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The Ancient Wisdom

By A Besant

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Reincarnation

We are now in a position to study one of the pivotal doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom, the doctrine of reincarnation. Our view of it will be clearer and more in congruity with natural order, if we look at it as universal in principle, and then consider the special case of the reincarnation of the human soul.

In studying it, this special case is generally wrenched from its place in natural order, and is considered as a dislocated fragment, greatly to its detriment. For all evolution consists of an evolving life, passing from form to form as it evolves, and storing up in itself the experiences gained through the forms ; the reincarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet the conditions rendered necessary by the individualisation of the continuously evolving life.

Mr. Lafcadio Hearn ( “Mr. Hearn has lost his way in expressing – but not, I think, in his inner view – in part of his exposition of the Buddhist statement of this doctrine, and his use of the word “Ego” will mislead the reader of his very interesting chapter on this subject, if the distinction between real and illusory ego is not readily kept in mind.”) has put this point well in considering the bearing of the idea of the pre-existence on the scientific thought of the West. He says : - (Page 180)  

“With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms of thought crumbled ; new ideas everywhere arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas ; and we now have the spectacle of a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy. The unprecedented rapidity and multiformity of scientific progress during the last fifty years could not have failed to provoke an equally unprecedented intellectual quickening among the non-scientific. “ 

“That the highest and most complex organisms have been developed from the lowest and simplest ; that a single physical basis of life is the substance of the whole living world ; that no line of separation can be drawn between the animal and vegetable ; that the difference between life and non-life is only a difference of degree, not of kind ; that matter is not less incomprehensible than mind, while both are but varying manifestations of one and the same unknown reality – these have already become the commonplaces of the new philosophy.” 

“After the first recognition even by theology of physical evolution, it was easy to predict that the recognition of psychical evolution could not be indefinitely delayed ; for the barrier erected by old dogma to keep men from looking backward had been broken down. And today for the student of scientific psychology the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact, proving the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any other.” 

“None but very hasty thinkers,’ wrote the late Professor Huxley, ‘will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality ; and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.” (Evolution and Ethics, p. 61, ed. 1894 – Kokoro, Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, by Lafcadio Hearn, pp. 237-39 london, 1896).” (Page 181) 

Let us consider the Monad of form, ?tma-Buddhi. In this Monad, the outbreathed life of the LOGOS, lie hidden all the divine powers, but, as we have seen, they are latent, not manifest and functioning. They are to be gradually aroused by external impacts, it being of the very nature of life to vibrate in answer to vibrations that play upon it.

As all possibilities of vibrations exist in the Monad, any vibration touching it will arouse its corresponding vibratory powers, and in this way one force after another will pass from the latent to the active state. (From the static to the kinetic condition, the physicist would say.) Herein lies the secret of evolution ; the environment acts on the form of the living creature – and all things, be it remembered, live – and this action, transmitted through the enveloping form to the life, the Monad, within it, arouses responsive vibrations which thrill outwards from the Monad through the form, throwing its particles, in turn, into vibrations, and rearranging them into a shape corresponding, or adapted, to the initial impact. 

This is the action and reaction between the environment and the organism, which have been recognised by all biologists, and which are considered by some as giving a sufficient mechanical explanation of evolution. Their patient and careful observation of these actions and reactions yields, however, no explanation why the organism should thus react to stimuli, and the Ancient Wisdom is needed to unveil the secret of evolution, by pointing to the Self in the heart of all (Page 182) forms, the hidden mainspring of all the movements of nature.

Having grasped this fundamental idea of a life containing the possibility of responding to every vibration that can reach it from the external universe, the actual response being gradually drawn forth by the play upon it of external forces, the next fundamental idea to be grasped is that of the continuity of life and forms.

Forms transmit their peculiarities to other forms that proceed from them, these other forms being part of their own substance, separated off to lead an independent existence. By fission, by budding, by extrusion of germs, by development of the offspring within the maternal womb, a physical continuity is preserved, every new form being derived from a preceding form and reproducing its characteristics. ( The student might wisely familiarise himself with the researches of Weissman on the continuity of germ-plasm.)

