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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30134 ***
+
+     ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY
+
+
+         L. W. ROGERS
+
+
+         LOS ANGELES
+  THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN
+            1917
+
+
+          Copyright
+             By
+        L. W. Rogers
+            1917
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+To comprehend the significance of great world changes, before Time has
+fully done his work, is difficult. While mighty events are still in
+their formative period the future is obscure. But our inability to
+outline the future cannot blind us to the unmistakable trend of the
+evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted
+Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most
+un-Christian war of recorded history and in which human atrocity has
+reached a point that leaves us vaguely groping for a rational
+explanation of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than twenty
+nations involved have been forced into measures and methods before
+unknown and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of
+governments. With these startling facts of religious and political
+significance before us thoughtful people are beginning to ask if we are
+not upon the threshold of a complete breaking down of modern
+civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in which direct
+government by the people throughout the entire world will be coincident
+with the rise of a universal religion based on the brotherhood of man.
+
+In such a time any contribution to current literature that will help to
+clear the ground of misconceptions and to bring to the attention of
+those interested in such things, that set of fundamental natural truths
+known as theosophy, may perhaps be helpful. Whether or not the world is
+about to recast its ethical code there can at least be no doubt that it
+is eagerly seeking reliable evidence that we live after bodily death and
+that it will welcome a hypothesis of immortality that is inherently
+reasonable and therefore satisfies the intellect as well as the heart.
+Those who are dissatisfied with the old answers to the riddle of
+existence and demand that Faith and Reason shall walk hand in hand, may
+find in the following pages some explanation of the puzzling things in
+life--an explanation that disregards neither the intuitions of religion
+nor the facts of science.
+
+Of course no pretension is made of fully covering the ground. The book
+is a student's presentation of some of the phases of theosophy as he
+understands them. They are presented with no authority whatever, and are
+merely an attempt to discuss in simple language some of the fundamental
+truths about the human being. No claim is made to originality but it is
+hoped that by putting the old truths in a somewhat different way, with
+new illustrations and arguments, they may perhaps be seen from a new
+viewpoint. The intention has been to present elementary theosophy simply
+and clearly and in the language familiar to the ordinary newspaper
+reader. All technical terms and expressions have been avoided and the
+reader will not find a single foreign word in the book.
+
+L. W. R.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  I.    THEOSOPHY                            9
+
+  II.   THE IMMANENCE OF GOD                15
+
+  III.  THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL           23
+
+  IV.   LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH             29
+
+  V.    THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD              43
+
+  VI.   THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS      49
+
+  VII.  DEATH                               59
+
+  VIII. THE ASTRAL WORLD                    69
+
+  IX.   REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS        103
+
+  X.    REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE               135
+
+  XI.   REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY             153
+
+  XII.  WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER             167
+
+  XIII. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT                181
+
+  XIV.  THE FORCES WE GENERATE             187
+
+  XV.   SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION            205
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THEOSOPHY
+
+
+Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress. Very much that we believe
+to be original with us at the time of its discovery or invention proves
+in time to have been known to earlier civilizations. The elevator, or
+lift, is a very modern invention and we supposed it to be a natural
+development of our civilization, with its intensive characteristics,
+until an antiquarian startled us with the announcement that it was used
+in Rome over two thousand years ago; not, of course, as we use it, but
+for the same purpose, and involving the same principles. A half century
+ago our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths of evolution
+that were being discovered and placed before western civilization. But
+as we learn more and more of the thought and intellectual life of the
+Orient it becomes clear that the idea of evolution permeated that part
+of the world centuries ago. Even the most recent and startling
+scientific discoveries occasionally serve to prove that what we supposed
+to be the fantastic beliefs of the ancients were really truths of nature
+that we were not yet able to comprehend! The transmutation of metals is
+an example. We have already gone far enough in that direction to show
+that the alchemists of old were not the foolish and superstitious people
+we supposed them to be. We have given far too little credit to past
+civilizations and we are coming to understand now that we have rated
+them too low. Our modesty must necessarily increase as it becomes
+clearer that much of our supposed contribution to the world's progress
+is not invention but rediscovery. We are beginning to see that it is not
+safe to put aside without careful examination an idea or a belief that
+was current in the world thousands of years ago. Like the supposed folly
+of the alchemists it may contain profound truths of nature that have
+thus far been foreign to our modes of thinking.
+
+Theosophy is both very old and very new--very old because the principles
+it contains were known and taught in the oldest civilizations, and very
+new because it includes the latest investigations of the present day. It
+is sometimes said by those who desire to speak lightly of it that it is
+a philosophy borrowed from the Buddhists, or at least from the Orient.
+That is, of course, an erroneous view. It is true that the Buddhists
+hold some beliefs in common with theosophists. It is also true that
+Methodists hold some beliefs in common with Unitarians, but that does
+not show that Unitarianism was borrowed from Wesley! When different
+people study the same facts of nature they are likely to arrive at
+substantially the same conclusions. Theosophy is based upon certain
+truths of nature. Those who study those truths and formulate a belief
+from them must reasonably be expected to resemble theosophists in their
+views. Buddhism is not unique in resembling theosophy. In the same list
+may be placed the Vedanta philosophy, the Cabala of the Jews, the
+teachings of the Christian Gnostics, and the philosophy of the Stoics.
+The more general charge must also be denied; theosophy is not something
+transplanted from the Orient. It belongs to the race, as the earth does,
+and cannot be localized, even to a continent. As it is taught today in
+Europe and America it is probably unknown to the masses of the Orient,
+for the great general truths it embodies have here the special
+application and peculiar emphasis required by a totally different
+civilization. But that theosophical principles were earlier known and
+more widely accepted in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no
+possible way lessen their value to us. Precisely the same thing is true
+of the principles of mathematics. The science of mathematics reached
+European civilization directly from the Arabs, but we do not foolishly
+decline to make use of the knowledge on that account.
+
+The literal meaning of the word theosophy is self-evident--knowledge of
+God. It has three aspects, determined by the different ways in which the
+human being acquires knowledge--through the study of concrete facts, by
+the study of the relationship of the individual consciousness to its
+source, and through the use of reasoning faculties in constructing a
+logical explanation of life and its purpose. In one aspect it is,
+therefore, a science. It deals with the tangible, with the facts and
+phenomena of the material scientist and makes its appeal to the evidence
+of the physical senses. In another aspect it is a religion. It deals
+with the relationship between the source of all consciousness and its
+multiplicity of individual expressions; with the complex relationships
+that arise between these personalities; with the duties and obligations
+which thus come into existence; with the evolution of the individual
+consciousness and its ultimate translation to higher spheres. In its
+other aspect it is a philosophy of life. It deals with man, his origin,
+his evolution, his destiny. It seeks to explain the universe and to
+throw a flood of light upon the problem of existence that will enable
+those who study its wisdom to go forward in their evolution rapidly,
+safely and comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the darkness of
+ignorance, reaping as they go the painful harvests of misdirected
+energy.
+
+While theosophy is distinctly a science and a philosophy it is not, in
+the same full sense, a religion. It has its distinctive religious
+aspect, it is true, but when we speak of a religion we usually have in
+mind a certain set of religious dogmas and a church that propagates
+them. Theosophy is a universal thing like mathematics--a body of natural
+truths applicable to all phases of life. It sees all religions as
+equally important, as peculiarly adapted to the varying civilizations in
+which they are found, and it presents a synthesis of the fundamental
+principles upon which all of them rest.
+
+From all of this it will be seen that there is a vast difference
+between theosophy and theology. Theosophy declares the immortality of
+man but not as a religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in
+relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no such word as
+"faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its faith arises from the constancy
+of natural law, the balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious
+adjustment of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient in that it is the
+great fund of ancient wisdom about man and his earth, that has come down
+through countless centuries, reaching far back into prehistoric times.
+But added to that hoary wisdom are the up-to-date facts that have been
+acquired by its most successful students, who have evolved their
+consciousness to levels transcending the physical senses--facts which,
+however, do not derive their authority from the method of their
+discovery but from their inherent reasonableness. A detailed discussion
+of such methods of consciousness and the proper value to be placed upon
+such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter. It is enough now
+to warn the reader against the error of confusing the pronouncements of
+pseudo psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who have already
+done much toward placing a scientific foundation beneath the universal
+hope of immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
+
+
+The antagonism between scientific and religious thought was the cause of
+the greatest controversy in the intellectual world in the nineteenth
+century. If the early teaching of the Christian Church had not been lost
+the conflict could not have arisen. The Gnostic philosophers, who were
+the intellect and heart of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true
+that it could not possibly come into collision with any fact of science.
+But unfortunately they were enormously outnumbered by the ignorant and
+the authority passed wholly into their hands. It was inevitable that
+misunderstanding should follow. The gross materialization of the early
+teaching, the superstition, the bigotry and the persecution of the
+Middle Ages was a perfectly natural result. That perverted,
+materialistic view has come down to us, and even now gives trend to the
+religious thought of Western civilization. Of that degradation of the
+early teaching the Encyclopedia Britannica says:
+
+      The conception of God as wholly external to man, a purely
+      mechanical theory of creation, is throughout Christendom
+      regarded as false to the teaching of the New Testament as
+      also to Christian experience.
+
+It is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but if it is so
+regarded "throughout Christendom" it is only on the part of its
+scholars; most certainly not by the masses of the people. The popular
+conception is undeniably that the relationship between God and man is
+identical with that between an inventor and an animated machine. It is
+an absolutely anthropomorphic view of the Supreme Being and thinks of
+God as being apart from man in precisely the same sense that a father is
+apart from his son. It may be an exalted, idealized conception of the
+relationship of father and son but it is nevertheless just that
+relationship, and along that line runs practically all the teaching and
+preaching of those who speak officially in modern religious
+interpretation. Emerson sought to counteract that popular misconception
+but he was regarded as a heretic by all but an infinitesimal portion of
+the church.
+
+The idea of the immanence of God is as different from the popular
+conception as noontide is different from midnight. It is so radically
+different that one who accepts that ancient belief must put aside his
+old ideas of what man is and raise him in dignity and potential power to
+a level that will, at first, seem actually startling; for it means, in
+its uttermost significance that God and man are but two phases of the
+one eternal life and consciousness that constitute our universe! The
+idea of the immanence of God is that He _is_ the universe; that the
+solar system is an emanation of the Supreme Being as clouds are an
+emanation of the sea, and that the relationship between God and man is
+not merely that of father and son but also that of ocean and raindrop.
+This conception makes man _a part of_ God, having potentially within him
+all the attributes and powers of the Supreme Being. It is the idea that
+nothing exists except God and that humanity is one portion of Him, and
+one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression of the waters that
+constitute the sea. The immanence of God is a conception of the universe
+that puts science and religion into perfect harmony with each other
+because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary creation takes
+its place.
+
+Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has such widespread dominion in
+Occidental thought the immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly
+emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him we live, and move,
+and have our being," is certainly very explicit and admits of no
+anthropomorphic interpretation. It could not be said that a son lives
+and moves in his father. The declaration presents the relationship of a
+lesser consciousness within a greater, and constituting a part of it.
+The essentially divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration in
+Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that the likeness is on the
+material side would, of course, be absurd. In divine essence, in latent
+power, in potential spirituality, man is an image of God, because he is
+a part of Him. The same idea is more directly put in the Psalms with the
+assertion, "ye are gods."[A] If the idea of the immanence of God is
+sound man, as a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
+Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve his latent powers
+into perfect expression.
+
+The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus in his teaching.
+Emerson's teaching of the immanence of God is unmistakable in both his
+prose and poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the soul where
+man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause, begins." Still more
+explicitly he puts it:
+
+      The realms of being to no other bow;
+      Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.
+
+The statement is as complete as it is emphatic. "Not only all are Thine,
+_but all are thou_." It's an unqualified assertion that humanity is a
+part of God, as leaves are part of a tree--not something a tree has
+created in the sense that a man creates a machine but something that is
+an emanation of the tree, and is a living part of it. Thus only has God
+made man. Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation, an
+evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being.
+
+It is upon the unity of all life that theosophy bases its declaration of
+universal brotherhood, regarding it as a fact in nature. The immanence
+of God gives a scientific basis of morality. The theosophical conception
+is that men are separated in form but are united in the one
+consciousness which is the life base of the universe. Their relationship
+to each other is somewhat like that of the fingers to each other--they
+are separate individuals on the form side but they are united in the
+one consciousness that animates the hand. If we imagine each finger to
+possess a consciousness of its own, which is limited to itself and
+cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall have a fair analogy of the
+unity and identity of interests of all living things. Under such
+circumstances an injury to one finger would not appear to the others as
+an injury to them, but if the finger consciousness could be extended to
+the hand the reality of the injury to all would be apparent. Likewise an
+injury to any human being is literally an injury to the race. The race
+does not recognize the truth of it just because, and only because, of
+the limitation of consciousness. Lowell put the fact clearly when he
+said:
+
+      He's true to God who's true to man;
+      Wherever wrong is done
+      To the humblest and weakest
+      'Neath the all-beholding sun,
+      That wrong is also done to us;
+      And they are slaves most base
+      Whose love of right is for themselves,
+      And not for all the race.
+
+He's true to God who's true to man because they are one life; because
+they are but different expressions of the one eternal consciousness;
+because they are as inseparable as the light and warmth of the sun. It
+follows that being true to man is fidelity to God.
+
+The popular idea is that people should be moral because that sort of
+conduct is pleasing to the Supreme Being and that He will, in the life
+beyond physical existence, in some way punish those who have broken the
+moral laws. It is belief in an external authority that threatens
+punishment as a deterrent to law breaking, as a state devises penalties
+commensurate with offenses. But the immanence of God represents a
+condition in which not punishments, but consequences, automatically
+follow all violations of natural law. Under such a state of affairs it
+would require no penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct,
+for it would be perceived that there is no possible escape from the
+consequences of an evil act.
+
+It is not difficult to see the relative value of the two systems of
+thought when put to a practical test in human affairs. Imagine an
+unscrupulous man of great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous
+fortune through sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings
+of others while he safely keeps just within the limits of the law. We
+can point out to him that while he is not violating the law, and cannot
+therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting injury upon
+others and consequently public opinion will condemn him. But such a man
+usually cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no good
+reason why he should not continue in his injurious work. But if he can
+be made to understand that all life is one and that we are so knit
+together in consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately
+react upon the person who inflicts it; if he once clearly understands
+that to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that to maim
+another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an
+exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow
+a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest
+could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of
+all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence
+of God furnishes a scientific basis of morality.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Psalms LXXXII--6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL
+
+
+If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we shall be forced to
+abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous creation of man and the
+earth on which he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible idea
+that the race came from an original human pair must be replaced by the
+hypothesis of the evolution of the soul.
+
+It was about the fact of evolution that the great storm of controversy
+raged between scientists and theologians in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first well
+understood. They seemed to question or deny the existence of God. Deep
+within humanity is intuitive religious belief. It is a natural faith
+that transcends all facts, like the faith of a child in its mother.
+Because evolution was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's
+inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy hope, and
+against fact and reason itself rose the protest of intuition with
+spiritual intensity. People felt more than they reasoned and cried out
+that science was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has proved
+that they had merely misinterpreted the meaning of evolution. Further
+understanding has shown that, instead of destroying the belief in God,
+evolution has given us a new and better understanding of the whole
+matter and has placed the hope of immortality on firmer ground than it
+previously occupied.
+
+Evolution is an established and generally accepted fact. No educated
+person now thinks of questioning it. It is settled beyond dispute that
+all things in the physical world have become what they are through a
+long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the most perfect in
+form and most complex in function have evolved from simpler ones. The
+age of miracle has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as its
+relation to the material world is concerned. It is no longer necessary
+to have a belief in an anthropomorphic God, performing feats in defiance
+of natural law, in order to account for that which exists. Science has
+reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown that, given nebulous
+physical matter, we can understand how the earth came into existence.
+
+But why should we stop with the application of the laws of evolution to
+material things? Only the outright materialist, who asserts that life is
+a product of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority in
+the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has asserted that there is no
+longer any such thing as scientific materialism.[B] Those who accept the
+idea of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily accept the
+idea of the evolution of the soul. How can consciousness possibly
+escape the laws that evolve the media for the expression of
+consciousness? There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as there
+is evolution of matter. The material and the spiritual, form and life,
+are inseparable. Indeed, scientific progress has now brought us to the
+point where matter, as such, practically disappears and we are face to
+face with the fact that matter is really but a manifestation of force.
+How, then, is it longer possible to speak of the soul and not accept the
+evolution of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than physiology.
+The phenomena of consciousness are as definitely studied as physical
+phenomena, and it is no more difficult to account for a myriad souls
+than to account for a million suns and their planets. The scientists who
+have taken the position that the universe has a spiritual side as well
+as a material side are among the most eminent and distinguished of the
+modern world. If evolution has produced the starry heavens from the
+material side it has likewise evolved the human souls of our world and
+others from the spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand
+the one than the other.
+
+From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief in the creation of
+the earth and the race by an act suddenly accomplished is, of course,
+preposterous. If we could know nothing back of the present moment and
+were called upon to account for the world as we see it--with its cities,
+its ships and railways, its cultivated fields and parks--many people who
+still believe in instantaneous creation of the soul would save
+themselves much mental exertion by declaring that God had made it all as
+it stands for the use and entertainment of man. But we know that it is
+utterly absurd to think of the world leaping into existence
+instantaneously--nothing existing one day and all trains running on time
+between ready-made cities the next, carrying ready-made people about. It
+sounds ridiculous only because we are putting it in material terms, but
+in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of the instantaneous
+creation of the creators of cities and railways.
+
+The idea that we are a sudden creation is only possible because of the
+very vague ideas of what human souls are. The chief difficulty with the
+popular notion that a human soul is as new as the body it inhabits is
+that it is a vague and indefinite conception of life, and the moment we
+begin to think seriously about it the weakness of the idea becomes
+apparent. Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of
+reasoning. How can one reason with a man who believes it possible for a
+soul to spring into existence from the void? What is the use in
+reasoning about the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole
+matter to say: "God did it"?
+
+One thing that prevents us from believing not only that millions of
+souls were created in the twinkling of an eye, but also that the world
+as it now is was likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know
+quite definitely the history of the world a little way into the past,
+and that history affirms that the earth and all life on it is the
+product of slow evolutionary growth.
+
+The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion on a scientific
+basis. Not only the origin of the soul but its development and its
+destiny at once appear in a new light. The mind is instinctively
+impressed with the dignity of the idea of the evolution of the soul,
+which, with its corollary, the immanence of God, makes the divinity of
+man a fact in nature.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Raymond: or Life and Death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH
+
+
+One of the really remarkable facts of modern life is the disinclination
+to accept at apparent value the scientific and other evidence there is
+to prove that consciousness persists after the death of the physical
+body. There is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much of
+it is offered by scientists of the highest standing; and yet the average
+man continues to speak of the subject as though nothing about it had yet
+been definitely learned. It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust
+itself very slowly to the truth, as it is discovered. Sometimes a
+generation passes away between the discovery and the general acceptance
+of a great truth. When we recall the intense opposition to the
+introduction of steam-driven boats and vehicles, and the slowness with
+which the world settles down to any radical change in its methods of
+thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the truth about the
+life after bodily death has waited so long for general recognition.
+
+The evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of consciousness is
+based is of two kinds--that furnished by physical science and that
+furnished by psychic science. Together they make a very complete case.
+
+The printed evidence of the first division--physical science--is
+voluminous. In addition to that gathered by the Society for Psychical
+Research there are the researches and experiments by the scientists of
+England, France and Italy, among whom are Crookes, Lodge, Flammarion and
+Lombroso. Crookes was a pioneer in the work of studying the human
+consciousness and tracing its activities beyond the change called death.
+All of that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge, which
+has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries and inventions, and
+has won for him world-wide fame, were brought to bear upon the subject,
+and for a period of four years he patiently investigated and
+experimented. Many illustrated articles prepared by him, fully
+describing his work, were published at the time in _The Journal of
+Science_ of which he was then the editor.
+
+Three vital points in psychic research were established by Sir William
+Crookes. One was that there is psychic force. He demonstrated its
+existence by levitation. He showed next, that the force is directed by
+intelligence. By various clever experiments he obtained most conclusive
+evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated that the intelligence
+directing the force is not that of living people. Crookes also went
+exhaustively into the subject of materialization and here, again, he was
+remarkably successful. He was the first scientist to photograph the
+materialized human form and engage in direct conversation with the
+person who thus returned from the mysterious life beyond. This evidence
+from the camera must be regarded as particularly interesting. It was
+received with much amazement at the time, but that was before we had
+revised our erroneous ideas about the nature of matter and before the
+day of liquid air. Materialization is no longer a startling idea, for
+that is precisely what liquid air is--a condensation of invisible matter
+to the point where it becomes tangible and can be weighed, measured,
+seen and otherwise known to the physical senses.
+
+All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his own premises and under
+the most rigid scientific conditions. All the methods and mechanism
+known to modern science were employed and he finally announced his
+complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness of the phenomena
+observed.
+
+As Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver Lodge is the latest
+of the famous scientists who have taken up the investigation of the
+continuity of consciousness. In a lecture upon the subject, before the
+Society for the Advancement of Science, he declared not only that the
+subject of life after physical death was one which science might
+legitimately and profitably investigate but that the existence of an
+invisible realm had been established. He declared the continent of an
+invisible world had been discovered, and added, "already a band of
+daring investigators have landed on its treacherous but promising
+shores."
+
+Different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds of psychic
+investigation and while Crookes made a detailed and careful study of
+materialization Lodge has given equally painstaking efforts to
+investigations by the use of that class of sensitives known as
+"mediums." A medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is
+not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric matter easily
+separates from the physical matter is a medium and can readily be
+utilized as a sort of telephone between the visible and the invisible
+planes. A medium is an abnormal person and is a good medium in
+proportion to the degree of abnormality. If the etheric matter of the
+body is easily extruded the physical body readily falls into the trance
+condition and the mechanism of conversation can be operated by the
+so-called "dead" person who has temporarily taken possession of it. In
+such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living-dead
+communicator. He is speaking directly himself, but he may often do it
+with great difficulty and not always succeed in accurately expressing
+the thought he has in mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts,
+moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand something of
+his difficulties it is not strange that such communications are
+frequently unsatisfactory. It is not often that an analogy can be found
+that will give a physical plane comprehension of a superphysical
+condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be had by thinking of a
+"party line" telephone that any one of a dozen people may use at any
+moment he can succeed in getting possession of it. A listener attempting
+to communicate with one of them may find that several others are
+constantly "switching in," much to his confusion. If distinction of
+voices due to sound were eliminated and then a stenographic record were
+to be made of all words reaching the listener he would find that it
+would often be fragmentary and trivial. That would not, however, prove
+that the conversation did not come from living beings nor that there
+was not at least one intelligent person among them. That scientists
+engaged in psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing
+more.
+
+It seems to be a common opinion that the evidential value of such
+psychic communications, even under the direction of a skilful scientist,
+cannot be very great. But there are ways of knowing. It is not at all
+difficult for the investigator to confine his work, not only to
+incidents unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts which the
+medium can not possibly comprehend. It is a matter of common knowledge
+that mediums are usually people without technical scientific knowledge.
+Some of them have some degree of education and some of them are
+illiterate. Some of the most celebrated belong to the peasant class of
+Europe.
+
+Let us suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge is about to attempt to communicate
+with a scientist who has passed on to join the living dead. He will ask
+technical scientific questions that nobody but a scientist can answer
+and that the medium can by no possibility even understand when they are
+answered. Or suppose he gets a communication from the medium's hand
+signed by a great author. The living dead man writes a criticism, let us
+say, of some new book and does it in his characteristic style, full of
+the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment. Surely nobody
+can believe that the medium is producing such things on her own account.
+If she could do so she would not be earning her living as a medium. But
+the scientists do not stop there. We often hear the expression
+"cross-correspondence." Just what do they mean by that and in what way
+does it prove the personal identity of a dead man who is communicating?
+The principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method. Sometimes
+a guest leaves a sum of money with the clerk, and he wishes to be
+perfectly sure of his identity when he returns to claim it. He requests
+the guest to put his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in two,
+gives him one piece and keeps the other. That gives him a double proof
+of identity. When he comes for his money he must first give his name and
+then produce the piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the
+piece the clerk has retained, the two together making the whole and
+restoring the signature. It's one of the simplest but most satisfactory
+proofs possible. Neither piece of that card alone is intelligible. If
+one piece should be lost and others should find it nobody could read it
+or make anything of it. Nobody could guess the name unless he had the
+other piece. He knows only about the part he holds. He may be a thief
+and may earnestly desire to use what he has found to defraud, but he is
+helpless because he has only one of the two parts it requires to make an
+intelligible whole. That is the principle involved in identity by
+cross-correspondence. Part of a message is written through one medium
+and part through another medium at another time in another place and
+neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence until it is
+fitted into the other part; and that prevents a medium who is dishonest
+from manufacturing a story that may be more or less plausible.
+
+We are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific investigation for
+evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently
+sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is
+far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the
+average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult
+experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed
+relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of
+thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances
+which, while possessing little evidential value from the scientific
+viewpoint, nevertheless have a legitimate place in the great mass of
+psychic phenomena. But more convincing is the evidence furnished in
+hundreds of homes where some member of the family acts as automatic
+writer or medium.
+
+The most convincing evidence is not always scientific evidence. What can
+be more convincing than the evidence furnished in one's home by members
+of the family? There is much such evidence, obtained both through
+mediums and by automatic writing.
+
+Automatic writing--that is, the control of the hand of a living person
+to record the thoughts of another who has lost the physical body--is
+perhaps one of the least objectionable ways in which communications have
+come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted for some useful
+books with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions. Here,
+of course, as elsewhere, discrimination must be used, for the wise and
+foolish, the useful and useless are to be found side by side. In
+accepting or rejecting, one must use his common sense just as he does on
+this plane in separating the valuable from the worthless. In such
+matters we should not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are
+unchanged in intellect and morality. The genius here is the genius there
+and the living fool is not different from the dead one. It is often
+those who know the least who are the most anxious to tell it and the
+medium or automatic writer sometimes gives them the opportunity.
+Consequently we get many foolish communications and an enormous amount
+of commonplace platitude is delivered at seances. But it is equally true
+that unquestionable proof of personal identity is sometimes secured.
+
+There is much valuable non-scientific evidence that the consciousness
+survives the loss of the physical body and it frequently comes from
+sources that insure respectful attention. The two following stories of
+that kind are cited as corroboration of the scientific evidence.
+
+Little touches of the personality often constitute the most convincing
+of all evidence. It is one thing to show that people in general live
+after physical death. It is quite a different matter to establish the
+personal identity of one of them who is communicating, and that is one
+of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent journalist,
+gives us some valuable evidence on personal identity. In his earlier
+years he had studied art in London. Shortly before the death of Turner,
+the great artist had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on
+painting, but had not redeemed the promise at the time of passing away.
+Stillman had a friend whose daughter was mediumistic and he decided to
+experiment. Immediately on beginning the seance the young girl was taken
+possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman asked his
+question silently, speaking no words, but mentally requesting Turner to
+write his name. The only reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He
+then asked if he would give some advice on painting. The response was
+another decided negative. Stillman felt that he was foolishly wasting
+his time and declared the seance at an end. But the girl sat silent.
+Then after a moment she slowly arose with the air of decrepitude, took a
+lithograph from the wall and went through the pantomime of stretching a
+sheet of paper on a drawing board, sharpening a pencil, tracing the
+outline, the washing-in of a drawing, etc., and then proceeded to show a
+simple but surprising method of taking out the lights. "Do you mean to
+say that Turner got his effects in that way?" asked the incredulous
+young artist. The answer was an emphatic affirmative. Stillman then
+asked if the central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain in the
+well known drawing "Llanthony Abbey" by Turner, had been done in that
+way and was answered by another emphatic affirmative. So sure was the
+young artist that this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust
+and abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling upon Ruskin
+and related the experience. Ruskin, who had known the celebrated dead
+artist intimately, declared that the contrariness of the medium at the
+beginning of the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But
+what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence, was that the
+drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession and eagerly it was
+brought down from the wall for examination. After close scrutiny the
+great art critic and the young artist agreed that, beyond dispute, the
+drawing _had_ been done in the way described.
+
+Such evidence has an added value when it comes from those who are
+neither spiritualists nor professional investigators, but who have the
+things they doubt thrust upon them in such convincing manner that they
+feel impelled to record their experience for the enlightenment of
+others. In the last literary work[C] done by Carl Schurz, we are given,
+quite incidentally, his testimony that at a seance soon after the Civil
+War he was told the future in such detail as to leave no possible room
+for the explanation of coincidence. It was in July, 1865, when Schurz
+was on his way to Washington, whither he had been summoned by President
+Johnson, that he stopped in Philadelphia at the home of his friend, Dr.
+Tiedemann. The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years old, could do
+automatic writing. As a matter of interest and amusement in the family
+circle the girl gave an exhibition of her psychic abilities. When Schurz
+was invited to ask for a communication he not unnaturally requested one
+from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for he had been personally
+acquainted with him. The girl wrote a message purporting to come from
+Lincoln. It related to politics and proved, in time, to have been an
+accurate prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not transpire for
+more than three years! Schurz lived in Wisconsin at the time and had no
+intention of changing his residence, nor did he do so until two years
+later. The message which the girl wrote asserted that Schurz would be
+elected to the United States senate _from Missouri_. He did not regard
+the message as authentic and naturally enough considered the prophecy
+absurd. In 1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in January,
+1869, he was elected United States senator by the Missouri legislature.
+
+So far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will be understood,
+of course, that no attempt is here made to present that. The intention
+is merely to call attention to some of the eminent scientists who have
+done notable work and to mention a few of the more interesting
+discoveries made. Those who desire to come into possession of the
+evidence in full will find upon examination that it is voluminous.
+
+From the viewpoint of physical science alone the evidence of the
+continuity of consciousness is not only convincing but conclusive. Yet
+occult science has much more to offer. To those who have no personal
+knowledge of the existence of occult faculties, such evidence can be
+offered only upon the inherent reasonableness of the statements made.
+
+The truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, must slowly win its
+way to general acceptance. While large numbers of people still scoff at
+it, even as the world not so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a
+fantastic theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless a
+large and rapidly growing number who personally know the truth about
+clairvoyance. There is every conceivable grade of clairvoyant power and
+some degree of superphysical sensitiveness is becoming rather common.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that which is most in
+evidence with the public is not calculated to inspire confidence. It is
+employed almost exclusively in what is known as "fortune telling" and
+is often practiced by those who are interested only in the money they
+can earn by it. As a matter of course, trickery and fraud are found
+associated with it among such people, and those amongst them who are
+both capable and honest suffer on account of it.
+
+The fortune telling clairvoyant is usually one who was born with "second
+sight," as the Scotch have named it, and almost without an exception
+they do not in the least understand its rationale. They find certain
+facts in their consciousness that could not be known to them by the
+physical senses, but why or how they get the information they do not
+know. That form of clairvoyance is a sensitiveness related to the
+sympathetic nervous system, the center of which is the solar plexus. It
+has no relationship whatever to the mind, no association with
+intelligence, and will often--indeed, commonly--be possessed by the most
+ignorant and uncouth. It is much more common among Indians and negroes
+than among more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and will slowly
+disappear from the race. It belongs to the realm of emotion, not
+thought.
+
+The higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing," is associated
+with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and its seat is in the brain. It
+is not a "natural gift"[D] like the other, although it is latent in all
+human beings. It has been highly developed in some who have had the
+unusual opportunity of long training under the direct supervision of
+great psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never to be found among
+the fortune tellers. Only people with serious views of life and intense
+devotion to human service would have the patience and endurance to
+undergo such training and only those of singular purity of life would
+have any possibility of success. Such clairvoyants are people of keen
+intelligence. By special training and tremendous effort, not possible to
+most of us, they have pressed forward in evolution and attained a
+development that the race will be many a century in reaching.
+
+It is by the use of this exalted order of clairvoyance that invisible
+realms are explored, and additional knowledge is accumulated to the
+ancient wisdom. Such a clairvoyant is not a medium. The medium
+surrenders his physical mechanism for the use of another, who speaks
+through it, and at the close of the seance the medium knows nothing of
+what has occurred. The clairvoyant is always in possession of his senses
+and is fully aware of what is occurring. He is the explorer and
+discoverer. He deals with the facts of the life after bodily death in a
+different way than the physical scientist does but it is soon found by
+the student that the physical scientist and the psychic scientist
+corroborate each other. Together they bring overwhelming evidence to
+support the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness we
+have at this moment will never cease to be; that our individuality, with
+all its present memories, will eternally persist; that what we call
+death is in reality but a forward step in an orderly evolutionary
+journey and an entrance upon a more joyous phase of life, which is not
+remarkably different from that we live today. The sum total of the
+knowledge that we have gained through the combined work of the physical
+scientists and the occult scientists leads us to the conclusion that the
+death of the physical body means neither the annihilation of
+consciousness nor a radical change in consciousness. It is, in fact, but
+the release of consciousness from its confinement to the physical form,
+as a song-bird is released from a cage to the joyous freedom of a wider
+world, where woods and stream and field and sky give new impulse to its
+innate characteristics.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p. 154.
+
+[D] There are, of course, really no natural gifts. Nature does not favor
+some and ignore others. When a few possess what others do not have, they
+earned it by giving special attention to its development or as in the
+case of the psychic sensitiveness of the sympathetic nervous system, it
+is vestigial, and has been possessed by the race in earlier ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD
+
+
+In a treatise on elementary theosophy the solar system may be reckoned
+as our universe and we shall have no need of considering more than a
+small fragment of even that. It is septenary in constitution, as may be
+seen in its vibrations expressed in color and sound. Beyond the seven
+colors of the prism we have only tints and outside the seven notes we
+can get only overtones or undertones. There are likewise seven planes in
+the system but less than half of them require our attention, for the
+evolutionary field of the human soul is the three lower planes, known as
+the physical, astral and mental. When the human being has outgrown them
+in evolution he passes on to superhuman evolution.
+
+The word "plane," so often encountered in theosophical literature,
+should perhaps have some definition. It has a wide application and is
+used as a synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring to
+the physical plane the term embraces all we know of earth and sky and
+life through the physical senses.
+
+There are seven planes in our solar system because of the seven
+different combinations of its ultimate atoms. Each plane consists of a
+totally different grade of matter than the next plane, but all have for
+their base the ultimate atom of the solar system. When modern science
+discovered, to its astonishment, that the physical atom was a composite
+body it confirmed the theosophical teaching that the ultimate physical
+atom was _not_ the final point of division. Theosophy teaches that when
+the ultimate physical atom is disintegrated its particles become the
+coarsest matter of the next plane or region above it--the astral plane.
+The process repeated with astral matter results in driving its ultimate
+atom from the highest level of the astral plane or world to the lowest
+of the mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom is the brick
+of the universe stated a great truth, for of its combinations all forms
+are built; and if the idea be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar
+system it will then be true that of such "bricks" all the planes are
+built.
+
+The relationship of the planes to each other is that of interpenetrating
+spheres of matter. The physical plane, consisting of the earth and its
+atmosphere, is surrounded and interpenetrated by the astral plane, or
+world, which is an enormously larger globe of exceedingly tenuous
+matter. This vast sphere of invisible matter is _within_ the earth as
+well as beyond it, interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the
+earth's center. Its grossest grade of matter is so rare, and its
+vibrations so intense, that they cannot affect the physical senses and
+therefore we remain unconscious of it while that matter moves freely
+through all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life and
+activities for precisely the same reason that we know nothing of the
+messages of intelligence carried on the vibrations of the wireless
+telegraph, although they pass through the room where we sit. We have no
+sense organs with which it is possible to register such vibrations.
+Messages conveying intelligence of tremendous import, involving the
+movements of vast armies, the fall of empires and the destinies of great
+nations, flow through the very space we occupy but we are wholly
+unconscious of them. Even so we remain blind and deaf to the stupendous
+activities of life and consciousness in the astral world,
+notwithstanding the fact that it surrounds and permeates us while its
+forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the physical world as freely as
+water flows through a sieve.
+
+The mental world constitutes a region of our earth still more vast than
+the astral portion of it. As the astral sphere encloses the physical
+globe, the mental encompasses both, enclosing them and also
+interpenetrating them to the earth's center. The term "mental world" may
+seem confusing to some because we are accustomed to think of the mental
+and the material as being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or
+plane, of theosophy, is a world of _matter_, not merely thought. It is
+matter, however, of such remarkable tenuosity that it may properly be
+called mind-stuff, and in its rarest levels it is said to be "formless"
+so far as the existence of what the physical senses know as form is
+concerned.
+
+All three of these worlds, or planes--the physical, astral and
+mental--are, then, worlds of matter, of form, of activity, of thought
+and of enterprise. They are concentric globes, the physical enclosed by
+the astral, and both physical and astral enclosed by the mental. Within
+and without all physical matter are both astral and mental matter. Every
+physical atom is surrounded and permeated by astral and mental matter.
+The relationship is precisely that which exists between the ether and
+the lower grades of physical matter.
+
+If the relationship of the three worlds--physical, astral and mental--is
+fully understood later confusion of thought will be avoided. Physical
+language is not capable of fully expressing much with which students of
+the occult must deal. Because there is nothing better for the purpose,
+words must be used that express but a part of the truth and may
+sometimes prove misleading unless the constitution and relationship of
+the three spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary to speak of
+higher and lower worlds, or planes, inner or outer, and of the soul
+coming "down" into the material world when, as a matter of fact, _no
+movement in space_ is under consideration. The astral is commonly spoken
+of as an inner plane and while it truly is so because it can be known
+only to astral senses by a withdrawal of the consciousness from its
+exterior, material body, it is also true that the astral world is
+outside the physical because it envelops it as the sea does a sponge.
+We usually speak of coming down from higher planes to lower and that may
+be true not only in the sense of changing the state of consciousness
+from higher vibrations to lower ones but it _could_ mean a journey in
+space from a point in the astral plane above the physical globe to a
+point at its surface. "Up" and "down" are relative, not absolute. "Down"
+for us is toward the earth's center and "up" is the opposite direction.
+A spire in the Occident and a spire in the Orient are both said to be
+pointing upward but they are pointing in opposite directions. On most
+parts of the earth's surface we have four directions, while at the poles
+there is, of course, but one direction--south or north, as the case may
+be. East, west and north disappear at the north pole. Reflection upon
+such facts leads one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility of
+space itself disappearing from the inner planes--space as we know it.
+
+The matter of each of the planes consists of seven classes. We are
+familiar with the solids, liquids and gases of the physical plane, and
+to them must be added four grades of the ether. The seven grades of
+matter of the astral and mental worlds constitute an important part of
+the mechanism for the soul's evolution, for they determine the state of
+consciousness in the life beyond the physical plane. But a study of
+those states of consciousness belongs to a later chapter.
+
+A difficulty which the student of theosophy should make an early effort
+to eliminate, is the tendency to think of invisible realms as unreal. It
+should not be forgotten that it is only the limitation of the physical
+senses that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond the visible.
+We should keep in mind the fact that the invisible realms are composed
+of matter as certainly as the air is matter, or a stone is matter. The
+water in a pan may evaporate, but it does not cease to be matter because
+it has passed beyond the ken of the physical senses. It will some time
+condense once more and play its part as the liquid, water, or as the
+solid, ice. Only when matter is in certain forms can we know of its
+existence through the physical senses.
+
+We frequently hear people who are students of the occult speak of a
+deceased person as having left the earth. But passing into the astral
+plane, or world, is not, of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral
+world and the mental world are divisions of the earth. As the atmosphere
+is invisible and yet is a part of the earth's physical matter, so the
+invisible astral and mental regions are other parts of the earth. They
+are properly called worlds because the activities in consciousness that
+make up existence there are as remote from ours as though they were upon
+another planet. We have erroneously supposed that with the physical
+senses we really see and know the earth, whereas we have known only that
+small fragment of the earth that consists of physical matter. Beyond the
+limitation of our poor senses stretch in unsuspected grandeur vaster
+regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations of an intenser life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+The soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness, or
+the life of the solar Logos; an individualized portion of the universal
+mind. That fragment of the divine life, with its latent God-like
+attributes, is expressed through a mechanism of consciousness that is
+formed of the matter of the various planes. Naturally enough it is
+expressed more fully upon the higher planes than upon the lower. At a
+very high level it is known as the monad. When it reaches down into the
+higher subdivisions of the mental world it is the ego, a lesser
+expression of the same divine life that pours from the Logos through the
+monad--lesser because it is then functioning through the denser matter
+of a lower level.
+
+The knowledge that has been gained about the nature of matter in recent
+years is helpful in understanding the activities of consciousness. The
+atom is found to be a center of force, and we are at the point where
+matter, as we have known it, disappears. All the force and consciousness
+of the solar system is, of course, but the life of the Logos, and on
+higher planes the distinctions we observe here fade out. Matter becomes
+a very different thing from the matter we know. The ether of the
+physical world is almost inconceivably tenuous matter. Yet it is gross
+when compared to the lowest grade of astral matter. The matter of the
+mental world is enormously rarer than the most tenuous matter of the
+astral world. In view of these facts it requires no stress of the
+imagination to understand that the matter of the higher planes is
+responsive to the vibrations of consciousness.
+
+The outraying energies of the individualized center of consciousness act
+upon the matter of the plane and draw about it a film that slowly grows
+into a vehicle through which consciousness can be more fully expressed,
+and which serves as a point of vantage from which its expression can be
+extended to lower planes.
+
+The seven subdivisions of the mental world fall naturally into two
+groups, composed of the three higher and the four lower grades of
+matter. The ego, anchored in the matter of the two planes above the
+mental world, descends to the upper levels of the mental and the vesture
+of matter with which it clothes itself is known as the causal body.
+Sending its energies downward, or outward, to the lower levels of the
+mental world, it establishes itself there in what slowly becomes a
+mental body. Again in the astral world the process is repeated and a
+vehicle of consciousness is formed of astral matter. The physical body
+is the lowest and last of the vehicles to be formed and as it is slowly
+built, in the months preceding birth, the matter it contains falls into
+place under the operation of occult laws which permit no element of
+chance to enter into its construction.
+
+Each of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness on the plane
+to which it belongs. The soul is evolving simultaneously in each of the
+worlds, physical, astral and mental, and these various bodies enable it
+to receive the vibrations of the plane they belong to and thus to be
+conscious there. The mental body is the seat of intellectual activity.
+Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes through the astral body
+into the physical brain. Whenever we think we are using the mental body.
+The astral body is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All emotion
+passes from it to the physical body to be expressed in the material
+world. The astral world is also called the emotional world, as the
+mental plane is called the mental world. The physical body is the soul's
+instrument of action. It attaches it to the physical world, enables the
+consciousness to contact material objects and to move and express on the
+material plane the thoughts and emotions generated in the mental and
+astral bodies.
+
+Another part of the mechanism of consciousness is known as the etheric
+double. But it is only a link in the chain and not a body through which
+the soul can function. It is composed of the etheric matter of the
+physical world and connects the astral body with the physical body. As
+every atom of physical matter is surrounded and permeated by etheric
+matter, it follows that the physical body has its duplicate in etheric
+matter. "Etheric double" is a very appropriate name since it is a
+perfect duplicate of the physical body in etheric matter. It serves the
+purpose of supplying the life force to the nervous system and is the
+medium through which sensation is conveyed. The action of an anaesthetic
+drives out so much of the matter of the etheric double that the
+connection is broken and sensation in the physical body ceases.
+
+One of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear conception of the
+constitution of man, and realizing that he is a soul functioning through
+various vehicles of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of thought
+common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed to thinking of the
+physical body itself as being the man, and if there is any thought at
+all of the consciousness surviving the death of the body it is very
+vague and indefinite as to where it exists and how it is expressed. Very
+little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity of the belief
+that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of
+twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real
+man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial
+disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are
+but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are
+expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a
+planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument for a
+purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body is a variable mass. It
+may increase or diminish greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There
+is no permanent relationship between the man and the physical matter
+which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness. According to the
+physiologists every atom of the body changes within a period of a few
+years. The cells wear out, break down and pass away to be replaced by
+new matter. Not a particle of the physical matter that was in our bodies
+seven years ago is there now, and none that is there now will remain.
+Within seven years, or less, we shall have bodies composed of new matter
+as certainly as an infant's is.
+
+Of course such reconstruction of the body does not change its
+appearance. It is built on the same lines. It is as it would be with
+some very old cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly
+rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The roof serves its time
+and is replaced. The walls crumble first in one place and then another
+until they have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand years
+has passed there may be none of the original material in the building,
+yet its appearance is unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have
+passed away and will be growing in the trees and blooming in the flowers
+in a few years. The bodies we shall then have are now scattered through
+the world. They will be brought together during that time and will come
+from many parts of the earth.
+
+The physical senses continually deceive us and nowhere more than in our
+ideas about the physical body. It is an unstable mass of matter, in
+constant motion, with great gulfs of space between its atoms. Emerson
+was very far ahead of his time and it took science a half century to
+catch up with him and learn that he had recorded a fact in nature when
+he wrote:
+
+      Atom from atom yawns as far
+      As earth from moon, or star from star.
+
+In 1908 the _Scientific American Supplement_, commenting on our
+reconstructed ideas about matter, remarked that the actual mass of the
+physical body to the apparent mass was about one to one million!
+
+If the physical body is merely an organized mass of matter, continually
+varying, constantly coming and going, and having no permanent
+relationship to the consciousness that functions through it, what reason
+is there for believing that it is the man? Does it seem strange that the
+center of consciousness should be able to draw about itself on the
+higher planes aggregations of matter and finally to express itself on
+the material plane through the mass of matter we call the body? If that
+is mysterious quite as miraculous things are going on constantly about
+us unnoticed. Thoreau calls attention to the fact that we become so
+accustomed to the marvelous expressions of life all about us that we are
+oblivious of the phenomena that are taking place. Commenting on the
+magic possible to nature he says:
+
+      "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where
+      no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed--a, to me,
+      equally mysterious origin for it. Convince me that you have
+      a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.... In
+      the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the
+      Patent Office, and labeled, I think, 'Poitrine jaune
+      grosse,' large yellow squash. Two came up, and one bore a
+      squash which weighed 123½ pounds, the other bore four,
+      weighing together 186¼ pounds. Who would have believed
+      that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that
+      corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to
+      catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace
+      of terriers which unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which
+      will find other things in that corner of my garden. Perfect
+      alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end,
+      and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible
+      treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value
+      which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz
+      about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour to see a
+      juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them
+      it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than
+      light."[E]
+
+A seed is a center of force through which life, at a much lower level
+than the human, flows and gathers about that center the material mass
+that serves the purpose of its lowly evolution. At the human level
+consciousness has become self-consciousness and a marvelously complex
+mechanism is required to express it and serve the purpose of its farther
+evolution.
+
+This complex mechanism of consciousness, composed of the various bodies
+through which the ego expresses itself at different levels, is used as a
+whole for functioning on the physical plane. But when the ego is
+functioning no farther down than the astral plane, the physical body
+is, of course, temporarily discarded. It is then in the condition known
+as sleep, or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the
+consciousness from the physical body. When the separation occurs in the
+case of the medium it is called a trance. The cause of the inert
+condition of the physical body is the same in both cases--the withdrawal
+of the consciousness of the ego. The physical body is then unoccupied,
+but the consciousness maintains magnetic connection with it. In death
+that tie is severed and the consciousness can return to the body no
+more. Instances in which the apparently dead are brought back to life
+are cases where the magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there is
+every appearance of death.
+
+In form and feature the physical body has its exact duplicate in the
+astral body, and in it we function in the astral world whenever the
+separation between the two occurs, whether from sleep or death. In sleep
+the consciousness, expressing itself in the astral body in the astral
+world, may be turned dreamily inward or it may be turned outward and be
+vividly aware of the life and activities of that world. But there is
+small chance that any memory of it will come through into the physical
+consciousness upon awakening. Occasionally, however, it does occur and
+then it is usually remembered as a very vivid dream. In illness, and
+other abnormal conditions, the connection between the physical and
+astral consciousness is much closer. At a comparatively high point in
+evolution the two states of consciousness merge. The man is then
+continuously conscious, and has a full memory in the physical brain of
+all his activities in the astral world during the hours when the
+physical body was asleep.
+
+Consciousness is, of course, at its worst when expressed through the
+limitation of its lower vehicles. Any person, whether brilliant or
+stupid, will be much abler and keener on the astral plane than on the
+physical, because in sleep, and after death, he has lost the limitations
+imposed by physical matter. But the degree of restriction is variable
+and depends much upon the _kind_ of matter of which the brain and body
+are composed; for the physical atoms vary greatly, and as they come and
+go in the passing years the body may either become purified and refined
+or it may grow grosser and coarser. By careful attention to food and
+drink, and by control of the emotions, the limitations of physical
+matter may be lessened and a much higher and more efficient state of
+consciousness in the physical body can be attained.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[E] The Succession of Forest Trees.--Thoreau.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DEATH
+
+
+Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly associated with a
+feeling of fear is because we give so little thought to it. Most people
+seem never to think of the subject at all until death invades the home
+and threatens some member of the family. Then terror fills the mind and
+all but paralyzes the reasoning faculties.
+
+Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental civilization, is
+eloquent testimony to the materialism of our times. It is doubt about
+the future that causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific
+basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear of death
+disappear. It is feared because it seems like annihilation. If people
+really believed in a heavenly existence beyond the physical life they
+could not possibly be filled with terror at the prospect of entering it.
+If a man's religion has not given him a genuine confidence in a future
+life, and made it as much of a reality to him as this life is, it has
+failed to do what we have a right to demand of religion. If it does not
+enable him to look upon the face of his dead without a doubt, or a fear,
+there is something wrong, either with his religion or with his
+comprehension of it. What possible reason is there for fearing death? A
+thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not be pernicious. To
+regard death as a disastrous thing would be an indictment of the sanity
+of nature.
+
+Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of experience. It is the
+annihilation of nothing but the physical body, in its aspect of an
+instrument of activity and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the
+physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together in the human form
+for temporary use, are, in death, released from the cohesive force of a
+living organism and will return whence they came.
+
+In reality there is no such thing as death, unless it be strictly
+applied to the form, regarded as a temporary vehicle of consciousness.
+As for the consciousness, there is no death. There is life in a physical
+form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death, or cessation,
+of the individual intelligence. What we name "death" is but a change in
+the orderly evolution of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is
+viewed from the physical plane that such a term can be applied to it.
+From this plane it is death, or departure. But looked at from the astral
+world it is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning of
+the expression of the soul through a material body on the physical
+plane. It is an arrival. But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure
+and therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure from a
+physical body is here. So death and departure from one plane is simply
+birth, or arrival, upon another, although it is not, of course, birth
+as we know it.
+
+Every process in nature has a part to play in evolution and therefore
+death is as necessary as life and as beneficial as birth. Death is the
+destroyer of the useless. There is a time when each human being should
+die--that is to say, a time when the physical body has fulfilled its
+mission and completely accomplished the purpose for which it exists. To
+continue life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste energy
+and lose time in the evolutionary journey. Under the action of what we
+call "diseases" the body becomes inefficient, or through the gradual
+breaking down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain. The
+consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed through its impaired
+machine and it is decidedly to the advantage of the ego to withdraw from
+it. The soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work with
+broken and rusted tools. Good results are no longer possible. It is then
+that death comes, beneficently destroying the worn out instrument and
+releasing the consciousness from its too-often painful situation and
+permitting its escape into a field of unobstructed activity.
+
+Death is painless. The breaking down of the body under the ravages of
+disease may cause pain, but that belongs to physical life, not death.
+Distress may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But the dying
+person who does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and no
+pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation will convince
+one that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on the part of
+surviving friends, not on the part of the dying. Those who are left
+behind remain within the limitations of the physical senses, and they
+are therefore separated from the so-called dead man, but he is not
+separated from them. It is because of that separation that the terror of
+death exists for them.
+
+But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary value of
+death. The separation it causes intensifies love as nothing else could
+do. It is only when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate his
+real value and comprehend how large a part he really played in our
+existence. As sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener
+realization of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its
+contrast, gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how
+enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death of a close
+friend. The whole nature is in some degree purified and spiritualized.
+Selfishness is decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for others in
+distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary advance is made. We
+have only to reflect upon the fact that separation without death
+produces the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
+value of death. In constant association we grow careless and
+indifferent. But an absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer
+perspective of personal associations and thereafter life has new zest. A
+child regards its mother with a certain degree of appreciation but a
+short absence enormously increases its appreciation. All human beings
+come into closer and more sympathetic association after a period of
+separation, and the completeness of the separation caused by death
+renders it peculiarly efficacious in the development of the spiritual
+side of one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention away
+from materialistic life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed
+in material success. There is no thought at all given to the higher
+life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities of the world, hold
+them firmly. They become completely self-centered. Then suddenly death
+enters and breaks the family circle, and the transient character of all
+they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly dawns upon them, and
+attention is turned to the nobler things of life. It is a well known
+fact that great wars are accompanied or followed with widespread
+spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the shadow of
+death has fallen on tens of thousands of households.
+
+It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics if it would not be an
+improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow caused by the death of our
+friends were softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
+It is evidently the plan of nature to have the physical life and the
+astral life normally separated at our present level of evolution. Some
+of the reasons have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly others
+that we are incapable of understanding, and still others that we can
+readily comprehend. If the higher, joyous life of the astral world were
+open to our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties of this
+life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our life in the physical
+body may be compared to the tasks of children in school. They have
+serious business before them in the acquiring of knowledge and the
+development of the intellect. They can best accomplish the work when
+completely isolated from other phases of life. Introduce into their
+work-day consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus, the
+military parade, the picnic and the dancing parties, and the purpose for
+which the school exists would be defeated. To exactly the extent that
+the consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable progress
+be made with the work of the school-room. And so it is with the
+limitation of our physical senses. It serves a purpose.
+
+But there is a point in human evolution where such limitation of the
+senses is no longer of any service and may be transcended. Some people
+have attained it. They are those who have previously been referred to as
+the psychic scientists, with the higher clairvoyance of the
+cerebro-spinal system developed. It is an accomplishment to which all
+may aspire. None need submit to the separation commonly caused by death.
+By hard work in co-operating with nature's methods of evolution and by a
+serious and sustained effort to live the highest and most helpful life
+of which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain a level of
+consciousness where one has personal knowledge that the dead still live.
+But in the very work of rising to that level, the concentration
+previously enforced by the limitation of the physical senses will have
+been acquired.
+
+One of the common delusions about death is that some radical change in
+the nature of a person then takes place. This is no doubt due in part to
+the theological ideas that have come down to us from the time of the
+Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some
+sort of a judgment that classes him as either a saint qualified for
+eternal bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The belief is
+based on that erroneous view of human nature that was common to the
+melodrama of a past generation and that will possibly have eternal life
+in the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good and
+the villain as absolutely bad. The one had no flaw of character and the
+other had not a redeeming feature. But human nature does not thus
+express itself. The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding it
+is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand we find no perfected
+beings. The perfect heroes were merely creations of an imperfect
+imagination. At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither the
+absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.
+
+Why should the change we call death transform a human being? It is
+merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of consciousness. The soul,
+the thinker, has lost connection with the physical world because the
+physical body has ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body
+remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he can not think more
+than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved. All that has happened
+in death is that contact with the material world has been lost.
+
+One of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom, and we
+often hear of people getting into communication with those who have
+passed on, with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is true that
+death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness and that in the
+astral world one can see a little further ahead and take a few more
+things into consideration. But--and it is a vital point--he would have
+no better judgment in determining a course of action than he had while
+here in the physical world.
+
+Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is
+neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it
+previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there.
+If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the
+astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
+unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world
+where emotion is the determining factor.
+
+Death merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where the evolution
+of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult to say which is the greater
+misfortune--the delusions that make death the king of terrors, or the
+complacent belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings the
+soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility and settles
+one's fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility or
+transform the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine
+destiny.
+
+The theosophical conception of death is as consoling as it is
+scientific. Instead of the fear of death it gives us knowledge of
+continued life. Instead of doubt and despair it gives us confidence and
+joy, for it guarantees the companionship once more of those we have
+known and loved, and erroneously supposed we have lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ASTRAL WORLD
+
+
+When the physical body dies there is an interval between the loss of
+consciousness here and the dawning of the astral consciousness. During
+that interim a review of the life scenes takes place. Everything between
+birth and death passes again through the consciousness, as it thus
+pauses in the etheric double, between the life activities of two worlds.
+Then peaceful unconsciousness follows, from which the man awakes in the
+astral world.
+
+To those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing to some remote
+heaven, where they become angels, it will perhaps sound startling to say
+that a dead man is not aware at first that the change we call death has
+taken place. Yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at all
+remarkable that it should be so with many. We have only to recall the
+fact that all physical matter is surrounded and permeated with astral
+matter to realize that the physical plane is duplicated in astral
+matter. Not only the physical body of the human being but, of course,
+every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The dying man loses
+consciousness of the physical plane and awakes as from a sleep to the
+astral consciousness. He sees then the exact duplicate, in astral
+matter, of the familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees, too, his
+friends, for their astral bodies are replicas of their physical forms.
+
+And yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference, though not a
+difference that enables him to comprehend what has occurred. He may know
+that only yesterday, or what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was
+ill and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he was about to
+die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never felt so free from aches and
+pains in all his life. The pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth
+are his again! This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally
+speaks to them, but gets no reply and finds that he can not attract
+their attention. It must be remembered that he can not see their
+physical bodies any more than they can see his astral body. Yet he truly
+sees them. If a so-called dead man and a living person look at the same
+instant at another living person they will both see him, but the latter
+sees the physical body while the former sees the astral body that
+surrounds and permeates it.
+
+Under these circumstances it is not strange that the new arrival in the
+astral world is seized with a feeling of baffling mystery. He is in full
+possession of his reasoning faculties, and will power, but there is a
+puzzling limitation to his efforts to produce expected results. A
+partial analogy may be found in the case of a person suddenly stricken
+with aphasia over night. He rises in the morning, dresses, and goes
+about his accustomed duties without the slightest suspicion that any
+change has come to him until he takes up the morning paper and
+discovers that he can not read--that the familiar print simply means
+nothing to him!
+
+Of course, in time the living dead man gets adjusted to the new life. He
+soon meets others in the astral world who have been there longer and
+they, sooner or later, succeed in convincing him that he is not having
+an exceptionally vivid dream.
+
+The astral world, as explained in a previous chapter, has seven
+subdivisions and the astral body contains matter belonging to each of
+them. While we have the physical body the matter of the astral body is
+in rapid circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented at
+the surface. But when the connection with the material plane is broken,
+a rearrangement of the matter of the astral body automatically takes
+place (unless it is prevented by an exercise of will power) and the
+grossest grade of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently
+the consciousness of the man is limited to that subdivision of the
+astral world represented by the lowest grade of matter which his astral
+body contains at the time of his death. This is a fact the importance of
+which it would be difficult to over emphasize, because his after-death
+state of consciousness, his joy or sorrow--in short, his temporary
+heaven or hell, depends upon his location in the astral world.
+
+There are three, and only three modes of death, or release from the
+physical body--by old age, by disease, or by violence. Old age is the
+natural and desirable close of the chapter of physical plane experience.
+It is most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a large
+harvest of experience. To live long and actively is excellent fortune.
+It is not well to pass into the astral world with strong physical
+desires. As old age comes on the desire forces subside. Most of that
+grade of astral matter that is capable of expressing them has slowly
+disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual loosening of the life
+forces from the material plane, and that has many advantages.
+
+Release from the physical body by disease is next in order of
+desirability. It is a quicker and less complete breaking down of the
+connection with the physical world. Nevertheless it is a condition in
+which much progress may be made in getting free from physical desires,
+as those who have had experience with invalids are aware. Desires
+usually grow weaker with the progress of the disease that finally ends
+in death.
+
+Release from the physical form by violence is, of course, the least
+desirable of the three, not merely because it is violence, but for the
+much more important reason that sudden death finds the man, as a rule,
+with a considerable amount of the lower grades of astral matter in his
+astral body.
+
+Whether the death by violence is the result of accident, murder, suicide
+or legal execution, the astral plane conditions of consciousness are
+alike unfortunate, in that it is sudden death, not the manner of death,
+that permits entry upon the astral life before the lower grades of
+astral matter have been eliminated from the astral body. This is one
+reason why suicide is unfortunate--because it ushers the man into the
+astral world with more of the matter of the lower levels in his astral
+vehicle than would be there if he had lived out his normal physical
+life.
+
+Purgatory is a term often applied to the lowest level of the astral
+world. The word is well chosen because it is there that the moral nature
+is purged of its impurities. Strong desires cultivated and indulged
+during the life in the physical body are eliminated with the gross
+astral matter through which alone they can be expressed and, freed to
+that extent, the man passes to the next subdivision, and into its higher
+state of consciousness.
+
+In the astral life some people linger long on the lower levels while
+others know them not at all, but awaken to the blissful consciousness of
+the higher subdivisions. Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping
+together people of a kind. It is, however, the manner in which one lives
+during physical life that determines his happiness or sorrow after
+death. The astral body, the seat of the emotions, is, like the physical
+body, constantly changing the matter that composes it. An emotion of any
+kind expresses itself as a vibration in the matter of the astral body.
+If it is a base emotion, such as anger, hatred, lust or cruelty, it
+throws into vibration the grossest of the astral body's matter, for only
+in that can it be expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love,
+sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects only the rarer
+grades of astral matter, for in them only can such feeling be expressed.
+
+With most people there is a constant mingling of a wide range of
+emotions, with a gain in one direction and a loss in another. One who
+fortunately understands the law of emotional cause and effect may make
+absolutely certain of a comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane after
+death. He would make it a rule to watch his emotions and control them,
+knowing that each time he indulged a gross one the vibration set up in
+his astral body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of matter
+in it, while pure and exalted emotions would strengthen the higher
+grades. Ultimately, the grossest grade, becoming atrophied for the lack
+of activity, would drop away from him.
+
+The descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic scientists are
+calculated to induce even the reckless to avoid it. If we could bring
+together all the vilest men and women now living on the physical plane,
+the crudest of murderers, the most besotted drunkards, the vilest
+degenerates, the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends of every
+description, and huddle them together in hovels reeking with filth, and
+let them remain without any outward government, free to prey upon each
+other, we should perhaps have a faint comprehension of the reality of
+the lowest subdivision of the astral world. But no physical plane
+comparison can do it full justice, for we must remember that it is the
+emotional world and that the feelings of its inhabitants make its
+atmosphere in a way that would here be impossible. Astral matter
+instantly and exactly reproduces emotion, so that the fiend or the
+sensualist looks exactly what he feels. Even in the unresponsive
+physical matter, the evil in a man is often sufficiently expressed to
+fill those who behold him with terror. In the astral world every cruel
+thought and hideous emotion would express itself in visible form and the
+multitudinous emotions welling up in the lower level of the astral
+world would be as a loathsome swarm of reptiles gliding through its
+horrible life. Add to all that the fact that the hopeless despair of its
+denizens gives an atmosphere of utter gloom and desolation, and we have
+a hell that leaves no need of other torture to check the course of the
+erring soul. And yet there is no suffering that is not self-imposed. It
+is both consistent and just that a man should associate with his kind
+and look upon himself in others until he grows sick of his own vileness
+and cries out in agony of spirit against his own moral offenses. It must
+not be assumed that every person dying with considerable matter
+belonging to the lower astral level still within his emotional body will
+necessarily pass through such experiences. It should never be forgotten
+that we are dealing with a matter of the utmost complexity and that even
+the most exhaustive description in print would present only a fragment
+of the truth. The conditions of consciousness on any subplane vary as
+individuals vary. Some people on the lowest astral level are wholly
+unconscious of their surroundings. Another variation is that some people
+find themselves floating in darkness and largely cut off from others--a
+sufficiently undesirable condition, and yet better than the fate of
+some. All states of astral consciousness are reactions from previous
+good or evil conduct and are, moreover, temporary conditions that will
+in time be left behind.
+
+In a different way and at a higher level there may be suffering on the
+astral plane that is purifying the nature. Not all offenses against
+nature's laws are of so gross a type. There is the abuse of desire and
+the violation of conscience that may result in various kinds of regret
+and emotional distress. A desire of a refined type strongly built up
+upon the physical plane lives with an intenser vitality on the astral
+plane after the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton and a
+miser have strong desires of a very different type. Each of them is
+likely to suffer on account of it during the astral life. They need not
+dwell upon the lowest level to get a reaction from their folly in the
+physical life. We can easily imagine the distress of the glutton in a
+world without food. There could be no distress because of hunger, for
+the astral body is not, like the physical body, renewed and maintained
+by what it consumes. But hunger and the gratification of the sense of
+taste are very different things. It is the latter that would trouble the
+gormand, and it is said that great suffering, as in the case of the
+drunkard, is his lot until the desire gradually disappears because of
+the impossibility of its gratification.
+
+The miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his greed for gold
+may be quite as intense as that of the glutton for sensual
+gratification. The accumulation of money has been the dominant thought
+of his life. He has created in his mind a wholly false value for money
+and it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it. Only dire
+necessity forces him to spend any portion of his hoard. It is not
+difficult to imagine his emotions when he is obliged to leave it behind
+and see others spend it freely.
+
+Any kind of a desire that is related to the physical body is without
+means of gratification in the astral world and if such desire has been
+cultivated until it becomes strong enough to play an important part in
+one's life it will certainly give him more or less trouble after the
+loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of an over-refinement
+and excess in a natural appetite, as in the case of the epicure, or is
+simply an artificial thing that is unrelated to any natural demand, as
+in the case of the smoker, the inability to gratify the desire is
+equally distressing. The suffering that results could hardly be judged
+by what would follow on the physical plane when desire is thwarted, for
+in the astral life emotion expresses itself much more intensely.
+
+All of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever type, is the
+natural result of the thoughts, emotions and acts during the life on the
+physical plane. The astral world is that part of the mechanism for man's
+evolution that brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving in the
+wrong direction. He is not being punished. The injurious forces he has
+generated are simply reacting upon him. This reaction, that sets him
+right, is as certain as in the case of the infant that picks up a live
+coal. It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in result, and it
+works itself out in a multiplicity of ways. One of the methods of
+reaction that helps to stamp out a fault is the automatic repetition of
+the unpleasant consequences of wrong doing. The murderer will serve for
+a general illustration. In the case of a deliberate, premeditated and
+cruel murder, the assassin is moved by such base motives as revenge or
+jealousy. The results of these, so far as their frightful consequences
+to the victim are concerned, do not in the least tend to deter the
+assassin from further deeds of violence. He feels gratified with his
+success and is quite satisfied with himself. Only the possibility of
+detection and punishment troubles him. If they follow in due course they
+will accomplish something in correcting his erroneous views of life. But
+they will not be sufficient to register indelibly, in the very nature of
+the man, a proper sense of the horror of which he has been guilty. Such
+a man can be impressed and his viewpoint changed only by consequences to
+himself. It is in the reaction in the astral life of the forces he has
+generated here that he gets the lesson that forces in upon his
+consciousness the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the
+physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless come into
+contact in the astral world with conditions sufficiently horrible. He
+has made a tie with his victim that can not be broken until the scales
+of justice are balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the
+uttermost. Just what form of retribution will follow depends, of course,
+on the nature of the case. But the reaction is as certain as it is
+multiplex. One of its variants is the gruesome experience of always
+fleeing from the corpse of the victim, but with the utter impossibility
+of a moment's escape. In the case of a murderer who has been
+apprehended, tried, condemned and executed, the whole of the tragedy and
+its sequel would be, not only lived over in imagination but repeated
+automatically, in fact, and worked out in full detail in the plastic
+matter of the astral region. Probably few people have the imagination to
+comprehend what the murderer feels of apprehension and fear at his trial
+when his life is in the balance; or what he suffers while hiding from
+justice and making futile efforts to escape the pursuing officers of the
+law; or what his emotions are as his hands are tied and he steps upon
+the death trap. All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly.
+As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject--let us say
+something that is the cause of much anxiety--finds it impossible to turn
+his attention from it and think of other things, or go to sleep, and is
+impelled against his desire to think the matter over and over, so the
+assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his crime and can not escape
+from living and acting it all over and over again until a revulsion of
+feeling arouses him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime.
+
+Again it should be said that no attempt is here made to give more than a
+very fragmentary description, and a few hints, of the manner in which
+the retributory laws of nature work. A writer on the subject should also
+be careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain classes of
+offenders against nature's laws severe penalties accrue, the reader does
+not get the impression that suffering is the common lot in the astral
+life. The truth of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate
+lives, and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to others,
+will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate side of astral existence.
+In the limitations, the vexations, the physical aches and ills, the
+poverty, sorrow and suffering of the material plane, most of us are as
+near to hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The ordinary
+man of average morality has so little of the matter of the lowest level
+of the astral plane lingering in him that as a rule he would begin his
+postmortem existence on the next higher subdivision, which is the
+counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore have no knowledge
+of the hell that exists on the lower level. But that is not at all true
+of those who live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger,
+jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses, that often lead
+to violent crimes. It is possible to live the physical life so sanely,
+usefully, harmoniously and unselfishly that at the death of the physical
+body one will pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career in
+the astral world. But while that is quite possible the unfortunate fact
+is that a great many people so color all their emotions with selfishness
+that the astral sojourn is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the
+emotions that determine the astral life and it is said that if they are
+directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the astral plane
+that are very unpleasant.
+
+It must be expected that any idea we may form of the astral life will be
+incomplete, and inadequate to give a true conception what it is really
+like. Perhaps the most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which
+reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There the average
+man will begin his conscious astral career. If we think of the world as
+we know it here and then imagine all that is material to have vanished
+from it we shall gain some comprehension of the situation. Eliminate the
+necessity of providing food, clothing and shelter and nearly all of the
+labor of the race would cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining, the
+building, the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange of the
+products of field and factory, constitute nearly the whole of human
+activity. In the astral life no food is required and one is clothed with
+astral matter from which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and
+rapidity of thought. No houses are needed for shelter. The astral body
+is not susceptible to degrees of heat and cold, and nothing there
+corresponds to our temperatures. There is no division of night and day,
+objects being self-luminous and light being perpetual.
+
+If we could drop out of physical life all need of physical labor,
+abolish all response to heat or cold, the need of food and houses, and
+add unlimited wealth or, to be more exact, give each person the power to
+possess all that wealth can confer and much that it can not, we would
+have an approach to a conception of the astral world from one viewpoint.
+Each one entering the astral life has, of course, a fullness of liberty
+and freedom from responsibility that is not instantly comprehensible to
+the physical mind. There is nothing whatever that he must do. There is,
+however, plenty that he can do if he desires to be active. On the
+physical plane many people of wealth travel and amuse themselves with
+sight seeing. Thousands of others would do so if it were possible. In
+the astral world it is possible and large numbers of people drift
+aimlessly about with no particular plans. Multitudes belonging to
+various religious sects organize themselves into congregations, build
+edifices and spend much time in religious services. Others amuse
+themselves building houses and constructing landscapes. It is not at all
+necessary, but the old habits live and influence activities.
+
+The average person in the astral world gives himself to idleness and
+the enjoyment of the intensified emotions of the astral life just as the
+majority of people would do here if it were possible to escape the round
+of duties so sternly imposed by their necessities. For a long time the
+most of them also make daily visits to the homes they have left behind
+on the physical plane. Those who have a strong tie of affection with
+some member of the family frequently spend much time lingering around
+and going on little journeys about the premises or elsewhere with the
+loved one. They understand that the dead person is not perceived by the
+living one, but nevertheless they desire to be near. They do not have a
+full consciousness of all the living person is thinking and doing, but
+they are fully aware of the state of feeling, or emotion, and whether
+the living friend is pleasantly or unpleasantly affected by passing
+events.
+
+As the astral life becomes more and more familiar to the newly arrived
+individual he gets well settled in it and gradually readjusts his
+viewpoint to a truer perspective than he has here. As time passes he is
+less and less in touch with the affairs of the physical life and finally
+loses consciousness of them altogether as he passes on to the higher
+levels of the astral world.
+
+But there are many people who have a more serious view of life and who
+lose no opportunity of acquiring knowledge, and the astral world, which
+is called "the hall of learning" by students of the occult, presents
+remarkably good conditions to them. Here we are limited in three
+dimensions of matter and hampered by the very narrow range of the
+physical senses. In the astral world matter has four dimensions and new
+and marvelous avenues of learning open before the student. Those who are
+at all interested in music, or art of any kind, find both the field and
+the facilities enormously extended. Those who study nature, whether by
+directly probing into her secrets or by cleverly combining her
+principles into new processes and inventions, have such opportunities as
+scientist and discoverer has not dreamed of on this plane. And so for
+all the thoughtful and studious there is a life of the most useful and
+fascinating kind in the astral world.
+
+But it must not be supposed that the opportunity of usefulness and
+progress is only for the studious. There as here the opportunity for
+useful work in helping humanity forward is boundless; for while poverty
+and disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic work
+of other kinds to be done. People are to be taught, for there, as here,
+the majority are sadly in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of
+nature's laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in harmony with
+them in order to get the greatest happiness from life. But the work to
+be done is by no means confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes
+the teaching so necessary has brought a great many people into the
+unfortunate condition, where immediate assistance is most urgently
+needed, and there is such a variety of helplessness that nobody need be
+idle.
+
+Because of the false teaching upon the subject of life hereafter, people
+are bewildered when they become conscious in the astral life. Many have
+had their minds so vividly impressed with the awful fate that awaits
+those who are not "saved" before death that they fall into a state of
+terror when at last they realize that death has really occurred. Others,
+who may or may not be haunted with any such absurd misconceptions, cling
+so tenaciously to the physical life when about to leave it that there is
+not complete separation between the etheric double and astral body. The
+result is that the unfortunate person finds himself cut off from the
+physical world and yet not arrived in the astral! Wrapped in a cloud of
+etheric matter he drifts for a time in terror of the unknown. Those
+among the so-called dead who are kindly enough to rescue the distressed
+may come to their relief and give valuable assistance.
+
+Perhaps the commonest thing that engages the attention of the astral
+worker is the fear that death brings to most people. They arrive in the
+astral world with the feeling that everything is unknown and uncertain.
+All preconceived ideas about the life after death have suddenly been
+found unreliable and they are afraid of, they know not what. They want
+to cling to anybody who knows something of the new world. When we
+remember that people are arriving in the astral world by the tens of
+thousands daily, even under normal conditions, it is evident that all
+who wish to be of service can find plenty to do. No special knowledge of
+the astral plane is necessary. Common sense is a sufficient equipment,
+in such simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead of giving
+the entire time to the pleasures of that world. The work for the astral
+helpers ranges upward in complexity, of course, and there is profitable
+activity for those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually
+work in well organized groups and render service of great practical
+value.
+
+Life on the astral plane has its end for the same reason that it comes
+to a close on the physical plane. Nature's purpose has been accomplished
+and the man is ready to go on farther in his evolution. The length of
+the astral life varies just as it does in the physical world. Some
+physical lives are very long and sometimes only when five scores of
+years, or more, have passed does the ego withdraw. Other lives are very
+short and scarcely well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close.
+There is nevertheless a general average to be found. It is at least
+possible to make averages for different classes of people and to say
+that a majority of those who are of ordinary health and strength are
+likely to attain a stated age, while it is certain that the majority of
+those who have such, and such, a physical handicap will lose their
+physical bodies when they are much younger. Such general rules may also
+be applied to the astral life.
+
+Here a long and alert life is most desirable because the purpose of the
+physical plane is to gather experience that shall be transmuted into
+wisdom on a higher plane. It is a seed time against a later harvest. But
+the astral plane is, for the vast majority of the race, related to the
+purgative process. In that life the errors of the physical life are
+largely worked out and desires that have grown up like weeds in a garden
+are rooted out and the budding virtues are given a chance to grow. It is
+a corrective plane, where blunders are checked up and the moral
+perspective is re-established. Naturally enough the sooner that can be
+done the better. The rule of a long life being most desirable on the
+physical plane is, therefore, reversed on the astral plane. It is the
+shortest life in the astral world that is the greatest prize, and it
+comes to those who have lived the purest and noblest lives while here.
+The sooner a man gets through the astral world and begins the reaping of
+his harvest on the mental plane, or heaven world, the better it is for
+him.
+
+The length of the astral sojourn depends primarily upon the durability
+of the astral body and that, in turn, depends upon the kind of a life he
+has lived here. Let us suppose that he has lived a very gross and
+sensual life. All of the emotions of that type that he indulged built
+more gross matter in his astral body and also strengthened and vivified
+the lowest grade of matter that was already there. Let us also imagine
+that he had an ungovernable temper and frequently gave way to outbursts
+of fury; further, that he was cruel and revengeful, seeking and finding
+many opportunities of inflicting injuries upon others. Here we have a
+case for long life on the lower levels of the astral world.
+
+Let us now consider a different type of man. He lives peacefully and
+harmoniously with those about him. He feels strong affection for wife
+and children. He has a host of friends because of his cheerful, helpful
+and sympathetic attitude toward others. He lives cleanly and thinks
+nobly. His mind is kept free from trivialities and his tongue is never
+employed in gossip. He makes a determined and persistent effort to
+eliminate pride, envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking
+first of the welfare of others and always last of himself--in short,
+tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all things impersonally.
+Such a man could know nothing whatever of the disagreeable part of the
+astral life and would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions
+and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.
+
+From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually to the higher. He
+remains on a given level so long as is required to eliminate the matter
+of that level from his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on
+the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because the man has
+at last stopped sending his life force through it. Ungratified desire
+has finally worn itself out and he is free. The process can be greatly
+hastened or retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly
+dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged life to
+them. If he can resolutely turn his mind to higher things he hastens his
+release. His fate is in his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he
+has a knowledge of such matters.
+
+One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly through the astral
+world than he would have done had he died in the full strength of
+manhood. As the years accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest
+grades of astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in
+which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is an additional
+reason why it is desirable to live to old age in the physical world.
+
+The hold that the material world has upon the mind is one of the causes
+which greatly prolong existence in the astral world. Some people give
+their time and thought so exclusively to material things that after
+they lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away from the life
+that lies behind them. This difficulty does not necessarily arise wholly
+from having given one's energies entirely to personal ambition and
+material accumulation. Sometimes the ruler of a country is so determined
+to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that this vivid interest in
+the physical world stretches out the period of astral life most
+unfortunately.
+
+Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively short, if
+we measure it in the terms of physical life. A person who has lived here
+seventy years may have thirty or forty years on the astral plane. But
+that will depend not only upon how he lived the physical life just
+closed but also upon his general position in human evolution. A savage
+of low type would have a comparatively long astral life while a man at
+the higher levels of civilization would have a comparatively short
+period there, while the man in the lower levels of civilized life might
+be said to come in at about midway between the two. But it must be
+remembered that these are very general estimates and that among
+civilized peoples individuals differ enormously. Some will pass very
+slowly and, so far as lower levels are concerned, painfully, through
+astral life, while the sojourn of others there is measured in minutes,
+and they pass happily and almost instantaneously from physical death to
+the heaven world. But such people are the exception, not the rule.
+
+Communication with those who have passed on into the astral world is
+possible, but not always desirable, for a number of reasons. As an
+evidence of the continuity of consciousness in the hands of the
+scientific investigator, such communications have been of the greatest
+value. As a consolation to those who have thus come again in touch with
+dead friends such messages have been of inestimable value to the
+bereaved, particularly when they have been received in the privacy of
+the family circle by some of its members. For a time those who have lost
+the physical body are usually within easy reach through the usual
+methods employed for the purpose and perhaps no harm is done by such
+communications unless they arouse anew the grief of those who have been
+left behind and thus greatly depress the departed. But after the living
+dead get farther along, and are practically out of touch with the
+material world, then directing their attention backward may be
+positively injurious to them. For that reason careful students of the
+occult seldom seek to obtain messages, or at least do it with proper
+consideration for all the circumstances of the particular case.
+
+Due regard for the interests of those who have passed on, as well as for
+those who remain, requires that all the facts be given full weight. The
+truth of the matter is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise
+to the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once more get into
+touch with one that seems to be lost to us. We are not really thinking
+much about his welfare. As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us
+and does not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able to see us
+at all times and be conscious of our feelings and emotions, but during
+the hours when we are asleep he is in the fullest and freest
+communication with us and we with him. On awakening we usually have no
+memory of this and if we do we think it was a dream. But it is not so
+with him. His memory of it is perfect and the result is that he has not
+our sense of separation and loss at all.
+
+The result of knowledge upon the subject, that is readily gained by a
+study of the researches of the skilled occultists, is that one comes to
+feel that one should rest satisfied with the fact that we do converse
+with the dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to the
+scientific investigators. The natural order of things is that the person
+who passes into the astral world shall in time fix his mind exclusively
+upon the inner life and be completely divorced from physical plane
+affairs. That is the mental and emotional condition which permits of his
+rapid passage through levels where he should not linger. It is said that
+to turn his attention backward at this time may cause him acute
+distress.
+
+A reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge of occultism
+often throws a new light upon the subject. An instance of this is to be
+found in the story of the woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his
+quest for psychic information about the crisis that has been reached in
+the affairs of his kingdom. The woman went into trance and acted as a
+medium for a communication from Samuel, who tells Saul just what will
+occur in the impending battle. Samuel's first words were a reproach to
+Saul. "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?"[F] was his greeting.
+It is the language of one who is displeased. Drawing his attention
+forcibly back to the material world by the strong desire Saul had to
+communicate with him was evidently distressing to the dead king, hence
+the rebuke, "Why hast thou _disquieted_ me?"
+
+What is here said on the subject of communication, however, has
+reference to general principles only. There is no intention of
+suggesting that it is always undesirable to communicate with those who
+have passed over. Often those on the other side seek means of
+communicating and they should then find the most willing co-operation
+from this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical plane life has a
+message of great importance to deliver and such a case reverses the
+general rule--he would be delayed if he could _not_ communicate. It
+would be decidedly to his advantage to free his mind of the matter.
+Until he has done so he may remain in a restless condition and his case
+falls into the category of what the spiritualists call "earth bound." He
+may have left undone something that a message will set right, if he can
+get it through, or he may have secreted something that cannot be found
+because he died suddenly and had no opportunity to speak of it. Or it
+may simply be a case of desiring to prove to materialistic friends the
+fact that the so-called dead are not dead, and are close at hand. It is
+sometimes possible for the important information to come through into
+physical life in the form of a dream by the living, and thus the
+recovery of valuables has followed.[G] In such a case the dream is a
+memory of facts well known in astral life but hidden from the waking
+consciousness by the unresponsive material brain.
+
+It sometimes happens that one who thus most earnestly desires to
+communicate but is wholly ignorant of how to accomplish his purpose
+causes a good deal of annoyance. His blundering attempts to use psychic
+force may be wholly abortive and result only in meaningless noises,
+raps, the tumbling of books or dishes from shelves or the aimless
+movement of furniture. Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention,
+on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be
+remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's
+common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or
+delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd
+assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining.
+This accounts for many of the foolish, and sometimes startling messages,
+or answers to questions, received at seances.
+
+It has often been asked why, if communication between the physical and
+astral planes is possible, we do not receive information that might lead
+to valuable discoveries and inventions. The very fact that death does
+not confer wisdom explains it in part. But an even more important fact
+is that communication is easy with the lower levels and correspondingly
+difficult as the higher levels are reached. All who have had much
+experience with seances are familiar with the fact that "guides" or
+"controls," that is, the persons in the invisible realms who direct the
+seance and frequently speak through the medium, are very often Indians
+or others at a low level of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants
+of the astral levels with which communication is easy are not the type
+capable of furnishing ideas of any great value. It is on the higher
+levels that the man of intellectual power passes most of his astral
+life. The scientist or the inventor who has given so much thought to his
+work that he has been in some degree successful here is not likely to
+have much consciousness on lower levels. It is the highest of the seven
+subdivisions of the astral world that is the habitat of the person who
+has followed intellectual pursuits, during physical life, and with that
+level it is practically impossible for the ordinary medium to
+communicate.
