English
The harmony between occultism and the essence of everything that is most exalted in religious aspiration or emotion is unmistakable for everyone who gets on far enough in the study of occultism to realise how much more it signifies than that which it is sometimes supposed to be chiefly concerned with—the unveiling of a new set of natural mysteries, the exploration of a new realm of scientific wonder. It is, ing@ged, the science behind all sciences, without which none can be complete; but it is also the religion behind all religions, without which none can do more than prepare the soul of man for entrance on its loftiest inheritance. 52 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. CHAPTER III. RE-INCARNATION. No purpose worth speaking of can be served by studying the teachings which constitute in their entirety the Esoteric Doctrine until the student is in the first instance completely saturated with the con- ception that the growth and development of the human soul is accomplished by means of successive returns to physical life (with intervening periods of spiritual rest) which, regarded in the aggregate as a- process of Nature, make up what is generally called the theory of Re-incarnation. It is equally true, how- ever, that the subject cannot be studied quite apart from other branches of the great body of knowledge to which it belongs. A general appreciation of the perfect harmony of the Esoteric Doctrine in its various ramifications is often required for the proper comprehension of its fundamental conceptions. Esoteric teaching is not in that respect quite like Euclid’s geometry, of which one may learn a little and no more and yet have that little firmly established in the understanding. It ts like Euclid’s geometry in the sense that the later propositions cannot be accepted unless the earlier propositions have been realised and appreciated first; but to get at that realisation it may often be necessary to sweep on far ahead and RE-INCARNATION. 53 realise how necessary the earlier propositions are to an appreciation of the grander spiritual ideas with which its later exposition may be concerned. Then the student, recommencing the examination of the whole teaching, will begin, perhaps, to see the fundamental principles in a new light, and may finally get them embedded in his permanent con- viction. Then he finds himself at last in possession of a foundation whereon he can build a structure of knowledge which it is possible to ascend with confidence. In dealing at the outset with the question whether the doctrine of human evolution summed up in the , term ‘“‘ Re-incarnation’”’ can be ‘‘proved’”’ or not, in the sense that you can prove a new discovery in physics, we have to recognise that, of course, such proof is impossible. All we can do is to show that it would be profoundly unphilosophical to believe anything else—anything, that is to say, at variance with that doctrine; that Re-incarnation will satis- factorily account for all the phenomena of human life (which the idea can have any relations with), and that these would be chaotic and unintelligible other- wise; that without bringing in this all-important interpretation of its conditions the world around us would be a creation of malevolence and injustice, rather than one of wisdom and goodness; that only by recognising Re-incarnation can we account for one man being a Newton and another an ignorant blockhead; finally, that although the majority of human beings at the present stage of evolution—for 54 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. reasons that esoteric teaching renders abundantly clear—do not remember their past lives, some people whose spiritual development has passed certain limits, actually do remember theirs not merely in a vague and shadowy fashion, but with complete precision and even a fuller grasp of detail than untrained memory will afford in dealing with the earlier periods of a current life. I shall amplify these and other considera- tions directly, but what I want to emphasise for the moment is that in admitting the doctrine of Re- incarnation to be insusceptible of proof —in the absolute, physical sense of the word—lI claim for it all the while that it can be so nearly proved by reasoning, that no intelligent man who correctly apprehends the idea, and who applies it with adequate patience to the experience of existence whether in or out of the body, can possibly fail to believe it as fully, for example, as the modern scientific world believes in the undulatory theory of light. That theory is not argued about any more in these days. It is the only theory that will explain all the facts. And so with Re-incarnation in the domain of spiritual science; it is the only theory which will explain all the facts, and it is luminous with a truly scientific aspect; that is to say, it is in harmony with the uniformities of Nature, affording indeed the only way out of supposing that the uniformities of Nature are rudely violated in the laws which govern the evolution of humanity. Thus, in progress of time, cultivated thinkers will certainly cease to argue about Re-incarna- tion, even before the development in ordinary mankind RE-INCARNATION. 55 of those higher faculties to whlch the concatenation of successive lives will ultimately become as plainly perceptible, no doubt, as the identity of the sun is obvious to us, on his rising every day. The first step towards realising the truth of the doctrine of Re-incarnation is to obtain a clear com- prehension of the views really held by people who recognise that doctrine as explaining the actual process of the soul’s evolution. We possess a considerable mass of writing on the subject now, which students of Oriental philosophy generally would recognise as setting forth the teaching of the most cultivated exponents of that philosophy, and we find, to begin with, that a good many popular notions on the subject which have floated about the world at various periods may be pared away from the central idea. The esoteric doctrine of Re-incarnation, for example, does wot contemplate the descent of human souls, under any circumstances, into animal bodies. In the crudest presentation of the idea, that has been treated as part of the scheme, but I do not believe it has ever been suggested except as a symbol of moral deterioration following on bad lives, or as a disguise of the true teaching. The only theory that I am anxious to support is that according to which the drift of successive Re-incarnations must always be progressive. Never mind for the moment from what phases of existence in the remote past human beings may have ascended: once on the human level they remain on that level, or, at all events continue to advance on that level. 56 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. We may start, in order to explain the real teaching of occultists on the subject of Re-incarnation, at a point in human evolution when the human condition has already been fully attained and when life is going on under the circumstances with which we are familiar. The doctrine is that when a man of our kind dies— as regards the physical manifestation of his conscious- ness—that consciousness passes first of all into spiritual or relatively spiritual conditions of existence, which are calculated to endure for a long time, and are immensely important. From some of these conditions it is undoubtedly possible that touch may be maintained with the consciousness of people still in the earth life. And though there are some spiritual conditions into which the soul may pass which are too exalted to _permit anything resembling what is ordinarily meant by intercourse with friends still in earth life, I imagine that the experience of many Spiritualists would go far to confirm rather than to conflict with that view. Broadly, therefore, it will be seen that the theory of Re-incarnation does not enter into competition with any estimate of the probabilities of spirit life—except in so far as some of those estimates will be satisfied with nothing less than eternity as the duration of the conditions they predict. The theory of Re-incarnation contemplates, with the progress of ages, so great an advance and improvement in the type of humanity, both as regards earthly body and soul consciousness, that it would certainly shrink from supposing that any human being of an imperfect type should be doomed to preserve to all eternity any single personality which RE-INCARNATION. 57 would perpetuate its imperfections. But that theory, let it always be remembered, is in no hurry to obliterate personalities. The spiritual existence following the release of the soul from any particular body may be prolonged, if the experiences of life in that body have been of a peculiarly vivid and inspiring character, for prodigious periods. But the contention of esoteric philosophy is that finite causes must have finite effects. The earthly experience of any human being between birth and death is an accumulation of finite causes, summed up within the experience, the emotions, the thoughts of the life in question. Grant those subjec- tive energies any range of amplification we please, a time will come, according to the doctrine I am now describing, when they are all distilled as it were into the essence of life. The soul has then absorbed into its permanent or truly spiritual nature all the capacities of emotion and knowledge, which its last life invested it with. It is once more a colourless, pure centre of abstract consciousness, and in that capacity, under the affinities of its nature, it once again seeks a vehicle for the activity of its latent capacities.