Science groups these facts under the name of the law of heredity, and its observations on the transmission of form are worthy of attention, and are illuminative of the workings of Nature in the phenomenal world. But it must be remembered that it applies only to the building of the physical body, into which enter the materials provided by the parents. 

Her more hidden workings, those workings of life without which form could not be, have received no attention, not being susceptible of physical observation, and this gap can only be filled by the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, given by Those who of old (Page 183) used superphysical powers of observation, and verifiable gradually by every pupil who studies patiently in Their schools.

There is continuity of life as well as continuity of form, and it is the continuing life – with ever more and more of its latent energies rendered active by the stimuli received through successive forms – which resumes into itself the experiences obtained by its incasings in form ; for when the form perishes, the life has the record of those experiences in the increased energies aroused by them, and is ready to pour itself into the new forms derived from the old, carrying with it this accumulated store. 

While it was in the previous form, it played through it, adapting it to express each newly awakened energy; the form hands on these adaptations, inwrought into its substance, to the separated part of itself that we speak of as its offspring, which, beings of its substance, must needs have the peculiarities of that substance; the life pours itself into that offspring with all its awakened powers, and moulds it yet further ; and so on and on. 

Modern science is proving more and more clearly that heredity plays an ever-decreasing part in the evolution of the higher creatures, that mental and moral qualities are not transmitted from parents to offspring, and that the higher qualities the more patent is this fact ‘ the child of the genius is oft-times a dolt; commonplace parents give birth to a genius.

A continuing substratum there must be, in which mental and moral qualities inhere, in order that they may increase, else would Nature, in (Page 184) this most important department of her work, show erratic uncaused production instead of orderly continuity. On this science is dumb, but the Ancient Wisdom teaches that this continuing substratum is the Monad, which is the receptacle of all results, the storehouse in which all experiences are garnered as increasingly active powers.

These two principles firmly grasped – of the Monad with potentialities becoming powers, and of the continuity of the life form – we can proceed to the continuity of life and form – we can proceed to study their working out in detail, and we shall find that they solve many of the perplexing problems of modern science, as well as the yet more heart-searching problems confronted by the philanthropist and the sage.

Let us start by considering the monad as it is first subjected to the impacts from the formless levels of the mental plane, the very beginning of the evolution of form. Its first faint responsive thrillings draw round it some of the matter of that plane, and we have the gradual evolution of the first elemental kingdom, already mentioned. (See chapter IV, on “The Mental Plane”). 

The great fundamental types of the Monad are seven in number, sometimes imaged as like the seven colours of the solar spectrum, derived from the three primary. (“As above, so below.” We instinctively remember the three LOGOI and the seven primeval Sons of the Fire ; in Christian Symbolism, the Trinity and the “Seven Spirits that are before the throne” ; or in Zoroastrian, Ahuramazda and the seven Ameshaspentas.) (Page 185)

Each of these types has its own colouring of characteristics, and this colouring persists throughout the aeonian cycle of its evolution, affecting all the series of living things that are animated by it. Now begins the process of subdivision in each of these types, that will be carried on, subdividing and ever subdividing, until the individual is reached.

The currents set up by the commencing outward-going energies of the Monad – to follow one line of evolution will suffice ; the other six are like unto it in principle – have but brief form-life, yet whatever experience can be gained through them is represented by an increasedly responsive life in the Monad who is their source and cause ; as this responsive life consists of vibrations that are often incongruous with each other, a tendency towards separation is set up within the Monad, the harmoniously vibrating forces grouping themselves together for, as it were, concerted action, until various sub-Monads, if the epithet may for a moment be allowed, are formed, alike in their main characteristics, but differing in details, like shades of the same colour.

These become, by impacts from the lower levels of the mental plane, the Monads of the second elemental kingdom, belonging to the form region of that plane, and the process continues, the Monad ever adding to its power to respond, each Monad being the inspiring life of countless forms, through which it receives vibrations, and, as the forms disintegrate, constantly vivifying new forms ; the process of subdivision also continues from the cause already described. (Page 186) 

Each Monad thus continually incarnates itself in forms, and garners within itself as awakened powers all the results obtained through the forms it animates. We may well regard these Monads as the souls of groups of forms; and as evolution proceeds, these forms show more and more attributes, the attributes being the powers of the monadic group-soul manifested through the forms in which it is incarnated.