+
+One of the objections to indiscriminate communication with the astral
+plane lies in the very fact that the lowest class of entities are most
+accessible. That not only accounts for the commonplace messages in such
+abundance, but it is frequently a source of actual danger, especially
+where people form "circles" for the purpose of rendering themselves more
+sensitive to psychic influences. In such cases it is common to accept
+every message as absolute truth. There is no doubt that as a rule the
+astral people in charge of such a gathering are earnest and honest. But
+they are neither all-wise nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about
+that some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed by astral
+entities, and that may prove to be an exceedingly serious matter. Some
+people have thus lost their sanity and others their lives.
+
+It is, of course, only the gross type of astral person who has a desire
+to seize upon the physical body of another. The purpose is to gratify
+desires that have outlived the physical body. The dead drunkard is
+perhaps the commonest example of the obsessing entity, and if the
+obsession is only partial it may lead to nothing worse than strong and
+perhaps irresistible impulses toward alcoholic stimulation. Obsession
+may, of course, occur without the psychic door being opened
+deliberately. But no obsession is possible, in any case, unless there is
+something within the victim responsive to the moral defect of the
+obsessing entity.
+
+Partial obsessions are rather common and there are frequent inquiries as
+to the best means of treating such a case. It may amount only to the
+slight annoyance of astral people hanging about and refusing to depart
+or to actual persecution. In all such cases the victim is, of course, in
+conscious touch and communication with the intruders. One of the world's
+greatest authorities on the subject, who is a constant investigator of
+the unseen regions, has given detailed answer to two questioners, and
+what he says is of such practical value that it is well worth
+reproducing. The second question itself is enlightening as to the
+character of the obsessing entities. The first inquirer asks:
+
+      "What is the best way to get rid of an excarnate human
+      being who persists in occupying one's body?"
+
+The reply follows:
+
+      "I should simply and absolutely decline to be so obsessed.
+      The best and kindest plan would be to have an explanation
+      with the dead person, to enquire what he wants and why he
+      makes such persistent attempts. Quite probably, he may be
+      some ignorant soul who does not at all comprehend his new
+      surroundings, and is striving madly to get into touch again
+      with the only kind of life that he understands. In that
+      case if matters are explained to him, he may be brought to
+      a happier frame of mind and induced to cease his
+      ill-directed efforts. Or the poor creature may have
+      something on his mind--some duty unfulfilled or some wrong
+      unrighted; if this be so, and the matter can be arranged to
+      his satisfaction, he may then be at peace.
+
+      "If, however, he proves not to be amenable to reason, if in
+      spite of all argument and explanation he refuses to abandon
+      his reprehensible line of action, it will be necessary
+      gently but firmly to resist him. Every man has an
+      inalienable right to the use of his own vehicles, and
+      encroachments of this nature should not be permitted. If
+      the lawful possessor of the body will confidently assert
+      himself and use his own willpower no obsession can take
+      place.
+
+      "When such things occur, it is almost always because the
+      victim has in the first place voluntarily yielded himself
+      to the invading influence, and his first step therefore is
+      to reverse that act of submission, to determine strongly to
+      take matters into his own hands again and to resume control
+      over his property. It is this reassertion of himself that
+      is the fundamental requirement, and though much help may be
+      given by wise friends, nothing which they can do will take
+      the place of the development of willpower on the part of
+      the victim, or obviate the necessity for it. The exact
+      method of procedure will naturally vary according to the
+      details of the case."
+
+The same authority answers another question on the same subject and he
+is here dealing with particular entities that he has evidently seen:
+
+      "I have long been troubled by entities who constantly
+      suggest evil ideas and make use of coarse and violent
+      language. They are always urging me to take strong drink,
+      and goading me on to the consumption of large quantities of
+      meat. I have prayed earnestly, but with little avail, and
+      am driven to my wits' end. What can I do?"
+
+To this appeal the psychic scientist replies:
+
+      "You have indeed suffered greatly; but now you must make up
+      your mind to suffer no more. You must take courage and make
+      a firm stand. The power of these dead people over you is
+      only in your fear of them. Your own will is stronger than
+      all theirs combined if you will only know that it is; if
+      you turn upon them with vigor and determination they must
+      yield before you. You have an inalienable right to the
+      undisturbed use of your own vehicles, and you should insist
+      on being left in peace. You would not tolerate an intrusion
+      of filthy and disgusting beings into your house on the
+      physical plane; why should you submit to it because the
+      entities happen to be astral? If an insolent tramp forces
+      himself into a man's house, the owner does not kneel down
+      and pray--he kicks the tramp out; and that is precisely
+      what you must do with these astral tramps.
+
+      "You will no doubt say to yourself that when I give you
+      this advice I do not know the terrible power of the
+      particular demons who are afflicting you. That is exactly
+      what they would like you to believe--what they will try to
+      make you believe; but do not be so foolish as to listen to
+      them. I know the type perfectly, and mean, despicable,
+      bullying villains they are; they will torment a weak woman
+      for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the
+      moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just
+      laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a
+      moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and
+      show fight, because you have let them have their own way
+      for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion;
+      but face them with iron determination, set your will
+      against them like an immovable rock, and down they will go.
+      Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire, and by the
+      power of the God within me I order you to depart!' Never
+      let yourself think for an instant of failure or of
+      yielding; God is within you, and God cannot fail."[H]
+
+Probably there is no astral subject of more vital importance to any of
+us than that of the right attitude of mind and emotion toward the living
+dead. It is commonly said that we can do nothing more for them when they
+have passed away from physical plane life, but a greater error could not
+easily be made. The connection with us is by no means severed. Not only
+are they emotionally in touch with us but their emotions are very much
+keener than when they had a physical body through which to express them.
+They are now living in the astral body, the matter of which is
+enormously more responsive to emotional vibrations. A joyous emotion
+here would be tremendously more joyous there and a thing that would
+produce depression here would be a hundred times more depressing there.
+That fact should give pause to those who are inclined to think in
+sorrow, and with something of despair, about their friends who have
+passed on. They are not far away in space and our emotions affect them
+profoundly and instantly.
+
+We are all familiar with the fact that moods are communicable. The
+person who is cheerful cheers up others in his vicinity, while the one
+who is gloomy spreads gloom wherever he goes. It is a simple matter of
+vibrations. It is often within the power of a member of the family who
+habitually has "the blues" to destroy the happiness of the entire
+household. If we think of the most depressing effect that can be caused
+by sorrow on the physical plane, and then multiply its effectiveness by
+a hundred, we shall have no exaggeration of the astral effects of the
+emotions we indulge in the physical body. If, then, the sorrow of a
+weeping relative distresses us here it is clear that it must bring
+really keen distress to the one who is the subject of such grief. His
+life may thus be made miserable by the very persons who would be the
+last to cause him sorrow if they understood what they were doing.
+
+We can really help the so-called dead and make them very much happier by
+simply changing our mournful attitude toward them. All violent
+expressions of grief should be avoided and a determination to make the
+best of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may indeed be
+bad, but we make it very much worse by our mourning. The funeral customs
+of Occidental civilization are quite consistent with its materialism. We
+act as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are lost to us
+absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as possible. Yet we are slowly
+improving. Not so very long ago when anybody died those present stopped
+the ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains, moved about on
+tiptoe, and acted generally in a way calculated to add as much as
+possible to the awe and the gloom. We still wear somber and depressing
+black and add all we can externally to our inward distress.
+
+A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at any theosophical
+funeral and, with growing frequency, at the funerals among thinking
+people. A funeral should not be the occasion of a final expression of
+grief, but a gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and helpful
+good wishes to the comrade whose life work in the physical world is
+finished. The general feeling should be very much like that of a party
+of friends who go to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long
+journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of many years or
+possibly a lifetime. There should be constant thought of his welfare,
+not of the loss to his friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an
+expression of selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice
+self control in such a matter just as one would control a feeling of
+anger under different circumstances.
+
+Naturally enough the control of grief when one we love has passed on is
+none to easy. But any degree of success is much better than no effort,
+and will certainly help the one for whom we mourn. Much can be
+accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that bring vividly back
+the keen sense of loss. Many people indulge the foolish custom of
+regularly visiting the cemetery where the body has been interred. A
+little analysis will show that this is only another evidence of our
+materialistic modes of thought, and the custom serves to perpetuate
+emotions that should never have existed. We can not, of course, think
+too often nor too tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should
+do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead, or being far
+away. The fact that they are alive and well and happy and near should
+constantly fill the mind; and all of that, in nearly all cases, will be
+perfectly true if we do not foolishly destroy their peace of mind with
+our selfish sorrow.
+
+Occasionally a hint on the subject comes from the astral plane people
+themselves. In the recent book[I] by Sir Oliver Lodge, on his
+experiments in psychic research, there is a message from his son, who
+was killed in battle, agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner and
+to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they will all refrain from
+gloomy thoughts about him! No one who is informed on the subject of
+emotional reaction on the astral body, after the loss of the physical
+body, could be surprised by the conditions named by the young man.
+
+The advocates of cremation have a strong argument in the fact that the
+preservation of the body for a time, whether in a tomb or a grave, tends
+to keep grief alive. When the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that
+the body is somehow the man seems to have less of a material basis.
+Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate, not alone because they renew
+grief through thinking upon it and thus cause great distress to those
+for whom we mourn, but also because the environment of a cemetery is one
+of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It is a dismal park of
+concentrated griefs where each mourner accentuates the emotional
+distress of all others. There is but one sensible attitude to take
+toward those we have lost by death--to think of them as living a joyous,
+busy life and at least calling on us daily even though most of us are
+not sensitive enough to be conscious of the fact. We should try to
+realize the truth of the matter and then readjust our habits to fit the
+facts. The average person who is afflicted with the erroneous ideas
+still so common, is doing an enormous amount of injury and bringing into
+the lives of the very people he loves a depression of which he little
+dreams, and which he can change to vivid pleasure by always thinking
+cheerfully of them and sending them daily thoughts of serenity and
+peace.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[F] 1 Samuel XXVIII--15.
+
+[G] Ch. 3, Dreams and Premonitions.--L. W. Rogers.
+
+[H] The Inner Life.--Leadbeater, Vol. I. p. 483.
+
+[I] Raymond: or Life and Death.--Lodge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS
+
+
+Life is the most elusive thing with which science has to deal but we
+have learned much about both life and matter in recent years, and it is
+a noteworthy fact that the more we learn the thinner become the ranks of
+the materialists. The only scientist of note who still declares his
+philosophy of materialism is Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has
+written, "He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the
+nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's almost deserted ground
+in the scientific world, he declares that his voice "is as the voice of
+one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an
+advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still
+bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his
+comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic
+direction."
+
+Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism being deserted by all
+progressive scientists. While we do not yet know a great deal about
+life, science has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and
+principles from which conclusions may be logically drawn and working
+hypotheses constructed. Sir Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the
+great English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's most eminent
+scientists, speaking of his conception of life, says that "It is
+dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation
+to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but
+otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that its essential
+existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with
+matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is
+subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to
+it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state."[J]
+
+Later in the same work he expresses the opinion "that life is something
+outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and
+energy; though it can nevertheless control and direct material
+forces...."
+
+In closing his volume on _Life and Matter_ this distinguished scientist
+says:
+
+      "What is certain is that life possesses the power of
+      vitalizing the complex material aggregates which exist on
+      this planet, and of utilizing their energies for a time to
+      display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it
+      seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is
+      perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it
+      is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the
+      animated material body moves about and strives after many
+      objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a
+      certain individuality, a certain character. It may realize
+      itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and
+      spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind
+      which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the
+      material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the
+      environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit.
+      Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent
+      soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth,
+      goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent
+      value, or a work of art or of literature; it may enter the
+      region of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest
+      kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may
+      soar till it is almost divine.
+
+      "Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own
+      unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired
+      this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas?
+      There are some who try to think that it is. There are
+      others who recognize in this extraordinary development a
+      contact between this material frame of things and a
+      universe higher and other than anything known to our
+      senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry;
+      but utilizing the interactions of matter for its own
+      purpose; a universe where the human spirit is more at home
+      than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a
+      universe capable of infinite development, of noble
+      contemplation and of lofty joy, long after this
+      planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled
+      its present sphere of destiny, and retired cold and
+      lifeless upon its endless way."
+
+Such a conception of life carries us very far from the old popular view
+of the origin of the race, but it is a conception that brings science
+and religion into perfect agreement and will enable us to understand
+human evolution and explain facts in life that would otherwise remain
+incomprehensible.
+
+The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal life, was taught
+and commonly accepted in the early Christian period. If we accept the
+fact of evolution at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape
+from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed, not even
+materialism can save one from the necessity of accepting the
+pre-existence of the individualized consciousness that we call a human
+being.
+
+Let us consider the human infant as we see it at birth. Whence came
+it--how can we account for it in a universe of law and order? We can
+understand it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse of
+physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few months. But its mind,
+its consciousness, its emotions, what of them? The average man replies
+that God made them and they constitute the soul. But how and when were
+they "made"? Even the material part of this infant did not spring
+miraculously and instantaneously into existence. How much less possible
+is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made it" we have explained
+nothing. But it is not necessary to deny that God creates the soul in
+order for us to move toward an understanding of how the soul came to be.
+It is only necessary to say that the process of its creation was
+evolutionary. Nobody denies that the earth was created by evolution,
+although men may differ in opinion on the matter of a divine
+intelligence guiding its evolutionary development. The same principle
+must apply to the human intelligence.
+
+Lodge wrote _Life and Matter_ as a reply to Haeckel's _Riddle of the
+Universe_, which presented the latter's philosophy of materialism. But
+Lodge did more than demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not
+an inch of scientific ground to support his theory. The English
+scientist raised questions that have not been answered, and cannot be
+answered, by the scientific materialist. He points out that the
+materialist's philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary
+rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully
+endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century."[K]
+
+With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the scientific materialist
+speechless; for all scientists are evolutionists, and it is impossible
+to account for "_the extraordinary rapidity of development_" by the laws
+of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary age of anything
+depends upon its complexity. A simple form is comparatively young while
+a complex one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The earth is
+simple compared to a human being. If, then, it has required ages to
+evolve the earth to its present stage how long did it take to evolve the
+wonderfully complex mental and emotional nature of the human being that
+inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge bottles Haeckel up on his own
+premises and shows that the very evolutionary principles to which the
+German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He practically says to
+Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir, fails to show how it is possible for the
+vacuous mind of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
+in thirty or forty years." In other words, if the infant is nothing but
+the form we see it would be utter absurdity to say that that mass of
+matter can evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years when
+it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary gain.
+
+Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its face. One might as well
+search the surface of a squash for some indication of intelligence. But
+wait only a little while and you shall have evidence not merely of
+intelligence but of emotions possible only to the highest order of life.
+Clearly, here is not something evolved within a brief period from a mass
+of material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific as the popular
+belief in miraculous creation at which the scientific materialist
+scoffs. The swift change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the
+intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a century" is not
+the creation of something but its _manifestation_--_the coming through
+into visible expression of that which already exists_. The soul, the
+consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole of the mental and
+emotional nature, which has been built up through thousands of years of
+evolution, is coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in a
+material body.
+
+The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument of the old
+soul--an instrument, as certainly as the violin is the instrument and a
+vehicle for the musician's expression. At every turn our materialistic
+conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception of nature's truth. It
+is because we think of the body as being actually the person, that it
+seems improbable that an old soul has entered the infant body. We think
+of the power and intelligence of an old soul and then look at the baby
+and find no indication of such things. But that is only because the baby
+body is such a new and undeveloped instrument that it is at first
+useless and only slowly can it be brought under control of the soul and
+made to express its intelligence and power. The body is a growing
+instrument, not a completed one.
+
+Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as physical bodies do.
+Suppose there was a time when the piano was keyless, as a baby is
+toothless. Suppose that sounding boards have a period of immaturity and
+that the whole mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only
+be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play on
+such a piano his performance would by no means be an indication of his
+ability. A competent critic who could hear the performance but not see
+the musician would promptly declare that no really great musician was
+touching the keys. And that is precisely the mistake we make in assuming
+that the immature body of an infant is capable of expressing the
+intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it differently, denying
+that a returned, old soul is in possession of the infant body simply
+because there is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos
+slowly grew to maturity then only when the instrument was mature could
+the master musician give a practical demonstration of his skill; and
+only when the physical body has reached its maturity can the soul that
+is using it fully express itself.
+
+In the early years of the physical body the soul is only very partially
+expressed through it. The entrance of the consciousness into the
+physical world is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth of a
+plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a good one, for a plant is
+very little like a human body. It is impossible to find a material
+equivalent of the dawning of consciousness on the physical plane.
+Beginning about four and a half months before the birth of the physical
+body and continuing for a period of several years the soul, or
+consciousness, is engaged in the process of anchorage in the physical
+world. For a long time the center of consciousness remains above the
+material plane and during the early years of childhood the consciousness
+is divided between the astral and physical worlds, with the result that
+the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments of astral
+consciousness into physical life. When the physical body is about seven
+years old the consciousness may be said to be centered on the physical
+plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's new instrument are
+mature has the opportunity come for the fullest expression.
+
+Some of the difficulties commonly associated in the mind with the
+thought of the pre-existence and rebirth of the soul will disappear if
+we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is a center of
+consciousness, which is always consciousness somewhere, but which very
+gradually shifts its focus from plane to plane. Its permanent home is in
+that body of filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels of
+the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws
+about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle
+of consciousness, that is not permanent but which will serve the purpose
+of functioning for a period on that plane. Downward again the energies
+are sent, building about the center of consciousness on the astral plane
+a temporary body of astral matter, temporary in the same sense that the
+physical body is temporary, and which shall serve the consciousness in
+the astral, or emotional world, during the whole of the physical plane
+life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or downward, the soul
+sends its energies till the material world is reached, when it begins to
+function partially, and very feebly, through the infant physical body.
+
+For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the physical plane where
+certain lessons are to be learned. After the early years of childhood
+are over the consciousness is firmly anchored here, where the chief work
+is to be done, during the hours of the waking consciousness. During
+sleep the ego temporarily lays aside the physical body and functions in
+the astral body in the astral world. The material body sleeping here is
+merely a deserted and empty vehicle, magnetically connected with the
+soul, and awaiting its return.
+
+As childhood, youth, maturity and old age pass, complex experiences
+come to the soul thus functioning here. Other souls functioning through
+physical bodies are encountered and various relationships are
+established. Out of the complexity of social, business, religious and
+political activities the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner
+or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter. The
+gathering of such experience has ceased, not because the soul has
+acquired all possible physical world knowledge, but because its
+instrument of consciousness here has worn out.
+
+Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection and the
+center of its consciousness is then shifted to the astral plane. There
+the purgative process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter.
+As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free from one grade of astral
+matter after another and with the loss of each the man becomes conscious
+on a higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but the matter of
+the astral body gradually wears away until there is so little left that
+the soul has lost connection with the astral world also. This means that
+the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental plane, or heaven
+world, where the man will function on the lower levels.
+
+There in the mental world, functioning through the vehicle of mental
+matter, a very important process goes on. The heaven world life is a
+harvest time in which assimilation of experience takes place. The
+consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences of life and
+extracts the essence from them which is transmuted into faculty and
+power for future greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in
+wisdom and power through its long evolution.
+
+When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest of experience has
+been threshed out and the net gain has been built into the enduring
+causal body, the mental body, like the astral, has been completely
+dissipated. The end of a cycle of experience--of a day in the
+evolutionary school--has come and the physical, astral and mental bodies
+have all perished. Nothing remains but the soul, the real man, the ego,
+functioning through the causal body which persists. From that the ego
+again sends the forces outward, in the first activity toward rebirth,
+first forming a new mental body by drawing about itself the matter of
+the lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new astral body on
+the astral plane and finally taking possession of another infant body in
+process of formation on the physical plane, into which it will in due
+course be reborn.
+
+The period between these successive appearances of the soul in a
+succession of physical bodies varies greatly and depends on a number of
+things. The length of time spent upon the astral plane has already been
+discussed. The time spent in the heaven world depends upon the mental
+and moral forces generated during the physical and astral life. If there
+is a great harvest of experience it will require a longer time to
+transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought little and loved but
+little will have a shorter period there, for it is the heart and head
+forces that have their culmination in the mental world. The question is
+a rather complex one and other factors come into play, including the
+intensity of the heaven world life. In general terms, however, it can be
+said that the heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will
+commonly be a period several times the length of his combined physical
+and astral life. Some people will have only two or three hundred years
+between incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries and
+still others a much longer period.
+
+In getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth, or
+reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the soul,
+or center of individualized consciousness, is the man and that the
+physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
+that the causal body is his permanent body for the whole of human
+evolution; that the mental plane is his home plane and that from there
+he sends forth successive expressions of himself into these lower
+planes. With such facts before us there should be no confusion of
+thought about the successive personalities of an individual. Yet we
+sometimes hear people speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
+can be one man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth. Of
+course no such thing occurs. An individual remains the same individual
+forever. "But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr. Jones, in
+England six hundred years ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in
+America at this moment? If so is that not a case of being two
+individuals?"
+
+It is certainly not a case of being two individuals. It is a case of
+one individual being expressed through a physical body six hundred years
+ago in England, dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
+astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing himself through
+another physical body in America at the present time. The confusion of
+thought on the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
+physical body as being the man. But it is no more the man than the
+clothing he wears. It is true that he is known at one period as Jones
+and at another as Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
+the assumption of an _alias_ by a fleeing criminal changes him. The name
+applies exclusively to the physical body, or personality, as
+distinguished from the individuality. That body is but the temporary
+clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were applied to
+his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his body. We
+might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and as Mr.
+Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name
+would in the least degree make him somebody else. The majority of women
+change their names in each incarnation. A man may know a certain woman
+as Miss Smith when she is a slip of a girl, free from care and with
+little serious thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs.
+Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of children. She has
+changed her name and greatly changed in character, too, but she is the
+same individual.
+
+It seems probable that a person may change quite as much between
+infancy and old age as between one incarnation and the next. Even the
+difference between a youth of twenty years who is an artist and the same
+man at three score and ten who has given forty years to scientific study
+and research, may be enormous, but the individuality is, of course,
+identical. It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and that is just
+what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths--steady evolutionary
+development of the eternal individual.
+
+The reincarnating process by which the soul evolves is somewhat
+analogous to the growth of a young physical body. The process consists
+of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. How does
+the body of a child grow? It consumes food, the objective activity. It
+then digests and assimilates it, the subjective activity. These periods
+must alternate or there can be no growth, because neither alone is the
+complete process. The one is the complement of the other. So it is in
+the evolution of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life is
+the food on which the soul grows. The physical plane existence is the
+objective period in which the food is gathered. At death the man passes
+into the invisible realms where the subjective process is carried on. He
+digests and assimilates his experiences and the gist is stored in the
+causal body and its growth includes an actual increase in size, just as
+in the case of the child's physical body.
+
+The same law governs mental and moral growth as it operates in our
+daily affairs. A young man is in college. How does his intellect grow?
+By precisely the same process of alternating periods of objective and
+subjective activity. In the class room the instructor puts a
+mathematical problem on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward
+senses of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the student
+gathers the food for mental growth. This period of objective activity
+comes to an end and he then retires to the privacy of his room and there
+the subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the problem. His
+material, the food for mental growth, is only a few notes that serve to
+keep the experience in his mind. At first all that they signify is not
+obvious, but as he turns the various points over and over in his mind
+their significance becomes clearer and fuller. It is the subjective
+process of digestion. Little by little new light dawns in the student's
+mind. Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
+principles involved, and the process of assimilation is finished. This
+subjective period is the complement of the objective period and they
+must go on alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When the
+process of digestion and assimilation is finished the student must
+return to the classroom for further mental food and when he arrives it
+is by virtue of the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that he
+is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And precisely so it is
+with the reincarnating soul. In the interval between incarnations it so
+assimilates the experiences of the last physical life that it comes to
+rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take higher and more
+difficult lessons than it could previously master.
+
+In the case of both physical growth by eating and mental growth by
+instruction there is no possible escape from the law of alternating
+periods of objective and subjective activity. When the child has
+digested and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing that can
+follow--return to his source of supply for another meal. When the
+student has digested and assimilated the lesson given to him the only
+possibility of further mental growth lies in his return to the
+class-room for more material. And so it is with the human soul in its
+work of evolving its latent powers and possibilities. There is no other
+road forward but the cyclic one that brings it back to the physical life
+incarnation after incarnation, but always at a higher point than it
+previously touched. The very hunger of the child that insures its return
+to the table for more food is analogous to the desire of the soul for
+sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.
+
+These alternating periods with the element of constant return are found
+everywhere in the economy of nature. All her evolutionary expressions
+are cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed circles. It
+represents a spiral. The "evolutionary ladder" that the soul climbs is a
+winding stairway. In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it is
+always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that
+is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral
+plane, into the physical and then back through the astral plane into the
+heaven world, it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a higher
+state of development, than it had previously attained. Each rebirth
+finds it abler here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
+return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler to digest
+and assimilate its experiences, and to comprehend more of the realities
+of the life of its home plane.
+
+This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral and mental regions,
+is a continuous progressive journey of the soul which began away back at
+the dawn of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
+mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he gathers experience
+in proportion to his alertness and to the opportunities his previous
+lives have made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to
+be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure in the astral life
+and joy and wisdom in the mental region, or heaven world. But he also
+does some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates hatred and he
+injures others. This will give him distress in the astral life and no
+results for soul growth or general progress in the heaven world. If he
+does an equal amount of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he
+does much good and little evil his progress will be rapid and his
+existence happy. If he is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
+development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will suffer much in the
+astral life.
+
+It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy to be told that
+the soul passes through the purgation of the astral plane and goes on
+into the heaven world only to return to another incarnation and later to
+again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who has
+thus been purified be again purified? The astral reactions are the
+results of the blunders made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
+given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the purgatory that awaits
+him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly be any
+reaction. As a matter of occult fact the average good man will find the
+astral plane life a happy existence and will soon pass on to the
+blissful heaven world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only
+to his evil deeds. Let us say he has committed murder. When the reaction
+of the evil force he has generated is over and he passes on into the
+heaven plane it does not mean that he is incapable of future evil. It
+means that he has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is very
+foolish to take life. But there are many other lessons he has not
+learned. When he passes into the heaven world he leaves all evil behind
+him. He is as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple. The astral
+body, like the physical, has perished and it is the freed soul that
+enters the heaven world. But when he returns through the astral plane to
+reincarnation he is clothed again in astral matter and this new astral
+body is exactly representative of his attainments in evolution. In his
+coming incarnation he will have other physical plane experiences and
+learn other lessons. The next time probably he will not kill, but
+perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard. These errors will
+react upon him in the astral life that follows. In a coming incarnation
+he will be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor steal; but
+perhaps he will be a gossip and work much evil through slander. This in
+turn will bring its pain. And so in time he will learn to generate no
+evil force at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward
+everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed, his life on all
+planes will be happy and the painful part of human evolution will be
+over.
+
+The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than the fact of evolution.
+Evolution is an unfolding process in which the latent becomes the active
+and the inner life is more and more fully expressed in outer form. The
+development and improvement in form keeps pace with the necessities of
+the unfolding life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the form
+is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller and fuller expression,
+limbs for locomotion and, in due course, the organs for hearing, and
+seeing, and the other mechanism of the developing consciousness, are
+evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of consciousness comes to its
+highest possible form and then evolution goes on in the perfecting of
+the physical form. In the process of continually changing the matter of
+the body it is possible for the brain to be constantly improved and the
+whole body to grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a
+better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each
+incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and
+form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of
+intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will be
+finished.
+
+The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a god in the
+making--not actually, but only potentially a god, a being to whom all
+wisdom, perfect compassion and unlimited power are possible; and by the
+process of evolution he changes the latent into the active. He is at
+first only an individualized center of consciousness within the
+All-Consciousness, a mere fragment of the divine life. His relationship
+to God is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product of it
+that has latent within it all the characteristics of the plant and the
+power to become a plant. It is not a plant and neither is man a god; but
+when it has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is a plant
+in the making; and when the human being has begun to evolve his latent
+spiritual qualities he is a god in the making. The theosophical view is
+that man is essentially divine.
+
+Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally divine, it is necessary
+for him to pass through any evolutionary process. Divinity here
+indicates merely the essential nature of the human being, not his
+possession of either knowledge or power or any degree of spiritual
+perfection. It is as though we should say that the infant son of a great
+king is royal. The word "royal," like the word "divine," indicates a
+relationship. The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a king in the
+making. He has much to learn. He must be educated in statecraft and he
+must evolve diplomacy. After much experience and development he will, in
+time, be capable of ruling an empire. At present this helpless infant
+bears little resemblance to a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his
+birth he was as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense the
+divinity of man represents potential possibilities rather than an
+obvious fact of the moment. Man is an embryo god and, in time, he shall
+evolve faculties and powers that his present limited consciousness can
+not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature of physical origin
+that lives a brief span to catch a glimpse of immortality and perish,
+but the deathless son of the living God, and by right divine he walks
+the upward way of eternal life.
+
+Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter of course, in a
+general way, but they appear unwilling to admit that the race has really
+made any evolutionary progress. Even scientific men have sometimes
+expressed doubt whether the world is growing better. In a newspaper
+interview an English scientist was quoted as saying a few years ago that
+the race is just as wicked today as at any time within recorded history.
+But if he was correctly reported it must have been a hasty expression of
+opinion which a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It is
+true that things are still bad enough but they are certainly enormously
+better than they were some centuries ago. To say that the world is full
+of crime and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact that a
+civilized nation has reverted to the wartime practices of savage life
+furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to do in
+determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality is to
+take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective
+conscience. How does the world of today view war and how did the world
+in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to shock us now but the
+very fact that it does shock us is the best evidence of moral progress.
+Atrocities were expected and taken as a matter of course some centuries
+ago. They are not the rule now but the rare exception and those guilty
+of them are likely to make their name a by-word among nations. Well
+within the era of recorded history the usages of nations' condemned
+prisoners of war to become slaves for life. Now the rule is to feed and
+clothe them and at the close of the conflict to send them home. A simple
+thing like public sports may be used as a measure of public morals. They
+show what the collective conscience approves. In these days there is
+very little of brutality in public sports. Professional pugilism still
+lingers, but barely lingers, in the most enlightened nations. In less
+progressive countries like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular.
+That is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment. But
+if we look backward to the Roman period we find a cruelty in public
+sports that is comparatively shocking. Gladiators were compelled to
+fight to the death and offenders were devoured by starving wild beasts
+and it all made a Roman holiday. Such "sports" would, of course, be
+utterly impossible anywhere in the world today. But at that time they
+were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest empire. The
+fact that the race has evolved morally and that the collective
+conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer than in the
+past is too obvious for argument.
+
+Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted for? It will not
+do to say that the Christian religion has wrought the change because,
+splendid as are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
+them and shaped its civilization by them. If it had done so the world
+war would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called Christian
+nations wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through all their
+history but class has been arrayed against class and every gain in
+either personal liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by
+force from those who profited by the misfortunes of others. In other
+words, the particular improvements that should have been brought about
+by religion were compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
+teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of
+Christianity, we are still unable to account for the change in the
+common conscience of the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
+steadily on since long, long before the coming of the Christ. How then
+shall we account for it?
+
+If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress of the race in
+morality becomes simple. The majority of the great groups of souls that
+constituted the civilized nations in the time when Rome was mistress of
+the world have had several incarnations in that time and in each sojourn
+on the astral plane have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
+from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually change the cruel man
+to the merciful man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane as
+well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any incarnation
+are carried forward into the next life, and thus compassion grows until
+there is ultimately perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the
+progress of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the
+viewpoint of reincarnation.
+
+Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such
+evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the pre-existence of
+the soul and hold that it is in some way brought into being at the time
+of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical position of saying
+that the reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman
+period is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now
+than he created then!
+
+The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or nations, to act in a
+way that imitates, or nearly duplicates, what has been done centuries
+before by other tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that it
+has given rise to the declaration that history repeats itself. The fact
+of reincarnation shows why it repeats itself. A nation like the Romans,
+or the Carthaginians, are bound together in the subtle ties that are
+formed by the intimate relationships of constant association. The group
+tends to persist and the members of it are largely drawn together and
+regrouped in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond the
+level of the previous centuries but the general traits and tendencies
+remain and the same general policies are likely to shape the national
+affairs. There comes a time in the existence of the great group, or
+nation, when the old environment will no longer serve for its further
+collective evolution as well as some other country. The majority then
+reincarnate elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be
+inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence the remarkable
+difference in the people of a given nation in different periods. Compare
+Rome in the time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or compare
+the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt. It is
+high-class egos that make a great nation and when a country has no more
+lessons to teach them, or rather when another country will serve as a
+better environment for their further progress, they return in rebirth to
+the more advantageous spot on the earth, and a different set of souls
+come into possession of the abandoned environment. The valley of the
+Nile, that was once the home of an energetic people with a flourishing
+civilization would not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile
+civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe because only
+that environment, in full touch with the great commercial stream of the
+economic world, can serve the purpose. As the world is today what could
+a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if born into Egypt?
+Nothing but leave it. So they are not reincarnated there, but other
+souls that are at the point in evolution where the primitive life of an
+isolated country will give the simpler lessons they must acquire,
+inherit the abandoned environment. As an individual moves continually
+onward in each return to incarnation to professional and business
+environments that will enable him to put into effect all the new skill
+and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes on to greater and greater
+opportunities. Souls that made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and
+Rome are now making the greatness of Europe and America. Such facts
+explain many things that have seemed puzzling. How, for example, was it
+possible for the world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in
+Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined--declined because her
+people largely reincarnated elsewhere--Europe was inhabited by slightly
+civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a few centuries--a mere
+passing moment in the great lapse of time required for race
+evolution--the civilization today could arise, would be to ignore the
+fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand that great groups of
+old souls incarnate in the strong physical bodies which the more
+primitive peoples could bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid
+rise of a great civilization in Europe is solved.
+
+The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal kingdom at a high
+level in it. The last phase of evolution in the animal kingdom is the
+individualizing of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or
+dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution and will be
+reborn at the lowest human level. Previous to its individualization it
+evolves in a group with others of its kind, animated by a common
+ensoulment that has not reached the level of complete
+self-consciousness. At that group-soul stage the experience of each
+animal in the group adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical
+teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to
+understand many things that would otherwise remain mysterious. Instinct
+has never been explained by science. Some of its best known expressions
+are altogether mysterious. Why does a young wild animal hide from the
+enemies of its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen either?
+A quail a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small stone or
+bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws to hide its body, and
+remain perfectly motionless at the approach of a human being, but will
+take no alarm at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a young
+chick know the difference between a crow and a hawk? And why, in remote
+places like the antarctic regions, are both young and old birds and
+animals unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and simple
+explanation of all such phenomena. The youngest have the knowledge of
+the oldest because they are attached to the same group-soul, or source
+of consciousness. The young quails of this season come back to rebirth
+from the group-soul that is the storehouse of the experiences of the
+quails that were killed by men in past seasons, and thus all young
+things know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred to the
+killing proclivities of the human being have not become known and there
+is no "instinct" to warn.
+
+An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the group-soul is the
+fact, often chronicled but not explained, that when telephone or
+telegraph lines are built in new countries the birds fly against the
+wires and are killed by thousands, the first season. But when the next
+season's birds are hatched they are wise and avoid the wires! If the
+group-soul were not a fact in nature it would naturally require a long
+time for wire education. No such sudden adjustment would be possible.
+
+Reincarnation represents continuous evolution with no waste of time or
+loss of energy. Death is not the sudden break in the life program that
+the popular belief pictures it. The common view of death is as erroneous
+as the common view of birth. If death were what most people believe it
+to be it would constitute a blunder of nature--an irrational
+interruption of orderly development. In nature's economy there is
+conservation of energy and no loss can arise through the change called
+death. If the popular belief that at death we go far away to a totally
+different kind of existence were sound then death would usually mean an
+enormous waste. A young man is educated for some particular work,
+engineering, architecture or statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to
+die soon afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting such an
+education would be largely lost either if death ends all, or is the
+last he will know of the material world. But nature does not thus
+blunder. Her law of conservation is always operative. All the skill and
+wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and will be used in the
+future incarnations.
+
+A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in evolution. The child
+cannot get an education in a term nor in a year. He must return often to
+the same school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may use new
+books with higher lessons but he returns periodically to the same
+environment. Continuous attendance would be as unthinkable as finishing
+his education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns
+periodically to the physical world, or plane, for the same reasons.
+Continuous life here until all material experience is gained would be
+impossible. Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring and
+digesting experience the physical body would become a hindrance to
+evolution. Within certain limits the physical brain can respond to the
+requirements of the growing soul, but a new body is in time an absolute
+necessity to further evolution.
+
+If we give a little thought to the evolutionary progress the ordinary
+person must make to raise him to mental and moral perfection, the
+absurdity of a single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a moment,
+intellectual perfection. It would mean a development of the mind to the
+point of genius in many directions. If we combine into one mind the
+attainments of the mathematical genius, the musical genius, the
+inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on until every line of
+intellectual activity is included, we then have only the perfect mental
+man. On the moral side we must add to that the combined qualities of the
+saints. Then we have the perfected human being, with nothing more to be
+learned from incarnation here. His further evolution belongs to
+superphysical realms.
+
+In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul, that slowly changes
+it life after life from the savage to the civilized state and finally
+raises it to perfection, it is helpful to observe how this great work
+corresponds to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation. A great
+character in history begins with helpless infancy. Steadily he
+progresses, unfolding new power at each step. He passes through the
+graded schools, slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows
+with higher and more difficult mental acquirements. Then he enters
+professional life and begins to use his intellect with more and more
+initiative. He moves on into public life with increased duties and
+responsibilities. From one post of honor he rises to another with
+increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is the head of a nation
+and has become a world figure. Even so it is in the evolution of the
+soul. Life by life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst every
+increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In one incarnation we
+have conditions that evolve courage. In another we are thrown into
+situations that develop tolerance. In still another we acquire patience
+and balance. In all of these incarnations we steadily evolve intellect
+and strengthen all previously acquired virtues. In each life we find
+the new conditions that are necessary for the exercise of our added
+abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual insight and
+the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves, we move forward to higher
+fields of evolution.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[J] "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120.
+
+[K] Life and Matter.--Lodge, p. 121.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE
+
+
+No matter how much we may differ in our view of the relationship between
+God and man there is general agreement about the attributes of the
+Supreme Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom, love and, of
+course, the perfection of all those desirable qualities we see in human
+beings. The theosophical view is that all we know in man of power,
+wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, et cetera, are faint but actual
+manifestations of the attributes of the deity. All who are not
+materialists, denying the existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that
+the wisdom and justice of God must be perfect. It would be illogical and
+inconsistent to limit or qualify His attributes. Either He is all-wise
+and absolutely just, or else the materialist is right. We cannot have a
+deity at all unless He represents perfect justice.
+
+Another point on which all but the materialists must agree is that
+creation is so ordered that the common welfare of humanity is best
+served by just the conditions of life that surround us. Nothing is
+different from what it should be unless it is because of man's failure
+to do what he should do for his own welfare. If it were otherwise what
+would become of the argument that an omniscient God has ordered it as it
+is? If, then, things are as they should be in the truest interests of
+man, and we find things in life that, according to our views of
+creation, are not right and just, it necessarily follows that the views
+we hold are erroneous.
+
+The popular belief is that human beings constitute a special creation;
+that whenever a baby is born God creates a soul or consciousness for
+that body and that after a life of many years, or a few days, or a few
+minutes, as the case may be, the body dies and the consciousness goes to
+dwell in remote regions for ever and ever. If the person lived a good
+life and also believed in the current religion he will be "saved" and
+will be eternally happy. If he did not live a good life but finally
+"believed" before death he will be saved anyway and be just as happy as
+though he had lived right from the start. If he did live a good life,
+but was not born with the ability to believe easily, he will be lost and
+will be eternally miserable. According to this theory of special
+creation God makes people of all sorts. None of them can help being what
+they are created. Some are wise and some are foolish. Those who are
+smart enough to find the way of salvation will finally have heaven added
+to their original gift of wisdom. Those who are not smart enough to find
+it will finally have hell added to their original lack of sense. This is
+what some people are pleased to call divine justice!
+
+It will hardly do to argue that the possibility that all may at last be
+happy in an endless heaven, makes it unimportant that there are
+inequalities now. The majority of the theologians do not admit that such
+a state awaits the whole of the human race, and the comparatively few
+who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that present justice can
+be determined by future happiness. Even if we positively knew that
+eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close of this physical life
+how could that make it just that one person shall be born a congenital
+criminal and another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How could it
+make it right that one is born to life-long illness, suffering and
+poverty, while another inherits both wealth and a sound physical body?
+Not even the certainty of future happiness would be compensation for
+present inequalities. But why should there be any such inequalities if
+God represents unlimited power and perfect justice? Why should there be
+any poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously,
+He can as certainly create any necessary condition for the soul? Why
+poverty and disease and suffering at all? There must be a better answer
+to such questions than that "it pleased God to have it so." It is surely
+little better than blasphemy to suggest that any kind of hard conditions
+for man are pleasing to the deity.
+
+To hold that any future condition of happiness can make present justice
+out of the truly terrible inequalities of life, would be much like a
+millionaire who has two sons giving one of them all the advantages of
+wealth, travel, skilled instructors and special care, while the other
+was permitted to wear rags and go hungry. If the neglected son asked why
+he was thus treated while his brother was most carefully provided for,
+the father might reply with some indignation, "You are to have plenty in
+the future! My will is so drawn that when I die my great wealth will be
+equally divided between you and your brother. You will then be a
+millionaire with more money than you can possibly spend. So don't be
+foolish about your hardships now. Learn to starve like a gentleman!" The
+father's position in such a case would be just as reasonable as that of
+those who think a heaven hereafter can justify an earthly hell now.
+
+Now let us take some of the particular facts of life that puzzle us and
+test them with the hypothesis of special creation, and also with the
+hypothesis of reincarnation, and see which can really explain them in a
+satisfactory manner. We will take some facts of real life. In a
+Massachusetts prison there is an old man whose name became familiar to
+many of us in our youth. He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy, the boy
+murderer. The present generation scarcely knows him. But forty years or
+more ago he was talked about by all the newspapers. For the crime of
+murdering his playmates the boy was sent to prison for life. Why did
+Pomeroy become a noted criminal in childhood? If the theory of special
+creation is sound he was created and put in the world to fit himself for
+a future heaven. But he was created in such fashion that he was
+deficient in moral perception and he began life with an act that led to
+his expulsion from society. If God created this soul as we first knew
+him why was he not created with the moral balance of a law-abiding
+citizen so that he could have lived long and peacefully in civilized
+society and have been prepared for heaven at death? What could have been
+the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think soundly and a
+conscience that welcomed murder? That leads us inevitably to the
+question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The
+deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the
+theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that
+contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to
+create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He
+should create a humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever
+attaining it. If He creates them as they come into the world at birth
+why are not all of them created wise and kind? Why must most of them
+blunder through life, making all sorts of mistakes, bringing suffering
+to others by their unkindness or cruelty and only, in the end, to pass
+from a life of failure to eternal punishment for that failure? There is
+no reason, no justice, no sanity in such a theory.
+
+Now let us turn to the explanation of reincarnation. According to that,
+Pomeroy has had many past incarnations and will have many more. Like all
+the rest of us he came up from primitive man. We have all learned the
+lessons of civilized life slowly by experience like children acquiring
+lessons from their books. The majority have come along well and
+developed a fair share of intellect in dealing with life's problems,
+and some degree of sympathy for others. Some have evolved rapidly like
+hard working pupils and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged
+behind and have learned very little. They are like the truants at school
+who have broken the rules and run away from their lessons. These
+laggards of the human race are the dullards and the criminals, who have
+moved so slowly incarnation after incarnation, or are so much younger in
+evolution, that they are now bringing savage traits into our present
+civilized life.
+
+Reincarnation not only explains who and what the criminal is but it also
+explains away the hell with which special creation threatens him. No
+hell awaits him except that which he has created himself by what he has
+done. By the law of cause and effect all the cruelty and suffering he
+has inflicted will react upon him to his sorrow, but will also serve for
+his enlightenment. In his next incarnation the kind of body he will have
+and the environment in which he will live will be determined exactly by
+the thoughts and emotions and acts of this and past incarnations. He
+will therefore neither go to a heaven for which he is not fitted nor to
+a hell which he does not justly deserve. He will simply come back in
+another physical body and have a chance to try it again, but he will
+have to make the trial under the conditions which his conduct has
+merited.
+
+And what of the idiot? According to special creation we cannot possibly
+explain him. It would be blasphemous to believe that God creates a
+mindless man. If one soul is given a mind and another is not, and for no
+reason whatever, it is the most monstrous injustice that ever forced
+itself upon the understanding of man! Think for a moment of the
+difference between the idiot and the normal person. The man of sound
+mind has before him the opportunity of progress, of mental and moral
+development. The avenues of business and professional life are open
+before him. He is free to try his powers and win his way. Wealth, power
+and fame are all possible for him. All the joys of social life may be
+his. Think of him surrounded by his family and friends, successful,
+satisfied, happy, and then think of the life of the idiot. Language
+cannot express the horror of the contrast! If there were no other
+explanation of life than that of special creation it would change the
+world into the hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation saves
+us from either blasphemy or madness. The idiot, like the congenital
+cripple, differs from the normal man only in the body, which is the
+instrument of the soul. Deformity of the body is a limitation of the ego
+who functions through it. A withered arm, a club foot, a deformed back,
+in this incarnation are results of unfortunate causes which that soul
+has generated in past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in the brain.
+Of course this is not an accident. There is no element of chance which
+places the limitation in one body where it causes but little trouble and
+in another where it prevents mental activity and thus produces idiocy.
+In each case it is the exact working out of the law. The body of the
+idiot is the physical plane representation of a soul that has made a
+serious blunder in the past, possible by limiting another with cruel
+restraint, and the gross misuse of his intellect and power in that way
+has operated to prevent his using it at all in the present life. But
+such limitations belong to the outer planes. It is the form that limits
+and when the form perishes the limitation disappears. As with the
+criminal no hell is needed to punish the idiot. He has made his own hell
+by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he must live in it
+and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it may seem to some that since the
+idiot is incapable of realizing the life of the normal person the
+situation represents no real misfortune for him. But idiocy on the
+physical plane does not mean idiocy in the soul. Even from the astral
+plane the ego may keenly feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime
+through such a physical body, as one here would feel the anguish of
+incarceration in a dungeon.
+
+The criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations of the failure of
+the theory of special creation to satisfactorily explain the facts of
+life. But if we turn to the other extreme and consider the most
+fortunate people in the world we shall find there, too, precisely the
+same failure to explain. By the hypothesis of special creation we find a
+gross injustice done to the soul born an ignoramus. Yet we find others
+possessing enough intelligence for several people. In the case of
+Macaulay we have the evidence in his own handwriting in a letter the
+date of which proves his age, that he was reading Greek and Latin and
+studying mathematics deeply when seven years old. There are many other
+cases of the remarkable display of talents in childhood, but a single
+instance will serve for all. It is all the better as an illustration
+because it is a contemporaneous case and the facts are known to scores
+of living people. It is recorded of William James Sidis, of Brookline,
+Massachusetts, that at six years of age he entered a grammar school and
+in six months had completed the work of seven grades. At the age of
+seven he had gone so far with his mathematical studies that his father,
+Professor Boris Sidis, could be of little assistance to him. He worked
+out the most abstruse and difficult problems with the greatest ease and
+invented new systems of computation which attracted much attention. When
+eight years old he entered the Brookline High School and in six weeks
+had completed the mathematical course and began writing a book on
+astronomy. He then took up the study of French, German, Latin and
+Russian. On leaving school he took up mathematics as a specialty and
+invented a system of logarithms based on the number 12 instead of 10.
+This was inspected by several well known mathematicians who pronounced
+it perfect in every detail. He applied for admission to Harvard
+University but the authorities refused his petition on account of his
+youth, only, since he could have passed the examination with ease. He
+tried again the next year and was again refused on the same ground. But
+at eleven years of age, having passed the entrance examination for the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was judged to know enough of
+chemistry and kindred subjects to make him eligible for admission to the
+Harvard medical school. He then entered upon a special course at Harvard
+because the ordinary course in college was far below the abilities of
+this boy of eleven years. Professor James, of Harvard, the famous
+psychologist, has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he ever
+knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite pages of Shakespeare
+from memory at an age when the ordinary boy is learning his alphabet.
+
+In the same city where young Sidis was born we find the idiot. Did God
+create them both as they were born or did they come up to their present
+difference of mental equipment through a process of evolution that
+accounts for it all satisfactorily? If the theory of special creation is
+sound why did not the idiot get at least a little of the intellect that
+Sidis could so easily have spared? If they are the work of special
+creation it is impossible to find reason or justice in such terrible
+inequalities. But if reincarnation is God's method of creation the
+explanation of the difference between them becomes simple. Sidis is not
+only an old soul but evidently one who has worked hard in past lives,
+throwing off the lassitude of the dense bodies and evolving the power of
+will that enabled him to triumph over obstacles, conquering all the
+enemies of intellectual progress and thus earning the fine physical body
+and brain he now possesses. His present abilities are but the sum total
+of the energies he has put forth in the past.
+
+The theory of special creation does not explain the facts of life. It
+lacks justice, it lacks harmony and it lacks consistency. It is not in
+accord with natural law. Nature knows no such thing as special creation.
+To believe in special creation is to ignore all scientific facts and
+principles. On the other hand reincarnation is in harmony with science
+and with natural law. Reincarnation is evolution and every kingdom of
+nature develops through evolution. The difference between the shriveled
+wild grain that struggles with the rock and soil for life enough to
+barely reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of the cultivated fields
+that feeds the world, is the work of evolution. The wild stalk produced
+the seed and from that seed came a better stalk. The better stalk
+produced a still better kernel and from that better kernel sprang a
+superior stalk to yield a higher grade of wheat than any of its
+predecessors. The stalk sprouts from the ground, matures, stores all its
+gain of growth within the seed and perishes. But from the seed springs
+its reincarnated form, to repeat the process that changes poor to good,
+good to better and better into best. And thus it is with the
+reincarnating soul. As the almost worthless grain through many seasons
+is slowly changed to perfect worth, the soul is by that same law of
+evolution slowly changed through many incarnations from the chaos of
+savage instincts to the law and order of the moral world. Each
+incarnation yields some improvement. As the seed sprouts within the
+darkness of the soil and, perishing there, attains its full results in
+the higher realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which,
+stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its better self, so
+the soul strikes anchorage in the lower planes and draws from its varied
+experiences that which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the
+power to return with greater life.
+
+Attempts have been made to find some explanation of the mental and moral
+inequalities that exist at birth. In the earlier days of the study of
+evolution it was usually asserted that the human being inherits his
+mentality and morality from his parents. But even if that were true the
+injustice of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain. It
+is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice, and it is of
+no importance whether it comes about through heredity or otherwise. But
+as a matter of fact heredity is confined to the physical side of
+existence. As more and more is learned by observation the old theory of
+mental and moral heredity has lost ground until it can be said that it
+now has no recognition in the scientific world. Nobody is better
+qualified to speak upon the subject than those with practical
+experience. Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University Children's Clinic,
+that has large numbers of defective children in charge, treating no less
+than sixteen hundred in a single year, says:
+
+      "As to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective
+      types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance. I do not
+      agree with social or educational doctrinaires who assign
+      the causes definitely to liquor, poverty, infectious
+      diseases, or other social or moral shortcomings. The
+      greatest minds of the world are hesitant in theorizing
+      about this. There are a complex of causes which explain
+      many of these cases, but no generalization fits absolutely.
+      We may find a case which is not traceable to any of these
+      conditions--_a case in which the antecedents would promise
+      a perfectly normal child, and yet we are confronted with a
+      defective child_. On the other hand, bright, normal
+      children, even children of superior intelligence sometimes
+      spring from such conditions."[L]
+
+A little reasoning about the facts concerning both genius and idiocy
+will make it clear that neither is inherited. If it were true that
+genius is inherited society would present a different appearance. There
+would be famous families of geniuses living in the world, in music, in
+poetry, in warfare, in invention, in art, if genius were inherited. The
+fact is that it is difficult to find even two geniuses in any family.
+The Caesars, Napoleons, Edisons, Lincolns, Wagners, Shakespeares, stand
+alone with neither great ancestors nor great descendants. We search in
+vain for great ancestors for such men; but if the theory of mental
+heredity were sound we should know their ancestors for precisely the
+same reason that we know them.
+
+Heredity, then, does not explain whence genius comes; and if anybody had
+really traced genius from father, or grandfather, to son or grandson, we
+should still have no explanation of what genius is. We could then only
+regard it as the result of some strange chance; yet the scientist knows
+that laws of nature contain no such element. But the only reason why
+genius appears so incomprehensible is because we have not looked at it
+in the light of nature's truth. We have erroneously assumed that this is
+the only life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the time is
+too short for the evolution of genius. A man can become an expert in one
+lifetime but not a genius. But if we give him many incarnations to
+develop along certain lines he can become a genius of a given type. The
+soul that works strenuously at building up a certain faculty through
+many incarnations naturally develops qualities in the causal body that
+shine out brilliantly upon its return to a physical body and we have the
+genius. We evolve our mentality and morality, and there could be no
+justice in life if it were otherwise.
+
+There is no element of chance in getting a new physical body in the next
+incarnation. The body is the material expression of the self. It is as
+much the product of the self as the rose is of the bush, the apple of
+the tree, or the tulip of the bulb. The musician can no more get a body
+suitable to the blacksmith than the rose bush can produce an apple. We
+do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people drawing clothing by
+numbers which might result in grotesque misfits. We do not get bodies at
+all, we evolve them, and in each incarnation the new body expresses all
+the soul has come to be up to that point in its evolution. Such a view
+of life has a basis of absolute justice. Every soul gets exactly what
+it has earned.
+
+The common belief in Occidental civilization is that we live here for
+only sixty or seventy years and that then, when we die, we pass on to
+live eternally somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity, whether
+it is filled with pleasure or is horrible with pain, is made to depend
+on how we spent those few years of the physical life! Such a fate would
+be unfair and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a term it would
+not be fair to condemn him to lose all opportunity of getting an
+education. We would give him another chance at the following term.
+
+A little incident of disobedience from home life will illustrate the
+point involved. A quinine capsule was lying on the table. A
+three-year-old boy reached for it. His mother called across the room,
+"Don't eat that, dearie, it isn't candy." But in a spirit of reckless
+mischief he hurried it into his mouth and quickly chewed it up! It was a
+very disagreeable but salutary lesson for the little fellow. It is an
+example of nature's methods. She is always consistent, and has a
+balanced relationship between cause and effect. But suppose in this case
+we throw her consistency aside as those who believe that eternal results
+will follow temporal effects are obliged to do. An ordinary lifetime
+compared to eternity is somewhat like that instant of disobedience
+compared to eighty years, but the illustration is not adequate because
+eternity never ends. As nearly as the principle can be applied it would
+be by saying to the child, "Because you were disobedient for a second
+of time you shall taste quinine for eighty years!" If that punishment is
+injustice what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain as the
+result of the errors committed in a lifetime?
+
+Any hypothesis of existence that does not take into consideration the
+welfare of humanity is a false hypothesis. What plan can better serve
+the common welfare than a chance to redeem a failure? When a prisoner is
+condemned for a crime we do not deprive him of opportunities. We give
+him every possible chance to improve his character. God cannot be less
+just or merciful than man. Rebirth is a new chance. Every incarnation is
+another opportunity.
+
+If the popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell is sound, and there be
+few who find the "narrow way," the time will come when the majority of
+the race will have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime, and
+have failed. If that were really true, it is easy to imagine what they
+would do with another opportunity if they had it! How long should
+opportunity be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to deprive
+anybody of it when he is eager to redeem past errors is to ignore the
+principles of human welfare. Therefore such a plan cannot be the true
+one. John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:
+
+      Master of human destinies am I!
+         Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait;
+         Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
+      Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
+         Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late
+         I knock unbidden once at every gate.
+      If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before
+         I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
+         And they who follow me reach every state
+      Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
+         Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
+      Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
+         Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
+         I answer not and I return no more.
+
+That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably emphasizes the
+importance of promptly acting when the time for action arrives. But
+there is another truth to be expressed on the subject and it is well
+done by Walter Malone, who says:
+
+      They do me wrong who say I come no more,
+          When once I knock and fail to find you in;
+      For every day I stand outside your door,
+          And bid you awake and rise to fight and win.
+      Wail not for precious chances passed away;
+          Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
+      Each night I burn the records of the day,
+          At sunrise every soul is born again.
+      Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;
+          To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
+      My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
+          But never bind a moment yet to come.
+      Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,
+      I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."
+
+What a magnificent view of human evolution! No ultimate failure possible
+because there is always another chance. The failure of one incarnation
+made good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults and
+frailties--the shadow blots of the past--vanishing in the light of a
+higher wisdom that has been won. No endless hell, no eternal torment;
+not even the ghosts of vanished chances to haunt the mind; but only the
+insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging us to wake and rise to
+strive and win!
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[L] Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY
+
+
+There are apparently but three ways in which anybody has attempted to
+explain the origin of the race. If two of these are shown to be
+impossible we have no course open to us but to accept the one which
+remains. One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another
+is the common belief that God created an original human pair and
+continues to create souls for babies. The third hypothesis is that of
+the evolution of the soul.
+
+The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that the forces of
+nature, with no directive intelligence, are sufficient to account for
+man as we see him; that a continuing consciousness in the human being is
+a delusion; that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has
+neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science to which the
+materialist appeals contradict such conclusions.
+
+This materialistic belief regards the human body as a self-sufficient
+machine whose brain generates thought. But the savage has a completely
+evolved physical body with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His
+brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference in its material
+constitution from the brain of civilized man. Indeed, his physical body
+is not only as complete a machine as ours but is likely to be materially
+sounder. Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this savage
+produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there is no directing soul
+back of the brain, why the marvelous difference in the product of the
+two brains?
+
+Materialists go too far in the assumption that they can explain the
+phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop
+short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology
+they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains
+unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart
+through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the
+veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced
+cannot say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been explained and
+cannot be explained from the materialist's viewpoint. Every human being
+is a miracle. A fingernail is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from
+the same food that makes the flesh and it will continue to be formed
+regardless of the variety or quality of the food. Why do certain
+particles become flesh or nails? Who can draw the division line between
+them? With marvelous instruments and wondrous skill science has explored
+and mapped and charted the "tabernacle of clay," but it cannot throw a
+single ray of light upon the intelligence that animates it.
+
+Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but still worse as a
+satisfactory interpretation of the panorama of the life about us. It is
+a philosophy of the gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance
+to be that which we are; that we are what we are merely because of
+fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations. Had the combinations
+chanced to be something different we should not be in existence. Chance
+is the king of the materialist's world.
+
+According to this theory all abilities are the gifts of nature and all
+lack of them is the blind award of chance. No credit whatever is due to
+anybody for what he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his
+deficiencies. All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw something
+from a bag under compulsion. It is not to the credit of one that he got
+a prize nor to the discredit of another that he drew a blank. This
+hypothesis holds that recently we were not and that presently we shall
+cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief period, suffer or
+enjoy as it may happen and then pass to the oblivion of eternal silence;
+that all the thought, all the toil and the striving, all the effort and
+endurance were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a philosophy
+will not long survive the progress of our age. It lacks the balance of
+nature's principle of conservation. It lacks the completeness of
+universal law. It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in
+every human consciousness and without which life would be a meaningless
+mockery and the world a chaos of despair.
+
+But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of bad points or
+undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea of a mechanical creation is
+equally at war with both fact and reason. That belief is that God
+created the world as men build houses, and added the human beings as men
+furnish their houses when built. It is the belief that He is still
+making souls as fast as bodies are being born in the world, that these
+souls begin their existence at birth, live here but one life and then
+pass on into either endless bliss or eternal pain.
+
+This idea differs from materialism in the matter of a governing
+intelligence and on immortality but it is remarkably like it in other
+ways. Like materialism it is fatalistic because it makes man the
+helpless subject of resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent
+force as first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.
+
+The materialist says that all human characteristics are the gift of
+nature while according to the popular belief they are the gifts of God.
+In either case one class of human beings gets abilities that they have
+not earned and others get defects that they do not deserve. The
+intellectual man is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped
+without mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured by being
+well born while others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes
+logically with such ideas.
+
+Happily the world has long been growing away from the once wide-spread
+belief in predestination because it is too shocking to the modern sense
+of justice. But is the world at the same time catching the point that if
+there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at birth, then
+the very essence of predestination remains, because some are created
+with the wisdom to attain salvation and others are created without it?
+
+If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility at the
+time of birth. Neither can it have any merit. One is born with a sound
+mind and moral insight. These qualities may lead to salvation but the
+man has done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel and
+vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore miss salvation,
+but if he had no pre-existence he can have done nothing to deserve such
+a start in life. If we are really here for the first time then justice
+can be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start and equal
+opportunities afterward.
+
+Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between human beings at
+birth. There is every degree of vice and virtue from the savage to the
+saint and every mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If
+God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created wise and kind
+though he did nothing to earn it. Another is created vicious and
+depraved. He did nothing to deserve it. One is showered with natural
+gifts to which he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a
+stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to believe that God
+made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason and to justice.
+
+It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between God
+and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible for a person to
+be saved by his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by God
+at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to comprehend spiritual
+truth and his moral strength to resist temptation, were conferred upon
+him, not earned by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings
+should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human automata
+operated by such degree of mental and moral ability as God chose to
+assign to them. If this be true, genius should have no credit for its
+accomplishments, indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of
+condemnation, tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue no
+applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this
+absurd and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of people.
+It is believed because it always has been believed.
+
+If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that
+the soul is created at birth is also impossible. It is a theory that
+encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions that destroy justice
+and defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its day. It was
+possible at any time only because there was too little information and,
+like the old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place to the
+newer knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest friend of
+religion. It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific belief
+in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality and a brotherhood of
+man that has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was hastily
+thought to be destructive of a belief in God and heaven and immortality
+is rapidly becoming the most important witness to the truth of them all.
+While it is true that in the earliest days of evolution the most eminent
+scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that today the most eminent
+scientists of the world believe in the existence of the soul, and in its
+immortality, and base that belief upon scientific grounds.
+
+What is the essence of the facts of evolution and how does it give
+evidence against materialism and for immortality? Evolution is an
+orderly unfolding from the single to the diversified, from the simple to
+the complex, in which process life evolves by passing from lower to
+higher forms and storing within itself the gist of the experiences
+gained in each.
+
+One of the vital facts that evolution establishes is that slow building
+is the order of creation. The horse is an example. He is traced backward
+with certainty to a small creature that resembles him very little
+indeed. Ages were required to evolve the horse into his present
+intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important fact in evolution
+is the continuity of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently
+used as an illustration, but the principle holds with all the higher
+order of insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis of the
+caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common that most people have
+personally observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation that
+contradicts materialistic philosophy. The worm is a physical body
+occupied by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body perishes
+and becomes part of the dust of the street. The life enters the grave of
+the chrysalis. The scientist takes that chrysalis, packs it in an ice
+house and leaves it frozen for a number of years. Now a mere frost will
+kill either caterpillar or butterfly, but when the chrysalis is removed
+from the ice and brought into a higher temperature the triumphant life
+emerges in the form of the butterfly. This phenomenon proves that life
+does survive the loss of the body. The body of the caterpillar is dead
+and has turned to dust years ago, but the caterpillar that lived in it
+is not dead. It now lives again in the physical world in a physical
+body of a higher type.
+
+Here, in an order of existence almost infinitely below man, we have an
+individual life existing in a physical form, passing from it and, after
+a number of years, taking possession of another form and living in that.
+Who can admit such continuity of life for the insect and deny it for
+man? Can there be a deathless something in a worm and not in a human
+being? Even without the mass of physical evidence that exists upon the
+subject the logic of nature would lead us to confident conclusions. The
+knowledge of evolution which science has so far accumulated leads to
+four natural inferences. One is that man is immortal. Another is that he
+has, like all creatures, slowly evolved to what he now is. A third is
+that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together, and the
+fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher and continually higher
+ones. The human soul evolves from the savage to the saint--from animal
+instincts to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot escape
+the conclusion that the race has evolved, is evolving and will continue
+to evolve until mental and moral perfection has been attained.
+
+If neither the theory of the materialist nor the popular notion that the
+soul is created at birth is satisfactory, we have only reincarnation
+left as a working hypothesis; and if we accept the evolution of the soul
+as a natural truth, then reincarnation becomes a necessity in explaining
+the known facts of life.
+
+But there are some students of life who appear to refuse the hypothesis
+of reincarnation while wishing to accept the idea of the evolution of
+the soul. But how would that be possible? If the soul is evolving it is
+under the necessity of developing by the laws of growth. They were
+discussed in Chapter IX.
+
+Those who desire to put their ideas about the soul and its immortality
+into harmony with the facts of evolution sometimes ask why it would not
+be possible for the soul to leave the material plane forever at the
+death of the physical body and then pursue its evolution on higher
+planes. In the vast universe there must be opportunity for all possible
+development, it is argued.
+
+But why go on into other regions when the lessons here have not been
+learned? That would be a violation of nature's law of the conservation
+of energy. The average human being is in the elementary grades, with
+scores of incarnations ahead of him before he will be in a position even
+to take advantage of his opportunities and thus make fairly rapid
+progress. To talk of going on to higher planes for further evolution is
+like proposing that a child shall leave the kindergarten and enter the
+university.
+
+We are evolving along two lines, the mental and moral, and a little
+consideration of the matter will make clear two important points--that
+we have much to learn and that the physical plane is wonderfully
+arranged for our instruction. We have conditions here for developing
+mentality that do not exist on higher planes. The absolute necessity of
+procuring food is an example. Death is the penalty for failure to obtain
+it. Hunger was the earliest spur to action at the lowest level of
+evolution and even now at our high point of attainment it is one of the
+chief factors of racial activity. In providing the necessities of life
+and in gratifying our multitude of desires mentality is developed.
+Business and professional life rests upon these physical plane
+necessities and, engaged in solving the problems of civilization, the
+race evolves intellect. Such problems do not, of course, exist on higher
+planes.
+
+While the mentality is thus being pushed along in evolution by our
+material necessities, the heart qualities are developed by the family
+ties in a way that could not be done elsewhere. In the nature of things
+the entrance of the soul to the physical plane is attended with
+helplessness. From the beginning it must have material necessities or
+die, and yet it can do nothing in its new infant body. Again, as a rule,
+long before it leaves the physical plane old age has once more rendered
+it helpless. Thus every human being must depend on the assistance of
+others at two critical periods of each incarnation. The help it
+receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back to the race, in the care
+of both the helpless young and the helpless old, when it is in the vigor
+of mature physical life. It is obvious that such experience develops the
+qualities of sympathy and compassion as no phase of business life could.
+The relationship of parent and child, husband and wife, evolves the
+heart qualities in a way that would be impossible in the totally
+different environment of higher planes. Naturally enough, each plane has
+a specific work to do in the soul's evolution. We can no more learn in
+the highest planes the lessons the material world is designed to teach
+us than a pupil can acquire a knowledge of mathematics from his lessons
+in geography. Hence the necessity for a periodical return to this life
+until its experiences have developed in us the qualities we lack.
+
+Not only has each plane its special adaptability to particular needs of
+the soul in its evolution, but the two kinds of physical
+bodies--masculine and feminine--through which the soul functions, afford
+special advantages for acquiring the lessons of life. The soul on its
+home plane is, of course, sexless. Sex, as we know it, is a
+differentiation arising from the soul's expression on lower planes. All
+characteristics of the soul itself, like intelligence, love, or
+devotion, are common to both sexes.
+
+The ego functioning through the masculine body has the opportunity of
+certain experiences that would be impossible in the feminine body,
+while, of course, the feminine form enables the ego to get experience
+that could not be known through the masculine body. A consideration of
+the widely different experiences of fathers and mothers, sons and
+daughters, will show how true this is. The lessons obtained in the
+masculine body are largely those of the head while in the feminine form
+they are lessons of the heart.
+
+When the ego puts forth its energies and begins descent into lower
+planes for another incarnation it is apparently beginning a cycle of
+experience in which either mentality or spirituality shall be the
+dominant note for that incarnation, and probably for several others. If
+it is to evolve for the time being through those experiences related to
+objective activity, with intellect as the guiding factor, the masculine
+body can best serve the purpose. But if the dominant note is to be
+spirituality, rather than mentality and the soul is, for the time,
+moving along the line of the heart side--the subjective, the
+intuitive--then the feminine body is the better vehicle in which such
+experience can be obtained. But to say that mentality is the dominant
+factor of masculine incarnation does not at all mean that men have a
+monopoly of the reasoning faculty. Nor does the fact that other souls
+are being expressed through the feminine body mean that they have a
+fundamental spiritual advantage. Some women are better reasoners than
+some men, while some men are more spiritual than some women. What it
+does mean is that a certain ego can express intellect better through a
+masculine body and intuition better through a feminine body.
+
+Our ordinary language confirms the truth of the statement that men
+normally express more the head qualities and women more the heart
+qualities. We speak of men as being reasoners and of women as being
+intuitional and depending upon their impressions. The soul in the
+masculine body is for the time being getting experiences of the outer,
+objective activities. He is the home builder and protector, the bread
+winner, the battle fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the
+time, getting experience along the line of the inner, subjective life.
+She is the wife and mother, and her lessons are of the heart rather than
+the head.
+
+As we study nature we are more and more impressed with her wonderful
+mechanism for the evolution of the soul. It soon becomes clear to the
+student that every individual is, in each incarnation, thrown into
+precisely the circumstances required for the greatest possible progress
+of that particular ego. If the qualities of initiative and courage, for
+example, are to be developed, the masculine body admirably serves the
+purpose, while if sympathy and compassion need stimulation the feminine
+form is wonderfully effective for that kind of progress. It requires
+little reasoning to see that the soul would not continue to incarnate in
+one sex indefinitely. It must develop all its inner qualities. Both
+intellect and compassion must reach perfect expression. Such a
+consummation can, of course, be best attained by alternating sex
+experiences. But here again there is wide latitude in the operation of
+the law. The rule seems to be that ordinarily there are not less than
+three nor more than seven successive incarnations in one sex, and then
+the ego begins to express itself through a body of the other sex. By
+that rule it would commonly be for a period of from a few hundred years
+to some thousands of years, that the ego expresses itself through one
+sex before it changes to the other. One case is mentioned by the occult
+investigators in which for about thirty thousand years a certain ego had
+expressed itself only through the masculine form. At least no trace of a
+feminine incarnation could be found during that time.
+
+The necessity for rebirth becomes clearer and clearer as we study the
+nature of the human being and the inherent divine qualities he is
+unfolding. Reincarnation is the method of evolution at the human level.
+Only by physical plane experience can man's potential powers be aroused
+and so tremendous is the evolutionary work to be done that only a mere
+fragment of it can be accomplished in an ordinary lifetime. The absolute
+necessity of many rebirths is obvious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER
+
+
+The loss of memory between incarnations and the failure to now recall
+any of our experiences previous to the present physical plane life has
+sometimes been cited as a negative kind of evidence against the
+hypothesis of rebirth. The point could not be made, however, by one who
+has studied the matter because close scrutiny will show that the loss of
+memory is a necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that we do not
+remember is in perfect harmony with the principles of evolution. Indeed,
+the close student of the subject would be very much surprised if we
+could normally remember, because he does not get far until he sees, not
+only why we do not remember past incarnations but why we should not
+remember them.
+
+The very nature of the evolutionary work to be done by reincarnation
+necessitates a sacrifice of memory. One useful purpose of the
+confinement of consciousness in matter, through the use of a physical
+body, is that it narrows the scope of consciousness and thereby
+increases its efficiency. The consciousness of the ego sweeps over a
+vast range, forward and backward, including all past incarnations. But
+the limitation of matter which compels consciousness to be expressed
+through a physical body, focuses the attention on the evolutionary work
+immediately in hand. The brain becomes the instrument of consciousness
+but also, fortunately, the limitation of consciousness. If there were
+not loss of memory our minds would now range over the adventures of
+thousands of years in the past. It would encompass a vast drama with
+countless loves and hates, of many lives filled with pathos and tragedy.
+To thus distract the mind from the present life would retard our
+progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place one can think better
+and accomplish more than when in the midst of turbulent scenes and
+throngs of people. When there is less to think about the thinking is
+more effective. It is necessary to restrict the consciousness and limit
+the mind to the present life in order to get the most satisfactory
+results. The same truth is embodied in that old saying that whoever is
+jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration alone can produce
+satisfactory results. If we would master the lessons of this life we
+must not take other lives within the field of consciousness. The very
+process of reincarnation is a coming out of the general into the
+particular, with the consequent narrowing of consciousness.
+
+We should keep in mind the fact that our true and permanent life is in
+the causal body, and on the mental plane, and that there, alone, is
+unbroken memory possible. The descent into matter in each incarnation is
+also beyond reach of the brain memory, of course. Getting new bodies is
+the working out of natural law even as instinct works in animals. The
+whole animal kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man, nevertheless
+adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy and with a depth of wisdom
+that is beyond our comprehension. And so is human evolution directed by
+impelling forces that are unknown to our waking consciousness. But our
+waking consciousness is only a small part of our consciousness--that
+fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical brain. The
+physical brain is a limitation of consciousness, and therefore of
+memory, as certainly as a mountain range is a limitation of sight and
+prevents one's knowing what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know
+our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes the memory of our
+past incarnations. But when we come downward into another incarnation it
+is as though we were descending in a narrow vale within mountain ranges
+that stand between us and the wider world. Memory is dependent on things
+not within the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish
+facts which we wish to recall. We know, for example, the name of a
+certain person. There is no doubt that we know it and yet it is
+impossible to remember it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us, but
+we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now, if memory fails to
+produce its record even when we have a mental picture of just how that
+person looks, and know just where we have met him, it is certainly not
+remarkable that with no such immediate connection with our last
+incarnation we fail to recall it. It was perhaps in another part of the
+world, and in another civilization, and is separated from us by the long
+interval between incarnations. Of course memory likewise fails to
+produce that record. But all of our past experiences are within the
+soul, just as the records of all of the experiences of this life are in
+the mind whether we can connect them with the present moment or not.
+
+But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not remember events that
+have occurred in past lives and people we have seen before, we do not at
+least now have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar to us. What
+the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation is not concrete facts but
+something higher and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts
+which gives the understanding of their true relationship; and this is
+the thing we call good judgment or common-sense. A man does not succeed
+in business because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows what
+to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full of facts but it cannot run
+a business. Every theorist and dreamer is loaded with facts. The
+successful man is the one with balance and judgment.
+
+It might seem on first thought that one who has been a carpenter in a
+previous incarnation should have no need to learn the name and use of a
+saw, or one who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to hold the
+pen and fashion the letters. But we must remember that the old soul is
+now breaking in a new physical instrument with which to express itself
+and that while it will be able to use all the skill it has previously
+evolved, its full expression must await the time when the new instrument
+has been brought into responsive action.
+
+The situation might be fairly illustrated by the case of a stenographer
+who is still using the original typewriter, in some remote corner of the
+earth, and who has not even seen or heard of any of the remarkable
+improvements made in such machines in the last thirty years. If his old
+machine were suddenly taken from him and a model of the present year
+were put in its place, it is obvious that he could at first make little
+use of it--not because he has no knowledge but because he must become
+accustomed to the new machine before he can express himself through it.
+It would have mechanism and appliances that he could not immediately
+manage. Let us imagine also that all the characters are in a foreign
+language which must be mastered before the machine can be used. But the
+difficulties are not great enough yet for a fair illustration. We must
+also suppose that it is a living thing, with moods and emotions, and
+that it must pass through stages of growth comparable to infancy and
+youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain that the stenographer
+would appear to have very little knowledge and to possess little skill.
+Yet as a matter of fact it is merely the conditions that temporarily
+prevent him from expressing his wisdom and skill.
+
+The gist of knowledge gained in the past represents skill that has no
+dependence whatever upon brain memory. If a man should suffer a lapse of
+memory, as sometimes happens, and wander about unable to give his name
+or place of residence, such loss of memory does not prevent him using
+any skill he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not know in
+what gymnasium he evolved his great strength, but he can use it just as
+effectively regardless of the absence of memory.
+
+One who has been a skillful penman brings all his skill to the new
+incarnation but of course the new body must be trained to hold the pen
+and form the letters. Every public school teacher knows that one child
+will quickly learn that and soon become a competent penman while another
+can by no possibility exhibit skill in that particular art. The reason
+is that one has previously evolved his skill and the other has not, and
+may not, for several more incarnations.
+
+It is sometimes objected that by the hypothesis of reincarnation we are
+required to go over the same ground again and again and learn what we
+have previously learned. But the criticism has no foundation in fact.
+There is undoubtedly some necessary recapitulation in the early part of
+the incarnation, just as there may be in the early part of a school
+term. But in the main we are thrown into new conditions which are
+calculated to develop additional faculties. We return to the same
+material world but we find it with a higher form of civilization than
+when we were here before. Never before have we who are now here seen a
+civilization like this, with its age of iron and steam and electricity,
+with its marvelous opportunities for developing the mechanical faculty
+in human nature. And that is another bit of evidence of the beauty and
+utility of the evolutionary scheme. We come back always to greater
+opportunities than we have yet known.
+
+It is not only clear that the failure to remember the past has nothing
+to do with our ability to use the skill and wisdom we have previously
+evolved but it is equally obvious that it is the best of good fortune
+that we cannot remember the past. If we could do so that memory would
+keep alive the personal antagonisms of past reincarnations. Nobody will
+deny that we have plenty of them in this incarnation or that the world
+would be the better if we could bury some of the present antagonisms in
+a like oblivion. If all quarreling neighbors were to suddenly lose
+memory of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage to everybody
+concerned.
+
+Nature's wisdom in veiling the past from us can be understood by
+observing the pernicious effects of remembering too long the blunders
+people make in this incarnation. Take the case of a very young man who
+has charge of his employer's money and who, finding himself pressed for
+ready cash, makes the grave mistake of "borrowing" a hundred dollars
+without his employer's knowledge and consent. The young man really
+believes he is borrowing it and knows just where the money is to come
+from to replace it soon, and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know
+anything about it. But to his consternation the money that was due him
+in a few days cannot be collected in time and an unexpected examination
+of his books leads to his arrest for embezzlement. He is convicted,
+sent to prison for a year, and returns a marked man. Thoughtless
+society closes its doors against him. He seeks employment in vain.
+Nobody wants an ex-convict. He explains that he had no criminal intent
+and that he really was guilty of only an indiscretion and that he paid
+back the money later. But the world is too busy to listen. It sees only
+the court record, and that was against him. The public forgets, or never
+knows, the extenuating circumstances. But it never forgets two
+things--the verdict of guilty and the prison. The young man would almost
+give his life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible. It
+stands against him for life. But nature is wise. She does not permit our
+vicious traits to extend their injury too far. If we could remember from
+incarnation to incarnation that man's misfortune might afflict him for
+thousands of years. But by the wise plan of closing all accounts at the
+end of each incarnation the mischief of remembering the blunders of
+others comes to an end. In the next incarnation all start with clear
+records again.
+
+One of the objections that one sometimes hears against reincarnation is
+that it seems to separate us for long periods, if not forever, and that
+even when we meet those we have previously known and loved, there is no
+memory of the past. The answer to the first point is that the separation
+is wholly on the lower planes and that the time spent on the higher
+planes is often twenty times that given to the lower. Separation is, of
+course, unavoidable on the physical plane, even where people live
+together in the same home. The average man spends most of the day at
+his office and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four. He is
+really separated from his family most of the time. But there is no such
+separation on higher planes and there is spent most of the whole period
+of evolution. The second point--that we do not now have the pleasure of
+knowing that our friends are those we knew and loved before--is not an
+important one. What is really important is that we again have them. If
+the ties of affection have been strong between us in the past there will
+be instant friendship when we meet for the first time in this
+incarnation. Those with strong heart ties are certain to be drawn into
+very close association life after life. It has been observed through the
+investigations that egos have been husband and wife, or parent and
+child, again and again. The probability of such close relationships
+depends upon the strength of the ties of affection. But if such real
+bond between the souls is lacking the mere fact that they now have
+family relationships is no guarantee of such future intimate
+association. When two souls have strong ties arising out of past
+association the failure to remember that incarnation does not in the
+least weaken the ties. But it does mercifully hide the past contentions
+that are to be found in nearly all lives.
+
+The failure to remember previous incarnations will be more clearly
+understood if we now give some thought to the fact that the personality
+here on the material plane is only a fragment of the whole consciousness
+of the soul. As we come down into lower planes from the mental world
+each grosser grade of matter through which the ego expresses itself is a
+limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane each of us, whatever he
+may be here, is more alive and enjoys an actual extension of
+consciousness. On the mental plane he has enormously greater wisdom than
+here, with a still further extension of consciousness that is quite
+beyond the present comprehension of the brain intelligence.
+
+To put it differently, the ego really does not come into incarnation at
+all. It merely sends outward a ray from itself--a mere fragment of
+itself, as a man might put his hand down into the water of a shallow
+stream to gather bits of ore from which gold can be obtained. So the ego
+puts a finger, only, down into denser matter to get the general
+experience that can be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill.
+That finger of the ego, that we know as the personality, gathers the
+experience and then it is withdrawn into the ego. During the incarnation
+the personality has been animated by only a little of the ego's vast
+intelligence and that is why it blunders so often. But, veiled in dense
+matter, not much of the ego's consciousness can reach it.
+
+The relationship between the ego and the personality may be illustrated
+by that which exists between the brain consciousness and that of the
+finger-tip. The difference, of course, is great. The finger tip cannot
+see of hear or taste or smell. It is limited to one sense--touch. But it
+is a form of consciousness, and it can get experience and pass it on to
+the brain consciousness. A man may be addressing an audience and see
+some substance on the table before him. It may be sand or sugar. Without
+interrupting his lecture he can put down his finger and get at the truth
+about the matter. The finger-tip gets the information and passes it on
+to the brain consciousness. Meantime there has been no pause in the
+discourse. Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought has been
+missed. The intellectual life went on in its completeness while the ray
+of intelligence sent down in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as
+it was. Just so the life of the ego--the true self of each of us--goes
+forward on its home plane while the personality here gropes for its
+harvest of experience. Some of those experiences will be painful to the
+personality, and the event will seem tragic here, but it will be a
+passing incident to the ego. In the illustration just used the substance
+on the table may prove to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of
+glass. Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and pain
+follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a blinding flash of
+distress that is overwhelming. But to the brain consciousness it is a
+trivial incident. And thus it is with most of our painful experiences
+here. They do a useful work in our evolution and they are trifling
+incidents to the consciousness of the ego.
+
+The personality finishes its work and perishes, in the sense that it is
+drawn up and incorporated in the ego. Most people identify themselves so
+fully with the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to them.
+But that feeling will trouble them no longer when the ego is understood
+to be the real self. We might say that the relationship between the ego
+and the personality is like that between man and child. Childhood will
+perish but only to be merged into manhood. When we look at that
+transformation from the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory.
+But if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may look appalling.
+If you should say to your son of three summers, "My child, the time will
+come when all these beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your
+little playmates will see you no more," you might cause him much
+distress. It would seem to his limited child consciousness nothing less
+than a tragic destruction of what makes life worth while. But when he
+reaches manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial things of
+those early days. If there is something in his childhood of real,
+permanent value, it will persist in manhood. All the trivial and
+transient will have disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so,
+for manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego is the real
+self.
+
+As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of the man, so the memory
+of all the hundreds of incarnations persists in the causal body and is
+an eternal possession of the ego. When we are sufficiently evolved to
+raise the consciousness to the level of the causal body, while still
+living on the physical plane, as some people are now able to do, we
+shall thus temporarily recover the memory of past lives. When that time
+comes, however, the soul is sufficiently advanced to use such wider
+knowledge without injury to itself or others.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
+
+
+Back of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is a profound and
+beautiful natural truth, but it has been degraded into a teaching that
+is as selfish and brutal as it is false. The natural truth is the
+sacrifice of the solar Logos, or the deity of our system. The sacrifice
+consists of limiting Himself in the matter of manifested worlds and it
+is reflected in the sacrifice of the Christ and other great teachers who
+use their vast consciousness through a physical brain for the helping of
+the world. Compared to the descent of such supermen into mundane spheres
+a mere physical death is a trifling sacrifice indeed.
