme of evolution a rugged, danger- ous portion of that way which " leads up hill to the very end."