The innumerable sub-Monads of this second elemental kingdom presently reach a stage of evolution at which they begin to respond to the vibrations of astral matter, and they begin to act on the astral plane, becoming the Monads of the third elemental kingdom, and repeating in this grosser world all the processes already accomplished on the mental plane.

They become more and more numerous as monadic group-souls, showing more and more diversity in detail, the number of forms animated by each becoming less as the specialised characteristics become more and more marked. Meanwhile, it may be said in passing, the ever-flowing stream of life from the LOGOS supplies new Monads of form on the higher levels, so that the evolution proceeds continuously, and as the more-evolved Monads incarnate in the lower worlds their place is taken by the newly emerged Monads in the higher.

By this ever-repeated process of the reincarnation of the Monads, or Monadic group-soul, in the astral world, their evolution proceeds, until they are ready to respond to the impacts upon them from physical matter. When we remember that the ultimate atoms of each plane have their sphere-walls composed of the coarsest matter of the plane immediately above it, it is easy to see how the Monads become responsive to impacts from one plane after another. (Page 187)

When, in the first elemental kingdom, the Monad had become accustomed to thrill responsively to the impacts of matter of that plane, it would soon begin to answer to vibrations received through the coarsest forms of that matter from the matter of the plane next below. So, in its coatings of matter that were the forms composed of the coarsest materials of the material plane, it would become susceptible to vibrations of astral atomic matter ; and, when incarnated in forms of the coarsest astral matter, it would similarly become responsive to atomic physical ether, the sphere-walls of which are constituted of the grossest astral materials.

Thus the Monad may be regarded as reaching the physical plane ; and there it begins, or, more accurately, all these monadic group-souls begin, to incarnate themselves in filmy physical forms, the etheric doubles of the future dense minerals of the physical world. Into these filmy forms the naturespirits build the denser physical materials, and thus minerals of all kinds are formed, the most rigid vehicles in which the evolving life in-closes itself, and through which the least of its powers can express themselves. Each monadic group-soul has its own mineral expressions, the mineral forms in which it is incarnated, and the specialisation has now reached a high degree. These Monadic group-souls are sometimes called in their (Page 188) totality the mineral Monad or the Monad incarnating in the mineral kingdom.

From this time forward the awakened energies of the Monad play a less passive part in evolution. They begin to seek expression actively to some extent when once aroused into functioning, and to exercise a distinctly moulding influence over the forms in which they are imprisoned. As they become too active for their mineral embodiment, the beginnings of the more plastic forms of the vegetable kingdom manifest themselves, the nature-spirits aiding this evolution throughout the physical kingdoms. In the mineral kingdom there had already been shown a tendency towards the definite organisation of form, the laying down of certain lines ( The axes of growth which determine form. They appear definitely in crystals ) along which the growth proceeded. This tendency governs henceforth all the building of forms, and is the cause of the exquisite symmetry of natural objects, with which every observer is familiar. 

The monadic group-souls in the vegetable kingdom undergo division and subdivision with increasing rapidity, in consequence of the still greater variety of impacts to which they are subjected, the evolution of families, genera, and species being due to this invisible subdivision. 

When any genus, with its generic monadic group-soul, is subjected to very varying conditions, i.e., when the forms connected with it receive very different impacts, a fresh tendency to subdivide is set up in the Monad, and various species are evolved, (Page 189) each having its own specific group-soul.  

When Nature is left to her own working the process is slow, although the nature-spirits do much towards the differentiation of species ; but when man has been evolved, and when he begins his artificial systems of cultivation, encouraging the play of one set of forces, warding off another, then this differentiation can be brought about with considerable rapidity, and specific differences are readily evolved. So long as actual division has not taken place in the monadic group-soul, the subjection of the forms to similar influences may again eradicate the separative tendency, but when that division is completed the new species are definitely and firmly established , and are ready to send out offshoots of their own. 