+
+The help that such great spiritual beings have given mankind is
+incalculable and altogether beyond what we are able to comprehend. But
+for such sacrifice the race would be very, very far below its present
+evolutionary level. But to assume that such sacrifices relieve man from
+the necessity of developing his spiritual nature or in any degree
+nullify his personal responsibility is false and dangerous doctrine.
+Nobody more than the theosophist pays to the Christ the tribute of the
+most reverent gratitude. He also holds with St. Paul that each must
+work out his own salvation.
+
+The belief in special creation arose in that period of our history when
+our ancestors knew little of nature. Modern science was then unborn and
+superstition filled the western world. Now that we do know the truths of
+nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous process that is
+still going on, it is time to abandon the old conceptions and bring
+religious beliefs and scientific principles into harmonious
+relationship.
+
+Wherever it touches the practical affairs of life the old idea of
+special creation and special salvation fail to satisfy our sense of
+justice and of consistency. Intuitively we know that any belief that is
+not in harmony with the facts of life is a wrong belief. The idea of
+special creation is not only inconsistent with the facts as science has
+found them, but it does not give us a sound basis for moral development.
+Having started with the false idea of the special creation of the soul,
+which brings it into the world free from personal responsibility, it
+became a necessity to invent a special salvation to give any semblance
+of justice at all.
+
+Now the vital point against this plan of salvation is that it denies the
+soul's personal responsibility and teaches that whatever the offenses
+against God and nature have been, they may be cancelled by the simple
+act of believing that another suffered and died in order that those sins
+might be forgiven. It is the pernicious doctrine that wrong doing by one
+can be set right by the sacrifice of another. It is simply astounding
+that such a belief could have survived the Middle Ages and should
+continue to find millions who accept it in these days of clearer
+thinking. But it seems that when people are taught a thing in childhood
+the mind accepts it then without reasoning and afterwards vaguely
+regards it as one of the established facts without thinking further of
+it at all. But upon reflection we see at once the impossibility of its
+being true. We hear of a lingering practice in a remote province of
+China, whereby a man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire a
+substitute to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law must have its
+victim and its supremacy must be upheld. We laugh at that and know well
+enough that punishing the unfortunate substitute, who sacrifices himself
+to obtain a sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot
+regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his willingness to
+shift the responsibility for his crime upon another only sinks him
+farther into iniquity. The only person who can gain in moral strength is
+the one who makes the sacrifice.
+
+Let us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement for wrong doing
+were to be adopted generally. Then every murderer who had the means
+would escape the consequences of his crime. Every burglar who was
+successful enough to have the cash on hand could elude prison. Every
+pickpocket could hire a substitute to suffer for him and thus continue
+his criminal career. Every embezzler would have the money to purchase
+freedom. Every corruptionist would be safe. Every thief could laugh at
+the law. It would make a mockery of justice. It would place a premium
+upon crime and a handicap upon honesty and virtue. However bad the
+dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would necessarily lower
+the standard of their morality by shifting the burden of their sins to
+others. It would destroy personal responsibility, and personal
+responsibility is the basis of sound morals and the foundation of
+civilized society.
+
+Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief in
+special creation and special salvation--the teaching that we are not
+responsible for our sins and that by believing that another assumed them
+and died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing and thus be
+saved. What are we to be saved from? From nothing but ourselves. From
+our selfishness, from our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to
+inflict pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the
+heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may
+escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The
+man who is willing to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit
+for heaven and could not recognize it if he were there. What do we think
+of a person here who shifts his sins upon another and while that other
+suffers he goes free and enjoys the fruits of his baseness?
+
+A heaven that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement a
+happy arrangement for letting them in pleasantly and easily would not be
+worth having. It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be no
+heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those who have
+eliminated selfishness; only of those who want to help others instead of
+trying to dodge the consequences of their own acts; only of those who
+are manly and womanly and generous and just and true. Nothing less than
+a recognition of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that.
+Yet the theory of special salvation ignores it, waves it aside--in fact
+denies it!
+
+Reincarnation represents personal responsibility and therefore absolute
+justice. It shows that, not merely in all the vast future, but also in
+this life and in every life, and all the time, our degree of happiness
+depends upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were
+generally understood it would necessarily raise the average of morality.
+It furnishes a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive
+for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the
+one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds; that he must
+return life after life to associations and environments determined by
+the good or the ill he has done; that he can no more escape from his
+evil deeds than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately
+suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation of every
+insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures the man of good
+intentions and right desires that every good deed shall rise up in the
+future to bless him; that all whom he has helped shall become his
+helpers hereafter; that even his good intentions that failed in their
+purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy in the future.
+
+What a splendid thing it is to know that every thought and act adds
+permanent value to the character; that all we learn in any life becomes
+an eternal possession; that we can add to our intellect, to our insight,
+to our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power, as certainly and
+definitely as a man can add to his bank account or permanent
+investments; that whatever we may be in this incarnation we can return
+again stronger and wiser and better.
+
+The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent divinity and the
+method by which the latent becomes the actual. Instead of the ignoble
+belief that we can fling our sins upon another it makes personal
+responsibility the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It is
+the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion of self-respect.
+
+Think of the utility as well as of the common-sense of a scheme of
+salvation that really saves us because it evolves us; that never denies
+us a chance to retrieve an error; that gives us an opportunity to right
+every wrong; that brings us back life after life until all enemies have
+been changed to friends; until all accounts are closed and balanced;
+until all our powers have been evolved, until intellect has become
+genius; until sympathy has become compassion and the last moral battle
+has been fought and won.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE FORCES WE GENERATE
+
+
+Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and
+they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success
+or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
+on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of
+rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and
+reaction under which we evolve while here.
+
+The three classes of energies which we generate are those of thought,
+desire and action. They belong, in the order named, to the mental world,
+the astral world and the physical world. All people are constantly
+thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting
+thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into the worlds of
+thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions, or consequences,
+and to them the man is bound until justice is done and the soul has
+learned its evolutionary lesson.
+
+That thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity is, the
+student of the occult well knows, but the world is not quite yet at the
+point where the fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the
+history of all human progress. When Franklin began his experiments with
+electrical force almost nobody believed there was any such thing in
+existence. Yet today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains and
+drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that at the time of the
+first experiments he would have been considered extraordinarily foolish.
+What the world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually has
+very little to do with the facts. The general public can be expected to
+come trailing along, about a half century late, with its acceptance and
+approval. Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be
+impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.
+
+The mental body grows by the process of thinking. The force generated in
+thinking reacts in the production of greater faculty for thinking, so
+that we literally create our mental abilities. The activities of thought
+change the mental body into a better and constantly better instrument
+through which the ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect
+others and we thereby make ties with them that must work out sooner or
+later in associated experience.
+
+Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role in
+the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the
+desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only
+judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying
+them. Thus do we acquire discrimination. It is usually a strong desire
+nature that brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of desire
+it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul
+finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires into higher
+ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment and liberation.
+
+Actions are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and, as we
+are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very
+complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up
+relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far
+into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under
+which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future
+incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for
+himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every
+injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in
+kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of
+retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on
+in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be
+accomplished.
+
+The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next
+and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates,
+our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in
+the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth
+or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our
+intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or
+limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the
+past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape.
+
+But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from
+which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize
+them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time
+we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong
+course in the past.
+
+Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and
+determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong
+arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either
+side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation
+lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both
+free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint
+is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily
+bound, _but we did the binding_, by the desires we indulged and the
+emotions we freely harbored in the past.
+
+The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may
+be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to
+locate mines. They are all aware that in that remote northern country
+navigation closes very early and that after the last boat leaves there
+is no possibility of getting out of that region until navigation opens
+again in the next season. Some of them are discreet and reach the
+landing in ample time. Others are careless. They continue their search
+for gold a little too long, and arrive at the river a day too late. The
+boat has sailed and they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a
+great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from
+Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely free. They
+can build a cabin and either waste the time with idle games or seriously
+think and study. They are limited but free within the limitation, and
+the limitation itself was of their own making. It is precisely so with
+us in the environment of the present incarnation and with our various
+fortunes. We made them and, when the forces with which we did it are
+exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification
+and improvement.
+
+The reactions from the forces we generate naturally do us exact justice
+just because they _are_ reactions. We reap precisely what we sow. The
+reaction may sometimes seem harsh but consideration of the matter from
+all points of view will show that mercy as well as justice is always a
+factor. Let us consider the method by which nature changes recklessness
+into caution. A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a cigar and
+throwing the burning match down wherever it may happen to fall. He may
+go on doing that a long time with no serious result, yet all careful
+people know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago a newspaper
+told the story of such a man, who passed along the street, lighted a
+cigaret and carelessly flung the flaming match from him. A nurse was
+passing with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell on some of
+the light, airy wraps of the infant and they burst into a blaze. Before
+the fire could be extinguished the child was so badly burned that it
+died the next day.
+
+The moment such a case is stated we realize the necessity of something
+that will cure the man of such fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the
+lives and property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be invoked. He
+had no criminal intent but he is none the less dangerous for that, as
+the incident proved. We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
+carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the law of action and
+reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be in the latter part of
+this incarnation, or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later
+his carelessness will react and he will lose his physical body in pain
+and distress and come to know personally just what his recklessness
+means. In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane,
+he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right. The folly of
+his course is so driven in on his consciousness that he is changed from
+the careless man to the careful man. In no other way could his cure be
+brought about.
+
+It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as the result of our
+wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can now know nothing of its
+cause and therefore we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we do
+not know in the limited consciousness of the physical brain the soul
+does know and in the wider consciousness the lesson is registered.
+
+The principles of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its
+evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he does not merit
+and that which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
+working of the law seen from an angle that makes it illusory. But, it
+may be objected, how does theosophy see "beneficent working of the law"
+in the burning of a theater where a score of people lose their lives,
+including several children? How can theosophy explain that?
+
+How can it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created at
+birth? If God really brings the soul into its original expression in an
+infant body, why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
+months? What can be the purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain
+the death of children if the soul were created at birth. But let us look
+at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul with a
+young body. Hark back to the case of the man whose carelessness caused
+the death of the baby in its carriage. He, and others like him, are
+again in incarnation and in the burning theater they get the reaction of
+the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why so many in some
+catastrophes? it may be asked. A principle is not affected by the number
+involved. If we can see justice in the death of one person we can see
+justice in the death of a hundred. It is simply class instruction.
+People of a kind have been drawn together.
+
+We should not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such case
+from the physical plane. We form an opinion, however, on that inadequate
+survey and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or injustice
+involved. But our verdict depends wholly upon a viewpoint. Let us
+suppose, for example, that a man strolls down the street and that, as he
+turns a corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of life. A young
+man is lying on the ground, battered and bleeding, while two others
+stand over him. What would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene
+say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The ruffians!" and he
+would be inclined to assist the man who was down. But let us suppose
+that he had been a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to
+turn around the corner with the other men and would have seen him rush
+upon a defenseless woman, push her down, snatch her purse and dash away,
+but, fortunately, in the direction of the men who assaulted and stopped
+him. Had the last arrival seen the entire affair he would have reversed
+his opinion and said that the thief got what he deserved. And so it is
+in our inadequate physical plane view of what we call a calamity. It may
+appear to involve an injustice, but only because we do not see the
+entire transaction.
+
+Those who study the occult laws that shape human destiny may learn to
+use them for their rapid progress and for insuring a comfortable, as
+well as spiritually profitable, life journey.
+
+But before we can work successfully within the law we must know that the
+law really exists. Most people seem either to believe there is no law
+that will certainly bring them the results of their good or evil
+thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they can in some way
+dodge it and escape the consequence, and so we see them go along
+through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing.
+They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts,
+they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort
+and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest
+from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the
+falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the
+company of schemers and are swindled, when a false story is started
+about them, when--through no fault of the moment--they are plunged into
+discomfort and humiliation, they merely call it so much bad luck and go
+blindly on with their generation of wrong forces that will in due time
+bring another enforced reaping of pain.
+
+There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain of daily life as
+certainly as there is a law that guides the earth in its orbit about the
+sun. That law of action and reaction is just as constant, accurate and
+immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet upon the ground
+while we come and go and think nothing at all about it.
+
+There is something almost terrifying in the immutability of all natural
+laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They are the operation of
+forces which, in themselves, are not related to what we call good and
+bad. They simply are. The law of gravity will illustrate the point. It
+operates with no consideration whatever for character or motives. It
+holds all people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it
+whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice,
+it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality. If the
+fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the
+saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored him. He has
+merely reaped the reward of his alertness in spite of his bad morals.
+The saintly man may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law
+of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over the precipice,
+and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless
+of his benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words "God is no
+respecter of persons," for, of course, all natural laws are but the
+expression of the divine will.
+
+But this immutability of natural law is not in the least terrifying when
+we come to look more closely at it. On the contrary it is within that
+very immutability that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It
+is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we can calculate
+with absolute certainty and surely attain the results at which we aim.
+It is because of the certainty that the doing of evil brings pain and
+the doing of good yields a return of happiness that we can control
+circumstances and determine destiny.
+
+Why should there be such a law operating in the mental and moral realm?
+Because only thus can we evolve. We must not only change from ignorance
+to wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong doing to
+perfect harmlessness. How would that be possible without the law of
+cause and effect, without action and reaction which brings pleasure for
+righteousness and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a law can we
+learn what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do. If it is
+agreed that we are souls, that evolution is a fact, and that perfection
+is the goal of the human race, then the necessity for the law of action
+and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a law of gravity.
+
+The existence and operation of this law of cause and effect are set
+forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures. "With what measures ye
+mete it to others it shall be measured to you," is certainly explicit.
+In Proverbs[M] we have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit
+shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon
+him." Of course the language is figurative. No writer of common sense
+would assert that every time a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into
+it nor that whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon him!
+We dig pits in the moral world whenever we undermine the character of
+another with a false story, whether we originate it or merely repeat it,
+and into such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the law.
+We have loosened and set rolling the stones of envy and hatred and they
+shall return to crush us down to failure and humiliation in the reaction
+that follows. We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law
+when we could have used it for our success and happiness.
+
+"Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement of the law of
+action and reaction. It is not an assertion that we should not judge
+because we are not qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong
+another with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that the
+consequence of judging others is that we, in turn, shall be judged. If
+we criticize, we shall be criticized. If we condemn others for their
+faults and failures, we shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant
+and remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be tolerantly
+regarded by others.
+
+All of us who have studied the subject find in our daily lives the
+evidence of the truth of such Biblical declarations. We know perfectly
+well that anger provokes anger and that conciliation wins concessions,
+while retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort calls out
+retort, while silence restores the peace. In these little things it is
+usually within the power of either party to the trouble to have peace
+instead of turmoil--just a matter of self control. But in the larger
+events it is not always so. They are not invariably within our immediate
+control because they are often the results of causes generated in the
+past which we can no longer modify. And this brings us to a wider view
+of this law of cause and effect.
+
+If we look at the life history of an individual as it stretches out from
+birth to death it presents a remarkable record of events that appear to
+have no logical relationship to each other. In childhood, there may have
+been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of
+the qualities of character we are considering, and there is nothing in
+the present life of the child to explain either. The child itself may be
+gentle and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross abuse
+and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find still greater
+mysteries. Invariably there are mingled successes and failures,
+pleasures and pains. But when we come to analyze them we fail to find a
+satisfactory reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
+when they are not warranted by anything that was done to win them, and
+for the want of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We also
+observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not
+only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test
+of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds
+and call it "bad luck."
+
+Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and our inability to
+trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask a savage to explain
+how it is that a few minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
+know what happened yesterday in London. He knows nothing of reporters
+and cables and presses. He cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend
+it. But if he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
+he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because we are
+lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly as we use it!
+
+If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world. Chance
+means chaos and the absence of law. From the magnificent, orderly
+procession of a hundred million suns and their world systems that wheel
+majestically through space down to the very atom, with all of its
+electrons, the universe is a stupendous proclamation of the
+all-pervading presence of law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and
+effect. There is no such thing as chance.
+
+What then _is_ good luck? We know that people do receive benefits which
+they apparently have not earned. There simply cannot be a result without
+a cause. They have earned it in other lives when the conditions did not
+permit immediate harvesting of the results of the good forces generated
+and Nature is paying the debt and making the balance of her books at a
+later period. It may be in the case of one that some specific act is
+attracting its reward, or it may be in the case of another that he is
+nearing the point in evolution where he no longer desires things for
+himself, only to discover that nature fairly flings her treasures at his
+feet. He has put himself in harmony with evolutionary law--with the
+divine plan, and nature withholds nothing.
+
+When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to seek the cause of
+unexplained good or bad fortune beyond the boundaries of this life
+because there is nothing else we can do. We have results to explain and
+we know they do not come from causes that belong to this life. They must
+of necessity arise from causes generated in a past life.
+
+Now the moment we get away from the narrow view that we began existence
+when we were born, all the mysteries about us disappear and we can fall
+back on natural law and logically explain everything. Why does one
+person begin life with a good mind while another is born with small
+mental capacity? Because one worked hard at life's problems in past
+incarnations while the other led a butterfly existence and merely amused
+himself. Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances always
+maintaining a cheerful view of life while another loses control of his
+temper at the slightest annoyance and wears himself out with the
+trifling vexations of existence? Only because one has for a long period
+practiced self control while the other has never given a thought to the
+matter. Why is one so thoughtful of others that he wins universal love
+and admiration while another is so self centered that he makes no true
+friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The one has studied
+the laws of destiny and lived by them while the other has not yet even
+learned of their existence.
+
+Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created at birth, and
+keeping in mind the newer and scientific view that we have all lived
+many lives before, all the difficulties and perplexities at once
+disappear. We are no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some
+good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we
+see that he must have set the forces in motion in a previous life which
+now culminate in this result. We are no longer mystified because
+apparent causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that in the nature
+of things he did generate the causes in the past. A single incarnation
+has the same relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single
+day has to one incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights and
+yet all the days are related by the acts which run through them, so the
+incarnations are separated by periods of rest in the heaven world and
+yet all the incarnations are related by the thoughts and acts running
+through them. What a man does in his youth affects his old age, and
+what we did in our last incarnation is affecting the present one. The
+one is no more remarkable than the other. As we mould old age by youth
+so we are shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we shall be
+able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth that what we are now
+is the result of our past we must have a clear understanding of the
+relationship between the soul and the body. The physical body in each
+incarnation is the material expression of the soul, of its moral power
+or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its purity or its grossness,
+just as one's face is, at each moment the expression of one's thought
+and emotion in physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers
+itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of joy and his
+face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry, and the change from joy to
+anger is registered in physical matter so that all who see his face are
+aware of the change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These
+are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they are obvious to
+all. But we know that as the years pass the constant influence of
+consciousness moulds even physical matter into permanent form. A soul of
+sunny disposition finally comes to have benevolent features while one of
+morose tendency as certainly has a face of settled gloom. Nobody can
+contact the soul of another with any physical sense we possess yet
+nobody has the slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a
+sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony with life. We
+know the difference only because consciousness moulds matter. But this
+is merely the surface indication. Consciousness is continually
+influencing matter and the major part of its work is not visible to us.
+What the consciousness is, the body becomes. Whether we are now
+brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities
+of consciousness, and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
+physical body are the registrations in matter of what we, the soul,
+thought and did in the past.
+
+Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall begin to see just
+why and how it may have come about. If in a past life a person was
+guilty of deliberate cruelty to another, and on account of it suffered
+great mental and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
+thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on his victim are
+reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have apparently merely a distorted
+brain so that the consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
+that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result of violent
+reaction from cruelties in a past life? The consciousness that can be
+guilty of cruelty is seeing things crooked--out of proportion. Otherwise
+it could not be cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register a
+corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the faithful and
+accurate reflection of that consciousness. It is just because the body
+is the true and exact expression of the consciousness in physical matter
+that the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such remarkable
+delineations of character. The record is there in hand and head for
+those who can read it.
+
+This broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very long
+series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different view of the
+difficulties with which we have to contend and of the limitations which
+afflict us. It at once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
+there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody; that all good
+fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune is deserved, and that each
+of us is, mentally and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
+it well when he wrote:
+
+      All that I rightly think or do,
+          Or make or spoil or bless or blast,
+      Is curse or blessing justly due
+          For sloth or effort in the past.
+      My life's a statement of the sum
+      Of vice indulged or overcome.
+      And as I journey on the roads
+          I shall be helped and healed and blessed.
+      Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads
+          To urge to heights as yet unguessed.
+      My road shall be the road I made.
+      All that I gave shall be repaid.
+
+Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth more inspiring? It is
+surely a satisfying thought that every effort shall give increased power
+of intellect; that all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own
+protection in time of need; that every impulse of affection shall ripen
+into the love of comrades; that all noble thinking builds heroic
+character, with which we shall return, in some future time, to play to a
+still noble part in the world of men.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[M] Proverbs, XXVI, 27.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION
+
+
+If we accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot escape the
+conclusion that there is superphysical evolution. The belief that man is
+the highest intelligence in the universe, except God himself, would be
+utterly inconsistent with evolutionary facts and principles. Evolution
+is a continuous unfolding from within, and it is only the limitation of
+our senses that leads us to set limitations to it. The one great life of
+the universe expresses itself in myriad forms and at innumerable levels
+of development. One of those levels is humanity. But as certainly as our
+consciousness has evolved to its present stage it shall go on to higher
+ones.
+
+Orderly gradation is clearly nature's method of expression. A
+continuous, unbroken line of life reaches downward from man. Its
+successive stages are seen in the animals, the reptiles, the insects and
+the microbes. Even the great kingdoms into which the biologist divides
+life fade into each other almost imperceptibly and it becomes difficult
+to say where the vegetable kingdom stops and the animal kingdom begins.
+Just as that continuous chain of life runs downward from man it must
+also rise above him until it merges in the Supreme Being. There must
+necessarily be the higher as well as the lower products of evolution.
+Man is merely one link in the evolutionary chain. The human level is the
+point where consciousness has become completely individualized and is
+capable of turning back upon itself and studying its own inner
+processes.
+
+The thought of Occidental civilization has been sadly fettered with
+materialism. It has scarcely dared to think beyond that which could be
+grasped with the hands. The physical senses were its outposts of
+investigation. What could not be seen or heard or felt had no existence
+for it. Modern science explored the material universe and perfected its
+methods until the vast panorama of worlds could be intimately studied,
+and its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat
+comprehended. But there was no study of life comparable to the vast
+stretch of worlds; for material science had made the remarkable blunder
+of assuming that the last word on the nature of matter had been said.
+Then came the startling discoveries that revolutionized the accepted
+views of matter, that proved that the supposedly indivisible atom was a
+miniature universe, a tiny cosmos of force. The old theories about
+matter had to be thrown aside. They were as much out of date as the
+belief that the earth is flat. Stripped of technical terms of expression
+the revised view of matter is, substantially, that it is the lowest
+expression of life; and now modern science is turning tardy attention to
+a study of the life side of the universe. The moment that is done the
+sense of consistency and the law of correspondence compel us to
+postulate a gradation of intelligences rising above man as man does
+above the insects.
+
+The scientific mind instantly grasps the inherent reasonableness of the
+existence of superphysical beings. Writing on the subject of energy,
+Nicola Tesla says:
+
+      "We can conceive of organized beings living without
+      nourishment and deriving all the energy they need for the
+      performance of their life functions from the ambient
+      medium.*** There may be *** individualized material systems
+      of beings, perhaps of gaseous constitution, or composed of
+      substance still more tenuous. In view of this
+      possibility--nay, probability--we cannot apodictically deny
+      the existence of organized beings on a planet merely
+      because the conditions on the same are unsuitable for the
+      existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot even, with
+      positive assurance, assert that some of them might not be
+      present here in this our world, in the very midst of us,
+      for their constitution and life manifestation may be such
+      that we are unable to perceive them."[N]
+
+Alfred Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand old man of science,"
+wrote in one of his latest books:
+
+      "I think we have got to recognize that between man and the
+      ultimate God there is an almost infinite multitude of
+      beings working in the universe at large, at tasks as
+      definite and important as any we have to perform on earth.
+      I imagine that the universe is peopled with spirits--that
+      is, with intelligent beings with powers and duties akin to
+      our own, but vaster. I think there is a gradual ascent from
+      man upward and onward."
+
+While the scientist, still lacking the absolutely conclusive evidence,
+goes only to the point of asserting that it is reasonable and probable
+that supermen exist, the occultist asserts it as a fact within his
+personal knowledge.[O] So we have the direct testimony of the
+occultists, the endorsement of the scientists as to its probability,
+and, perhaps the most important of all, the inherent reasonableness of
+the idea.
+
+The relationship of the supermen, or great spiritual hierarchy, to the
+human race is that of teachers, guardians and directors. They
+superintend human evolution. But this does not mean in the very least
+the relationship that is expressed in the term "spirit guides" so
+frequently use by the spiritualist. That is a totally different thing.
+They seem to imply that the "spirit guide" gives direct instructions or
+orders to the person known as a "medium." If we were all thus controlled
+and directed what would become of free will? Evolution can proceed only
+if we use our initiative in the affairs of life. If we were to be
+directed by the wisdom and will of others we would not evolve at all. We
+would be merely automata directed by others, and no matter how great
+they were we could never thus develop our judgment and self-reliance. It
+is not thus that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution.
+It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse and bringing mental and
+moral forces to play upon them, thus stimulating latent spiritual forces
+from within. It is also by directly, or indirectly placing ideals
+instead of commands before the race. In another direction it is actual
+superintendence, or administration, or teaching, in a way that does not
+interfere with one's initiative or will. If the soul is to evolve it
+must have liberty--even the freedom to make mistakes.
+
+It is sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist, those who are in
+incarnation do not come out into the world and give us ocular evidence
+of the fact. It is pointed out that they could speedily convince the
+world by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably not in
+the least interested in convincing anybody of their existence. They
+_are_ interested in raising the general level of morality, of course,
+but such an exhibition would not make people morally better. The work of
+the supermen can best be done from higher planes than the physical. As
+for the very small number of the supermen who take physical bodies to
+better do their special work, they can best accomplish it from secluded
+places; and if they sometimes have reason to come out into the seething
+vibrations of our modern civilization it is easy to understand that they
+would not be conspicuously different from other men, to the ordinary
+observer.
+
+It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the religions of the
+world. There the question may arise, "Then why do they differ so
+greatly?" Because the peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The
+difference of temperament and viewpoint between the Orient and the
+Occident is enormous. We are evolving along the outer, the objective,
+and our civilization represents the material conquest of nature. They
+are evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the common trend
+of conversation is philosophical, just as in the Occident it is
+commercial. Such different types of mind require somewhat different
+statements of ethics, but the fundamental principles of all religions
+are identical.
+
+When a new era in human evolution begins a World Teacher comes into
+voluntary incarnation and founds a religion that is suited to the
+requirements of the new era. Humanity is never left to grope along
+alone. All that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the
+various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and saviours of the race,
+have been appearing at propitious times since humanity began existence.
+
+Most readers will probably agree that a World Teacher known as the
+Christ did come and found a religion nearly two thousand years ago. Why
+do they think so? They reply that God so loved the world that he sent
+his Son, the Christ, to bring it light and life. If that is true how can
+we avoid the conclusion that He, or his predecessors, must have come
+many a time before? The belief that He came but once is consistent only
+with the erroneous notion that Genesis is history instead of allegory,
+and that the earth is about six thousand years old! Science has not
+determined its age but we know that it is very old, indeed. Many eminent
+scientists have made rough estimates, taking into consideration all that
+we have learned from astronomy, geology and archeology. Phillips, the
+geologist, basing his calculations upon the time required for the
+depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum age at thirty-eight
+million years and the maximum age at ninety-six million years. Sir
+George Darwin, basing his calculation wholly upon astronomical data,
+puts the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years. Joly
+arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time required to produce
+the sodium content of the ocean, and concluded that the age of the earth
+is between eighty million and one hundred million years. Sollas is said
+to have made careful study of the matter and he finds the minimum to be
+eighty million, and the maximum age to be one hundred and fifty million
+years. But perhaps the most exhaustive study of the matter, and that
+made by the use of the later scientific knowledge, was by Bosler, of the
+French scientists. He bases his calculations upon the radio-activity of
+rocks and arrives at a minimum earth age of seven hundred and ten
+millions of years. Thus it will be observed that as our knowledge grows
+the estimated age of the earth increases.
+
+In the face of such facts what becomes of the assertion that God so
+loved the world that he sent His Son to help ignorant humanity about two
+thousand years ago--but never before? What about the hundreds of
+millions of human beings who lived and died before that time? Did He
+care nothing for them? Did He give his attention to humanity for a
+period of only two thousand years and neglect it for millions of years?
+Two thousand years, compared to the age of the earth, is less than an
+hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does anybody believe that God, in
+his great compassion, sent just one World Teacher for that brief period?
+What would we say of a father who gave one hour of his whole life to his
+child and neglected him absolutely before and after that? Countless
+millions of the people who lived and died prior to the coming of the
+Christ were very much like ourselves. They belonged to ancient
+civilizations that often surpassed our own in many desirable
+characteristics. They were educated and cultured in their time and
+fashion. They were fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and
+husbands and wives, with the same kind of heart ties that we have. What
+of them? Were they permitted to grope in the moral wilderness without a
+Teacher or a ray of light? Of course the idea is preposterous. If God so
+loved the world that He sent his Son two thousand years ago He sent Him,
+or some predecessor, very many times before. By the same token He will
+come again. The only logical escape from such a conclusion is in the
+materialist's belief that He never came at all.
+
+All religions crystalize, become materialized, and lose their spiritual
+significance. That is precisely what has happened to the various great
+religions of the modern world, including Christianity. It is no longer
+the dynamic thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why a
+world war was possible. The fault is not with the teachings of the
+Christ. The trouble is that the world has not lived by them. We need a
+restatement of the old teachings in the terms of modern life that shall
+again make it a living force in the lives of men. It is when the World
+Teacher is most needed that he comes; and when has the need been greater
+than now? The world war has demonstrated the failure of so-called
+Christian civilization. We have seen the highest type of that
+civilization revert to the law of the jungle, deliberately disregard
+the usages of civilized warfare, and commit atrocities that would shame
+barbarians. We surely need no further proof that the Christian religion
+has not accomplished all that the spiritual hierarchy had a right to
+hope for, and that the coming of the Christ again is a necessity.
+
+But the spiritual hierarchy sends its great ambassadors only when the
+time is propitious, only when the world is ready to listen. Perhaps such
+an event can never be predicted in terms of time, but only in those of
+conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent, when the slain
+totals appalling numbers, when few homes of high or low degree are
+without their terrible sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled
+with anguish, when famine and disease have done their awful work, and
+humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed, lust, cruelty and
+revenge actually means, the world will be ready to listen as it never
+listened before, and after that we may reasonably expect the Christ to
+again appear to re-proclaim the ancient truth in terms of modern life.
+
+The supermen are not myths nor figments of imagination. They are as
+natural and comprehensive as human beings. In the regular order of
+evolution we shall reach their level and join their ranks while younger
+humanities shall attain our present estate. As the supermen rose we,
+too, shall rise. Our past has been evolution's night. Our present is its
+dawn. Our future shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from
+which we have emerged--a chaos of contending forces, a world in which
+might was the measure of right, a civilization of scepter and sword, of
+baron and serf, of master and slave. That, we have left behind us.
+Think of the grey dawn that our civilization has reached--the dawn of a
+public conscience, of individual liberty, of collective welfare, of the
+sacredness of life, but with armed force still dominant, with war the
+arbiter of national destiny, with industrial slavery still lingering,
+with conflict between the higher aspirations and the lower desires still
+raging--a world of selfishness masked by civilized usage, a world of
+veneered cruelty and refined brutality. In all that we now live. But
+think of the coming results of evolution!--an era in which love shall
+replace force, when saber and cannon shall be unknown, when selfish
+desires shall be transmuted into noble service, when, finally, we shall
+finish the painful period of human evolution and join the spiritual
+hierarchy to direct the faltering steps of a younger race.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] "The Conservation of Energy," Nicola Tesla, Century Magazine, June
+1900.
+
+[O] An Outline of Theosophy, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 6-12.
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following corrections were made:
+
+p. 6: pretention to pretension (no pretension is made)
+
+p. 12: An to In (In another aspect it is a religion.)
+
+p. 12: thesosophy to theosophy (While theosophy is distinctly a science)
+
+p. 13: discusison to discussion (A detailed discussion of such methods)
+
+p. 16: nevertheelss to nevertheless (is nevertheless just that
+relationship)
+
+p. 17: explicilt to explicit (is certainly very explicit)
+
+p. 19: period to semi-colon (who's true to man;)
+
+p. 34: communciating to communicating (dead man who is communicating?)
+
+p. 35: extra 'the' removed (more convincing than the evidence)
+
+p. 46-47: envelopes to envelops (because it envelops it)
+
+p. 63: oftens to often (often requires death)
+
+p. 74: repreduces to reproduces (exactly reproduces emotion)
+
+p. 82: consciouness to consciousness (finally loses consciousness)
+
+p. 83: of to or (or by cleverly combining)
+
+p. 86: strengthend to strengthened (strengthened and vivified)
+
+p. 89: slight to sight (has not lost sight of us)
+
+p. 91: communciate to communicate (had to communicate with him)
+
+p. 91: communcation to communication (subject of communication)
+
+p. 92: communciate to communicate (desires to communicate)
+
+p. 93: influnces to influences (sensitive to psychic influences)
+
+p. 94: persist to persists (who persists in occupying)
+
+p. 95: confidenty to confidently (will confidently assert himself)
+
+p. 96: close quote added (What can I do?")
+
+p. 103: missing comma added (While we do not yet know a great deal about
+life, science)
+
+p. 105: perect to perfect (perfect agreement)
+
+p. 109: extra 'and' removed (new and undeveloped)
+
+p. 115: thoughtul to thoughtful (a thoughtful matron)
+
+p. 117: methematical to mathematical (a mathematical problem)
+
+p. 120: If to It (It often puzzles)
+
+p. 121: from to form (highest possible form)
+
+p. 124: missing apostrophe added (of nations' condemned prisoners)
+
+p. 128: extra 'to' removed (civilization today could arise)
+
+p. 129: two erroneously reversed lines corrected (consciousness. The
+young quails of this season come / they are attached to the same
+group-soul, or source of)
+
+p. 138: crminal to criminal (a noted criminal)
+
+p. 142: possesing to possessing (we find others possessing)
+
+p. 146: blockquote formatted to match others in text
+
+p. 158: meed to need (no need of praise)
+
+p. 181: incalcuable to incalculable (is incalculable and altogether
+beyond)
+
+p. 185: responsibilty to responsibility (personal responsibility and
+therefore)
+
+p. 191: hapen to happen (may happen to fall)
+
+p. 191-192: extinquished to extinguished (Before the fire could be
+extinguished)
+
+p. 193: beneficient to beneficent ("beneficent working of the law")
+
+p. 193: phsical to physical (from the physical plane)
+
+p. 195: mistate to misstate (misstate facts)
+
+p. 196: atain to attain (and surely attain)
+
+p. 203: idocy to idiocy (In idiocy we have)
+
+p. 204: Maesfield to Masefield (Masefield put it well)
+
+p. 204: blest to blessed (I shall be helped and healed and blessed.)
+
+p. 207: appodictically to apodictically (cannot apodictically deny)
+
+p. 209: superman to supermen (small number of the supermen)
+
+p. 209: it to is (it is easy to understand)
+
+p. 211: calcualations to calculations (He bases his calculations upon)
+
+p. 212: chrystalize to crystalize (All religions crystalize)
+
+p. 213: embassadors to ambassadors (sends its great ambassadors)
+
+Irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. wide-spread vs. widespread,
+class-room vs. classroom) and variant spellings (e.g. cigaret) have not
+been corrected.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30134 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30134 ***</div>
+
+<div class="tp">
+<h1>ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY</h1>
+
+<p class="center noin pad">L. W. ROGERS</p>
+
+<p class="center noin">
+<span class="sm">LOS ANGELES</span><br />
+THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN<br />
+<span class="sm">1917</span>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center noin sm">
+Copyright<br />
+By<br />
+L. W. Rogers<br />
+1917
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>To comprehend the significance of great world
+changes, before Time has fully done his work, is
+difficult. While mighty events are still in their
+formative period the future is obscure. But our inability
+to outline the future cannot blind us to the
+unmistakable trend of the evolutionary forces at
+work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted
+Christian civilization is the theater in which has been
+staged the most un-Christian war of recorded history
+and in which human atrocity has reached a point that
+leaves us vaguely groping for a rational explanation
+of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than
+twenty nations involved have been forced into
+measures and methods before unknown and which
+wholly transform the recognized function and powers
+of governments. With these startling facts of religious
+and political significance before us thoughtful
+people are beginning to ask if we are not upon the
+threshold of a complete breaking down of modern
+civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in
+which direct government by the people throughout
+the entire world will be coincident with the rise of a
+universal religion based on the brotherhood of man.</p>
+
+<p>In such a time any contribution to current literature
+that will help to clear the ground of misconceptions
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>and to bring to the attention of those interested
+in such things, that set of fundamental natural truths
+known as theosophy, may perhaps be helpful.
+Whether or not the world is about to recast its ethical
+code there can at least be no doubt that it is eagerly
+seeking reliable evidence that we live after bodily
+death and that it will welcome a hypothesis of immortality
+that is inherently reasonable and therefore satisfies
+the intellect as well as the heart. Those who
+are dissatisfied with the old answers to the riddle of
+existence and demand that Faith and Reason shall
+walk hand in hand, may find in the following pages
+some explanation of the puzzling things in life&mdash;an
+explanation that disregards neither the intuitions of
+religion nor the facts of science.</p>
+
+<p>Of course no pretension is made of fully covering
+the ground. The book is a student's presentation of
+some of the phases of theosophy as he understands
+them. They are presented with no authority whatever,
+and are merely an attempt to discuss in simple
+language some of the fundamental truths about the
+human being. No claim is made to originality but
+it is hoped that by putting the old truths in a somewhat
+different way, with new illustrations and arguments,
+they may perhaps be seen from a new viewpoint.
+The intention has been to present elementary
+theosophy simply and clearly and in the language
+familiar to the ordinary newspaper reader. All technical
+terms and expressions have been avoided and
+the reader will not find a single foreign word in the
+book.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign">
+L. W. R.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>  <td>I.</td> <td class="smcap">Theosophy</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>II.</td> <td class="smcap">The Immanence of God</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>III.</td> <td class="smcap">The Evolution of the Soul</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>IV.</td> <td class="smcap">Life After Bodily Death</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>V.</td> <td class="smcap">The Evolutionary Field</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>VI.</td> <td class="smcap">The Mechanism of Consciousness</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>VII.</td> <td class="smcap">Death</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>VIII.</td> <td class="smcap">The Astral World</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>IX.</td> <td class="smcap">Rebirth: Its Reasonableness</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>X.</td> <td class="smcap">Rebirth: Its Justice</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XI.</td> <td class="smcap">Rebirth: Its Necessity</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XII.</td> <td class="smcap">Why We do not Remember</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XIII.</td> <td class="smcap">Vicarious Atonement</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XIV.</td> <td class="smcap">The Forces We Generate</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XV.</td> <td class="smcap">Superphysical Evolution</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER I.</span><br />
+THEOSOPHY</h2>
+
+<p>Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress.
+Very much that we believe to be original with us at
+the time of its discovery or invention proves in time
+to have been known to earlier civilizations. The
+elevator, or lift, is a very modern invention and we
+supposed it to be a natural development of our civilization,
+with its intensive characteristics, until an antiquarian
+startled us with the announcement that it was
+used in Rome over two thousand years ago; not, of
+course, as we use it, but for the same purpose, and
+involving the same principles. A half century ago
+our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths
+of evolution that were being discovered and placed
+before western civilization. But as we learn more
+and more of the thought and intellectual life of the
+Orient it becomes clear that the idea of evolution permeated
+that part of the world centuries ago. Even
+the most recent and startling scientific discoveries
+occasionally serve to prove that what we supposed to
+be the fantastic beliefs of the ancients were really
+truths of nature that we were not yet able to comprehend!
+The transmutation of metals is an example.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+We have already gone far enough in that direction to
+show that the alchemists of old were not the foolish
+and superstitious people we supposed them to be.
+We have given far too little credit to past civilizations
+and we are coming to understand now that we have
+rated them too low. Our modesty must necessarily
+increase as it becomes clearer that much of our supposed
+contribution to the world's progress is not invention
+but rediscovery. We are beginning to see
+that it is not safe to put aside without careful examination
+an idea or a belief that was current in the
+world thousands of years ago. Like the supposed
+folly of the alchemists it may contain profound
+truths of nature that have thus far been foreign to
+our modes of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Theosophy is both very old and very new&mdash;very
+old because the principles it contains were known and
+taught in the oldest civilizations, and very new because
+it includes the latest investigations of the
+present day. It is sometimes said by those who desire
+to speak lightly of it that it is a philosophy borrowed
+from the Buddhists, or at least from the Orient.
+That is, of course, an erroneous view. It is true that
+the Buddhists hold some beliefs in common with
+theosophists. It is also true that Methodists hold
+some beliefs in common with Unitarians, but that does
+not show that Unitarianism was borrowed from Wesley!
+When different people study the same facts of
+nature they are likely to arrive at substantially the
+same conclusions. Theosophy is based upon certain
+truths of nature. Those who study those truths and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+formulate a belief from them must reasonably be expected
+to resemble theosophists in their views.
+Buddhism is not unique in resembling theosophy.
+In the same list may be placed the Vedanta philosophy,
+the Cabala of the Jews, the teachings of
+the Christian Gnostics, and the philosophy of the
+Stoics. The more general charge must also be denied;
+theosophy is not something transplanted from the
+Orient. It belongs to the race, as the earth does, and
+cannot be localized, even to a continent. As it is
+taught today in Europe and America it is probably
+unknown to the masses of the Orient, for the great
+general truths it embodies have here the special application
+and peculiar emphasis required by a totally
+different civilization. But that theosophical principles
+were earlier known and more widely accepted
+in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no possible
+way lessen their value to us. Precisely the same
+thing is true of the principles of mathematics. The
+science of mathematics reached European civilization
+directly from the Arabs, but we do not foolishly decline
+to make use of the knowledge on that account.</p>
+
+<p>The literal meaning of the word theosophy is
+self-evident&mdash;knowledge of God. It has three aspects,
+determined by the different ways in which the human
+being acquires knowledge&mdash;through the study of concrete
+facts, by the study of the relationship of the
+individual consciousness to its source, and through the
+use of reasoning faculties in constructing a logical
+explanation of life and its purpose. In one aspect it
+is, therefore, a science. It deals with the tangible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+with the facts and phenomena of the material scientist
+and makes its appeal to the evidence of the physical
+senses. In another aspect it is a religion. It deals
+with the relationship between the source of all consciousness
+and its multiplicity of individual expressions;
+with the complex relationships that arise between
+these personalities; with the duties and obligations
+which thus come into existence; with the evolution
+of the individual consciousness and its ultimate
+translation to higher spheres. In its other aspect it is
+a philosophy of life. It deals with man, his origin,
+his evolution, his destiny. It seeks to explain the universe
+and to throw a flood of light upon the problem
+of existence that will enable those who study its wisdom
+to go forward in their evolution rapidly, safely
+and comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the
+darkness of ignorance, reaping as they go the painful
+harvests of misdirected energy.</p>
+
+<p>While theosophy is distinctly a science and a
+philosophy it is not, in the same full sense, a religion.
+It has its distinctive religious aspect, it is true, but
+when we speak of a religion we usually have in mind
+a certain set of religious dogmas and a church that
+propagates them. Theosophy is a universal thing like
+mathematics&mdash;a body of natural truths applicable to
+all phases of life. It sees all religions as equally important,
+as peculiarly adapted to the varying civilizations
+in which they are found, and it presents a synthesis
+of the fundamental principles upon which all
+of them rest.</p>
+
+<p>From all of this it will be seen that there is a vast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+difference between theosophy and theology. Theosophy
+declares the immortality of man but not as a
+religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in
+relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no
+such word as "faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its
+faith arises from the constancy of natural law, the
+balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious adjustment
+of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient
+in that it is the great fund of ancient wisdom about
+man and his earth, that has come down through countless
+centuries, reaching far back into prehistoric times.
+But added to that hoary wisdom are the up-to-date
+facts that have been acquired by its most successful
+students, who have evolved their consciousness to
+levels transcending the physical senses&mdash;facts which,
+however, do not derive their authority from the method
+of their discovery but from their inherent reasonableness.
+A detailed discussion of such methods of consciousness
+and the proper value to be placed upon
+such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter.
+It is enough now to warn the reader against
+the error of confusing the pronouncements of pseudo
+psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who
+have already done much toward placing a scientific
+foundation beneath the universal hope of immortality.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER II.</span><br />
+THE IMMANENCE OF GOD</h2>
+
+<p>The antagonism between scientific and religious
+thought was the cause of the greatest controversy in
+the intellectual world in the nineteenth century. If
+the early teaching of the Christian Church had not
+been lost the conflict could not have arisen. The
+Gnostic philosophers, who were the intellect and heart
+of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true that
+it could not possibly come into collision with any
+fact of science. But unfortunately they were enormously
+outnumbered by the ignorant and the authority
+passed wholly into their hands. It was inevitable
+that misunderstanding should follow. The gross
+materialization of the early teaching, the superstition,
+the bigotry and the persecution of the Middle Ages
+was a perfectly natural result. That perverted,
+materialistic view has come down to us, and even now
+gives trend to the religious thought of Western civilization.
+Of that degradation of the early teaching
+the Encyclopedia Britannica says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The conception of God as wholly external to
+man, a purely mechanical theory of creation, is
+throughout Christendom regarded as false to the
+teaching of the New Testament as also to Christian
+experience.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p><p>It is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but
+if it is so regarded "throughout Christendom" it is
+only on the part of its scholars; most certainly not
+by the masses of the people. The popular conception
+is undeniably that the relationship between God
+and man is identical with that between an inventor
+and an animated machine. It is an absolutely anthropomorphic
+view of the Supreme Being and thinks of
+God as being apart from man in precisely the same
+sense that a father is apart from his son. It may be
+an exalted, idealized conception of the relationship of
+father and son but it is nevertheless just that relationship,
+and along that line runs practically all the
+teaching and preaching of those who speak officially
+in modern religious interpretation. Emerson sought
+to counteract that popular misconception but he was
+regarded as a heretic by all but an infinitesimal portion
+of the church.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the immanence of God is as different
+from the popular conception as noontide is different
+from midnight. It is so radically different that one
+who accepts that ancient belief must put aside his old
+ideas of what man is and raise him in dignity and
+potential power to a level that will, at first, seem
+actually startling; for it means, in its uttermost significance
+that God and man are but two phases of
+the one eternal life and consciousness that constitute
+our universe! The idea of the immanence of God is
+that He <em>is</em> the universe; that the solar system is an
+emanation of the Supreme Being as clouds are an
+emanation of the sea, and that the relationship between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+God and man is not merely that of father and son
+but also that of ocean and raindrop. This conception
+makes man <em>a part of</em> God, having potentially
+within him all the attributes and powers of the
+Supreme Being. It is the idea that nothing exists
+except God and that humanity is one portion of Him,
+and one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression
+of the waters that constitute the sea. The immanence
+of God is a conception of the universe that puts
+science and religion into perfect harmony with each
+other because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary
+creation takes its place.</p>
+
+<p>Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has
+such widespread dominion in Occidental thought the
+immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly
+emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him
+we live, and move, and have our being," is certainly
+very explicit and admits of no anthropomorphic interpretation.
+It could not be said that a son lives
+and moves in his father. The declaration presents
+the relationship of a lesser consciousness within a
+greater, and constituting a part of it. The essentially
+divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration
+in Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that
+the likeness is on the material side would, of course,
+be absurd. In divine essence, in latent power, in potential
+spirituality, man is an image of God, because
+he is a part of Him. The same idea is more directly
+put in the Psalms with the assertion, "ye are gods."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+If the idea of the immanence of God is sound man, as
+a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
+Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve
+his latent powers into perfect expression.</p>
+
+<p>The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus
+in his teaching. Emerson's teaching of the immanence
+of God is unmistakable in both his prose and
+poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the
+soul where man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause,
+begins." Still more explicitly he puts it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The realms of being to no other bow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The statement is as complete as it is emphatic.
+"Not only all are Thine, <em>but all are thou</em>." It's an
+unqualified assertion that humanity is a part of God,
+as leaves are part of a tree&mdash;not something a tree has
+created in the sense that a man creates a machine
+but something that is an emanation of the tree, and
+is a living part of it. Thus only has God made man.
+Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation,
+an evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being.</p>
+
+<p>It is upon the unity of all life that theosophy bases
+its declaration of universal brotherhood, regarding
+it as a fact in nature. The immanence of God gives
+a scientific basis of morality. The theosophical conception
+is that men are separated in form but are
+united in the one consciousness which is the life base
+of the universe. Their relationship to each other is
+somewhat like that of the fingers to each other&mdash;they
+are separate individuals on the form side but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+they are united in the one consciousness that animates
+the hand. If we imagine each finger to possess a consciousness
+of its own, which is limited to itself and
+cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall have a fair
+analogy of the unity and identity of interests of all
+living things. Under such circumstances an injury
+to one finger would not appear to the others as an
+injury to them, but if the finger consciousness could
+be extended to the hand the reality of the injury to
+all would be apparent. Likewise an injury to any
+human being is literally an injury to the race. The
+race does not recognize the truth of it just because,
+and only because, of the limitation of consciousness.
+Lowell put the fact clearly when he said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's true to God who's true to man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherever wrong is done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the humblest and weakest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Neath the all-beholding sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wrong is also done to us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they are slaves most base<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose love of right is for themselves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not for all the race.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He's true to God who's true to man because they
+are one life; because they are but different expressions
+of the one eternal consciousness; because they
+are as inseparable as the light and warmth of the
+sun. It follows that being true to man is fidelity to
+God.</p>
+
+<p>The popular idea is that people should be moral
+because that sort of conduct is pleasing to the Supreme
+Being and that He will, in the life beyond physical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+existence, in some way punish those who have broken
+the moral laws. It is belief in an external authority
+that threatens punishment as a deterrent to law breaking,
+as a state devises penalties commensurate with
+offenses. But the immanence of God represents a
+condition in which not punishments, but consequences,
+automatically follow all violations of natural law.
+Under such a state of affairs it would require no
+penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct,
+for it would be perceived that there is no possible
+escape from the consequences of an evil act.</p>
+
+<p>It is not difficult to see the relative value of the
+two systems of thought when put to a practical test
+in human affairs. Imagine an unscrupulous man of
+great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous
+fortune through sharp practices that enable him to
+acquire the earnings of others while he safely keeps
+just within the limits of the law. We can point out
+to him that while he is not violating the law, and
+cannot therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting
+injury upon others and consequently public
+opinion will condemn him. But such a man usually
+cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no
+good reason why he should not continue in his injurious
+work. But if he can be made to understand
+that all life is one and that we are so knit together in
+consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately
+react upon the person who inflicts it; if he
+once clearly understands that to enslave another is
+to put chains upon himself, that to maim another is to
+strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce
+him to follow a moral course. He would see that his
+own larger and true self-interest could be served only
+when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare
+of all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say
+that the immanence of God furnishes a scientific basis
+of morality.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Psalms LXXXII&mdash;6.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER III.</span><br />
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL</h2>
+
+<p>If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we
+shall be forced to abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous
+creation of man and the earth on which
+he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible
+idea that the race came from an original human pair
+must be replaced by the hypothesis of the evolution
+of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>It was about the fact of evolution that the great
+storm of controversy raged between scientists and
+theologians in the middle of the nineteenth century,
+and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first
+well understood. They seemed to question or deny the
+existence of God. Deep within humanity is intuitive religious
+belief. It is a natural faith that transcends all
+facts, like the faith of a child in its mother. Because evolution
+was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's
+inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy
+hope, and against fact and reason itself rose the protest
+of intuition with spiritual intensity. People felt
+more than they reasoned and cried out that science
+was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has
+proved that they had merely misinterpreted the mean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>ing
+of evolution. Further understanding has shown
+that, instead of destroying the belief in God, evolution
+has given us a new and better understanding of the
+whole matter and has placed the hope of immortality
+on firmer ground than it previously occupied.</p>
+
+<p>Evolution is an established and generally accepted
+fact. No educated person now thinks of questioning
+it. It is settled beyond dispute that all things in the
+physical world have become what they are through a
+long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the
+most perfect in form and most complex in function
+have evolved from simpler ones. The age of miracle
+has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as
+its relation to the material world is concerned. It
+is no longer necessary to have a belief in an anthropomorphic
+God, performing feats in defiance of natural
+law, in order to account for that which exists. Science
+has reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown
+that, given nebulous physical matter, we can understand
+how the earth came into existence.</p>
+
+<p>But why should we stop with the application of
+the laws of evolution to material things? Only the
+outright materialist, who asserts that life is a product
+of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority
+in the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has
+asserted that there is no longer any such thing as
+scientific materialism.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> Those who accept the idea
+of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily
+accept the idea of the evolution of the soul. How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+can consciousness possibly escape the laws that
+evolve the media for the expression of consciousness?
+There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as
+there is evolution of matter. The material and the
+spiritual, form and life, are inseparable. Indeed,
+scientific progress has now brought us to the point
+where matter, as such, practically disappears and we
+are face to face with the fact that matter is really but
+a manifestation of force. How, then, is it longer possible
+to speak of the soul and not accept the evolution
+of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than
+physiology. The phenomena of consciousness are as
+definitely studied as physical phenomena, and it is
+no more difficult to account for a myriad souls than
+to account for a million suns and their planets. The
+scientists who have taken the position that the universe
+has a spiritual side as well as a material side
+are among the most eminent and distinguished of the
+modern world. If evolution has produced the starry
+heavens from the material side it has likewise evolved
+the human souls of our world and others from the
+spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand
+the one than the other.</p>
+
+<p>From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief
+in the creation of the earth and the race by an act
+suddenly accomplished is, of course, preposterous. If
+we could know nothing back of the present moment
+and were called upon to account for the world as we
+see it&mdash;with its cities, its ships and railways, its cultivated
+fields and parks&mdash;many people who still believe
+in instantaneous creation of the soul would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+save themselves much mental exertion by declaring
+that God had made it all as it stands for the use and
+entertainment of man. But we know that it is utterly
+absurd to think of the world leaping into existence instantaneously&mdash;nothing
+existing one day and all trains
+running on time between ready-made cities the next,
+carrying ready-made people about. It sounds ridiculous
+only because we are putting it in material terms,
+but in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of
+the instantaneous creation of the creators of cities
+and railways.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that we are a sudden creation is only
+possible because of the very vague ideas of what
+human souls are. The chief difficulty with the popular
+notion that a human soul is as new as the body it
+inhabits is that it is a vague and indefinite conception
+of life, and the moment we begin to think seriously
+about it the weakness of the idea becomes apparent.
+Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of
+reasoning. How can one reason with a man who
+believes it possible for a soul to spring into existence
+from the void? What is the use in reasoning about
+the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole
+matter to say: "God did it"?</p>
+
+<p>One thing that prevents us from believing not only
+that millions of souls were created in the twinkling
+of an eye, but also that the world as it now is was
+likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know
+quite definitely the history of the world a little way
+into the past, and that history affirms that the earth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+and all life on it is the product of slow evolutionary
+growth.</p>
+
+<p>The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion
+on a scientific basis. Not only the origin of
+the soul but its development and its destiny at once
+appear in a new light. The mind is instinctively impressed
+with the dignity of the idea of the evolution
+of the soul, which, with its corollary, the immanence
+of God, makes the divinity of man a fact in nature.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Raymond: or Life and Death.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER IV.</span><br />
+LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH</h2>
+
+<p>One of the really remarkable facts of modern life is
+the disinclination to accept at apparent value the scientific
+and other evidence there is to prove that consciousness
+persists after the death of the physical body. There
+is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much
+of it is offered by scientists of the highest standing; and
+yet the average man continues to speak of the subject
+as though nothing about it had yet been definitely learned.
+It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust itself very
+slowly to the truth, as it is discovered. Sometimes a
+generation passes away between the discovery and the
+general acceptance of a great truth. When we recall the
+intense opposition to the introduction of steam-driven
+boats and vehicles, and the slowness with which the
+world settles down to any radical change in its methods
+of thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the
+truth about the life after bodily death has waited so
+long for general recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of
+consciousness is based is of two kinds&mdash;that furnished
+by physical science and that furnished by psychic science.
+Together they make a very complete case.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p><p>The printed evidence of the first division&mdash;physical
+science&mdash;is voluminous. In addition to that gathered by
+the Society for Psychical Research there are the researches
+and experiments by the scientists of England,
+France and Italy, among whom are Crookes, Lodge,
+Flammarion and Lombroso. Crookes was a pioneer in
+the work of studying the human consciousness and tracing
+its activities beyond the change called death. All of
+that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge,
+which has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries
+and inventions, and has won for him world-wide
+fame, were brought to bear upon the subject, and for a
+period of four years he patiently investigated and experimented.
+Many illustrated articles prepared by him,
+fully describing his work, were published at the time in
+<cite>The Journal of Science</cite> of which he was then the editor.</p>
+
+<p>Three vital points in psychic research were established
+by Sir William Crookes. One was that there is
+psychic force. He demonstrated its existence by levitation.
+He showed next, that the force is directed by intelligence.
+By various clever experiments he obtained
+most conclusive evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated
+that the intelligence directing the force is not that
+of living people. Crookes also went exhaustively into
+the subject of materialization and here, again, he was
+remarkably successful. He was the first scientist to
+photograph the materialized human form and engage in
+direct conversation with the person who thus returned
+from the mysterious life beyond. This evidence from the
+camera must be regarded as particularly interesting. It
+was received with much amazement at the time, but that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+was before we had revised our erroneous ideas about the
+nature of matter and before the day of liquid air. Materialization
+is no longer a startling idea, for that is precisely
+what liquid air is&mdash;a condensation of invisible
+matter to the point where it becomes tangible and can
+be weighed, measured, seen and otherwise known to the
+physical senses.</p>
+
+<p>All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his
+own premises and under the most rigid scientific conditions.
+All the methods and mechanism known to modern
+science were employed and he finally announced his
+complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness
+of the phenomena observed.</p>
+
+<p>As Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver
+Lodge is the latest of the famous scientists who have
+taken up the investigation of the continuity of consciousness.
+In a lecture upon the subject, before the Society
+for the Advancement of Science, he declared not only
+that the subject of life after physical death was one which
+science might legitimately and profitably investigate but
+that the existence of an invisible realm had been established.
+He declared the continent of an invisible world
+had been discovered, and added, "already a band of daring
+investigators have landed on its treacherous but
+promising shores."</p>
+
+<p>Different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds
+of psychic investigation and while Crookes made a detailed
+and careful study of materialization Lodge has
+given equally painstaking efforts to investigations by the
+use of that class of sensitives known as "mediums." A
+medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric
+matter easily separates from the physical matter is a
+medium and can readily be utilized as a sort of telephone
+between the visible and the invisible planes. A medium
+is an abnormal person and is a good medium in proportion
+to the degree of abnormality. If the etheric
+matter of the body is easily extruded the physical body
+readily falls into the trance condition and the mechanism
+of conversation can be operated by the so-called "dead"
+person who has temporarily taken possession of it. In
+such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living-dead
+communicator. He is speaking directly himself,
+but he may often do it with great difficulty and not always
+succeed in accurately expressing the thought he has in
+mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts,
+moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand
+something of his difficulties it is not strange
+that such communications are frequently unsatisfactory.
+It is not often that an analogy can be found that will
+give a physical plane comprehension of a superphysical
+condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be
+had by thinking of a "party line" telephone that any one
+of a dozen people may use at any moment he can succeed
+in getting possession of it. A listener attempting to
+communicate with one of them may find that several
+others are constantly "switching in," much to his confusion.
+If distinction of voices due to sound were eliminated
+and then a stenographic record were to be made
+of all words reaching the listener he would find that it
+would often be fragmentary and trivial. That would not,
+however, prove that the conversation did not come from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+living beings nor that there was not at least one intelligent
+person among them. That scientists engaged in
+psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing
+more.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to be a common opinion that the evidential
+value of such psychic communications, even under the
+direction of a skilful scientist, cannot be very great. But
+there are ways of knowing. It is not at all difficult for
+the investigator to confine his work, not only to incidents
+unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts which
+the medium can not possibly comprehend. It is a matter
+of common knowledge that mediums are usually people
+without technical scientific knowledge. Some of them
+have some degree of education and some of them are
+illiterate. Some of the most celebrated belong to the
+peasant class of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge is about to
+attempt to communicate with a scientist who has passed
+on to join the living dead. He will ask technical scientific
+questions that nobody but a scientist can answer and
+that the medium can by no possibility even understand
+when they are answered. Or suppose he gets a communication
+from the medium's hand signed by a great author.
+The living dead man writes a criticism, let us say, of some
+new book and does it in his characteristic style, full
+of the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment.
+Surely nobody can believe that the medium is
+producing such things on her own account. If she could
+do so she would not be earning her living as a medium.
+But the scientists do not stop there. We often hear the
+expression "cross-correspondence." Just what do they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+mean by that and in what way does it prove the personal
+identity of a dead man who is communicating? The
+principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method.
+Sometimes a guest leaves a sum of money with the
+clerk, and he wishes to be perfectly sure of his identity
+when he returns to claim it. He requests the guest to put
+his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in two,
+gives him one piece and keeps the other. That gives
+him a double proof of identity. When he comes for his
+money he must first give his name and then produce the
+piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the piece
+the clerk has retained, the two together making the whole
+and restoring the signature. It's one of the simplest but
+most satisfactory proofs possible. Neither piece of that
+card alone is intelligible. If one piece should be lost
+and others should find it nobody could read it or make
+anything of it. Nobody could guess the name unless he
+had the other piece. He knows only about the part he
+holds. He may be a thief and may earnestly desire to
+use what he has found to defraud, but he is helpless
+because he has only one of the two parts it requires to
+make an intelligible whole. That is the principle involved
+in identity by cross-correspondence. Part of a
+message is written through one medium and part through
+another medium at another time in another place and
+neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence
+until it is fitted into the other part; and that
+prevents a medium who is dishonest from manufacturing
+a story that may be more or less plausible.</p>
+
+<p>We are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific
+investigation for evidence that the dead still live. Hun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>dreds
+of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some
+personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far
+beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is
+that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own
+counsel about his occult experience. The other is the
+feeling that communications from departed relatives are
+too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of
+thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic
+seances which, while possessing little evidential
+value from the scientific viewpoint, nevertheless have a
+legitimate place in the great mass of psychic phenomena.
+But more convincing is the evidence furnished in hundreds
+of homes where some member of the family acts
+as automatic writer or medium.</p>
+
+<p>The most convincing evidence is not always scientific
+evidence. What can be more convincing than the
+evidence furnished in one's home by members of
+the family? There is much such evidence, obtained both
+through mediums and by automatic writing.</p>
+
+<p>Automatic writing&mdash;that is, the control of the hand
+of a living person to record the thoughts of another
+who has lost the physical body&mdash;is perhaps one of the
+least objectionable ways in which communications have
+come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted
+for some useful books with interesting accounts of the
+life in the unseen regions. Here, of course, as elsewhere,
+discrimination must be used, for the wise and foolish,
+the useful and useless are to be found side by side.
+In accepting or rejecting, one must use his common
+sense just as he does on this plane in separating the
+valuable from the worthless. In such matters we should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are unchanged
+in intellect and morality. The genius here is
+the genius there and the living fool is not different from
+the dead one. It is often those who know the least who
+are the most anxious to tell it and the medium or automatic
+writer sometimes gives them the opportunity. Consequently
+we get many foolish communications and an
+enormous amount of commonplace platitude is delivered
+at seances. But it is equally true that unquestionable
+proof of personal identity is sometimes secured.</p>
+
+<p>There is much valuable non-scientific evidence that
+the consciousness survives the loss of the physical body
+and it frequently comes from sources that insure respectful
+attention. The two following stories of that kind
+are cited as corroboration of the scientific evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Little touches of the personality often constitute the
+most convincing of all evidence. It is one thing to show
+that people in general live after physical death. It is
+quite a different matter to establish the personal identity
+of one of them who is communicating, and that is one
+of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent
+journalist, gives us some valuable evidence on personal
+identity. In his earlier years he had studied art in London.
+Shortly before the death of Turner, the great artist
+had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on painting,
+but had not redeemed the promise at the time of
+passing away. Stillman had a friend whose daughter
+was mediumistic and he decided to experiment. Immediately
+on beginning the seance the young girl was taken
+possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman
+asked his question silently, speaking no words, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+mentally requesting Turner to write his name. The only
+reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He then
+asked if he would give some advice on painting. The
+response was another decided negative. Stillman felt
+that he was foolishly wasting his time and declared the
+seance at an end. But the girl sat silent. Then after a
+moment she slowly arose with the air of decrepitude,
+took a lithograph from the wall and went through the
+pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing
+board, sharpening a pencil, tracing the outline, the washing-in
+of a drawing, etc., and then proceeded to show a
+simple but surprising method of taking out the lights.
+"Do you mean to say that Turner got his effects in that
+way?" asked the incredulous young artist. The answer
+was an emphatic affirmative. Stillman then asked if the
+central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain in
+the well known drawing "Llanthony Abbey" by Turner,
+had been done in that way and was answered by another
+emphatic affirmative. So sure was the young artist that
+this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust and
+abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling
+upon Ruskin and related the experience. Ruskin, who
+had known the celebrated dead artist intimately, declared
+that the contrariness of the medium at the beginning of
+the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But
+what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence,
+was that the drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession
+and eagerly it was brought down from the wall
+for examination. After close scrutiny the great art
+critic and the young artist agreed that, beyond dispute,
+the drawing <em>had</em> been done in the way described.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p><p>Such evidence has an added value when it comes from
+those who are neither spiritualists nor professional investigators,
+but who have the things they doubt thrust
+upon them in such convincing manner that they feel
+impelled to record their experience for the enlightenment
+of others. In the last literary work<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> done by Carl Schurz,
+we are given, quite incidentally, his testimony that at a
+seance soon after the Civil War he was told the future
+in such detail as to leave no possible room for the explanation
+of coincidence. It was in July, 1865, when
+Schurz was on his way to Washington, whither he had
+been summoned by President Johnson, that he stopped in
+Philadelphia at the home of his friend, Dr. Tiedemann.
+The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years old, could do
+automatic writing. As a matter of interest and amusement
+in the family circle the girl gave an exhibition of
+her psychic abilities. When Schurz was invited to ask
+for a communication he not unnaturally requested one
+from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for he
+had been personally acquainted with him. The girl wrote
+a message purporting to come from Lincoln. It related
+to politics and proved, in time, to have been an accurate
+prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not
+transpire for more than three years! Schurz lived in
+Wisconsin at the time and had no intention of changing
+his residence, nor did he do so until two years later.
+The message which the girl wrote asserted that Schurz
+would be elected to the United States senate <em>from Missouri</em>.
+He did not regard the message as authentic and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+naturally enough considered the prophecy absurd. In
+1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in January,
+1869, he was elected United States senator by the
+Missouri legislature.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will
+be understood, of course, that no attempt is here
+made to present that. The intention is merely to call
+attention to some of the eminent scientists who
+have done notable work and to mention a few of the
+more interesting discoveries made. Those who desire to
+come into possession of the evidence in full will find upon
+examination that it is voluminous.</p>
+
+<p>From the viewpoint of physical science alone the
+evidence of the continuity of consciousness is not only
+convincing but conclusive. Yet occult science has much
+more to offer. To those who have no personal knowledge
+of the existence of occult faculties, such evidence
+can be offered only upon the inherent reasonableness of
+the statements made.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, must
+slowly win its way to general acceptance. While large
+numbers of people still scoff at it, even as the world not
+so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a fantastic
+theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless
+a large and rapidly growing number who personally know
+the truth about clairvoyance. There is every conceivable
+grade of clairvoyant power and some degree of superphysical
+sensitiveness is becoming rather common.</p>
+
+<p>There are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that
+which is most in evidence with the public is not calculated
+to inspire confidence. It is employed almost ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>clusively
+in what is known as "fortune telling" and is
+often practiced by those who are interested only in the
+money they can earn by it. As a matter of course, trickery
+and fraud are found associated with it among such people,
+and those amongst them who are both capable and
+honest suffer on account of it.</p>
+
+<p>The fortune telling clairvoyant is usually one who
+was born with "second sight," as the Scotch have named
+it, and almost without an exception they do not in the
+least understand its rationale. They find certain facts
+in their consciousness that could not be known to them by
+the physical senses, but why or how they get the information
+they do not know. That form of clairvoyance is a
+sensitiveness related to the sympathetic nervous system,
+the center of which is the solar plexus. It has no relationship
+whatever to the mind, no association with intelligence,
+and will often&mdash;indeed, commonly&mdash;be possessed
+by the most ignorant and uncouth. It is much
+more common among Indians and negroes than among
+more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and will
+slowly disappear from the race. It belongs to the realm
+of emotion, not thought.</p>
+
+<p>The higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing,"
+is associated with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and
+its seat is in the brain. It is not a "natural gift"<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+other, although it is latent in all human beings. It has
+been highly developed in some who have had the unusual
+opportunity of long training under the direct supervision
+of great psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never
+to be found among the fortune tellers. Only people with
+serious views of life and intense devotion to human service
+would have the patience and endurance to undergo
+such training and only those of singular purity of life
+would have any possibility of success. Such clairvoyants
+are people of keen intelligence. By special training and
+tremendous effort, not possible to most of us, they have
+pressed forward in evolution and attained a development
+that the race will be many a century in reaching.</p>
+
+<p>It is by the use of this exalted order of clairvoyance
+that invisible realms are explored, and additional knowledge
+is accumulated to the ancient wisdom. Such a
+clairvoyant is not a medium. The medium surrenders
+his physical mechanism for the use of another, who
+speaks through it, and at the close of the seance the
+medium knows nothing of what has occurred. The clairvoyant
+is always in possession of his senses and is fully
+aware of what is occurring. He is the explorer and discoverer.
+He deals with the facts of the life after bodily
+death in a different way than the physical scientist does
+but it is soon found by the student that the physical scientist
+and the psychic scientist corroborate each other.
+Together they bring overwhelming evidence to support
+the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness
+we have at this moment will never cease to be; that our
+individuality, with all its present memories, will eternally
+persist; that what we call death is in reality but a forward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+step in an orderly evolutionary journey and an entrance
+upon a more joyous phase of life, which is not remarkably
+different from that we live today. The sum total of
+the knowledge that we have gained through the combined
+work of the physical scientists and the occult scientists
+leads us to the conclusion that the death of the
+physical body means neither the annihilation of consciousness
+nor a radical change in consciousness. It is, in fact,
+but the release of consciousness from its confinement to
+the physical form, as a song-bird is released from a cage
+to the joyous freedom of a wider world, where woods
+and stream and field and sky give new impulse to its
+innate characteristics.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p. 154.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> There are, of course, really no natural gifts.
+Nature does not favor some and ignore others. When
+a few possess what others do not have, they earned
+it by giving special attention to its development
+or as in the case of the psychic sensitiveness of the
+sympathetic nervous system, it is vestigial, and has
+been possessed by the race in earlier ages.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER V.</span><br />
+THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD</h2>
+
+<p>In a treatise on elementary theosophy the solar
+system may be reckoned as our universe and we shall
+have no need of considering more than a small fragment
+of even that. It is septenary in constitution,
+as may be seen in its vibrations expressed in color
+and sound. Beyond the seven colors of the prism
+we have only tints and outside the seven notes we
+can get only overtones or undertones. There are
+likewise seven planes in the system but less than
+half of them require our attention, for the evolutionary
+field of the human soul is the three lower planes,
+known as the physical, astral and mental. When the
+human being has outgrown them in evolution he
+passes on to superhuman evolution.</p>
+
+<p>The word "plane," so often encountered in theosophical
+literature, should perhaps have some definition.
+It has a wide application and is used as a
+synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring
+to the physical plane the term embraces all
+we know of earth and sky and life through the
+physical senses.</p>
+
+<p>There are seven planes in our solar system because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+of the seven different combinations of its ultimate
+atoms. Each plane consists of a totally different
+grade of matter than the next plane, but all have for
+their base the ultimate atom of the solar system.
+When modern science discovered, to its astonishment,
+that the physical atom was a composite body it confirmed
+the theosophical teaching that the ultimate
+physical atom was <em>not</em> the final point of division.
+Theosophy teaches that when the ultimate physical
+atom is disintegrated its particles become the coarsest
+matter of the next plane or region above it&mdash;the astral
+plane. The process repeated with astral matter results
+in driving its ultimate atom from the highest
+level of the astral plane or world to the lowest of the
+mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom
+is the brick of the universe stated a great truth, for
+of its combinations all forms are built; and if the idea
+be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar system
+it will then be true that of such "bricks" all the planes
+are built.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship of the planes to each other is that
+of interpenetrating spheres of matter. The physical
+plane, consisting of the earth and its atmosphere, is
+surrounded and interpenetrated by the astral plane,
+or world, which is an enormously larger globe of exceedingly
+tenuous matter. This vast sphere of invisible
+matter is <em>within</em> the earth as well as beyond it,
+interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the
+earth's center. Its grossest grade of matter is so rare,
+and its vibrations so intense, that they cannot affect
+the physical senses and therefore we remain uncon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>scious
+of it while that matter moves freely through
+all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life
+and activities for precisely the same reason that we
+know nothing of the messages of intelligence carried
+on the vibrations of the wireless telegraph, although
+they pass through the room where we sit. We have
+no sense organs with which it is possible to register
+such vibrations. Messages conveying intelligence of
+tremendous import, involving the movements of vast
+armies, the fall of empires and the destinies of great
+nations, flow through the very space we occupy but
+we are wholly unconscious of them. Even so we remain
+blind and deaf to the stupendous activities of
+life and consciousness in the astral world, notwithstanding
+the fact that it surrounds and permeates us
+while its forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the
+physical world as freely as water flows through a
+sieve.</p>
+
+<p>The mental world constitutes a region of our earth
+still more vast than the astral portion of it. As the
+astral sphere encloses the physical globe, the mental
+encompasses both, enclosing them and also interpenetrating
+them to the earth's center. The term "mental
+world" may seem confusing to some because we are
+accustomed to think of the mental and the material as
+being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or
+plane, of theosophy, is a world of <em>matter</em>, not merely
+thought. It is matter, however, of such remarkable
+tenuosity that it may properly be called mind-stuff,
+and in its rarest levels it is said to be "formless" so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+far as the existence of what the physical senses know
+as form is concerned.</p>
+
+<p>All three of these worlds, or planes&mdash;the physical,
+astral and mental&mdash;are, then, worlds of matter, of
+form, of activity, of thought and of enterprise. They
+are concentric globes, the physical enclosed by the
+astral, and both physical and astral enclosed by the
+mental. Within and without all physical matter are
+both astral and mental matter. Every physical atom
+is surrounded and permeated by astral and mental
+matter. The relationship is precisely that which
+exists between the ether and the lower grades of
+physical matter.</p>
+
+<p>If the relationship of the three worlds&mdash;physical,
+astral and mental&mdash;is fully understood later confusion
+of thought will be avoided. Physical language is not
+capable of fully expressing much with which students
+of the occult must deal. Because there is nothing
+better for the purpose, words must be used that express
+but a part of the truth and may sometimes prove
+misleading unless the constitution and relationship
+of the three spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary
+to speak of higher and lower worlds, or planes,
+inner or outer, and of the soul coming "down" into
+the material world when, as a matter of fact, <em>no movement
+in space</em> is under consideration. The astral is
+commonly spoken of as an inner plane and while it
+truly is so because it can be known only to astral
+senses by a withdrawal of the consciousness from
+its exterior, material body, it is also true that the
+astral world is outside the physical because it en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>velops
+it as the sea does a sponge. We usually
+speak of coming down from higher planes to lower
+and that may be true not only in the sense of changing
+the state of consciousness from higher vibrations
+to lower ones but it <em>could</em> mean a journey in space
+from a point in the astral plane above the physical
+globe to a point at its surface. "Up" and "down"
+are relative, not absolute. "Down" for us is toward
+the earth's center and "up" is the opposite direction.
+A spire in the Occident and a spire in the Orient are
+both said to be pointing upward but they are pointing
+in opposite directions. On most parts of the
+earth's surface we have four directions, while at the
+poles there is, of course, but one direction&mdash;south or
+north, as the case may be. East, west and north
+disappear at the north pole. Reflection upon such
+facts leads one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility
+of space itself disappearing from the inner
+planes&mdash;space as we know it.</p>
+
+<p>The matter of each of the planes consists of seven
+classes. We are familiar with the solids, liquids and
+gases of the physical plane, and to them must be added
+four grades of the ether. The seven grades of matter
+of the astral and mental worlds constitute an important
+part of the mechanism for the soul's evolution,
+for they determine the state of consciousness in the
+life beyond the physical plane. But a study of those
+states of consciousness belongs to a later chapter.</p>
+
+<p>A difficulty which the student of theosophy should
+make an early effort to eliminate, is the tendency to
+think of invisible realms as unreal. It should not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+forgotten that it is only the limitation of the physical
+senses that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond
+the visible. We should keep in mind the fact
+that the invisible realms are composed of matter as
+certainly as the air is matter, or a stone is matter.
+The water in a pan may evaporate, but it does not
+cease to be matter because it has passed beyond the
+ken of the physical senses. It will some time condense
+once more and play its part as the liquid, water,
+or as the solid, ice. Only when matter is in certain
+forms can we know of its existence through the physical
+senses.</p>
+
+<p>We frequently hear people who are students of
+the occult speak of a deceased person as having left
+the earth. But passing into the astral plane, or world,
+is not, of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral
+world and the mental world are divisions of the earth.
+As the atmosphere is invisible and yet is a part of the
+earth's physical matter, so the invisible astral and
+mental regions are other parts of the earth. They are
+properly called worlds because the activities in consciousness
+that make up existence there are as remote
+from ours as though they were upon another planet.
+We have erroneously supposed that with the physical
+senses we really see and know the earth, whereas we
+have known only that small fragment of the earth that
+consists of physical matter. Beyond the limitation of
+our poor senses stretch in unsuspected grandeur vaster
+regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations of an
+intenser life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER VI.</span><br />
+THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS</h2>
+
+<p>The soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness,
+or the life of the solar Logos; an individualized
+portion of the universal mind. That
+fragment of the divine life, with its latent God-like
+attributes, is expressed through a mechanism of consciousness
+that is formed of the matter of the various
+planes. Naturally enough it is expressed more fully
+upon the higher planes than upon the lower. At a
+very high level it is known as the monad. When
+it reaches down into the higher subdivisions of the
+mental world it is the ego, a lesser expression of the
+same divine life that pours from the Logos through
+the monad&mdash;lesser because it is then functioning
+through the denser matter of a lower level.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge that has been gained about the
+nature of matter in recent years is helpful in understanding
+the activities of consciousness. The atom is
+found to be a center of force, and we are at the point
+where matter, as we have known it, disappears. All
+the force and consciousness of the solar system is, of
+course, but the life of the Logos, and on higher planes
+the distinctions we observe here fade out. Matter be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>comes
+a very different thing from the matter we know.
+The ether of the physical world is almost inconceivably
+tenuous matter. Yet it is gross when compared
+to the lowest grade of astral matter. The matter of
+the mental world is enormously rarer than the most
+tenuous matter of the astral world. In view of these
+facts it requires no stress of the imagination to understand
+that the matter of the higher planes is responsive
+to the vibrations of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The outraying energies of the individualized center
+of consciousness act upon the matter of the plane and
+draw about it a film that slowly grows into a vehicle
+through which consciousness can be more fully expressed,
+and which serves as a point of vantage from
+which its expression can be extended to lower planes.</p>
+
+<p>The seven subdivisions of the mental world fall
+naturally into two groups, composed of the three
+higher and the four lower grades of matter. The ego,
+anchored in the matter of the two planes above the
+mental world, descends to the upper levels of the
+mental and the vesture of matter with which it
+clothes itself is known as the causal body. Sending
+its energies downward, or outward, to the lower
+levels of the mental world, it establishes itself there
+in what slowly becomes a mental body. Again in the
+astral world the process is repeated and a vehicle of
+consciousness is formed of astral matter. The
+physical body is the lowest and last of the vehicles
+to be formed and as it is slowly built, in the months
+preceding birth, the matter it contains falls into place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+under the operation of occult laws which permit no
+element of chance to enter into its construction.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness
+on the plane to which it belongs. The
+soul is evolving simultaneously in each of the worlds,
+physical, astral and mental, and these various bodies
+enable it to receive the vibrations of the plane they
+belong to and thus to be conscious there. The
+mental body is the seat of intellectual activity.
+Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes through
+the astral body into the physical brain. Whenever
+we think we are using the mental body. The astral
+body is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All
+emotion passes from it to the physical body to be
+expressed in the material world. The astral world is
+also called the emotional world, as the mental plane
+is called the mental world. The physical body is the
+soul's instrument of action. It attaches it to the
+physical world, enables the consciousness to contact
+material objects and to move and express on the
+material plane the thoughts and emotions generated
+in the mental and astral bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Another part of the mechanism of consciousness is
+known as the etheric double. But it is only a link in
+the chain and not a body through which the soul can
+function. It is composed of the etheric matter of the
+physical world and connects the astral body with the
+physical body. As every atom of physical matter is
+surrounded and permeated by etheric matter, it follows
+that the physical body has its duplicate in etheric
+matter. "Etheric double" is a very appropriate name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+since it is a perfect duplicate of the physical body in
+etheric matter. It serves the purpose of supplying the
+life force to the nervous system and is the medium
+through which sensation is conveyed. The action of
+an anaesthetic drives out so much of the matter of
+the etheric double that the connection is broken and
+sensation in the physical body ceases.</p>
+
+<p>One of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear
+conception of the constitution of man, and realizing
+that he is a soul functioning through various vehicles
+of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of thought
+common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed
+to thinking of the physical body itself as being
+the man, and if there is any thought at all of the consciousness
+surviving the death of the body it is very
+vague and indefinite as to where it exists and how it
+is expressed. Very little thinking should be necessary
+to show the absurdity of the belief that the body
+is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case
+of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely
+unlike. The real man is superphysical. His
+intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or
+his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are
+but the manifestations of himself through the body
+by which they are expressed. The body itself is a
+mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is,
+so organized that they constitute an instrument for a
+purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body
+is a variable mass. It may increase or diminish
+greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There is no
+permanent relationship between the man and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+physical matter which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness.
+According to the physiologists every
+atom of the body changes within a period of a few
+years. The cells wear out, break down and pass away
+to be replaced by new matter. Not a particle of the
+physical matter that was in our bodies seven years
+ago is there now, and none that is there now will remain.
+Within seven years, or less, we shall have
+bodies composed of new matter as certainly as an
+infant's is.</p>
+
+<p>Of course such reconstruction of the body does
+not change its appearance. It is built on the same
+lines. It is as it would be with some very old
+cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly
+rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The
+roof serves its time and is replaced. The walls
+crumble first in one place and then another until they
+have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand
+years has passed there may be none of the original
+material in the building, yet its appearance is
+unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have
+passed away and will be growing in the trees and
+blooming in the flowers in a few years. The bodies
+we shall then have are now scattered through the
+world. They will be brought together during that time
+and will come from many parts of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The physical senses continually deceive us and
+nowhere more than in our ideas about the physical
+body. It is an unstable mass of matter, in constant
+motion, with great gulfs of space between its atoms.
+Emerson was very far ahead of his time and it took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+science a half century to catch up with him and learn
+that he had recorded a fact in nature when he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Atom from atom yawns as far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As earth from moon, or star from star.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1908 the <cite>Scientific American Supplement</cite>, commenting
+on our reconstructed ideas about matter, remarked
+that the actual mass of the physical body to
+the apparent mass was about one to one million!</p>
+
+<p>If the physical body is merely an organized mass
+of matter, continually varying, constantly coming and
+going, and having no permanent relationship to the
+consciousness that functions through it, what reason
+is there for believing that it is the man? Does it seem
+strange that the center of consciousness should be
+able to draw about itself on the higher planes aggregations
+of matter and finally to express itself on the
+material plane through the mass of matter we call
+the body? If that is mysterious quite as miraculous
+things are going on constantly about us unnoticed.
