English
But though that would not be a satisfactory or equitable arrangement all round, if the two phases of the Ego were really the separate entities they look like from the earthly point of view, the pro- priety of the whole situation is amply vindicated as soon as we can be quite sure that, from the celestial point of view, the personality and the Higher Self or Individuality are felt and seen to be one and the same centre of consciousness, though functioning first under one and then under the other set of conditions. How, it may be asked, are we to get proof of this vitally important theory ? In such a region of thought as this we are exploring, it is almost superfluous to answer that proof must be sought for in the interior conscious- ness, which is the more or less obscured reflection in THE HIGHER SELF. 117 each of us of the Higher Self to which such personality may belong. But, meanwhile, I venture to think that, in the ‘‘ sweet reasonableness”’ of the position, a provisional guarantee of its security may be found. We stand face to face with the perennial problem of life—the hardship of existence and the necessity of accounting for this in some way that shall be coherent with the general drift of humanity towards perfection, and the prevalence of Justice as a law of Nature, in the long run. Around the leading ideas of the esoteric doctrine, which we in this generation have been stimu- lated to reflect upon, theosophical study has enabled us to group a considerable mass of inevitably certain detail. The alternate manifestations of the Ego on the physical and spiritual planes of Nature lead by an indisputable train of conjecture to the doctrine here spoken of as that of the Higher Self, and this, in turn, brings us along a causeway of trustworthy reasoning, to the consideration of the still more elevated subject— the evolution of the Higher Self—with which we are at present engaged. In the comprehension of the laws thus governing the evolution of the Higher Self, we attain the innermost goal of esoteric study, as this study may be regarded from the incarnate point of view. The practical value of such a comprehension in its bearing on life and conduct, and on any capacity to bear whatever trials of one sort or another we may have to bear in our “lower selves ’’—that is to say, in the incarnate phase of our existence—is something that cannot ‘be exagger- ated. The old vague religious hope that we shall 118 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. somehow be rewarded after we die for any meritorious behaviour we may have contrived to carry on here below, in spite of our manifold embarrassments, is thus replaced by a specific, scientific perception of the way that process is worked out. The method is altogether in harmony with all truths of spiritual science we have been able to reach, and the consequence is, that once thoroughly assimilated, it is calculated to soothe in a remarkable degree the strain of emotion and the great vacuity of life which are among the well-known concomitants of any deliber- ate attempt to tread the upward path. It is not in human nature to be content—above all it is not in the highly speculative and introspective nature of an occult student to be content—with the attenuated promise of an ultimate absorption of his consciousness in the Infinite Consciousness, as a compensation for painful self-denial in this life, and as a readjustment, in accord- ance with infallible justice, of the long account of physical existence. Some exalted natures may be indifferent to compensations as far as they themselves are concerned, or may honestly imagine themselves so indifferent at all events, till some unforeseen turn of the screw, influencing them in an unexpected way, may betray their natural human weakness to their own inner consciousness. But at any rate even these will not be content to suppose that humanity at large is destined all along the line to the cheerless prospect of unremunerated labour. Let us each, leaving ourselves out of the calculation, and thinking only of our brother, admit that we have not made sense of the problem of THE HIGHER SELF. IIg Nature till we have distinctly provided, by our inter- pretation thereof, for the reward of merit. And up to the very threshold of the theory I have endeavoured to set forth, this reward is not adequately provided for in the sense of being specifically appre- hended. If the Higher Self were in all cases an already omniscient being, as some occultists have seemed to imagine, and if progress merely represented the efforts of the lower self in any given case to rise into conscious relations with it, the lower self or personality would go altogether unrewarded in the enormous number of cases where that conscious relationship is never established. The struggle to do right on this plane of existence would then indeed be a futile and miserable under- taking, at the very best rewarded only by the good Karma, that would render the next physical life, which the impassive Higher Self or Individuality might over- shadow, a less painful experience for the practically new entity which would have no recollection of its former struggle to give zest to its relative enjoyment in the new and altogether detached physical existence. Without the evolution of the Higher Self to express the consequences of that struggle, the situation would go far to justify the familiar objection to the doctrine of Re-incarnation, which rests upon the forgetfulness in each physical life of the circumstances of the last. But let us once realise the position as occultists of even a moderate degree of advancement know that it actually stands, and the incarnate man, however little he may himself, in his own incarnate consciousness, feel the teward of his good deeds or self-denial, is nevertheless I20 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. assured of being himself, in his spiritual condition after release from the body, the recipient of the harvest that he has sown. He may not, in the flesh, be conscious of the emotions and exhilaration of the Higher Self due to his work, but the consciousness of his Higher Self embraces his consciousness as he looks back on his past career from the point of view of the superior plane. We are not violently straining or materialising the facts; merely adapting them to the character of our present consciousness, if we imagine the Higher Self as reflecting: “If, in the pbysical environment from which I ain now set free, I had not the strength of mind to do this or that,’ whatever the important achievement may have been, ‘‘I should not now be enjoying my present rich sense of spiritual blessedness.”’ Indeed we may, in the attempt to realise the position in all its bearings, accept the service of illustrations drawn from commonplace life. A man, established from very early youth abroad to carve out his fortunes in some distant country, may have set his face during that undertaking against all kinds of wasteful and temporary self-indulgence. He may have been guided by the resolution to postpone the enjoyment of his earnings till circumstances should permit him to return to his own natural home, even though the ways and surroundings of life there should be unknown to him, and the lines along which it should be spent, left to be planned out later on. But assuming the programme to be fulfilled, the fruition of his efforts on his return home might be an ample compensation to him for the toil and self-denial THE HIGHER SELF. lar of his earlier years. So, in a far more elevated and glorious degree, and unqualified by risks of disaster which may always dash any worldly cup of enjoyment from expectant lips, may we regard the programme of physical effort and fruition on the spiritual plane, as assuring us the reward which we must be able to discern as awaiting the meritorious actor in this life’s drama, if the whole proceeding is to be regarded as something better than a farce and a tragedy in one. It is not necessary to this speculation to treat, as an essential part of the scheme of Nature, the possibility that, by the conscious direction of our efforts on this plane of life to the fulfilment of the idea thus conceived, we may actually, if all circumstances are propitious, obtain, even during this life, something more than an intellectual conviction of the spiritual reward that will be secured by our efforts here. But we should let slip a very important consideration connected with the whole transaction if we did not take note, in reviewing it, of the possibility to which I refer. There may be here and there, even among people who are not obtru- sively elevated to any remarkable degree above their fellows of this race to which we belong, some who in the lower self-consciousness are invested with the beautiful characteristics of a spiritualised clairvoyance. Such persons will be able, from time to time, to ascend into the consciousness of the Higher Self, retaining in the physical brain a recollection of those experiences. They are in a position to be the pioneers of spiritual progress for their less gifted brethren, rendering trans- I22 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. parently obvious, as a fact in Nature, the existence of that relationship between the lower and Higher Self which I have endeavoured to depict. And they may afford to any resolute explorer of the higher life good ground for hoping that others in turn, by earnest endeavours in that direction, may anticipate the revela- tion—even while in this life—of that which has hitherto been regarded as the great and insoluble mystery of death.