In some of the longer-lived members of the vegetable kingdom the element of personality begins to manifest itself, the stability of the organism rendering possible this foreshadowing of individuality. With a tree, living for scores of years, the recurrence of similar conditions causing similar impacts, the seasons ever returning year after year, the consecutive motions caused by them, the rising of the sap, the putting forth of leaves, the touches of the wind, of the sunbeams, of the rain – all these outer influences with their rhythmical progression – set up responsive thrillings in the monadic group-soul, and, as the sequence impresses itself by continual repetition, the recurrence of one leads to the dim expectation of its oftrepeated successor. Nature evolves no quality suddenly, and these are the first faint (Page 190) adumbrations of what will later be memory and anticipation.

In the vegetable kingdom also appear the foreshadowings of sensation, evolving in its higher members to what the Western psychologist would term “massive” sensations of pleasure and discomfort. (The “massive” sensation is one that pervades the organism and is not felt especially in any one part more than in others. It is the antithesis of the “acute.”) It must be remembered that the Monad has drawn round itself materials of the planes through which it has descended, and hence is able to contact impacts, from those planes, the strongest and those most nearly allied to the grossest forms of matter being the first to make themselves felt. 

Sunshine and the chill of its absence at last impress themselves on the monadic consciousness ; and its astral coating, thrown into faint vibrations, gives rise to the slight massive kind of sensation spoken of. Rain and drought affecting the mechanical constitution of the form, and its power to convey vibrations to the ensouling Monad – are another of the “pairs of opposites,” the play of which arouses the recognition of difference, which is the root alike of all sensation, and later of all thought. Thus by their repeated plantreincarnations the monadic group-souls in the vegetable kingdom evolve, until those that ensoul the highest members of the kingdom are ready for the next step.

This step carries them into the animal kingdom, and here they slowly evolve in their physical and astral vehicles a very distinct personality. The animal, (Page 191) being free to move about, subjects itself to a greater variety of conditions than can be experienced by the plant, rooted to a single spot, and this variety, as ever, promotes differentiation.

The monadic group-soul, however, which animates a number of wild animals of the same species or subspecies, while it receives a great variety of impacts, since they are for the most part repeated continually and are shared by all the members of the group, differentiates but slowly. 

These impacts aid in the development of the physical and astral bodies, and through them the monadic group-soul gathers much experience. When the form of a member of the group perishes, the experience gathered through that form is accumulated in the monadic group-soul, and may be said to colour it ; the slightly increased life of the monadic group-soul, poured into all the forms which compose its group, shares among all the experiences of the perished form, and in this way continually repeated experiences, stored up in the monadic group-soul, appear as instincts, “accumulated hereditary experiences” in the new forms.

Countless birds having fallen a prey to hawks, chicks just out of the egg will cower at the approach of one of the hereditary enemies, for the life that is incarnated in them knows the danger, and the innate instinct is the expression of its knowledge. In this way are formed the wonderful instincts that guard animals from innumerable habitual perils, while a new danger finds them unprepared and only bewilders them. (Page 192)

As animals come under the influence of man, the monadic group-souls evolves with greatly increased rapidity, and, from causes similar to those which affect plants under domestication, subdivision of the incarnating life is more readily brought about. Personality evolves and becomes more and more strongly marked ; in the earlier stages it may almost be said to be compound – a whole flock of wild creatures will act as though moved by a single personality, so completely are the forms dominated by the common soul, it, in turn, being affected by the impulse from the external world.

Domesticated animals of the higher types, the elephants, the horse, the cat, the dog, show a more individualised personality – two dogs, for instance, may act very differently under the impact of the same circumstances. The monadic group-soul incarnates in a decreasing number of forms as it gradually approaches the point at which complete individualisation will be reached. The desire-body, or K?mic vehicle, becomes considerably developed, and persists for some time after the death of the physical body, leading an independent existence in K?maloka. At last the decreasing number of forms animated by a monadic group-soul comes down to unity, and it animates a succession of single forms – a condition differing from human reincarnation only by the absence of Manas, with its causal and mental bodies.

The mental matter brought down by the monadic group-souls begins to be susceptible to impacts from the mental plane, and the animal is then ready to receive the third great (Page 193) outpouring of the life of the LOGOS – the tabernacle is ready for the reception of the human Monad.