+Thoreau calls attention to the fact that we become
+so accustomed to the marvelous expressions of life all
+about us that we are oblivious of the phenomena that
+are taking place. Commenting on the magic possible
+to nature he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Though I do not believe that a plant will
+spring up where no seed has been, I have great
+faith in a seed&mdash;a, to me, equally mysterious
+origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed
+there, and I am prepared to expect wonders....
+In the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to
+me from the Patent Office, and labeled, I think,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+'Poitrine jaune grosse,' large yellow squash. Two
+came up, and one bore a squash which weighed
+123&frac12; pounds, the other bore four, weighing together
+186&frac14; pounds. Who would have believed
+that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse
+in that corner of my garden? These seeds were
+the bait I used to catch it, my ferrets which I
+sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which
+unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which
+will find other things in that corner of my garden.
+Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances
+without end, and thus the corner of my
+garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here
+you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold
+merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz
+about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour
+to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat,
+though he tells them it is all deception. Surely,
+men love darkness rather than light."<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>A seed is a center of force through which life, at a
+much lower level than the human, flows and gathers
+about that center the material mass that serves the
+purpose of its lowly evolution. At the human level
+consciousness has become self-consciousness and a
+marvelously complex mechanism is required to express
+it and serve the purpose of its farther evolution.</p>
+
+<p>This complex mechanism of consciousness, composed
+of the various bodies through which the ego
+expresses itself at different levels, is used as a whole
+for functioning on the physical plane. But when the
+ego is functioning no farther down than the astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+plane, the physical body is, of course, temporarily
+discarded. It is then in the condition known as sleep,
+or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the
+consciousness from the physical body. When the
+separation occurs in the case of the medium it is called
+a trance. The cause of the inert condition of the
+physical body is the same in both cases&mdash;the withdrawal
+of the consciousness of the ego. The physical
+body is then unoccupied, but the consciousness maintains
+magnetic connection with it. In death that tie
+is severed and the consciousness can return to the
+body no more. Instances in which the apparently
+dead are brought back to life are cases where the
+magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there is
+every appearance of death.</p>
+
+<p>In form and feature the physical body has its exact
+duplicate in the astral body, and in it we function
+in the astral world whenever the separation between
+the two occurs, whether from sleep or death. In
+sleep the consciousness, expressing itself in the astral
+body in the astral world, may be turned dreamily inward
+or it may be turned outward and be vividly
+aware of the life and activities of that world. But
+there is small chance that any memory of it will come
+through into the physical consciousness upon awakening.
+Occasionally, however, it does occur and then
+it is usually remembered as a very vivid dream. In
+illness, and other abnormal conditions, the connection
+between the physical and astral consciousness is
+much closer. At a comparatively high point in evolution
+the two states of consciousness merge. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+man is then continuously conscious, and has a full
+memory in the physical brain of all his activities in
+the astral world during the hours when the physical
+body was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Consciousness is, of course, at its worst when expressed
+through the limitation of its lower vehicles.
+Any person, whether brilliant or stupid, will be much
+abler and keener on the astral plane than on the
+physical, because in sleep, and after death, he has lost
+the limitations imposed by physical matter. But the
+degree of restriction is variable and depends much
+upon the <em>kind</em> of matter of which the brain and body
+are composed; for the physical atoms vary greatly,
+and as they come and go in the passing years the
+body may either become purified and refined or it
+may grow grosser and coarser. By careful attention
+to food and drink, and by control of the emotions,
+the limitations of physical matter may be lessened
+and a much higher and more efficient state of consciousness
+in the physical body can be attained.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> The Succession of Forest Trees.&mdash;Thoreau.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER VII.</span><br />
+DEATH</h2>
+
+<p>Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly
+associated with a feeling of fear is because we
+give so little thought to it. Most people seem never
+to think of the subject at all until death invades the
+home and threatens some member of the family.
+Then terror fills the mind and all but paralyzes the
+reasoning faculties.</p>
+
+<p>Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental
+civilization, is eloquent testimony to the materialism
+of our times. It is doubt about the future that
+causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific
+basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear
+of death disappear. It is feared because it seems like
+annihilation. If people really believed in a heavenly
+existence beyond the physical life they could not possibly
+be filled with terror at the prospect of entering
+it. If a man's religion has not given him a genuine
+confidence in a future life, and made it as much
+of a reality to him as this life is, it has failed to do
+what we have a right to demand of religion. If it
+does not enable him to look upon the face of his dead
+without a doubt, or a fear, there is something wrong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+either with his religion or with his comprehension of
+it. What possible reason is there for fearing death?
+A thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not
+be pernicious. To regard death as a disastrous thing
+would be an indictment of the sanity of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of
+experience. It is the annihilation of nothing but the
+physical body, in its aspect of an instrument of activity
+and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the
+physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together
+in the human form for temporary use, are, in
+death, released from the cohesive force of a living
+organism and will return whence they came.</p>
+
+<p>In reality there is no such thing as death, unless
+it be strictly applied to the form, regarded as a temporary
+vehicle of consciousness. As for the consciousness,
+there is no death. There is life in a physical
+form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death,
+or cessation, of the individual intelligence. What we
+name "death" is but a change in the orderly evolution
+of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is
+viewed from the physical plane that such a term
+can be applied to it. From this plane it is death, or
+departure. But looked at from the astral world it
+is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning
+of the expression of the soul through a material
+body on the physical plane. It is an arrival.
+But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure and
+therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure
+from a physical body is here. So death and departure
+from one plane is simply birth, or arrival, upon an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>other,
+although it is not, of course, birth as we know
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Every process in nature has a part to play in
+evolution and therefore death is as necessary as life
+and as beneficial as birth. Death is the destroyer of
+the useless. There is a time when each human being
+should die&mdash;that is to say, a time when the physical
+body has fulfilled its mission and completely accomplished
+the purpose for which it exists. To continue
+life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste
+energy and lose time in the evolutionary journey.
+Under the action of what we call "diseases" the body
+becomes inefficient, or through the gradual breaking
+down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain.
+The consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed
+through its impaired machine and it is decidedly to
+the advantage of the ego to withdraw from it. The
+soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work
+with broken and rusted tools. Good results are no
+longer possible. It is then that death comes, beneficently
+destroying the worn out instrument and releasing
+the consciousness from its too-often painful
+situation and permitting its escape into a field of
+unobstructed activity.</p>
+
+<p>Death is painless. The breaking down of the
+body under the ravages of disease may cause pain,
+but that belongs to physical life, not death. Distress
+may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But
+the dying person who does not know that death is
+upon him has no terror, and no pain, and sinks quietly
+to sleep. Very little observation will convince one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on
+the part of surviving friends, not on the part of the
+dying. Those who are left behind remain within the
+limitations of the physical senses, and they are therefore
+separated from the so-called dead man, but he
+is not separated from them. It is because of that
+separation that the terror of death exists for them.</p>
+
+<p>But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary
+value of death. The separation it causes
+intensifies love as nothing else could do. It is only
+when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate
+his real value and comprehend how large a part he
+really played in our existence. As sudden silence
+gives the consciousness a keener realization of the
+sound that has just ceased, so death, by its contrast,
+gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know
+how enormously the heart qualities are quickened by
+the death of a close friend. The whole nature is in
+some degree purified and spiritualized. Selfishness is
+decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for
+others in distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary
+advance is made. We have only to reflect
+upon the fact that separation without death produces
+the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
+value of death. In constant association we
+grow careless and indifferent. But an absence of a
+month or two enables one to get a truer perspective
+of personal associations and thereafter life has new
+zest. A child regards its mother with a certain degree
+of appreciation but a short absence enormously
+increases its appreciation. All human beings come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+into closer and more sympathetic association after a
+period of separation, and the completeness of the
+separation caused by death renders it peculiarly
+efficacious in the development of the spiritual side of
+one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention
+away from materialistic life. Frequently a
+family becomes completely absorbed in material success.
+There is no thought at all given to the higher
+life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities
+of the world, hold them firmly. They become completely
+self-centered. Then suddenly death enters and
+breaks the family circle, and the transient character
+of all they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly
+dawns upon them, and attention is turned to
+the nobler things of life. It is a well known fact
+that great wars are accompanied or followed with
+widespread spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt
+largely because the shadow of death has fallen on
+tens of thousands of households.</p>
+
+<p>It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics
+if it would not be an improvement on nature's plan
+if the sorrow caused by the death of our friends were
+softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
+It is evidently the plan of nature to have the
+physical life and the astral life normally separated at
+our present level of evolution. Some of the reasons
+have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly
+others that we are incapable of understanding, and
+still others that we can readily comprehend. If the
+higher, joyous life of the astral world were open to
+our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+of this life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our
+life in the physical body may be compared to the
+tasks of children in school. They have serious business
+before them in the acquiring of knowledge and
+the development of the intellect. They can best accomplish
+the work when completely isolated from
+other phases of life. Introduce into their work-day
+consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus,
+the military parade, the picnic and the dancing
+parties, and the purpose for which the school exists
+would be defeated. To exactly the extent that the
+consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable
+progress be made with the work of the school-room.
+And so it is with the limitation of our physical
+senses. It serves a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a point in human evolution where
+such limitation of the senses is no longer of any service
+and may be transcended. Some people have attained
+it. They are those who have previously been
+referred to as the psychic scientists, with the higher
+clairvoyance of the cerebro-spinal system developed.
+It is an accomplishment to which all may aspire.
+None need submit to the separation commonly caused
+by death. By hard work in co-operating with nature's
+methods of evolution and by a serious and sustained
+effort to live the highest and most helpful life of
+which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain
+a level of consciousness where one has personal
+knowledge that the dead still live. But in the very
+work of rising to that level, the concentration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+previously enforced by the limitation of the physical
+senses will have been acquired.</p>
+
+<p>One of the common delusions about death is that
+some radical change in the nature of a person then
+takes place. This is no doubt due in part to the
+theological ideas that have come down to us from the
+time of the Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed
+that at death one comes to some sort of a judgment
+that classes him as either a saint qualified for eternal
+bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The
+belief is based on that erroneous view of human nature
+that was common to the melodrama of a past
+generation and that will possibly have eternal life in
+the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly
+good and the villain as absolutely bad. The
+one had no flaw of character and the other had not
+a redeeming feature. But human nature does not
+thus express itself. The spark of divine life is in all,
+notwithstanding it is sometimes darkly hidden. On
+the other hand we find no perfected beings. The perfect
+heroes were merely creations of an imperfect imagination.
+At our halfway stage of evolution we find
+neither the absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.</p>
+
+<p>Why should the change we call death transform
+a human being? It is merely the loss of one part of
+the mechanism of consciousness. The soul, the
+thinker, has lost connection with the physical world
+because the physical body has ceased to exist. The
+mental body and the astral body remain and they
+enable him to think and feel. But he can not think
+more than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+All that has happened in death is that contact with
+the material world has been lost.</p>
+
+<p>One of the misconceptions is that death brings
+great wisdom, and we often hear of people getting
+into communication with those who have passed on,
+with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is
+true that death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness
+and that in the astral world one can see a
+little further ahead and take a few more things into
+consideration. But&mdash;and it is a vital point&mdash;he would
+have no better judgment in determining a course
+of action than he had while here in the physical
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged.
+His grade of morality is neither better nor worse.
+His tolerance or narrowness remains what it previously
+was. If he was bigoted while here he is still
+bigoted there. If he was the unevolved ignoramus
+here he remains precisely that in the astral world.
+Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
+unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development,
+but in a world where emotion is the determining
+factor.</p>
+
+<p>Death merely opens the door to a new and wider
+realm where the evolution of the soul proceeds. It
+would be difficult to say which is the greater misfortune&mdash;the
+delusions that make death the king of
+terrors, or the complacent belief that if death does
+not end all, it at least brings the soul to a judgment
+that ends all personal responsibility and settles one's
+fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+or transform the moral nature than sleep can change
+character or determine destiny.</p>
+
+<p>The theosophical conception of death is as consoling
+as it is scientific. Instead of the fear of death
+it gives us knowledge of continued life. Instead of
+doubt and despair it gives us confidence and joy, for
+it guarantees the companionship once more of those
+we have known and loved, and erroneously supposed
+we have lost.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER VIII.</span><br />
+THE ASTRAL WORLD</h2>
+
+<p>When the physical body dies there is an interval between
+the loss of consciousness here and the dawning
+of the astral consciousness. During that interim a review
+of the life scenes takes place. Everything between birth
+and death passes again through the consciousness, as
+it thus pauses in the etheric double, between the life
+activities of two worlds. Then peaceful unconsciousness
+follows, from which the man awakes in the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>To those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing
+to some remote heaven, where they become angels,
+it will perhaps sound startling to say that a dead man
+is not aware at first that the change we call death has
+taken place. Yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at
+all remarkable that it should be so with many. We have
+only to recall the fact that all physical matter is surrounded
+and permeated with astral matter to realize that
+the physical plane is duplicated in astral matter. Not
+only the physical body of the human being but, of course,
+every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The
+dying man loses consciousness of the physical plane and
+awakes as from a sleep to the astral consciousness. He
+sees then the exact duplicate, in astral matter, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees, too, his
+friends, for their astral bodies are replicas of their
+physical forms.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference,
+though not a difference that enables him to comprehend
+what has occurred. He may know that only yesterday,
+or what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was ill
+and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he
+was about to die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never
+felt so free from aches and pains in all his life. The
+pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth are his again!
+This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally
+speaks to them, but gets no reply and finds that he can
+not attract their attention. It must be remembered that
+he can not see their physical bodies any more than they
+can see his astral body. Yet he truly sees them. If a
+so-called dead man and a living person look at the same
+instant at another living person they will both see him,
+but the latter sees the physical body while the former
+sees the astral body that surrounds and permeates it.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances it is not strange that the
+new arrival in the astral world is seized with a feeling
+of baffling mystery. He is in full possession of his
+reasoning faculties, and will power, but there is a puzzling
+limitation to his efforts to produce expected results.
+A partial analogy may be found in the case of a person
+suddenly stricken with aphasia over night. He rises in
+the morning, dresses, and goes about his accustomed
+duties without the slightest suspicion that any change has
+come to him until he takes up the morning paper and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+discovers that he can not read&mdash;that the familiar print
+simply means nothing to him!</p>
+
+<p>Of course, in time the living dead man gets adjusted
+to the new life. He soon meets others in the astral
+world who have been there longer and they, sooner or
+later, succeed in convincing him that he is not having
+an exceptionally vivid dream.</p>
+
+<p>The astral world, as explained in a previous chapter,
+has seven subdivisions and the astral body contains matter
+belonging to each of them. While we have the
+physical body the matter of the astral body is in rapid
+circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented
+at the surface. But when the connection with the
+material plane is broken, a rearrangement of the matter
+of the astral body automatically takes place (unless it is
+prevented by an exercise of will power) and the grossest
+grade of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently
+the consciousness of the man is limited to that
+subdivision of the astral world represented by the lowest
+grade of matter which his astral body contains at the
+time of his death. This is a fact the importance of
+which it would be difficult to over emphasize, because
+his after-death state of consciousness, his joy or sorrow&mdash;in
+short, his temporary heaven or hell, depends upon
+his location in the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>There are three, and only three modes of death,
+or release from the physical body&mdash;by old age, by disease,
+or by violence. Old age is the natural and desirable
+close of the chapter of physical plane experience. It is
+most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a
+large harvest of experience. To live long and actively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+is excellent fortune. It is not well to pass into the astral
+world with strong physical desires. As old age comes
+on the desire forces subside. Most of that grade of
+astral matter that is capable of expressing them has
+slowly disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual
+loosening of the life forces from the material plane, and
+that has many advantages.</p>
+
+<p>Release from the physical body by disease is next
+in order of desirability. It is a quicker and less complete
+breaking down of the connection with the physical
+world. Nevertheless it is a condition in which much
+progress may be made in getting free from physical desires,
+as those who have had experience with invalids
+are aware. Desires usually grow weaker with the progress
+of the disease that finally ends in death.</p>
+
+<p>Release from the physical form by violence is, of
+course, the least desirable of the three, not merely because
+it is violence, but for the much more important
+reason that sudden death finds the man, as a rule, with
+a considerable amount of the lower grades of astral
+matter in his astral body.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the death by violence is the result of accident,
+murder, suicide or legal execution, the astral
+plane conditions of consciousness are alike unfortunate,
+in that it is sudden death, not the manner of death, that
+permits entry upon the astral life before the lower
+grades of astral matter have been eliminated from the
+astral body. This is one reason why suicide is unfortunate&mdash;because
+it ushers the man into the astral world
+with more of the matter of the lower levels in his astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+vehicle than would be there if he had lived out his normal
+physical life.</p>
+
+<p>Purgatory is a term often applied to the lowest level
+of the astral world. The word is well chosen because
+it is there that the moral nature is purged of its impurities.
+Strong desires cultivated and indulged during the
+life in the physical body are eliminated with the gross
+astral matter through which alone they can be expressed
+and, freed to that extent, the man passes to the next
+subdivision, and into its higher state of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In the astral life some people linger long on the
+lower levels while others know them not at all, but
+awaken to the blissful consciousness of the higher subdivisions.
+Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping together
+people of a kind. It is, however, the manner in
+which one lives during physical life that determines his
+happiness or sorrow after death. The astral body, the
+seat of the emotions, is, like the physical body, constantly
+changing the matter that composes it. An emotion of
+any kind expresses itself as a vibration in the matter of
+the astral body. If it is a base emotion, such as anger,
+hatred, lust or cruelty, it throws into vibration the grossest
+of the astral body's matter, for only in that can it be
+expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love,
+sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects
+only the rarer grades of astral matter, for in them only
+can such feeling be expressed.</p>
+
+<p>With most people there is a constant mingling of a
+wide range of emotions, with a gain in one direction
+and a loss in another. One who fortunately understands
+the law of emotional cause and effect may make absolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+certain of a comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane
+after death. He would make it a rule to watch his
+emotions and control them, knowing that each time he
+indulged a gross one the vibration set up in his astral
+body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of
+matter in it, while pure and exalted emotions would
+strengthen the higher grades. Ultimately, the grossest
+grade, becoming atrophied for the lack of activity, would
+drop away from him.</p>
+
+<p>The descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic
+scientists are calculated to induce even the reckless to
+avoid it. If we could bring together all the vilest men
+and women now living on the physical plane, the crudest
+of murderers, the most besotted drunkards, the vilest
+degenerates, the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends
+of every description, and huddle them together in hovels
+reeking with filth, and let them remain without any outward
+government, free to prey upon each other, we
+should perhaps have a faint comprehension of the reality
+of the lowest subdivision of the astral world. But no
+physical plane comparison can do it full justice, for we
+must remember that it is the emotional world and that
+the feelings of its inhabitants make its atmosphere in a
+way that would here be impossible. Astral matter instantly
+and exactly reproduces emotion, so that the fiend
+or the sensualist looks exactly what he feels. Even in
+the unresponsive physical matter, the evil in a man is
+often sufficiently expressed to fill those who behold him
+with terror. In the astral world every cruel thought
+and hideous emotion would express itself in visible form
+and the multitudinous emotions welling up in the lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+level of the astral world would be as a loathsome swarm
+of reptiles gliding through its horrible life. Add to all
+that the fact that the hopeless despair of its denizens
+gives an atmosphere of utter gloom and desolation, and
+we have a hell that leaves no need of other torture to
+check the course of the erring soul. And yet there is
+no suffering that is not self-imposed. It is both consistent
+and just that a man should associate with his
+kind and look upon himself in others until he grows
+sick of his own vileness and cries out in agony of spirit
+against his own moral offenses. It must not be assumed
+that every person dying with considerable matter belonging
+to the lower astral level still within his emotional
+body will necessarily pass through such experiences. It
+should never be forgotten that we are dealing with a
+matter of the utmost complexity and that even the most
+exhaustive description in print would present only a
+fragment of the truth. The conditions of consciousness
+on any subplane vary as individuals vary. Some people
+on the lowest astral level are wholly unconscious of
+their surroundings. Another variation is that some people
+find themselves floating in darkness and largely cut
+off from others&mdash;a sufficiently undesirable condition, and
+yet better than the fate of some. All states of
+astral consciousness are reactions from previous good
+or evil conduct and are, moreover, temporary conditions
+that will in time be left behind.</p>
+
+<p>In a different way and at a higher level there may
+be suffering on the astral plane that is purifying the
+nature. Not all offenses against nature's laws are of
+so gross a type. There is the abuse of desire and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+violation of conscience that may result in various
+kinds of regret and emotional distress. A desire of
+a refined type strongly built up upon the physical plane
+lives with an intenser vitality on the astral plane after
+the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton
+and a miser have strong desires of a very different
+type. Each of them is likely to suffer on account of it
+during the astral life. They need not dwell upon the
+lowest level to get a reaction from their folly in the
+physical life. We can easily imagine the distress of the
+glutton in a world without food. There could be no
+distress because of hunger, for the astral body is not,
+like the physical body, renewed and maintained by what
+it consumes. But hunger and the gratification of the
+sense of taste are very different things. It is the latter
+that would trouble the gormand, and it is said that
+great suffering, as in the case of the drunkard, is his
+lot until the desire gradually disappears because of the
+impossibility of its gratification.</p>
+
+<p>The miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his
+greed for gold may be quite as intense as that of the
+glutton for sensual gratification. The accumulation of
+money has been the dominant thought of his life. He
+has created in his mind a wholly false value for money
+and it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it.
+Only dire necessity forces him to spend any portion of
+his hoard. It is not difficult to imagine his emotions when
+he is obliged to leave it behind and see others spend it
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>Any kind of a desire that is related to the physical
+body is without means of gratification in the astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+world and if such desire has been cultivated until it
+becomes strong enough to play an important part in one's
+life it will certainly give him more or less trouble after
+the loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of
+an over-refinement and excess in a natural appetite, as
+in the case of the epicure, or is simply an artificial thing
+that is unrelated to any natural demand, as in the case
+of the smoker, the inability to gratify the desire is
+equally distressing. The suffering that results could
+hardly be judged by what would follow on the physical
+plane when desire is thwarted, for in the astral life
+emotion expresses itself much more intensely.</p>
+
+<p>All of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever
+type, is the natural result of the thoughts, emotions and
+acts during the life on the physical plane. The astral
+world is that part of the mechanism for man's evolution
+that brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving
+in the wrong direction. He is not being punished. The
+injurious forces he has generated are simply reacting
+upon him. This reaction, that sets him right, is as
+certain as in the case of the infant that picks up a live
+coal. It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in
+result, and it works itself out in a multiplicity of ways.
+One of the methods of reaction that helps to stamp out
+a fault is the automatic repetition of the unpleasant
+consequences of wrong doing. The murderer will serve
+for a general illustration. In the case of a deliberate,
+premeditated and cruel murder, the assassin is moved
+by such base motives as revenge or jealousy. The results
+of these, so far as their frightful consequences to
+the victim are concerned, do not in the least tend to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+deter the assassin from further deeds of violence. He
+feels gratified with his success and is quite satisfied with
+himself. Only the possibility of detection and punishment
+troubles him. If they follow in due course they
+will accomplish something in correcting his erroneous
+views of life. But they will not be sufficient to register
+indelibly, in the very nature of the man, a proper sense
+of the horror of which he has been guilty. Such a man
+can be impressed and his viewpoint changed only by
+consequences to himself. It is in the reaction in the
+astral life of the forces he has generated here that he
+gets the lesson that forces in upon his consciousness
+the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the
+physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless
+come into contact in the astral world with conditions
+sufficiently horrible. He has made a tie with his
+victim that can not be broken until the scales of justice
+are balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the
+uttermost. Just what form of retribution will follow
+depends, of course, on the nature of the case. But the
+reaction is as certain as it is multiplex. One of its
+variants is the gruesome experience of always fleeing
+from the corpse of the victim, but with the utter impossibility
+of a moment's escape. In the case of a murderer
+who has been apprehended, tried, condemned and
+executed, the whole of the tragedy and its sequel would
+be, not only lived over in imagination but repeated automatically,
+in fact, and worked out in full detail in the
+plastic matter of the astral region. Probably few people
+have the imagination to comprehend what the murderer
+feels of apprehension and fear at his trial when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+his life is in the balance; or what he suffers while
+hiding from justice and making futile efforts to escape
+the pursuing officers of the law; or what his emotions
+are as his hands are tied and he steps upon the death
+trap. All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly.
+As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject&mdash;let
+us say something that is the cause of much anxiety&mdash;finds
+it impossible to turn his attention from it and
+think of other things, or go to sleep, and is impelled
+against his desire to think the matter over and over,
+so the assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his
+crime and can not escape from living and acting it all
+over and over again until a revulsion of feeling arouses
+him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime.</p>
+
+<p>Again it should be said that no attempt is here made
+to give more than a very fragmentary description, and a
+few hints, of the manner in which the retributory laws
+of nature work. A writer on the subject should also be
+careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain
+classes of offenders against nature's laws severe penalties
+accrue, the reader does not get the impression that
+suffering is the common lot in the astral life. The truth
+of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate lives,
+and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to
+others, will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate
+side of astral existence. In the limitations, the vexations,
+the physical aches and ills, the poverty, sorrow and suffering
+of the material plane, most of us are as near to
+hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The
+ordinary man of average morality has so little of the
+matter of the lowest level of the astral plane lingering in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+him that as a rule he would begin his postmortem existence
+on the next higher subdivision, which is the
+counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore
+have no knowledge of the hell that exists on the
+lower level. But that is not at all true of those who
+live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger,
+jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses,
+that often lead to violent crimes. It is possible to live
+the physical life so sanely, usefully, harmoniously and
+unselfishly that at the death of the physical body one will
+pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career
+in the astral world. But while that is quite possible the
+unfortunate fact is that a great many people so color
+all their emotions with selfishness that the astral sojourn
+is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the emotions that
+determine the astral life and it is said that if they are
+directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the
+astral plane that are very unpleasant.</p>
+
+<p>It must be expected that any idea we may form of
+the astral life will be incomplete, and inadequate to give
+a true conception what it is really like. Perhaps the
+most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which
+reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There
+the average man will begin his conscious astral career.
+If we think of the world as we know it here and then
+imagine all that is material to have vanished from it
+we shall gain some comprehension of the situation. Eliminate
+the necessity of providing food, clothing and
+shelter and nearly all of the labor of the race would
+cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining, the building,
+the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+of the products of field and factory, constitute nearly
+the whole of human activity. In the astral life no food
+is required and one is clothed with astral matter from
+which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and
+rapidity of thought. No houses are needed for shelter.
+The astral body is not susceptible to degrees of heat
+and cold, and nothing there corresponds to our temperatures.
+There is no division of night and day, objects
+being self-luminous and light being perpetual.</p>
+
+<p>If we could drop out of physical life all need of
+physical labor, abolish all response to heat or cold, the
+need of food and houses, and add unlimited wealth or,
+to be more exact, give each person the power to possess
+all that wealth can confer and much that it can not,
+we would have an approach to a conception of the astral
+world from one viewpoint. Each one entering the astral
+life has, of course, a fullness of liberty and freedom
+from responsibility that is not instantly comprehensible
+to the physical mind. There is nothing whatever that
+he must do. There is, however, plenty that he can do
+if he desires to be active. On the physical plane many
+people of wealth travel and amuse themselves with sight
+seeing. Thousands of others would do so if it were
+possible. In the astral world it is possible and large
+numbers of people drift aimlessly about with no particular
+plans. Multitudes belonging to various religious sects
+organize themselves into congregations, build edifices
+and spend much time in religious services. Others amuse
+themselves building houses and constructing landscapes.
+It is not at all necessary, but the old habits live and
+influence activities.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p><p>The average person in the astral world gives himself
+to idleness and the enjoyment of the intensified emotions
+of the astral life just as the majority of people would
+do here if it were possible to escape the round of duties
+so sternly imposed by their necessities. For a long time
+the most of them also make daily visits to the homes
+they have left behind on the physical plane. Those who
+have a strong tie of affection with some member of
+the family frequently spend much time lingering around
+and going on little journeys about the premises or elsewhere
+with the loved one. They understand that the
+dead person is not perceived by the living one, but nevertheless
+they desire to be near. They do not have a full
+consciousness of all the living person is thinking and
+doing, but they are fully aware of the state of feeling,
+or emotion, and whether the living friend is pleasantly
+or unpleasantly affected by passing events.</p>
+
+<p>As the astral life becomes more and more familiar
+to the newly arrived individual he gets well settled in
+it and gradually readjusts his viewpoint to a truer perspective
+than he has here. As time passes he is less and
+less in touch with the affairs of the physical life and
+finally loses consciousness of them altogether as he passes
+on to the higher levels of the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>But there are many people who have a more serious
+view of life and who lose no opportunity of acquiring
+knowledge, and the astral world, which is called "the
+hall of learning" by students of the occult, presents
+remarkably good conditions to them. Here we are limited
+in three dimensions of matter and hampered by the very
+narrow range of the physical senses. In the astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+world matter has four dimensions and new and
+marvelous avenues of learning open before the
+student. Those who are at all interested in music, or
+art of any kind, find both the field and the facilities
+enormously extended. Those who study nature, whether
+by directly probing into her secrets or by cleverly combining
+her principles into new processes and inventions,
+have such opportunities as scientist and discoverer has
+not dreamed of on this plane. And so for all the thoughtful
+and studious there is a life of the most useful and
+fascinating kind in the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>But it must not be supposed that the opportunity of
+usefulness and progress is only for the studious. There
+as here the opportunity for useful work in helping humanity
+forward is boundless; for while poverty and
+disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic
+work of other kinds to be done. People are
+to be taught, for there, as here, the majority are sadly
+in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of nature's
+laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in
+harmony with them in order to get the greatest happiness
+from life. But the work to be done is by no means
+confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes the
+teaching so necessary has brought a great many people
+into the unfortunate condition, where immediate assistance
+is most urgently needed, and there is such a
+variety of helplessness that nobody need be idle.</p>
+
+<p>Because of the false teaching upon the subject of
+life hereafter, people are bewildered when they become
+conscious in the astral life. Many have had their minds
+so vividly impressed with the awful fate that awaits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+those who are not "saved" before death that they fall
+into a state of terror when at last they realize that death
+has really occurred. Others, who may or may not be
+haunted with any such absurd misconceptions, cling so
+tenaciously to the physical life when about to leave it
+that there is not complete separation between the etheric
+double and astral body. The result is that the unfortunate
+person finds himself cut off from the physical world
+and yet not arrived in the astral! Wrapped in a cloud
+of etheric matter he drifts for a time in terror of the
+unknown. Those among the so-called dead who are
+kindly enough to rescue the distressed may come to their
+relief and give valuable assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the commonest thing that engages the attention
+of the astral worker is the fear that death brings to
+most people. They arrive in the astral world with the feeling
+that everything is unknown and uncertain. All preconceived
+ideas about the life after death have suddenly
+been found unreliable and they are afraid of, they know
+not what. They want to cling to anybody who knows
+something of the new world. When we remember that
+people are arriving in the astral world by the tens of
+thousands daily, even under normal conditions, it is
+evident that all who wish to be of service can find plenty
+to do. No special knowledge of the astral plane is necessary.
+Common sense is a sufficient equipment, in such
+simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead
+of giving the entire time to the pleasures of that world.
+The work for the astral helpers ranges upward in complexity,
+of course, and there is profitable activity for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually
+work in well organized groups and render service of
+great practical value.</p>
+
+<p>Life on the astral plane has its end for the same
+reason that it comes to a close on the physical plane.
+Nature's purpose has been accomplished and the man is
+ready to go on farther in his evolution. The length of
+the astral life varies just as it does in the physical world.
+Some physical lives are very long and sometimes only
+when five scores of years, or more, have passed does the
+ego withdraw. Other lives are very short and scarcely
+well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close.
+There is nevertheless a general average to be found. It
+is at least possible to make averages for different classes
+of people and to say that a majority of those who are
+of ordinary health and strength are likely to attain
+a stated age, while it is certain that the majority
+of those who have such, and such, a physical handicap
+will lose their physical bodies when they are much
+younger. Such general rules may also be applied to the
+astral life.</p>
+
+<p>Here a long and alert life is most desirable because
+the purpose of the physical plane is to gather experience
+that shall be transmuted into wisdom on a higher plane.
+It is a seed time against a later harvest. But the astral
+plane is, for the vast majority of the race, related to
+the purgative process. In that life the errors of the
+physical life are largely worked out and desires that
+have grown up like weeds in a garden are rooted out and
+the budding virtues are given a chance to grow. It is a
+corrective plane, where blunders are checked up and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+moral perspective is re-established. Naturally enough
+the sooner that can be done the better. The rule of a
+long life being most desirable on the physical plane is,
+therefore, reversed on the astral plane. It is the shortest
+life in the astral world that is the greatest prize, and it
+comes to those who have lived the purest and noblest
+lives while here. The sooner a man gets through the
+astral world and begins the reaping of his harvest on
+the mental plane, or heaven world, the better it is for him.</p>
+
+<p>The length of the astral sojourn depends primarily
+upon the durability of the astral body and that, in turn,
+depends upon the kind of a life he has lived here. Let
+us suppose that he has lived a very gross and sensual
+life. All of the emotions of that type that he indulged
+built more gross matter in his astral body and also
+strengthened and vivified the lowest grade of matter that
+was already there. Let us also imagine that he had an
+ungovernable temper and frequently gave way to outbursts
+of fury; further, that he was cruel and revengeful,
+seeking and finding many opportunities of inflicting injuries
+upon others. Here we have a case for long life
+on the lower levels of the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now consider a different type of man. He
+lives peacefully and harmoniously with those about him.
+He feels strong affection for wife and children. He has
+a host of friends because of his cheerful, helpful and
+sympathetic attitude toward others. He lives cleanly
+and thinks nobly. His mind is kept free from trivialities
+and his tongue is never employed in gossip. He makes
+a determined and persistent effort to eliminate pride,
+envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+first of the welfare of others and always last of himself&mdash;in
+short, tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all
+things impersonally. Such a man could know nothing
+whatever of the disagreeable part of the astral life and
+would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions
+and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.</p>
+
+<p>From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually
+to the higher. He remains on a given level so long
+as is required to eliminate the matter of that level from
+his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on
+the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because
+the man has at last stopped sending his life force
+through it. Ungratified desire has finally worn itself out
+and he is free. The process can be greatly hastened or
+retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly
+dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged
+life to them. If he can resolutely turn his mind
+to higher things he hastens his release. His fate is in
+his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he has a
+knowledge of such matters.</p>
+
+<p>One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly
+through the astral world than he would have done had
+he died in the full strength of manhood. As the years
+accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest grades of
+astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter
+in which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is
+an additional reason why it is desirable to live to old
+age in the physical world.</p>
+
+<p>The hold that the material world has upon the mind
+is one of the causes which greatly prolong existence
+in the astral world. Some people give their time and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+thought so exclusively to material things that after they
+lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away
+from the life that lies behind them. This difficulty
+does not necessarily arise wholly from having given one's
+energies entirely to personal ambition and material accumulation.
+Sometimes the ruler of a country is so
+determined to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that
+this vivid interest in the physical world stretches out the
+period of astral life most unfortunately.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively
+short, if we measure it in the terms of physical
+life. A person who has lived here seventy years may
+have thirty or forty years on the astral plane. But that
+will depend not only upon how he lived the physical
+life just closed but also upon his general position in
+human evolution. A savage of low type would have a
+comparatively long astral life while a man at the higher
+levels of civilization would have a comparatively short
+period there, while the man in the lower levels of civilized
+life might be said to come in at about midway
+between the two. But it must be remembered that these
+are very general estimates and that among civilized peoples
+individuals differ enormously. Some will pass very
+slowly and, so far as lower levels are concerned, painfully,
+through astral life, while the sojourn of others
+there is measured in minutes, and they pass happily and
+almost instantaneously from physical death to the heaven
+world. But such people are the exception, not the rule.</p>
+
+<p>Communication with those who have passed on into
+the astral world is possible, but not always desirable, for
+a number of reasons. As an evidence of the continuity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+of consciousness in the hands of the scientific investigator,
+such communications have been of the greatest
+value. As a consolation to those who have thus come
+again in touch with dead friends such messages have
+been of inestimable value to the bereaved, particularly
+when they have been received in the privacy of the family
+circle by some of its members. For a time those who
+have lost the physical body are usually within easy reach
+through the usual methods employed for the purpose and
+perhaps no harm is done by such communications unless
+they arouse anew the grief of those who have been left
+behind and thus greatly depress the departed. But after
+the living dead get farther along, and are practically out
+of touch with the material world, then directing their
+attention backward may be positively injurious to them.
+For that reason careful students of the occult seldom seek
+to obtain messages, or at least do it with proper consideration
+for all the circumstances of the particular
+case.</p>
+
+<p>Due regard for the interests of those who have passed
+on, as well as for those who remain, requires that all
+the facts be given full weight. The truth of the matter
+is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise to
+the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once
+more get into touch with one that seems to be lost to
+us. We are not really thinking much about his welfare.
+As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us and does
+not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able to
+see us at all times and be conscious of our feelings and
+emotions, but during the hours when we are asleep he
+is in the fullest and freest communication with us and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+we with him. On awakening we usually have no memory
+of this and if we do we think it was a dream. But it
+is not so with him. His memory of it is perfect and
+the result is that he has not our sense of separation and
+loss at all.</p>
+
+<p>The result of knowledge upon the subject, that is
+readily gained by a study of the researches of the skilled
+occultists, is that one comes to feel that one should
+rest satisfied with the fact that we do converse with the
+dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to
+the scientific investigators. The natural order of things
+is that the person who passes into the astral world shall
+in time fix his mind exclusively upon the inner life and
+be completely divorced from physical plane affairs. That
+is the mental and emotional condition which permits
+of his rapid passage through levels where he should not
+linger. It is said that to turn his attention backward at
+this time may cause him acute distress.</p>
+
+<p>A reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge
+of occultism often throws a new light upon the
+subject. An instance of this is to be found in the story
+of the woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his
+quest for psychic information about the crisis that has
+been reached in the affairs of his kingdom. The woman
+went into trance and acted as a medium for a communication
+from Samuel, who tells Saul just what will occur
+in the impending battle. Samuel's first words were
+a reproach to Saul. "Why hast thou disquieted me to
+bring me up?"<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> was his greeting. It is the language of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+one who is displeased. Drawing his attention forcibly
+back to the material world by the strong desire Saul
+had to communicate with him was evidently distressing
+to the dead king, hence the rebuke, "Why hast thou
+<em>disquieted</em> me?"</p>
+
+<p>What is here said on the subject of communication,
+however, has reference to general principles only. There
+is no intention of suggesting that it is always undesirable
+to communicate with those who have passed over. Often
+those on the other side seek means of communicating and
+they should then find the most willing co-operation from
+this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical
+plane life has a message of great importance to deliver
+and such a case reverses the general rule&mdash;he would be
+delayed if he could <em>not</em> communicate. It would be decidedly
+to his advantage to free his mind of the matter.
+Until he has done so he may remain in a restless condition
+and his case falls into the category of what the
+spiritualists call "earth bound." He may have left
+undone something that a message will set right, if he
+can get it through, or he may have secreted something
+that cannot be found because he died suddenly and had
+no opportunity to speak of it. Or it may simply be a
+case of desiring to prove to materialistic friends the
+fact that the so-called dead are not dead, and are close
+at hand. It is sometimes possible for the important
+information to come through into physical life in the
+form of a dream by the living, and thus the recovery of
+valuables has followed.<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> In such a case the dream is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+a memory of facts well known in astral life but hidden
+from the waking consciousness by the unresponsive material
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>It sometimes happens that one who thus most earnestly
+desires to communicate but is wholly ignorant
+of how to accomplish his purpose causes a good deal of
+annoyance. His blundering attempts to use psychic
+force may be wholly abortive and result only in meaningless
+noises, raps, the tumbling of books or dishes
+from shelves or the aimless movement of furniture.
+Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention, on the
+part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks.
+It must be remembered that passing on to the astral life
+does not improve one's common sense. If while living
+here, he thought it amusing to astonish or delude somebody,
+or trick a friend into seriously accepting some
+absurd assertion as a fact, he still regards the same
+course as entertaining. This accounts for many of the
+foolish, and sometimes startling messages, or answers to
+questions, received at seances.</p>
+
+<p>It has often been asked why, if communication between
+the physical and astral planes is possible, we do
+not receive information that might lead to valuable discoveries
+and inventions. The very fact that death does
+not confer wisdom explains it in part. But an even more
+important fact is that communication is easy with the
+lower levels and correspondingly difficult as the higher
+levels are reached. All who have had much experience
+with seances are familiar with the fact that "guides"
+or "controls," that is, the persons in the invisible realms
+who direct the seance and frequently speak through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+the medium, are very often Indians or others at a low
+level of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants of
+the astral levels with which communication is easy are
+not the type capable of furnishing ideas of any great
+value. It is on the higher levels that the man of intellectual
+power passes most of his astral life. The
+scientist or the inventor who has given so much thought
+to his work that he has been in some degree successful
+here is not likely to have much consciousness on lower
+levels. It is the highest of the seven subdivisions of the
+astral world that is the habitat of the person who has
+followed intellectual pursuits, during physical life, and
+with that level it is practically impossible for the ordinary
+medium to communicate.</p>
+
+<p>One of the objections to indiscriminate communication
+with the astral plane lies in the very fact that the
+lowest class of entities are most accessible. That not
+only accounts for the commonplace messages in such
+abundance, but it is frequently a source of actual danger,
+especially where people form "circles" for the purpose
+of rendering themselves more sensitive to psychic influences.
+In such cases it is common to accept every
+message as absolute truth. There is no doubt that as
+a rule the astral people in charge of such a gathering
+are earnest and honest. But they are neither all-wise
+nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about that
+some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed by
+astral entities, and that may prove to be an exceedingly
+serious matter. Some people have thus lost their sanity
+and others their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, only the gross type of astral person<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+who has a desire to seize upon the physical body of
+another. The purpose is to gratify desires that have
+outlived the physical body. The dead drunkard is perhaps
+the commonest example of the obsessing entity, and
+if the obsession is only partial it may lead to nothing
+worse than strong and perhaps irresistible impulses
+toward alcoholic stimulation. Obsession may, of course,
+occur without the psychic door being opened deliberately.
+But no obsession is possible, in any case, unless there is
+something within the victim responsive to the moral
+defect of the obsessing entity.</p>
+
+<p>Partial obsessions are rather common and there are
+frequent inquiries as to the best means of treating such
+a case. It may amount only to the slight annoyance
+of astral people hanging about and refusing to depart
+or to actual persecution. In all such cases the victim is,
+of course, in conscious touch and communication with
+the intruders. One of the world's greatest authorities
+on the subject, who is a constant investigator of the unseen
+regions, has given detailed answer to two questioners,
+and what he says is of such practical value that
+it is well worth reproducing. The second question itself
+is enlightening as to the character of the obsessing
+entities. The first inquirer asks:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"What is the best way to get rid of an excarnate
+human being who persists in occupying one's
+body?"</p></div>
+
+<p>The reply follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I should simply and absolutely decline to be so
+obsessed. The best and kindest plan would be to
+have an explanation with the dead person, to enquire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+what he wants and why he makes such persistent
+attempts. Quite probably, he may be some ignorant
+soul who does not at all comprehend his new surroundings,
+and is striving madly to get into touch
+again with the only kind of life that he understands.
+In that case if matters are explained to him, he may
+be brought to a happier frame of mind and induced
+to cease his ill-directed efforts. Or the poor creature
+may have something on his mind&mdash;some duty unfulfilled
+or some wrong unrighted; if this be so, and
+the matter can be arranged to his satisfaction, he
+may then be at peace.</p>
+
+<p>"If, however, he proves not to be amenable to
+reason, if in spite of all argument and explanation
+he refuses to abandon his reprehensible line of
+action, it will be necessary gently but firmly to
+resist him. Every man has an inalienable right to the
+use of his own vehicles, and encroachments of this
+nature should not be permitted. If the lawful possessor
+of the body will confidently assert himself and
+use his own willpower no obsession can take
+place.</p>
+
+<p>"When such things occur, it is almost always because
+the victim has in the first place voluntarily
+yielded himself to the invading influence, and his
+first step therefore is to reverse that act of submission,
+to determine strongly to take matters into his
+own hands again and to resume control over his
+property. It is this reassertion of himself that is
+the fundamental requirement, and though much help
+may be given by wise friends, nothing which they
+can do will take the place of the development of
+willpower on the part of the victim, or obviate the
+necessity for it. The exact method of procedure
+will naturally vary according to the details of the
+case."</p></div>
+
+<p>The same authority answers another question on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+same subject and he is here dealing with particular
+entities that he has evidently seen:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have long been troubled by entities who constantly
+suggest evil ideas and make use of coarse
+and violent language. They are always urging me
+to take strong drink, and goading me on to the consumption
+of large quantities of meat. I have prayed
+earnestly, but with little avail, and am driven to my
+wits' end. What can I do?"</p></div>
+
+<p>To this appeal the psychic scientist replies:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"You have indeed suffered greatly; but now you
+must make up your mind to suffer no more. You
+must take courage and make a firm stand. The
+power of these dead people over you is only in your
+fear of them. Your own will is stronger than all
+theirs combined if you will only know that it is;
+if you turn upon them with vigor and determination
+they must yield before you. You have an inalienable
+right to the undisturbed use of your own vehicles,
+and you should insist on being left in peace. You
+would not tolerate an intrusion of filthy and disgusting
+beings into your house on the physical plane;
+why should you submit to it because the entities
+happen to be astral? If an insolent tramp forces
+himself into a man's house, the owner does not kneel
+down and pray&mdash;he kicks the tramp out; and that
+is precisely what you must do with these astral
+tramps.</p>
+
+<p>"You will no doubt say to yourself that when I
+give you this advice I do not know the terrible power
+of the particular demons who are afflicting you.
+That is exactly what they would like you to believe&mdash;what
+they will try to make you believe; but
+do not be so foolish as to listen to them. I know
+the type perfectly, and mean, despicable, bullying
+villains they are; they will torment a weak woman
+for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+the moment you turn upon them in righteous anger!
+I should just laugh at them, but I would drive them
+out, hold not a moment's parley with them. Of
+course, they will bluster and show fight, because you
+have let them have their own way for so long that
+they will not tamely submit to expulsion; but face
+them with iron determination, set your will against
+them like an immovable rock, and down they will
+go. Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire,
+and by the power of the God within me I order you
+to depart!' Never let yourself think for an instant of
+failure or of yielding; God is within you, and God
+cannot fail."<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Probably there is no astral subject of more vital
+importance to any of us than that of the right attitude
+of mind and emotion toward the living dead. It is
+commonly said that we can do nothing more for them
+when they have passed away from physical plane life,
+but a greater error could not easily be made. The
+connection with us is by no means severed. Not only are
+they emotionally in touch with us but their emotions are
+very much keener than when they had a physical body
+through which to express them. They are now living
+in the astral body, the matter of which is enormously
+more responsive to emotional vibrations. A joyous emotion
+here would be tremendously more joyous there and
+a thing that would produce depression here would be a
+hundred times more depressing there. That fact should
+give pause to those who are inclined to think in sorrow,
+and with something of despair, about their friends who
+have passed on. They are not far away in space and
+our emotions affect them profoundly and instantly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p><p>We are all familiar with the fact that moods are
+communicable. The person who is cheerful cheers up
+others in his vicinity, while the one who is gloomy spreads
+gloom wherever he goes. It is a simple matter of vibrations.
+It is often within the power of a member of the
+family who habitually has "the blues" to destroy the
+happiness of the entire household. If we think of the
+most depressing effect that can be caused by sorrow on
+the physical plane, and then multiply its effectiveness
+by a hundred, we shall have no exaggeration of the astral
+effects of the emotions we indulge in the physical body.
+If, then, the sorrow of a weeping relative distresses us
+here it is clear that it must bring really keen distress
+to the one who is the subject of such grief. His life
+may thus be made miserable by the very persons who
+would be the last to cause him sorrow if they understood
+what they were doing.</p>
+
+<p>We can really help the so-called dead and make them
+very much happier by simply changing our mournful
+attitude toward them. All violent expressions of grief
+should be avoided and a determination to make the best
+of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may
+indeed be bad, but we make it very much worse by our
+mourning. The funeral customs of Occidental civilization
+are quite consistent with its materialism. We act
+as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are
+lost to us absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as
+possible. Yet we are slowly improving. Not so very
+long ago when anybody died those present stopped the
+ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains,
+moved about on tiptoe, and acted generally in a way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+calculated to add as much as possible to the awe and the
+gloom. We still wear somber and depressing black
+and add all we can externally to our inward distress.</p>
+
+<p>A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at
+any theosophical funeral and, with growing frequency,
+at the funerals among thinking people. A funeral should
+not be the occasion of a final expression of grief, but a
+gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and
+helpful good wishes to the comrade whose life work in
+the physical world is finished. The general feeling should
+be very much like that of a party of friends who go
+to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long
+journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of
+many years or possibly a lifetime. There should be
+constant thought of his welfare, not of the loss to his
+friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an expression of
+selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice
+self control in such a matter just as one would control a
+feeling of anger under different circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally enough the control of grief when one we
+love has passed on is none to easy. But any degree
+of success is much better than no effort, and will certainly
+help the one for whom we mourn. Much can
+be accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that
+bring vividly back the keen sense of loss. Many people
+indulge the foolish custom of regularly visiting the
+cemetery where the body has been interred. A little
+analysis will show that this is only another evidence of
+our materialistic modes of thought, and the custom
+serves to perpetuate emotions that should never have
+existed. We can not, of course, think too often nor too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should
+do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead,
+or being far away. The fact that they are alive and
+well and happy and near should constantly fill the mind;
+and all of that, in nearly all cases, will be perfectly true
+if we do not foolishly destroy their peace of mind with
+our selfish sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally a hint on the subject comes from the
+astral plane people themselves. In the recent book<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a>
+by Sir Oliver Lodge, on his experiments in psychic research,
+there is a message from his son, who was killed
+in battle, agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner
+and to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they
+will all refrain from gloomy thoughts about him! No
+one who is informed on the subject of emotional reaction
+on the astral body, after the loss of the physical
+body, could be surprised by the conditions named by
+the young man.</p>
+
+<p>The advocates of cremation have a strong argument
+in the fact that the preservation of the body for a time,
+whether in a tomb or a grave, tends to keep grief alive.
+When the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that the
+body is somehow the man seems to have less of a
+material basis. Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate,
+not alone because they renew grief through thinking
+upon it and thus cause great distress to those for whom
+we mourn, but also because the environment of a cemetery
+is one of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It
+is a dismal park of concentrated griefs where each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+mourner accentuates the emotional distress of all others.
+There is but one sensible attitude to take toward those
+we have lost by death&mdash;to think of them as living a
+joyous, busy life and at least calling on us daily even
+though most of us are not sensitive enough to be conscious
+of the fact. We should try to realize the truth
+of the matter and then readjust our habits to fit the
+facts. The average person who is afflicted with the
+erroneous ideas still so common, is doing an enormous
+amount of injury and bringing into the lives of the very
+people he loves a depression of which he little dreams,
+and which he can change to vivid pleasure by always
+thinking cheerfully of them and sending them daily
+thoughts of serenity and peace.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> 1 Samuel XXVIII&mdash;15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Ch. 3, Dreams and Premonitions.&mdash;L. W. Rogers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> The Inner Life.&mdash;Leadbeater, Vol. I. p. 483.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> Raymond: or Life and Death.&mdash;Lodge.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER IX.</span><br />
+REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS</h2>
+
+<p>Life is the most elusive thing with which science
+has to deal but we have learned much about both
+life and matter in recent years, and it is a noteworthy
+fact that the more we learn the thinner become the
+ranks of the materialists. The only scientist of note
+who still declares his philosophy of materialism is
+Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has written,
+"He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle
+of the nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's
+almost deserted ground in the scientific world, he
+declares that his voice "is as the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of
+an advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a
+standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but
+abandoned by the retreating ranks of his comrades as
+they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic
+direction."</p>
+
+<p>Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism
+being deserted by all progressive scientists. While
+we do not yet know a great deal about life, science
+has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and
+principles from which conclusions may be logically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+drawn and working hypotheses constructed. Sir
+Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the great
+English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's
+most eminent scientists, speaking of his conception
+of life, says that "It is dependent on matter for its
+phenomenal appearance&mdash;for its manifestation to us
+here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities;
+but otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that
+its essential existence is continuous and permanent,
+though its interactions with matter are discontinuous
+and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to
+a law of evolution&mdash;that a linear advance is open to it&mdash;whether
+it be in its phenomenal or in its occult
+state."<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></p>
+
+<p>Later in the same work he expresses the opinion
+"that life is something outside the scheme of
+mechanics&mdash;outside the categories of matter and energy;
+though it can nevertheless control and direct
+material forces...."</p>
+
+<p>In closing his volume on <cite>Life and Matter</cite> this distinguished
+scientist says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"What is certain is that life possesses the power
+of vitalizing the complex material aggregates which
+exist on this planet, and of utilizing their energies
+for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings;
+and then it seems to disappear or evaporate
+whence it came. It is perpetually arriving and perpetually
+disappearing. While it is here, if it is at
+a sufficiently high level, the animated material body
+moves about and strives after many objects, some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain
+individuality, a certain character. It may realize
+itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own
+mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins
+to explore the Mind which, like its own, it conceives
+must underlie the material fabric&mdash;half displayed,
+half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible
+only to a kindred spirit. Thus the scheme
+of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent soul,
+and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth,
+goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of
+permanent value, or a work of art or of literature;
+it may enter the region of emotion and may evolve
+ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below
+the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it the material molecular aggregate that has
+of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality,
+acquired this character, felt these emotions,
+evolved these ideas? There are some who try to think
+that it is. There are others who recognize in this extraordinary
+development a contact between this material
+frame of things and a universe higher and
+other than anything known to our senses; a universe
+not dominated by physics and chemistry; but utilizing
+the interactions of matter for its own purpose;
+a universe where the human spirit is more at home
+than it is among these temporary collocations of
+atoms; a universe capable of infinite development,
+of noble contemplation and of lofty joy, long after
+this planet&mdash;nay, the whole solar system&mdash;shall have
+fulfilled its present sphere of destiny, and retired
+cold and lifeless upon its endless way."</p></div>
+
+<p>Such a conception of life carries us very far from
+the old popular view of the origin of the race, but
+it is a conception that brings science and religion into
+perfect agreement and will enable us to understand
+human evolution and explain facts in life that would
+otherwise remain incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p><p>The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal
+life, was taught and commonly accepted in the
+early Christian period. If we accept the fact of evolution
+at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape
+from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed,
+not even materialism can save one from the necessity
+of accepting the pre-existence of the individualized
+consciousness that we call a human being.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider the human infant as we see it at
+birth. Whence came it&mdash;how can we account for it
+in a universe of law and order? We can understand
+it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse
+of physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few
+months. But its mind, its consciousness, its emotions,
+what of them? The average man replies that
+God made them and they constitute the soul. But
+how and when were they "made"? Even the material
+part of this infant did not spring miraculously and
+instantaneously into existence. How much less possible
+is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made
+it" we have explained nothing. But it is not necessary
+to deny that God creates the soul in order for
+us to move toward an understanding of how the soul
+came to be. It is only necessary to say that the
+process of its creation was evolutionary. Nobody
+denies that the earth was created by evolution, although
+men may differ in opinion on the matter of a
+divine intelligence guiding its evolutionary development.
+The same principle must apply to the human
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Lodge wrote <cite>Life and Matter</cite> as a reply to Haeck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>el's
+<cite>Riddle of the Universe</cite>, which presented the latter's
+philosophy of materialism. But Lodge did more than
+demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not
+an inch of scientific ground to support his theory.
+The English scientist raised questions that have not
+been answered, and cannot be answered, by the scientific
+materialist. He points out that the materialist's
+philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary
+rapidity of development, which results in the production
+of a fully endowed individual in the course of
+some fraction of a century."<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a></p>
+
+<p>With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the
+scientific materialist speechless; for all scientists are
+evolutionists, and it is impossible to account for
+"<em>the extraordinary rapidity of development</em>" by the laws
+of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary
+age of anything depends upon its complexity. A
+simple form is comparatively young while a complex
+one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The
+earth is simple compared to a human being. If, then,
+it has required ages to evolve the earth to its present
+stage how long did it take to evolve the wonderfully
+complex mental and emotional nature of the human
+being that inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge
+bottles Haeckel up on his own premises and shows
+that the very evolutionary principles to which the
+German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He
+practically says to Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir,
+fails to show how it is possible for the vacuous mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
+in thirty or forty years." In other words, if
+the infant is nothing but the form we see it would
+be utter absurdity to say that that mass of matter can
+evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years
+when it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary
+gain.</p>
+
+<p>Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its
+face. One might as well search the surface of a
+squash for some indication of intelligence. But wait
+only a little while and you shall have evidence not
+merely of intelligence but of emotions possible only to
+the highest order of life. Clearly, here is not something
+evolved within a brief period from a mass of
+material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific
+as the popular belief in miraculous creation at
+which the scientific materialist scoffs. The swift
+change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the
+intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a
+century" is not the creation of something but
+its <em>manifestation</em>&mdash;<em>the coming through into visible expression
+of that which already exists</em>. The soul, the
+consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole
+of the mental and emotional nature, which has been
+built up through thousands of years of evolution, is
+coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in
+a material body.</p>
+
+<p>The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument
+of the old soul&mdash;an instrument, as certainly
+as the violin is the instrument and a vehicle for the
+musician's expression. At every turn our material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>istic
+conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception
+of nature's truth. It is because we think of the
+body as being actually the person, that it seems improbable
+that an old soul has entered the infant body.
+We think of the power and intelligence of an old soul
+and then look at the baby and find no indication of
+such things. But that is only because the baby body
+is such a new and undeveloped instrument that
+it is at first useless and only slowly can it be brought
+under control of the soul and made to express its intelligence
+and power. The body is a growing instrument,
+not a completed one.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as
+physical bodies do. Suppose there was a time when
+the piano was keyless, as a baby is toothless. Suppose
+that sounding boards have a period of immaturity
+and that the whole mechanism of the instrument
+is in a state that can only be characterized
+as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play
+on such a piano his performance would by no means
+be an indication of his ability. A competent critic
+who could hear the performance but not see the
+musician would promptly declare that no really great
+musician was touching the keys. And that is precisely
+the mistake we make in assuming that the immature
+body of an infant is capable of expressing
+the intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it
+differently, denying that a returned, old soul is in
+possession of the infant body simply because there
+is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos
+slowly grew to maturity then only when the instru<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>ment
+was mature could the master musician give a
+practical demonstration of his skill; and only when
+the physical body has reached its maturity can the
+soul that is using it fully express itself.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the physical body the soul
+is only very partially expressed through it. The
+entrance of the consciousness into the physical world
+is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth
+of a plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a
+good one, for a plant is very little like a human body.
+It is impossible to find a material equivalent of the
+dawning of consciousness on the physical plane. Beginning
+about four and a half months before the
+birth of the physical body and continuing for a period
+of several years the soul, or consciousness, is engaged
+in the process of anchorage in the physical world.
+For a long time the center of consciousness remains
+above the material plane and during the early years
+of childhood the consciousness is divided between
+the astral and physical worlds, with the result that
+the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments
+of astral consciousness into physical life. When
+the physical body is about seven years old the consciousness
+may be said to be centered on the physical
+plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's
+new instrument are mature has the opportunity come
+for the fullest expression.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the difficulties commonly associated in
+the mind with the thought of the pre-existence and
+rebirth of the soul will disappear if we do not lose
+sight of the fact that the soul is a center of con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>sciousness,
+which is always consciousness somewhere,
+but which very gradually shifts its focus from plane
+to plane. Its permanent home is in that body of
+filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels
+of the heaven world. From that point it sends energies
+outward and draws about itself in the lower
+levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle of consciousness,
+that is not permanent but which will serve
+the purpose of functioning for a period on that plane.
+Downward again the energies are sent, building about
+the center of consciousness on the astral plane a temporary
+body of astral matter, temporary in the same
+sense that the physical body is temporary, and which
+shall serve the consciousness in the astral, or emotional
+world, during the whole of the physical plane
+life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or
+downward, the soul sends its energies till the material
+world is reached, when it begins to function partially,
+and very feebly, through the infant physical body.</p>
+
+<p>For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the
+physical plane where certain lessons are to be learned.
+After the early years of childhood are over the consciousness
+is firmly anchored here, where the chief
+work is to be done, during the hours of the waking
+consciousness. During sleep the ego temporarily lays
+aside the physical body and functions in the astral
+body in the astral world. The material body sleeping
+here is merely a deserted and empty vehicle,
+magnetically connected with the soul, and awaiting
+its return.</p>
+
+<p>As childhood, youth, maturity and old age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+pass, complex experiences come to the soul thus
+functioning here. Other souls functioning through
+physical bodies are encountered and various
+relationships are established. Out of the complexity
+of social, business, religious and political activities
+the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner
+or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter.
+The gathering of such experience has ceased,
+not because the soul has acquired all possible physical
+world knowledge, but because its instrument of consciousness
+here has worn out.</p>
+
+<p>Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection
+and the center of its consciousness is then
+shifted to the astral plane. There the purgative
+process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter.
+As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free
+from one grade of astral matter after another and with
+the loss of each the man becomes conscious on a
+higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but
+the matter of the astral body gradually wears away
+until there is so little left that the soul has lost connection
+with the astral world also. This means that
+the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental
+plane, or heaven world, where the man will function
+on the lower levels.</p>
+
+<p>There in the mental world, functioning through
+the vehicle of mental matter, a very important process
+goes on. The heaven world life is a harvest time in
+which assimilation of experience takes place. The
+consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences
+of life and extracts the essence from them which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+is transmuted into faculty and power for future
+greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in
+wisdom and power through its long evolution.</p>
+
+<p>When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest
+of experience has been threshed out and the net gain
+has been built into the enduring causal body, the
+mental body, like the astral, has been completely dissipated.
+The end of a cycle of experience&mdash;of a day
+in the evolutionary school&mdash;has come and the physical,
+astral and mental bodies have all perished. Nothing
+remains but the soul, the real man, the ego, functioning
+through the causal body which persists. From
+that the ego again sends the forces outward, in the
+first activity toward rebirth, first forming a new
+mental body by drawing about itself the matter of the
+lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new
+astral body on the astral plane and finally taking possession
+of another infant body in process of formation
+on the physical plane, into which it will in due course
+be reborn.</p>
+
+<p>The period between these successive appearances
+of the soul in a succession of physical bodies varies
+greatly and depends on a number of things. The
+length of time spent upon the astral plane has already
+been discussed. The time spent in the heaven world
+depends upon the mental and moral forces generated
+during the physical and astral life. If there is a great
+harvest of experience it will require a longer time to
+transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought
+little and loved but little will have a shorter period
+there, for it is the heart and head forces that have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+their culmination in the mental world. The question
+is a rather complex one and other factors come into
+play, including the intensity of the heaven world life.
+In general terms, however, it can be said that the
+heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will
+commonly be a period several times the length of his
+combined physical and astral life. Some people will
+have only two or three hundred years between incarnations
+while others may have six or seven centuries
+and still others a much longer period.</p>
+
+<p>In getting a right understanding of the subject
+of rebirth, or reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in
+mind the fact that the soul, or center of individualized
+consciousness, is the man and that the physical body
+is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
+that the causal body is his permanent body for the
+whole of human evolution; that the mental plane is
+his home plane and that from there he sends forth
+successive expressions of himself into these lower
+planes. With such facts before us there should be
+no confusion of thought about the successive personalities
+of an individual. Yet we sometimes hear people
+speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
+can be one man in one incarnation and another man
+at a later rebirth. Of course no such thing occurs.
+An individual remains the same individual forever.
+"But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr.
+Jones, in England six hundred years ago, whereas I
+am now certainly Mr. Brown, in America at this
+moment? If so is that not a case of being two individuals?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p><p>It is certainly not a case of being two individuals.
+It is a case of one individual being expressed through
+a physical body six hundred years ago in England,
+dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
+astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing
+himself through another physical body in America
+at the present time. The confusion of thought on
+the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
+physical body as being the man. But it is no more
+the man than the clothing he wears. It is true that
+he is known at one period as Jones and at another as
+Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
+the assumption of an <i>alias</i> by a fleeing criminal
+changes him. The name applies exclusively to the
+physical body, or personality, as distinguished from
+the individuality. That body is but the temporary
+clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's
+name were applied to his clothing and changed with
+his clothing as it does with his body. We might then
+know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and
+as Mr. Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the
+change of clothing or name would in the least degree
+make him somebody else. The majority of women
+change their names in each incarnation. A man may
+know a certain woman as Miss Smith when she is a
+slip of a girl, free from care and with little serious
+thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs.
+Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of
+children. She has changed her name and greatly
+changed in character, too, but she is the same individual.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p><p>It seems probable that a person may change quite
+as much between infancy and old age as between one
+incarnation and the next. Even the difference between
+a youth of twenty years who is an artist and
+the same man at three score and ten who has given
+forty years to scientific study and research, may be
+enormous, but the individuality is, of course, identical.
+It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and
+that is just what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths&mdash;steady
+evolutionary development of the
+eternal individual.</p>
+
+<p>The reincarnating process by which the soul
+evolves is somewhat analogous to the growth of a
+young physical body. The process consists of alternating
+periods of objective and subjective activity.
+How does the body of a child grow? It consumes
+food, the objective activity. It then digests and assimilates
+it, the subjective activity. These periods
+must alternate or there can be no growth, because
+neither alone is the complete process. The one is the
+complement of the other. So it is in the evolution
+of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life
+is the food on which the soul grows. The physical
+plane existence is the objective period in which the
+food is gathered. At death the man passes into the
+invisible realms where the subjective process is carried
+on. He digests and assimilates his experiences
+and the gist is stored in the causal body and its
+growth includes an actual increase in size, just as in
+the case of the child's physical body.</p>
+
+<p>The same law governs mental and moral growth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+as it operates in our daily affairs. A young man is
+in college. How does his intellect grow? By precisely
+the same process of alternating periods of objective
+and subjective activity. In the class room the
+instructor puts a mathematical problem on the blackboard
+and explains it. With the outward senses of
+sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the
+student gathers the food for mental growth. This
+period of objective activity comes to an end and he
+then retires to the privacy of his room and there the
+subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the
+problem. His material, the food for mental growth,
+is only a few notes that serve to keep the experience
+in his mind. At first all that they signify is not obvious,
+but as he turns the various points over and
+over in his mind their significance becomes clearer
+and fuller. It is the subjective process of digestion.
+Little by little new light dawns in the student's mind.
+Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
+principles involved, and the process of assimilation
+is finished. This subjective period is the complement
+of the objective period and they must go on
+alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When
+the process of digestion and assimilation is finished the
+student must return to the classroom for further
+mental food and when he arrives it is by virtue of
+the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that
+he is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And
+precisely so it is with the reincarnating soul. In the
+interval between incarnations it so assimilates the experiences
+of the last physical life that it comes to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take
+higher and more difficult lessons than it could previously
+master.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of both physical growth by eating and
+mental growth by instruction there is no possible
+escape from the law of alternating periods of objective
+and subjective activity. When the child has digested
+and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing
+that can follow&mdash;return to his source of supply for
+another meal. When the student has digested and
+assimilated the lesson given to him the only possibility
+of further mental growth lies in his return to
+the class-room for more material. And so it is with
+the human soul in its work of evolving its latent
+powers and possibilities. There is no other road forward
+but the cyclic one that brings it back to the
+physical life incarnation after incarnation, but always
+at a higher point than it previously touched. The
+very hunger of the child that insures its return to
+the table for more food is analogous to the desire of
+the soul for sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.</p>
+
+<p>These alternating periods with the element of
+constant return are found everywhere in the economy
+of nature. All her evolutionary expressions are
+cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed
+circles. It represents a spiral. The "evolutionary
+ladder" that the soul climbs is a winding stairway.
+In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it
+is always mounting and never returns to the same
+point. In each cycle, that is made up of the journey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+from the heaven world through the astral plane, into
+the physical and then back through the astral plane
+into the heaven world, it touches each of them at a
+higher point, or in a higher state of development, than
+it had previously attained. Each rebirth finds it abler
+here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
+return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it
+abler to digest and assimilate its experiences, and to
+comprehend more of the realities of the life of its
+home plane.</p>
+
+<p>This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral
+and mental regions, is a continuous progressive journey
+of the soul which began away back at the dawn
+of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
+mental and moral being. At each incarnation
+here he gathers experience in proportion to his alertness
+and to the opportunities his previous lives have
+made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic,
+to be tolerant. Such activities will give him
+pleasure in the astral life and joy and wisdom in the
+mental region, or heaven world. But he also does
+some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates
+hatred and he injures others. This will give him distress
+in the astral life and no results for soul growth
+or general progress in the heaven world. If he does
+an equal amount of good and harm his progress will
+be slow. If he does much good and little evil his
+progress will be rapid and his existence happy. If he
+is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
+development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will
+suffer much in the astral life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p><p>It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy
+to be told that the soul passes through the purgation
+of the astral plane and goes on into the heaven
+world only to return to another incarnation and later
+to again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked,
+must one who has thus been purified be again purified?
+The astral reactions are the results of the blunders
+made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
+given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the
+purgatory that awaits him after death. If he does no
+wrong there cannot possibly be any reaction. As a
+matter of occult fact the average good man will find
+the astral plane life a happy existence and will soon
+pass on to the blissful heaven world. As for the evil
+doer the suffering relates only to his evil deeds. Let
+us say he has committed murder. When the reaction
+of the evil force he has generated is over and he
+passes on into the heaven plane it does not mean
+that he is incapable of future evil. It means that he
+has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is
+very foolish to take life. But there are many other
+lessons he has not learned. When he passes into the
+heaven world he leaves all evil behind him. He is
+as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple.
+The astral body, like the physical, has perished and
+it is the freed soul that enters the heaven world. But
+when he returns through the astral plane to reincarnation
+he is clothed again in astral matter and this
+new astral body is exactly representative of his attainments
+in evolution. In his coming incarnation he
+will have other physical plane experiences and learn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+other lessons. The next time probably he will not
+kill, but perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard.
+These errors will react upon him in the astral
+life that follows. In a coming incarnation he will
+be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor
+steal; but perhaps he will be a gossip and work much
+evil through slander. This in turn will bring its pain.
+And so in time he will learn to generate no evil force
+at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward
+everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed,
+his life on all planes will be happy and the painful
+part of human evolution will be over.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than
+the fact of evolution. Evolution is an unfolding
+process in which the latent becomes the active and
+the inner life is more and more fully expressed in
+outer form. The development and improvement in
+form keeps pace with the necessities of the unfolding
+life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the
+form is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller
+and fuller expression, limbs for locomotion and, in
+due course, the organs for hearing, and seeing, and
+the other mechanism of the developing consciousness,
+are evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of
+consciousness comes to its highest possible form and
+then evolution goes on in the perfecting of the physical
+form. In the process of continually changing the
+matter of the body it is possible for the brain to be
+constantly improved and the whole body to grow
+more and more sensitive and gradually to become a
+better and truer expression of the evolving life within.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+In each incarnation the physical body thus improves.
+The evolution of life and form keep pace. Ultimately
+perfection of form, as well as perfection of intellect and
+morality, will be reached and human evolution will
+be finished.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a
+god in the making&mdash;not actually, but only potentially
+a god, a being to whom all wisdom, perfect compassion
+and unlimited power are possible; and by the
+process of evolution he changes the latent into the
+active. He is at first only an individualized center
+of consciousness within the All-Consciousness, a mere
+fragment of the divine life. His relationship to God
+is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product
+of it that has latent within it all the characteristics
+of the plant and the power to become a plant. It is
+not a plant and neither is man a god; but when it
+has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is
+a plant in the making; and when the human being
+has begun to evolve his latent spiritual qualities he
+is a god in the making. The theosophical view is that
+man is essentially divine.</p>
+
+<p>Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally
+divine, it is necessary for him to pass through any
+evolutionary process. Divinity here indicates merely
+the essential nature of the human being, not his possession
+of either knowledge or power or any degree
+of spiritual perfection. It is as though we should say
+that the infant son of a great king is royal. The word
+"royal," like the word "divine," indicates a relationship.
+The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+king in the making. He has much to learn. He
+must be educated in statecraft and he must evolve
+diplomacy. After much experience and development
+he will, in time, be capable of ruling an empire. At
+present this helpless infant bears little resemblance to
+a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his birth he was
+as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense
+the divinity of man represents potential possibilities
+rather than an obvious fact of the moment. Man is an
+embryo god and, in time, he shall evolve faculties
+and powers that his present limited consciousness can
+not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature
+of physical origin that lives a brief span to catch
+a glimpse of immortality and perish, but the deathless
+son of the living God, and by right divine he
+walks the upward way of eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter
+of course, in a general way, but they appear unwilling
+to admit that the race has really made any evolutionary
+progress. Even scientific men have sometimes
+expressed doubt whether the world is growing
+better. In a newspaper interview an English scientist
+was quoted as saying a few years ago that the
+race is just as wicked today as at any time within
+recorded history. But if he was correctly reported
+it must have been a hasty expression of opinion which
+a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It
+is true that things are still bad enough but they are
+certainly enormously better than they were some
+centuries ago. To say that the world is full of crime
+and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+that a civilized nation has reverted to the wartime
+practices of savage life furnish real ground for a pessimistic
+view. What we have to do in determining
+whether there has been any racial progress in morality
+is to take as our standard of measurement something
+that tests the collective conscience. How does
+the world of today view war and how did the world
+in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to
+shock us now but the very fact that it does shock us
+is the best evidence of moral progress. Atrocities
+were expected and taken as a matter of course some
+centuries ago. They are not the rule now but the
+rare exception and those guilty of them are likely to
+make their name a by-word among nations. Well
+within the era of recorded history the usages of nations'
+condemned prisoners of war to become slaves
+for life. Now the rule is to feed and clothe them and
+at the close of the conflict to send them home. A
+simple thing like public sports may be used as a
+measure of public morals. They show what the collective
+conscience approves. In these days there is
+very little of brutality in public sports. Professional
+pugilism still lingers, but barely lingers, in the most
+enlightened nations. In less progressive countries
+like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular. That
+is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment.
+But if we look backward to the Roman
+period we find a cruelty in public sports that is comparatively
+shocking. Gladiators were compelled to
+fight to the death and offenders were devoured by
+starving wild beasts and it all made a Roman holiday.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+Such "sports" would, of course, be utterly impossible
+anywhere in the world today. But at that time they
+were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest
+empire. The fact that the race has evolved morally
+and that the collective conscience marks a higher
+point on the ethical thermometer than in the past is
+too obvious for argument.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted
+for? It will not do to say that the Christian
+religion has wrought the change because, splendid as
+are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
+them and shaped its civilization by them. If
+it had done so the world war would have been impossible.
+Not only have the so-called Christian nations
+wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through
+all their history but class has been arrayed against
+class and every gain in either personal liberty or
+economic improvement has been wrested by force
+from those who profited by the misfortunes of others.
+In other words, the particular improvements that
+should have been brought about by religion were
+compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
+teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may
+for the influence of Christianity, we are still unable to
+account for the change in the common conscience of
+the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
+steadily on since long, long before the coming of the
+Christ. How then shall we account for it?</p>
+
+<p>If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the
+progress of the race in morality becomes simple. The
+majority of the great groups of souls that constituted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+the civilized nations in the time when Rome was
+mistress of the world have had several incarnations
+in that time and in each sojourn on the astral plane
+have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
+from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually
+change the cruel man to the merciful man. In every
+incarnation the soul grows more humane as well as
+more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any
+incarnation are carried forward into the next life, and
+thus compassion grows until there is ultimately perfect
+sympathy with all suffering. Both the progress
+of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from
+the viewpoint of reincarnation.</p>
+
+<p>Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to
+explain such evolutionary progress? Those who do
+not believe in the pre-existence of the soul and hold
+that it is in some way brought into being at the time
+of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical
+position of saying that the reason why the world is
+better now than it was in the Roman period is because
+it pleases God to create a better kind of souls
+now than he created then!</p>
+
+<p>The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or
+nations, to act in a way that imitates, or nearly duplicates,
+what has been done centuries before by other
+tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that
+it has given rise to the declaration that history repeats
+itself. The fact of reincarnation shows why it
+repeats itself. A nation like the Romans, or the Carthaginians,
+are bound together in the subtle ties that
+are formed by the intimate relationships of constant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+association. The group tends to persist and the members
+of it are largely drawn together and regrouped
+in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond
+the level of the previous centuries but the general
+traits and tendencies remain and the same general
+policies are likely to shape the national affairs.
+There comes a time in the existence of the great group,
+or nation, when the old environment will no longer
+serve for its further collective evolution as well as
+some other country. The majority then reincarnate
+elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be
+inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence
+the remarkable difference in the people of a given
+nation in different periods. Compare Rome in the
+time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or
+compare the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with
+modern Egypt. It is high-class egos that make a
+great nation and when a country has no more lessons
+to teach them, or rather when another country will
+serve as a better environment for their further
+progress, they return in rebirth to the more advantageous
+spot on the earth, and a different set of souls
+come into possession of the abandoned environment.
+The valley of the Nile, that was once the home of an
+energetic people with a flourishing civilization would
+not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile
+civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe
+because only that environment, in full touch with the
+great commercial stream of the economic world, can
+serve the purpose. As the world is today what could
+a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+born into Egypt? Nothing but leave it. So they are
+not reincarnated there, but other souls that are at the
+point in evolution where the primitive life of an isolated
+country will give the simpler lessons they must
+acquire, inherit the abandoned environment. As an
+individual moves continually onward in each return
+to incarnation to professional and business environments
+that will enable him to put into effect all the
+new skill and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes
+on to greater and greater opportunities. Souls that
+made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and Rome
+are now making the greatness of Europe and America.
+Such facts explain many things that have seemed
+puzzling. How, for example, was it possible for the
+world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in
+Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined&mdash;declined
+because her people largely reincarnated
+elsewhere&mdash;Europe was inhabited by slightly
+civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a
+few centuries&mdash;a mere passing moment in the great
+lapse of time required for race evolution&mdash;the civilization
+today could arise, would be to ignore the
+fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand
+that great groups of old souls incarnate in the strong
+physical bodies which the more primitive peoples could
+bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid rise of
+a great civilization in Europe is solved.</p>
+
+<p>The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal
+kingdom at a high level in it. The last phase of evolution
+in the animal kingdom is the individualizing
+of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution
+and will be reborn at the lowest human level.
+Previous to its individualization it evolves in a
+group with others of its kind, animated by a
+common ensoulment that has not reached the level
+of complete self-consciousness. At that group-soul
+stage the experience of each animal in the group
+adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical
+teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables
+us to understand many things that would otherwise
+remain mysterious. Instinct has never been explained
+by science. Some of its best known expressions
+are altogether mysterious. Why does a young
+wild animal hide from the enemies of its kind but not
+from friends, when it has never seen either? A quail
+a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small
+stone or bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws
+to hide its body, and remain perfectly motionless at
+the approach of a human being, but will take no alarm
+at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a
+young chick know the difference between a crow and
+a hawk? And why, in remote places like the antarctic
+regions, are both young and old birds and animals
+unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and
+simple explanation of all such phenomena. The
+youngest have the knowledge of the oldest because
+they are attached to the same group-soul, or source of
+consciousness. The young quails of this season come
+back to rebirth from the group-soul that is the storehouse
+of the experiences of the quails that were killed
+by men in past seasons, and thus all young things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred
+to the killing proclivities of the human being
+have not become known and there is no "instinct" to
+warn.</p>
+
+<p>An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the
+group-soul is the fact, often chronicled but not
+explained, that when telephone or telegraph lines are
+built in new countries the birds fly against the wires
+and are killed by thousands, the first season. But
+when the next season's birds are hatched they are
+wise and avoid the wires! If the group-soul were not
+a fact in nature it would naturally require a long time
+for wire education. No such sudden adjustment
+would be possible.</p>
+
+<p>Reincarnation represents continuous evolution
+with no waste of time or loss of energy. Death is not
+the sudden break in the life program that the popular
+belief pictures it. The common view of death is as
+erroneous as the common view of birth. If death were
+what most people believe it to be it would constitute
+a blunder of nature&mdash;an irrational interruption of
+orderly development. In nature's economy there is
+conservation of energy and no loss can arise through
+the change called death. If the popular belief that at
+death we go far away to a totally different kind of
+existence were sound then death would usually mean
+an enormous waste. A young man is educated for
+some particular work, engineering, architecture or
+statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to die soon
+afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting
+such an education would be largely lost either if death<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+ends all, or is the last he will know of the material
+world. But nature does not thus blunder. Her law
+of conservation is always operative. All the skill and
+wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and
+will be used in the future incarnations.</p>
+
+<p>A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in
+evolution. The child cannot get an education in a
+term nor in a year. He must return often to the same
+school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may
+use new books with higher lessons but he returns periodically
+to the same environment. Continuous attendance
+would be as unthinkable as finishing his
+education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns
+periodically to the physical world, or plane, for
+the same reasons. Continuous life here until all
+material experience is gained would be impossible.
+Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring
+and digesting experience the physical body would
+become a hindrance to evolution. Within certain
+limits the physical brain can respond to the requirements
+of the growing soul, but a new body is in time
+an absolute necessity to further evolution.</p>
+
+<p>If we give a little thought to the evolutionary
+progress the ordinary person must make to raise him
+to mental and moral perfection, the absurdity of a
+single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a
+moment, intellectual perfection. It would mean a development
+of the mind to the point of genius in many
+directions. If we combine into one mind the attainments
+of the mathematical genius, the musical genius,
+the inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+until every line of intellectual activity is included, we
+then have only the perfect mental man. On the moral
+side we must add to that the combined qualities of
+the saints. Then we have the perfected human being,
+with nothing more to be learned from incarnation
+here. His further evolution belongs to superphysical
+realms.</p>
+
+<p>In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul,
+that slowly changes it life after life from the savage
+to the civilized state and finally raises it to perfection,
+it is helpful to observe how this great work corresponds
+to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation.
+A great character in history begins with helpless infancy.
+Steadily he progresses, unfolding new power
+at each step. He passes through the graded schools,
+slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows
+with higher and more difficult mental acquirements.
+Then he enters professional life and begins to use his
+intellect with more and more initiative. He moves
+on into public life with increased duties and responsibilities.
+From one post of honor he rises to another
+with increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is
+the head of a nation and has become a world figure.
+Even so it is in the evolution of the soul. Life by
+life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst
+every increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In
+one incarnation we have conditions that evolve courage.
