English
It finds that vehicle—not consciously, but under the opération of a comprehensive natural law, just as the appropriate molecules of matter from the atmosphere are drawn into the composition of a plant—in a newly developing human form. So far we have just a bare outline of the theory of Re-incarnation. We start with a soul in physical life —we follow it through the experiences of life which develop all those innumerable memories and affections 58 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. and associations of thought which make up the person or personality in question (a something quite distinct, of course, from the body which is its vehicle). We perceive that personality proceeding next to enjoy a spiritual existence (for periods enormously outrunning the span of physical life), and then we find it returning to a new earth life to gather in fresh experience, and develop fresh capacity for knowledge, and perhaps to make that all-important moral progress which can only be accomplished in the midst of the temptations, the struggles, and the internal victories of the physical plane. But to understand the doctrine aright, it..is above all things necessary to keep in view the law under which the soul, at the expiration of its spiritual rest, is drawn back into earth life. That law is known to Oriental philosophy as the law of Karma, and it is the essential complement of the doctrine of Re-incarnation. In its broad outlines this law is very easy of comprehension. The literal meaning of the word is simply ‘‘doing’’ or ‘‘action.” But the law without which the whole scheme of human life would be chaotic, enacts that action of whatever kind must give rise to consequences ; that on the moral plane the effect follows the cause as inevitably as in the laboratory. The word seems sometimes to puzzle readers unfamiliar with occult literature, but need never do so although used sometimes in different senses, because the context of any sentence must always show in what sense it is used. The law of Karma is, as just described, the great principle that RE-INCARNATION. 59 effect follows cause, that as we sow so shall we reap, that good deeds give rise to happiness in some form or another, and evil deeds to the reverse. Then, as a substantive, Karma is often spoken of as the action itself which gives rise to a result, and thus we come to speak of bad karma or good karma as phrases indicating the kind of action productive of good or evil. Again Karma may be spoken of as the force which explains any actual condition of things, and is thus associated especially with the teaching concerning Re-incarnation, with which we are now concerned. It shows us that the bodily form to which the soul is drawn back is not selected at random—as in a certain sense the raindrops may be said to fall at random on the shore or the sea, on the desert or the fruitful plain. Governed by the all-sufficient discernment of Nature, the soul ripe for Re-incarnation finds its expression in a body which affords it the exact conditions of life which Karma—in this sense its desert—requires. The circumstances of life to which that body introduces its tenant, the destiny of happiness or suffering which its leading characteristics provide for, its intellectual capacities as an instrument on which the soul can play, are all determined (with an infinite variety of other conditions) by the Karma of the re-incarnating soul, or, to use what is, perhaps, a more scientific expression, of the re-incarnating Ego. No one need here for an instant be embarrassed by the familiar phenomena in human life of what is called heredity. Physical forms are transmitted on the plane of physical evolution from 60 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. father to son with sometimes remarkable resemblances ; in such cases heredity is not the cause, but the con- comitant of the attributes manifested by the son. His independent soul Karma has required such a vehicle as the man who becomes his father was physically qualified to engender. Many illustrations might be taken from Nature to show her various forces and powers playing in this way into one another’s hands. Assimilation is the law by which Re-incarnation and Karma reconcile themselves with heredity. Now this statement of the view really held by adherents of Oriental philosophy in respect to Re-incarnation should go far to answer by anticipation many objections to the idea often urged by people who acquire an inaccurate or incomplete notion of the teaching. The suggestion, for instance, that we cannot have passed former lives on earth because we do not remember them, might be an objection to some totally different theory, but it is no objection to the theory I have reviewed. For manifestly, by the hypothesis, it is impossible for any one returning to the incarnate life to remember that which he must wear out. completely distil, and forget, as regards its specific details, before he is qualified to re-incarnate. If it is alleged, as has, indeed, sometimes been alleged with great force in reference to particular cases, that some rarely organised persons have maintained recollections of a former life of no very remote period, all we need point out is that few of the standing rules of natural growth in any of the kingdoms of RE-INCARNATION. 61 Nature are beyond the reach of occasional abnormal exceptions. It is the rule, for instance, that men of our race live to about threescore years and ten, but there are many examples in which that rule is violated, and we may conceive in the same way that people sometimes die prematurely from the spiritual planes of Nature and return before their time to the earth life. Nor in venturing that guess need we assume that accidents like those which terminate life abruptly sometimes amongst us, are liable to befall the released souls of the higher levels. Premature returns to earth life in the rare cases where they occur, may be due to Karmic complications too elaborate to inquire into now. The important point is that the regular course of events must necessarily clear the Ego of all specific recollections of one life before it is ready for another. It might be desirable that this should be done in the interest of the soul’s progress, if for no other reason, Life would perhaps hardly be bearable for human beings still in a humble phase of evolution, if the long and weary procession of uninteresting existences through which they had passed lay within sight behind them, before an enlightened spirituality of consciousness had shown them the ultimate possi- bilities of progress in future. And each life in turn would not, perhaps, be fraught with its own lessons unless these were learned separately, as it were, and one by one. But above all the forgetfulness of each life is plainly due to that provision of Nature already referred to which ensures for each of us after death the maximum fruition of all our spiritual aspirations 62 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. in the corresponding and appropriate realms of consciousness. It would be unjust to the soul that it should remember, before it is exalted enough to exercise faculties far transcending those of the present average mankind. Memories are apt to be tinged either with sad longing or regret. For a man to remember some long vanished happiness of a former incarnation would mean one of two things: either he would have been unfairly deprived of the spiritual complement of that happiness, turned out too soon from the Heaven in which it would naturally be protracted, or supposing his new conditions of physical life owing to bad Karma —1.e., to evil-doing on his part in the former life—to be the painful penalty of such misdoing, he would be doubly punished if allowed the tantalising memory of what he had lost. Finally, as regards this point, though I have here been endeavouring to justify the law of Nature in question, it 1s not always to be expected that we can do this completely, and even if some critics remain inclined to dispute the wisdom of Nature in providing a draught of I,ethe, ‘‘on slipping through from state to state,’ I would answer that the first thing we have to do in studying these mysteries is to find out what ts, leaving to a more advanced period of our knowledge the task of ascertaining why it 1s. At all events, the fact that we do not remember former incarnations, taken in conjunction with the merciful arrangement that provides us after each physical life a long and, in most cases, highly enjoy- able and refreshing expansion of our existence on RE-INCARNATION. 63 the spiritual planes, is no impediment whatever to the acceptance of the Re-incarnation theory, if we find it recommended to acceptance on independent grounds. Coming now to some of those independent grounds, I would call attention to a somewhat recondite but extremely important argument, which is this: Ex mihtlo nihil fit. ‘That is a rule which commands our respect aS much on the spiritual as on the physical plane of Nature. Now, independently of the broad teachings of religion, there is plenty of evidence around us for inquirers who are not too much prejudiced to avail themselves of it, to show that the human soul is a real entity even when apart from and independent of the body with which it is associated during physical life. The experiences of spiritualism afford us this evidence. In spite of all the fraud and trickery with which the practice of Spiritualism is surrounded, and in spite of the insufhciency of its most genuine experiences to establish the theories which many spiritualists have hastily built up, nothing but wilful ignorance of these experiences can blind the world at large to the proof it affords of one all-important fact, viz.