The human Monad is, as we have seen, triple in its nature, its three aspects being denominated, respectively, the Spirit, the spiritual Soul, and the human Soul, ?tma-Buddhi-Manas. Doubtless, in the course of eons of evolution, the upwardly evolving Monad of form might have unfolded Manas by progressive growth, but both in the human race in the past, and in the animals of the present, such has not been the course of Nature.

When the house was ready the tenant was sent down ; from the higher planes of being the ?tmic life descended, veiling itself in Buddhi, as a golden thread ; and its third aspect, Manas, showing itself in the higher levels of the formless world of the mental plane, germinal Manas within the form was fructified, and the embryonic causal body was formed by the union. This is the individualisation of the spirit, the incasing of it in form, and this spirit incased in the causal body is the soul, the individual, the real man. This is his birth hour; for though his essence be eternal, unborn and undying, his birth in time as an individual is definite. 

Further, this outpoured life reaches the evolving forms not directly, but by intermediaries. The human race having attained the point of receptivity, certain great Ones, called Sons of Mind – (Manasaputra is the technical name, being merely the Sanskrit for Sons of Mind.) – cast into men the monadic spark of ?tmaBuddhi-Manas, needed (Page 194) for the formation of the embryonic soul.

And some of these great Ones actually incarnated in human forms, in order to become the guides and teachers of infant humanity. These Sons of Mind had completed Their own intellectual evolution in other worlds, and came to this younger world, our earth, for the purpose of thus aiding in the evolution of the human race. They are in truth, the spiritual fathers of the bulk of our humanity. Other intelligences of much lower grade, men who had evolved in preceding cycles in another world, incarnated among the descendants of the race that received its infant souls in the way just described. As this race evolved, the human tabernacles improved, and myriads of souls that were awaiting the opportunity of incarnation, that they might continue their evolution, took birth among its children.

These partially evolved souls are also spoken of in the ancient records as Sons of Mind, for they were possessed of mind, although comparatively it was but little developed – childish souls we may call them, in distinguishment from the embryonic souls of the bulk of humanity, and the mature souls of the great Teachers.

These child-souls, by reason of their more evolved intelligence, formed the leading types of the ancient world, the classes higher in mentality, and therefore in the power of acquiring knowledge, that dominated the masses of less developed men in antiquity. And thus arose, in our world, the enormous differences in mental and moral capacity which separate the most highly evolved from the least (Page 195) evolved races, and which, even within the limits of single race, separate the lofty philosophic thinker from the well-nigh animal type of the most depraved of his own nation. These differences are but differences of the stage of evolution, of the age of the soul, and they have been found to exist throughout the whole of history of humanity on this globe. Go back as far as we may in historic records, and we may find lofty intelligence and debased ignorance side by side, and the occult records, carrying us backwards, tell a similar story of the early millennia of humanity.

Nor should this distress us, as though some had been unduly favoured and others unduly burdened for the struggle of life. The loftiest soul had its childhood and its infancy, albeit in previous worlds, where other souls were as high above it as others are below it now ; the lowest soul shall climb to where our highest are standing, and souls yet unborn shall occupy its present place in evolution. Things seem unjust because we wrench our world out of its place in evolution, and set it apart in isolation, with no forerunners and no successors. It is our ignorance that sees the injustice ; the ways of Nature are equal, and she brings to all her children infancy, childhood, and manhood. Nor hers the fault if our folly demands that all souls shall occupy the same stage of evolution at the same time, and cries “Unjust!” if the demand be not fulfilled.

We shall best understand the evolution of the soul, if we take it up at the point where we left it, when animal-man was ready to receive, and did (Page 196) receive, the embryonic soul. To avoid a possible misapprehension, it may be well to say that there were not henceforth two Monads in man – the one that had built the human tabernacle, and the one that descended into that tabernacle, and whose lowest aspect was the human soul.

To borrow a simile again from H. P. Blavatsky, as two rays of the sun may pass through a hole in a shutter, and mingling together form but one ray though they had been twain, so is it with these rays from the Supreme Sun, the divine Lord of our universe. The second ray, as it entered into the human tabernacle, blended with the first, merely adding to it fresh energy and brilliance, and the human Monad, as a unit, began its mighty task of unfolding the higher powers in man of that divine Life whence it came. 