+In another we are thrown into situations that
+develop tolerance. In still another we acquire
+patience and balance. In all of these incarnations we
+steadily evolve intellect and strengthen all previously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+acquired virtues. In each life we find the new conditions
+that are necessary for the exercise of our added
+abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual
+insight and the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves,
+we move forward to higher fields of evolution.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> Life and Matter.&mdash;Lodge, p. 121.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER X.</span><br />
+REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE</h2>
+
+<p>No matter how much we may differ in our view
+of the relationship between God and man there is
+general agreement about the attributes of the Supreme
+Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom,
+love and, of course, the perfection of all those desirable
+qualities we see in human beings. The theosophical
+view is that all we know in man of power,
+wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, et cetera, are
+faint but actual manifestations of the attributes of
+the deity. All who are not materialists, denying the
+existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that the
+wisdom and justice of God must be perfect. It would
+be illogical and inconsistent to limit or qualify His
+attributes. Either He is all-wise and absolutely just,
+or else the materialist is right. We cannot have a
+deity at all unless He represents perfect justice.</p>
+
+<p>Another point on which all but the materialists
+must agree is that creation is so ordered that the
+common welfare of humanity is best served by just
+the conditions of life that surround us. Nothing is
+different from what it should be unless it is because
+of man's failure to do what he should do for his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+welfare. If it were otherwise what would become of
+the argument that an omniscient God has ordered it
+as it is? If, then, things are as they should be in the
+truest interests of man, and we find things in life
+that, according to our views of creation, are not right
+and just, it necessarily follows that the views we hold
+are erroneous.</p>
+
+<p>The popular belief is that human beings constitute
+a special creation; that whenever a baby is born God
+creates a soul or consciousness for that body and that
+after a life of many years, or a few days, or a few
+minutes, as the case may be, the body dies and the
+consciousness goes to dwell in remote regions for
+ever and ever. If the person lived a good life and
+also believed in the current religion he will be "saved"
+and will be eternally happy. If he did not live a good
+life but finally "believed" before death he will be
+saved anyway and be just as happy as though he had
+lived right from the start. If he did live a good life,
+but was not born with the ability to believe easily,
+he will be lost and will be eternally miserable. According
+to this theory of special creation God makes
+people of all sorts. None of them can help being
+what they are created. Some are wise and some are
+foolish. Those who are smart enough to find the way
+of salvation will finally have heaven added to their
+original gift of wisdom. Those who are not smart
+enough to find it will finally have hell added to their
+original lack of sense. This is what some people are
+pleased to call divine justice!</p>
+
+<p>It will hardly do to argue that the possibility that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+all may at last be happy in an endless heaven, makes
+it unimportant that there are inequalities now. The
+majority of the theologians do not admit that such a
+state awaits the whole of the human race, and the
+comparatively few who do believe it will hardly venture
+to assert that present justice can be determined
+by future happiness. Even if we positively knew
+that eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close
+of this physical life how could that make it just that
+one person shall be born a congenital criminal and
+another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How
+could it make it right that one is born to life-long
+illness, suffering and poverty, while another inherits
+both wealth and a sound physical body? Not even
+the certainty of future happiness would be compensation
+for present inequalities. But why should there
+be any such inequalities if God represents unlimited
+power and perfect justice? Why should there be any
+poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously,
+He can as certainly create any necessary
+condition for the soul? Why poverty and disease
+and suffering at all? There must be a better answer
+to such questions than that "it pleased God to have
+it so." It is surely little better than blasphemy to
+suggest that any kind of hard conditions for man are
+pleasing to the deity.</p>
+
+<p>To hold that any future condition of happiness can
+make present justice out of the truly terrible inequalities
+of life, would be much like a millionaire who has
+two sons giving one of them all the advantages of
+wealth, travel, skilled instructors and special care,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+while the other was permitted to wear rags and go
+hungry. If the neglected son asked why he was thus
+treated while his brother was most carefully provided
+for, the father might reply with some indignation,
+"You are to have plenty in the future! My will is so
+drawn that when I die my great wealth will be equally
+divided between you and your brother. You will then
+be a millionaire with more money than you can possibly
+spend. So don't be foolish about your hardships
+now. Learn to starve like a gentleman!" The
+father's position in such a case would be just as
+reasonable as that of those who think a heaven hereafter
+can justify an earthly hell now.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us take some of the particular facts of
+life that puzzle us and test them with the hypothesis
+of special creation, and also with the hypothesis of
+reincarnation, and see which can really explain them
+in a satisfactory manner. We will take some facts of
+real life. In a Massachusetts prison there is an old
+man whose name became familiar to many of us in
+our youth. He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy,
+the boy murderer. The present generation scarcely
+knows him. But forty years or more ago he was
+talked about by all the newspapers. For the crime
+of murdering his playmates the boy was sent to prison
+for life. Why did Pomeroy become a noted criminal
+in childhood? If the theory of special creation is
+sound he was created and put in the world to fit himself
+for a future heaven. But he was created in such
+fashion that he was deficient in moral perception and
+he began life with an act that led to his expulsion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+from society. If God created this soul as we first
+knew him why was he not created with the moral
+balance of a law-abiding citizen so that he could have
+lived long and peacefully in civilized society and have
+been prepared for heaven at death? What could have
+been the purpose of giving him a brain that could not
+think soundly and a conscience that welcomed murder?
+That leads us inevitably to the question, Why are
+criminals created at all? Why are idiots created?
+The deeper we look into the facts of life the more
+unsatisfactory does the theory of special creation become
+because we find a thousand things that contradict
+it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of
+God was to create a heaven to be enjoyed by those
+who reach it we cannot see why He should create a
+humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever
+attaining it. If He creates them as they come into
+the world at birth why are not all of them created
+wise and kind? Why must most of them blunder
+through life, making all sorts of mistakes, bringing
+suffering to others by their unkindness or cruelty and
+only, in the end, to pass from a life of failure to eternal
+punishment for that failure? There is no reason, no
+justice, no sanity in such a theory.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us turn to the explanation of reincarnation.
+According to that, Pomeroy has had many past
+incarnations and will have many more. Like all the
+rest of us he came up from primitive man. We have
+all learned the lessons of civilized life slowly by experience
+like children acquiring lessons from their
+books. The majority have come along well and de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>veloped
+a fair share of intellect in dealing with life's
+problems, and some degree of sympathy for others.
+Some have evolved rapidly like hard working pupils
+and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged behind
+and have learned very little. They are like the
+truants at school who have broken the rules and run
+away from their lessons. These laggards of the
+human race are the dullards and the criminals, who
+have moved so slowly incarnation after incarnation,
+or are so much younger in evolution, that they are
+now bringing savage traits into our present civilized
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Reincarnation not only explains who and what the
+criminal is but it also explains away the hell with
+which special creation threatens him. No hell awaits
+him except that which he has created himself by what
+he has done. By the law of cause and effect all the
+cruelty and suffering he has inflicted will react upon
+him to his sorrow, but will also serve for his enlightenment.
+In his next incarnation the kind of body he
+will have and the environment in which he will live
+will be determined exactly by the thoughts and emotions
+and acts of this and past incarnations. He will
+therefore neither go to a heaven for which he is not
+fitted nor to a hell which he does not justly deserve.
+He will simply come back in another physical body
+and have a chance to try it again, but he will have to
+make the trial under the conditions which his conduct
+has merited.</p>
+
+<p>And what of the idiot? According to special creation
+we cannot possibly explain him. It would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+blasphemous to believe that God creates a mindless
+man. If one soul is given a mind and another is not,
+and for no reason whatever, it is the most monstrous
+injustice that ever forced itself upon the understanding
+of man! Think for a moment of the difference
+between the idiot and the normal person. The man
+of sound mind has before him the opportunity of
+progress, of mental and moral development. The
+avenues of business and professional life are open before
+him. He is free to try his powers and win his
+way. Wealth, power and fame are all possible for
+him. All the joys of social life may be his. Think
+of him surrounded by his family and friends, successful,
+satisfied, happy, and then think of the life of
+the idiot. Language cannot express the horror of the
+contrast! If there were no other explanation of life
+than that of special creation it would change the world
+into the hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation
+saves us from either blasphemy or madness.
+The idiot, like the congenital cripple, differs from the
+normal man only in the body, which is the instrument
+of the soul. Deformity of the body is a limitation of
+the ego who functions through it. A withered arm,
+a club foot, a deformed back, in this incarnation are
+results of unfortunate causes which that soul has generated
+in past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in
+the brain. Of course this is not an accident. There
+is no element of chance which places the limitation
+in one body where it causes but little trouble and in
+another where it prevents mental activity and thus
+produces idiocy. In each case it is the exact work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>ing
+out of the law. The body of the idiot is the
+physical plane representation of a soul that has made
+a serious blunder in the past, possible by limiting
+another with cruel restraint, and the gross misuse of
+his intellect and power in that way has operated to
+prevent his using it at all in the present life. But
+such limitations belong to the outer planes. It is the
+form that limits and when the form perishes the limitation
+disappears. As with the criminal no hell is
+needed to punish the idiot. He has made his own hell
+by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he
+must live in it and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it
+may seem to some that since the idiot is incapable
+of realizing the life of the normal person the situation
+represents no real misfortune for him. But idiocy
+on the physical plane does not mean idiocy in the
+soul. Even from the astral plane the ego may keenly
+feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime through
+such a physical body, as one here would feel the
+anguish of incarceration in a dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>The criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations
+of the failure of the theory of special creation to satisfactorily
+explain the facts of life. But if we turn
+to the other extreme and consider the most fortunate
+people in the world we shall find there, too, precisely
+the same failure to explain. By the hypothesis of
+special creation we find a gross injustice done to the
+soul born an ignoramus. Yet we find others possessing
+enough intelligence for several people. In the
+case of Macaulay we have the evidence in his own
+handwriting in a letter the date of which proves his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+age, that he was reading Greek and Latin and studying
+mathematics deeply when seven years old. There
+are many other cases of the remarkable display of
+talents in childhood, but a single instance will serve
+for all. It is all the better as an illustration because
+it is a contemporaneous case and the facts are known
+to scores of living people. It is recorded of William
+James Sidis, of Brookline, Massachusetts, that at six
+years of age he entered a grammar school and in six
+months had completed the work of seven grades. At
+the age of seven he had gone so far with his mathematical
+studies that his father, Professor Boris Sidis,
+could be of little assistance to him. He worked out
+the most abstruse and difficult problems with the
+greatest ease and invented new systems of computation
+which attracted much attention. When eight
+years old he entered the Brookline High School and
+in six weeks had completed the mathematical course
+and began writing a book on astronomy. He then
+took up the study of French, German, Latin and Russian.
+On leaving school he took up mathematics as
+a specialty and invented a system of logarithms based
+on the number 12 instead of 10. This was inspected
+by several well known mathematicians who pronounced
+it perfect in every detail. He applied for
+admission to Harvard University but the authorities
+refused his petition on account of his youth, only, since
+he could have passed the examination with ease. He
+tried again the next year and was again refused on
+the same ground. But at eleven years of age, having
+passed the entrance examination for the Massachu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>setts
+Institute of Technology, he was judged to know
+enough of chemistry and kindred subjects to make
+him eligible for admission to the Harvard medical
+school. He then entered upon a special course at
+Harvard because the ordinary course in college was
+far below the abilities of this boy of eleven years. Professor
+James, of Harvard, the famous psychologist,
+has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he
+ever knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite
+pages of Shakespeare from memory at an age when
+the ordinary boy is learning his alphabet.</p>
+
+<p>In the same city where young Sidis was born we
+find the idiot. Did God create them both as they
+were born or did they come up to their present difference
+of mental equipment through a process of evolution
+that accounts for it all satisfactorily? If the
+theory of special creation is sound why did not the
+idiot get at least a little of the intellect that Sidis
+could so easily have spared? If they are the work of
+special creation it is impossible to find reason or justice
+in such terrible inequalities. But if reincarnation is
+God's method of creation the explanation of the difference
+between them becomes simple. Sidis is not
+only an old soul but evidently one who has worked
+hard in past lives, throwing off the lassitude of the
+dense bodies and evolving the power of will that enabled
+him to triumph over obstacles, conquering all
+the enemies of intellectual progress and thus earning
+the fine physical body and brain he now possesses.
+His present abilities are but the sum total of the energies
+he has put forth in the past.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p><p>The theory of special creation does not explain
+the facts of life. It lacks justice, it lacks harmony and
+it lacks consistency. It is not in accord with natural
+law. Nature knows no such thing as special creation.
+To believe in special creation is to ignore all
+scientific facts and principles. On the other hand reincarnation
+is in harmony with science and with
+natural law. Reincarnation is evolution and every
+kingdom of nature develops through evolution. The
+difference between the shriveled wild grain that
+struggles with the rock and soil for life enough to
+barely reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of the
+cultivated fields that feeds the world, is the work of
+evolution. The wild stalk produced the seed and from
+that seed came a better stalk. The better stalk produced
+a still better kernel and from that better kernel
+sprang a superior stalk to yield a higher grade of
+wheat than any of its predecessors. The stalk sprouts
+from the ground, matures, stores all its gain of
+growth within the seed and perishes. But from the
+seed springs its reincarnated form, to repeat the
+process that changes poor to good, good to better and
+better into best. And thus it is with the reincarnating
+soul. As the almost worthless grain through
+many seasons is slowly changed to perfect worth, the
+soul is by that same law of evolution slowly changed
+through many incarnations from the chaos of savage
+instincts to the law and order of the moral world.
+Each incarnation yields some improvement. As the
+seed sprouts within the darkness of the soil and, perishing
+there, attains its full results in the higher<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which,
+stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its
+better self, so the soul strikes anchorage in the lower
+planes and draws from its varied experiences that
+which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the
+power to return with greater life.</p>
+
+<p>Attempts have been made to find some explanation
+of the mental and moral inequalities that exist
+at birth. In the earlier days of the study of evolution
+it was usually asserted that the human being inherits
+his mentality and morality from his parents.
+But even if that were true the injustice of one being
+born a genius and another a fool would remain. It
+is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice,
+and it is of no importance whether it comes about
+through heredity or otherwise. But as a matter of
+fact heredity is confined to the physical side of existence.
+As more and more is learned by observation
+the old theory of mental and moral heredity has lost
+ground until it can be said that it now has no recognition
+in the scientific world. Nobody is better qualified
+to speak upon the subject than those with practical
+experience. Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University
+Children's Clinic, that has large numbers of
+defective children in charge, treating no less than
+sixteen hundred in a single year, says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"As to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective
+types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance.
+I do not agree with social or educational doctrinaires
+who assign the causes definitely to liquor,
+poverty, infectious diseases, or other social or moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+shortcomings. The greatest minds of the world are
+hesitant in theorizing about this. There are a complex
+of causes which explain many of these cases, but
+no generalization fits absolutely. We may find a
+case which is not traceable to any of these conditions&mdash;<em>a
+case in which the antecedents would promise a
+perfectly normal child, and yet we are confronted with
+a defective child</em>. On the other hand, bright, normal
+children, even children of superior intelligence sometimes
+spring from such conditions."<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>A little reasoning about the facts concerning both
+genius and idiocy will make it clear that neither is
+inherited. If it were true that genius is inherited
+society would present a different appearance. There
+would be famous families of geniuses living in the
+world, in music, in poetry, in warfare, in invention,
+in art, if genius were inherited. The fact is that it is
+difficult to find even two geniuses in any family. The
+Caesars, Napoleons, Edisons, Lincolns, Wagners,
+Shakespeares, stand alone with neither great ancestors
+nor great descendants. We search in vain for
+great ancestors for such men; but if the theory of
+mental heredity were sound we should know their ancestors
+for precisely the same reason that we know
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Heredity, then, does not explain whence genius
+comes; and if anybody had really traced genius from
+father, or grandfather, to son or grandson, we should
+still have no explanation of what genius is. We could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+then only regard it as the result of some strange
+chance; yet the scientist knows that laws of nature
+contain no such element. But the only reason why
+genius appears so incomprehensible is because we
+have not looked at it in the light of nature's truth.
+We have erroneously assumed that this is the only
+life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the
+time is too short for the evolution of genius. A man
+can become an expert in one lifetime but not a
+genius. But if we give him many incarnations to develop
+along certain lines he can become a genius of
+a given type. The soul that works strenuously at
+building up a certain faculty through many incarnations
+naturally develops qualities in the causal body
+that shine out brilliantly upon its return to a physical
+body and we have the genius. We evolve our mentality
+and morality, and there could be no justice in
+life if it were otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>There is no element of chance in getting a new
+physical body in the next incarnation. The body is
+the material expression of the self. It is as much the
+product of the self as the rose is of the bush, the
+apple of the tree, or the tulip of the bulb. The
+musician can no more get a body suitable to the blacksmith
+than the rose bush can produce an apple. We
+do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people
+drawing clothing by numbers which might result in
+grotesque misfits. We do not get bodies at all, we
+evolve them, and in each incarnation the new body
+expresses all the soul has come to be up to that point
+in its evolution. Such a view of life has a basis of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+absolute justice. Every soul gets exactly what it has
+earned.</p>
+
+<p>The common belief in Occidental civilization is
+that we live here for only sixty or seventy years and
+that then, when we die, we pass on to live eternally
+somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity,
+whether it is filled with pleasure or is horrible with
+pain, is made to depend on how we spent those few
+years of the physical life! Such a fate would be unfair
+and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a
+term it would not be fair to condemn him to lose all
+opportunity of getting an education. We would give
+him another chance at the following term.</p>
+
+<p>A little incident of disobedience from home life
+will illustrate the point involved. A quinine capsule
+was lying on the table. A three-year-old boy reached
+for it. His mother called across the room, "Don't
+eat that, dearie, it isn't candy." But in a spirit of
+reckless mischief he hurried it into his mouth and
+quickly chewed it up! It was a very disagreeable but
+salutary lesson for the little fellow. It is an example
+of nature's methods. She is always consistent, and
+has a balanced relationship between cause and effect.
+But suppose in this case we throw her consistency
+aside as those who believe that eternal results will
+follow temporal effects are obliged to do. An ordinary
+lifetime compared to eternity is somewhat like
+that instant of disobedience compared to eighty years,
+but the illustration is not adequate because eternity
+never ends. As nearly as the principle can be applied
+it would be by saying to the child, "Because you were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+disobedient for a second of time you shall taste quinine
+for eighty years!" If that punishment is injustice
+what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain
+as the result of the errors committed in a lifetime?</p>
+
+<p>Any hypothesis of existence that does not take
+into consideration the welfare of humanity is a false
+hypothesis. What plan can better serve the common
+welfare than a chance to redeem a failure? When a
+prisoner is condemned for a crime we do not deprive
+him of opportunities. We give him every possible
+chance to improve his character. God cannot be less
+just or merciful than man. Rebirth is a new chance.
+Every incarnation is another opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>If the popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell
+is sound, and there be few who find the "narrow way,"
+the time will come when the majority of the race will
+have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime,
+and have failed. If that were really true, it is easy
+to imagine what they would do with another opportunity
+if they had it! How long should opportunity
+be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to
+deprive anybody of it when he is eager to redeem
+past errors is to ignore the principles of human welfare.
+Therefore such a plan cannot be the true one.
+John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Master of human destinies am I!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deserts and seas remote, and passing by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knock unbidden once at every gate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I turn away. It is the hour of fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they who follow me reach every state<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mortals desire, and conquer every foe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Condemned to failure, penury and woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I answer not and I return no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably
+emphasizes the importance of promptly acting
+when the time for action arrives. But there is another
+truth to be expressed on the subject and it is
+well done by Walter Malone, who says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They do me wrong who say I come no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When once I knock and fail to find you in;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every day I stand outside your door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bid you awake and rise to fight and win.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wail not for precious chances passed away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weep not for golden ages on the wane;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each night I burn the records of the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At sunrise every soul is born again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never bind a moment yet to come.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What a magnificent view of human evolution!
+No ultimate failure possible because there is always
+another chance. The failure of one incarnation made
+good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults
+and frailties&mdash;the shadow blots of the past&mdash;vanishing
+in the light of a higher wisdom that has been
+won. No endless hell, no eternal torment; not even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+the ghosts of vanished chances to haunt the mind; but
+only the insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging
+us to wake and rise to strive and win!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XI.</span><br />
+REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY</h2>
+
+<p>There are apparently but three ways in which anybody
+has attempted to explain the origin of the race. If
+two of these are shown to be impossible we have no
+course open to us but to accept the one which remains.
+One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another
+is the common belief that God created an original
+human pair and continues to create souls for babies.
+The third hypothesis is that of the evolution of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that
+the forces of nature, with no directive intelligence, are
+sufficient to account for man as we see him; that a continuing
+consciousness in the human being is a delusion;
+that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has
+neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science
+to which the materialist appeals contradict such conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>This materialistic belief regards the human body as
+a self-sufficient machine whose brain generates thought.
+But the savage has a completely evolved physical body
+with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His
+brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference
+in its material constitution from the brain of civilized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+man. Indeed, his physical body is not only as complete
+a machine as ours but is likely to be materially sounder.
+Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this
+savage produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there
+is no directing soul back of the brain, why the marvelous
+difference in the product of the two brains?</p>
+
+<p>Materialists go too far in the assumption that they
+can explain the phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly
+about it but they must stop short of the source
+of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology they
+know, but the life that flows through the human machine
+remains unexplained. They can trace the circulation of
+the blood from the heart through the arteries, from the
+arteries across to the veins, from the veins back to the
+heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced cannot
+say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been
+explained and cannot be explained from the materialist's
+viewpoint. Every human being is a miracle. A fingernail
+is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from the
+same food that makes the flesh and it will continue to
+be formed regardless of the variety or quality of the
+food. Why do certain particles become flesh or nails?
+Who can draw the division line between them? With
+marvelous instruments and wondrous skill science has
+explored and mapped and charted the "tabernacle of
+clay," but it cannot throw a single ray of light upon the
+intelligence that animates it.</p>
+
+<p>Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but
+still worse as a satisfactory interpretation of the panorama
+of the life about us. It is a philosophy of the
+gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+be that which we are; that we are what we are merely
+because of fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations.
+Had the combinations chanced to be something
+different we should not be in existence. Chance is the
+king of the materialist's world.</p>
+
+<p>According to this theory all abilities are the gifts
+of nature and all lack of them is the blind award of
+chance. No credit whatever is due to anybody for what
+he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his deficiencies.
+All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw
+something from a bag under compulsion. It is not to
+the credit of one that he got a prize nor to the discredit
+of another that he drew a blank. This hypothesis holds
+that recently we were not and that presently we shall
+cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief
+period, suffer or enjoy as it may happen and then pass
+to the oblivion of eternal silence; that all the thought,
+all the toil and the striving, all the effort and endurance
+were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a
+philosophy will not long survive the progress of our
+age. It lacks the balance of nature's principle of conservation.
+It lacks the completeness of universal law.
+It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in every
+human consciousness and without which life would be
+a meaningless mockery and the world a chaos of despair.</p>
+
+<p>But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of
+bad points or undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea
+of a mechanical creation is equally at war with both
+fact and reason. That belief is that God created the
+world as men build houses, and added the human beings
+as men furnish their houses when built. It is the belief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+that He is still making souls as fast as bodies are being
+born in the world, that these souls begin their existence
+at birth, live here but one life and then pass on into
+either endless bliss or eternal pain.</p>
+
+<p>This idea differs from materialism in the matter
+of a governing intelligence and on immortality but it is
+remarkably like it in other ways. Like materialism it is
+fatalistic because it makes man the helpless subject of
+resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent force as
+first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.</p>
+
+<p>The materialist says that all human characteristics
+are the gift of nature while according to the popular
+belief they are the gifts of God. In either case one
+class of human beings gets abilities that they have not
+earned and others get defects that they do not deserve.
+The intellectual man is favored without reason and the
+fool is handicapped without mercy. Some come into the
+world with salvation assured by being well born while
+others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes
+logically with such ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Happily the world has long been growing away from
+the once wide-spread belief in predestination because it
+is too shocking to the modern sense of justice. But is
+the world at the same time catching the point that if
+there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at
+birth, then the very essence of predestination remains,
+because some are created with the wisdom to attain
+salvation and others are created without it?</p>
+
+<p>If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility
+at the time of birth. Neither can it have any
+merit. One is born with a sound mind and moral insight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+These qualities may lead to salvation but the man has
+done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel
+and vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore
+miss salvation, but if he had no pre-existence he
+can have done nothing to deserve such a start in life.
+If we are really here for the first time then justice can
+be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start
+and equal opportunities afterward.</p>
+
+<p>Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between
+human beings at birth. There is every degree of
+vice and virtue from the savage to the saint and every
+mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If
+God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created
+wise and kind though he did nothing to earn it. Another
+is created vicious and depraved. He did nothing to deserve
+it. One is showered with natural gifts to which
+he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a
+stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to
+believe that God made them thus! Such a belief is
+contrary to reason and to justice.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship
+between God and man, salvation was to be by
+faith. It was impossible for a person to be saved by
+his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by
+God at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to
+comprehend spiritual truth and his moral strength to
+resist temptation, were conferred upon him, not earned
+by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings
+should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply
+human automata operated by such degree of mental and
+moral ability as God chose to assign to them. If this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+be true, genius should have no credit for its accomplishments,
+indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice
+no lash of condemnation, tolerance no need of praise,
+cruelty no rebuke, virtue no applause and heroism no
+fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this absurd
+and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of
+people. It is believed because it always has been believed.</p>
+
+<p>If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then
+the popular belief that the soul is created at birth is also
+impossible. It is a theory that encumbers its belief
+in immortality with conditions that destroy justice and
+defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its
+day. It was possible at any time only because there
+was too little information and, like the old belief that
+the world was flat, it must yield place to the newer
+knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest
+friend of religion. It is the foundation on which may be
+built a scientific belief in a Supreme Being, a rational
+faith in immortality and a brotherhood of man that
+has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was
+hastily thought to be destructive of a belief in God and
+heaven and immortality is rapidly becoming the most
+important witness to the truth of them all. While it is
+true that in the earliest days of evolution the most
+eminent scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that
+today the most eminent scientists of the world believe
+in the existence of the soul, and in its immortality, and
+base that belief upon scientific grounds.</p>
+
+<p>What is the essence of the facts of evolution and
+how does it give evidence against materialism and for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+immortality? Evolution is an orderly unfolding from the
+single to the diversified, from the simple to the complex,
+in which process life evolves by passing from lower to
+higher forms and storing within itself the gist of the
+experiences gained in each.</p>
+
+<p>One of the vital facts that evolution establishes is
+that slow building is the order of creation. The horse
+is an example. He is traced backward with certainty
+to a small creature that resembles him very little indeed.
+Ages were required to evolve the horse into his present
+intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important
+fact in evolution is the continuity of life from body to
+body. The butterfly is frequently used as an illustration,
+but the principle holds with all the higher order of
+insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis
+of the caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common
+that most people have personally observed it. Watch, in
+imagination, its transformation that contradicts materialistic
+philosophy. The worm is a physical body occupied
+by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body
+perishes and becomes part of the dust of the street.
+The life enters the grave of the chrysalis. The scientist
+takes that chrysalis, packs it in an ice house and leaves
+it frozen for a number of years. Now a mere frost
+will kill either caterpillar or butterfly, but when the
+chrysalis is removed from the ice and brought into a
+higher temperature the triumphant life emerges in the
+form of the butterfly. This phenomenon proves that
+life does survive the loss of the body. The body of the
+caterpillar is dead and has turned to dust years ago, but
+the caterpillar that lived in it is not dead. It now lives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+again in the physical world in a physical body of a
+higher type.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in an order of existence almost infinitely below
+man, we have an individual life existing in a physical
+form, passing from it and, after a number of years,
+taking possession of another form and living in that.
+Who can admit such continuity of life for the insect and
+deny it for man? Can there be a deathless something in
+a worm and not in a human being? Even without the
+mass of physical evidence that exists upon the subject the
+logic of nature would lead us to confident conclusions.
+The knowledge of evolution which science has so far
+accumulated leads to four natural inferences. One is
+that man is immortal. Another is that he has, like all
+creatures, slowly evolved to what he now is. A third is
+that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together,
+and the fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher
+and continually higher ones. The human soul evolves
+from the savage to the saint&mdash;from animal instincts
+to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot
+escape the conclusion that the race has evolved, is
+evolving and will continue to evolve until mental and
+moral perfection has been attained.</p>
+
+<p>If neither the theory of the materialist nor the popular
+notion that the soul is created at birth is satisfactory,
+we have only reincarnation left as a working hypothesis;
+and if we accept the evolution of the soul as a natural
+truth, then reincarnation becomes a necessity in explaining
+the known facts of life.</p>
+
+<p>But there are some students of life who appear to
+refuse the hypothesis of reincarnation while wishing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+to accept the idea of the evolution of the soul. But
+how would that be possible? If the soul is evolving it
+is under the necessity of developing by the laws of
+growth. They were discussed in Chapter IX.</p>
+
+<p>Those who desire to put their ideas about the soul
+and its immortality into harmony with the facts of
+evolution sometimes ask why it would not be possible
+for the soul to leave the material plane forever at the
+death of the physical body and then pursue its evolution
+on higher planes. In the vast universe there must be
+opportunity for all possible development, it is argued.</p>
+
+<p>But why go on into other regions when the lessons
+here have not been learned? That would be a violation
+of nature's law of the conservation of energy. The
+average human being is in the elementary grades, with
+scores of incarnations ahead of him before he will be
+in a position even to take advantage of his opportunities
+and thus make fairly rapid progress. To talk of going
+on to higher planes for further evolution is like proposing
+that a child shall leave the kindergarten and enter the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>We are evolving along two lines, the mental and
+moral, and a little consideration of the matter will make
+clear two important points&mdash;that we have much to learn
+and that the physical plane is wonderfully arranged for
+our instruction. We have conditions here for developing
+mentality that do not exist on higher planes. The absolute
+necessity of procuring food is an example. Death
+is the penalty for failure to obtain it. Hunger was the
+earliest spur to action at the lowest level of evolution
+and even now at our high point of attainment it is one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+of the chief factors of racial activity. In providing
+the necessities of life and in gratifying our multitude
+of desires mentality is developed. Business and professional
+life rests upon these physical plane necessities and,
+engaged in solving the problems of civilization, the race
+evolves intellect. Such problems do not, of course,
+exist on higher planes.</p>
+
+<p>While the mentality is thus being pushed along in
+evolution by our material necessities, the heart qualities
+are developed by the family ties in a way that could not
+be done elsewhere. In the nature of things the entrance
+of the soul to the physical plane is attended with helplessness.
+From the beginning it must have material necessities
+or die, and yet it can do nothing in its new infant
+body. Again, as a rule, long before it leaves the physical
+plane old age has once more rendered it helpless. Thus
+every human being must depend on the assistance of
+others at two critical periods of each incarnation. The
+help it receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back
+to the race, in the care of both the helpless young and
+the helpless old, when it is in the vigor of mature physical
+life. It is obvious that such experience develops
+the qualities of sympathy and compassion as no phase
+of business life could. The relationship of parent and
+child, husband and wife, evolves the heart qualities in a
+way that would be impossible in the totally different
+environment of higher planes. Naturally enough, each
+plane has a specific work to do in the soul's evolution.
+We can no more learn in the highest planes the lessons
+the material world is designed to teach us than a pupil
+can acquire a knowledge of mathematics from his lessons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+in geography. Hence the necessity for a periodical return
+to this life until its experiences have developed in
+us the qualities we lack.</p>
+
+<p>Not only has each plane its special adaptability to
+particular needs of the soul in its evolution, but the
+two kinds of physical bodies&mdash;masculine and feminine&mdash;through
+which the soul functions, afford special advantages
+for acquiring the lessons of life. The soul
+on its home plane is, of course, sexless. Sex, as we
+know it, is a differentiation arising from the soul's expression
+on lower planes. All characteristics of the soul
+itself, like intelligence, love, or devotion, are common
+to both sexes.</p>
+
+<p>The ego functioning through the masculine body has
+the opportunity of certain experiences that would be
+impossible in the feminine body, while, of course, the
+feminine form enables the ego to get experience that
+could not be known through the masculine body. A
+consideration of the widely different experiences of
+fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, will show how
+true this is. The lessons obtained in the masculine
+body are largely those of the head while in the feminine
+form they are lessons of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>When the ego puts forth its energies and begins
+descent into lower planes for another incarnation it is
+apparently beginning a cycle of experience in which
+either mentality or spirituality shall be the dominant
+note for that incarnation, and probably for several others.
+If it is to evolve for the time being through those experiences
+related to objective activity, with intellect as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+guiding factor, the masculine body can best serve the
+purpose. But if the dominant note is to be spirituality,
+rather than mentality and the soul is, for the time, moving
+along the line of the heart side&mdash;the subjective, the
+intuitive&mdash;then the feminine body is the better vehicle
+in which such experience can be obtained. But to say
+that mentality is the dominant factor of masculine incarnation
+does not at all mean that men have a monopoly
+of the reasoning faculty. Nor does the fact that other
+souls are being expressed through the feminine body mean
+that they have a fundamental spiritual advantage. Some
+women are better reasoners than some men, while some
+men are more spiritual than some women. What it
+does mean is that a certain ego can express intellect
+better through a masculine body and intuition better
+through a feminine body.</p>
+
+<p>Our ordinary language confirms the truth of the
+statement that men normally express more the head
+qualities and women more the heart qualities. We
+speak of men as being reasoners and of women as being
+intuitional and depending upon their impressions. The
+soul in the masculine body is for the time being getting
+experiences of the outer, objective activities. He is the
+home builder and protector, the bread winner, the battle
+fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the time,
+getting experience along the line of the inner, subjective
+life. She is the wife and mother, and her lessons are
+of the heart rather than the head.</p>
+
+<p>As we study nature we are more and more impressed
+with her wonderful mechanism for the evolution of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+soul. It soon becomes clear to the student that every individual
+is, in each incarnation, thrown into precisely the
+circumstances required for the greatest possible progress
+of that particular ego. If the qualities of initiative and
+courage, for example, are to be developed, the masculine
+body admirably serves the purpose, while if sympathy
+and compassion need stimulation the feminine form is
+wonderfully effective for that kind of progress. It requires
+little reasoning to see that the soul would not
+continue to incarnate in one sex indefinitely. It must
+develop all its inner qualities. Both intellect and compassion
+must reach perfect expression. Such a consummation
+can, of course, be best attained by alternating
+sex experiences. But here again there is wide latitude
+in the operation of the law. The rule seems to be that
+ordinarily there are not less than three nor more than
+seven successive incarnations in one sex, and then the
+ego begins to express itself through a body of the other
+sex. By that rule it would commonly be for a period
+of from a few hundred years to some thousands of
+years, that the ego expresses itself through one sex before
+it changes to the other. One case is mentioned by the
+occult investigators in which for about thirty thousand
+years a certain ego had expressed itself only through the
+masculine form. At least no trace of a feminine incarnation
+could be found during that time.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for rebirth becomes clearer and clearer
+as we study the nature of the human being and the
+inherent divine qualities he is unfolding. Reincarnation
+is the method of evolution at the human level. Only by
+physical plane experience can man's potential powers be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+aroused and so tremendous is the evolutionary work to
+be done that only a mere fragment of it can be accomplished
+in an ordinary lifetime. The absolute necessity
+of many rebirths is obvious.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XII.</span><br />
+WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER</h2>
+
+<p>The loss of memory between incarnations and the
+failure to now recall any of our experiences previous
+to the present physical plane life has sometimes been
+cited as a negative kind of evidence against the hypothesis
+of rebirth. The point could not be made,
+however, by one who has studied the matter because
+close scrutiny will show that the loss of memory is a
+necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that we do
+not remember is in perfect harmony with the principles
+of evolution. Indeed, the close student of the
+subject would be very much surprised if we could
+normally remember, because he does not get far until
+he sees, not only why we do not remember past incarnations
+but why we should not remember them.</p>
+
+<p>The very nature of the evolutionary work to be
+done by reincarnation necessitates a sacrifice of
+memory. One useful purpose of the confinement of
+consciousness in matter, through the use of a physical
+body, is that it narrows the scope of consciousness
+and thereby increases its efficiency. The consciousness
+of the ego sweeps over a vast range, forward and
+backward, including all past incarnations. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+limitation of matter which compels consciousness to
+be expressed through a physical body, focuses the
+attention on the evolutionary work immediately in
+hand. The brain becomes the instrument of consciousness
+but also, fortunately, the limitation of consciousness.
+If there were not loss of memory our
+minds would now range over the adventures of thousands
+of years in the past. It would encompass a
+vast drama with countless loves and hates, of many
+lives filled with pathos and tragedy. To thus distract
+the mind from the present life would retard our
+progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place
+one can think better and accomplish more than when
+in the midst of turbulent scenes and throngs of people.
+When there is less to think about the thinking
+is more effective. It is necessary to restrict the consciousness
+and limit the mind to the present life in
+order to get the most satisfactory results. The same
+truth is embodied in that old saying that whoever is
+jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration
+alone can produce satisfactory results. If we would
+master the lessons of this life we must not take other
+lives within the field of consciousness. The very
+process of reincarnation is a coming out of the general
+into the particular, with the consequent narrowing
+of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>We should keep in mind the fact that our true and
+permanent life is in the causal body, and on the mental
+plane, and that there, alone, is unbroken memory possible.
+The descent into matter in each incarnation is
+also beyond reach of the brain memory, of course.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+Getting new bodies is the working out of natural law
+even as instinct works in animals. The whole animal
+kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man,
+nevertheless adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy
+and with a depth of wisdom that is beyond our
+comprehension. And so is human evolution directed
+by impelling forces that are unknown to our waking
+consciousness. But our waking consciousness is only
+a small part of our consciousness&mdash;that fragment of
+it that can be expressed through the physical brain.
+The physical brain is a limitation of consciousness,
+and therefore of memory, as certainly as a mountain
+range is a limitation of sight and prevents one's knowing
+what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know
+our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes
+the memory of our past incarnations. But when we
+come downward into another incarnation it is as
+though we were descending in a narrow vale within
+mountain ranges that stand between us and the wider
+world. Memory is dependent on things not within
+the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish
+facts which we wish to recall. We know, for
+example, the name of a certain person. There is no
+doubt that we know it and yet it is impossible to remember
+it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us,
+but we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now,
+if memory fails to produce its record even when we
+have a mental picture of just how that person looks,
+and know just where we have met him, it is certainly
+not remarkable that with no such immediate connection
+with our last incarnation we fail to recall it. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+was perhaps in another part of the world, and in another
+civilization, and is separated from us by the
+long interval between incarnations. Of course
+memory likewise fails to produce that record. But
+all of our past experiences are within the soul, just
+as the records of all of the experiences of this life are
+in the mind whether we can connect them with the
+present moment or not.</p>
+
+<p>But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not
+remember events that have occurred in past lives and
+people we have seen before, we do not at least now
+have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar
+to us. What the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation
+is not concrete facts but something higher
+and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts
+which gives the understanding of their true relationship;
+and this is the thing we call good judgment or
+common-sense. A man does not succeed in business
+because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows
+what to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full
+of facts but it cannot run a business. Every theorist
+and dreamer is loaded with facts. The successful man
+is the one with balance and judgment.</p>
+
+<p>It might seem on first thought that one who has
+been a carpenter in a previous incarnation should have
+no need to learn the name and use of a saw, or one
+who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to
+hold the pen and fashion the letters. But we must
+remember that the old soul is now breaking in a new
+physical instrument with which to express itself and
+that while it will be able to use all the skill it has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+previously evolved, its full expression must await the
+time when the new instrument has been brought into
+responsive action.</p>
+
+<p>The situation might be fairly illustrated by the
+case of a stenographer who is still using the original
+typewriter, in some remote corner of the earth, and
+who has not even seen or heard of any of the remarkable
+improvements made in such machines in the last
+thirty years. If his old machine were suddenly taken
+from him and a model of the present year were put in
+its place, it is obvious that he could at first make little
+use of it&mdash;not because he has no knowledge but because
+he must become accustomed to the new machine
+before he can express himself through it. It would
+have mechanism and appliances that he could not
+immediately manage. Let us imagine also that all the
+characters are in a foreign language which must be
+mastered before the machine can be used. But the
+difficulties are not great enough yet for a fair illustration.
+We must also suppose that it is a living
+thing, with moods and emotions, and that it must pass
+through stages of growth comparable to infancy and
+youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain
+that the stenographer would appear to have very little
+knowledge and to possess little skill. Yet as a matter
+of fact it is merely the conditions that temporarily
+prevent him from expressing his wisdom and skill.</p>
+
+<p>The gist of knowledge gained in the past represents
+skill that has no dependence whatever upon
+brain memory. If a man should suffer a lapse of
+memory, as sometimes happens, and wander about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+unable to give his name or place of residence, such
+loss of memory does not prevent him using any skill
+he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not
+know in what gymnasium he evolved his great
+strength, but he can use it just as effectively regardless
+of the absence of memory.</p>
+
+<p>One who has been a skillful penman brings all his
+skill to the new incarnation but of course the new
+body must be trained to hold the pen and form the
+letters. Every public school teacher knows that one
+child will quickly learn that and soon become a
+competent penman while another can by no possibility
+exhibit skill in that particular art. The reason is
+that one has previously evolved his skill and the other
+has not, and may not, for several more incarnations.</p>
+
+<p>It is sometimes objected that by the hypothesis of
+reincarnation we are required to go over the same
+ground again and again and learn what we have
+previously learned. But the criticism has no foundation
+in fact. There is undoubtedly some necessary
+recapitulation in the early part of the incarnation, just
+as there may be in the early part of a school term.
+But in the main we are thrown into new conditions
+which are calculated to develop additional faculties.
+We return to the same material world but we find it
+with a higher form of civilization than when we were
+here before. Never before have we who are now here
+seen a civilization like this, with its age of iron and
+steam and electricity, with its marvelous opportunities
+for developing the mechanical faculty in human nature.
+And that is another bit of evidence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+beauty and utility of the evolutionary scheme. We
+come back always to greater opportunities than we
+have yet known.</p>
+
+<p>It is not only clear that the failure to remember
+the past has nothing to do with our ability to use the
+skill and wisdom we have previously evolved but it
+is equally obvious that it is the best of good fortune
+that we cannot remember the past. If we could do
+so that memory would keep alive the personal antagonisms
+of past reincarnations. Nobody will deny that
+we have plenty of them in this incarnation or that the
+world would be the better if we could bury some of
+the present antagonisms in a like oblivion. If all
+quarreling neighbors were to suddenly lose memory
+of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage to
+everybody concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Nature's wisdom in veiling the past from us can
+be understood by observing the pernicious effects of
+remembering too long the blunders people make in
+this incarnation. Take the case of a very young man
+who has charge of his employer's money and who,
+finding himself pressed for ready cash, makes the grave
+mistake of "borrowing" a hundred dollars without his
+employer's knowledge and consent. The young man
+really believes he is borrowing it and knows just
+where the money is to come from to replace it soon,
+and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know anything
+about it. But to his consternation the money
+that was due him in a few days cannot be collected in
+time and an unexpected examination of his books leads
+to his arrest for embezzlement. He is convicted, sent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+to prison for a year, and returns a marked man.
+Thoughtless society closes its doors against him. He
+seeks employment in vain. Nobody wants an ex-convict.
+He explains that he had no criminal intent
+and that he really was guilty of only an indiscretion
+and that he paid back the money later. But the world
+is too busy to listen. It sees only the court record,
+and that was against him. The public forgets, or
+never knows, the extenuating circumstances. But it
+never forgets two things&mdash;the verdict of guilty and
+the prison. The young man would almost give his
+life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible.
+It stands against him for life. But nature is wise.
+She does not permit our vicious traits to extend their
+injury too far. If we could remember from incarnation
+to incarnation that man's misfortune might
+afflict him for thousands of years. But by the wise
+plan of closing all accounts at the end of each incarnation
+the mischief of remembering the blunders of
+others comes to an end. In the next incarnation all
+start with clear records again.</p>
+
+<p>One of the objections that one sometimes hears
+against reincarnation is that it seems to separate us
+for long periods, if not forever, and that even when
+we meet those we have previously known and loved,
+there is no memory of the past. The answer to the
+first point is that the separation is wholly on the lower
+planes and that the time spent on the higher planes
+is often twenty times that given to the lower. Separation
+is, of course, unavoidable on the physical plane,
+even where people live together in the same home.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+The average man spends most of the day at his office
+and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four.
+He is really separated from his family most of the
+time. But there is no such separation on higher planes
+and there is spent most of the whole period of evolution.
+The second point&mdash;that we do not now have
+the pleasure of knowing that our friends are those we
+knew and loved before&mdash;is not an important one.
+What is really important is that we again have them.
+If the ties of affection have been strong between us
+in the past there will be instant friendship when we
+meet for the first time in this incarnation. Those with
+strong heart ties are certain to be drawn into very
+close association life after life. It has been observed
+through the investigations that egos have been husband
+and wife, or parent and child, again and again.
+The probability of such close relationships depends
+upon the strength of the ties of affection. But if such
+real bond between the souls is lacking the mere fact
+that they now have family relationships is no guarantee
+of such future intimate association. When two
+souls have strong ties arising out of past association
+the failure to remember that incarnation does not in
+the least weaken the ties. But it does mercifully hide
+the past contentions that are to be found in nearly
+all lives.</p>
+
+<p>The failure to remember previous incarnations will
+be more clearly understood if we now give some
+thought to the fact that the personality here on the
+material plane is only a fragment of the whole consciousness
+of the soul. As we come down into lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+planes from the mental world each grosser grade of
+matter through which the ego expresses itself is a
+limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane each
+of us, whatever he may be here, is more alive and
+enjoys an actual extension of consciousness. On the
+mental plane he has enormously greater wisdom than
+here, with a still further extension of consciousness
+that is quite beyond the present comprehension of the
+brain intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>To put it differently, the ego really does not come
+into incarnation at all. It merely sends outward a
+ray from itself&mdash;a mere fragment of itself, as a man
+might put his hand down into the water of a shallow
+stream to gather bits of ore from which gold can be
+obtained. So the ego puts a finger, only, down into
+denser matter to get the general experience that can
+be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill.
+That finger of the ego, that we know as the personality,
+gathers the experience and then it is withdrawn
+into the ego. During the incarnation the personality
+has been animated by only a little of the ego's vast
+intelligence and that is why it blunders so often. But,
+veiled in dense matter, not much of the ego's consciousness
+can reach it.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship between the ego and the personality
+may be illustrated by that which exists between
+the brain consciousness and that of the finger-tip. The
+difference, of course, is great. The finger tip cannot
+see of hear or taste or smell. It is limited to one
+sense&mdash;touch. But it is a form of consciousness, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+it can get experience and pass it on to the brain consciousness.
+A man may be addressing an audience
+and see some substance on the table before him. It
+may be sand or sugar. Without interrupting his lecture
+he can put down his finger and get at the truth
+about the matter. The finger-tip gets the information
+and passes it on to the brain consciousness.
+Meantime there has been no pause in the discourse.
+Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought
+has been missed. The intellectual life went on in its
+completeness while the ray of intelligence sent down
+in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as it was.
+Just so the life of the ego&mdash;the true self of each of
+us&mdash;goes forward on its home plane while the personality
+here gropes for its harvest of experience.
+Some of those experiences will be painful to the personality,
+and the event will seem tragic here, but it
+will be a passing incident to the ego. In the illustration
+just used the substance on the table may prove
+to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of glass.
+Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and
+pain follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a
+blinding flash of distress that is overwhelming. But
+to the brain consciousness it is a trivial incident.
+And thus it is with most of our painful experiences
+here. They do a useful work in our evolution and
+they are trifling incidents to the consciousness of the
+ego.</p>
+
+<p>The personality finishes its work and perishes, in
+the sense that it is drawn up and incorporated in the
+ego. Most people identify themselves so fully with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to
+them. But that feeling will trouble them no longer
+when the ego is understood to be the real self. We
+might say that the relationship between the ego and
+the personality is like that between man and child.
+Childhood will perish but only to be merged into
+manhood. When we look at that transformation from
+the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory. But
+if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may
+look appalling. If you should say to your son of three
+summers, "My child, the time will come when all these
+beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your little
+playmates will see you no more," you might cause
+him much distress. It would seem to his limited child
+consciousness nothing less than a tragic destruction
+of what makes life worth while. But when he reaches
+manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial
+things of those early days. If there is something in
+his childhood of real, permanent value, it will persist
+in manhood. All the trivial and transient will have
+disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so, for
+manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego
+is the real self.</p>
+
+<p>As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of
+the man, so the memory of all the hundreds of incarnations
+persists in the causal body and is an eternal
+possession of the ego. When we are sufficiently
+evolved to raise the consciousness to the level of the
+causal body, while still living on the physical plane,
+as some people are now able to do, we shall thus temporarily
+recover the memory of past lives. When that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+time comes, however, the soul is sufficiently advanced
+to use such wider knowledge without injury to itself
+or others.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XIII.</span><br />
+VICARIOUS ATONEMENT</h2>
+
+<p>Back of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is
+a profound and beautiful natural truth, but it has been
+degraded into a teaching that is as selfish and brutal
+as it is false. The natural truth is the sacrifice of the
+solar Logos, or the deity of our system. The sacrifice
+consists of limiting Himself in the matter of manifested
+worlds and it is reflected in the sacrifice of the Christ
+and other great teachers who use their vast consciousness
+through a physical brain for the helping of
+the world. Compared to the descent of such supermen
+into mundane spheres a mere physical death is a trifling
+sacrifice indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The help that such great spiritual beings have given
+mankind is incalculable and altogether beyond what we
+are able to comprehend. But for such sacrifice the race
+would be very, very far below its present evolutionary
+level. But to assume that such sacrifices relieve man
+from the necessity of developing his spiritual nature
+or in any degree nullify his personal responsibility is
+false and dangerous doctrine. Nobody more than the
+theosophist pays to the Christ the tribute of the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+reverent gratitude. He also holds with St. Paul that
+each must work out his own salvation.</p>
+
+<p>The belief in special creation arose in that period of
+our history when our ancestors knew little of nature.
+Modern science was then unborn and superstition filled
+the western world. Now that we do know the truths of
+nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous
+process that is still going on, it is time to abandon the
+old conceptions and bring religious beliefs and scientific
+principles into harmonious relationship.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever it touches the practical affairs of life the
+old idea of special creation and special salvation fail to
+satisfy our sense of justice and of consistency. Intuitively
+we know that any belief that is not in harmony with
+the facts of life is a wrong belief. The idea of special
+creation is not only inconsistent with the facts as science
+has found them, but it does not give us a sound basis
+for moral development. Having started with the false
+idea of the special creation of the soul, which brings
+it into the world free from personal responsibility, it
+became a necessity to invent a special salvation to give
+any semblance of justice at all.</p>
+
+<p>Now the vital point against this plan of salvation is
+that it denies the soul's personal responsibility and
+teaches that whatever the offenses against God and
+nature have been, they may be cancelled by the simple
+act of believing that another suffered and died in order
+that those sins might be forgiven. It is the pernicious
+doctrine that wrong doing by one can be set right by
+the sacrifice of another. It is simply astounding that
+such a belief could have survived the Middle Ages and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+should continue to find millions who accept it in these
+days of clearer thinking. But it seems that when people
+are taught a thing in childhood the mind accepts it
+then without reasoning and afterwards vaguely regards
+it as one of the established facts without thinking further
+of it at all. But upon reflection we see at once the
+impossibility of its being true. We hear of a lingering
+practice in a remote province of China, whereby a
+man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire a substitute
+to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law must have
+its victim and its supremacy must be upheld. We laugh
+at that and know well enough that punishing the unfortunate
+substitute, who sacrifices himself to obtain a
+sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot
+regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his
+willingness to shift the responsibility for his crime upon
+another only sinks him farther into iniquity. The only
+person who can gain in moral strength is the one
+who makes the sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement
+for wrong doing were to be adopted generally.
+Then every murderer who had the means would escape
+the consequences of his crime. Every burglar who was
+successful enough to have the cash on hand could elude
+prison. Every pickpocket could hire a substitute to
+suffer for him and thus continue his criminal career.
+Every embezzler would have the money to purchase
+freedom. Every corruptionist would be safe. Every
+thief could laugh at the law. It would make a mockery
+of justice. It would place a premium upon crime and
+a handicap upon honesty and virtue. However bad the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would
+necessarily lower the standard of their morality by shifting
+the burden of their sins to others. It would destroy
+personal responsibility, and personal responsibility is the
+basis of sound morals and the foundation of civilized
+society.</p>
+
+<p>Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with
+the belief in special creation and special salvation&mdash;the
+teaching that we are not responsible for our sins and
+that by believing that another assumed them and died
+for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing
+and thus be saved. What are we to be saved from?
+From nothing but ourselves. From our selfishness, from
+our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to inflict
+pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and
+from the heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer
+in order that we may escape. Salvation must necessarily
+mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The man who is willing
+to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit for
+heaven and could not recognize it if he were there.
+What do we think of a person here who shifts his sins
+upon another and while that other suffers he goes free
+and enjoys the fruits of his baseness?</p>
+
+<p>A heaven that is populated with those who see in
+vicarious atonement a happy arrangement for letting
+them in pleasantly and easily would not be worth having.
+It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be
+no heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only
+of those who have eliminated selfishness; only of those
+who want to help others instead of trying to dodge the
+consequences of their own acts; only of those who are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+manly and womanly and generous and just and true.
+Nothing less than a recognition of personal responsibility
+can lead to a heaven like that. Yet the theory of special
+salvation ignores it, waves it aside&mdash;in fact denies it!</p>
+
+<p>Reincarnation represents personal responsibility
+and therefore absolute justice. It shows that, not merely
+in all the vast future, but also in this life and in every
+life, and all the time, our degree of happiness depends
+upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were
+generally understood it would necessarily raise the
+average of morality. It furnishes a deterrent for the
+evil doer and a tremendous incentive for the man who
+desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the
+one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds;
+that he must return life after life to associations and
+environments determined by the good or the ill he has
+done; that he can no more escape from his evil deeds
+than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately
+suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation
+of every insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures
+the man of good intentions and right desires that every
+good deed shall rise up in the future to bless him; that
+all whom he has helped shall become his helpers hereafter;
+that even his good intentions that failed in their
+purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy
+in the future.</p>
+
+<p>What a splendid thing it is to know that every
+thought and act adds permanent value to the character;
+that all we learn in any life becomes an eternal possession;
+that we can add to our intellect, to our insight, to
+our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power, as cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>tainly
+and definitely as a man can add to his bank account
+or permanent investments; that whatever we may be in
+this incarnation we can return again stronger and wiser
+and better.</p>
+
+<p>The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent
+divinity and the method by which the latent becomes
+the actual. Instead of the ignoble belief that we can
+fling our sins upon another it makes personal responsibility
+the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It
+is the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion of
+self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the utility as well as of the common-sense
+of a scheme of salvation that really saves us because it
+evolves us; that never denies us a chance to retrieve an
+error; that gives us an opportunity to right every
+wrong; that brings us back life after life until all enemies
+have been changed to friends; until all accounts
+are closed and balanced; until all our powers have
+been evolved, until intellect has become genius; until
+sympathy has become compassion and the last moral
+battle has been fought and won.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XIV.</span><br />
+THE FORCES WE GENERATE</h2>
+
+<p>Every human being is constantly generating three
+classes of forces, and they determine the kind of life
+he will lead here, the degree of success or failure that
+will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
+on the inner planes after the death of his physical body.
+The law of rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but
+it is the law of action and reaction under which we
+evolve while here.</p>
+
+<p>The three classes of energies which we generate
+are those of thought, desire and action. They belong,
+in the order named, to the mental world, the astral
+world and the physical world. All people are constantly
+thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees
+of energy, are putting thought and desire into
+action. These forces sent out into the worlds of
+thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions,
+or consequences, and to them the man is bound
+until justice is done and the soul has learned its evolutionary
+lesson.</p>
+
+<p>That thought and desire are forces as certainly as
+electricity is, the student of the occult well knows,
+but the world is not quite yet at the point where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the history
+of all human progress. When Franklin began
+his experiments with electrical force almost nobody
+believed there was any such thing in existence. Yet
+today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains
+and drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all
+that at the time of the first experiments he would have
+been considered extraordinarily foolish. What the
+world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually
+has very little to do with the facts. The general
+public can be expected to come trailing along, about
+a half century late, with its acceptance and approval.
+Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would
+be impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>The mental body grows by the process of thinking.
+The force generated in thinking reacts in the production
+of greater faculty for thinking, so that we
+literally create our mental abilities. The activities
+of thought change the mental body into a better
+and constantly better instrument through which the
+ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect
+others and we thereby make ties with them that must
+work out sooner or later in associated experience.</p>
+
+<p>Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a
+most important role in the drama of human evolution.
+The law operates to bring together the desirer and the
+object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only
+judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the
+result of gratifying them. Thus do we acquire discrimination.
+It is usually a strong desire nature that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of
+desire it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through
+experience the soul finally learns to control desire,
+to raise lower desires into higher ones and thus ultimately
+to attain non-attachment and liberation.</p>
+
+<p>Actions are the physical expression of thoughts
+and desires and, as we are constantly simultaneously
+thinking, desiring and acting, very complex results
+arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set
+up relationships with other souls, some of the results
+of which reach far into the future. The average man,
+with no knowledge of the laws under which he is
+evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for
+future incarnations and is often unwittingly laying
+up pain and sorrow for himself that a little occult
+knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every injury
+that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily
+in kind. Nature does not punish. She merely
+teaches and knows nothing of retaliations. Her great
+concern seems to be that all souls shall get on in
+evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose
+appears to be accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>The forces we generate in each incarnation shape
+and determine the next and succeeding ones. Our
+friends, our families, our business associates, our nation,
+are determined by what we have thought and
+felt and done in the past and by the lessons it is
+necessary we shall learn. Our wealth or poverty, our
+fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our intelligence
+or stupidity, our good or bad environment,
+our freedom or limitations, all grow out of the thoughts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+and emotions and acts in the past. From their consequences
+there is no possibility of escape.</p>
+
+<p>But that does not mean that we are the helpless
+slaves of fate from which there is no release. We
+who generated the forces can neutralize them. We
+can undo anything we have done. It only means that
+for a time we must work within the self-imposed
+limitations created by a wrong course in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Those who are interested in the long-time discussion
+over free-will and determinism have often been
+impressed with the remarkably strong arguments that
+can be marshaled by each side to the controversy.
+Either side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive.
+The explanation lies in the fact that each
+is right, but only to a certain point. Both free will
+and necessity are factors and when the theosophical
+viewpoint is understood the apparent contradiction
+disappears. We are temporarily bound, <em>but we did
+the binding</em>, by the desires we indulged and the emotions
+we freely harbored in the past.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of temporary restraint in which we
+now find ourselves may be likened to that of a party
+of gold hunters who go into Alaska to locate mines.
+They are all aware that in that remote northern country
+navigation closes very early and that after the
+last boat leaves there is no possibility of getting out
+of that region until navigation opens again in the next
+season. Some of them are discreet and reach the landing
+in ample time. Others are careless. They continue
+their search for gold a little too long, and arrive
+at the river a day too late. The boat has sailed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a
+great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They
+cannot escape from Alaska for many months but
+within Alaska they are absolutely free. They can build
+a cabin and either waste the time with idle games
+or seriously think and study. They are limited but
+free within the limitation, and the limitation itself was
+of their own making. It is precisely so with us in
+the environment of the present incarnation and with
+our various fortunes. We made them and, when the
+forces with which we did it are exhausted, we shall
+be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification
+and improvement.</p>
+
+<p>The reactions from the forces we generate naturally
+do us exact justice just because they <em>are</em> reactions. We
+reap precisely what we sow. The reaction may sometimes
+seem harsh but consideration of the matter from
+all points of view will show that mercy as well as
+justice is always a factor. Let us consider the
+method by which nature changes recklessness into caution.
+A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a
+cigar and throwing the burning match down wherever
+it may happen to fall. He may go on doing that a long
+time with no serious result, yet all careful people
+know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago
+a newspaper told the story of such a man, who passed
+along the street, lighted a cigaret and carelessly flung
+the flaming match from him. A nurse was passing
+with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell
+on some of the light, airy wraps of the infant and they
+burst into a blaze. Before the fire could be extin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>guished
+the child was so badly burned that it died
+the next day.</p>
+
+<p>The moment such a case is stated we realize the
+necessity of something that will cure the man of such
+fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the lives and
+property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be
+invoked. He had no criminal intent but he is none
+the less dangerous for that, as the incident proved.
+We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
+carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the
+law of action and reaction he must reap as he has
+sown. It may be in the latter part of this incarnation,
+or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later his
+carelessness will react and he will lose his physical
+body in pain and distress and come to know personally
+just what his recklessness means. In the reaction, a
+part only of which is on the physical plane, he gets the
+experience that is necessary to set him right. The
+folly of his course is so driven in on his consciousness
+that he is changed from the careless man to the careful
+man. In no other way could his cure be brought
+about.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as
+the result of our wrong thinking and acting in a past
+life we can now know nothing of its cause and therefore
+we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we
+do not know in the limited consciousness of the physical
+brain the soul does know and in the wider consciousness
+the lesson is registered.</p>
+
+<p>The principles of justice are never violated in
+teaching the soul its evolutionary lessons. Nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+can come to a man that he does not merit and that
+which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
+working of the law seen from an angle that
+makes it illusory. But, it may be objected, how does
+theosophy see "beneficent working of the law" in the
+burning of a theater where a score of people lose their
+lives, including several children? How can theosophy
+explain that?</p>
+
+<p>How can it be explained by those who hold that
+the soul is created at birth? If God really brings the
+soul into its original expression in an infant body,
+why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
+months? What can be the purpose? It would be
+difficult indeed to explain the death of children if the
+soul were created at birth. But let us look at it from
+the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul
+with a young body. Hark back to the case of the
+man whose carelessness caused the death of the baby
+in its carriage. He, and others like him, are again in
+incarnation and in the burning theater they get the
+reaction of the unfortunate forces they have generated.
+But why so many in some catastrophes? it may be
+asked. A principle is not affected by the number involved.
+If we can see justice in the death of one person
+we can see justice in the death of a hundred. It is
+simply class instruction. People of a kind have been
+drawn together.</p>
+
+<p>We should not forget that we see only a small
+fragment of any such case from the physical plane. We
+form an opinion, however, on that inadequate survey
+and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+injustice involved. But our verdict depends wholly
+upon a viewpoint. Let us suppose, for example, that a
+man strolls down the street and that, as he turns a
+corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of
+life. A young man is lying on the ground, battered
+and bleeding, while two others stand over him. What
+would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene
+say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The
+ruffians!" and he would be inclined to assist the man
+who was down. But let us suppose that he had been
+a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to
+turn around the corner with the other men and would
+have seen him rush upon a defenseless woman, push
+her down, snatch her purse and dash away, but, fortunately,
+in the direction of the men who assaulted
+and stopped him. Had the last arrival seen the entire
+affair he would have reversed his opinion and said that
+the thief got what he deserved. And so it is in our
+inadequate physical plane view of what we call a
+calamity. It may appear to involve an injustice, but
+only because we do not see the entire transaction.</p>
+
+<p>Those who study the occult laws that shape human
+destiny may learn to use them for their rapid progress
+and for insuring a comfortable, as well as spiritually
+profitable, life journey.</p>
+
+<p>But before we can work successfully within the
+law we must know that the law really exists. Most
+people seem either to believe there is no law that will
+certainly bring them the results of their good or evil
+thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they
+can in some way dodge it and escape the consequence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+and so we see them go along through life always
+doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing. They
+misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil
+thoughts, they have their enemies and hate them, they
+scheme to bring discomfort and humiliation upon those
+whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest from
+this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled
+by the falsehoods of others to their loss and injury,
+when they fall into the company of schemers and are
+swindled, when a false story is started about them,
+when&mdash;through no fault of the moment&mdash;they are
+plunged into discomfort and humiliation, they merely
+call it so much bad luck and go blindly on with their
+generation of wrong forces that will in due time bring
+another enforced reaping of pain.</p>
+
+<p>There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain
+of daily life as certainly as there is a law that guides
+the earth in its orbit about the sun. That law of action
+and reaction is just as constant, accurate and
+immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet
+upon the ground while we come and go and think
+nothing at all about it.</p>
+
+<p>There is something almost terrifying in the immutability
+of all natural laws and their utterly impersonal
+aspect. They are the operation of forces
+which, in themselves, are not related to what we call
+good and bad. They simply are. The law of gravity
+will illustrate the point. It operates with no consideration
+whatever for character or motives. It holds all
+people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while
+it whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+over a precipice, it will hurl them both to the bottom
+with perfect impartiality. If the fiend, who may just
+have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the
+saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored
+him. He has merely reaped the reward of his alertness
+in spite of his bad morals. The saintly man
+may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but
+the law of gravity takes no account of that. When he
+stepped over the precipice, and was dashed to death,
+he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless of his
+benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words
+"God is no respecter of persons," for, of course, all
+natural laws are but the expression of the divine will.</p>
+
+<p>But this immutability of natural law is not in the
+least terrifying when we come to look more closely at
+it. On the contrary it is within that very immutability
+that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It
+is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we
+can calculate with absolute certainty and surely attain the
+results at which we aim. It is because of the certainty
+that the doing of evil brings pain and the doing of good
+yields a return of happiness that we can control circumstances
+and determine destiny.</p>
+
+<p>Why should there be such a law operating in the
+mental and moral realm? Because only thus can we
+evolve. We must not only change from ignorance to
+wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong
+doing to perfect harmlessness. How would that be
+possible without the law of cause and effect, without
+action and reaction which brings pleasure for righteousness
+and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+law can we learn what is the right and what is the
+wrong thing to do. If it is agreed that we are souls,
+that evolution is a fact, and that perfection is the goal
+of the human race, then the necessity for the law of
+action and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a
+law of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The existence and operation of this law of cause and
+effect are set forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures.
+"With what measures ye mete it to others it shall be
+measured to you," is certainly explicit. In Proverbs<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a> we
+have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit
+shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall
+return upon him." Of course the language is figurative.
+No writer of common sense would assert that every time
+a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into it nor that
+whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon
+him! We dig pits in the moral world whenever we
+undermine the character of another with a false story,
+whether we originate it or merely repeat it, and into
+such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the
+law. We have loosened and set rolling the stones of
+envy and hatred and they shall return to crush us down
+to failure and humiliation in the reaction that follows.
+We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law
+when we could have used it for our success and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement
+of the law of action and reaction. It is not an
+assertion that we should not judge because we are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong another
+with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that
+the consequence of judging others is that we, in turn,
+shall be judged. If we criticize, we shall be criticized.
+If we condemn others for their faults and failures, we
+shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant and
+remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be
+tolerantly regarded by others.</p>
+
+<p>All of us who have studied the subject find in our
+daily lives the evidence of the truth of such Biblical
+declarations. We know perfectly well that anger provokes
+anger and that conciliation wins concessions, while
+retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort
+calls out retort, while silence restores the peace. In
+these little things it is usually within the power of either
+party to the trouble to have peace instead of turmoil&mdash;just
+a matter of self control. But in the larger events
+it is not always so. They are not invariably within our
+immediate control because they are often the results of
+causes generated in the past which we can no longer
+modify. And this brings us to a wider view of this law
+of cause and effect.</p>
+
+<p>If we look at the life history of an individual as it
+stretches out from birth to death it presents a remarkable
+record of events that appear to have no logical relationship
+to each other. In childhood, there may have
+been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering
+regardless of the qualities of character we are considering,
+and there is nothing in the present life of the child
+to explain either. The child itself may be gentle and
+affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+abuse and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may
+find still greater mysteries. Invariably there are mingled
+successes and failures, pleasures and pains. But when
+we come to analyze them we fail to find a satisfactory
+reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
+when they are not warranted by anything that was done
+to win them, and for the want of any rational explanation
+we call it "good luck." We also observe that sometimes
+failure after failure comes when the man is not
+only doing his very best but when all of his plans will
+stand the test of sound business procedure. Baffled
+again we throw logic to the winds and call it "bad luck."</p>
+
+<p>Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and
+our inability to trace the working of the law. Suppose
+we were to ask a savage to explain how it is that a few
+minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
+know what happened yesterday in London. He knows
+nothing of reporters and cables and presses. He cannot
+explain it. He cannot even comprehend it. But if he
+is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
+he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is
+because we are lucky; and he would be using the word
+just as sensibly as we use it!</p>
+
+<p>If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing
+in this world. Chance means chaos and the absence
+of law. From the magnificent, orderly procession of
+a hundred million suns and their world systems that
+wheel majestically through space down to the very atom,
+with all of its electrons, the universe is a stupendous
+proclamation of the all-pervading presence of law. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+is a mighty panorama of cause and effect. There is no
+such thing as chance.</p>
+
+<p>What then <em>is</em> good luck? We know that people do
+receive benefits which they apparently have not earned.
+There simply cannot be a result without a cause. They
+have earned it in other lives when the conditions did
+not permit immediate harvesting of the results of the
+good forces generated and Nature is paying the debt and
+making the balance of her books at a later period. It
+may be in the case of one that some specific act is attracting
+its reward, or it may be in the case of another
+that he is nearing the point in evolution where he no
+longer desires things for himself, only to discover that
+nature fairly flings her treasures at his feet. He has
+put himself in harmony with evolutionary law&mdash;with the
+divine plan, and nature withholds nothing.</p>
+
+<p>When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to
+seek the cause of unexplained good or bad fortune beyond
+the boundaries of this life because there is nothing
+else we can do. We have results to explain and we
+know they do not come from causes that belong to this
+life. They must of necessity arise from causes generated
+in a past life.</p>
+
+<p>Now the moment we get away from the narrow view
+that we began existence when we were born, all the
+mysteries about us disappear and we can fall back on
+natural law and logically explain everything. Why does
+one person begin life with a good mind while another is
+born with small mental capacity? Because one worked
+hard at life's problems in past incarnations while the
+other led a butterfly existence and merely amused him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>self.
+Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances
+always maintaining a cheerful view of life
+while another loses control of his temper at the slightest
+annoyance and wears himself out with the trifling vexations
+of existence? Only because one has for a long
+period practiced self control while the other has never
+given a thought to the matter. Why is one so thoughtful
+of others that he wins universal love and admiration
+while another is so self centered that he makes no true
+friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The
+one has studied the laws of destiny and lived by them
+while the other has not yet even learned of their existence.</p>
+
+<p>Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created
+at birth, and keeping in mind the newer and scientific
+view that we have all lived many lives before, all the
+difficulties and perplexities at once disappear. We are
+no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some
+good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to
+deserve it, for we see that he must have set the forces
+in motion in a previous life which now culminate in
+this result. We are no longer mystified because apparent
+causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that
+in the nature of things he did generate the causes in the
+past. A single incarnation has the same relation to the
+whole of the soul's evolution that a single day has to one
+incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights
+and yet all the days are related by the acts which run
+through them, so the incarnations are separated by periods
+of rest in the heaven world and yet all the incarnations
+are related by the thoughts and acts running through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+them. What a man does in his youth affects his old
+age, and what we did in our last incarnation is affecting
+the present one. The one is no more remarkable than
+the other. As we mould old age by youth so we are
+shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we
+shall be able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth
+that what we are now is the result of our past we must
+have a clear understanding of the relationship between
+the soul and the body. The physical body in each incarnation
+is the material expression of the soul, of its moral
+power or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its
+purity or its grossness, just as one's face is, at each moment
+the expression of one's thought and emotion in
+physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers
+itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of
+joy and his face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry,
+and the change from joy to anger is registered in physical
+matter so that all who see his face are aware of the
+change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These
+are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they
+are obvious to all. But we know that as the years pass
+the constant influence of consciousness moulds even
+physical matter into permanent form. A soul of sunny
+disposition finally comes to have benevolent features
+while one of morose tendency as certainly has a face of
+settled gloom. Nobody can contact the soul of another
+with any physical sense we possess yet nobody has the
+slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a
+sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony
+with life. We know the difference only because consciousness
+moulds matter. But this is merely the sur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>face
+indication. Consciousness is continually influencing
+matter and the major part of its work is not visible to
+us. What the consciousness is, the body becomes.
+Whether we are now brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed,
+is the result of the activities of consciousness,
+and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
+physical body are the registrations in matter of what we,
+the soul, thought and did in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall
+begin to see just why and how it may have come about.
+If in a past life a person was guilty of deliberate cruelty
+to another, and on account of it suffered great mental
+and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
+thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted
+on his victim are reproduced in himself. In idiocy
+we have apparently merely a distorted brain so that the
+consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
+that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result
+of violent reaction from cruelties in a past life? The
+consciousness that can be guilty of cruelty is seeing things
+crooked&mdash;out of proportion. Otherwise it could not be
+cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register
+a corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is
+the faithful and accurate reflection of that consciousness.
+It is just because the body is the true and exact expression
+of the consciousness in physical matter that the
+palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such
+remarkable delineations of character. The record is
+there in hand and head for those who can read it.</p>
+
+<p>This broader outlook on the life journey, extending
+over a very long series of incarnations, gives us a wholly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+different view of the difficulties with which we have to
+contend and of the limitations which afflict us. It at
+once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
+there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody;
+that all good fortune has been earned; that all
+bad fortune is deserved, and that each of us is, mentally
+and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
+it well when he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All that I rightly think or do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or make or spoil or bless or blast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is curse or blessing justly due<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sloth or effort in the past.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My life's a statement of the sum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of vice indulged or overcome.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as I journey on the roads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall be helped and healed and blessed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To urge to heights as yet unguessed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My road shall be the road I made.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that I gave shall be repaid.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth
+more inspiring? It is surely a satisfying thought that
+every effort shall give increased power of intellect; that
+all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own protection
+in time of need; that every impulse of affection
+shall ripen into the love of comrades; that all noble
+thinking builds heroic character, with which we shall return,
+in some future time, to play to a still noble part in
+the world of men.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Proverbs, XXVI, 27.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XV.</span><br />
+SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION</h2>
+
+<p>If we accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot
+escape the conclusion that there is superphysical evolution.
+The belief that man is the highest intelligence in
+the universe, except God himself, would be utterly inconsistent
+with evolutionary facts and principles. Evolution
+is a continuous unfolding from within, and it is
+only the limitation of our senses that leads us to set
+limitations to it. The one great life of the universe
+expresses itself in myriad forms and at innumerable
+levels of development. One of those levels is humanity.
+But as certainly as our consciousness has evolved to its
+present stage it shall go on to higher ones.</p>
+
+<p>Orderly gradation is clearly nature's method of expression.
+A continuous, unbroken line of life reaches
+downward from man. Its successive stages are seen in
+the animals, the reptiles, the insects and the microbes.
+Even the great kingdoms into which the biologist divides
+life fade into each other almost imperceptibly and it
+becomes difficult to say where the vegetable kingdom
+stops and the animal kingdom begins. Just as that
+continuous chain of life runs downward from man it
+must also rise above him until it merges in the Supreme<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+Being. There must necessarily be the higher as well
+as the lower products of evolution. Man is merely one
+link in the evolutionary chain. The human level is the
+point where consciousness has become completely individualized
+and is capable of turning back upon itself and
+studying its own inner processes.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Occidental civilization has been sadly
+fettered with materialism. It has scarcely dared to
+think beyond that which could be grasped with the
+hands. The physical senses were its outposts of investigation.
+What could not be seen or heard or felt
+had no existence for it. Modern science explored the
+material universe and perfected its methods until the vast
+panorama of worlds could be intimately studied, and
+its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat
+comprehended. But there was no study of life comparable
+to the vast stretch of worlds; for material science
+had made the remarkable blunder of assuming that the
+last word on the nature of matter had been said. Then
+came the startling discoveries that revolutionized the
+accepted views of matter, that proved that the supposedly
+indivisible atom was a miniature universe, a tiny
+cosmos of force. The old theories about matter had to
+be thrown aside. They were as much out of date as
+the belief that the earth is flat. Stripped of technical
+terms of expression the revised view of matter is, substantially,
+that it is the lowest expression of life; and
+now modern science is turning tardy attention to a
+study of the life side of the universe. The moment that
+is done the sense of consistency and the law of correspondence
+compel us to postulate a gradation of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>telligences
+rising above man as man does above the
+insects.</p>
+
+<p>The scientific mind instantly grasps the inherent
+reasonableness of the existence of superphysical beings.
+Writing on the subject of energy, Nicola Tesla says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"We can conceive of organized beings living without
+nourishment and deriving all the energy they
+need for the performance of their life functions
+from the ambient medium.*** There may be ***
+individualized material systems of beings, perhaps
+of gaseous constitution, or composed of substance
+still more tenuous. In view of this possibility&mdash;nay,
+probability&mdash;we cannot apodictically deny the
+existence of organized beings on a planet merely because
+the conditions on the same are unsuitable for
+the existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot
+even, with positive assurance, assert that some of
+them might not be present here in this our world,
+in the very midst of us, for their constitution and
+life manifestation may be such that we are unable
+to perceive them."<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Alfred Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand
+old man of science," wrote in one of his latest books:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think we have got to recognize that between
+man and the ultimate God there is an almost infinite
+multitude of beings working in the universe at large,
+at tasks as definite and important as any we have
+to perform on earth. I imagine that the universe is
+peopled with spirits&mdash;that is, with intelligent beings
+with powers and duties akin to our own, but vaster.
+I think there is a gradual ascent from man upward
+and onward."</p></div>
+
+<p>While the scientist, still lacking the absolutely con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>clusive
+evidence, goes only to the point of asserting that
+it is reasonable and probable that supermen exist, the
+occultist asserts it as a fact within his personal knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a>
+So we have the direct testimony of the occultists,
+the endorsement of the scientists as to its probability,
+and, perhaps the most important of all, the inherent
+reasonableness of the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship of the supermen, or great spiritual
+hierarchy, to the human race is that of teachers,
+guardians and directors. They superintend human
+evolution. But this does not mean in the very least
+the relationship that is expressed in the term "spirit
+guides" so frequently use by the spiritualist. That is
+a totally different thing. They seem to imply that the
+"spirit guide" gives direct instructions or orders to the
+person known as a "medium." If we were all thus controlled
+and directed what would become of free will?
+Evolution can proceed only if we use our initiative in
+the affairs of life. If we were to be directed by the
+wisdom and will of others we would not evolve at all.
+We would be merely automata directed by others, and
+no matter how great they were we could never thus
+develop our judgment and self-reliance. It is not thus
+that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution.
+It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse
+and bringing mental and moral forces to play upon them,
+thus stimulating latent spiritual forces from within. It
+is also by directly, or indirectly placing ideals instead
+of commands before the race. In another direction it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+is actual superintendence, or administration, or teaching,
+in a way that does not interfere with one's initiative or
+will. If the soul is to evolve it must have liberty&mdash;even
+the freedom to make mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>It is sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist,
+those who are in incarnation do not come out into the
+world and give us ocular evidence of the fact. It is
+pointed out that they could speedily convince the world
+by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably
+not in the least interested in convincing anybody
+of their existence. They <em>are</em> interested in raising the
+general level of morality, of course, but such an exhibition
+would not make people morally better. The work
+of the supermen can best be done from higher planes
+than the physical. As for the very small number of the
+supermen who take physical bodies to better do their
+special work, they can best accomplish it from secluded
+places; and if they sometimes have reason to come out
+into the seething vibrations of our modern civilization it
+is easy to understand that they would not be conspicuously
+different from other men, to the ordinary observer.</p>
+
+<p>It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the
+religions of the world. There the question may arise,
+"Then why do they differ so greatly?" Because the
+peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The
+difference of temperament and viewpoint between the
+Orient and the Occident is enormous. We are evolving
+along the outer, the objective, and our civilization represents
+the material conquest of nature. They are
+evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the
+common trend of conversation is philosophical, just as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+in the Occident it is commercial. Such different types
+of mind require somewhat different statements of ethics,
+but the fundamental principles of all religions are identical.</p>
+
+<p>When a new era in human evolution begins a World
+Teacher comes into voluntary incarnation and founds a
+religion that is suited to the requirements of the new
+era. Humanity is never left to grope along alone. All
+that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the
+various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and
+saviours of the race, have been appearing at propitious
+times since humanity began existence.</p>
+
+<p>Most readers will probably agree that a World
+Teacher known as the Christ did come and found a
+religion nearly two thousand years ago. Why do they
+think so? They reply that God so loved the world that
+he sent his Son, the Christ, to bring it light and life.
+If that is true how can we avoid the conclusion that
+He, or his predecessors, must have come many a time
+before? The belief that He came but once is consistent
+only with the erroneous notion that Genesis is
+history instead of allegory, and that the earth is about
+six thousand years old! Science has not determined
+its age but we know that it is very old, indeed. Many
+eminent scientists have made rough estimates, taking
+into consideration all that we have learned from astronomy,
+geology and archeology. Phillips, the geologist,
+basing his calculations upon the time required for the
+depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum
+age at thirty-eight million years and the maximum age
+at ninety-six million years. Sir George Darwin, bas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>ing
+his calculation wholly upon astronomical data, puts
+the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years.
+Joly arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time
+required to produce the sodium content of the ocean,
+and concluded that the age of the earth is between
+eighty million and one hundred million years. Sollas is
+said to have made careful study of the matter and he
+finds the minimum to be eighty million, and the maximum
+age to be one hundred and fifty million years. But
+perhaps the most exhaustive study of the matter, and
+that made by the use of the later scientific knowledge,
+was by Bosler, of the French scientists. He bases his
+calculations upon the radio-activity of rocks and arrives
+at a minimum earth age of seven hundred and ten
+millions of years. Thus it will be observed that as our
+knowledge grows the estimated age of the earth increases.</p>
+
+<p>In the face of such facts what becomes of the assertion
+that God so loved the world that he sent His Son
+to help ignorant humanity about two thousand years
+ago&mdash;but never before? What about the hundreds of
+millions of human beings who lived and died before that
+time? Did He care nothing for them? Did He give
+his attention to humanity for a period of only two
+thousand years and neglect it for millions of years?
+Two thousand years, compared to the age of the earth,
+is less than an hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does
+anybody believe that God, in his great compassion,
+sent just one World Teacher for that brief period?
+What would we say of a father who gave one hour of
+his whole life to his child and neglected him absolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+before and after that? Countless millions of the people
+who lived and died prior to the coming of the Christ
+were very much like ourselves. They belonged to
+ancient civilizations that often surpassed our own in
+many desirable characteristics. They were educated and
+cultured in their time and fashion. They were fathers
+and sons and mothers and daughters and husbands and
+wives, with the same kind of heart ties that we have.
+What of them? Were they permitted to grope in the
+moral wilderness without a Teacher or a ray of light?
+Of course the idea is preposterous. If God so loved
+the world that He sent his Son two thousand years
+ago He sent Him, or some predecessor, very many times
+before. By the same token He will come again. The
+only logical escape from such a conclusion is in the
+materialist's belief that He never came at all.</p>
+
+<p>All religions crystalize, become materialized, and
+lose their spiritual significance. That is precisely what
+has happened to the various great religions of the modern
+world, including Christianity. It is no longer the dynamic
+thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why
+a world war was possible. The fault is not with the
+teachings of the Christ. The trouble is that the world has
+not lived by them. We need a restatement of the old
+teachings in the terms of modern life that shall again
+make it a living force in the lives of men. It is when the
+World Teacher is most needed that he comes; and when
+has the need been greater than now? The world war has
+demonstrated the failure of so-called Christian civilization.
+We have seen the highest type of that civilization
+revert to the law of the jungle, deliberately disregard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+the usages of civilized warfare, and commit atrocities
+that would shame barbarians. We surely need no further
+proof that the Christian religion has not accomplished
+all that the spiritual hierarchy had a right to
+hope for, and that the coming of the Christ again is a
+necessity.</p>
+
+<p>But the spiritual hierarchy sends its great ambassadors
+only when the time is propitious, only when the
+world is ready to listen. Perhaps such an event can
+never be predicted in terms of time, but only in those of
+conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent,
+when the slain totals appalling numbers, when few
+homes of high or low degree are without their terrible
+sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled with anguish,
+when famine and disease have done their awful work,
+and humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed,
+lust, cruelty and revenge actually means, the world will
+be ready to listen as it never listened before, and after
+that we may reasonably expect the Christ to again appear
+to re-proclaim the ancient truth in terms of modern life.</p>
+
+<p>The supermen are not myths nor figments of imagination.
