English
And it is but a short-sighted aspiration, indeed, which would lead even the most lofty-minded and cultivated members of that race to prefer the infinite perpetuation of their own personalities—to the infinite improvement of these which the principles of Re-incarnation hold out to them. I am not unaware of the hypothesis which some thinkers may vaguely cling to, according to which they hope for improve- ment along some unknown channels of progress in spiritual realms external to the life of this planet. Such unphilosophical expectations ought not to be maintained by a generation for whom it has been clearly shown—if they have eyes to see—that the spiritual planes of Nature are closely linked with that on which humanity is manifest in the flesh. Such hopes ought not to be the refuge of those whose experience, far transcending that of the common-place world at large, renders them familiar with the idea just expressed. The simple creed that we shall go to Heaven if we are good, and there be taken care of and helped along somehow, may be a good working creed for men in an early stage of spiritual development who are drifting along from one unintelligent life to another, remitting to later opportunities the commencement of 88 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. their higher evolution. But it is not a creed that can long suffice for people who begin to realise the intimate manner in which various states of existence in this highly complicated world around us are _ blended together. It converts the visible world—for one thing: as I have said—into a seething cauldron of injustice, and further than this, it degrades it into playing an almost useless part in the evolution of humanity—for by the hypothesis I speak of all that would be really important in that evolution would have to be performed elsewhere. We need not, however, disinherit the earth and deny it the fruition of its own suffering. As far as the human family, as manifested on earth, has already advanced beyond the condition of the lowliest savages —and further—will that family advance in the future. To question or doubt this would be an insult to the majesty of the Divine principle in Nature, with which most surely the human family must be in close relations. As we grow in moral stature and wisdom and in all the higher capacities, as we work our way on through the sometimes painful schooling of physical life, our souls grow gradually fitted to inhabit the physical organisms of the future which the progressive forces of the material plane will evolve for us as we succes- sively return to them. We shall all of us see the world again, under those greatly ameliorated conditions, and looking back then to this period will smile to think that it was ever possible for men to regard the present conditions of this now current race as a fitting platform from which to part company for ever from the sphere of incarnate experience. RE-INCARNATION. 89 So far I have dealt with a mass of reflections bearing on the doctrine of Re-incarnation. The subject, however, may be handled in a different way as soon as we get touch with the thought that at certain stages of advancement in occult study people whose faculties have undergone adequate development are enabled to recover a full and complete recollection of their former lives—a recollection far more complete indeed than that which enables ordinary people in mature life to remember the events of their youth. Clairvovant faculties, indeed, that are susceptible of exercise on the spiritual plane as well as on the astral—of which more anon—will enable their possessor to do more than remember his own past lives. It will enable him to get into magnetic relations with the imperishable records of other lives as well, and to track back the previous existences on the physical plane of almost anyone with whom he may be acquainted. And in the same way the adepts of occult science know by their own personal observation, not merely that Re-incarnation is the law of human evolution, but the exact way in which it works, I should be arranging my explanations, however, in the wrong order if I tried to elucidate the science of the matter before treating fully of the “ higher self’’ of man, which is the true Re-incarnating Ego. So this department of the subject must be picked up again a little later on. go THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. CHAPTER IV. THE HIGHER SELF. A FUNDAMENTAL error concerning the constitution of the human soul, which crude conceptions of spiritual science have imposed on modern thinking, has been that which leads many people to regard it as a simple entity, complete in itself, self-contained on the plane of Nature to which it belongs, as the incarnate man is, or appears to be, self-contained in reference to the other similar beings around him. People think of the soul—when sc far acquiescent in conventional religious teaching as to put trust in the theory that there is such a thing—much as they think of the Djin, of the old fairy tale, imprisoned for a time in the bottle found by the fisherman of the Arabian Nights. Death is a process of letting it out of the bottle, and then it proceeds to live according to its nature—a complete entity set free, which was formerly imprisoned. But the more we study Nature, even on the physical plane, the more complex do we find her phenomena to be, and the same rule holds good on the higher planes of natural activity. Conceptions we form of super-physical processes, expand ad infinttum the longer the mind dwells on their wider significance. The first notion we may put together of any such process can rarely, indeed, in the beginning bear any closer resemblance to the truth than the notion THE HIGHER SELF. | gI we form of a solid by examining one of its sides. The mind may ultimately be enabled to hold all the attri- butes of the solid in its grasp, but that achievement is only possible as the consequence of a large development of its first impressions. It may be unnecessary to dis- card those impressions. From the later standpoint they will seem to have afforded a very crude idea of the truth, but they will be valued still as having led up to more complex conceptions, which for that matter may in their turn be developed still further as our capacity for knowledge is expanded. In this way the picture of the soul’s growth through Re-incarnation under the guidance of the Karmic law, which is presented to the mind by the first broad analysis of esoteric teaching, is, to begin with, a stupend- ous advance on the happy-go-lucky theory of soul creation. Even the view of life which accepts the soul as a primary fact without seeking or offering any explanation of its genesis, which treats it as a new creation originating with the birth of each child, is no doubt an advance upon the blank unconsciousness of anything connected with life beyond sensation, which we may reasonably impute to the animal king- dom, but which even the savage feebly endeavours to rebel against when he constructs a vision of the happy hunting grounds, though modern materialism endeavours to cultivate the gloomy doctrine with much intellectual ingenuity. In doing this, by the bye, he is pleasantly unaware of the fact that he is illus- trating in his own person one of the principles brought to light by esoteric science—that the culmination of 92 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. the physical intellect is the nadir point of spiritual enlightenment. He will eventually appreciate the further principle that in the progress of the cycle evolution will go on, even after that point is reached, illuminating the physical intellect with an influx of spiritual perception without requiring it to forfeit any portion of its own independent conquest. But, to go back to our comparison, just as blank ignorance of soul is well superseded by the illuminating conjecture which recognises it as at all events a something, even if created ex nthilo; and just as that idea in turn is enormously elevated in the philosophical scale when harmonised with the principles of Re-incarnation and Karma, so may the first conception of spiritual evolu- tion, as proceeding along that path, be developed by a fuller examination of the highly complicated consti- tution of the soul, and of the methods by which the experiences, opportunities, and sufferings of each incar- nate existence are made to react on the permanent immortal consciousness, and translated into so much cosmic growth. In approaching such problems we may be coming into the neighbourhood of the boundaries beyond which precise language is inapplicable to spiritual research. In handling such topics it is well to remember that any attempt to pass beyond those boundaries will necessarily be futile. The attributes and modes of consciousness of Universal Spirit, for example, are beyond the reach of language because they are beyond the reach of thought functioning in a physical brain ; and metaphysicians, who sometimes attempt, by the THE HIGHER SELF. 93 construction of quaint phrases, to suggest the belief that their thoughts have outrun in subtlety the resources of expression, are probably, in most cases, as little qualified to apprehend, as their phrases to convey, ideas that are really entitled to be so described. But, on the other hand, as long as we find it possible to be precise, it is a fatal mistake for the student of spiritual science to be content with vague suggestions. Cloudiness of language is not depth of thought.