The embryonic soul, the Thinker, had at the beginning for its embryonic mental body the mind-stuff envelope that the Monad of form had brought with it, but had not yet organised into any possibility of functioning. It was the mere germ of a mental body, attached to a mere germ of a causal body, and for many a life the strong desire-nature had its will with the soul, whirling it along the road of its own passions and appetites, and dashing up against it all the furious waves of its own uncontrolled animality.

Repulsive as this early life of the soul may at first seem to some when looked at from the higher stage that we have now attained, it was a necessary one for the germination of the seeds of mind. Recognition of difference, the perception that one thing is different (Page 197) from another, is a preliminary essential to thinking at all. And, in order to awaken this perception in the as yet unthinking soul, strong and violent contrasts had to strike upon it, so as to force differences upon it – blow after blow of riotous pleasure, blow after blow of crushing pain.

The external world hammered on the soul through the desire nature, till perceptions began to be slowly made, and, after countless repetitions, to be registered. The little gains made in each life were stored up by the Thinker, as we have already seen, and thus slow progress was made. 

Slow progress, indeed, for scarcely anything was thought, and hence scarcely anything was done in the way of organising the mental body. Not until many perceptions had been registered in it as mental images was there any material on which mental action, initiated from within, could be based ; this would begin when two or more of these mental images were drawn together, and some inference, however elementary, was made from them. That inference was the beginning of reasoning, the germ of all the systems of logic which the intellect of man has since evolved or assimilated. These inferences would at first all be made in the service of the desire-nature, for the increasing of pleasure, the lessening of pain ; but each one would increase the activity of the mental body, and would stimulate it into more ready functioning.

It will readily be seen that at this period of his infancy man had no knowledge of good or of evil; (Page 198) right and wrong for him had no existence. The right is that which is in accordance with the divine will, which helps forward the progress of the soul, which tends to the strengthening of the higher nature of man and to the training and subjugation of the lower, the wrong is that which retards evolution, which retains the soul in the lower stages after he has learned the lessons they have to teach, which tends to the mastery of the lower nature over the higher, and assimilates man to the brute he should be outgrowing instead of to the God he should be evolving.

Ere man could know what was right, he had to learn the existence of the law, and this he could only learn by following all that attracted him in the outer world, by grasping every desirable object, and then by learning from experience, sweet or bitter, whether his delight was in harmony or in conflict with the law. Let us take an obvious example, the taking of pleasant food, and see how infant man might learn therefrom the presence of a natural law. At the first taking, his hunger was appeased, his taste was gratified, and only pleasure resulted from the experience, for his action was in harmony with law. On another occasion, desiring to increase pleasure, he ate overmuch and suffered in consequence, for he transgressed against the law. A confusing experience to the dawning intelligence, how the pleasurable became painful by excess.

Over and over again he would be led by desire into excess, and each time he would experience the painful consequences, until at last he learned moderation, (Page 199) i.e., he learned to conform his bodily acts in this respect to physical law; for he found that there were conditions which affected him and which he could not control, and that only by observing them could physical happiness be insured. Similar experiences flowed in upon him through all the bodily organs, with undeviating regularity ; his outrushing desires brought him pleasure or pain just as they worked with the laws of Nature or against them, and, as experience increased, it began to guide his steps, to influence his choice, It was not as though he had to begin his experience anew with every life, for on each new birth he brought with him mental faculties a little increased, and ever-accumulating store.

I have said that the growth in these early days was very slow, for there was but the dawning of mental action, and when the man left his physical body at death he passed most of his time in K?maloka, sleeping through a brief devachanic period of unconscious assimilation of any minute mental experience not yet sufficiently developed for the active heavenly life that lay before him after many days.

Still, the enduring causal body was there, to be the receptacle of his qualities, and to carry them on for further development into his next life on earth. The part played by the monadic group-soul in the earlier stages of evolution is played in man by the causal body, and it is this continuing entity who, in all cases, makes evolution possible. Without him, the accumulation of mental and moral experiences, shown as (Page 200) faculties, would be as impossible as would be the accumulation of physical experiences, shown as racial and family characteristics without the continuity of physical plasm.