+They are as natural and comprehensive as human
+beings. In the regular order of evolution we shall
+reach their level and join their ranks while younger humanities
+shall attain our present estate. As the supermen
+rose we, too, shall rise. Our past has been evolution's
+night. Our present is its dawn. Our future
+shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from
+which we have emerged&mdash;a chaos of contending forces,
+a world in which might was the measure of right, a civilization
+of scepter and sword, of baron and serf, of master<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+and slave. That, we have left behind us. Think of the
+grey dawn that our civilization has reached&mdash;the dawn
+of a public conscience, of individual liberty, of collective
+welfare, of the sacredness of life, but with armed force
+still dominant, with war the arbiter of national destiny,
+with industrial slavery still lingering, with conflict between
+the higher aspirations and the lower desires still
+raging&mdash;a world of selfishness masked by civilized usage,
+a world of veneered cruelty and refined brutality. In all
+that we now live. But think of the coming results of
+evolution!&mdash;an era in which love shall replace force,
+when saber and cannon shall be unknown, when selfish
+desires shall be transmuted into noble service, when,
+finally, we shall finish the painful period of human evolution
+and join the spiritual hierarchy to direct the
+faltering steps of a younger race.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> "The Conservation of Energy," Nicola Tesla, Century
+Magazine, June 1900.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> An Outline of Theosophy, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 6-12.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tn">
+<h4 class="u">Transcriber's Note:</h4>
+
+<p>The following corrections were made:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#Page_6">p. 6</a>: pretention to pretension (no pretension is made)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_12">p. 12</a>: An to In (In another aspect it is a religion.)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_12">p. 12</a>: thesosophy to theosophy (While theosophy is distinctly a science)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_13">p. 13</a>: discusison to discussion (A detailed discussion of such methods)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_16">p. 16</a>: nevertheelss to nevertheless (is nevertheless just that relationship)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_17">p. 17</a>: explicilt to explicit (is certainly very explicit)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_19">p. 19</a>: period to semi-colon (who's true to man;)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_34">p. 34</a>: communciating to communicating (dead man who is communicating?)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_35">p. 35</a>: extra 'the' removed (more convincing than the evidence)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_47">p. 46-47</a>: envelopes to envelops (because it envelops it)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_63">p. 63</a>: oftens to often (often requires death)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_74">p. 74</a>: repreduces to reproduces (exactly reproduces emotion)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_82">p. 82</a>: consciouness to consciousness (finally loses consciousness)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_83">p. 83</a>: of to or (or by cleverly combining)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_86">p. 86</a>: strengthend to strengthened (strengthened and vivified)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_89">p. 89</a>: slight to sight (has not lost sight of us)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_91">p. 91</a>: communciate to communicate (had to communicate with him)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_91">p. 91</a>: communcation to communication (subject of communication)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_92">p. 92</a>: communciate to communicate (desires to communicate)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_93">p. 93</a>: influnces to influences (sensitive to psychic influences)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_94">p. 94</a>: persist to persists (who persists in occupying)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_95">p. 95</a>: confidenty to confidently (will confidently assert himself)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_96">p. 96</a>: close quote added (What can I do?")</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_103">p. 103</a>: missing comma added (While we do not yet know a great deal about life, science)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_105">p. 105</a>: perect to perfect (perfect agreement)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_109">p. 109</a>: extra 'and' removed (new and undeveloped)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_115">p. 115</a>: thoughtul to thoughtful (a thoughtful matron)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_117">p. 117</a>: methematical to mathematical (a mathematical problem)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_120">p. 120</a>: If to It (It often puzzles)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_121">p. 121</a>: from to form (highest possible form)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_124">p. 124</a>: missing apostrophe added (of nations' condemned prisoners)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_128">p. 128</a>: extra 'to' removed (civilization today could arise)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_129">p. 129</a>: two erroneously reversed lines corrected (consciousness. The young quails of this season come / they are attached to the same group-soul, or source of)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_138">p. 138</a>: crminal to criminal (a noted criminal)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_142">p. 142</a>: possesing to possessing (we find others possessing)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_146">p. 146</a>: blockquote formatted to match others in text</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_158">p. 158</a>: meed to need (no need of praise)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_181">p. 181</a>: incalcuable to incalculable (is incalculable and altogether beyond)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_185">p. 185</a>: responsibilty to responsibility (personal responsibility and therefore)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_191">p. 191</a>: hapen to happen (may happen to fall)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_191">p. 191-192</a>: extinquished to extinguished (Before the fire could be extinguished)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_193">p. 193</a>: beneficient to beneficent ("beneficent working of the law")</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_193">p. 193</a>: phsical to physical (from the physical plane)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_195">p. 195</a>: mistate to misstate (misstate facts)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_196">p. 196</a>: atain to attain (and surely attain)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_203">p. 203</a>: idocy to idiocy (In idiocy we have)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_204">p. 204</a>: Maesfield to Masefield (Masefield put it well)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_204">p. 204</a>: blest to blessed (I shall be helped and healed and blessed.)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_207">p. 207</a>: appodictically to apodictically (cannot apodictically deny)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_209">p. 209</a>: superman to supermen (small number of the supermen)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_209">p. 209</a>: it to is (it is easy to understand)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_211">p. 211</a>: calcualations to calculations (He bases his calculations upon)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_212">p. 212</a>: chrystalize to crystalize (All religions crystalize)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_213">p. 213</a>: embassadors to ambassadors (sends its great ambassadors)</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>Irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. wide-spread vs. widespread, class-room vs. classroom) and variant spellings (e.g. cigaret) have not been corrected.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30134 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Elementary Theosophy
+
+Author: L. W. Rogers
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2009 [EBook #30134]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by V. L. Simpson, S.D., and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY
+
+
+         L. W. ROGERS
+
+
+         LOS ANGELES
+  THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN
+            1917
+
+
+          Copyright
+             By
+        L. W. Rogers
+            1917
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+To comprehend the significance of great world changes, before Time has
+fully done his work, is difficult. While mighty events are still in
+their formative period the future is obscure. But our inability to
+outline the future cannot blind us to the unmistakable trend of the
+evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted
+Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most
+un-Christian war of recorded history and in which human atrocity has
+reached a point that leaves us vaguely groping for a rational
+explanation of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than twenty
+nations involved have been forced into measures and methods before
+unknown and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of
+governments. With these startling facts of religious and political
+significance before us thoughtful people are beginning to ask if we are
+not upon the threshold of a complete breaking down of modern
+civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in which direct
+government by the people throughout the entire world will be coincident
+with the rise of a universal religion based on the brotherhood of man.
+
+In such a time any contribution to current literature that will help to
+clear the ground of misconceptions and to bring to the attention of
+those interested in such things, that set of fundamental natural truths
+known as theosophy, may perhaps be helpful. Whether or not the world is
+about to recast its ethical code there can at least be no doubt that it
+is eagerly seeking reliable evidence that we live after bodily death and
+that it will welcome a hypothesis of immortality that is inherently
+reasonable and therefore satisfies the intellect as well as the heart.
+Those who are dissatisfied with the old answers to the riddle of
+existence and demand that Faith and Reason shall walk hand in hand, may
+find in the following pages some explanation of the puzzling things in
+life--an explanation that disregards neither the intuitions of religion
+nor the facts of science.
+
+Of course no pretension is made of fully covering the ground. The book
+is a student's presentation of some of the phases of theosophy as he
+understands them. They are presented with no authority whatever, and are
+merely an attempt to discuss in simple language some of the fundamental
+truths about the human being. No claim is made to originality but it is
+hoped that by putting the old truths in a somewhat different way, with
+new illustrations and arguments, they may perhaps be seen from a new
+viewpoint. The intention has been to present elementary theosophy simply
+and clearly and in the language familiar to the ordinary newspaper
+reader. All technical terms and expressions have been avoided and the
+reader will not find a single foreign word in the book.
+
+L. W. R.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  I.    THEOSOPHY                            9
+
+  II.   THE IMMANENCE OF GOD                15
+
+  III.  THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL           23
+
+  IV.   LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH             29
+
+  V.    THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD              43
+
+  VI.   THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS      49
+
+  VII.  DEATH                               59
+
+  VIII. THE ASTRAL WORLD                    69
+
+  IX.   REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS        103
+
+  X.    REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE               135
+
+  XI.   REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY             153
+
+  XII.  WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER             167
+
+  XIII. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT                181
+
+  XIV.  THE FORCES WE GENERATE             187
+
+  XV.   SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION            205
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THEOSOPHY
+
+
+Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress. Very much that we believe
+to be original with us at the time of its discovery or invention proves
+in time to have been known to earlier civilizations. The elevator, or
+lift, is a very modern invention and we supposed it to be a natural
+development of our civilization, with its intensive characteristics,
+until an antiquarian startled us with the announcement that it was used
+in Rome over two thousand years ago; not, of course, as we use it, but
+for the same purpose, and involving the same principles. A half century
+ago our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths of evolution
+that were being discovered and placed before western civilization. But
+as we learn more and more of the thought and intellectual life of the
+Orient it becomes clear that the idea of evolution permeated that part
+of the world centuries ago. Even the most recent and startling
+scientific discoveries occasionally serve to prove that what we supposed
+to be the fantastic beliefs of the ancients were really truths of nature
+that we were not yet able to comprehend! The transmutation of metals is
+an example. We have already gone far enough in that direction to show
+that the alchemists of old were not the foolish and superstitious people
+we supposed them to be. We have given far too little credit to past
+civilizations and we are coming to understand now that we have rated
+them too low. Our modesty must necessarily increase as it becomes
+clearer that much of our supposed contribution to the world's progress
+is not invention but rediscovery. We are beginning to see that it is not
+safe to put aside without careful examination an idea or a belief that
+was current in the world thousands of years ago. Like the supposed folly
+of the alchemists it may contain profound truths of nature that have
+thus far been foreign to our modes of thinking.
+
+Theosophy is both very old and very new--very old because the principles
+it contains were known and taught in the oldest civilizations, and very
+new because it includes the latest investigations of the present day. It
+is sometimes said by those who desire to speak lightly of it that it is
+a philosophy borrowed from the Buddhists, or at least from the Orient.
+That is, of course, an erroneous view. It is true that the Buddhists
+hold some beliefs in common with theosophists. It is also true that
+Methodists hold some beliefs in common with Unitarians, but that does
+not show that Unitarianism was borrowed from Wesley! When different
+people study the same facts of nature they are likely to arrive at
+substantially the same conclusions. Theosophy is based upon certain
+truths of nature. Those who study those truths and formulate a belief
+from them must reasonably be expected to resemble theosophists in their
+views. Buddhism is not unique in resembling theosophy. In the same list
+may be placed the Vedanta philosophy, the Cabala of the Jews, the
+teachings of the Christian Gnostics, and the philosophy of the Stoics.
+The more general charge must also be denied; theosophy is not something
+transplanted from the Orient. It belongs to the race, as the earth does,
+and cannot be localized, even to a continent. As it is taught today in
+Europe and America it is probably unknown to the masses of the Orient,
+for the great general truths it embodies have here the special
+application and peculiar emphasis required by a totally different
+civilization. But that theosophical principles were earlier known and
+more widely accepted in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no
+possible way lessen their value to us. Precisely the same thing is true
+of the principles of mathematics. The science of mathematics reached
+European civilization directly from the Arabs, but we do not foolishly
+decline to make use of the knowledge on that account.
+
+The literal meaning of the word theosophy is self-evident--knowledge of
+God. It has three aspects, determined by the different ways in which the
+human being acquires knowledge--through the study of concrete facts, by
+the study of the relationship of the individual consciousness to its
+source, and through the use of reasoning faculties in constructing a
+logical explanation of life and its purpose. In one aspect it is,
+therefore, a science. It deals with the tangible, with the facts and
+phenomena of the material scientist and makes its appeal to the evidence
+of the physical senses. In another aspect it is a religion. It deals
+with the relationship between the source of all consciousness and its
+multiplicity of individual expressions; with the complex relationships
+that arise between these personalities; with the duties and obligations
+which thus come into existence; with the evolution of the individual
+consciousness and its ultimate translation to higher spheres. In its
+other aspect it is a philosophy of life. It deals with man, his origin,
+his evolution, his destiny. It seeks to explain the universe and to
+throw a flood of light upon the problem of existence that will enable
+those who study its wisdom to go forward in their evolution rapidly,
+safely and comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the darkness of
+ignorance, reaping as they go the painful harvests of misdirected
+energy.
+
+While theosophy is distinctly a science and a philosophy it is not, in
+the same full sense, a religion. It has its distinctive religious
+aspect, it is true, but when we speak of a religion we usually have in
+mind a certain set of religious dogmas and a church that propagates
+them. Theosophy is a universal thing like mathematics--a body of natural
+truths applicable to all phases of life. It sees all religions as
+equally important, as peculiarly adapted to the varying civilizations in
+which they are found, and it presents a synthesis of the fundamental
+principles upon which all of them rest.
+
+From all of this it will be seen that there is a vast difference
+between theosophy and theology. Theosophy declares the immortality of
+man but not as a religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in
+relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no such word as
+"faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its faith arises from the constancy
+of natural law, the balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious
+adjustment of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient in that it is the
+great fund of ancient wisdom about man and his earth, that has come down
+through countless centuries, reaching far back into prehistoric times.
+But added to that hoary wisdom are the up-to-date facts that have been
+acquired by its most successful students, who have evolved their
+consciousness to levels transcending the physical senses--facts which,
+however, do not derive their authority from the method of their
+discovery but from their inherent reasonableness. A detailed discussion
+of such methods of consciousness and the proper value to be placed upon
+such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter. It is enough now
+to warn the reader against the error of confusing the pronouncements of
+pseudo psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who have already
+done much toward placing a scientific foundation beneath the universal
+hope of immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
+
+
+The antagonism between scientific and religious thought was the cause of
+the greatest controversy in the intellectual world in the nineteenth
+century. If the early teaching of the Christian Church had not been lost
+the conflict could not have arisen. The Gnostic philosophers, who were
+the intellect and heart of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true
+that it could not possibly come into collision with any fact of science.
+But unfortunately they were enormously outnumbered by the ignorant and
+the authority passed wholly into their hands. It was inevitable that
+misunderstanding should follow. The gross materialization of the early
+teaching, the superstition, the bigotry and the persecution of the
+Middle Ages was a perfectly natural result. That perverted,
+materialistic view has come down to us, and even now gives trend to the
+religious thought of Western civilization. Of that degradation of the
+early teaching the Encyclopedia Britannica says:
+
+      The conception of God as wholly external to man, a purely
+      mechanical theory of creation, is throughout Christendom
+      regarded as false to the teaching of the New Testament as
+      also to Christian experience.
+
+It is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but if it is so
+regarded "throughout Christendom" it is only on the part of its
+scholars; most certainly not by the masses of the people. The popular
+conception is undeniably that the relationship between God and man is
+identical with that between an inventor and an animated machine. It is
+an absolutely anthropomorphic view of the Supreme Being and thinks of
+God as being apart from man in precisely the same sense that a father is
+apart from his son. It may be an exalted, idealized conception of the
+relationship of father and son but it is nevertheless just that
+relationship, and along that line runs practically all the teaching and
+preaching of those who speak officially in modern religious
+interpretation. Emerson sought to counteract that popular misconception
+but he was regarded as a heretic by all but an infinitesimal portion of
+the church.
+
+The idea of the immanence of God is as different from the popular
+conception as noontide is different from midnight. It is so radically
+different that one who accepts that ancient belief must put aside his
+old ideas of what man is and raise him in dignity and potential power to
+a level that will, at first, seem actually startling; for it means, in
+its uttermost significance that God and man are but two phases of the
+one eternal life and consciousness that constitute our universe! The
+idea of the immanence of God is that He _is_ the universe; that the
+solar system is an emanation of the Supreme Being as clouds are an
+emanation of the sea, and that the relationship between God and man is
+not merely that of father and son but also that of ocean and raindrop.
+This conception makes man _a part of_ God, having potentially within him
+all the attributes and powers of the Supreme Being. It is the idea that
+nothing exists except God and that humanity is one portion of Him, and
+one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression of the waters that
+constitute the sea. The immanence of God is a conception of the universe
+that puts science and religion into perfect harmony with each other
+because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary creation takes
+its place.
+
+Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has such widespread dominion in
+Occidental thought the immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly
+emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him we live, and move,
+and have our being," is certainly very explicit and admits of no
+anthropomorphic interpretation. It could not be said that a son lives
+and moves in his father. The declaration presents the relationship of a
+lesser consciousness within a greater, and constituting a part of it.
+The essentially divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration in
+Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that the likeness is on the
+material side would, of course, be absurd. In divine essence, in latent
+power, in potential spirituality, man is an image of God, because he is
+a part of Him. The same idea is more directly put in the Psalms with the
+assertion, "ye are gods."[A] If the idea of the immanence of God is
+sound man, as a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
+Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve his latent powers
+into perfect expression.
+
+The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus in his teaching.
+Emerson's teaching of the immanence of God is unmistakable in both his
+prose and poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the soul where
+man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause, begins." Still more
+explicitly he puts it:
+
+      The realms of being to no other bow;
+      Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.
+
+The statement is as complete as it is emphatic. "Not only all are Thine,
+_but all are thou_." It's an unqualified assertion that humanity is a
+part of God, as leaves are part of a tree--not something a tree has
+created in the sense that a man creates a machine but something that is
+an emanation of the tree, and is a living part of it. Thus only has God
+made man. Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation, an
+evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being.
+
+It is upon the unity of all life that theosophy bases its declaration of
+universal brotherhood, regarding it as a fact in nature. The immanence
+of God gives a scientific basis of morality. The theosophical conception
+is that men are separated in form but are united in the one
+consciousness which is the life base of the universe. Their relationship
+to each other is somewhat like that of the fingers to each other--they
+are separate individuals on the form side but they are united in the
+one consciousness that animates the hand. If we imagine each finger to
+possess a consciousness of its own, which is limited to itself and
+cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall have a fair analogy of the
+unity and identity of interests of all living things. Under such
+circumstances an injury to one finger would not appear to the others as
+an injury to them, but if the finger consciousness could be extended to
+the hand the reality of the injury to all would be apparent. Likewise an
+injury to any human being is literally an injury to the race. The race
+does not recognize the truth of it just because, and only because, of
+the limitation of consciousness. Lowell put the fact clearly when he
+said:
+
+      He's true to God who's true to man;
+      Wherever wrong is done
+      To the humblest and weakest
+      'Neath the all-beholding sun,
+      That wrong is also done to us;
+      And they are slaves most base
+      Whose love of right is for themselves,
+      And not for all the race.
+
+He's true to God who's true to man because they are one life; because
+they are but different expressions of the one eternal consciousness;
+because they are as inseparable as the light and warmth of the sun. It
+follows that being true to man is fidelity to God.
+
+The popular idea is that people should be moral because that sort of
+conduct is pleasing to the Supreme Being and that He will, in the life
+beyond physical existence, in some way punish those who have broken the
+moral laws. It is belief in an external authority that threatens
+punishment as a deterrent to law breaking, as a state devises penalties
+commensurate with offenses. But the immanence of God represents a
+condition in which not punishments, but consequences, automatically
+follow all violations of natural law. Under such a state of affairs it
+would require no penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct,
+for it would be perceived that there is no possible escape from the
+consequences of an evil act.
+
+It is not difficult to see the relative value of the two systems of
+thought when put to a practical test in human affairs. Imagine an
+unscrupulous man of great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous
+fortune through sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings
+of others while he safely keeps just within the limits of the law. We
+can point out to him that while he is not violating the law, and cannot
+therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting injury upon
+others and consequently public opinion will condemn him. But such a man
+usually cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no good
+reason why he should not continue in his injurious work. But if he can
+be made to understand that all life is one and that we are so knit
+together in consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately
+react upon the person who inflicts it; if he once clearly understands
+that to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that to maim
+another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an
+exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow
+a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest
+could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of
+all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence
+of God furnishes a scientific basis of morality.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Psalms LXXXII--6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL
+
+
+If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we shall be forced to
+abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous creation of man and the
+earth on which he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible idea
+that the race came from an original human pair must be replaced by the
+hypothesis of the evolution of the soul.
+
+It was about the fact of evolution that the great storm of controversy
+raged between scientists and theologians in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first well
+understood. They seemed to question or deny the existence of God. Deep
+within humanity is intuitive religious belief. It is a natural faith
+that transcends all facts, like the faith of a child in its mother.
+Because evolution was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's
+inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy hope, and
+against fact and reason itself rose the protest of intuition with
+spiritual intensity. People felt more than they reasoned and cried out
+that science was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has proved
+that they had merely misinterpreted the meaning of evolution. Further
+understanding has shown that, instead of destroying the belief in God,
+evolution has given us a new and better understanding of the whole
+matter and has placed the hope of immortality on firmer ground than it
+previously occupied.
+
+Evolution is an established and generally accepted fact. No educated
+person now thinks of questioning it. It is settled beyond dispute that
+all things in the physical world have become what they are through a
+long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the most perfect in
+form and most complex in function have evolved from simpler ones. The
+age of miracle has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as its
+relation to the material world is concerned. It is no longer necessary
+to have a belief in an anthropomorphic God, performing feats in defiance
+of natural law, in order to account for that which exists. Science has
+reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown that, given nebulous
+physical matter, we can understand how the earth came into existence.
+
+But why should we stop with the application of the laws of evolution to
+material things? Only the outright materialist, who asserts that life is
+a product of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority in
+the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has asserted that there is no
+longer any such thing as scientific materialism.[B] Those who accept the
+idea of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily accept the
+idea of the evolution of the soul. How can consciousness possibly
+escape the laws that evolve the media for the expression of
+consciousness? There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as there
+is evolution of matter. The material and the spiritual, form and life,
+are inseparable. Indeed, scientific progress has now brought us to the
+point where matter, as such, practically disappears and we are face to
+face with the fact that matter is really but a manifestation of force.
+How, then, is it longer possible to speak of the soul and not accept the
+evolution of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than physiology.
+The phenomena of consciousness are as definitely studied as physical
+phenomena, and it is no more difficult to account for a myriad souls
+than to account for a million suns and their planets. The scientists who
+have taken the position that the universe has a spiritual side as well
+as a material side are among the most eminent and distinguished of the
+modern world. If evolution has produced the starry heavens from the
+material side it has likewise evolved the human souls of our world and
+others from the spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand
+the one than the other.
+
+From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief in the creation of
+the earth and the race by an act suddenly accomplished is, of course,
+preposterous. If we could know nothing back of the present moment and
+were called upon to account for the world as we see it--with its cities,
+its ships and railways, its cultivated fields and parks--many people who
+still believe in instantaneous creation of the soul would save
+themselves much mental exertion by declaring that God had made it all as
+it stands for the use and entertainment of man. But we know that it is
+utterly absurd to think of the world leaping into existence
+instantaneously--nothing existing one day and all trains running on time
+between ready-made cities the next, carrying ready-made people about. It
+sounds ridiculous only because we are putting it in material terms, but
+in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of the instantaneous
+creation of the creators of cities and railways.
+
+The idea that we are a sudden creation is only possible because of the
+very vague ideas of what human souls are. The chief difficulty with the
+popular notion that a human soul is as new as the body it inhabits is
+that it is a vague and indefinite conception of life, and the moment we
+begin to think seriously about it the weakness of the idea becomes
+apparent. Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of
+reasoning. How can one reason with a man who believes it possible for a
+soul to spring into existence from the void? What is the use in
+reasoning about the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole
+matter to say: "God did it"?
+
+One thing that prevents us from believing not only that millions of
+souls were created in the twinkling of an eye, but also that the world
+as it now is was likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know
+quite definitely the history of the world a little way into the past,
+and that history affirms that the earth and all life on it is the
+product of slow evolutionary growth.
+
+The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion on a scientific
+basis. Not only the origin of the soul but its development and its
+destiny at once appear in a new light. The mind is instinctively
+impressed with the dignity of the idea of the evolution of the soul,
+which, with its corollary, the immanence of God, makes the divinity of
+man a fact in nature.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Raymond: or Life and Death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH
+
+
+One of the really remarkable facts of modern life is the disinclination
+to accept at apparent value the scientific and other evidence there is
+to prove that consciousness persists after the death of the physical
+body. There is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much of
+it is offered by scientists of the highest standing; and yet the average
+man continues to speak of the subject as though nothing about it had yet
+been definitely learned. It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust
+itself very slowly to the truth, as it is discovered. Sometimes a
+generation passes away between the discovery and the general acceptance
+of a great truth. When we recall the intense opposition to the
+introduction of steam-driven boats and vehicles, and the slowness with
+which the world settles down to any radical change in its methods of
+thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the truth about the
+life after bodily death has waited so long for general recognition.
+
+The evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of consciousness is
+based is of two kinds--that furnished by physical science and that
+furnished by psychic science. Together they make a very complete case.
+
+The printed evidence of the first division--physical science--is
+voluminous. In addition to that gathered by the Society for Psychical
+Research there are the researches and experiments by the scientists of
+England, France and Italy, among whom are Crookes, Lodge, Flammarion and
+Lombroso. Crookes was a pioneer in the work of studying the human
+consciousness and tracing its activities beyond the change called death.
+All of that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge, which
+has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries and inventions, and
+has won for him world-wide fame, were brought to bear upon the subject,
+and for a period of four years he patiently investigated and
+experimented. Many illustrated articles prepared by him, fully
+describing his work, were published at the time in _The Journal of
+Science_ of which he was then the editor.
+
+Three vital points in psychic research were established by Sir William
+Crookes. One was that there is psychic force. He demonstrated its
+existence by levitation. He showed next, that the force is directed by
+intelligence. By various clever experiments he obtained most conclusive
+evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated that the intelligence
+directing the force is not that of living people. Crookes also went
+exhaustively into the subject of materialization and here, again, he was
+remarkably successful. He was the first scientist to photograph the
+materialized human form and engage in direct conversation with the
+person who thus returned from the mysterious life beyond. This evidence
+from the camera must be regarded as particularly interesting. It was
+received with much amazement at the time, but that was before we had
+revised our erroneous ideas about the nature of matter and before the
+day of liquid air. Materialization is no longer a startling idea, for
+that is precisely what liquid air is--a condensation of invisible matter
+to the point where it becomes tangible and can be weighed, measured,
+seen and otherwise known to the physical senses.
+
+All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his own premises and under
+the most rigid scientific conditions. All the methods and mechanism
+known to modern science were employed and he finally announced his
+complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness of the phenomena
+observed.
+
+As Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver Lodge is the latest
+of the famous scientists who have taken up the investigation of the
+continuity of consciousness. In a lecture upon the subject, before the
+Society for the Advancement of Science, he declared not only that the
+subject of life after physical death was one which science might
+legitimately and profitably investigate but that the existence of an
+invisible realm had been established. He declared the continent of an
+invisible world had been discovered, and added, "already a band of
+daring investigators have landed on its treacherous but promising
+shores."
+
+Different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds of psychic
+investigation and while Crookes made a detailed and careful study of
+materialization Lodge has given equally painstaking efforts to
+investigations by the use of that class of sensitives known as
+"mediums." A medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is
+not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric matter easily
+separates from the physical matter is a medium and can readily be
+utilized as a sort of telephone between the visible and the invisible
+planes. A medium is an abnormal person and is a good medium in
+proportion to the degree of abnormality. If the etheric matter of the
+body is easily extruded the physical body readily falls into the trance
+condition and the mechanism of conversation can be operated by the
+so-called "dead" person who has temporarily taken possession of it. In
+such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living-dead
+communicator. He is speaking directly himself, but he may often do it
+with great difficulty and not always succeed in accurately expressing
+the thought he has in mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts,
+moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand something of
+his difficulties it is not strange that such communications are
+frequently unsatisfactory. It is not often that an analogy can be found
+that will give a physical plane comprehension of a superphysical
+condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be had by thinking of a
+"party line" telephone that any one of a dozen people may use at any
+moment he can succeed in getting possession of it. A listener attempting
+to communicate with one of them may find that several others are
+constantly "switching in," much to his confusion. If distinction of
+voices due to sound were eliminated and then a stenographic record were
+to be made of all words reaching the listener he would find that it
+would often be fragmentary and trivial. That would not, however, prove
+that the conversation did not come from living beings nor that there
+was not at least one intelligent person among them. That scientists
+engaged in psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing
+more.
+
+It seems to be a common opinion that the evidential value of such
+psychic communications, even under the direction of a skilful scientist,
+cannot be very great. But there are ways of knowing. It is not at all
+difficult for the investigator to confine his work, not only to
+incidents unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts which the
+medium can not possibly comprehend. It is a matter of common knowledge
+that mediums are usually people without technical scientific knowledge.
+Some of them have some degree of education and some of them are
+illiterate. Some of the most celebrated belong to the peasant class of
+Europe.
+
+Let us suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge is about to attempt to communicate
+with a scientist who has passed on to join the living dead. He will ask
+technical scientific questions that nobody but a scientist can answer
+and that the medium can by no possibility even understand when they are
+answered. Or suppose he gets a communication from the medium's hand
+signed by a great author. The living dead man writes a criticism, let us
+say, of some new book and does it in his characteristic style, full of
+the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment. Surely nobody
+can believe that the medium is producing such things on her own account.
+If she could do so she would not be earning her living as a medium. But
+the scientists do not stop there. We often hear the expression
+"cross-correspondence." Just what do they mean by that and in what way
+does it prove the personal identity of a dead man who is communicating?
+The principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method. Sometimes
+a guest leaves a sum of money with the clerk, and he wishes to be
+perfectly sure of his identity when he returns to claim it. He requests
+the guest to put his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in two,
+gives him one piece and keeps the other. That gives him a double proof
+of identity. When he comes for his money he must first give his name and
+then produce the piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the
+piece the clerk has retained, the two together making the whole and
+restoring the signature. It's one of the simplest but most satisfactory
+proofs possible. Neither piece of that card alone is intelligible. If
+one piece should be lost and others should find it nobody could read it
+or make anything of it. Nobody could guess the name unless he had the
+other piece. He knows only about the part he holds. He may be a thief
+and may earnestly desire to use what he has found to defraud, but he is
+helpless because he has only one of the two parts it requires to make an
+intelligible whole. That is the principle involved in identity by
+cross-correspondence. Part of a message is written through one medium
+and part through another medium at another time in another place and
+neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence until it is
+fitted into the other part; and that prevents a medium who is dishonest
+from manufacturing a story that may be more or less plausible.
+
+We are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific investigation for
+evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently
+sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is
+far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the
+average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult
+experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed
+relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of
+thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances
+which, while possessing little evidential value from the scientific
+viewpoint, nevertheless have a legitimate place in the great mass of
+psychic phenomena. But more convincing is the evidence furnished in
+hundreds of homes where some member of the family acts as automatic
+writer or medium.
+
+The most convincing evidence is not always scientific evidence. What can
+be more convincing than the evidence furnished in one's home by members
+of the family? There is much such evidence, obtained both through
+mediums and by automatic writing.
+
+Automatic writing--that is, the control of the hand of a living person
+to record the thoughts of another who has lost the physical body--is
+perhaps one of the least objectionable ways in which communications have
+come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted for some useful
+books with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions. Here,
+of course, as elsewhere, discrimination must be used, for the wise and
+foolish, the useful and useless are to be found side by side. In
+accepting or rejecting, one must use his common sense just as he does on
+this plane in separating the valuable from the worthless. In such
+matters we should not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are
+unchanged in intellect and morality. The genius here is the genius there
+and the living fool is not different from the dead one. It is often
+those who know the least who are the most anxious to tell it and the
+medium or automatic writer sometimes gives them the opportunity.
+Consequently we get many foolish communications and an enormous amount
+of commonplace platitude is delivered at seances. But it is equally true
+that unquestionable proof of personal identity is sometimes secured.
+
+There is much valuable non-scientific evidence that the consciousness
+survives the loss of the physical body and it frequently comes from
+sources that insure respectful attention. The two following stories of
+that kind are cited as corroboration of the scientific evidence.
+
+Little touches of the personality often constitute the most convincing
+of all evidence. It is one thing to show that people in general live
+after physical death. It is quite a different matter to establish the
+personal identity of one of them who is communicating, and that is one
+of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent journalist,
+gives us some valuable evidence on personal identity. In his earlier
+years he had studied art in London. Shortly before the death of Turner,
+the great artist had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on
+painting, but had not redeemed the promise at the time of passing away.
+Stillman had a friend whose daughter was mediumistic and he decided to
+experiment. Immediately on beginning the seance the young girl was taken
+possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman asked his
+question silently, speaking no words, but mentally requesting Turner to
+write his name. The only reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He
+then asked if he would give some advice on painting. The response was
+another decided negative. Stillman felt that he was foolishly wasting
+his time and declared the seance at an end. But the girl sat silent.
+Then after a moment she slowly arose with the air of decrepitude, took a
+lithograph from the wall and went through the pantomime of stretching a
+sheet of paper on a drawing board, sharpening a pencil, tracing the
+outline, the washing-in of a drawing, etc., and then proceeded to show a
+simple but surprising method of taking out the lights. "Do you mean to
+say that Turner got his effects in that way?" asked the incredulous
+young artist. The answer was an emphatic affirmative. Stillman then
+asked if the central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain in the
+well known drawing "Llanthony Abbey" by Turner, had been done in that
+way and was answered by another emphatic affirmative. So sure was the
+young artist that this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust
+and abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling upon Ruskin
+and related the experience. Ruskin, who had known the celebrated dead
+artist intimately, declared that the contrariness of the medium at the
+beginning of the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But
+what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence, was that the
+drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession and eagerly it was
+brought down from the wall for examination. After close scrutiny the
+great art critic and the young artist agreed that, beyond dispute, the
+drawing _had_ been done in the way described.
+
+Such evidence has an added value when it comes from those who are
+neither spiritualists nor professional investigators, but who have the
+things they doubt thrust upon them in such convincing manner that they
+feel impelled to record their experience for the enlightenment of
+others. In the last literary work[C] done by Carl Schurz, we are given,
+quite incidentally, his testimony that at a seance soon after the Civil
+War he was told the future in such detail as to leave no possible room
+for the explanation of coincidence. It was in July, 1865, when Schurz
+was on his way to Washington, whither he had been summoned by President
+Johnson, that he stopped in Philadelphia at the home of his friend, Dr.
+Tiedemann. The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years old, could do
+automatic writing. As a matter of interest and amusement in the family
+circle the girl gave an exhibition of her psychic abilities. When Schurz
+was invited to ask for a communication he not unnaturally requested one
+from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for he had been personally
+acquainted with him. The girl wrote a message purporting to come from
+Lincoln. It related to politics and proved, in time, to have been an
+accurate prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not transpire for
+more than three years! Schurz lived in Wisconsin at the time and had no
+intention of changing his residence, nor did he do so until two years
+later. The message which the girl wrote asserted that Schurz would be
+elected to the United States senate _from Missouri_. He did not regard
+the message as authentic and naturally enough considered the prophecy
+absurd. In 1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in January,
+1869, he was elected United States senator by the Missouri legislature.
+
+So far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will be understood,
+of course, that no attempt is here made to present that. The intention
+is merely to call attention to some of the eminent scientists who have
+done notable work and to mention a few of the more interesting
+discoveries made. Those who desire to come into possession of the
+evidence in full will find upon examination that it is voluminous.
+
+From the viewpoint of physical science alone the evidence of the
+continuity of consciousness is not only convincing but conclusive. Yet
+occult science has much more to offer. To those who have no personal
+knowledge of the existence of occult faculties, such evidence can be
+offered only upon the inherent reasonableness of the statements made.
+
+The truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, must slowly win its
+way to general acceptance. While large numbers of people still scoff at
+it, even as the world not so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a
+fantastic theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless a
+large and rapidly growing number who personally know the truth about
+clairvoyance. There is every conceivable grade of clairvoyant power and
+some degree of superphysical sensitiveness is becoming rather common.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that which is most in
+evidence with the public is not calculated to inspire confidence. It is
+employed almost exclusively in what is known as "fortune telling" and
+is often practiced by those who are interested only in the money they
+can earn by it. As a matter of course, trickery and fraud are found
+associated with it among such people, and those amongst them who are
+both capable and honest suffer on account of it.
+
+The fortune telling clairvoyant is usually one who was born with "second
+sight," as the Scotch have named it, and almost without an exception
+they do not in the least understand its rationale. They find certain
+facts in their consciousness that could not be known to them by the
+physical senses, but why or how they get the information they do not
+know. That form of clairvoyance is a sensitiveness related to the
+sympathetic nervous system, the center of which is the solar plexus. It
+has no relationship whatever to the mind, no association with
+intelligence, and will often--indeed, commonly--be possessed by the most
+ignorant and uncouth. It is much more common among Indians and negroes
+than among more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and will slowly
+disappear from the race. It belongs to the realm of emotion, not
+thought.
+
+The higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing," is associated
+with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and its seat is in the brain. It
+is not a "natural gift"[D] like the other, although it is latent in all
+human beings. It has been highly developed in some who have had the
+unusual opportunity of long training under the direct supervision of
+great psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never to be found among
+the fortune tellers. Only people with serious views of life and intense
+devotion to human service would have the patience and endurance to
+undergo such training and only those of singular purity of life would
+have any possibility of success. Such clairvoyants are people of keen
+intelligence. By special training and tremendous effort, not possible to
+most of us, they have pressed forward in evolution and attained a
+development that the race will be many a century in reaching.
+
+It is by the use of this exalted order of clairvoyance that invisible
+realms are explored, and additional knowledge is accumulated to the
+ancient wisdom. Such a clairvoyant is not a medium. The medium
+surrenders his physical mechanism for the use of another, who speaks
+through it, and at the close of the seance the medium knows nothing of
+what has occurred. The clairvoyant is always in possession of his senses
+and is fully aware of what is occurring. He is the explorer and
+discoverer. He deals with the facts of the life after bodily death in a
+different way than the physical scientist does but it is soon found by
+the student that the physical scientist and the psychic scientist
+corroborate each other. Together they bring overwhelming evidence to
+support the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness we
+have at this moment will never cease to be; that our individuality, with
+all its present memories, will eternally persist; that what we call
+death is in reality but a forward step in an orderly evolutionary
+journey and an entrance upon a more joyous phase of life, which is not
+remarkably different from that we live today. The sum total of the
+knowledge that we have gained through the combined work of the physical
+scientists and the occult scientists leads us to the conclusion that the
+death of the physical body means neither the annihilation of
+consciousness nor a radical change in consciousness. It is, in fact, but
+the release of consciousness from its confinement to the physical form,
+as a song-bird is released from a cage to the joyous freedom of a wider
+world, where woods and stream and field and sky give new impulse to its
+innate characteristics.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p. 154.
+
+[D] There are, of course, really no natural gifts. Nature does not favor
+some and ignore others. When a few possess what others do not have, they
+earned it by giving special attention to its development or as in the
+case of the psychic sensitiveness of the sympathetic nervous system, it
+is vestigial, and has been possessed by the race in earlier ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD
+
+
+In a treatise on elementary theosophy the solar system may be reckoned
+as our universe and we shall have no need of considering more than a
+small fragment of even that. It is septenary in constitution, as may be
+seen in its vibrations expressed in color and sound. Beyond the seven
+colors of the prism we have only tints and outside the seven notes we
+can get only overtones or undertones. There are likewise seven planes in
+the system but less than half of them require our attention, for the
+evolutionary field of the human soul is the three lower planes, known as
+the physical, astral and mental. When the human being has outgrown them
+in evolution he passes on to superhuman evolution.
+
+The word "plane," so often encountered in theosophical literature,
+should perhaps have some definition. It has a wide application and is
+used as a synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring to
+the physical plane the term embraces all we know of earth and sky and
+life through the physical senses.
+
+There are seven planes in our solar system because of the seven
+different combinations of its ultimate atoms. Each plane consists of a
+totally different grade of matter than the next plane, but all have for
+their base the ultimate atom of the solar system. When modern science
+discovered, to its astonishment, that the physical atom was a composite
+body it confirmed the theosophical teaching that the ultimate physical
+atom was _not_ the final point of division. Theosophy teaches that when
+the ultimate physical atom is disintegrated its particles become the
+coarsest matter of the next plane or region above it--the astral plane.
+The process repeated with astral matter results in driving its ultimate
+atom from the highest level of the astral plane or world to the lowest
+of the mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom is the brick
+of the universe stated a great truth, for of its combinations all forms
+are built; and if the idea be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar
+system it will then be true that of such "bricks" all the planes are
+built.
+
+The relationship of the planes to each other is that of interpenetrating
+spheres of matter. The physical plane, consisting of the earth and its
+atmosphere, is surrounded and interpenetrated by the astral plane, or
+world, which is an enormously larger globe of exceedingly tenuous
+matter. This vast sphere of invisible matter is _within_ the earth as
+well as beyond it, interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the
+earth's center. Its grossest grade of matter is so rare, and its
+vibrations so intense, that they cannot affect the physical senses and
+therefore we remain unconscious of it while that matter moves freely
+through all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life and
+activities for precisely the same reason that we know nothing of the
+messages of intelligence carried on the vibrations of the wireless
+telegraph, although they pass through the room where we sit. We have no
+sense organs with which it is possible to register such vibrations.
+Messages conveying intelligence of tremendous import, involving the
+movements of vast armies, the fall of empires and the destinies of great
+nations, flow through the very space we occupy but we are wholly
+unconscious of them. Even so we remain blind and deaf to the stupendous
+activities of life and consciousness in the astral world,
+notwithstanding the fact that it surrounds and permeates us while its
+forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the physical world as freely as
+water flows through a sieve.
+
+The mental world constitutes a region of our earth still more vast than
+the astral portion of it. As the astral sphere encloses the physical
+globe, the mental encompasses both, enclosing them and also
+interpenetrating them to the earth's center. The term "mental world" may
+seem confusing to some because we are accustomed to think of the mental
+and the material as being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or
+plane, of theosophy, is a world of _matter_, not merely thought. It is
+matter, however, of such remarkable tenuosity that it may properly be
+called mind-stuff, and in its rarest levels it is said to be "formless"
+so far as the existence of what the physical senses know as form is
+concerned.
+
+All three of these worlds, or planes--the physical, astral and
+mental--are, then, worlds of matter, of form, of activity, of thought
+and of enterprise. They are concentric globes, the physical enclosed by
+the astral, and both physical and astral enclosed by the mental. Within
+and without all physical matter are both astral and mental matter. Every
+physical atom is surrounded and permeated by astral and mental matter.
+The relationship is precisely that which exists between the ether and
+the lower grades of physical matter.
+
+If the relationship of the three worlds--physical, astral and mental--is
+fully understood later confusion of thought will be avoided. Physical
+language is not capable of fully expressing much with which students of
+the occult must deal. Because there is nothing better for the purpose,
+words must be used that express but a part of the truth and may
+sometimes prove misleading unless the constitution and relationship of
+the three spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary to speak of
+higher and lower worlds, or planes, inner or outer, and of the soul
+coming "down" into the material world when, as a matter of fact, _no
+movement in space_ is under consideration. The astral is commonly spoken
+of as an inner plane and while it truly is so because it can be known
+only to astral senses by a withdrawal of the consciousness from its
+exterior, material body, it is also true that the astral world is
+outside the physical because it envelops it as the sea does a sponge.
+We usually speak of coming down from higher planes to lower and that may
+be true not only in the sense of changing the state of consciousness
+from higher vibrations to lower ones but it _could_ mean a journey in
+space from a point in the astral plane above the physical globe to a
+point at its surface. "Up" and "down" are relative, not absolute. "Down"
+for us is toward the earth's center and "up" is the opposite direction.
+A spire in the Occident and a spire in the Orient are both said to be
+pointing upward but they are pointing in opposite directions. On most
+parts of the earth's surface we have four directions, while at the poles
+there is, of course, but one direction--south or north, as the case may
+be. East, west and north disappear at the north pole. Reflection upon
+such facts leads one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility of
+space itself disappearing from the inner planes--space as we know it.
+
+The matter of each of the planes consists of seven classes. We are
+familiar with the solids, liquids and gases of the physical plane, and
+to them must be added four grades of the ether. The seven grades of
+matter of the astral and mental worlds constitute an important part of
+the mechanism for the soul's evolution, for they determine the state of
+consciousness in the life beyond the physical plane. But a study of
+those states of consciousness belongs to a later chapter.
+
+A difficulty which the student of theosophy should make an early effort
+to eliminate, is the tendency to think of invisible realms as unreal. It
+should not be forgotten that it is only the limitation of the physical
+senses that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond the visible.
+We should keep in mind the fact that the invisible realms are composed
+of matter as certainly as the air is matter, or a stone is matter. The
+water in a pan may evaporate, but it does not cease to be matter because
+it has passed beyond the ken of the physical senses. It will some time
+condense once more and play its part as the liquid, water, or as the
+solid, ice. Only when matter is in certain forms can we know of its
+existence through the physical senses.
+
+We frequently hear people who are students of the occult speak of a
+deceased person as having left the earth. But passing into the astral
+plane, or world, is not, of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral
+world and the mental world are divisions of the earth. As the atmosphere
+is invisible and yet is a part of the earth's physical matter, so the
+invisible astral and mental regions are other parts of the earth. They
+are properly called worlds because the activities in consciousness that
+make up existence there are as remote from ours as though they were upon
+another planet. We have erroneously supposed that with the physical
+senses we really see and know the earth, whereas we have known only that
+small fragment of the earth that consists of physical matter. Beyond the
+limitation of our poor senses stretch in unsuspected grandeur vaster
+regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations of an intenser life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+The soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness, or
+the life of the solar Logos; an individualized portion of the universal
+mind. That fragment of the divine life, with its latent God-like
+attributes, is expressed through a mechanism of consciousness that is
+formed of the matter of the various planes. Naturally enough it is
+expressed more fully upon the higher planes than upon the lower. At a
+very high level it is known as the monad. When it reaches down into the
+higher subdivisions of the mental world it is the ego, a lesser
+expression of the same divine life that pours from the Logos through the
+monad--lesser because it is then functioning through the denser matter
+of a lower level.
+
+The knowledge that has been gained about the nature of matter in recent
+years is helpful in understanding the activities of consciousness. The
+atom is found to be a center of force, and we are at the point where
+matter, as we have known it, disappears. All the force and consciousness
+of the solar system is, of course, but the life of the Logos, and on
+higher planes the distinctions we observe here fade out. Matter becomes
+a very different thing from the matter we know. The ether of the
+physical world is almost inconceivably tenuous matter. Yet it is gross
+when compared to the lowest grade of astral matter. The matter of the
+mental world is enormously rarer than the most tenuous matter of the
+astral world. In view of these facts it requires no stress of the
+imagination to understand that the matter of the higher planes is
+responsive to the vibrations of consciousness.
+
+The outraying energies of the individualized center of consciousness act
+upon the matter of the plane and draw about it a film that slowly grows
+into a vehicle through which consciousness can be more fully expressed,
+and which serves as a point of vantage from which its expression can be
+extended to lower planes.
+
+The seven subdivisions of the mental world fall naturally into two
+groups, composed of the three higher and the four lower grades of
+matter. The ego, anchored in the matter of the two planes above the
+mental world, descends to the upper levels of the mental and the vesture
+of matter with which it clothes itself is known as the causal body.
+Sending its energies downward, or outward, to the lower levels of the
+mental world, it establishes itself there in what slowly becomes a
+mental body. Again in the astral world the process is repeated and a
+vehicle of consciousness is formed of astral matter. The physical body
+is the lowest and last of the vehicles to be formed and as it is slowly
+built, in the months preceding birth, the matter it contains falls into
+place under the operation of occult laws which permit no element of
+chance to enter into its construction.
+
+Each of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness on the plane
+to which it belongs. The soul is evolving simultaneously in each of the
+worlds, physical, astral and mental, and these various bodies enable it
+to receive the vibrations of the plane they belong to and thus to be
+conscious there. The mental body is the seat of intellectual activity.
+Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes through the astral body
+into the physical brain. Whenever we think we are using the mental body.
+The astral body is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All emotion
+passes from it to the physical body to be expressed in the material
+world. The astral world is also called the emotional world, as the
+mental plane is called the mental world. The physical body is the soul's
+instrument of action. It attaches it to the physical world, enables the
+consciousness to contact material objects and to move and express on the
+material plane the thoughts and emotions generated in the mental and
+astral bodies.
+
+Another part of the mechanism of consciousness is known as the etheric
+double. But it is only a link in the chain and not a body through which
+the soul can function. It is composed of the etheric matter of the
+physical world and connects the astral body with the physical body. As
+every atom of physical matter is surrounded and permeated by etheric
+matter, it follows that the physical body has its duplicate in etheric
+matter. "Etheric double" is a very appropriate name since it is a
+perfect duplicate of the physical body in etheric matter. It serves the
+purpose of supplying the life force to the nervous system and is the
+medium through which sensation is conveyed. The action of an anaesthetic
+drives out so much of the matter of the etheric double that the
+connection is broken and sensation in the physical body ceases.
+
+One of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear conception of the
+constitution of man, and realizing that he is a soul functioning through
+various vehicles of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of thought
+common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed to thinking of the
+physical body itself as being the man, and if there is any thought at
+all of the consciousness surviving the death of the body it is very
+vague and indefinite as to where it exists and how it is expressed. Very
+little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity of the belief
+that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of
+twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real
+man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial
+disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are
+but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are
+expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a
+planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument for a
+purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body is a variable mass. It
+may increase or diminish greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There
+is no permanent relationship between the man and the physical matter
+which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness. According to the
+physiologists every atom of the body changes within a period of a few
+years. The cells wear out, break down and pass away to be replaced by
+new matter. Not a particle of the physical matter that was in our bodies
+seven years ago is there now, and none that is there now will remain.
+Within seven years, or less, we shall have bodies composed of new matter
+as certainly as an infant's is.
+
+Of course such reconstruction of the body does not change its
+appearance. It is built on the same lines. It is as it would be with
+some very old cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly
+rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The roof serves its time
+and is replaced. The walls crumble first in one place and then another
+until they have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand years
+has passed there may be none of the original material in the building,
+yet its appearance is unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have
+passed away and will be growing in the trees and blooming in the flowers
+in a few years. The bodies we shall then have are now scattered through
+the world. They will be brought together during that time and will come
+from many parts of the earth.
+
+The physical senses continually deceive us and nowhere more than in our
+ideas about the physical body. It is an unstable mass of matter, in
+constant motion, with great gulfs of space between its atoms. Emerson
+was very far ahead of his time and it took science a half century to
+catch up with him and learn that he had recorded a fact in nature when
+he wrote:
+
+      Atom from atom yawns as far
+      As earth from moon, or star from star.
+
+In 1908 the _Scientific American Supplement_, commenting on our
+reconstructed ideas about matter, remarked that the actual mass of the
+physical body to the apparent mass was about one to one million!
+
+If the physical body is merely an organized mass of matter, continually
+varying, constantly coming and going, and having no permanent
+relationship to the consciousness that functions through it, what reason
+is there for believing that it is the man? Does it seem strange that the
+center of consciousness should be able to draw about itself on the
+higher planes aggregations of matter and finally to express itself on
+the material plane through the mass of matter we call the body? If that
+is mysterious quite as miraculous things are going on constantly about
+us unnoticed. Thoreau calls attention to the fact that we become so
+accustomed to the marvelous expressions of life all about us that we are
+oblivious of the phenomena that are taking place. Commenting on the
+magic possible to nature he says:
+
+      "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where
+      no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed--a, to me,
+      equally mysterious origin for it. Convince me that you have
+      a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.... In
+      the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the
+      Patent Office, and labeled, I think, 'Poitrine jaune
+      grosse,' large yellow squash. Two came up, and one bore a
+      squash which weighed 123½ pounds, the other bore four,
+      weighing together 186¼ pounds. Who would have believed
+      that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that
+      corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to
+      catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace
+      of terriers which unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which
+      will find other things in that corner of my garden. Perfect
+      alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end,
+      and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible
+      treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value
+      which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz
+      about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour to see a
+      juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them
+      it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than
+      light."[E]
+
+A seed is a center of force through which life, at a much lower level
+than the human, flows and gathers about that center the material mass
+that serves the purpose of its lowly evolution. At the human level
+consciousness has become self-consciousness and a marvelously complex
+mechanism is required to express it and serve the purpose of its farther
+evolution.
+
+This complex mechanism of consciousness, composed of the various bodies
+through which the ego expresses itself at different levels, is used as a
+whole for functioning on the physical plane. But when the ego is
+functioning no farther down than the astral plane, the physical body
+is, of course, temporarily discarded. It is then in the condition known
+as sleep, or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the
+consciousness from the physical body. When the separation occurs in the
+case of the medium it is called a trance. The cause of the inert
+condition of the physical body is the same in both cases--the withdrawal
+of the consciousness of the ego. The physical body is then unoccupied,
+but the consciousness maintains magnetic connection with it. In death
+that tie is severed and the consciousness can return to the body no
+more. Instances in which the apparently dead are brought back to life
+are cases where the magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there is
+every appearance of death.
+
+In form and feature the physical body has its exact duplicate in the
+astral body, and in it we function in the astral world whenever the
+separation between the two occurs, whether from sleep or death. In sleep
+the consciousness, expressing itself in the astral body in the astral
+world, may be turned dreamily inward or it may be turned outward and be
+vividly aware of the life and activities of that world. But there is
+small chance that any memory of it will come through into the physical
+consciousness upon awakening. Occasionally, however, it does occur and
+then it is usually remembered as a very vivid dream. In illness, and
+other abnormal conditions, the connection between the physical and
+astral consciousness is much closer. At a comparatively high point in
+evolution the two states of consciousness merge. The man is then
+continuously conscious, and has a full memory in the physical brain of
+all his activities in the astral world during the hours when the
+physical body was asleep.
+
+Consciousness is, of course, at its worst when expressed through the
+limitation of its lower vehicles. Any person, whether brilliant or
+stupid, will be much abler and keener on the astral plane than on the
+physical, because in sleep, and after death, he has lost the limitations
+imposed by physical matter. But the degree of restriction is variable
+and depends much upon the _kind_ of matter of which the brain and body
+are composed; for the physical atoms vary greatly, and as they come and
+go in the passing years the body may either become purified and refined
+or it may grow grosser and coarser. By careful attention to food and
+drink, and by control of the emotions, the limitations of physical
+matter may be lessened and a much higher and more efficient state of
+consciousness in the physical body can be attained.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[E] The Succession of Forest Trees.--Thoreau.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DEATH
+
+
+Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly associated with a
+feeling of fear is because we give so little thought to it. Most people
+seem never to think of the subject at all until death invades the home
+and threatens some member of the family. Then terror fills the mind and
+all but paralyzes the reasoning faculties.
+
+Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental civilization, is
+eloquent testimony to the materialism of our times. It is doubt about
+the future that causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific
+basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear of death
+disappear. It is feared because it seems like annihilation. If people
+really believed in a heavenly existence beyond the physical life they
+could not possibly be filled with terror at the prospect of entering it.
+If a man's religion has not given him a genuine confidence in a future
+life, and made it as much of a reality to him as this life is, it has
+failed to do what we have a right to demand of religion. If it does not
+enable him to look upon the face of his dead without a doubt, or a fear,
+there is something wrong, either with his religion or with his
+comprehension of it. What possible reason is there for fearing death? A
+thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not be pernicious. To
+regard death as a disastrous thing would be an indictment of the sanity
+of nature.
+
+Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of experience. It is the
+annihilation of nothing but the physical body, in its aspect of an
+instrument of activity and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the
+physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together in the human form
+for temporary use, are, in death, released from the cohesive force of a
+living organism and will return whence they came.
+
+In reality there is no such thing as death, unless it be strictly
+applied to the form, regarded as a temporary vehicle of consciousness.
+As for the consciousness, there is no death. There is life in a physical
+form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death, or cessation,
+of the individual intelligence. What we name "death" is but a change in
+the orderly evolution of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is
+viewed from the physical plane that such a term can be applied to it.
+From this plane it is death, or departure. But looked at from the astral
+world it is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning of
+the expression of the soul through a material body on the physical
+plane. It is an arrival. But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure
+and therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure from a
+physical body is here. So death and departure from one plane is simply
+birth, or arrival, upon another, although it is not, of course, birth
+as we know it.
+
+Every process in nature has a part to play in evolution and therefore
+death is as necessary as life and as beneficial as birth. Death is the
+destroyer of the useless. There is a time when each human being should
+die--that is to say, a time when the physical body has fulfilled its
+mission and completely accomplished the purpose for which it exists. To
+continue life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste energy
+and lose time in the evolutionary journey. Under the action of what we
+call "diseases" the body becomes inefficient, or through the gradual
+breaking down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain. The
+consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed through its impaired
+machine and it is decidedly to the advantage of the ego to withdraw from
+it. The soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work with
+broken and rusted tools. Good results are no longer possible. It is then
+that death comes, beneficently destroying the worn out instrument and
+releasing the consciousness from its too-often painful situation and
+permitting its escape into a field of unobstructed activity.
+
+Death is painless. The breaking down of the body under the ravages of
+disease may cause pain, but that belongs to physical life, not death.
+Distress may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But the dying
+person who does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and no
+pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation will convince
+one that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on the part of
+surviving friends, not on the part of the dying. Those who are left
+behind remain within the limitations of the physical senses, and they
+are therefore separated from the so-called dead man, but he is not
+separated from them. It is because of that separation that the terror of
+death exists for them.
+
+But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary value of
+death. The separation it causes intensifies love as nothing else could
+do. It is only when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate his
+real value and comprehend how large a part he really played in our
+existence. As sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener
+realization of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its
+contrast, gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how
+enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death of a close
+friend. The whole nature is in some degree purified and spiritualized.
+Selfishness is decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for others in
+distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary advance is made. We
+have only to reflect upon the fact that separation without death
+produces the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
+value of death. In constant association we grow careless and
+indifferent. But an absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer
+perspective of personal associations and thereafter life has new zest. A
+child regards its mother with a certain degree of appreciation but a
+short absence enormously increases its appreciation. All human beings
+come into closer and more sympathetic association after a period of
+separation, and the completeness of the separation caused by death
+renders it peculiarly efficacious in the development of the spiritual
+side of one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention away
+from materialistic life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed
+in material success. There is no thought at all given to the higher
+life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities of the world, hold
+them firmly. They become completely self-centered. Then suddenly death
+enters and breaks the family circle, and the transient character of all
+they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly dawns upon them, and
+attention is turned to the nobler things of life. It is a well known
+fact that great wars are accompanied or followed with widespread
+spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the shadow of
+death has fallen on tens of thousands of households.
+
+It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics if it would not be an
+improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow caused by the death of our
+friends were softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
+It is evidently the plan of nature to have the physical life and the
+astral life normally separated at our present level of evolution. Some
+of the reasons have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly others
+that we are incapable of understanding, and still others that we can
+readily comprehend. If the higher, joyous life of the astral world were
+open to our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties of this
+life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our life in the physical
+body may be compared to the tasks of children in school. They have
+serious business before them in the acquiring of knowledge and the
+development of the intellect. They can best accomplish the work when
+completely isolated from other phases of life. Introduce into their
+work-day consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus, the
+military parade, the picnic and the dancing parties, and the purpose for
+which the school exists would be defeated. To exactly the extent that
+the consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable progress
+be made with the work of the school-room. And so it is with the
+limitation of our physical senses. It serves a purpose.
+
+But there is a point in human evolution where such limitation of the
+senses is no longer of any service and may be transcended. Some people
+have attained it. They are those who have previously been referred to as
+the psychic scientists, with the higher clairvoyance of the
+cerebro-spinal system developed. It is an accomplishment to which all
+may aspire. None need submit to the separation commonly caused by death.
+By hard work in co-operating with nature's methods of evolution and by a
+serious and sustained effort to live the highest and most helpful life
+of which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain a level of
+consciousness where one has personal knowledge that the dead still live.
+But in the very work of rising to that level, the concentration
+previously enforced by the limitation of the physical senses will have
+been acquired.
+
+One of the common delusions about death is that some radical change in
+the nature of a person then takes place. This is no doubt due in part to
+the theological ideas that have come down to us from the time of the
+Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some
+sort of a judgment that classes him as either a saint qualified for
+eternal bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The belief is
+based on that erroneous view of human nature that was common to the
+melodrama of a past generation and that will possibly have eternal life
+in the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good and
+the villain as absolutely bad. The one had no flaw of character and the
+other had not a redeeming feature. But human nature does not thus
+express itself. The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding it
+is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand we find no perfected
+beings. The perfect heroes were merely creations of an imperfect
+imagination. At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither the
+absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.
+
+Why should the change we call death transform a human being? It is
+merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of consciousness. The soul,
+the thinker, has lost connection with the physical world because the
+physical body has ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body
+remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he can not think more
+than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved. All that has happened
+in death is that contact with the material world has been lost.
+
+One of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom, and we
+often hear of people getting into communication with those who have
+passed on, with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is true that
+death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness and that in the
+astral world one can see a little further ahead and take a few more
+things into consideration. But--and it is a vital point--he would have
+no better judgment in determining a course of action than he had while
+here in the physical world.
+
+Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is
+neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it
+previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there.
+If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the
+astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
+unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world
+where emotion is the determining factor.
+
+Death merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where the evolution
+of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult to say which is the greater
+misfortune--the delusions that make death the king of terrors, or the
+complacent belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings the
+soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility and settles
+one's fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility or
+transform the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine
+destiny.
+
+The theosophical conception of death is as consoling as it is
+scientific. Instead of the fear of death it gives us knowledge of
+continued life. Instead of doubt and despair it gives us confidence and
+joy, for it guarantees the companionship once more of those we have
+known and loved, and erroneously supposed we have lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ASTRAL WORLD
+
+
+When the physical body dies there is an interval between the loss of
+consciousness here and the dawning of the astral consciousness. During
+that interim a review of the life scenes takes place. Everything between
+birth and death passes again through the consciousness, as it thus
+pauses in the etheric double, between the life activities of two worlds.
+Then peaceful unconsciousness follows, from which the man awakes in the
+astral world.
+
+To those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing to some remote
+heaven, where they become angels, it will perhaps sound startling to say
+that a dead man is not aware at first that the change we call death has
+taken place. Yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at all
+remarkable that it should be so with many. We have only to recall the
+fact that all physical matter is surrounded and permeated with astral
+matter to realize that the physical plane is duplicated in astral
+matter. Not only the physical body of the human being but, of course,
+every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The dying man loses
+consciousness of the physical plane and awakes as from a sleep to the
+astral consciousness. He sees then the exact duplicate, in astral
+matter, of the familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees, too, his
+friends, for their astral bodies are replicas of their physical forms.
+
+And yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference, though not a
+difference that enables him to comprehend what has occurred. He may know
+that only yesterday, or what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was
+ill and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he was about to
+die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never felt so free from aches and
+pains in all his life. The pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth
+are his again! This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally
+speaks to them, but gets no reply and finds that he can not attract
+their attention. It must be remembered that he can not see their
+physical bodies any more than they can see his astral body. Yet he truly
+sees them. If a so-called dead man and a living person look at the same
+instant at another living person they will both see him, but the latter
+sees the physical body while the former sees the astral body that
+surrounds and permeates it.
+
+Under these circumstances it is not strange that the new arrival in the
+astral world is seized with a feeling of baffling mystery. He is in full
+possession of his reasoning faculties, and will power, but there is a
+puzzling limitation to his efforts to produce expected results. A
+partial analogy may be found in the case of a person suddenly stricken
+with aphasia over night. He rises in the morning, dresses, and goes
+about his accustomed duties without the slightest suspicion that any
+change has come to him until he takes up the morning paper and
+discovers that he can not read--that the familiar print simply means
+nothing to him!
+
+Of course, in time the living dead man gets adjusted to the new life. He
+soon meets others in the astral world who have been there longer and
+they, sooner or later, succeed in convincing him that he is not having
+an exceptionally vivid dream.
+
+The astral world, as explained in a previous chapter, has seven
+subdivisions and the astral body contains matter belonging to each of
+them. While we have the physical body the matter of the astral body is
+in rapid circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented at
+the surface. But when the connection with the material plane is broken,
+a rearrangement of the matter of the astral body automatically takes
+place (unless it is prevented by an exercise of will power) and the
+grossest grade of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently
+the consciousness of the man is limited to that subdivision of the
+astral world represented by the lowest grade of matter which his astral
+body contains at the time of his death. This is a fact the importance of
+which it would be difficult to over emphasize, because his after-death
+state of consciousness, his joy or sorrow--in short, his temporary
+heaven or hell, depends upon his location in the astral world.
+
+There are three, and only three modes of death, or release from the
+physical body--by old age, by disease, or by violence. Old age is the
+natural and desirable close of the chapter of physical plane experience.
+It is most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a large
+harvest of experience. To live long and actively is excellent fortune.
+It is not well to pass into the astral world with strong physical
+desires. As old age comes on the desire forces subside. Most of that
+grade of astral matter that is capable of expressing them has slowly
+disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual loosening of the life
+forces from the material plane, and that has many advantages.
+
+Release from the physical body by disease is next in order of
+desirability. It is a quicker and less complete breaking down of the
+connection with the physical world. Nevertheless it is a condition in
+which much progress may be made in getting free from physical desires,
+as those who have had experience with invalids are aware. Desires
+usually grow weaker with the progress of the disease that finally ends
+in death.
+
+Release from the physical form by violence is, of course, the least
+desirable of the three, not merely because it is violence, but for the
+much more important reason that sudden death finds the man, as a rule,
+with a considerable amount of the lower grades of astral matter in his
+astral body.
+
+Whether the death by violence is the result of accident, murder, suicide
+or legal execution, the astral plane conditions of consciousness are
+alike unfortunate, in that it is sudden death, not the manner of death,
+that permits entry upon the astral life before the lower grades of
+astral matter have been eliminated from the astral body. This is one
+reason why suicide is unfortunate--because it ushers the man into the
+astral world with more of the matter of the lower levels in his astral
+vehicle than would be there if he had lived out his normal physical
+life.
+
+Purgatory is a term often applied to the lowest level of the astral
+world. The word is well chosen because it is there that the moral nature
+is purged of its impurities. Strong desires cultivated and indulged
+during the life in the physical body are eliminated with the gross
+astral matter through which alone they can be expressed and, freed to
+that extent, the man passes to the next subdivision, and into its higher
+state of consciousness.
+
+In the astral life some people linger long on the lower levels while
+others know them not at all, but awaken to the blissful consciousness of
+the higher subdivisions. Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping
+together people of a kind. It is, however, the manner in which one lives
+during physical life that determines his happiness or sorrow after
+death. The astral body, the seat of the emotions, is, like the physical
+body, constantly changing the matter that composes it. An emotion of any
+kind expresses itself as a vibration in the matter of the astral body.
+If it is a base emotion, such as anger, hatred, lust or cruelty, it
+throws into vibration the grossest of the astral body's matter, for only
+in that can it be expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love,
+sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects only the rarer
+grades of astral matter, for in them only can such feeling be expressed.
+
+With most people there is a constant mingling of a wide range of
+emotions, with a gain in one direction and a loss in another. One who
+fortunately understands the law of emotional cause and effect may make
+absolutely certain of a comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane after
+death. He would make it a rule to watch his emotions and control them,
+knowing that each time he indulged a gross one the vibration set up in
+his astral body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of matter
+in it, while pure and exalted emotions would strengthen the higher
+grades. Ultimately, the grossest grade, becoming atrophied for the lack
+of activity, would drop away from him.
+
+The descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic scientists are
+calculated to induce even the reckless to avoid it. If we could bring
+together all the vilest men and women now living on the physical plane,
+the crudest of murderers, the most besotted drunkards, the vilest
+degenerates, the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends of every
+description, and huddle them together in hovels reeking with filth, and
+let them remain without any outward government, free to prey upon each
+other, we should perhaps have a faint comprehension of the reality of
+the lowest subdivision of the astral world. But no physical plane
+comparison can do it full justice, for we must remember that it is the
+emotional world and that the feelings of its inhabitants make its
+atmosphere in a way that would here be impossible. Astral matter
+instantly and exactly reproduces emotion, so that the fiend or the
+sensualist looks exactly what he feels. Even in the unresponsive
+physical matter, the evil in a man is often sufficiently expressed to
+fill those who behold him with terror. In the astral world every cruel
+thought and hideous emotion would express itself in visible form and the
+multitudinous emotions welling up in the lower level of the astral
+world would be as a loathsome swarm of reptiles gliding through its
+horrible life. Add to all that the fact that the hopeless despair of its
+denizens gives an atmosphere of utter gloom and desolation, and we have
+a hell that leaves no need of other torture to check the course of the
+erring soul. And yet there is no suffering that is not self-imposed. It
+is both consistent and just that a man should associate with his kind
+and look upon himself in others until he grows sick of his own vileness
+and cries out in agony of spirit against his own moral offenses. It must
+not be assumed that every person dying with considerable matter
+belonging to the lower astral level still within his emotional body will
+necessarily pass through such experiences. It should never be forgotten
+that we are dealing with a matter of the utmost complexity and that even
+the most exhaustive description in print would present only a fragment
+of the truth. The conditions of consciousness on any subplane vary as
+individuals vary. Some people on the lowest astral level are wholly
+unconscious of their surroundings. Another variation is that some people
+find themselves floating in darkness and largely cut off from others--a
+sufficiently undesirable condition, and yet better than the fate of
+some. All states of astral consciousness are reactions from previous
+good or evil conduct and are, moreover, temporary conditions that will
+in time be left behind.
+
+In a different way and at a higher level there may be suffering on the
+astral plane that is purifying the nature. Not all offenses against
+nature's laws are of so gross a type. There is the abuse of desire and
+the violation of conscience that may result in various kinds of regret
+and emotional distress. A desire of a refined type strongly built up
+upon the physical plane lives with an intenser vitality on the astral
+plane after the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton and a
+miser have strong desires of a very different type. Each of them is
+likely to suffer on account of it during the astral life. They need not
+dwell upon the lowest level to get a reaction from their folly in the
+physical life. We can easily imagine the distress of the glutton in a
+world without food. There could be no distress because of hunger, for
+the astral body is not, like the physical body, renewed and maintained
+by what it consumes. But hunger and the gratification of the sense of
+taste are very different things. It is the latter that would trouble the
+gormand, and it is said that great suffering, as in the case of the
+drunkard, is his lot until the desire gradually disappears because of
+the impossibility of its gratification.
+
+The miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his greed for gold
+may be quite as intense as that of the glutton for sensual
+gratification. The accumulation of money has been the dominant thought
+of his life. He has created in his mind a wholly false value for money
+and it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it. Only dire
+necessity forces him to spend any portion of his hoard. It is not
+difficult to imagine his emotions when he is obliged to leave it behind
+and see others spend it freely.
+
+Any kind of a desire that is related to the physical body is without
+means of gratification in the astral world and if such desire has been
+cultivated until it becomes strong enough to play an important part in
+one's life it will certainly give him more or less trouble after the
+loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of an over-refinement
+and excess in a natural appetite, as in the case of the epicure, or is
+simply an artificial thing that is unrelated to any natural demand, as
+in the case of the smoker, the inability to gratify the desire is
+equally distressing. The suffering that results could hardly be judged
+by what would follow on the physical plane when desire is thwarted, for
+in the astral life emotion expresses itself much more intensely.
+
+All of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever type, is the
+natural result of the thoughts, emotions and acts during the life on the
+physical plane. The astral world is that part of the mechanism for man's
+evolution that brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving in the
+wrong direction. He is not being punished. The injurious forces he has
+generated are simply reacting upon him. This reaction, that sets him
+right, is as certain as in the case of the infant that picks up a live
+coal. It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in result, and it
+works itself out in a multiplicity of ways. One of the methods of
+reaction that helps to stamp out a fault is the automatic repetition of
+the unpleasant consequences of wrong doing. The murderer will serve for
+a general illustration. In the case of a deliberate, premeditated and
+cruel murder, the assassin is moved by such base motives as revenge or
+jealousy. The results of these, so far as their frightful consequences
+to the victim are concerned, do not in the least tend to deter the
+assassin from further deeds of violence. He feels gratified with his
+success and is quite satisfied with himself. Only the possibility of
+detection and punishment troubles him. If they follow in due course they
+will accomplish something in correcting his erroneous views of life. But
+they will not be sufficient to register indelibly, in the very nature of
+the man, a proper sense of the horror of which he has been guilty. Such
+a man can be impressed and his viewpoint changed only by consequences to
+himself. It is in the reaction in the astral life of the forces he has
+generated here that he gets the lesson that forces in upon his
+consciousness the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the
+physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless come into
+contact in the astral world with conditions sufficiently horrible. He
+has made a tie with his victim that can not be broken until the scales
+of justice are balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the
+uttermost. Just what form of retribution will follow depends, of course,
+on the nature of the case. But the reaction is as certain as it is
+multiplex. One of its variants is the gruesome experience of always
+fleeing from the corpse of the victim, but with the utter impossibility
+of a moment's escape. In the case of a murderer who has been
+apprehended, tried, condemned and executed, the whole of the tragedy and
+its sequel would be, not only lived over in imagination but repeated
+automatically, in fact, and worked out in full detail in the plastic
+matter of the astral region. Probably few people have the imagination to
+comprehend what the murderer feels of apprehension and fear at his trial
+when his life is in the balance; or what he suffers while hiding from
+justice and making futile efforts to escape the pursuing officers of the
+law; or what his emotions are as his hands are tied and he steps upon
+the death trap. All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly.
+As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject--let us say
+something that is the cause of much anxiety--finds it impossible to turn
+his attention from it and think of other things, or go to sleep, and is
+impelled against his desire to think the matter over and over, so the
+assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his crime and can not escape
+from living and acting it all over and over again until a revulsion of
+feeling arouses him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime.
+
+Again it should be said that no attempt is here made to give more than a
+very fragmentary description, and a few hints, of the manner in which
+the retributory laws of nature work. A writer on the subject should also
+be careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain classes of
+offenders against nature's laws severe penalties accrue, the reader does
+not get the impression that suffering is the common lot in the astral
+life. The truth of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate
+lives, and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to others,
+will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate side of astral existence.
+In the limitations, the vexations, the physical aches and ills, the
+poverty, sorrow and suffering of the material plane, most of us are as
+near to hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The ordinary
+man of average morality has so little of the matter of the lowest level
+of the astral plane lingering in him that as a rule he would begin his
+postmortem existence on the next higher subdivision, which is the
+counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore have no knowledge
+of the hell that exists on the lower level. But that is not at all true
+of those who live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger,
+jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses, that often lead
+to violent crimes. It is possible to live the physical life so sanely,
+usefully, harmoniously and unselfishly that at the death of the physical
+body one will pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career in
+the astral world. But while that is quite possible the unfortunate fact
+is that a great many people so color all their emotions with selfishness
+that the astral sojourn is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the
+emotions that determine the astral life and it is said that if they are
+directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the astral plane
+that are very unpleasant.
+
+It must be expected that any idea we may form of the astral life will be
+incomplete, and inadequate to give a true conception what it is really
+like. Perhaps the most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which
+reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There the average
+man will begin his conscious astral career. If we think of the world as
+we know it here and then imagine all that is material to have vanished
+from it we shall gain some comprehension of the situation. Eliminate the
+necessity of providing food, clothing and shelter and nearly all of the
+labor of the race would cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining, the
+building, the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange of the
+products of field and factory, constitute nearly the whole of human
+activity. In the astral life no food is required and one is clothed with
+astral matter from which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and
+rapidity of thought. No houses are needed for shelter. The astral body
+is not susceptible to degrees of heat and cold, and nothing there
+corresponds to our temperatures. There is no division of night and day,
+objects being self-luminous and light being perpetual.
+
+If we could drop out of physical life all need of physical labor,
+abolish all response to heat or cold, the need of food and houses, and
+add unlimited wealth or, to be more exact, give each person the power to
+possess all that wealth can confer and much that it can not, we would
+have an approach to a conception of the astral world from one viewpoint.
+Each one entering the astral life has, of course, a fullness of liberty
+and freedom from responsibility that is not instantly comprehensible to
+the physical mind. There is nothing whatever that he must do. There is,
+however, plenty that he can do if he desires to be active. On the
+physical plane many people of wealth travel and amuse themselves with
+sight seeing. Thousands of others would do so if it were possible. In
+the astral world it is possible and large numbers of people drift
+aimlessly about with no particular plans. Multitudes belonging to
+various religious sects organize themselves into congregations, build
+edifices and spend much time in religious services. Others amuse
+themselves building houses and constructing landscapes. It is not at all
+necessary, but the old habits live and influence activities.
+
+The average person in the astral world gives himself to idleness and
+the enjoyment of the intensified emotions of the astral life just as the
+majority of people would do here if it were possible to escape the round
+of duties so sternly imposed by their necessities. For a long time the
+most of them also make daily visits to the homes they have left behind
+on the physical plane. Those who have a strong tie of affection with
+some member of the family frequently spend much time lingering around
+and going on little journeys about the premises or elsewhere with the
+loved one. They understand that the dead person is not perceived by the
+living one, but nevertheless they desire to be near. They do not have a
+full consciousness of all the living person is thinking and doing, but
+they are fully aware of the state of feeling, or emotion, and whether
+the living friend is pleasantly or unpleasantly affected by passing
+events.
+
+As the astral life becomes more and more familiar to the newly arrived
+individual he gets well settled in it and gradually readjusts his
+viewpoint to a truer perspective than he has here. As time passes he is
+less and less in touch with the affairs of the physical life and finally
+loses consciousness of them altogether as he passes on to the higher
+levels of the astral world.
+
+But there are many people who have a more serious view of life and who
+lose no opportunity of acquiring knowledge, and the astral world, which
+is called "the hall of learning" by students of the occult, presents
+remarkably good conditions to them. Here we are limited in three
+dimensions of matter and hampered by the very narrow range of the
+physical senses. In the astral world matter has four dimensions and new
+and marvelous avenues of learning open before the student. Those who are
+at all interested in music, or art of any kind, find both the field and
+the facilities enormously extended. Those who study nature, whether by
+directly probing into her secrets or by cleverly combining her
+principles into new processes and inventions, have such opportunities as
+scientist and discoverer has not dreamed of on this plane. And so for
+all the thoughtful and studious there is a life of the most useful and
+fascinating kind in the astral world.
+
+But it must not be supposed that the opportunity of usefulness and
+progress is only for the studious. There as here the opportunity for
+useful work in helping humanity forward is boundless; for while poverty
+and disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic work
+of other kinds to be done. People are to be taught, for there, as here,
+the majority are sadly in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of
+nature's laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in harmony with
+them in order to get the greatest happiness from life. But the work to
+be done is by no means confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes
+the teaching so necessary has brought a great many people into the
+unfortunate condition, where immediate assistance is most urgently
+needed, and there is such a variety of helplessness that nobody need be
+idle.
+
+Because of the false teaching upon the subject of life hereafter, people
+are bewildered when they become conscious in the astral life. Many have
+had their minds so vividly impressed with the awful fate that awaits
+those who are not "saved" before death that they fall into a state of
+terror when at last they realize that death has really occurred. Others,
+who may or may not be haunted with any such absurd misconceptions, cling
+so tenaciously to the physical life when about to leave it that there is
+not complete separation between the etheric double and astral body. The
+result is that the unfortunate person finds himself cut off from the
+physical world and yet not arrived in the astral! Wrapped in a cloud of
+etheric matter he drifts for a time in terror of the unknown. Those
+among the so-called dead who are kindly enough to rescue the distressed
+may come to their relief and give valuable assistance.
+
+Perhaps the commonest thing that engages the attention of the astral
+worker is the fear that death brings to most people. They arrive in the
+astral world with the feeling that everything is unknown and uncertain.
+All preconceived ideas about the life after death have suddenly been
+found unreliable and they are afraid of, they know not what. They want
+to cling to anybody who knows something of the new world. When we
+remember that people are arriving in the astral world by the tens of
+thousands daily, even under normal conditions, it is evident that all
+who wish to be of service can find plenty to do. No special knowledge of
+the astral plane is necessary. Common sense is a sufficient equipment,
+in such simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead of giving
+the entire time to the pleasures of that world. The work for the astral
+helpers ranges upward in complexity, of course, and there is profitable
+activity for those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually
+work in well organized groups and render service of great practical
+value.
+
+Life on the astral plane has its end for the same reason that it comes
+to a close on the physical plane. Nature's purpose has been accomplished
+and the man is ready to go on farther in his evolution. The length of
+the astral life varies just as it does in the physical world. Some
+physical lives are very long and sometimes only when five scores of
+years, or more, have passed does the ego withdraw. Other lives are very
+short and scarcely well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close.
+There is nevertheless a general average to be found. It is at least
+possible to make averages for different classes of people and to say
+that a majority of those who are of ordinary health and strength are
+likely to attain a stated age, while it is certain that the majority of
+those who have such, and such, a physical handicap will lose their
+physical bodies when they are much younger. Such general rules may also
+be applied to the astral life.
+
+Here a long and alert life is most desirable because the purpose of the
+physical plane is to gather experience that shall be transmuted into
+wisdom on a higher plane. It is a seed time against a later harvest. But
+the astral plane is, for the vast majority of the race, related to the
+purgative process. In that life the errors of the physical life are
+largely worked out and desires that have grown up like weeds in a garden
+are rooted out and the budding virtues are given a chance to grow. It is
+a corrective plane, where blunders are checked up and the moral
+perspective is re-established. Naturally enough the sooner that can be
+done the better. The rule of a long life being most desirable on the
+physical plane is, therefore, reversed on the astral plane. It is the
+shortest life in the astral world that is the greatest prize, and it
+comes to those who have lived the purest and noblest lives while here.
+The sooner a man gets through the astral world and begins the reaping of
+his harvest on the mental plane, or heaven world, the better it is for
+him.
+
+The length of the astral sojourn depends primarily upon the durability
+of the astral body and that, in turn, depends upon the kind of a life he
+has lived here. Let us suppose that he has lived a very gross and
+sensual life. All of the emotions of that type that he indulged built
+more gross matter in his astral body and also strengthened and vivified
+the lowest grade of matter that was already there. Let us also imagine
+that he had an ungovernable temper and frequently gave way to outbursts
+of fury; further, that he was cruel and revengeful, seeking and finding
+many opportunities of inflicting injuries upon others. Here we have a
+case for long life on the lower levels of the astral world.
+
+Let us now consider a different type of man. He lives peacefully and
+harmoniously with those about him. He feels strong affection for wife
+and children. He has a host of friends because of his cheerful, helpful
+and sympathetic attitude toward others. He lives cleanly and thinks
+nobly. His mind is kept free from trivialities and his tongue is never
+employed in gossip. He makes a determined and persistent effort to
+eliminate pride, envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking
+first of the welfare of others and always last of himself--in short,
+tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all things impersonally.
+Such a man could know nothing whatever of the disagreeable part of the
+astral life and would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions
+and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.
+
+From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually to the higher. He
+remains on a given level so long as is required to eliminate the matter
+of that level from his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on
+the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because the man has
+at last stopped sending his life force through it. Ungratified desire
+has finally worn itself out and he is free. The process can be greatly
+hastened or retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly
+dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged life to
+them. If he can resolutely turn his mind to higher things he hastens his
+release. His fate is in his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he
+has a knowledge of such matters.
+
+One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly through the astral
+world than he would have done had he died in the full strength of
+manhood. As the years accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest
+grades of astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in
+which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is an additional
+reason why it is desirable to live to old age in the physical world.
+
+The hold that the material world has upon the mind is one of the causes
+which greatly prolong existence in the astral world. Some people give
+their time and thought so exclusively to material things that after
+they lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away from the life
+that lies behind them. This difficulty does not necessarily arise wholly
+from having given one's energies entirely to personal ambition and
+material accumulation. Sometimes the ruler of a country is so determined
+to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that this vivid interest in
+the physical world stretches out the period of astral life most
+unfortunately.
+
+Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively short, if
+we measure it in the terms of physical life. A person who has lived here
+seventy years may have thirty or forty years on the astral plane. But
+that will depend not only upon how he lived the physical life just
+closed but also upon his general position in human evolution. A savage
+of low type would have a comparatively long astral life while a man at
+the higher levels of civilization would have a comparatively short
+period there, while the man in the lower levels of civilized life might
+be said to come in at about midway between the two. But it must be
+remembered that these are very general estimates and that among
+civilized peoples individuals differ enormously. Some will pass very
+slowly and, so far as lower levels are concerned, painfully, through
+astral life, while the sojourn of others there is measured in minutes,
+and they pass happily and almost instantaneously from physical death to
+the heaven world. But such people are the exception, not the rule.
+
+Communication with those who have passed on into the astral world is
+possible, but not always desirable, for a number of reasons. As an
+evidence of the continuity of consciousness in the hands of the
+scientific investigator, such communications have been of the greatest
+value. As a consolation to those who have thus come again in touch with
+dead friends such messages have been of inestimable value to the
+bereaved, particularly when they have been received in the privacy of
+the family circle by some of its members. For a time those who have lost
+the physical body are usually within easy reach through the usual
+methods employed for the purpose and perhaps no harm is done by such
+communications unless they arouse anew the grief of those who have been
+left behind and thus greatly depress the departed. But after the living
+dead get farther along, and are practically out of touch with the
+material world, then directing their attention backward may be
+positively injurious to them. For that reason careful students of the
+occult seldom seek to obtain messages, or at least do it with proper
+consideration for all the circumstances of the particular case.
