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How- ever, without professing to realise this, we may, at any rate, intellectually comprehend that men of abnormal spirituality, who have declared such a desire, are not on that account declaring a desire for extinction of consciousness. For them, at all events, the higher kind of consciousness embraces the lower, supersedes it and triumphs over it. If Buddha thus said nothing to break down existing beliefs in the normal progress of man through successive rebirths, intercalated with successive periods of heavenly enjoyment, and if Hindu philosophy had already acknowledged that the highest state of human evolution would carry men into Nirvana, what was it that he did teach? The answer will be readily substantiated by the sermons and teachings of Buddhist literature, as already translated for Western reference, and will in half-a-dozen words afford the clue to the comprehension of his 82. THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. whole position. He taught the way to Nirvana. This teaching had previously been esoteric. He sought to show all men the way to Nirvana, and the rules of life with which almost all his recorded utterances are thus concerned, did not constitute an everyday code of morality for ordinary people. They were the prescriptions laid down for those whose spiritual aspirations were already so highly awakened that they desired Nirvana; or, at all events, were so near the threshold of that desire that a little stimulus to their spirituality might suffice to lead them across it. The proof of this view will be supplied most readily, not by quoting at length from the language which Buddha addressed to his monks, to “the brethren,’ who were avowedly candidates for Nirvana, but by showing that all the while he recognised a totally different sort of morality for men who were still in the fetters of separateness, and whose highest aspirations were for individual spiritual happiness in Heaven. Tet us take, for example, the following passage from the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, as translated by Dr. Rhys David (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, page 16), by no means the only one of the kind that could be produced, but sufficient in itself for our present purpose. The sentences quoted constitute a short address to certain ‘‘householders,’’ followers of his teaching, but persons who were not engaged in the arduous struggles of arhatship,—that candidature for Nirvana of which we have already spoken. Here there are no ambiguous metaphysics to lead astray the minds of later readers RE-INCARNATION. 83 out of sympathy with the subtle selflessness of Nirvanic aspirations. The passage runs :— Then the Blessed one addressed the Pataligama disciples, and said :—Fivefold, oh householders, is the loss of the wrong- doer through this want of rectitude. In the first place, the wrong-doer, devoid of rectitude, falls into great poverty through sloth; in the next place, his evil repute gets noised abroad; thirdly, whatever society he enters, whether of Brahmans, nobles, heads of houses, or Samanas, he enters shyly and confused; fourthly, he is full of anxiety when he dies; and lastly, on the dissolution of the body after death, he is reborn into some unhappy state of suffering or woe. Fivefold, oh householders, is the gain of the well-doer through the practice of rectitude. In the first place, the well-doer, strong in rectitude, acquires great wealth through his industry; in the next place, good reports of him are spread abroad; thirdly, whatever society he enters, whether of nobles, Brahmans, heads of houses, or members of the order, he enters confident and self-possessed ; fourthly, he dies without anxiety ; and lastly, on the dissolution of the body after death, he is reborn into some happy state in Heaven. - Certainly it might be argued that this address does not contain a complete code of even worldly morality, but if the question were to judge the ethics of Buddha’s teaching we may find plenty of other material to work with. The very simplicity of the appeal here made to selfishness as a motive for well doing.gives the present quotation its value, as showing how fully Buddha recognised the persistent existence of the soul as an individual entity after the death of the body in regard to the great bulk of mankind at large, in regard to whom there might be no question of treading the path to Nirvana. Coming now to the teaching of Christianity—in reference to which the Western world has so long 84 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. denied itself the advantage of comparative theosophy —we find the later faith really taking Re-incarnation for granted, just as this was done by the earlier Buddhist reform. One of the most striking of the passages in the New Testament that recognises Re-incarnation is that in which Jesus refers to the prophecy in Malachi that Elijah or Elias would return to earth. The prophecy itself occurs in the last verse but one of the Old Testament, ‘‘ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.’ Jesus refers to this, according to the eleventh chapter of Matthew, as follows: ‘‘ But what went ye out for to see? a man clothed in soft raiment? . . . But wherefore went ye out? To see a prophet ? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist And if ye are willing to receive it this is Elijah which is to come. He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” The same idea is expressed in the ninth chapter of Mark, as follows :—‘‘ And they asked him, saying, The scribes say that Elijah must first come. And he said unto them, Elijah indeed cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how is it written of the Son of man, that he should suffer many things and be set at nought ? But I say unto you, that Elijah is come, RE-INCARNATION. 85 and they have also done unto him whatsoever they listed, even as it is written of him.” Again, in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, we read :—‘‘ And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elijah must come first ? And he answered and said, Elijah indeed cometh, and shall restore all things; but I say unto you that Elijah is come already and they knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they listed. Even so shall the Son of man also suffer of them. Then understood the disciples that he spake to them of John the Baptist.” In what sense these words can be taken except as meaning that John the Baptist was a Re-incarnation of Elijah it would be difficult to say. The remarkable words above quoted, ‘‘ He that hath ears let him hear,” show that the information was given out rather for the use of the enlightened than of the common multitude, who might be expected not to understand its full significance; but it is evident, from another passage, that Jesus assumed a widespread knowledge around Him of the principle of Re-incarnation, for in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew we read :— ‘‘Now, when Jesus came into the parts of Cesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, saying: Who do men say that the Son of man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist; some Elijah; and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Jesus then goes on to repudiate any such specific individuality for Himself, but none the less does the conversation show that the idea of Re-incarnation was a familiar and accepted principle with those 86 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. whom he addressed ; while far from rebuking that belief as a principle, He explicitly affirms it in the case of John the Baptist. That the principle in question was a _ generally accepted belief among the disciples is plainly shown by the passage in John ix., relating to the man who was blind from his birth : ‘““ And as he passed by he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It would be a digression if I went into an analysis of the answer which Jesus here gives—“ Neither did this man sin nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” The value of the passage for my present purpose lies in the signi- ficance of the question. The man had been blind from his birth, and yet the disciples asked did he earn that affliction by sin? ‘The question was either nonsense, or it meant did he sin in his last tncarnation ? The truth appears to be that it is only among the modern generations of the Western world, when the inner science of spiritual nature has been so deeply obscured by the acquirements of material civilisation, that people have lost touch with the all-important tenet that true Theosophists, students of Divine Wisdom, are at last struggling to restore. It has been forgotten so long that people who have constructed a fanciful scheme of human destinies for themselves, are sometimes in the present day inconquerably loth to welcome back the truth. They find it uncomfortable, and regard that as a sufficient ground for its rejection, RE-INCARNATION. 87 unaware of the fact that the other alternative—the perpetuation ad infinitum of the miserable personalities that so many men are doomed to bear, or, as I should rather say, have built up for themselves by the sad misuse they have hitherto made of their opportunities —would be for the majority of the present race the most profoundly uncomfortable fate that could well be imagined.