Souls without a past behind them, springing suddenly into existence, out of nothing, with marked mental and moral peculiarities, are a conception as monstrous as would be the corresponding conception of babies suddenly appearing from nowhere, unrelated to anybody, but showing marked racial and family types.

Neither man nor his physical vehicle is uncaused, or caused by the direct power of the LOGOS ; here, as in so many other cases, the invisible things are clearly seen by their analogy with the visible, the visible being, in very truth, nothing more than the images, the reflections, of things unseen. Without a continuity in the physical plasm, there would be no means for the evolution of physical peculiarities ; without the continuity of the intelligence, there would be no means for the evolution of mental and moral qualities. In both cases, without continuity, evolution would be stopped at its first stage, and the world would be a chaos of infinite and isolated beginnings instead of a cosmos continually becoming. 

We must not omit to notice that in these early days much variety is caused in the type and in the nature of individual progress by the environment which surrounds the individual. Ultimately all the souls have to develop all their powers, but the order in which these powers are developed depends (Page 201) on the circumstances amid which the soul is placed. Climate, the fertility or sterility of nature, the life of the mountain or of the plain, of the inland forest or the ocean shore – these things and countless others will call into activity one set or another of the awakening mental energies. 

A life of extreme hardship, of ceaseless struggle with nature, will develop very different powers from those evolved amid the luxuriant plenty of a tropical island ; both sets of powers are needed, for the soul is to conquer every region of nature, but striking differences may thus be evolved even in souls of the same age, and one may appear to be more advanced than the other, according as the observer estimates most highly the more “practical” or the more “contemplative” powers of the soul, the active outward-going energies, or the quiet inward-turned musing faculties. The perfected soul possesses all, but the soul in the making must develop them successively, and thus arises another cause of the immense variety found among human beings. 

For again, it must be remembered that human evolution is individual. In a group informed by a single monadic group-soul the same instincts will be found in all, for the receptacle of the experiences is that monadic group-soul, and it pours its life into all forms dependent upon it. 

But each man has his own physical vehicle and one only at a time, and the receptacle of all experiences is the causal body, which pours its life into its one physical vehicle, and can affect no other physical vehicle, being connected (Page 202) with none other. Hence we find differences separating individual men greater, than the ever separated, closely allied animals, and hence also the evolution of qualities cannot be studied in men in the mass, but only in the continuing individual. The lack of power to make such a study leaves science unable to explain why some men tower above their fellows, intellectual and moral giants, unable to trace the intellectual evolution of a Shankarâchârya or a Pythagoras, the moral evolution of a Buddha or of a Christ.

Let us now consider the factors in reincarnation, as a clear understanding of these is necessary for the explanation of some of the difficulties – such as the alleged loss of memory – which are felt by those unfamiliar with the idea. We have seen that man, during his passage through physical death, K?maloka and Devachan, loses one after the other, his various bodies, the physical, the astral, and the mental. These are all disintegrated, and their particles remix with the materials of their several planes. The connection of the man with the physical vehicle is entirely broken off and done with ; but the astral and mental bodies hand on to the man himself, to the Thinker, the germs of the faculties and qualities resulting from the activities of the earth-life, and these are stored within the causal body, the seeds of his next astral and mental bodies.

At this stage, then, only the man himself is left, the labourer who has brought his harvest home, and has lived upon it till it is all worked up into himself. The dawn of a (Page 203) new life begins, and he must go forth again to his labour until the even.

The new life begins by the vivifying of the mental germs, and they draw upon the materials of the lower mental levels, till a mental body has grown up from them that represents exactly the mental stage of the man, expressing all his mental faculties as organs ; the experiences of the past do not exist as mental images in this new body; as mental images they perished when the old mind-body perished, and only their essence, their effects on faculty, remain ; they were the food of the mind, the materials which it wove into powers, and in the new body they reappear as powers, they determine its materials, and they form its organs. When the man, the Thinker, has thus clothed himself with a new body for his coming life on the lower mental levels, he proceeds, by vivifying the astral germs, to provide himself with an astral body for his life on the astral plane.