+
+Due regard for the interests of those who have passed on, as well as for
+those who remain, requires that all the facts be given full weight. The
+truth of the matter is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise
+to the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once more get into
+touch with one that seems to be lost to us. We are not really thinking
+much about his welfare. As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us
+and does not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able to see us
+at all times and be conscious of our feelings and emotions, but during
+the hours when we are asleep he is in the fullest and freest
+communication with us and we with him. On awakening we usually have no
+memory of this and if we do we think it was a dream. But it is not so
+with him. His memory of it is perfect and the result is that he has not
+our sense of separation and loss at all.
+
+The result of knowledge upon the subject, that is readily gained by a
+study of the researches of the skilled occultists, is that one comes to
+feel that one should rest satisfied with the fact that we do converse
+with the dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to the
+scientific investigators. The natural order of things is that the person
+who passes into the astral world shall in time fix his mind exclusively
+upon the inner life and be completely divorced from physical plane
+affairs. That is the mental and emotional condition which permits of his
+rapid passage through levels where he should not linger. It is said that
+to turn his attention backward at this time may cause him acute
+distress.
+
+A reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge of occultism
+often throws a new light upon the subject. An instance of this is to be
+found in the story of the woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his
+quest for psychic information about the crisis that has been reached in
+the affairs of his kingdom. The woman went into trance and acted as a
+medium for a communication from Samuel, who tells Saul just what will
+occur in the impending battle. Samuel's first words were a reproach to
+Saul. "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?"[F] was his greeting.
+It is the language of one who is displeased. Drawing his attention
+forcibly back to the material world by the strong desire Saul had to
+communicate with him was evidently distressing to the dead king, hence
+the rebuke, "Why hast thou _disquieted_ me?"
+
+What is here said on the subject of communication, however, has
+reference to general principles only. There is no intention of
+suggesting that it is always undesirable to communicate with those who
+have passed over. Often those on the other side seek means of
+communicating and they should then find the most willing co-operation
+from this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical plane life has a
+message of great importance to deliver and such a case reverses the
+general rule--he would be delayed if he could _not_ communicate. It
+would be decidedly to his advantage to free his mind of the matter.
+Until he has done so he may remain in a restless condition and his case
+falls into the category of what the spiritualists call "earth bound." He
+may have left undone something that a message will set right, if he can
+get it through, or he may have secreted something that cannot be found
+because he died suddenly and had no opportunity to speak of it. Or it
+may simply be a case of desiring to prove to materialistic friends the
+fact that the so-called dead are not dead, and are close at hand. It is
+sometimes possible for the important information to come through into
+physical life in the form of a dream by the living, and thus the
+recovery of valuables has followed.[G] In such a case the dream is a
+memory of facts well known in astral life but hidden from the waking
+consciousness by the unresponsive material brain.
+
+It sometimes happens that one who thus most earnestly desires to
+communicate but is wholly ignorant of how to accomplish his purpose
+causes a good deal of annoyance. His blundering attempts to use psychic
+force may be wholly abortive and result only in meaningless noises,
+raps, the tumbling of books or dishes from shelves or the aimless
+movement of furniture. Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention,
+on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be
+remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's
+common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or
+delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd
+assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining.
+This accounts for many of the foolish, and sometimes startling messages,
+or answers to questions, received at seances.
+
+It has often been asked why, if communication between the physical and
+astral planes is possible, we do not receive information that might lead
+to valuable discoveries and inventions. The very fact that death does
+not confer wisdom explains it in part. But an even more important fact
+is that communication is easy with the lower levels and correspondingly
+difficult as the higher levels are reached. All who have had much
+experience with seances are familiar with the fact that "guides" or
+"controls," that is, the persons in the invisible realms who direct the
+seance and frequently speak through the medium, are very often Indians
+or others at a low level of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants
+of the astral levels with which communication is easy are not the type
+capable of furnishing ideas of any great value. It is on the higher
+levels that the man of intellectual power passes most of his astral
+life. The scientist or the inventor who has given so much thought to his
+work that he has been in some degree successful here is not likely to
+have much consciousness on lower levels. It is the highest of the seven
+subdivisions of the astral world that is the habitat of the person who
+has followed intellectual pursuits, during physical life, and with that
+level it is practically impossible for the ordinary medium to
+communicate.
+
+One of the objections to indiscriminate communication with the astral
+plane lies in the very fact that the lowest class of entities are most
+accessible. That not only accounts for the commonplace messages in such
+abundance, but it is frequently a source of actual danger, especially
+where people form "circles" for the purpose of rendering themselves more
+sensitive to psychic influences. In such cases it is common to accept
+every message as absolute truth. There is no doubt that as a rule the
+astral people in charge of such a gathering are earnest and honest. But
+they are neither all-wise nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about
+that some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed by astral
+entities, and that may prove to be an exceedingly serious matter. Some
+people have thus lost their sanity and others their lives.
+
+It is, of course, only the gross type of astral person who has a desire
+to seize upon the physical body of another. The purpose is to gratify
+desires that have outlived the physical body. The dead drunkard is
+perhaps the commonest example of the obsessing entity, and if the
+obsession is only partial it may lead to nothing worse than strong and
+perhaps irresistible impulses toward alcoholic stimulation. Obsession
+may, of course, occur without the psychic door being opened
+deliberately. But no obsession is possible, in any case, unless there is
+something within the victim responsive to the moral defect of the
+obsessing entity.
+
+Partial obsessions are rather common and there are frequent inquiries as
+to the best means of treating such a case. It may amount only to the
+slight annoyance of astral people hanging about and refusing to depart
+or to actual persecution. In all such cases the victim is, of course, in
+conscious touch and communication with the intruders. One of the world's
+greatest authorities on the subject, who is a constant investigator of
+the unseen regions, has given detailed answer to two questioners, and
+what he says is of such practical value that it is well worth
+reproducing. The second question itself is enlightening as to the
+character of the obsessing entities. The first inquirer asks:
+
+      "What is the best way to get rid of an excarnate human
+      being who persists in occupying one's body?"
+
+The reply follows:
+
+      "I should simply and absolutely decline to be so obsessed.
+      The best and kindest plan would be to have an explanation
+      with the dead person, to enquire what he wants and why he
+      makes such persistent attempts. Quite probably, he may be
+      some ignorant soul who does not at all comprehend his new
+      surroundings, and is striving madly to get into touch again
+      with the only kind of life that he understands. In that
+      case if matters are explained to him, he may be brought to
+      a happier frame of mind and induced to cease his
+      ill-directed efforts. Or the poor creature may have
+      something on his mind--some duty unfulfilled or some wrong
+      unrighted; if this be so, and the matter can be arranged to
+      his satisfaction, he may then be at peace.
+
+      "If, however, he proves not to be amenable to reason, if in
+      spite of all argument and explanation he refuses to abandon
+      his reprehensible line of action, it will be necessary
+      gently but firmly to resist him. Every man has an
+      inalienable right to the use of his own vehicles, and
+      encroachments of this nature should not be permitted. If
+      the lawful possessor of the body will confidently assert
+      himself and use his own willpower no obsession can take
+      place.
+
+      "When such things occur, it is almost always because the
+      victim has in the first place voluntarily yielded himself
+      to the invading influence, and his first step therefore is
+      to reverse that act of submission, to determine strongly to
+      take matters into his own hands again and to resume control
+      over his property. It is this reassertion of himself that
+      is the fundamental requirement, and though much help may be
+      given by wise friends, nothing which they can do will take
+      the place of the development of willpower on the part of
+      the victim, or obviate the necessity for it. The exact
+      method of procedure will naturally vary according to the
+      details of the case."
+
+The same authority answers another question on the same subject and he
+is here dealing with particular entities that he has evidently seen:
+
+      "I have long been troubled by entities who constantly
+      suggest evil ideas and make use of coarse and violent
+      language. They are always urging me to take strong drink,
+      and goading me on to the consumption of large quantities of
+      meat. I have prayed earnestly, but with little avail, and
+      am driven to my wits' end. What can I do?"
+
+To this appeal the psychic scientist replies:
+
+      "You have indeed suffered greatly; but now you must make up
+      your mind to suffer no more. You must take courage and make
+      a firm stand. The power of these dead people over you is
+      only in your fear of them. Your own will is stronger than
+      all theirs combined if you will only know that it is; if
+      you turn upon them with vigor and determination they must
+      yield before you. You have an inalienable right to the
+      undisturbed use of your own vehicles, and you should insist
+      on being left in peace. You would not tolerate an intrusion
+      of filthy and disgusting beings into your house on the
+      physical plane; why should you submit to it because the
+      entities happen to be astral? If an insolent tramp forces
+      himself into a man's house, the owner does not kneel down
+      and pray--he kicks the tramp out; and that is precisely
+      what you must do with these astral tramps.
+
+      "You will no doubt say to yourself that when I give you
+      this advice I do not know the terrible power of the
+      particular demons who are afflicting you. That is exactly
+      what they would like you to believe--what they will try to
+      make you believe; but do not be so foolish as to listen to
+      them. I know the type perfectly, and mean, despicable,
+      bullying villains they are; they will torment a weak woman
+      for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the
+      moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just
+      laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a
+      moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and
+      show fight, because you have let them have their own way
+      for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion;
+      but face them with iron determination, set your will
+      against them like an immovable rock, and down they will go.
+      Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire, and by the
+      power of the God within me I order you to depart!' Never
+      let yourself think for an instant of failure or of
+      yielding; God is within you, and God cannot fail."[H]
+
+Probably there is no astral subject of more vital importance to any of
+us than that of the right attitude of mind and emotion toward the living
+dead. It is commonly said that we can do nothing more for them when they
+have passed away from physical plane life, but a greater error could not
+easily be made. The connection with us is by no means severed. Not only
+are they emotionally in touch with us but their emotions are very much
+keener than when they had a physical body through which to express them.
+They are now living in the astral body, the matter of which is
+enormously more responsive to emotional vibrations. A joyous emotion
+here would be tremendously more joyous there and a thing that would
+produce depression here would be a hundred times more depressing there.
+That fact should give pause to those who are inclined to think in
+sorrow, and with something of despair, about their friends who have
+passed on. They are not far away in space and our emotions affect them
+profoundly and instantly.
+
+We are all familiar with the fact that moods are communicable. The
+person who is cheerful cheers up others in his vicinity, while the one
+who is gloomy spreads gloom wherever he goes. It is a simple matter of
+vibrations. It is often within the power of a member of the family who
+habitually has "the blues" to destroy the happiness of the entire
+household. If we think of the most depressing effect that can be caused
+by sorrow on the physical plane, and then multiply its effectiveness by
+a hundred, we shall have no exaggeration of the astral effects of the
+emotions we indulge in the physical body. If, then, the sorrow of a
+weeping relative distresses us here it is clear that it must bring
+really keen distress to the one who is the subject of such grief. His
+life may thus be made miserable by the very persons who would be the
+last to cause him sorrow if they understood what they were doing.
+
+We can really help the so-called dead and make them very much happier by
+simply changing our mournful attitude toward them. All violent
+expressions of grief should be avoided and a determination to make the
+best of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may indeed be
+bad, but we make it very much worse by our mourning. The funeral customs
+of Occidental civilization are quite consistent with its materialism. We
+act as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are lost to us
+absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as possible. Yet we are slowly
+improving. Not so very long ago when anybody died those present stopped
+the ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains, moved about on
+tiptoe, and acted generally in a way calculated to add as much as
+possible to the awe and the gloom. We still wear somber and depressing
+black and add all we can externally to our inward distress.
+
+A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at any theosophical
+funeral and, with growing frequency, at the funerals among thinking
+people. A funeral should not be the occasion of a final expression of
+grief, but a gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and helpful
+good wishes to the comrade whose life work in the physical world is
+finished. The general feeling should be very much like that of a party
+of friends who go to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long
+journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of many years or
+possibly a lifetime. There should be constant thought of his welfare,
+not of the loss to his friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an
+expression of selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice
+self control in such a matter just as one would control a feeling of
+anger under different circumstances.
+
+Naturally enough the control of grief when one we love has passed on is
+none to easy. But any degree of success is much better than no effort,
+and will certainly help the one for whom we mourn. Much can be
+accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that bring vividly back
+the keen sense of loss. Many people indulge the foolish custom of
+regularly visiting the cemetery where the body has been interred. A
+little analysis will show that this is only another evidence of our
+materialistic modes of thought, and the custom serves to perpetuate
+emotions that should never have existed. We can not, of course, think
+too often nor too tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should
+do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead, or being far
+away. The fact that they are alive and well and happy and near should
+constantly fill the mind; and all of that, in nearly all cases, will be
+perfectly true if we do not foolishly destroy their peace of mind with
+our selfish sorrow.
+
+Occasionally a hint on the subject comes from the astral plane people
+themselves. In the recent book[I] by Sir Oliver Lodge, on his
+experiments in psychic research, there is a message from his son, who
+was killed in battle, agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner and
+to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they will all refrain from
+gloomy thoughts about him! No one who is informed on the subject of
+emotional reaction on the astral body, after the loss of the physical
+body, could be surprised by the conditions named by the young man.
+
+The advocates of cremation have a strong argument in the fact that the
+preservation of the body for a time, whether in a tomb or a grave, tends
+to keep grief alive. When the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that
+the body is somehow the man seems to have less of a material basis.
+Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate, not alone because they renew
+grief through thinking upon it and thus cause great distress to those
+for whom we mourn, but also because the environment of a cemetery is one
+of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It is a dismal park of
+concentrated griefs where each mourner accentuates the emotional
+distress of all others. There is but one sensible attitude to take
+toward those we have lost by death--to think of them as living a joyous,
+busy life and at least calling on us daily even though most of us are
+not sensitive enough to be conscious of the fact. We should try to
+realize the truth of the matter and then readjust our habits to fit the
+facts. The average person who is afflicted with the erroneous ideas
+still so common, is doing an enormous amount of injury and bringing into
+the lives of the very people he loves a depression of which he little
+dreams, and which he can change to vivid pleasure by always thinking
+cheerfully of them and sending them daily thoughts of serenity and
+peace.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[F] 1 Samuel XXVIII--15.
+
+[G] Ch. 3, Dreams and Premonitions.--L. W. Rogers.
+
+[H] The Inner Life.--Leadbeater, Vol. I. p. 483.
+
+[I] Raymond: or Life and Death.--Lodge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS
+
+
+Life is the most elusive thing with which science has to deal but we
+have learned much about both life and matter in recent years, and it is
+a noteworthy fact that the more we learn the thinner become the ranks of
+the materialists. The only scientist of note who still declares his
+philosophy of materialism is Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has
+written, "He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the
+nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's almost deserted ground
+in the scientific world, he declares that his voice "is as the voice of
+one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an
+advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still
+bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his
+comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic
+direction."
+
+Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism being deserted by all
+progressive scientists. While we do not yet know a great deal about
+life, science has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and
+principles from which conclusions may be logically drawn and working
+hypotheses constructed. Sir Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the
+great English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's most eminent
+scientists, speaking of his conception of life, says that "It is
+dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation
+to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but
+otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that its essential
+existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with
+matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is
+subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to
+it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state."[J]
+
+Later in the same work he expresses the opinion "that life is something
+outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and
+energy; though it can nevertheless control and direct material
+forces...."
+
+In closing his volume on _Life and Matter_ this distinguished scientist
+says:
+
+      "What is certain is that life possesses the power of
+      vitalizing the complex material aggregates which exist on
+      this planet, and of utilizing their energies for a time to
+      display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it
+      seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is
+      perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it
+      is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the
+      animated material body moves about and strives after many
+      objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a
+      certain individuality, a certain character. It may realize
+      itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and
+      spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind
+      which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the
+      material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the
+      environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit.
+      Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent
+      soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth,
+      goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent
+      value, or a work of art or of literature; it may enter the
+      region of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest
+      kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may
+      soar till it is almost divine.
+
+      "Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own
+      unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired
+      this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas?
+      There are some who try to think that it is. There are
+      others who recognize in this extraordinary development a
+      contact between this material frame of things and a
+      universe higher and other than anything known to our
+      senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry;
+      but utilizing the interactions of matter for its own
+      purpose; a universe where the human spirit is more at home
+      than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a
+      universe capable of infinite development, of noble
+      contemplation and of lofty joy, long after this
+      planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled
+      its present sphere of destiny, and retired cold and
+      lifeless upon its endless way."
+
+Such a conception of life carries us very far from the old popular view
+of the origin of the race, but it is a conception that brings science
+and religion into perfect agreement and will enable us to understand
+human evolution and explain facts in life that would otherwise remain
+incomprehensible.
+
+The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal life, was taught
+and commonly accepted in the early Christian period. If we accept the
+fact of evolution at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape
+from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed, not even
+materialism can save one from the necessity of accepting the
+pre-existence of the individualized consciousness that we call a human
+being.
+
+Let us consider the human infant as we see it at birth. Whence came
+it--how can we account for it in a universe of law and order? We can
+understand it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse of
+physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few months. But its mind,
+its consciousness, its emotions, what of them? The average man replies
+that God made them and they constitute the soul. But how and when were
+they "made"? Even the material part of this infant did not spring
+miraculously and instantaneously into existence. How much less possible
+is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made it" we have explained
+nothing. But it is not necessary to deny that God creates the soul in
+order for us to move toward an understanding of how the soul came to be.
+It is only necessary to say that the process of its creation was
+evolutionary. Nobody denies that the earth was created by evolution,
+although men may differ in opinion on the matter of a divine
+intelligence guiding its evolutionary development. The same principle
+must apply to the human intelligence.
+
+Lodge wrote _Life and Matter_ as a reply to Haeckel's _Riddle of the
+Universe_, which presented the latter's philosophy of materialism. But
+Lodge did more than demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not
+an inch of scientific ground to support his theory. The English
+scientist raised questions that have not been answered, and cannot be
+answered, by the scientific materialist. He points out that the
+materialist's philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary
+rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully
+endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century."[K]
+
+With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the scientific materialist
+speechless; for all scientists are evolutionists, and it is impossible
+to account for "_the extraordinary rapidity of development_" by the laws
+of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary age of anything
+depends upon its complexity. A simple form is comparatively young while
+a complex one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The earth is
+simple compared to a human being. If, then, it has required ages to
+evolve the earth to its present stage how long did it take to evolve the
+wonderfully complex mental and emotional nature of the human being that
+inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge bottles Haeckel up on his own
+premises and shows that the very evolutionary principles to which the
+German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He practically says to
+Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir, fails to show how it is possible for the
+vacuous mind of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
+in thirty or forty years." In other words, if the infant is nothing but
+the form we see it would be utter absurdity to say that that mass of
+matter can evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years when
+it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary gain.
+
+Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its face. One might as well
+search the surface of a squash for some indication of intelligence. But
+wait only a little while and you shall have evidence not merely of
+intelligence but of emotions possible only to the highest order of life.
+Clearly, here is not something evolved within a brief period from a mass
+of material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific as the popular
+belief in miraculous creation at which the scientific materialist
+scoffs. The swift change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the
+intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a century" is not
+the creation of something but its _manifestation_--_the coming through
+into visible expression of that which already exists_. The soul, the
+consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole of the mental and
+emotional nature, which has been built up through thousands of years of
+evolution, is coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in a
+material body.
+
+The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument of the old
+soul--an instrument, as certainly as the violin is the instrument and a
+vehicle for the musician's expression. At every turn our materialistic
+conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception of nature's truth. It
+is because we think of the body as being actually the person, that it
+seems improbable that an old soul has entered the infant body. We think
+of the power and intelligence of an old soul and then look at the baby
+and find no indication of such things. But that is only because the baby
+body is such a new and undeveloped instrument that it is at first
+useless and only slowly can it be brought under control of the soul and
+made to express its intelligence and power. The body is a growing
+instrument, not a completed one.
+
+Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as physical bodies do.
+Suppose there was a time when the piano was keyless, as a baby is
+toothless. Suppose that sounding boards have a period of immaturity and
+that the whole mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only
+be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play on
+such a piano his performance would by no means be an indication of his
+ability. A competent critic who could hear the performance but not see
+the musician would promptly declare that no really great musician was
+touching the keys. And that is precisely the mistake we make in assuming
+that the immature body of an infant is capable of expressing the
+intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it differently, denying
+that a returned, old soul is in possession of the infant body simply
+because there is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos
+slowly grew to maturity then only when the instrument was mature could
+the master musician give a practical demonstration of his skill; and
+only when the physical body has reached its maturity can the soul that
+is using it fully express itself.
+
+In the early years of the physical body the soul is only very partially
+expressed through it. The entrance of the consciousness into the
+physical world is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth of a
+plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a good one, for a plant is
+very little like a human body. It is impossible to find a material
+equivalent of the dawning of consciousness on the physical plane.
+Beginning about four and a half months before the birth of the physical
+body and continuing for a period of several years the soul, or
+consciousness, is engaged in the process of anchorage in the physical
+world. For a long time the center of consciousness remains above the
+material plane and during the early years of childhood the consciousness
+is divided between the astral and physical worlds, with the result that
+the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments of astral
+consciousness into physical life. When the physical body is about seven
+years old the consciousness may be said to be centered on the physical
+plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's new instrument are
+mature has the opportunity come for the fullest expression.
+
+Some of the difficulties commonly associated in the mind with the
+thought of the pre-existence and rebirth of the soul will disappear if
+we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is a center of
+consciousness, which is always consciousness somewhere, but which very
+gradually shifts its focus from plane to plane. Its permanent home is in
+that body of filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels of
+the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws
+about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle
+of consciousness, that is not permanent but which will serve the purpose
+of functioning for a period on that plane. Downward again the energies
+are sent, building about the center of consciousness on the astral plane
+a temporary body of astral matter, temporary in the same sense that the
+physical body is temporary, and which shall serve the consciousness in
+the astral, or emotional world, during the whole of the physical plane
+life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or downward, the soul
+sends its energies till the material world is reached, when it begins to
+function partially, and very feebly, through the infant physical body.
+
+For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the physical plane where
+certain lessons are to be learned. After the early years of childhood
+are over the consciousness is firmly anchored here, where the chief work
+is to be done, during the hours of the waking consciousness. During
+sleep the ego temporarily lays aside the physical body and functions in
+the astral body in the astral world. The material body sleeping here is
+merely a deserted and empty vehicle, magnetically connected with the
+soul, and awaiting its return.
+
+As childhood, youth, maturity and old age pass, complex experiences
+come to the soul thus functioning here. Other souls functioning through
+physical bodies are encountered and various relationships are
+established. Out of the complexity of social, business, religious and
+political activities the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner
+or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter. The
+gathering of such experience has ceased, not because the soul has
+acquired all possible physical world knowledge, but because its
+instrument of consciousness here has worn out.
+
+Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection and the
+center of its consciousness is then shifted to the astral plane. There
+the purgative process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter.
+As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free from one grade of astral
+matter after another and with the loss of each the man becomes conscious
+on a higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but the matter of
+the astral body gradually wears away until there is so little left that
+the soul has lost connection with the astral world also. This means that
+the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental plane, or heaven
+world, where the man will function on the lower levels.
+
+There in the mental world, functioning through the vehicle of mental
+matter, a very important process goes on. The heaven world life is a
+harvest time in which assimilation of experience takes place. The
+consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences of life and
+extracts the essence from them which is transmuted into faculty and
+power for future greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in
+wisdom and power through its long evolution.
+
+When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest of experience has
+been threshed out and the net gain has been built into the enduring
+causal body, the mental body, like the astral, has been completely
+dissipated. The end of a cycle of experience--of a day in the
+evolutionary school--has come and the physical, astral and mental bodies
+have all perished. Nothing remains but the soul, the real man, the ego,
+functioning through the causal body which persists. From that the ego
+again sends the forces outward, in the first activity toward rebirth,
+first forming a new mental body by drawing about itself the matter of
+the lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new astral body on
+the astral plane and finally taking possession of another infant body in
+process of formation on the physical plane, into which it will in due
+course be reborn.
+
+The period between these successive appearances of the soul in a
+succession of physical bodies varies greatly and depends on a number of
+things. The length of time spent upon the astral plane has already been
+discussed. The time spent in the heaven world depends upon the mental
+and moral forces generated during the physical and astral life. If there
+is a great harvest of experience it will require a longer time to
+transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought little and loved but
+little will have a shorter period there, for it is the heart and head
+forces that have their culmination in the mental world. The question is
+a rather complex one and other factors come into play, including the
+intensity of the heaven world life. In general terms, however, it can be
+said that the heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will
+commonly be a period several times the length of his combined physical
+and astral life. Some people will have only two or three hundred years
+between incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries and
+still others a much longer period.
+
+In getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth, or
+reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the soul,
+or center of individualized consciousness, is the man and that the
+physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
+that the causal body is his permanent body for the whole of human
+evolution; that the mental plane is his home plane and that from there
+he sends forth successive expressions of himself into these lower
+planes. With such facts before us there should be no confusion of
+thought about the successive personalities of an individual. Yet we
+sometimes hear people speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
+can be one man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth. Of
+course no such thing occurs. An individual remains the same individual
+forever. "But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr. Jones, in
+England six hundred years ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in
+America at this moment? If so is that not a case of being two
+individuals?"
+
+It is certainly not a case of being two individuals. It is a case of
+one individual being expressed through a physical body six hundred years
+ago in England, dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
+astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing himself through
+another physical body in America at the present time. The confusion of
+thought on the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
+physical body as being the man. But it is no more the man than the
+clothing he wears. It is true that he is known at one period as Jones
+and at another as Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
+the assumption of an _alias_ by a fleeing criminal changes him. The name
+applies exclusively to the physical body, or personality, as
+distinguished from the individuality. That body is but the temporary
+clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were applied to
+his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his body. We
+might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and as Mr.
+Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name
+would in the least degree make him somebody else. The majority of women
+change their names in each incarnation. A man may know a certain woman
+as Miss Smith when she is a slip of a girl, free from care and with
+little serious thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs.
+Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of children. She has
+changed her name and greatly changed in character, too, but she is the
+same individual.
+
+It seems probable that a person may change quite as much between
+infancy and old age as between one incarnation and the next. Even the
+difference between a youth of twenty years who is an artist and the same
+man at three score and ten who has given forty years to scientific study
+and research, may be enormous, but the individuality is, of course,
+identical. It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and that is just
+what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths--steady evolutionary
+development of the eternal individual.
+
+The reincarnating process by which the soul evolves is somewhat
+analogous to the growth of a young physical body. The process consists
+of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. How does
+the body of a child grow? It consumes food, the objective activity. It
+then digests and assimilates it, the subjective activity. These periods
+must alternate or there can be no growth, because neither alone is the
+complete process. The one is the complement of the other. So it is in
+the evolution of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life is
+the food on which the soul grows. The physical plane existence is the
+objective period in which the food is gathered. At death the man passes
+into the invisible realms where the subjective process is carried on. He
+digests and assimilates his experiences and the gist is stored in the
+causal body and its growth includes an actual increase in size, just as
+in the case of the child's physical body.
+
+The same law governs mental and moral growth as it operates in our
+daily affairs. A young man is in college. How does his intellect grow?
+By precisely the same process of alternating periods of objective and
+subjective activity. In the class room the instructor puts a
+mathematical problem on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward
+senses of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the student
+gathers the food for mental growth. This period of objective activity
+comes to an end and he then retires to the privacy of his room and there
+the subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the problem. His
+material, the food for mental growth, is only a few notes that serve to
+keep the experience in his mind. At first all that they signify is not
+obvious, but as he turns the various points over and over in his mind
+their significance becomes clearer and fuller. It is the subjective
+process of digestion. Little by little new light dawns in the student's
+mind. Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
+principles involved, and the process of assimilation is finished. This
+subjective period is the complement of the objective period and they
+must go on alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When the
+process of digestion and assimilation is finished the student must
+return to the classroom for further mental food and when he arrives it
+is by virtue of the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that he
+is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And precisely so it is
+with the reincarnating soul. In the interval between incarnations it so
+assimilates the experiences of the last physical life that it comes to
+rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take higher and more
+difficult lessons than it could previously master.
+
+In the case of both physical growth by eating and mental growth by
+instruction there is no possible escape from the law of alternating
+periods of objective and subjective activity. When the child has
+digested and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing that can
+follow--return to his source of supply for another meal. When the
+student has digested and assimilated the lesson given to him the only
+possibility of further mental growth lies in his return to the
+class-room for more material. And so it is with the human soul in its
+work of evolving its latent powers and possibilities. There is no other
+road forward but the cyclic one that brings it back to the physical life
+incarnation after incarnation, but always at a higher point than it
+previously touched. The very hunger of the child that insures its return
+to the table for more food is analogous to the desire of the soul for
+sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.
+
+These alternating periods with the element of constant return are found
+everywhere in the economy of nature. All her evolutionary expressions
+are cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed circles. It
+represents a spiral. The "evolutionary ladder" that the soul climbs is a
+winding stairway. In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it is
+always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that
+is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral
+plane, into the physical and then back through the astral plane into the
+heaven world, it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a higher
+state of development, than it had previously attained. Each rebirth
+finds it abler here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
+return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler to digest
+and assimilate its experiences, and to comprehend more of the realities
+of the life of its home plane.
+
+This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral and mental regions,
+is a continuous progressive journey of the soul which began away back at
+the dawn of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
+mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he gathers experience
+in proportion to his alertness and to the opportunities his previous
+lives have made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to
+be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure in the astral life
+and joy and wisdom in the mental region, or heaven world. But he also
+does some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates hatred and he
+injures others. This will give him distress in the astral life and no
+results for soul growth or general progress in the heaven world. If he
+does an equal amount of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he
+does much good and little evil his progress will be rapid and his
+existence happy. If he is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
+development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will suffer much in the
+astral life.
+
+It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy to be told that
+the soul passes through the purgation of the astral plane and goes on
+into the heaven world only to return to another incarnation and later to
+again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who has
+thus been purified be again purified? The astral reactions are the
+results of the blunders made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
+given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the purgatory that awaits
+him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly be any
+reaction. As a matter of occult fact the average good man will find the
+astral plane life a happy existence and will soon pass on to the
+blissful heaven world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only
+to his evil deeds. Let us say he has committed murder. When the reaction
+of the evil force he has generated is over and he passes on into the
+heaven plane it does not mean that he is incapable of future evil. It
+means that he has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is very
+foolish to take life. But there are many other lessons he has not
+learned. When he passes into the heaven world he leaves all evil behind
+him. He is as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple. The astral
+body, like the physical, has perished and it is the freed soul that
+enters the heaven world. But when he returns through the astral plane to
+reincarnation he is clothed again in astral matter and this new astral
+body is exactly representative of his attainments in evolution. In his
+coming incarnation he will have other physical plane experiences and
+learn other lessons. The next time probably he will not kill, but
+perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard. These errors will
+react upon him in the astral life that follows. In a coming incarnation
+he will be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor steal; but
+perhaps he will be a gossip and work much evil through slander. This in
+turn will bring its pain. And so in time he will learn to generate no
+evil force at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward
+everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed, his life on all
+planes will be happy and the painful part of human evolution will be
+over.
+
+The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than the fact of evolution.
+Evolution is an unfolding process in which the latent becomes the active
+and the inner life is more and more fully expressed in outer form. The
+development and improvement in form keeps pace with the necessities of
+the unfolding life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the form
+is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller and fuller expression,
+limbs for locomotion and, in due course, the organs for hearing, and
+seeing, and the other mechanism of the developing consciousness, are
+evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of consciousness comes to its
+highest possible form and then evolution goes on in the perfecting of
+the physical form. In the process of continually changing the matter of
+the body it is possible for the brain to be constantly improved and the
+whole body to grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a
+better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each
+incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and
+form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of
+intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will be
+finished.
+
+The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a god in the
+making--not actually, but only potentially a god, a being to whom all
+wisdom, perfect compassion and unlimited power are possible; and by the
+process of evolution he changes the latent into the active. He is at
+first only an individualized center of consciousness within the
+All-Consciousness, a mere fragment of the divine life. His relationship
+to God is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product of it
+that has latent within it all the characteristics of the plant and the
+power to become a plant. It is not a plant and neither is man a god; but
+when it has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is a plant
+in the making; and when the human being has begun to evolve his latent
+spiritual qualities he is a god in the making. The theosophical view is
+that man is essentially divine.
+
+Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally divine, it is necessary
+for him to pass through any evolutionary process. Divinity here
+indicates merely the essential nature of the human being, not his
+possession of either knowledge or power or any degree of spiritual
+perfection. It is as though we should say that the infant son of a great
+king is royal. The word "royal," like the word "divine," indicates a
+relationship. The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a king in the
+making. He has much to learn. He must be educated in statecraft and he
+must evolve diplomacy. After much experience and development he will, in
+time, be capable of ruling an empire. At present this helpless infant
+bears little resemblance to a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his
+birth he was as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense the
+divinity of man represents potential possibilities rather than an
+obvious fact of the moment. Man is an embryo god and, in time, he shall
+evolve faculties and powers that his present limited consciousness can
+not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature of physical origin
+that lives a brief span to catch a glimpse of immortality and perish,
+but the deathless son of the living God, and by right divine he walks
+the upward way of eternal life.
+
+Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter of course, in a
+general way, but they appear unwilling to admit that the race has really
+made any evolutionary progress. Even scientific men have sometimes
+expressed doubt whether the world is growing better. In a newspaper
+interview an English scientist was quoted as saying a few years ago that
+the race is just as wicked today as at any time within recorded history.
+But if he was correctly reported it must have been a hasty expression of
+opinion which a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It is
+true that things are still bad enough but they are certainly enormously
+better than they were some centuries ago. To say that the world is full
+of crime and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact that a
+civilized nation has reverted to the wartime practices of savage life
+furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to do in
+determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality is to
+take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective
+conscience. How does the world of today view war and how did the world
+in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to shock us now but the
+very fact that it does shock us is the best evidence of moral progress.
+Atrocities were expected and taken as a matter of course some centuries
+ago. They are not the rule now but the rare exception and those guilty
+of them are likely to make their name a by-word among nations. Well
+within the era of recorded history the usages of nations' condemned
+prisoners of war to become slaves for life. Now the rule is to feed and
+clothe them and at the close of the conflict to send them home. A simple
+thing like public sports may be used as a measure of public morals. They
+show what the collective conscience approves. In these days there is
+very little of brutality in public sports. Professional pugilism still
+lingers, but barely lingers, in the most enlightened nations. In less
+progressive countries like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular.
+That is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment. But
+if we look backward to the Roman period we find a cruelty in public
+sports that is comparatively shocking. Gladiators were compelled to
+fight to the death and offenders were devoured by starving wild beasts
+and it all made a Roman holiday. Such "sports" would, of course, be
+utterly impossible anywhere in the world today. But at that time they
+were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest empire. The
+fact that the race has evolved morally and that the collective
+conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer than in the
+past is too obvious for argument.
+
+Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted for? It will not
+do to say that the Christian religion has wrought the change because,
+splendid as are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
+them and shaped its civilization by them. If it had done so the world
+war would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called Christian
+nations wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through all their
+history but class has been arrayed against class and every gain in
+either personal liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by
+force from those who profited by the misfortunes of others. In other
+words, the particular improvements that should have been brought about
+by religion were compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
+teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of
+Christianity, we are still unable to account for the change in the
+common conscience of the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
+steadily on since long, long before the coming of the Christ. How then
+shall we account for it?
+
+If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress of the race in
+morality becomes simple. The majority of the great groups of souls that
+constituted the civilized nations in the time when Rome was mistress of
+the world have had several incarnations in that time and in each sojourn
+on the astral plane have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
+from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually change the cruel man
+to the merciful man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane as
+well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any incarnation
+are carried forward into the next life, and thus compassion grows until
+there is ultimately perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the
+progress of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the
+viewpoint of reincarnation.
+
+Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such
+evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the pre-existence of
+the soul and hold that it is in some way brought into being at the time
+of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical position of saying
+that the reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman
+period is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now
+than he created then!
+
+The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or nations, to act in a
+way that imitates, or nearly duplicates, what has been done centuries
+before by other tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that it
+has given rise to the declaration that history repeats itself. The fact
+of reincarnation shows why it repeats itself. A nation like the Romans,
+or the Carthaginians, are bound together in the subtle ties that are
+formed by the intimate relationships of constant association. The group
+tends to persist and the members of it are largely drawn together and
+regrouped in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond the
+level of the previous centuries but the general traits and tendencies
+remain and the same general policies are likely to shape the national
+affairs. There comes a time in the existence of the great group, or
+nation, when the old environment will no longer serve for its further
+collective evolution as well as some other country. The majority then
+reincarnate elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be
+inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence the remarkable
+difference in the people of a given nation in different periods. Compare
+Rome in the time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or compare
+the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt. It is
+high-class egos that make a great nation and when a country has no more
+lessons to teach them, or rather when another country will serve as a
+better environment for their further progress, they return in rebirth to
+the more advantageous spot on the earth, and a different set of souls
+come into possession of the abandoned environment. The valley of the
+Nile, that was once the home of an energetic people with a flourishing
+civilization would not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile
+civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe because only
+that environment, in full touch with the great commercial stream of the
+economic world, can serve the purpose. As the world is today what could
+a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if born into Egypt?
+Nothing but leave it. So they are not reincarnated there, but other
+souls that are at the point in evolution where the primitive life of an
+isolated country will give the simpler lessons they must acquire,
+inherit the abandoned environment. As an individual moves continually
+onward in each return to incarnation to professional and business
+environments that will enable him to put into effect all the new skill
+and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes on to greater and greater
+opportunities. Souls that made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and
+Rome are now making the greatness of Europe and America. Such facts
+explain many things that have seemed puzzling. How, for example, was it
+possible for the world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in
+Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined--declined because her
+people largely reincarnated elsewhere--Europe was inhabited by slightly
+civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a few centuries--a mere
+passing moment in the great lapse of time required for race
+evolution--the civilization today could arise, would be to ignore the
+fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand that great groups of
+old souls incarnate in the strong physical bodies which the more
+primitive peoples could bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid
+rise of a great civilization in Europe is solved.
+
+The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal kingdom at a high
+level in it. The last phase of evolution in the animal kingdom is the
+individualizing of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or
+dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution and will be
+reborn at the lowest human level. Previous to its individualization it
+evolves in a group with others of its kind, animated by a common
+ensoulment that has not reached the level of complete
+self-consciousness. At that group-soul stage the experience of each
+animal in the group adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical
+teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to
+understand many things that would otherwise remain mysterious. Instinct
+has never been explained by science. Some of its best known expressions
+are altogether mysterious. Why does a young wild animal hide from the
+enemies of its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen either?
+A quail a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small stone or
+bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws to hide its body, and
+remain perfectly motionless at the approach of a human being, but will
+take no alarm at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a young
+chick know the difference between a crow and a hawk? And why, in remote
+places like the antarctic regions, are both young and old birds and
+animals unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and simple
+explanation of all such phenomena. The youngest have the knowledge of
+the oldest because they are attached to the same group-soul, or source
+of consciousness. The young quails of this season come back to rebirth
+from the group-soul that is the storehouse of the experiences of the
+quails that were killed by men in past seasons, and thus all young
+things know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred to the
+killing proclivities of the human being have not become known and there
+is no "instinct" to warn.
+
+An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the group-soul is the
+fact, often chronicled but not explained, that when telephone or
+telegraph lines are built in new countries the birds fly against the
+wires and are killed by thousands, the first season. But when the next
+season's birds are hatched they are wise and avoid the wires! If the
+group-soul were not a fact in nature it would naturally require a long
+time for wire education. No such sudden adjustment would be possible.
+
+Reincarnation represents continuous evolution with no waste of time or
+loss of energy. Death is not the sudden break in the life program that
+the popular belief pictures it. The common view of death is as erroneous
+as the common view of birth. If death were what most people believe it
+to be it would constitute a blunder of nature--an irrational
+interruption of orderly development. In nature's economy there is
+conservation of energy and no loss can arise through the change called
+death. If the popular belief that at death we go far away to a totally
+different kind of existence were sound then death would usually mean an
+enormous waste. A young man is educated for some particular work,
+engineering, architecture or statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to
+die soon afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting such an
+education would be largely lost either if death ends all, or is the
+last he will know of the material world. But nature does not thus
+blunder. Her law of conservation is always operative. All the skill and
+wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and will be used in the
+future incarnations.
+
+A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in evolution. The child
+cannot get an education in a term nor in a year. He must return often to
+the same school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may use new
+books with higher lessons but he returns periodically to the same
+environment. Continuous attendance would be as unthinkable as finishing
+his education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns
+periodically to the physical world, or plane, for the same reasons.
+Continuous life here until all material experience is gained would be
+impossible. Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring and
+digesting experience the physical body would become a hindrance to
+evolution. Within certain limits the physical brain can respond to the
+requirements of the growing soul, but a new body is in time an absolute
+necessity to further evolution.
+
+If we give a little thought to the evolutionary progress the ordinary
+person must make to raise him to mental and moral perfection, the
+absurdity of a single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a moment,
+intellectual perfection. It would mean a development of the mind to the
+point of genius in many directions. If we combine into one mind the
+attainments of the mathematical genius, the musical genius, the
+inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on until every line of
+intellectual activity is included, we then have only the perfect mental
+man. On the moral side we must add to that the combined qualities of the
+saints. Then we have the perfected human being, with nothing more to be
+learned from incarnation here. His further evolution belongs to
+superphysical realms.
+
+In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul, that slowly changes
+it life after life from the savage to the civilized state and finally
+raises it to perfection, it is helpful to observe how this great work
+corresponds to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation. A great
+character in history begins with helpless infancy. Steadily he
+progresses, unfolding new power at each step. He passes through the
+graded schools, slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows
+with higher and more difficult mental acquirements. Then he enters
+professional life and begins to use his intellect with more and more
+initiative. He moves on into public life with increased duties and
+responsibilities. From one post of honor he rises to another with
+increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is the head of a nation
+and has become a world figure. Even so it is in the evolution of the
+soul. Life by life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst every
+increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In one incarnation we
+have conditions that evolve courage. In another we are thrown into
+situations that develop tolerance. In still another we acquire patience
+and balance. In all of these incarnations we steadily evolve intellect
+and strengthen all previously acquired virtues. In each life we find
+the new conditions that are necessary for the exercise of our added
+abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual insight and
+the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves, we move forward to higher
+fields of evolution.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[J] "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120.
+
+[K] Life and Matter.--Lodge, p. 121.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE
+
+
+No matter how much we may differ in our view of the relationship between
+God and man there is general agreement about the attributes of the
+Supreme Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom, love and, of
+course, the perfection of all those desirable qualities we see in human
+beings. The theosophical view is that all we know in man of power,
+wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, et cetera, are faint but actual
+manifestations of the attributes of the deity. All who are not
+materialists, denying the existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that
+the wisdom and justice of God must be perfect. It would be illogical and
+inconsistent to limit or qualify His attributes. Either He is all-wise
+and absolutely just, or else the materialist is right. We cannot have a
+deity at all unless He represents perfect justice.
+
+Another point on which all but the materialists must agree is that
+creation is so ordered that the common welfare of humanity is best
+served by just the conditions of life that surround us. Nothing is
+different from what it should be unless it is because of man's failure
+to do what he should do for his own welfare. If it were otherwise what
+would become of the argument that an omniscient God has ordered it as it
+is? If, then, things are as they should be in the truest interests of
+man, and we find things in life that, according to our views of
+creation, are not right and just, it necessarily follows that the views
+we hold are erroneous.
+
+The popular belief is that human beings constitute a special creation;
+that whenever a baby is born God creates a soul or consciousness for
+that body and that after a life of many years, or a few days, or a few
+minutes, as the case may be, the body dies and the consciousness goes to
+dwell in remote regions for ever and ever. If the person lived a good
+life and also believed in the current religion he will be "saved" and
+will be eternally happy. If he did not live a good life but finally
+"believed" before death he will be saved anyway and be just as happy as
+though he had lived right from the start. If he did live a good life,
+but was not born with the ability to believe easily, he will be lost and
+will be eternally miserable. According to this theory of special
+creation God makes people of all sorts. None of them can help being what
+they are created. Some are wise and some are foolish. Those who are
+smart enough to find the way of salvation will finally have heaven added
+to their original gift of wisdom. Those who are not smart enough to find
+it will finally have hell added to their original lack of sense. This is
+what some people are pleased to call divine justice!
+
+It will hardly do to argue that the possibility that all may at last be
+happy in an endless heaven, makes it unimportant that there are
+inequalities now. The majority of the theologians do not admit that such
+a state awaits the whole of the human race, and the comparatively few
+who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that present justice can
+be determined by future happiness. Even if we positively knew that
+eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close of this physical life
+how could that make it just that one person shall be born a congenital
+criminal and another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How could it
+make it right that one is born to life-long illness, suffering and
+poverty, while another inherits both wealth and a sound physical body?
+Not even the certainty of future happiness would be compensation for
+present inequalities. But why should there be any such inequalities if
+God represents unlimited power and perfect justice? Why should there be
+any poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously,
+He can as certainly create any necessary condition for the soul? Why
+poverty and disease and suffering at all? There must be a better answer
+to such questions than that "it pleased God to have it so." It is surely
+little better than blasphemy to suggest that any kind of hard conditions
+for man are pleasing to the deity.
+
+To hold that any future condition of happiness can make present justice
+out of the truly terrible inequalities of life, would be much like a
+millionaire who has two sons giving one of them all the advantages of
+wealth, travel, skilled instructors and special care, while the other
+was permitted to wear rags and go hungry. If the neglected son asked why
+he was thus treated while his brother was most carefully provided for,
+the father might reply with some indignation, "You are to have plenty in
+the future! My will is so drawn that when I die my great wealth will be
+equally divided between you and your brother. You will then be a
+millionaire with more money than you can possibly spend. So don't be
+foolish about your hardships now. Learn to starve like a gentleman!" The
+father's position in such a case would be just as reasonable as that of
+those who think a heaven hereafter can justify an earthly hell now.
+
+Now let us take some of the particular facts of life that puzzle us and
+test them with the hypothesis of special creation, and also with the
+hypothesis of reincarnation, and see which can really explain them in a
+satisfactory manner. We will take some facts of real life. In a
+Massachusetts prison there is an old man whose name became familiar to
+many of us in our youth. He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy, the boy
+murderer. The present generation scarcely knows him. But forty years or
+more ago he was talked about by all the newspapers. For the crime of
+murdering his playmates the boy was sent to prison for life. Why did
+Pomeroy become a noted criminal in childhood? If the theory of special
+creation is sound he was created and put in the world to fit himself for
+a future heaven. But he was created in such fashion that he was
+deficient in moral perception and he began life with an act that led to
+his expulsion from society. If God created this soul as we first knew
+him why was he not created with the moral balance of a law-abiding
+citizen so that he could have lived long and peacefully in civilized
+society and have been prepared for heaven at death? What could have been
+the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think soundly and a
+conscience that welcomed murder? That leads us inevitably to the
+question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The
+deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the
+theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that
+contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to
+create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He
+should create a humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever
+attaining it. If He creates them as they come into the world at birth
+why are not all of them created wise and kind? Why must most of them
+blunder through life, making all sorts of mistakes, bringing suffering
+to others by their unkindness or cruelty and only, in the end, to pass
+from a life of failure to eternal punishment for that failure? There is
+no reason, no justice, no sanity in such a theory.
+
+Now let us turn to the explanation of reincarnation. According to that,
+Pomeroy has had many past incarnations and will have many more. Like all
+the rest of us he came up from primitive man. We have all learned the
+lessons of civilized life slowly by experience like children acquiring
+lessons from their books. The majority have come along well and
+developed a fair share of intellect in dealing with life's problems,
+and some degree of sympathy for others. Some have evolved rapidly like
+hard working pupils and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged
+behind and have learned very little. They are like the truants at school
+who have broken the rules and run away from their lessons. These
+laggards of the human race are the dullards and the criminals, who have
+moved so slowly incarnation after incarnation, or are so much younger in
+evolution, that they are now bringing savage traits into our present
+civilized life.
+
+Reincarnation not only explains who and what the criminal is but it also
+explains away the hell with which special creation threatens him. No
+hell awaits him except that which he has created himself by what he has
+done. By the law of cause and effect all the cruelty and suffering he
+has inflicted will react upon him to his sorrow, but will also serve for
+his enlightenment. In his next incarnation the kind of body he will have
+and the environment in which he will live will be determined exactly by
+the thoughts and emotions and acts of this and past incarnations. He
+will therefore neither go to a heaven for which he is not fitted nor to
+a hell which he does not justly deserve. He will simply come back in
+another physical body and have a chance to try it again, but he will
+have to make the trial under the conditions which his conduct has
+merited.
+
+And what of the idiot? According to special creation we cannot possibly
+explain him. It would be blasphemous to believe that God creates a
+mindless man. If one soul is given a mind and another is not, and for no
+reason whatever, it is the most monstrous injustice that ever forced
+itself upon the understanding of man! Think for a moment of the
+difference between the idiot and the normal person. The man of sound
+mind has before him the opportunity of progress, of mental and moral
+development. The avenues of business and professional life are open
+before him. He is free to try his powers and win his way. Wealth, power
+and fame are all possible for him. All the joys of social life may be
+his. Think of him surrounded by his family and friends, successful,
+satisfied, happy, and then think of the life of the idiot. Language
+cannot express the horror of the contrast! If there were no other
+explanation of life than that of special creation it would change the
+world into the hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation saves
+us from either blasphemy or madness. The idiot, like the congenital
+cripple, differs from the normal man only in the body, which is the
+instrument of the soul. Deformity of the body is a limitation of the ego
+who functions through it. A withered arm, a club foot, a deformed back,
+in this incarnation are results of unfortunate causes which that soul
+has generated in past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in the brain.
+Of course this is not an accident. There is no element of chance which
+places the limitation in one body where it causes but little trouble and
+in another where it prevents mental activity and thus produces idiocy.
+In each case it is the exact working out of the law. The body of the
+idiot is the physical plane representation of a soul that has made a
+serious blunder in the past, possible by limiting another with cruel
+restraint, and the gross misuse of his intellect and power in that way
+has operated to prevent his using it at all in the present life. But
+such limitations belong to the outer planes. It is the form that limits
+and when the form perishes the limitation disappears. As with the
+criminal no hell is needed to punish the idiot. He has made his own hell
+by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he must live in it
+and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it may seem to some that since the
+idiot is incapable of realizing the life of the normal person the
+situation represents no real misfortune for him. But idiocy on the
+physical plane does not mean idiocy in the soul. Even from the astral
+plane the ego may keenly feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime
+through such a physical body, as one here would feel the anguish of
+incarceration in a dungeon.
+
+The criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations of the failure of
+the theory of special creation to satisfactorily explain the facts of
+life. But if we turn to the other extreme and consider the most
+fortunate people in the world we shall find there, too, precisely the
+same failure to explain. By the hypothesis of special creation we find a
+gross injustice done to the soul born an ignoramus. Yet we find others
+possessing enough intelligence for several people. In the case of
+Macaulay we have the evidence in his own handwriting in a letter the
+date of which proves his age, that he was reading Greek and Latin and
+studying mathematics deeply when seven years old. There are many other
+cases of the remarkable display of talents in childhood, but a single
+instance will serve for all. It is all the better as an illustration
+because it is a contemporaneous case and the facts are known to scores
+of living people. It is recorded of William James Sidis, of Brookline,
+Massachusetts, that at six years of age he entered a grammar school and
+in six months had completed the work of seven grades. At the age of
+seven he had gone so far with his mathematical studies that his father,
+Professor Boris Sidis, could be of little assistance to him. He worked
+out the most abstruse and difficult problems with the greatest ease and
+invented new systems of computation which attracted much attention. When
+eight years old he entered the Brookline High School and in six weeks
+had completed the mathematical course and began writing a book on
+astronomy. He then took up the study of French, German, Latin and
+Russian. On leaving school he took up mathematics as a specialty and
+invented a system of logarithms based on the number 12 instead of 10.
+This was inspected by several well known mathematicians who pronounced
+it perfect in every detail. He applied for admission to Harvard
+University but the authorities refused his petition on account of his
+youth, only, since he could have passed the examination with ease. He
+tried again the next year and was again refused on the same ground. But
+at eleven years of age, having passed the entrance examination for the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was judged to know enough of
+chemistry and kindred subjects to make him eligible for admission to the
+Harvard medical school. He then entered upon a special course at Harvard
+because the ordinary course in college was far below the abilities of
+this boy of eleven years. Professor James, of Harvard, the famous
+psychologist, has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he ever
+knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite pages of Shakespeare
+from memory at an age when the ordinary boy is learning his alphabet.
+
+In the same city where young Sidis was born we find the idiot. Did God
+create them both as they were born or did they come up to their present
+difference of mental equipment through a process of evolution that
+accounts for it all satisfactorily? If the theory of special creation is
+sound why did not the idiot get at least a little of the intellect that
+Sidis could so easily have spared? If they are the work of special
+creation it is impossible to find reason or justice in such terrible
+inequalities. But if reincarnation is God's method of creation the
+explanation of the difference between them becomes simple. Sidis is not
+only an old soul but evidently one who has worked hard in past lives,
+throwing off the lassitude of the dense bodies and evolving the power of
+will that enabled him to triumph over obstacles, conquering all the
+enemies of intellectual progress and thus earning the fine physical body
+and brain he now possesses. His present abilities are but the sum total
+of the energies he has put forth in the past.
+
+The theory of special creation does not explain the facts of life. It
+lacks justice, it lacks harmony and it lacks consistency. It is not in
+accord with natural law. Nature knows no such thing as special creation.
+To believe in special creation is to ignore all scientific facts and
+principles. On the other hand reincarnation is in harmony with science
+and with natural law. Reincarnation is evolution and every kingdom of
+nature develops through evolution. The difference between the shriveled
+wild grain that struggles with the rock and soil for life enough to
+barely reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of the cultivated fields
+that feeds the world, is the work of evolution. The wild stalk produced
+the seed and from that seed came a better stalk. The better stalk
+produced a still better kernel and from that better kernel sprang a
+superior stalk to yield a higher grade of wheat than any of its
+predecessors. The stalk sprouts from the ground, matures, stores all its
+gain of growth within the seed and perishes. But from the seed springs
+its reincarnated form, to repeat the process that changes poor to good,
+good to better and better into best. And thus it is with the
+reincarnating soul. As the almost worthless grain through many seasons
+is slowly changed to perfect worth, the soul is by that same law of
+evolution slowly changed through many incarnations from the chaos of
+savage instincts to the law and order of the moral world. Each
+incarnation yields some improvement. As the seed sprouts within the
+darkness of the soil and, perishing there, attains its full results in
+the higher realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which,
+stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its better self, so
+the soul strikes anchorage in the lower planes and draws from its varied
+experiences that which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the
+power to return with greater life.
+
+Attempts have been made to find some explanation of the mental and moral
+inequalities that exist at birth. In the earlier days of the study of
+evolution it was usually asserted that the human being inherits his
+mentality and morality from his parents. But even if that were true the
+injustice of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain. It
+is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice, and it is of
+no importance whether it comes about through heredity or otherwise. But
+as a matter of fact heredity is confined to the physical side of
+existence. As more and more is learned by observation the old theory of
+mental and moral heredity has lost ground until it can be said that it
+now has no recognition in the scientific world. Nobody is better
+qualified to speak upon the subject than those with practical
+experience. Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University Children's Clinic,
+that has large numbers of defective children in charge, treating no less
+than sixteen hundred in a single year, says:
+
+      "As to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective
+      types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance. I do not
+      agree with social or educational doctrinaires who assign
+      the causes definitely to liquor, poverty, infectious
+      diseases, or other social or moral shortcomings. The
+      greatest minds of the world are hesitant in theorizing
+      about this. There are a complex of causes which explain
+      many of these cases, but no generalization fits absolutely.
+      We may find a case which is not traceable to any of these
+      conditions--_a case in which the antecedents would promise
+      a perfectly normal child, and yet we are confronted with a
+      defective child_. On the other hand, bright, normal
+      children, even children of superior intelligence sometimes
+      spring from such conditions."[L]
+
+A little reasoning about the facts concerning both genius and idiocy
+will make it clear that neither is inherited. If it were true that
+genius is inherited society would present a different appearance. There
+would be famous families of geniuses living in the world, in music, in
+poetry, in warfare, in invention, in art, if genius were inherited. The
+fact is that it is difficult to find even two geniuses in any family.
+The Caesars, Napoleons, Edisons, Lincolns, Wagners, Shakespeares, stand
+alone with neither great ancestors nor great descendants. We search in
+vain for great ancestors for such men; but if the theory of mental
+heredity were sound we should know their ancestors for precisely the
+same reason that we know them.
+
+Heredity, then, does not explain whence genius comes; and if anybody had
+really traced genius from father, or grandfather, to son or grandson, we
+should still have no explanation of what genius is. We could then only
+regard it as the result of some strange chance; yet the scientist knows
+that laws of nature contain no such element. But the only reason why
+genius appears so incomprehensible is because we have not looked at it
+in the light of nature's truth. We have erroneously assumed that this is
+the only life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the time is
+too short for the evolution of genius. A man can become an expert in one
+lifetime but not a genius. But if we give him many incarnations to
+develop along certain lines he can become a genius of a given type. The
+soul that works strenuously at building up a certain faculty through
+many incarnations naturally develops qualities in the causal body that
+shine out brilliantly upon its return to a physical body and we have the
+genius. We evolve our mentality and morality, and there could be no
+justice in life if it were otherwise.
+
+There is no element of chance in getting a new physical body in the next
+incarnation. The body is the material expression of the self. It is as
+much the product of the self as the rose is of the bush, the apple of
+the tree, or the tulip of the bulb. The musician can no more get a body
+suitable to the blacksmith than the rose bush can produce an apple. We
+do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people drawing clothing by
+numbers which might result in grotesque misfits. We do not get bodies at
+all, we evolve them, and in each incarnation the new body expresses all
+the soul has come to be up to that point in its evolution. Such a view
+of life has a basis of absolute justice. Every soul gets exactly what
+it has earned.
+
+The common belief in Occidental civilization is that we live here for
+only sixty or seventy years and that then, when we die, we pass on to
+live eternally somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity, whether
+it is filled with pleasure or is horrible with pain, is made to depend
+on how we spent those few years of the physical life! Such a fate would
+be unfair and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a term it would
+not be fair to condemn him to lose all opportunity of getting an
+education. We would give him another chance at the following term.
+
+A little incident of disobedience from home life will illustrate the
+point involved. A quinine capsule was lying on the table. A
+three-year-old boy reached for it. His mother called across the room,
+"Don't eat that, dearie, it isn't candy." But in a spirit of reckless
+mischief he hurried it into his mouth and quickly chewed it up! It was a
+very disagreeable but salutary lesson for the little fellow. It is an
+example of nature's methods. She is always consistent, and has a
+balanced relationship between cause and effect. But suppose in this case
+we throw her consistency aside as those who believe that eternal results
+will follow temporal effects are obliged to do. An ordinary lifetime
+compared to eternity is somewhat like that instant of disobedience
+compared to eighty years, but the illustration is not adequate because
+eternity never ends. As nearly as the principle can be applied it would
+be by saying to the child, "Because you were disobedient for a second
+of time you shall taste quinine for eighty years!" If that punishment is
+injustice what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain as the
+result of the errors committed in a lifetime?
+
+Any hypothesis of existence that does not take into consideration the
+welfare of humanity is a false hypothesis. What plan can better serve
+the common welfare than a chance to redeem a failure? When a prisoner is
+condemned for a crime we do not deprive him of opportunities. We give
+him every possible chance to improve his character. God cannot be less
+just or merciful than man. Rebirth is a new chance. Every incarnation is
+another opportunity.
+
+If the popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell is sound, and there be
+few who find the "narrow way," the time will come when the majority of
+the race will have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime, and
+have failed. If that were really true, it is easy to imagine what they
+would do with another opportunity if they had it! How long should
+opportunity be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to deprive
+anybody of it when he is eager to redeem past errors is to ignore the
+principles of human welfare. Therefore such a plan cannot be the true
+one. John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:
+
+      Master of human destinies am I!
+         Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait;
+         Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
+      Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
+         Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late
+         I knock unbidden once at every gate.
+      If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before
+         I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
+         And they who follow me reach every state
+      Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
+         Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
+      Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
+         Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
+         I answer not and I return no more.
+
+That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably emphasizes the
+importance of promptly acting when the time for action arrives. But
+there is another truth to be expressed on the subject and it is well
+done by Walter Malone, who says:
+
+      They do me wrong who say I come no more,
+          When once I knock and fail to find you in;
+      For every day I stand outside your door,
+          And bid you awake and rise to fight and win.
+      Wail not for precious chances passed away;
+          Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
+      Each night I burn the records of the day,
+          At sunrise every soul is born again.
+      Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;
+          To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
+      My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
+          But never bind a moment yet to come.
+      Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,
+      I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."
+
+What a magnificent view of human evolution! No ultimate failure possible
+because there is always another chance. The failure of one incarnation
+made good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults and
+frailties--the shadow blots of the past--vanishing in the light of a
+higher wisdom that has been won. No endless hell, no eternal torment;
+not even the ghosts of vanished chances to haunt the mind; but only the
+insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging us to wake and rise to
+strive and win!
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[L] Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY
+
+
+There are apparently but three ways in which anybody has attempted to
+explain the origin of the race. If two of these are shown to be
+impossible we have no course open to us but to accept the one which
+remains. One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another
+is the common belief that God created an original human pair and
+continues to create souls for babies. The third hypothesis is that of
+the evolution of the soul.
+
+The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that the forces of
+nature, with no directive intelligence, are sufficient to account for
+man as we see him; that a continuing consciousness in the human being is
+a delusion; that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has
+neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science to which the
+materialist appeals contradict such conclusions.
+
+This materialistic belief regards the human body as a self-sufficient
+machine whose brain generates thought. But the savage has a completely
+evolved physical body with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His
+brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference in its material
+constitution from the brain of civilized man. Indeed, his physical body
+is not only as complete a machine as ours but is likely to be materially
+sounder. Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this savage
+produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there is no directing soul
+back of the brain, why the marvelous difference in the product of the
+two brains?
+
+Materialists go too far in the assumption that they can explain the
+phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop
+short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology
+they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains
+unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart
+through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the
+veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced
+cannot say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been explained and
+cannot be explained from the materialist's viewpoint. Every human being
+is a miracle. A fingernail is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from
+the same food that makes the flesh and it will continue to be formed
+regardless of the variety or quality of the food. Why do certain
+particles become flesh or nails? Who can draw the division line between
+them? With marvelous instruments and wondrous skill science has explored
+and mapped and charted the "tabernacle of clay," but it cannot throw a
+single ray of light upon the intelligence that animates it.
+
+Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but still worse as a
+satisfactory interpretation of the panorama of the life about us. It is
+a philosophy of the gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance
+to be that which we are; that we are what we are merely because of
+fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations. Had the combinations
+chanced to be something different we should not be in existence. Chance
+is the king of the materialist's world.
+
+According to this theory all abilities are the gifts of nature and all
+lack of them is the blind award of chance. No credit whatever is due to
+anybody for what he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his
+deficiencies. All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw something
+from a bag under compulsion. It is not to the credit of one that he got
+a prize nor to the discredit of another that he drew a blank. This
+hypothesis holds that recently we were not and that presently we shall
+cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief period, suffer or
+enjoy as it may happen and then pass to the oblivion of eternal silence;
+that all the thought, all the toil and the striving, all the effort and
+endurance were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a philosophy
+will not long survive the progress of our age. It lacks the balance of
+nature's principle of conservation. It lacks the completeness of
+universal law. It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in
+every human consciousness and without which life would be a meaningless
+mockery and the world a chaos of despair.
+
+But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of bad points or
+undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea of a mechanical creation is
+equally at war with both fact and reason. That belief is that God
+created the world as men build houses, and added the human beings as men
+furnish their houses when built. It is the belief that He is still
+making souls as fast as bodies are being born in the world, that these
+souls begin their existence at birth, live here but one life and then
+pass on into either endless bliss or eternal pain.
+
+This idea differs from materialism in the matter of a governing
+intelligence and on immortality but it is remarkably like it in other
+ways. Like materialism it is fatalistic because it makes man the
+helpless subject of resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent
+force as first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.
+
+The materialist says that all human characteristics are the gift of
+nature while according to the popular belief they are the gifts of God.
+In either case one class of human beings gets abilities that they have
+not earned and others get defects that they do not deserve. The
+intellectual man is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped
+without mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured by being
+well born while others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes
+logically with such ideas.
+
+Happily the world has long been growing away from the once wide-spread
+belief in predestination because it is too shocking to the modern sense
+of justice. But is the world at the same time catching the point that if
+there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at birth, then
+the very essence of predestination remains, because some are created
+with the wisdom to attain salvation and others are created without it?
+
+If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility at the
+time of birth. Neither can it have any merit. One is born with a sound
+mind and moral insight. These qualities may lead to salvation but the
+man has done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel and
+vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore miss salvation,
+but if he had no pre-existence he can have done nothing to deserve such
+a start in life. If we are really here for the first time then justice
+can be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start and equal
+opportunities afterward.
+
+Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between human beings at
+birth. There is every degree of vice and virtue from the savage to the
+saint and every mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If
+God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created wise and kind
+though he did nothing to earn it. Another is created vicious and
+depraved. He did nothing to deserve it. One is showered with natural
+gifts to which he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a
+stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to believe that God
+made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason and to justice.
+
+It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between God
+and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible for a person to
+be saved by his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by God
+at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to comprehend spiritual
+truth and his moral strength to resist temptation, were conferred upon
+him, not earned by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings
+should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human automata
+operated by such degree of mental and moral ability as God chose to
+assign to them. If this be true, genius should have no credit for its
+accomplishments, indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of
+condemnation, tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue no
+applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this
+absurd and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of people.
+It is believed because it always has been believed.
+
+If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that
+the soul is created at birth is also impossible. It is a theory that
+encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions that destroy justice
+and defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its day. It was
+possible at any time only because there was too little information and,
+like the old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place to the
+newer knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest friend of
+religion. It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific belief
+in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality and a brotherhood of
+man that has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was hastily
+thought to be destructive of a belief in God and heaven and immortality
+is rapidly becoming the most important witness to the truth of them all.
+While it is true that in the earliest days of evolution the most eminent
+scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that today the most eminent
+scientists of the world believe in the existence of the soul, and in its
+immortality, and base that belief upon scientific grounds.
+
+What is the essence of the facts of evolution and how does it give
+evidence against materialism and for immortality? Evolution is an
+orderly unfolding from the single to the diversified, from the simple to
+the complex, in which process life evolves by passing from lower to
+higher forms and storing within itself the gist of the experiences
+gained in each.
+
+One of the vital facts that evolution establishes is that slow building
+is the order of creation. The horse is an example. He is traced backward
+with certainty to a small creature that resembles him very little
+indeed. Ages were required to evolve the horse into his present
+intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important fact in evolution
+is the continuity of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently
+used as an illustration, but the principle holds with all the higher
+order of insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis of the
+caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common that most people have
+personally observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation that
+contradicts materialistic philosophy. The worm is a physical body
+occupied by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body perishes
+and becomes part of the dust of the street. The life enters the grave of
+the chrysalis. The scientist takes that chrysalis, packs it in an ice
+house and leaves it frozen for a number of years. Now a mere frost will
+kill either caterpillar or butterfly, but when the chrysalis is removed
+from the ice and brought into a higher temperature the triumphant life
+emerges in the form of the butterfly. This phenomenon proves that life
+does survive the loss of the body. The body of the caterpillar is dead
+and has turned to dust years ago, but the caterpillar that lived in it
+is not dead. It now lives again in the physical world in a physical
+body of a higher type.
+
+Here, in an order of existence almost infinitely below man, we have an
+individual life existing in a physical form, passing from it and, after
+a number of years, taking possession of another form and living in that.
+Who can admit such continuity of life for the insect and deny it for
+man? Can there be a deathless something in a worm and not in a human
+being? Even without the mass of physical evidence that exists upon the
+subject the logic of nature would lead us to confident conclusions. The
+knowledge of evolution which science has so far accumulated leads to
+four natural inferences. One is that man is immortal. Another is that he
+has, like all creatures, slowly evolved to what he now is. A third is
+that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together, and the
+fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher and continually higher
+ones. The human soul evolves from the savage to the saint--from animal
+instincts to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot escape
+the conclusion that the race has evolved, is evolving and will continue
+to evolve until mental and moral perfection has been attained.
+
+If neither the theory of the materialist nor the popular notion that the
+soul is created at birth is satisfactory, we have only reincarnation
+left as a working hypothesis; and if we accept the evolution of the soul
+as a natural truth, then reincarnation becomes a necessity in explaining
+the known facts of life.
+
+But there are some students of life who appear to refuse the hypothesis
+of reincarnation while wishing to accept the idea of the evolution of
+the soul. But how would that be possible? If the soul is evolving it is
+under the necessity of developing by the laws of growth. They were
+discussed in Chapter IX.
+
+Those who desire to put their ideas about the soul and its immortality
+into harmony with the facts of evolution sometimes ask why it would not
+be possible for the soul to leave the material plane forever at the
+death of the physical body and then pursue its evolution on higher
+planes. In the vast universe there must be opportunity for all possible
+development, it is argued.
+
+But why go on into other regions when the lessons here have not been
+learned? That would be a violation of nature's law of the conservation
+of energy. The average human being is in the elementary grades, with
+scores of incarnations ahead of him before he will be in a position even
+to take advantage of his opportunities and thus make fairly rapid
+progress. To talk of going on to higher planes for further evolution is
+like proposing that a child shall leave the kindergarten and enter the
+university.
+
+We are evolving along two lines, the mental and moral, and a little
+consideration of the matter will make clear two important points--that
+we have much to learn and that the physical plane is wonderfully
+arranged for our instruction. We have conditions here for developing
+mentality that do not exist on higher planes. The absolute necessity of
+procuring food is an example. Death is the penalty for failure to obtain
+it. Hunger was the earliest spur to action at the lowest level of
+evolution and even now at our high point of attainment it is one of the
+chief factors of racial activity. In providing the necessities of life
+and in gratifying our multitude of desires mentality is developed.
+Business and professional life rests upon these physical plane
+necessities and, engaged in solving the problems of civilization, the
+race evolves intellect. Such problems do not, of course, exist on higher
+planes.
+
+While the mentality is thus being pushed along in evolution by our
+material necessities, the heart qualities are developed by the family
+ties in a way that could not be done elsewhere. In the nature of things
+the entrance of the soul to the physical plane is attended with
+helplessness. From the beginning it must have material necessities or
+die, and yet it can do nothing in its new infant body. Again, as a rule,
+long before it leaves the physical plane old age has once more rendered
+it helpless. Thus every human being must depend on the assistance of
+others at two critical periods of each incarnation. The help it
+receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back to the race, in the care
+of both the helpless young and the helpless old, when it is in the vigor
+of mature physical life. It is obvious that such experience develops the
+qualities of sympathy and compassion as no phase of business life could.
+The relationship of parent and child, husband and wife, evolves the
+heart qualities in a way that would be impossible in the totally
+different environment of higher planes. Naturally enough, each plane has
+a specific work to do in the soul's evolution. We can no more learn in
+the highest planes the lessons the material world is designed to teach
+us than a pupil can acquire a knowledge of mathematics from his lessons
+in geography. Hence the necessity for a periodical return to this life
+until its experiences have developed in us the qualities we lack.
+
+Not only has each plane its special adaptability to particular needs of
+the soul in its evolution, but the two kinds of physical
+bodies--masculine and feminine--through which the soul functions, afford
+special advantages for acquiring the lessons of life. The soul on its
+home plane is, of course, sexless. Sex, as we know it, is a
+differentiation arising from the soul's expression on lower planes. All
+characteristics of the soul itself, like intelligence, love, or
+devotion, are common to both sexes.
+
+The ego functioning through the masculine body has the opportunity of
+certain experiences that would be impossible in the feminine body,
+while, of course, the feminine form enables the ego to get experience
+that could not be known through the masculine body. A consideration of
+the widely different experiences of fathers and mothers, sons and
+daughters, will show how true this is. The lessons obtained in the
+masculine body are largely those of the head while in the feminine form
+they are lessons of the heart.
+
+When the ego puts forth its energies and begins descent into lower
+planes for another incarnation it is apparently beginning a cycle of
+experience in which either mentality or spirituality shall be the
+dominant note for that incarnation, and probably for several others. If
+it is to evolve for the time being through those experiences related to
+objective activity, with intellect as the guiding factor, the masculine
+body can best serve the purpose. But if the dominant note is to be
+spirituality, rather than mentality and the soul is, for the time,
+moving along the line of the heart side--the subjective, the
+intuitive--then the feminine body is the better vehicle in which such
+experience can be obtained. But to say that mentality is the dominant
+factor of masculine incarnation does not at all mean that men have a
+monopoly of the reasoning faculty. Nor does the fact that other souls
+are being expressed through the feminine body mean that they have a
+fundamental spiritual advantage. Some women are better reasoners than
+some men, while some men are more spiritual than some women. What it
+does mean is that a certain ego can express intellect better through a
+masculine body and intuition better through a feminine body.
+
+Our ordinary language confirms the truth of the statement that men
+normally express more the head qualities and women more the heart
+qualities. We speak of men as being reasoners and of women as being
+intuitional and depending upon their impressions. The soul in the
+masculine body is for the time being getting experiences of the outer,
+objective activities. He is the home builder and protector, the bread
+winner, the battle fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the
+time, getting experience along the line of the inner, subjective life.
+She is the wife and mother, and her lessons are of the heart rather than
+the head.
+
+As we study nature we are more and more impressed with her wonderful
+mechanism for the evolution of the soul. It soon becomes clear to the
+student that every individual is, in each incarnation, thrown into
+precisely the circumstances required for the greatest possible progress
+of that particular ego. If the qualities of initiative and courage, for
+example, are to be developed, the masculine body admirably serves the
+purpose, while if sympathy and compassion need stimulation the feminine
+form is wonderfully effective for that kind of progress. It requires
+little reasoning to see that the soul would not continue to incarnate in
+one sex indefinitely. It must develop all its inner qualities. Both
+intellect and compassion must reach perfect expression. Such a
+consummation can, of course, be best attained by alternating sex
+experiences. But here again there is wide latitude in the operation of
+the law. The rule seems to be that ordinarily there are not less than
+three nor more than seven successive incarnations in one sex, and then
+the ego begins to express itself through a body of the other sex. By
+that rule it would commonly be for a period of from a few hundred years
+to some thousands of years, that the ego expresses itself through one
+sex before it changes to the other. One case is mentioned by the occult
+investigators in which for about thirty thousand years a certain ego had
+expressed itself only through the masculine form. At least no trace of a
+feminine incarnation could be found during that time.
+
+The necessity for rebirth becomes clearer and clearer as we study the
+nature of the human being and the inherent divine qualities he is
+unfolding. Reincarnation is the method of evolution at the human level.
+Only by physical plane experience can man's potential powers be aroused
+and so tremendous is the evolutionary work to be done that only a mere
+fragment of it can be accomplished in an ordinary lifetime. The absolute
+necessity of many rebirths is obvious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER
+
+
+The loss of memory between incarnations and the failure to now recall
+any of our experiences previous to the present physical plane life has
+sometimes been cited as a negative kind of evidence against the
+hypothesis of rebirth. The point could not be made, however, by one who
+has studied the matter because close scrutiny will show that the loss of
+memory is a necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that we do not
+remember is in perfect harmony with the principles of evolution. Indeed,
+the close student of the subject would be very much surprised if we
+could normally remember, because he does not get far until he sees, not
+only why we do not remember past incarnations but why we should not
+remember them.
+
+The very nature of the evolutionary work to be done by reincarnation
+necessitates a sacrifice of memory. One useful purpose of the
+confinement of consciousness in matter, through the use of a physical
+body, is that it narrows the scope of consciousness and thereby
+increases its efficiency. The consciousness of the ego sweeps over a
+vast range, forward and backward, including all past incarnations. But
+the limitation of matter which compels consciousness to be expressed
+through a physical body, focuses the attention on the evolutionary work
+immediately in hand. The brain becomes the instrument of consciousness
+but also, fortunately, the limitation of consciousness. If there were
+not loss of memory our minds would now range over the adventures of
+thousands of years in the past. It would encompass a vast drama with
+countless loves and hates, of many lives filled with pathos and tragedy.
+To thus distract the mind from the present life would retard our
+progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place one can think better
+and accomplish more than when in the midst of turbulent scenes and
+throngs of people. When there is less to think about the thinking is
+more effective. It is necessary to restrict the consciousness and limit
+the mind to the present life in order to get the most satisfactory
+results. The same truth is embodied in that old saying that whoever is
+jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration alone can produce
+satisfactory results. If we would master the lessons of this life we
+must not take other lives within the field of consciousness. The very
+process of reincarnation is a coming out of the general into the
+particular, with the consequent narrowing of consciousness.
+
+We should keep in mind the fact that our true and permanent life is in
+the causal body, and on the mental plane, and that there, alone, is
+unbroken memory possible. The descent into matter in each incarnation is
+also beyond reach of the brain memory, of course. Getting new bodies is
+the working out of natural law even as instinct works in animals. The
+whole animal kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man, nevertheless
+adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy and with a depth of wisdom
+that is beyond our comprehension. And so is human evolution directed by
+impelling forces that are unknown to our waking consciousness. But our
+waking consciousness is only a small part of our consciousness--that
+fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical brain. The
+physical brain is a limitation of consciousness, and therefore of
+memory, as certainly as a mountain range is a limitation of sight and
+prevents one's knowing what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know
+our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes the memory of our
+past incarnations. But when we come downward into another incarnation it
+is as though we were descending in a narrow vale within mountain ranges
+that stand between us and the wider world. Memory is dependent on things
+not within the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish
+facts which we wish to recall. We know, for example, the name of a
+certain person. There is no doubt that we know it and yet it is
+impossible to remember it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us, but
+we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now, if memory fails to
+produce its record even when we have a mental picture of just how that
+person looks, and know just where we have met him, it is certainly not
+remarkable that with no such immediate connection with our last
+incarnation we fail to recall it. It was perhaps in another part of the
+world, and in another civilization, and is separated from us by the long
+interval between incarnations. Of course memory likewise fails to
+produce that record. But all of our past experiences are within the
+soul, just as the records of all of the experiences of this life are in
+the mind whether we can connect them with the present moment or not.
+
+But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not remember events that
+have occurred in past lives and people we have seen before, we do not at
+least now have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar to us. What
+the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation is not concrete facts but
+something higher and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts
+which gives the understanding of their true relationship; and this is
+the thing we call good judgment or common-sense. A man does not succeed
+in business because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows what
+to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full of facts but it cannot run
+a business. Every theorist and dreamer is loaded with facts. The
+successful man is the one with balance and judgment.
+
+It might seem on first thought that one who has been a carpenter in a
+previous incarnation should have no need to learn the name and use of a
+saw, or one who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to hold the
+pen and fashion the letters. But we must remember that the old soul is
+now breaking in a new physical instrument with which to express itself
+and that while it will be able to use all the skill it has previously
+evolved, its full expression must await the time when the new instrument
+has been brought into responsive action.
+
+The situation might be fairly illustrated by the case of a stenographer
+who is still using the original typewriter, in some remote corner of the
+earth, and who has not even seen or heard of any of the remarkable
+improvements made in such machines in the last thirty years. If his old
+machine were suddenly taken from him and a model of the present year
+were put in its place, it is obvious that he could at first make little
+use of it--not because he has no knowledge but because he must become
+accustomed to the new machine before he can express himself through it.
+It would have mechanism and appliances that he could not immediately
+manage. Let us imagine also that all the characters are in a foreign
+language which must be mastered before the machine can be used. But the
+difficulties are not great enough yet for a fair illustration. We must
+also suppose that it is a living thing, with moods and emotions, and
+that it must pass through stages of growth comparable to infancy and
+youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain that the stenographer
+would appear to have very little knowledge and to possess little skill.
+Yet as a matter of fact it is merely the conditions that temporarily
+prevent him from expressing his wisdom and skill.
+
+The gist of knowledge gained in the past represents skill that has no
+dependence whatever upon brain memory. If a man should suffer a lapse of
+memory, as sometimes happens, and wander about unable to give his name
+or place of residence, such loss of memory does not prevent him using
+any skill he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not know in
+what gymnasium he evolved his great strength, but he can use it just as
+effectively regardless of the absence of memory.
+
+One who has been a skillful penman brings all his skill to the new
+incarnation but of course the new body must be trained to hold the pen
+and form the letters. Every public school teacher knows that one child
+will quickly learn that and soon become a competent penman while another
+can by no possibility exhibit skill in that particular art. The reason
+is that one has previously evolved his skill and the other has not, and
+may not, for several more incarnations.
+
+It is sometimes objected that by the hypothesis of reincarnation we are
+required to go over the same ground again and again and learn what we
+have previously learned. But the criticism has no foundation in fact.
+There is undoubtedly some necessary recapitulation in the early part of
+the incarnation, just as there may be in the early part of a school
+term. But in the main we are thrown into new conditions which are
+calculated to develop additional faculties. We return to the same
+material world but we find it with a higher form of civilization than
+when we were here before. Never before have we who are now here seen a
+civilization like this, with its age of iron and steam and electricity,
+with its marvelous opportunities for developing the mechanical faculty
+in human nature. And that is another bit of evidence of the beauty and
+utility of the evolutionary scheme. We come back always to greater
+opportunities than we have yet known.
+
+It is not only clear that the failure to remember the past has nothing
+to do with our ability to use the skill and wisdom we have previously
+evolved but it is equally obvious that it is the best of good fortune
+that we cannot remember the past. If we could do so that memory would
+keep alive the personal antagonisms of past reincarnations. Nobody will
+deny that we have plenty of them in this incarnation or that the world
+would be the better if we could bury some of the present antagonisms in
+a like oblivion. If all quarreling neighbors were to suddenly lose
+memory of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage to everybody
+concerned.
+
+Nature's wisdom in veiling the past from us can be understood by
+observing the pernicious effects of remembering too long the blunders
+people make in this incarnation. Take the case of a very young man who
+has charge of his employer's money and who, finding himself pressed for
+ready cash, makes the grave mistake of "borrowing" a hundred dollars
+without his employer's knowledge and consent. The young man really
+believes he is borrowing it and knows just where the money is to come
+from to replace it soon, and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know
+anything about it. But to his consternation the money that was due him
+in a few days cannot be collected in time and an unexpected examination
+of his books leads to his arrest for embezzlement. He is convicted,
+sent to prison for a year, and returns a marked man. Thoughtless
+society closes its doors against him. He seeks employment in vain.
+Nobody wants an ex-convict. He explains that he had no criminal intent
+and that he really was guilty of only an indiscretion and that he paid
+back the money later. But the world is too busy to listen. It sees only
+the court record, and that was against him. The public forgets, or never
+knows, the extenuating circumstances. But it never forgets two
+things--the verdict of guilty and the prison. The young man would almost
+give his life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible. It
+stands against him for life. But nature is wise. She does not permit our
+vicious traits to extend their injury too far. If we could remember from
+incarnation to incarnation that man's misfortune might afflict him for
+thousands of years. But by the wise plan of closing all accounts at the
+end of each incarnation the mischief of remembering the blunders of
+others comes to an end. In the next incarnation all start with clear
+records again.