This, again, exactly represents his desire-nature, faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in the past, as the seed reproduces its parent tree. Thus the man stands, fully equipped for his next incarnation, the only memory of these events of his past being in the causal body, in his own enduring form, the one body that passes on from life to life.

Meanwhile, action external to himself is being taken to provide him with a physical body suitable for the expression of his qualities. In past lives he has made ties with, contracted liabilities towards, other human beings, and some of these will partly (Page 204) determine his place of birth and his family. – ( This and the following causes determining the outward circumstances of the new life will be fully explained in Chapter IX, on “Karma”.) He has been a source of happiness or of unhappiness to others ; this is a factor in determining the conditions of his coming life. His desire-nature is well disciplined, or unregulated and riotous ; this will be taken into account in the physical heredity of the new body. He has cultivated certain mental powers, such as the artistic ; this must be considered, as here again physical heredity is an important factor where delicacy of nervous organisation and tactile sensibility are required. 

And so on, in endless variety. The man may, certainly will, have in him many incongruous characteristics, so that only some can find expression in any one body that could be provided, and a group of his powers suitable for simultaneous expression must be selected. All this is done by certain mighty spiritual Intelligences,( Spoken of by H.P.Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine. They are the Lipika, the Keepers of the k?rmic records, and the Mah?r?jas, who direct the practical working out of the decrees of the Lipika.) - often spoken of as the Lords of Karma, because it is their function to superintend the working out of causes continually set going by thoughts, desires, and actions. They hold the threads of destiny which each man has woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment determined by his past, unconsciously self-chosen through his past life.(Page 205) 

The race, the nation, the family, being thus determined, what may be called the mould of the physical body – suitable for the expression of the man’s qualities, and for the working out of the causes he has set going – is given by these great Ones, and the new etheric double, a copy of this, is built within the mother’s womb by the agency of an elemental, the thought of the Karmic Lords being its motive power.

The dense body is built into the etheric double molecule by molecule, following it exactly, and here physical heredity has full sway in the materials provided. Further, the thoughts and passions of surrounding people, especially of the continually present father and mother, influence the building elemental in its work, the individuals with whom the incarnating man had formed ties in the past thus affecting the physical conditions growing up for his new life on earth.

At a very early stage the new astral body comes into connection with the new etheric double, and exercises considerable influence over its formation, and through it the mental body works upon the nervous organisation, preparing it to become a suitable instrument for its own expression in the future. This influence commenced in ante natal life – so that when a child is born its brain-formation reveals the extent and balance of its mental and moral qualities – is continued after birth, and this building of brain and nerves, and their correlation to the astral and mental bodies, go on till the seventh year of childhood, at which age the connection between the man and his physical (Page 206) vehicle is complete, and he may be said to work through it henceforth more than upon it. 

Up to this age, the consciousness of the Thinker is more upon the astral plane than upon the physical, and this is often evidenced by the play of psychic faculties in young children. They see invisible comrades and fairy landscapes, hear voices inaudible to their elders, catch charming and delicate fancies from the astral world. These phenomena generally vanish as the Thinker begins to work effectively through the physical vehicle, and the dreamy child becomes the commonplace boy or girl, oftentimes much to the relief of the bewildered parents, ignorant of the cause of their child’s “queerness.” 

Most children have at least a touch of this “queerness,” but they quickly learn to hide away their fancies and visions from their unsympathetic elders, fearful of blame for “telling stories,” or of what the child dreads far more – ridicule. If parents could see their children’s brains, vibrating under an inextricable mingling of physical and astral impacts, which the children themselves are quite incapable of separating, and receiving sometimes a thrill – so plastic are they – even from the higher regions, giving a vision of ethereal beauty, of heroic achievement, they would be more patient with, more responsive to, the confused prattlings of the little ones, trying to translate into the difficult medium of unaccustomed words the elusive touches of which they are conscious, and which they try to catch and retain. Reincarnation, believed in and understood, would relieve child life (Page 207) of its most pathetic aspect, the unaided struggle of the soul to gain control over its new vehicles, and to connect itself fully with its densest body without losing power to impress the rarer ones in a way that would enable them to convey to the denser their own more subtle vibrations.