+
+One of the objections that one sometimes hears against reincarnation is
+that it seems to separate us for long periods, if not forever, and that
+even when we meet those we have previously known and loved, there is no
+memory of the past. The answer to the first point is that the separation
+is wholly on the lower planes and that the time spent on the higher
+planes is often twenty times that given to the lower. Separation is, of
+course, unavoidable on the physical plane, even where people live
+together in the same home. The average man spends most of the day at
+his office and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four. He is
+really separated from his family most of the time. But there is no such
+separation on higher planes and there is spent most of the whole period
+of evolution. The second point--that we do not now have the pleasure of
+knowing that our friends are those we knew and loved before--is not an
+important one. What is really important is that we again have them. If
+the ties of affection have been strong between us in the past there will
+be instant friendship when we meet for the first time in this
+incarnation. Those with strong heart ties are certain to be drawn into
+very close association life after life. It has been observed through the
+investigations that egos have been husband and wife, or parent and
+child, again and again. The probability of such close relationships
+depends upon the strength of the ties of affection. But if such real
+bond between the souls is lacking the mere fact that they now have
+family relationships is no guarantee of such future intimate
+association. When two souls have strong ties arising out of past
+association the failure to remember that incarnation does not in the
+least weaken the ties. But it does mercifully hide the past contentions
+that are to be found in nearly all lives.
+
+The failure to remember previous incarnations will be more clearly
+understood if we now give some thought to the fact that the personality
+here on the material plane is only a fragment of the whole consciousness
+of the soul. As we come down into lower planes from the mental world
+each grosser grade of matter through which the ego expresses itself is a
+limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane each of us, whatever he
+may be here, is more alive and enjoys an actual extension of
+consciousness. On the mental plane he has enormously greater wisdom than
+here, with a still further extension of consciousness that is quite
+beyond the present comprehension of the brain intelligence.
+
+To put it differently, the ego really does not come into incarnation at
+all. It merely sends outward a ray from itself--a mere fragment of
+itself, as a man might put his hand down into the water of a shallow
+stream to gather bits of ore from which gold can be obtained. So the ego
+puts a finger, only, down into denser matter to get the general
+experience that can be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill.
+That finger of the ego, that we know as the personality, gathers the
+experience and then it is withdrawn into the ego. During the incarnation
+the personality has been animated by only a little of the ego's vast
+intelligence and that is why it blunders so often. But, veiled in dense
+matter, not much of the ego's consciousness can reach it.
+
+The relationship between the ego and the personality may be illustrated
+by that which exists between the brain consciousness and that of the
+finger-tip. The difference, of course, is great. The finger tip cannot
+see of hear or taste or smell. It is limited to one sense--touch. But it
+is a form of consciousness, and it can get experience and pass it on to
+the brain consciousness. A man may be addressing an audience and see
+some substance on the table before him. It may be sand or sugar. Without
+interrupting his lecture he can put down his finger and get at the truth
+about the matter. The finger-tip gets the information and passes it on
+to the brain consciousness. Meantime there has been no pause in the
+discourse. Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought has been
+missed. The intellectual life went on in its completeness while the ray
+of intelligence sent down in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as
+it was. Just so the life of the ego--the true self of each of us--goes
+forward on its home plane while the personality here gropes for its
+harvest of experience. Some of those experiences will be painful to the
+personality, and the event will seem tragic here, but it will be a
+passing incident to the ego. In the illustration just used the substance
+on the table may prove to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of
+glass. Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and pain
+follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a blinding flash of
+distress that is overwhelming. But to the brain consciousness it is a
+trivial incident. And thus it is with most of our painful experiences
+here. They do a useful work in our evolution and they are trifling
+incidents to the consciousness of the ego.
+
+The personality finishes its work and perishes, in the sense that it is
+drawn up and incorporated in the ego. Most people identify themselves so
+fully with the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to them.
+But that feeling will trouble them no longer when the ego is understood
+to be the real self. We might say that the relationship between the ego
+and the personality is like that between man and child. Childhood will
+perish but only to be merged into manhood. When we look at that
+transformation from the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory.
+But if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may look appalling.
+If you should say to your son of three summers, "My child, the time will
+come when all these beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your
+little playmates will see you no more," you might cause him much
+distress. It would seem to his limited child consciousness nothing less
+than a tragic destruction of what makes life worth while. But when he
+reaches manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial things of
+those early days. If there is something in his childhood of real,
+permanent value, it will persist in manhood. All the trivial and
+transient will have disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so,
+for manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego is the real
+self.
+
+As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of the man, so the memory
+of all the hundreds of incarnations persists in the causal body and is
+an eternal possession of the ego. When we are sufficiently evolved to
+raise the consciousness to the level of the causal body, while still
+living on the physical plane, as some people are now able to do, we
+shall thus temporarily recover the memory of past lives. When that time
+comes, however, the soul is sufficiently advanced to use such wider
+knowledge without injury to itself or others.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
+
+
+Back of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is a profound and
+beautiful natural truth, but it has been degraded into a teaching that
+is as selfish and brutal as it is false. The natural truth is the
+sacrifice of the solar Logos, or the deity of our system. The sacrifice
+consists of limiting Himself in the matter of manifested worlds and it
+is reflected in the sacrifice of the Christ and other great teachers who
+use their vast consciousness through a physical brain for the helping of
+the world. Compared to the descent of such supermen into mundane spheres
+a mere physical death is a trifling sacrifice indeed.
+
+The help that such great spiritual beings have given mankind is
+incalculable and altogether beyond what we are able to comprehend. But
+for such sacrifice the race would be very, very far below its present
+evolutionary level. But to assume that such sacrifices relieve man from
+the necessity of developing his spiritual nature or in any degree
+nullify his personal responsibility is false and dangerous doctrine.
+Nobody more than the theosophist pays to the Christ the tribute of the
+most reverent gratitude. He also holds with St. Paul that each must
+work out his own salvation.
+
+The belief in special creation arose in that period of our history when
+our ancestors knew little of nature. Modern science was then unborn and
+superstition filled the western world. Now that we do know the truths of
+nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous process that is
+still going on, it is time to abandon the old conceptions and bring
+religious beliefs and scientific principles into harmonious
+relationship.
+
+Wherever it touches the practical affairs of life the old idea of
+special creation and special salvation fail to satisfy our sense of
+justice and of consistency. Intuitively we know that any belief that is
+not in harmony with the facts of life is a wrong belief. The idea of
+special creation is not only inconsistent with the facts as science has
+found them, but it does not give us a sound basis for moral development.
+Having started with the false idea of the special creation of the soul,
+which brings it into the world free from personal responsibility, it
+became a necessity to invent a special salvation to give any semblance
+of justice at all.
+
+Now the vital point against this plan of salvation is that it denies the
+soul's personal responsibility and teaches that whatever the offenses
+against God and nature have been, they may be cancelled by the simple
+act of believing that another suffered and died in order that those sins
+might be forgiven. It is the pernicious doctrine that wrong doing by one
+can be set right by the sacrifice of another. It is simply astounding
+that such a belief could have survived the Middle Ages and should
+continue to find millions who accept it in these days of clearer
+thinking. But it seems that when people are taught a thing in childhood
+the mind accepts it then without reasoning and afterwards vaguely
+regards it as one of the established facts without thinking further of
+it at all. But upon reflection we see at once the impossibility of its
+being true. We hear of a lingering practice in a remote province of
+China, whereby a man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire a
+substitute to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law must have its
+victim and its supremacy must be upheld. We laugh at that and know well
+enough that punishing the unfortunate substitute, who sacrifices himself
+to obtain a sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot
+regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his willingness to
+shift the responsibility for his crime upon another only sinks him
+farther into iniquity. The only person who can gain in moral strength is
+the one who makes the sacrifice.
+
+Let us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement for wrong doing
+were to be adopted generally. Then every murderer who had the means
+would escape the consequences of his crime. Every burglar who was
+successful enough to have the cash on hand could elude prison. Every
+pickpocket could hire a substitute to suffer for him and thus continue
+his criminal career. Every embezzler would have the money to purchase
+freedom. Every corruptionist would be safe. Every thief could laugh at
+the law. It would make a mockery of justice. It would place a premium
+upon crime and a handicap upon honesty and virtue. However bad the
+dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would necessarily lower
+the standard of their morality by shifting the burden of their sins to
+others. It would destroy personal responsibility, and personal
+responsibility is the basis of sound morals and the foundation of
+civilized society.
+
+Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief in
+special creation and special salvation--the teaching that we are not
+responsible for our sins and that by believing that another assumed them
+and died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing and thus be
+saved. What are we to be saved from? From nothing but ourselves. From
+our selfishness, from our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to
+inflict pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the
+heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may
+escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The
+man who is willing to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit
+for heaven and could not recognize it if he were there. What do we think
+of a person here who shifts his sins upon another and while that other
+suffers he goes free and enjoys the fruits of his baseness?
+
+A heaven that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement a
+happy arrangement for letting them in pleasantly and easily would not be
+worth having. It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be no
+heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those who have
+eliminated selfishness; only of those who want to help others instead of
+trying to dodge the consequences of their own acts; only of those who
+are manly and womanly and generous and just and true. Nothing less than
+a recognition of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that.
+Yet the theory of special salvation ignores it, waves it aside--in fact
+denies it!
+
+Reincarnation represents personal responsibility and therefore absolute
+justice. It shows that, not merely in all the vast future, but also in
+this life and in every life, and all the time, our degree of happiness
+depends upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were
+generally understood it would necessarily raise the average of morality.
+It furnishes a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive
+for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the
+one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds; that he must
+return life after life to associations and environments determined by
+the good or the ill he has done; that he can no more escape from his
+evil deeds than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately
+suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation of every
+insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures the man of good
+intentions and right desires that every good deed shall rise up in the
+future to bless him; that all whom he has helped shall become his
+helpers hereafter; that even his good intentions that failed in their
+purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy in the future.
+
+What a splendid thing it is to know that every thought and act adds
+permanent value to the character; that all we learn in any life becomes
+an eternal possession; that we can add to our intellect, to our insight,
+to our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power, as certainly and
+definitely as a man can add to his bank account or permanent
+investments; that whatever we may be in this incarnation we can return
+again stronger and wiser and better.
+
+The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent divinity and the
+method by which the latent becomes the actual. Instead of the ignoble
+belief that we can fling our sins upon another it makes personal
+responsibility the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It is
+the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion of self-respect.
+
+Think of the utility as well as of the common-sense of a scheme of
+salvation that really saves us because it evolves us; that never denies
+us a chance to retrieve an error; that gives us an opportunity to right
+every wrong; that brings us back life after life until all enemies have
+been changed to friends; until all accounts are closed and balanced;
+until all our powers have been evolved, until intellect has become
+genius; until sympathy has become compassion and the last moral battle
+has been fought and won.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE FORCES WE GENERATE
+
+
+Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and
+they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success
+or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
+on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of
+rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and
+reaction under which we evolve while here.
+
+The three classes of energies which we generate are those of thought,
+desire and action. They belong, in the order named, to the mental world,
+the astral world and the physical world. All people are constantly
+thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting
+thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into the worlds of
+thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions, or consequences,
+and to them the man is bound until justice is done and the soul has
+learned its evolutionary lesson.
+
+That thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity is, the
+student of the occult well knows, but the world is not quite yet at the
+point where the fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the
+history of all human progress. When Franklin began his experiments with
+electrical force almost nobody believed there was any such thing in
+existence. Yet today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains and
+drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that at the time of the
+first experiments he would have been considered extraordinarily foolish.
+What the world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually has
+very little to do with the facts. The general public can be expected to
+come trailing along, about a half century late, with its acceptance and
+approval. Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be
+impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.
+
+The mental body grows by the process of thinking. The force generated in
+thinking reacts in the production of greater faculty for thinking, so
+that we literally create our mental abilities. The activities of thought
+change the mental body into a better and constantly better instrument
+through which the ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect
+others and we thereby make ties with them that must work out sooner or
+later in associated experience.
+
+Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role in
+the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the
+desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only
+judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying
+them. Thus do we acquire discrimination. It is usually a strong desire
+nature that brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of desire
+it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul
+finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires into higher
+ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment and liberation.
+
+Actions are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and, as we
+are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very
+complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up
+relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far
+into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under
+which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future
+incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for
+himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every
+injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in
+kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of
+retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on
+in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be
+accomplished.
+
+The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next
+and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates,
+our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in
+the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth
+or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our
+intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or
+limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the
+past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape.
+
+But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from
+which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize
+them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time
+we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong
+course in the past.
+
+Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and
+determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong
+arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either
+side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation
+lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both
+free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint
+is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily
+bound, _but we did the binding_, by the desires we indulged and the
+emotions we freely harbored in the past.
+
+The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may
+be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to
+locate mines. They are all aware that in that remote northern country
+navigation closes very early and that after the last boat leaves there
+is no possibility of getting out of that region until navigation opens
+again in the next season. Some of them are discreet and reach the
+landing in ample time. Others are careless. They continue their search
+for gold a little too long, and arrive at the river a day too late. The
+boat has sailed and they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a
+great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from
+Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely free. They
+can build a cabin and either waste the time with idle games or seriously
+think and study. They are limited but free within the limitation, and
+the limitation itself was of their own making. It is precisely so with
+us in the environment of the present incarnation and with our various
+fortunes. We made them and, when the forces with which we did it are
+exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification
+and improvement.
+
+The reactions from the forces we generate naturally do us exact justice
+just because they _are_ reactions. We reap precisely what we sow. The
+reaction may sometimes seem harsh but consideration of the matter from
+all points of view will show that mercy as well as justice is always a
+factor. Let us consider the method by which nature changes recklessness
+into caution. A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a cigar and
+throwing the burning match down wherever it may happen to fall. He may
+go on doing that a long time with no serious result, yet all careful
+people know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago a newspaper
+told the story of such a man, who passed along the street, lighted a
+cigaret and carelessly flung the flaming match from him. A nurse was
+passing with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell on some of
+the light, airy wraps of the infant and they burst into a blaze. Before
+the fire could be extinguished the child was so badly burned that it
+died the next day.
+
+The moment such a case is stated we realize the necessity of something
+that will cure the man of such fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the
+lives and property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be invoked. He
+had no criminal intent but he is none the less dangerous for that, as
+the incident proved. We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
+carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the law of action and
+reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be in the latter part of
+this incarnation, or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later
+his carelessness will react and he will lose his physical body in pain
+and distress and come to know personally just what his recklessness
+means. In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane,
+he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right. The folly of
+his course is so driven in on his consciousness that he is changed from
+the careless man to the careful man. In no other way could his cure be
+brought about.
+
+It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as the result of our
+wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can now know nothing of its
+cause and therefore we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we do
+not know in the limited consciousness of the physical brain the soul
+does know and in the wider consciousness the lesson is registered.
+
+The principles of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its
+evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he does not merit
+and that which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
+working of the law seen from an angle that makes it illusory. But, it
+may be objected, how does theosophy see "beneficent working of the law"
+in the burning of a theater where a score of people lose their lives,
+including several children? How can theosophy explain that?
+
+How can it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created at
+birth? If God really brings the soul into its original expression in an
+infant body, why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
+months? What can be the purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain
+the death of children if the soul were created at birth. But let us look
+at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul with a
+young body. Hark back to the case of the man whose carelessness caused
+the death of the baby in its carriage. He, and others like him, are
+again in incarnation and in the burning theater they get the reaction of
+the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why so many in some
+catastrophes? it may be asked. A principle is not affected by the number
+involved. If we can see justice in the death of one person we can see
+justice in the death of a hundred. It is simply class instruction.
+People of a kind have been drawn together.
+
+We should not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such case
+from the physical plane. We form an opinion, however, on that inadequate
+survey and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or injustice
+involved. But our verdict depends wholly upon a viewpoint. Let us
+suppose, for example, that a man strolls down the street and that, as he
+turns a corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of life. A young
+man is lying on the ground, battered and bleeding, while two others
+stand over him. What would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene
+say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The ruffians!" and he
+would be inclined to assist the man who was down. But let us suppose
+that he had been a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to
+turn around the corner with the other men and would have seen him rush
+upon a defenseless woman, push her down, snatch her purse and dash away,
+but, fortunately, in the direction of the men who assaulted and stopped
+him. Had the last arrival seen the entire affair he would have reversed
+his opinion and said that the thief got what he deserved. And so it is
+in our inadequate physical plane view of what we call a calamity. It may
+appear to involve an injustice, but only because we do not see the
+entire transaction.
+
+Those who study the occult laws that shape human destiny may learn to
+use them for their rapid progress and for insuring a comfortable, as
+well as spiritually profitable, life journey.
+
+But before we can work successfully within the law we must know that the
+law really exists. Most people seem either to believe there is no law
+that will certainly bring them the results of their good or evil
+thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they can in some way
+dodge it and escape the consequence, and so we see them go along
+through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing.
+They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts,
+they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort
+and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest
+from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the
+falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the
+company of schemers and are swindled, when a false story is started
+about them, when--through no fault of the moment--they are plunged into
+discomfort and humiliation, they merely call it so much bad luck and go
+blindly on with their generation of wrong forces that will in due time
+bring another enforced reaping of pain.
+
+There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain of daily life as
+certainly as there is a law that guides the earth in its orbit about the
+sun. That law of action and reaction is just as constant, accurate and
+immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet upon the ground
+while we come and go and think nothing at all about it.
+
+There is something almost terrifying in the immutability of all natural
+laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They are the operation of
+forces which, in themselves, are not related to what we call good and
+bad. They simply are. The law of gravity will illustrate the point. It
+operates with no consideration whatever for character or motives. It
+holds all people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it
+whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice,
+it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality. If the
+fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the
+saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored him. He has
+merely reaped the reward of his alertness in spite of his bad morals.
+The saintly man may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law
+of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over the precipice,
+and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless
+of his benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words "God is no
+respecter of persons," for, of course, all natural laws are but the
+expression of the divine will.
+
+But this immutability of natural law is not in the least terrifying when
+we come to look more closely at it. On the contrary it is within that
+very immutability that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It
+is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we can calculate
+with absolute certainty and surely attain the results at which we aim.
+It is because of the certainty that the doing of evil brings pain and
+the doing of good yields a return of happiness that we can control
+circumstances and determine destiny.
+
+Why should there be such a law operating in the mental and moral realm?
+Because only thus can we evolve. We must not only change from ignorance
+to wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong doing to
+perfect harmlessness. How would that be possible without the law of
+cause and effect, without action and reaction which brings pleasure for
+righteousness and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a law can we
+learn what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do. If it is
+agreed that we are souls, that evolution is a fact, and that perfection
+is the goal of the human race, then the necessity for the law of action
+and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a law of gravity.
+
+The existence and operation of this law of cause and effect are set
+forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures. "With what measures ye
+mete it to others it shall be measured to you," is certainly explicit.
+In Proverbs[M] we have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit
+shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon
+him." Of course the language is figurative. No writer of common sense
+would assert that every time a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into
+it nor that whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon him!
+We dig pits in the moral world whenever we undermine the character of
+another with a false story, whether we originate it or merely repeat it,
+and into such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the law.
+We have loosened and set rolling the stones of envy and hatred and they
+shall return to crush us down to failure and humiliation in the reaction
+that follows. We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law
+when we could have used it for our success and happiness.
+
+"Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement of the law of
+action and reaction. It is not an assertion that we should not judge
+because we are not qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong
+another with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that the
+consequence of judging others is that we, in turn, shall be judged. If
+we criticize, we shall be criticized. If we condemn others for their
+faults and failures, we shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant
+and remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be tolerantly
+regarded by others.
+
+All of us who have studied the subject find in our daily lives the
+evidence of the truth of such Biblical declarations. We know perfectly
+well that anger provokes anger and that conciliation wins concessions,
+while retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort calls out
+retort, while silence restores the peace. In these little things it is
+usually within the power of either party to the trouble to have peace
+instead of turmoil--just a matter of self control. But in the larger
+events it is not always so. They are not invariably within our immediate
+control because they are often the results of causes generated in the
+past which we can no longer modify. And this brings us to a wider view
+of this law of cause and effect.
+
+If we look at the life history of an individual as it stretches out from
+birth to death it presents a remarkable record of events that appear to
+have no logical relationship to each other. In childhood, there may have
+been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of
+the qualities of character we are considering, and there is nothing in
+the present life of the child to explain either. The child itself may be
+gentle and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross abuse
+and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find still greater
+mysteries. Invariably there are mingled successes and failures,
+pleasures and pains. But when we come to analyze them we fail to find a
+satisfactory reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
+when they are not warranted by anything that was done to win them, and
+for the want of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We also
+observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not
+only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test
+of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds
+and call it "bad luck."
+
+Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and our inability to
+trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask a savage to explain
+how it is that a few minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
+know what happened yesterday in London. He knows nothing of reporters
+and cables and presses. He cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend
+it. But if he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
+he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because we are
+lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly as we use it!
+
+If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world. Chance
+means chaos and the absence of law. From the magnificent, orderly
+procession of a hundred million suns and their world systems that wheel
+majestically through space down to the very atom, with all of its
+electrons, the universe is a stupendous proclamation of the
+all-pervading presence of law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and
+effect. There is no such thing as chance.
+
+What then _is_ good luck? We know that people do receive benefits which
+they apparently have not earned. There simply cannot be a result without
+a cause. They have earned it in other lives when the conditions did not
+permit immediate harvesting of the results of the good forces generated
+and Nature is paying the debt and making the balance of her books at a
+later period. It may be in the case of one that some specific act is
+attracting its reward, or it may be in the case of another that he is
+nearing the point in evolution where he no longer desires things for
+himself, only to discover that nature fairly flings her treasures at his
+feet. He has put himself in harmony with evolutionary law--with the
+divine plan, and nature withholds nothing.
+
+When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to seek the cause of
+unexplained good or bad fortune beyond the boundaries of this life
+because there is nothing else we can do. We have results to explain and
+we know they do not come from causes that belong to this life. They must
+of necessity arise from causes generated in a past life.
+
+Now the moment we get away from the narrow view that we began existence
+when we were born, all the mysteries about us disappear and we can fall
+back on natural law and logically explain everything. Why does one
+person begin life with a good mind while another is born with small
+mental capacity? Because one worked hard at life's problems in past
+incarnations while the other led a butterfly existence and merely amused
+himself. Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances always
+maintaining a cheerful view of life while another loses control of his
+temper at the slightest annoyance and wears himself out with the
+trifling vexations of existence? Only because one has for a long period
+practiced self control while the other has never given a thought to the
+matter. Why is one so thoughtful of others that he wins universal love
+and admiration while another is so self centered that he makes no true
+friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The one has studied
+the laws of destiny and lived by them while the other has not yet even
+learned of their existence.
+
+Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created at birth, and
+keeping in mind the newer and scientific view that we have all lived
+many lives before, all the difficulties and perplexities at once
+disappear. We are no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some
+good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we
+see that he must have set the forces in motion in a previous life which
+now culminate in this result. We are no longer mystified because
+apparent causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that in the nature
+of things he did generate the causes in the past. A single incarnation
+has the same relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single
+day has to one incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights and
+yet all the days are related by the acts which run through them, so the
+incarnations are separated by periods of rest in the heaven world and
+yet all the incarnations are related by the thoughts and acts running
+through them. What a man does in his youth affects his old age, and
+what we did in our last incarnation is affecting the present one. The
+one is no more remarkable than the other. As we mould old age by youth
+so we are shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we shall be
+able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth that what we are now
+is the result of our past we must have a clear understanding of the
+relationship between the soul and the body. The physical body in each
+incarnation is the material expression of the soul, of its moral power
+or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its purity or its grossness,
+just as one's face is, at each moment the expression of one's thought
+and emotion in physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers
+itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of joy and his
+face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry, and the change from joy to
+anger is registered in physical matter so that all who see his face are
+aware of the change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These
+are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they are obvious to
+all. But we know that as the years pass the constant influence of
+consciousness moulds even physical matter into permanent form. A soul of
+sunny disposition finally comes to have benevolent features while one of
+morose tendency as certainly has a face of settled gloom. Nobody can
+contact the soul of another with any physical sense we possess yet
+nobody has the slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a
+sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony with life. We
+know the difference only because consciousness moulds matter. But this
+is merely the surface indication. Consciousness is continually
+influencing matter and the major part of its work is not visible to us.
+What the consciousness is, the body becomes. Whether we are now
+brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities
+of consciousness, and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
+physical body are the registrations in matter of what we, the soul,
+thought and did in the past.
+
+Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall begin to see just
+why and how it may have come about. If in a past life a person was
+guilty of deliberate cruelty to another, and on account of it suffered
+great mental and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
+thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on his victim are
+reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have apparently merely a distorted
+brain so that the consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
+that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result of violent
+reaction from cruelties in a past life? The consciousness that can be
+guilty of cruelty is seeing things crooked--out of proportion. Otherwise
+it could not be cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register a
+corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the faithful and
+accurate reflection of that consciousness. It is just because the body
+is the true and exact expression of the consciousness in physical matter
+that the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such remarkable
+delineations of character. The record is there in hand and head for
+those who can read it.
+
+This broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very long
+series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different view of the
+difficulties with which we have to contend and of the limitations which
+afflict us. It at once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
+there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody; that all good
+fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune is deserved, and that each
+of us is, mentally and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
+it well when he wrote:
+
+      All that I rightly think or do,
+          Or make or spoil or bless or blast,
+      Is curse or blessing justly due
+          For sloth or effort in the past.
+      My life's a statement of the sum
+      Of vice indulged or overcome.
+      And as I journey on the roads
+          I shall be helped and healed and blessed.
+      Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads
+          To urge to heights as yet unguessed.
+      My road shall be the road I made.
+      All that I gave shall be repaid.
+
+Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth more inspiring? It is
+surely a satisfying thought that every effort shall give increased power
+of intellect; that all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own
+protection in time of need; that every impulse of affection shall ripen
+into the love of comrades; that all noble thinking builds heroic
+character, with which we shall return, in some future time, to play to a
+still noble part in the world of men.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[M] Proverbs, XXVI, 27.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION
+
+
+If we accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot escape the
+conclusion that there is superphysical evolution. The belief that man is
+the highest intelligence in the universe, except God himself, would be
+utterly inconsistent with evolutionary facts and principles. Evolution
+is a continuous unfolding from within, and it is only the limitation of
+our senses that leads us to set limitations to it. The one great life of
+the universe expresses itself in myriad forms and at innumerable levels
+of development. One of those levels is humanity. But as certainly as our
+consciousness has evolved to its present stage it shall go on to higher
+ones.
+
+Orderly gradation is clearly nature's method of expression. A
+continuous, unbroken line of life reaches downward from man. Its
+successive stages are seen in the animals, the reptiles, the insects and
+the microbes. Even the great kingdoms into which the biologist divides
+life fade into each other almost imperceptibly and it becomes difficult
+to say where the vegetable kingdom stops and the animal kingdom begins.
+Just as that continuous chain of life runs downward from man it must
+also rise above him until it merges in the Supreme Being. There must
+necessarily be the higher as well as the lower products of evolution.
+Man is merely one link in the evolutionary chain. The human level is the
+point where consciousness has become completely individualized and is
+capable of turning back upon itself and studying its own inner
+processes.
+
+The thought of Occidental civilization has been sadly fettered with
+materialism. It has scarcely dared to think beyond that which could be
+grasped with the hands. The physical senses were its outposts of
+investigation. What could not be seen or heard or felt had no existence
+for it. Modern science explored the material universe and perfected its
+methods until the vast panorama of worlds could be intimately studied,
+and its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat
+comprehended. But there was no study of life comparable to the vast
+stretch of worlds; for material science had made the remarkable blunder
+of assuming that the last word on the nature of matter had been said.
+Then came the startling discoveries that revolutionized the accepted
+views of matter, that proved that the supposedly indivisible atom was a
+miniature universe, a tiny cosmos of force. The old theories about
+matter had to be thrown aside. They were as much out of date as the
+belief that the earth is flat. Stripped of technical terms of expression
+the revised view of matter is, substantially, that it is the lowest
+expression of life; and now modern science is turning tardy attention to
+a study of the life side of the universe. The moment that is done the
+sense of consistency and the law of correspondence compel us to
+postulate a gradation of intelligences rising above man as man does
+above the insects.
+
+The scientific mind instantly grasps the inherent reasonableness of the
+existence of superphysical beings. Writing on the subject of energy,
+Nicola Tesla says:
+
+      "We can conceive of organized beings living without
+      nourishment and deriving all the energy they need for the
+      performance of their life functions from the ambient
+      medium.*** There may be *** individualized material systems
+      of beings, perhaps of gaseous constitution, or composed of
+      substance still more tenuous. In view of this
+      possibility--nay, probability--we cannot apodictically deny
+      the existence of organized beings on a planet merely
+      because the conditions on the same are unsuitable for the
+      existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot even, with
+      positive assurance, assert that some of them might not be
+      present here in this our world, in the very midst of us,
+      for their constitution and life manifestation may be such
+      that we are unable to perceive them."[N]
+
+Alfred Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand old man of science,"
+wrote in one of his latest books:
+
+      "I think we have got to recognize that between man and the
+      ultimate God there is an almost infinite multitude of
+      beings working in the universe at large, at tasks as
+      definite and important as any we have to perform on earth.
+      I imagine that the universe is peopled with spirits--that
+      is, with intelligent beings with powers and duties akin to
+      our own, but vaster. I think there is a gradual ascent from
+      man upward and onward."
+
+While the scientist, still lacking the absolutely conclusive evidence,
+goes only to the point of asserting that it is reasonable and probable
+that supermen exist, the occultist asserts it as a fact within his
+personal knowledge.[O] So we have the direct testimony of the
+occultists, the endorsement of the scientists as to its probability,
+and, perhaps the most important of all, the inherent reasonableness of
+the idea.
+
+The relationship of the supermen, or great spiritual hierarchy, to the
+human race is that of teachers, guardians and directors. They
+superintend human evolution. But this does not mean in the very least
+the relationship that is expressed in the term "spirit guides" so
+frequently use by the spiritualist. That is a totally different thing.
+They seem to imply that the "spirit guide" gives direct instructions or
+orders to the person known as a "medium." If we were all thus controlled
+and directed what would become of free will? Evolution can proceed only
+if we use our initiative in the affairs of life. If we were to be
+directed by the wisdom and will of others we would not evolve at all. We
+would be merely automata directed by others, and no matter how great
+they were we could never thus develop our judgment and self-reliance. It
+is not thus that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution.
+It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse and bringing mental and
+moral forces to play upon them, thus stimulating latent spiritual forces
+from within. It is also by directly, or indirectly placing ideals
+instead of commands before the race. In another direction it is actual
+superintendence, or administration, or teaching, in a way that does not
+interfere with one's initiative or will. If the soul is to evolve it
+must have liberty--even the freedom to make mistakes.
+
+It is sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist, those who are in
+incarnation do not come out into the world and give us ocular evidence
+of the fact. It is pointed out that they could speedily convince the
+world by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably not in
+the least interested in convincing anybody of their existence. They
+_are_ interested in raising the general level of morality, of course,
+but such an exhibition would not make people morally better. The work of
+the supermen can best be done from higher planes than the physical. As
+for the very small number of the supermen who take physical bodies to
+better do their special work, they can best accomplish it from secluded
+places; and if they sometimes have reason to come out into the seething
+vibrations of our modern civilization it is easy to understand that they
+would not be conspicuously different from other men, to the ordinary
+observer.
+
+It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the religions of the
+world. There the question may arise, "Then why do they differ so
+greatly?" Because the peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The
+difference of temperament and viewpoint between the Orient and the
+Occident is enormous. We are evolving along the outer, the objective,
+and our civilization represents the material conquest of nature. They
+are evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the common trend
+of conversation is philosophical, just as in the Occident it is
+commercial. Such different types of mind require somewhat different
+statements of ethics, but the fundamental principles of all religions
+are identical.
+
+When a new era in human evolution begins a World Teacher comes into
+voluntary incarnation and founds a religion that is suited to the
+requirements of the new era. Humanity is never left to grope along
+alone. All that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the
+various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and saviours of the race,
+have been appearing at propitious times since humanity began existence.
+
+Most readers will probably agree that a World Teacher known as the
+Christ did come and found a religion nearly two thousand years ago. Why
+do they think so? They reply that God so loved the world that he sent
+his Son, the Christ, to bring it light and life. If that is true how can
+we avoid the conclusion that He, or his predecessors, must have come
+many a time before? The belief that He came but once is consistent only
+with the erroneous notion that Genesis is history instead of allegory,
+and that the earth is about six thousand years old! Science has not
+determined its age but we know that it is very old, indeed. Many eminent
+scientists have made rough estimates, taking into consideration all that
+we have learned from astronomy, geology and archeology. Phillips, the
+geologist, basing his calculations upon the time required for the
+depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum age at thirty-eight
+million years and the maximum age at ninety-six million years. Sir
+George Darwin, basing his calculation wholly upon astronomical data,
+puts the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years. Joly
+arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time required to produce
+the sodium content of the ocean, and concluded that the age of the earth
+is between eighty million and one hundred million years. Sollas is said
+to have made careful study of the matter and he finds the minimum to be
+eighty million, and the maximum age to be one hundred and fifty million
+years. But perhaps the most exhaustive study of the matter, and that
+made by the use of the later scientific knowledge, was by Bosler, of the
+French scientists. He bases his calculations upon the radio-activity of
+rocks and arrives at a minimum earth age of seven hundred and ten
+millions of years. Thus it will be observed that as our knowledge grows
+the estimated age of the earth increases.
+
+In the face of such facts what becomes of the assertion that God so
+loved the world that he sent His Son to help ignorant humanity about two
+thousand years ago--but never before? What about the hundreds of
+millions of human beings who lived and died before that time? Did He
+care nothing for them? Did He give his attention to humanity for a
+period of only two thousand years and neglect it for millions of years?
+Two thousand years, compared to the age of the earth, is less than an
+hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does anybody believe that God, in
+his great compassion, sent just one World Teacher for that brief period?
+What would we say of a father who gave one hour of his whole life to his
+child and neglected him absolutely before and after that? Countless
+millions of the people who lived and died prior to the coming of the
+Christ were very much like ourselves. They belonged to ancient
+civilizations that often surpassed our own in many desirable
+characteristics. They were educated and cultured in their time and
+fashion. They were fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and
+husbands and wives, with the same kind of heart ties that we have. What
+of them? Were they permitted to grope in the moral wilderness without a
+Teacher or a ray of light? Of course the idea is preposterous. If God so
+loved the world that He sent his Son two thousand years ago He sent Him,
+or some predecessor, very many times before. By the same token He will
+come again. The only logical escape from such a conclusion is in the
+materialist's belief that He never came at all.
+
+All religions crystalize, become materialized, and lose their spiritual
+significance. That is precisely what has happened to the various great
+religions of the modern world, including Christianity. It is no longer
+the dynamic thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why a
+world war was possible. The fault is not with the teachings of the
+Christ. The trouble is that the world has not lived by them. We need a
+restatement of the old teachings in the terms of modern life that shall
+again make it a living force in the lives of men. It is when the World
+Teacher is most needed that he comes; and when has the need been greater
+than now? The world war has demonstrated the failure of so-called
+Christian civilization. We have seen the highest type of that
+civilization revert to the law of the jungle, deliberately disregard
+the usages of civilized warfare, and commit atrocities that would shame
+barbarians. We surely need no further proof that the Christian religion
+has not accomplished all that the spiritual hierarchy had a right to
+hope for, and that the coming of the Christ again is a necessity.
+
+But the spiritual hierarchy sends its great ambassadors only when the
+time is propitious, only when the world is ready to listen. Perhaps such
+an event can never be predicted in terms of time, but only in those of
+conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent, when the slain
+totals appalling numbers, when few homes of high or low degree are
+without their terrible sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled
+with anguish, when famine and disease have done their awful work, and
+humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed, lust, cruelty and
+revenge actually means, the world will be ready to listen as it never
+listened before, and after that we may reasonably expect the Christ to
+again appear to re-proclaim the ancient truth in terms of modern life.
+
+The supermen are not myths nor figments of imagination. They are as
+natural and comprehensive as human beings. In the regular order of
+evolution we shall reach their level and join their ranks while younger
+humanities shall attain our present estate. As the supermen rose we,
+too, shall rise. Our past has been evolution's night. Our present is its
+dawn. Our future shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from
+which we have emerged--a chaos of contending forces, a world in which
+might was the measure of right, a civilization of scepter and sword, of
+baron and serf, of master and slave. That, we have left behind us.
+Think of the grey dawn that our civilization has reached--the dawn of a
+public conscience, of individual liberty, of collective welfare, of the
+sacredness of life, but with armed force still dominant, with war the
+arbiter of national destiny, with industrial slavery still lingering,
+with conflict between the higher aspirations and the lower desires still
+raging--a world of selfishness masked by civilized usage, a world of
+veneered cruelty and refined brutality. In all that we now live. But
+think of the coming results of evolution!--an era in which love shall
+replace force, when saber and cannon shall be unknown, when selfish
+desires shall be transmuted into noble service, when, finally, we shall
+finish the painful period of human evolution and join the spiritual
+hierarchy to direct the faltering steps of a younger race.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] "The Conservation of Energy," Nicola Tesla, Century Magazine, June
+1900.
+
+[O] An Outline of Theosophy, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 6-12.
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following corrections were made:
+
+p. 6: pretention to pretension (no pretension is made)
+
+p. 12: An to In (In another aspect it is a religion.)
+
+p. 12: thesosophy to theosophy (While theosophy is distinctly a science)
+
+p. 13: discusison to discussion (A detailed discussion of such methods)
+
+p. 16: nevertheelss to nevertheless (is nevertheless just that
+relationship)
+
+p. 17: explicilt to explicit (is certainly very explicit)
+
+p. 19: period to semi-colon (who's true to man;)
+
+p. 34: communciating to communicating (dead man who is communicating?)
+
+p. 35: extra 'the' removed (more convincing than the evidence)
+
+p. 46-47: envelopes to envelops (because it envelops it)
+
+p. 63: oftens to often (often requires death)
+
+p. 74: repreduces to reproduces (exactly reproduces emotion)
+
+p. 82: consciouness to consciousness (finally loses consciousness)
+
+p. 83: of to or (or by cleverly combining)
+
+p. 86: strengthend to strengthened (strengthened and vivified)
+
+p. 89: slight to sight (has not lost sight of us)
+
+p. 91: communciate to communicate (had to communicate with him)
+
+p. 91: communcation to communication (subject of communication)
+
+p. 92: communciate to communicate (desires to communicate)
+
+p. 93: influnces to influences (sensitive to psychic influences)
+
+p. 94: persist to persists (who persists in occupying)
+
+p. 95: confidenty to confidently (will confidently assert himself)
+
+p. 96: close quote added (What can I do?")
+
+p. 103: missing comma added (While we do not yet know a great deal about
+life, science)
+
+p. 105: perect to perfect (perfect agreement)
+
+p. 109: extra 'and' removed (new and undeveloped)
+
+p. 115: thoughtul to thoughtful (a thoughtful matron)
+
+p. 117: methematical to mathematical (a mathematical problem)
+
+p. 120: If to It (It often puzzles)
+
+p. 121: from to form (highest possible form)
+
+p. 124: missing apostrophe added (of nations' condemned prisoners)
+
+p. 128: extra 'to' removed (civilization today could arise)
+
+p. 129: two erroneously reversed lines corrected (consciousness. The
+young quails of this season come / they are attached to the same
+group-soul, or source of)
+
+p. 138: crminal to criminal (a noted criminal)
+
+p. 142: possesing to possessing (we find others possessing)
+
+p. 146: blockquote formatted to match others in text
+
+p. 158: meed to need (no need of praise)
+
+p. 181: incalcuable to incalculable (is incalculable and altogether
+beyond)
+
+p. 185: responsibilty to responsibility (personal responsibility and
+therefore)
+
+p. 191: hapen to happen (may happen to fall)
+
+p. 191-192: extinquished to extinguished (Before the fire could be
+extinguished)
+
+p. 193: beneficient to beneficent ("beneficent working of the law")
+
+p. 193: phsical to physical (from the physical plane)
+
+p. 195: mistate to misstate (misstate facts)
+
+p. 196: atain to attain (and surely attain)
+
+p. 203: idocy to idiocy (In idiocy we have)
+
+p. 204: Maesfield to Masefield (Masefield put it well)
+
+p. 204: blest to blessed (I shall be helped and healed and blessed.)
+
+p. 207: appodictically to apodictically (cannot apodictically deny)
+
+p. 209: superman to supermen (small number of the supermen)
+
+p. 209: it to is (it is easy to understand)
+
+p. 211: calcualations to calculations (He bases his calculations upon)
+
+p. 212: chrystalize to crystalize (All religions crystalize)
+
+p. 213: embassadors to ambassadors (sends its great ambassadors)
+
+Irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. wide-spread vs. widespread,
+class-room vs. classroom) and variant spellings (e.g. cigaret) have not
+been corrected.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Elementary Theosophy
+
+Author: L. W. Rogers
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2009 [EBook #30134]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY ***
+
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+
+
+Produced by V. L. Simpson, S.D., and the Online Distributed
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+from the Google Print project.)
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tp">
+<h1>ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY</h1>
+
+<p class="center noin pad">L. W. ROGERS</p>
+
+<p class="center noin">
+<span class="sm">LOS ANGELES</span><br />
+THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN<br />
+<span class="sm">1917</span>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center noin sm">
+Copyright<br />
+By<br />
+L. W. Rogers<br />
+1917
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>To comprehend the significance of great world
+changes, before Time has fully done his work, is
+difficult. While mighty events are still in their
+formative period the future is obscure. But our inability
+to outline the future cannot blind us to the
+unmistakable trend of the evolutionary forces at
+work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted
+Christian civilization is the theater in which has been
+staged the most un-Christian war of recorded history
+and in which human atrocity has reached a point that
+leaves us vaguely groping for a rational explanation
+of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than
+twenty nations involved have been forced into
+measures and methods before unknown and which
+wholly transform the recognized function and powers
+of governments. With these startling facts of religious
+and political significance before us thoughtful
+people are beginning to ask if we are not upon the
+threshold of a complete breaking down of modern
+civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in
+which direct government by the people throughout
+the entire world will be coincident with the rise of a
+universal religion based on the brotherhood of man.</p>
+
+<p>In such a time any contribution to current literature
+that will help to clear the ground of misconceptions
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>and to bring to the attention of those interested
+in such things, that set of fundamental natural truths
+known as theosophy, may perhaps be helpful.
+Whether or not the world is about to recast its ethical
+code there can at least be no doubt that it is eagerly
+seeking reliable evidence that we live after bodily
+death and that it will welcome a hypothesis of immortality
+that is inherently reasonable and therefore satisfies
+the intellect as well as the heart. Those who
+are dissatisfied with the old answers to the riddle of
+existence and demand that Faith and Reason shall
+walk hand in hand, may find in the following pages
+some explanation of the puzzling things in life&mdash;an
+explanation that disregards neither the intuitions of
+religion nor the facts of science.</p>
+
+<p>Of course no pretension is made of fully covering
+the ground. The book is a student's presentation of
+some of the phases of theosophy as he understands
+them. They are presented with no authority whatever,
+and are merely an attempt to discuss in simple
+language some of the fundamental truths about the
+human being. No claim is made to originality but
+it is hoped that by putting the old truths in a somewhat
+different way, with new illustrations and arguments,
+they may perhaps be seen from a new viewpoint.
+The intention has been to present elementary
+theosophy simply and clearly and in the language
+familiar to the ordinary newspaper reader. All technical
+terms and expressions have been avoided and
+the reader will not find a single foreign word in the
+book.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign">
+L. W. R.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>  <td>I.</td> <td class="smcap">Theosophy</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>II.</td> <td class="smcap">The Immanence of God</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>III.</td> <td class="smcap">The Evolution of the Soul</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>IV.</td> <td class="smcap">Life After Bodily Death</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>V.</td> <td class="smcap">The Evolutionary Field</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>VI.</td> <td class="smcap">The Mechanism of Consciousness</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>VII.</td> <td class="smcap">Death</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>VIII.</td> <td class="smcap">The Astral World</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>IX.</td> <td class="smcap">Rebirth: Its Reasonableness</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>X.</td> <td class="smcap">Rebirth: Its Justice</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XI.</td> <td class="smcap">Rebirth: Its Necessity</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XII.</td> <td class="smcap">Why We do not Remember</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XIII.</td> <td class="smcap">Vicarious Atonement</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XIV.</td> <td class="smcap">The Forces We Generate</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr>  <td>XV.</td> <td class="smcap">Superphysical Evolution</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER I.</span><br />
+THEOSOPHY</h2>
+
+<p>Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress.
+Very much that we believe to be original with us at
+the time of its discovery or invention proves in time
+to have been known to earlier civilizations. The
+elevator, or lift, is a very modern invention and we
+supposed it to be a natural development of our civilization,
+with its intensive characteristics, until an antiquarian
+startled us with the announcement that it was
+used in Rome over two thousand years ago; not, of
+course, as we use it, but for the same purpose, and
+involving the same principles. A half century ago
+our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths
+of evolution that were being discovered and placed
+before western civilization. But as we learn more
+and more of the thought and intellectual life of the
+Orient it becomes clear that the idea of evolution permeated
+that part of the world centuries ago. Even
+the most recent and startling scientific discoveries
+occasionally serve to prove that what we supposed to
+be the fantastic beliefs of the ancients were really
+truths of nature that we were not yet able to comprehend!
+The transmutation of metals is an example.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+We have already gone far enough in that direction to
+show that the alchemists of old were not the foolish
+and superstitious people we supposed them to be.
+We have given far too little credit to past civilizations
+and we are coming to understand now that we have
+rated them too low. Our modesty must necessarily
+increase as it becomes clearer that much of our supposed
+contribution to the world's progress is not invention
+but rediscovery. We are beginning to see
+that it is not safe to put aside without careful examination
+an idea or a belief that was current in the
+world thousands of years ago. Like the supposed
+folly of the alchemists it may contain profound
+truths of nature that have thus far been foreign to
+our modes of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Theosophy is both very old and very new&mdash;very
+old because the principles it contains were known and
+taught in the oldest civilizations, and very new because
+it includes the latest investigations of the
+present day. It is sometimes said by those who desire
+to speak lightly of it that it is a philosophy borrowed
+from the Buddhists, or at least from the Orient.
+That is, of course, an erroneous view. It is true that
+the Buddhists hold some beliefs in common with
+theosophists. It is also true that Methodists hold
+some beliefs in common with Unitarians, but that does
+not show that Unitarianism was borrowed from Wesley!
+When different people study the same facts of
+nature they are likely to arrive at substantially the
+same conclusions. Theosophy is based upon certain
+truths of nature. Those who study those truths and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+formulate a belief from them must reasonably be expected
+to resemble theosophists in their views.
+Buddhism is not unique in resembling theosophy.
+In the same list may be placed the Vedanta philosophy,
+the Cabala of the Jews, the teachings of
+the Christian Gnostics, and the philosophy of the
+Stoics. The more general charge must also be denied;
+theosophy is not something transplanted from the
+Orient. It belongs to the race, as the earth does, and
+cannot be localized, even to a continent. As it is
+taught today in Europe and America it is probably
+unknown to the masses of the Orient, for the great
+general truths it embodies have here the special application
+and peculiar emphasis required by a totally
+different civilization. But that theosophical principles
+were earlier known and more widely accepted
+in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no possible
+way lessen their value to us. Precisely the same
+thing is true of the principles of mathematics. The
+science of mathematics reached European civilization
+directly from the Arabs, but we do not foolishly decline
+to make use of the knowledge on that account.</p>
+
+<p>The literal meaning of the word theosophy is
+self-evident&mdash;knowledge of God. It has three aspects,
+determined by the different ways in which the human
+being acquires knowledge&mdash;through the study of concrete
+facts, by the study of the relationship of the
+individual consciousness to its source, and through the
+use of reasoning faculties in constructing a logical
+explanation of life and its purpose. In one aspect it
+is, therefore, a science. It deals with the tangible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+with the facts and phenomena of the material scientist
+and makes its appeal to the evidence of the physical
+senses. In another aspect it is a religion. It deals
+with the relationship between the source of all consciousness
+and its multiplicity of individual expressions;
+with the complex relationships that arise between
+these personalities; with the duties and obligations
+which thus come into existence; with the evolution
+of the individual consciousness and its ultimate
+translation to higher spheres. In its other aspect it is
+a philosophy of life. It deals with man, his origin,
+his evolution, his destiny. It seeks to explain the universe
+and to throw a flood of light upon the problem
+of existence that will enable those who study its wisdom
+to go forward in their evolution rapidly, safely
+and comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the
+darkness of ignorance, reaping as they go the painful
+harvests of misdirected energy.</p>
+
+<p>While theosophy is distinctly a science and a
+philosophy it is not, in the same full sense, a religion.
+It has its distinctive religious aspect, it is true, but
+when we speak of a religion we usually have in mind
+a certain set of religious dogmas and a church that
+propagates them. Theosophy is a universal thing like
+mathematics&mdash;a body of natural truths applicable to
+all phases of life. It sees all religions as equally important,
+as peculiarly adapted to the varying civilizations
+in which they are found, and it presents a synthesis
+of the fundamental principles upon which all
+of them rest.</p>
+
+<p>From all of this it will be seen that there is a vast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+difference between theosophy and theology. Theosophy
+declares the immortality of man but not as a
+religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in
+relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no
+such word as "faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its
+faith arises from the constancy of natural law, the
+balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious adjustment
+of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient
+in that it is the great fund of ancient wisdom about
+man and his earth, that has come down through countless
+centuries, reaching far back into prehistoric times.
+But added to that hoary wisdom are the up-to-date
+facts that have been acquired by its most successful
+students, who have evolved their consciousness to
+levels transcending the physical senses&mdash;facts which,
+however, do not derive their authority from the method
+of their discovery but from their inherent reasonableness.
+A detailed discussion of such methods of consciousness
+and the proper value to be placed upon
+such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter.
+It is enough now to warn the reader against
+the error of confusing the pronouncements of pseudo
+psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who
+have already done much toward placing a scientific
+foundation beneath the universal hope of immortality.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER II.</span><br />
+THE IMMANENCE OF GOD</h2>
+
+<p>The antagonism between scientific and religious
+thought was the cause of the greatest controversy in
+the intellectual world in the nineteenth century. If
+the early teaching of the Christian Church had not
+been lost the conflict could not have arisen. The
+Gnostic philosophers, who were the intellect and heart
+of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true that
+it could not possibly come into collision with any
+fact of science. But unfortunately they were enormously
+outnumbered by the ignorant and the authority
+passed wholly into their hands. It was inevitable
+that misunderstanding should follow. The gross
+materialization of the early teaching, the superstition,
+the bigotry and the persecution of the Middle Ages
+was a perfectly natural result. That perverted,
+materialistic view has come down to us, and even now
+gives trend to the religious thought of Western civilization.
+Of that degradation of the early teaching
+the Encyclopedia Britannica says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The conception of God as wholly external to
+man, a purely mechanical theory of creation, is
+throughout Christendom regarded as false to the
+teaching of the New Testament as also to Christian
+experience.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p><p>It is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but
+if it is so regarded "throughout Christendom" it is
+only on the part of its scholars; most certainly not
+by the masses of the people. The popular conception
+is undeniably that the relationship between God
+and man is identical with that between an inventor
+and an animated machine. It is an absolutely anthropomorphic
+view of the Supreme Being and thinks of
+God as being apart from man in precisely the same
+sense that a father is apart from his son. It may be
+an exalted, idealized conception of the relationship of
+father and son but it is nevertheless just that relationship,
+and along that line runs practically all the
+teaching and preaching of those who speak officially
+in modern religious interpretation. Emerson sought
+to counteract that popular misconception but he was
+regarded as a heretic by all but an infinitesimal portion
+of the church.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the immanence of God is as different
+from the popular conception as noontide is different
+from midnight. It is so radically different that one
+who accepts that ancient belief must put aside his old
+ideas of what man is and raise him in dignity and
+potential power to a level that will, at first, seem
+actually startling; for it means, in its uttermost significance
+that God and man are but two phases of
+the one eternal life and consciousness that constitute
+our universe! The idea of the immanence of God is
+that He <em>is</em> the universe; that the solar system is an
+emanation of the Supreme Being as clouds are an
+emanation of the sea, and that the relationship between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+God and man is not merely that of father and son
+but also that of ocean and raindrop. This conception
+makes man <em>a part of</em> God, having potentially
+within him all the attributes and powers of the
+Supreme Being. It is the idea that nothing exists
+except God and that humanity is one portion of Him,
+and one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression
+of the waters that constitute the sea. The immanence
+of God is a conception of the universe that puts
+science and religion into perfect harmony with each
+other because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary
+creation takes its place.</p>
+
+<p>Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has
+such widespread dominion in Occidental thought the
+immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly
+emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him
+we live, and move, and have our being," is certainly
+very explicit and admits of no anthropomorphic interpretation.
+It could not be said that a son lives
+and moves in his father. The declaration presents
+the relationship of a lesser consciousness within a
+greater, and constituting a part of it. The essentially
+divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration
+in Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that
+the likeness is on the material side would, of course,
+be absurd. In divine essence, in latent power, in potential
+spirituality, man is an image of God, because
+he is a part of Him. The same idea is more directly
+put in the Psalms with the assertion, "ye are gods."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+If the idea of the immanence of God is sound man, as
+a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
+Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve
+his latent powers into perfect expression.</p>
+
+<p>The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus
+in his teaching. Emerson's teaching of the immanence
+of God is unmistakable in both his prose and
+poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the
+soul where man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause,
+begins." Still more explicitly he puts it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The realms of being to no other bow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The statement is as complete as it is emphatic.
+"Not only all are Thine, <em>but all are thou</em>." It's an
+unqualified assertion that humanity is a part of God,
+as leaves are part of a tree&mdash;not something a tree has
+created in the sense that a man creates a machine
+but something that is an emanation of the tree, and
+is a living part of it. Thus only has God made man.
+Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation,
+an evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being.</p>
+
+<p>It is upon the unity of all life that theosophy bases
+its declaration of universal brotherhood, regarding
+it as a fact in nature. The immanence of God gives
+a scientific basis of morality. The theosophical conception
+is that men are separated in form but are
+united in the one consciousness which is the life base
+of the universe. Their relationship to each other is
+somewhat like that of the fingers to each other&mdash;they
+are separate individuals on the form side but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+they are united in the one consciousness that animates
+the hand. If we imagine each finger to possess a consciousness
+of its own, which is limited to itself and
+cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall have a fair
+analogy of the unity and identity of interests of all
+living things. Under such circumstances an injury
+to one finger would not appear to the others as an
+injury to them, but if the finger consciousness could
+be extended to the hand the reality of the injury to
+all would be apparent. Likewise an injury to any
+human being is literally an injury to the race. The
+race does not recognize the truth of it just because,
+and only because, of the limitation of consciousness.
+Lowell put the fact clearly when he said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's true to God who's true to man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherever wrong is done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the humblest and weakest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Neath the all-beholding sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wrong is also done to us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they are slaves most base<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose love of right is for themselves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not for all the race.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He's true to God who's true to man because they
+are one life; because they are but different expressions
+of the one eternal consciousness; because they
+are as inseparable as the light and warmth of the
+sun. It follows that being true to man is fidelity to
+God.</p>
+
+<p>The popular idea is that people should be moral
+because that sort of conduct is pleasing to the Supreme
+Being and that He will, in the life beyond physical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+existence, in some way punish those who have broken
+the moral laws. It is belief in an external authority
+that threatens punishment as a deterrent to law breaking,
+as a state devises penalties commensurate with
+offenses. But the immanence of God represents a
+condition in which not punishments, but consequences,
+automatically follow all violations of natural law.
+Under such a state of affairs it would require no
+penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct,
+for it would be perceived that there is no possible
+escape from the consequences of an evil act.</p>
+
+<p>It is not difficult to see the relative value of the
+two systems of thought when put to a practical test
+in human affairs. Imagine an unscrupulous man of
+great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous
+fortune through sharp practices that enable him to
+acquire the earnings of others while he safely keeps
+just within the limits of the law. We can point out
+to him that while he is not violating the law, and
+cannot therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting
+injury upon others and consequently public
+opinion will condemn him. But such a man usually
+cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no
+good reason why he should not continue in his injurious
+work. But if he can be made to understand
+that all life is one and that we are so knit together in
+consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately
+react upon the person who inflicts it; if he
+once clearly understands that to enslave another is
+to put chains upon himself, that to maim another is to
+strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce
+him to follow a moral course. He would see that his
+own larger and true self-interest could be served only
+when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare
+of all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say
+that the immanence of God furnishes a scientific basis
+of morality.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Psalms LXXXII&mdash;6.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER III.</span><br />
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL</h2>
+
+<p>If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we
+shall be forced to abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous
+creation of man and the earth on which
+he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible
+idea that the race came from an original human pair
+must be replaced by the hypothesis of the evolution
+of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>It was about the fact of evolution that the great
+storm of controversy raged between scientists and
+theologians in the middle of the nineteenth century,
+and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first
+well understood. They seemed to question or deny the
+existence of God. Deep within humanity is intuitive religious
+belief. It is a natural faith that transcends all
+facts, like the faith of a child in its mother. Because evolution
+was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's
+inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy
+hope, and against fact and reason itself rose the protest
+of intuition with spiritual intensity. People felt
+more than they reasoned and cried out that science
+was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has
+proved that they had merely misinterpreted the mean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>ing
+of evolution. Further understanding has shown
+that, instead of destroying the belief in God, evolution
+has given us a new and better understanding of the
+whole matter and has placed the hope of immortality
+on firmer ground than it previously occupied.</p>
+
+<p>Evolution is an established and generally accepted
+fact. No educated person now thinks of questioning
+it. It is settled beyond dispute that all things in the
+physical world have become what they are through a
+long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the
+most perfect in form and most complex in function
+have evolved from simpler ones. The age of miracle
+has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as
+its relation to the material world is concerned. It
+is no longer necessary to have a belief in an anthropomorphic
+God, performing feats in defiance of natural
+law, in order to account for that which exists. Science
+has reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown
+that, given nebulous physical matter, we can understand
+how the earth came into existence.</p>
+
+<p>But why should we stop with the application of
+the laws of evolution to material things? Only the
+outright materialist, who asserts that life is a product
+of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority
+in the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has
+asserted that there is no longer any such thing as
+scientific materialism.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> Those who accept the idea
+of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily
+accept the idea of the evolution of the soul. How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+can consciousness possibly escape the laws that
+evolve the media for the expression of consciousness?
+There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as
+there is evolution of matter. The material and the
+spiritual, form and life, are inseparable. Indeed,
+scientific progress has now brought us to the point
+where matter, as such, practically disappears and we
+are face to face with the fact that matter is really but
+a manifestation of force. How, then, is it longer possible
+to speak of the soul and not accept the evolution
+of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than
+physiology. The phenomena of consciousness are as
+definitely studied as physical phenomena, and it is
+no more difficult to account for a myriad souls than
+to account for a million suns and their planets. The
+scientists who have taken the position that the universe
+has a spiritual side as well as a material side
+are among the most eminent and distinguished of the
+modern world. If evolution has produced the starry
+heavens from the material side it has likewise evolved
+the human souls of our world and others from the
+spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand
+the one than the other.</p>
+
+<p>From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief
+in the creation of the earth and the race by an act
+suddenly accomplished is, of course, preposterous. If
+we could know nothing back of the present moment
+and were called upon to account for the world as we
+see it&mdash;with its cities, its ships and railways, its cultivated
+fields and parks&mdash;many people who still believe
+in instantaneous creation of the soul would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+save themselves much mental exertion by declaring
+that God had made it all as it stands for the use and
+entertainment of man. But we know that it is utterly
+absurd to think of the world leaping into existence instantaneously&mdash;nothing
+existing one day and all trains
+running on time between ready-made cities the next,
+carrying ready-made people about. It sounds ridiculous
+only because we are putting it in material terms,
+but in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of
+the instantaneous creation of the creators of cities
+and railways.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that we are a sudden creation is only
+possible because of the very vague ideas of what
+human souls are. The chief difficulty with the popular
+notion that a human soul is as new as the body it
+inhabits is that it is a vague and indefinite conception
+of life, and the moment we begin to think seriously
+about it the weakness of the idea becomes apparent.
+Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of
+reasoning. How can one reason with a man who
+believes it possible for a soul to spring into existence
+from the void? What is the use in reasoning about
+the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole
+matter to say: "God did it"?</p>
+
+<p>One thing that prevents us from believing not only
+that millions of souls were created in the twinkling
+of an eye, but also that the world as it now is was
+likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know
+quite definitely the history of the world a little way
+into the past, and that history affirms that the earth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+and all life on it is the product of slow evolutionary
+growth.</p>
+
+<p>The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion
+on a scientific basis. Not only the origin of
+the soul but its development and its destiny at once
+appear in a new light. The mind is instinctively impressed
+with the dignity of the idea of the evolution
+of the soul, which, with its corollary, the immanence
+of God, makes the divinity of man a fact in nature.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Raymond: or Life and Death.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER IV.</span><br />
+LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH</h2>
+
+<p>One of the really remarkable facts of modern life is
+the disinclination to accept at apparent value the scientific
+and other evidence there is to prove that consciousness
+persists after the death of the physical body. There
+is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much
+of it is offered by scientists of the highest standing; and
+yet the average man continues to speak of the subject
+as though nothing about it had yet been definitely learned.
+It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust itself very
+slowly to the truth, as it is discovered. Sometimes a
+generation passes away between the discovery and the
+general acceptance of a great truth. When we recall the
+intense opposition to the introduction of steam-driven
+boats and vehicles, and the slowness with which the
+world settles down to any radical change in its methods
+of thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the
+truth about the life after bodily death has waited so
+long for general recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of
+consciousness is based is of two kinds&mdash;that furnished
+by physical science and that furnished by psychic science.
+Together they make a very complete case.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p><p>The printed evidence of the first division&mdash;physical
+science&mdash;is voluminous. In addition to that gathered by
+the Society for Psychical Research there are the researches
+and experiments by the scientists of England,
+France and Italy, among whom are Crookes, Lodge,
+Flammarion and Lombroso. Crookes was a pioneer in
+the work of studying the human consciousness and tracing
+its activities beyond the change called death. All of
+that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge,
+which has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries
+and inventions, and has won for him world-wide
+fame, were brought to bear upon the subject, and for a
+period of four years he patiently investigated and experimented.
+Many illustrated articles prepared by him,
+fully describing his work, were published at the time in
+<cite>The Journal of Science</cite> of which he was then the editor.</p>
+
+<p>Three vital points in psychic research were established
+by Sir William Crookes. One was that there is
+psychic force. He demonstrated its existence by levitation.
+He showed next, that the force is directed by intelligence.
+By various clever experiments he obtained
+most conclusive evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated
+that the intelligence directing the force is not that
+of living people. Crookes also went exhaustively into
+the subject of materialization and here, again, he was
+remarkably successful. He was the first scientist to
+photograph the materialized human form and engage in
+direct conversation with the person who thus returned
+from the mysterious life beyond. This evidence from the
+camera must be regarded as particularly interesting. It
+was received with much amazement at the time, but that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+was before we had revised our erroneous ideas about the
+nature of matter and before the day of liquid air. Materialization
+is no longer a startling idea, for that is precisely
+what liquid air is&mdash;a condensation of invisible
+matter to the point where it becomes tangible and can
+be weighed, measured, seen and otherwise known to the
+physical senses.</p>
+
+<p>All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his
+own premises and under the most rigid scientific conditions.
+All the methods and mechanism known to modern
+science were employed and he finally announced his
+complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness
+of the phenomena observed.</p>
+
+<p>As Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver
+Lodge is the latest of the famous scientists who have
+taken up the investigation of the continuity of consciousness.
+In a lecture upon the subject, before the Society
+for the Advancement of Science, he declared not only
+that the subject of life after physical death was one which
+science might legitimately and profitably investigate but
+that the existence of an invisible realm had been established.
+He declared the continent of an invisible world
+had been discovered, and added, "already a band of daring
+investigators have landed on its treacherous but
+promising shores."</p>
+
+<p>Different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds
+of psychic investigation and while Crookes made a detailed
+and careful study of materialization Lodge has
+given equally painstaking efforts to investigations by the
+use of that class of sensitives known as "mediums." A
+medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric
+matter easily separates from the physical matter is a
+medium and can readily be utilized as a sort of telephone
+between the visible and the invisible planes. A medium
+is an abnormal person and is a good medium in proportion
+to the degree of abnormality. If the etheric
+matter of the body is easily extruded the physical body
+readily falls into the trance condition and the mechanism
+of conversation can be operated by the so-called "dead"
+person who has temporarily taken possession of it. In
+such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living-dead
+communicator. He is speaking directly himself,
+but he may often do it with great difficulty and not always
+succeed in accurately expressing the thought he has in
+mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts,
+moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand
+something of his difficulties it is not strange
+that such communications are frequently unsatisfactory.
+It is not often that an analogy can be found that will
+give a physical plane comprehension of a superphysical
+condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be
+had by thinking of a "party line" telephone that any one
+of a dozen people may use at any moment he can succeed
+in getting possession of it. A listener attempting to
+communicate with one of them may find that several
+others are constantly "switching in," much to his confusion.
+If distinction of voices due to sound were eliminated
+and then a stenographic record were to be made
+of all words reaching the listener he would find that it
+would often be fragmentary and trivial. That would not,
+however, prove that the conversation did not come from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+living beings nor that there was not at least one intelligent
+person among them. That scientists engaged in
+psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing
+more.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to be a common opinion that the evidential
+value of such psychic communications, even under the
+direction of a skilful scientist, cannot be very great. But
+there are ways of knowing. It is not at all difficult for
+the investigator to confine his work, not only to incidents
+unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts which
+the medium can not possibly comprehend. It is a matter
+of common knowledge that mediums are usually people
+without technical scientific knowledge. Some of them
+have some degree of education and some of them are
+illiterate. Some of the most celebrated belong to the
+peasant class of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge is about to
+attempt to communicate with a scientist who has passed
+on to join the living dead. He will ask technical scientific
+questions that nobody but a scientist can answer and
+that the medium can by no possibility even understand
+when they are answered. Or suppose he gets a communication
+from the medium's hand signed by a great author.
+The living dead man writes a criticism, let us say, of some
+new book and does it in his characteristic style, full
+of the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment.
+Surely nobody can believe that the medium is
+producing such things on her own account. If she could
+do so she would not be earning her living as a medium.
+But the scientists do not stop there. We often hear the
+expression "cross-correspondence." Just what do they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+mean by that and in what way does it prove the personal
+identity of a dead man who is communicating? The
+principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method.
+Sometimes a guest leaves a sum of money with the
+clerk, and he wishes to be perfectly sure of his identity
+when he returns to claim it. He requests the guest to put
+his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in two,
+gives him one piece and keeps the other. That gives
+him a double proof of identity. When he comes for his
+money he must first give his name and then produce the
+piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the piece
+the clerk has retained, the two together making the whole
+and restoring the signature. It's one of the simplest but
+most satisfactory proofs possible. Neither piece of that
+card alone is intelligible. If one piece should be lost
+and others should find it nobody could read it or make
+anything of it. Nobody could guess the name unless he
+had the other piece. He knows only about the part he
+holds. He may be a thief and may earnestly desire to
+use what he has found to defraud, but he is helpless
+because he has only one of the two parts it requires to
+make an intelligible whole. That is the principle involved
+in identity by cross-correspondence. Part of a
+message is written through one medium and part through
+another medium at another time in another place and
+neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence
+until it is fitted into the other part; and that
+prevents a medium who is dishonest from manufacturing
+a story that may be more or less plausible.</p>
+
+<p>We are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific
+investigation for evidence that the dead still live. Hun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>dreds
+of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some
+personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far
+beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is
+that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own
+counsel about his occult experience. The other is the
+feeling that communications from departed relatives are
+too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of
+thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic
+seances which, while possessing little evidential
+value from the scientific viewpoint, nevertheless have a
+legitimate place in the great mass of psychic phenomena.
+But more convincing is the evidence furnished in hundreds
+of homes where some member of the family acts
+as automatic writer or medium.</p>
+
+<p>The most convincing evidence is not always scientific
+evidence. What can be more convincing than the
+evidence furnished in one's home by members of
+the family? There is much such evidence, obtained both
+through mediums and by automatic writing.</p>
+
+<p>Automatic writing&mdash;that is, the control of the hand
+of a living person to record the thoughts of another
+who has lost the physical body&mdash;is perhaps one of the
+least objectionable ways in which communications have
+come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted
+for some useful books with interesting accounts of the
+life in the unseen regions. Here, of course, as elsewhere,
+discrimination must be used, for the wise and foolish,
+the useful and useless are to be found side by side.
+In accepting or rejecting, one must use his common
+sense just as he does on this plane in separating the
+valuable from the worthless. In such matters we should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are unchanged
+in intellect and morality. The genius here is
+the genius there and the living fool is not different from
+the dead one. It is often those who know the least who
+are the most anxious to tell it and the medium or automatic
+writer sometimes gives them the opportunity. Consequently
+we get many foolish communications and an
+enormous amount of commonplace platitude is delivered
+at seances. But it is equally true that unquestionable
+proof of personal identity is sometimes secured.</p>
+
+<p>There is much valuable non-scientific evidence that
+the consciousness survives the loss of the physical body
+and it frequently comes from sources that insure respectful
+attention. The two following stories of that kind
+are cited as corroboration of the scientific evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Little touches of the personality often constitute the
+most convincing of all evidence. It is one thing to show
+that people in general live after physical death. It is
+quite a different matter to establish the personal identity
+of one of them who is communicating, and that is one
+of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent
+journalist, gives us some valuable evidence on personal
+identity. In his earlier years he had studied art in London.
+Shortly before the death of Turner, the great artist
+had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on painting,
+but had not redeemed the promise at the time of
+passing away. Stillman had a friend whose daughter
+was mediumistic and he decided to experiment. Immediately
+on beginning the seance the young girl was taken
+possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman
+asked his question silently, speaking no words, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+mentally requesting Turner to write his name. The only
+reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He then
+asked if he would give some advice on painting. The
+response was another decided negative. Stillman felt
+that he was foolishly wasting his time and declared the
+seance at an end. But the girl sat silent. Then after a
+moment she slowly arose with the air of decrepitude,
+took a lithograph from the wall and went through the
+pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing
+board, sharpening a pencil, tracing the outline, the washing-in
+of a drawing, etc., and then proceeded to show a
+simple but surprising method of taking out the lights.
+"Do you mean to say that Turner got his effects in that
+way?" asked the incredulous young artist. The answer
+was an emphatic affirmative. Stillman then asked if the
+central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain in
+the well known drawing "Llanthony Abbey" by Turner,
+had been done in that way and was answered by another
+emphatic affirmative. So sure was the young artist that
+this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust and
+abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling
+upon Ruskin and related the experience. Ruskin, who
+had known the celebrated dead artist intimately, declared
+that the contrariness of the medium at the beginning of
+the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But
+what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence,
+was that the drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession
+and eagerly it was brought down from the wall
+for examination. After close scrutiny the great art
+critic and the young artist agreed that, beyond dispute,
+the drawing <em>had</em> been done in the way described.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p><p>Such evidence has an added value when it comes from
+those who are neither spiritualists nor professional investigators,
+but who have the things they doubt thrust
+upon them in such convincing manner that they feel
+impelled to record their experience for the enlightenment
+of others. In the last literary work<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> done by Carl Schurz,
+we are given, quite incidentally, his testimony that at a
+seance soon after the Civil War he was told the future
+in such detail as to leave no possible room for the explanation
+of coincidence. It was in July, 1865, when
+Schurz was on his way to Washington, whither he had
+been summoned by President Johnson, that he stopped in
+Philadelphia at the home of his friend, Dr. Tiedemann.
+The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years old, could do
+automatic writing. As a matter of interest and amusement
+in the family circle the girl gave an exhibition of
+her psychic abilities. When Schurz was invited to ask
+for a communication he not unnaturally requested one
+from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for he
+had been personally acquainted with him. The girl wrote
+a message purporting to come from Lincoln. It related
+to politics and proved, in time, to have been an accurate
+prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not
+transpire for more than three years! Schurz lived in
+Wisconsin at the time and had no intention of changing
+his residence, nor did he do so until two years later.
+The message which the girl wrote asserted that Schurz
+would be elected to the United States senate <em>from Missouri</em>.
+He did not regard the message as authentic and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+naturally enough considered the prophecy absurd. In
+1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in January,
+1869, he was elected United States senator by the
+Missouri legislature.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will
+be understood, of course, that no attempt is here
+made to present that. The intention is merely to call
+attention to some of the eminent scientists who
+have done notable work and to mention a few of the
+more interesting discoveries made. Those who desire to
+come into possession of the evidence in full will find upon
+examination that it is voluminous.</p>
+
+<p>From the viewpoint of physical science alone the
+evidence of the continuity of consciousness is not only
+convincing but conclusive. Yet occult science has much
+more to offer. To those who have no personal knowledge
+of the existence of occult faculties, such evidence
+can be offered only upon the inherent reasonableness of
+the statements made.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, must
+slowly win its way to general acceptance. While large
+numbers of people still scoff at it, even as the world not
+so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a fantastic
+theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless
+a large and rapidly growing number who personally know
+the truth about clairvoyance. There is every conceivable
+grade of clairvoyant power and some degree of superphysical
+sensitiveness is becoming rather common.</p>
+
+<p>There are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that
+which is most in evidence with the public is not calculated
+to inspire confidence. It is employed almost ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>clusively
+in what is known as "fortune telling" and is
+often practiced by those who are interested only in the
+money they can earn by it. As a matter of course, trickery
+and fraud are found associated with it among such people,
+and those amongst them who are both capable and
+honest suffer on account of it.</p>
+
+<p>The fortune telling clairvoyant is usually one who
+was born with "second sight," as the Scotch have named
+it, and almost without an exception they do not in the
+least understand its rationale. They find certain facts
+in their consciousness that could not be known to them by
+the physical senses, but why or how they get the information
+they do not know. That form of clairvoyance is a
+sensitiveness related to the sympathetic nervous system,
+the center of which is the solar plexus. It has no relationship
+whatever to the mind, no association with intelligence,
+and will often&mdash;indeed, commonly&mdash;be possessed
+by the most ignorant and uncouth. It is much
+more common among Indians and negroes than among
+more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and will
+slowly disappear from the race. It belongs to the realm
+of emotion, not thought.</p>
+
+<p>The higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing,"
+is associated with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and
+its seat is in the brain. It is not a "natural gift"<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+other, although it is latent in all human beings. It has
+been highly developed in some who have had the unusual
+opportunity of long training under the direct supervision
+of great psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never
+to be found among the fortune tellers. Only people with
+serious views of life and intense devotion to human service
+would have the patience and endurance to undergo
+such training and only those of singular purity of life
+would have any possibility of success. Such clairvoyants
+are people of keen intelligence. By special training and
+tremendous effort, not possible to most of us, they have
+pressed forward in evolution and attained a development
+that the race will be many a century in reaching.</p>
+
+<p>It is by the use of this exalted order of clairvoyance
+that invisible realms are explored, and additional knowledge
+is accumulated to the ancient wisdom. Such a
+clairvoyant is not a medium. The medium surrenders
+his physical mechanism for the use of another, who
+speaks through it, and at the close of the seance the
+medium knows nothing of what has occurred. The clairvoyant
+is always in possession of his senses and is fully
+aware of what is occurring. He is the explorer and discoverer.
+He deals with the facts of the life after bodily
+death in a different way than the physical scientist does
+but it is soon found by the student that the physical scientist
+and the psychic scientist corroborate each other.
+Together they bring overwhelming evidence to support
+the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness
+we have at this moment will never cease to be; that our
+individuality, with all its present memories, will eternally
+persist; that what we call death is in reality but a forward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+step in an orderly evolutionary journey and an entrance
+upon a more joyous phase of life, which is not remarkably
+different from that we live today. The sum total of
+the knowledge that we have gained through the combined
+work of the physical scientists and the occult scientists
+leads us to the conclusion that the death of the
+physical body means neither the annihilation of consciousness
+nor a radical change in consciousness. It is, in fact,
+but the release of consciousness from its confinement to
+the physical form, as a song-bird is released from a cage
+to the joyous freedom of a wider world, where woods
+and stream and field and sky give new impulse to its
+innate characteristics.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p. 154.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> There are, of course, really no natural gifts.
+Nature does not favor some and ignore others. When
+a few possess what others do not have, they earned
+it by giving special attention to its development
+or as in the case of the psychic sensitiveness of the
+sympathetic nervous system, it is vestigial, and has
+been possessed by the race in earlier ages.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER V.</span><br />
+THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD</h2>
+
+<p>In a treatise on elementary theosophy the solar
+system may be reckoned as our universe and we shall
+have no need of considering more than a small fragment
+of even that. It is septenary in constitution,
+as may be seen in its vibrations expressed in color
+and sound. Beyond the seven colors of the prism
+we have only tints and outside the seven notes we
+can get only overtones or undertones. There are
+likewise seven planes in the system but less than
+half of them require our attention, for the evolutionary
+field of the human soul is the three lower planes,
+known as the physical, astral and mental. When the
+human being has outgrown them in evolution he
+passes on to superhuman evolution.</p>
+
+<p>The word "plane," so often encountered in theosophical
+literature, should perhaps have some definition.
+It has a wide application and is used as a
+synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring
+to the physical plane the term embraces all
+we know of earth and sky and life through the
+physical senses.</p>
+
+<p>There are seven planes in our solar system because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+of the seven different combinations of its ultimate
+atoms. Each plane consists of a totally different
+grade of matter than the next plane, but all have for
+their base the ultimate atom of the solar system.
+When modern science discovered, to its astonishment,
+that the physical atom was a composite body it confirmed
+the theosophical teaching that the ultimate
+physical atom was <em>not</em> the final point of division.
+Theosophy teaches that when the ultimate physical
+atom is disintegrated its particles become the coarsest
+matter of the next plane or region above it&mdash;the astral
+plane. The process repeated with astral matter results
+in driving its ultimate atom from the highest
+level of the astral plane or world to the lowest of the
+mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom
+is the brick of the universe stated a great truth, for
+of its combinations all forms are built; and if the idea
+be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar system
+it will then be true that of such "bricks" all the planes
+are built.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship of the planes to each other is that
+of interpenetrating spheres of matter. The physical
+plane, consisting of the earth and its atmosphere, is
+surrounded and interpenetrated by the astral plane,
+or world, which is an enormously larger globe of exceedingly
+tenuous matter. This vast sphere of invisible
+matter is <em>within</em> the earth as well as beyond it,
+interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the
+earth's center. Its grossest grade of matter is so rare,
+and its vibrations so intense, that they cannot affect
+the physical senses and therefore we remain uncon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>scious
+of it while that matter moves freely through
+all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life
+and activities for precisely the same reason that we
+know nothing of the messages of intelligence carried
+on the vibrations of the wireless telegraph, although
+they pass through the room where we sit. We have
+no sense organs with which it is possible to register
+such vibrations. Messages conveying intelligence of
+tremendous import, involving the movements of vast
+armies, the fall of empires and the destinies of great
+nations, flow through the very space we occupy but
+we are wholly unconscious of them. Even so we remain
+blind and deaf to the stupendous activities of
+life and consciousness in the astral world, notwithstanding
+the fact that it surrounds and permeates us
+while its forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the
+physical world as freely as water flows through a
+sieve.</p>
+
+<p>The mental world constitutes a region of our earth
+still more vast than the astral portion of it. As the
+astral sphere encloses the physical globe, the mental
+encompasses both, enclosing them and also interpenetrating
+them to the earth's center. The term "mental
+world" may seem confusing to some because we are
+accustomed to think of the mental and the material as
+being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or
+plane, of theosophy, is a world of <em>matter</em>, not merely
+thought. It is matter, however, of such remarkable
+tenuosity that it may properly be called mind-stuff,
+and in its rarest levels it is said to be "formless" so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+far as the existence of what the physical senses know
+as form is concerned.</p>
+
+<p>All three of these worlds, or planes&mdash;the physical,
+astral and mental&mdash;are, then, worlds of matter, of
+form, of activity, of thought and of enterprise. They
+are concentric globes, the physical enclosed by the
+astral, and both physical and astral enclosed by the
+mental. Within and without all physical matter are
+both astral and mental matter. Every physical atom
+is surrounded and permeated by astral and mental
+matter. The relationship is precisely that which
+exists between the ether and the lower grades of
+physical matter.</p>
+
+<p>If the relationship of the three worlds&mdash;physical,
+astral and mental&mdash;is fully understood later confusion
+of thought will be avoided. Physical language is not
+capable of fully expressing much with which students
+of the occult must deal. Because there is nothing
+better for the purpose, words must be used that express
+but a part of the truth and may sometimes prove
+misleading unless the constitution and relationship
+of the three spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary
+to speak of higher and lower worlds, or planes,
+inner or outer, and of the soul coming "down" into
+the material world when, as a matter of fact, <em>no movement
+in space</em> is under consideration. The astral is
+commonly spoken of as an inner plane and while it
+truly is so because it can be known only to astral
+senses by a withdrawal of the consciousness from
+its exterior, material body, it is also true that the
+astral world is outside the physical because it en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>velops
+it as the sea does a sponge. We usually
+speak of coming down from higher planes to lower
+and that may be true not only in the sense of changing
+the state of consciousness from higher vibrations
+to lower ones but it <em>could</em> mean a journey in space
+from a point in the astral plane above the physical
+globe to a point at its surface. "Up" and "down"
+are relative, not absolute. "Down" for us is toward
+the earth's center and "up" is the opposite direction.
+A spire in the Occident and a spire in the Orient are
+both said to be pointing upward but they are pointing
+in opposite directions. On most parts of the
+earth's surface we have four directions, while at the
+poles there is, of course, but one direction&mdash;south or
+north, as the case may be. East, west and north
+disappear at the north pole. Reflection upon such
+facts leads one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility
+of space itself disappearing from the inner
+planes&mdash;space as we know it.</p>
+
+<p>The matter of each of the planes consists of seven
+classes. We are familiar with the solids, liquids and
+gases of the physical plane, and to them must be added
+four grades of the ether. The seven grades of matter
+of the astral and mental worlds constitute an important
+part of the mechanism for the soul's evolution,
+for they determine the state of consciousness in the
+life beyond the physical plane. But a study of those
+states of consciousness belongs to a later chapter.</p>
+
+<p>A difficulty which the student of theosophy should
+make an early effort to eliminate, is the tendency to
+think of invisible realms as unreal. It should not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+forgotten that it is only the limitation of the physical
+senses that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond
+the visible. We should keep in mind the fact
+that the invisible realms are composed of matter as
+certainly as the air is matter, or a stone is matter.
+The water in a pan may evaporate, but it does not
+cease to be matter because it has passed beyond the
+ken of the physical senses. It will some time condense
+once more and play its part as the liquid, water,
+or as the solid, ice. Only when matter is in certain
+forms can we know of its existence through the physical
+senses.</p>
+
+<p>We frequently hear people who are students of
+the occult speak of a deceased person as having left
+the earth. But passing into the astral plane, or world,
+is not, of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral
+world and the mental world are divisions of the earth.
+As the atmosphere is invisible and yet is a part of the
+earth's physical matter, so the invisible astral and
+mental regions are other parts of the earth. They are
+properly called worlds because the activities in consciousness
+that make up existence there are as remote
+from ours as though they were upon another planet.
+We have erroneously supposed that with the physical
+senses we really see and know the earth, whereas we
+have known only that small fragment of the earth that
+consists of physical matter. Beyond the limitation of
+our poor senses stretch in unsuspected grandeur vaster
+regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations of an
+intenser life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER VI.</span><br />
+THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS</h2>
+
+<p>The soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness,
+or the life of the solar Logos; an individualized
+portion of the universal mind. That
+fragment of the divine life, with its latent God-like
+attributes, is expressed through a mechanism of consciousness
+that is formed of the matter of the various
+planes. Naturally enough it is expressed more fully
+upon the higher planes than upon the lower. At a
+very high level it is known as the monad. When
+it reaches down into the higher subdivisions of the
+mental world it is the ego, a lesser expression of the
+same divine life that pours from the Logos through
+the monad&mdash;lesser because it is then functioning
+through the denser matter of a lower level.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge that has been gained about the
+nature of matter in recent years is helpful in understanding
+the activities of consciousness. The atom is
+found to be a center of force, and we are at the point
+where matter, as we have known it, disappears. All
+the force and consciousness of the solar system is, of
+course, but the life of the Logos, and on higher planes
+the distinctions we observe here fade out. Matter be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>comes
+a very different thing from the matter we know.
+The ether of the physical world is almost inconceivably
+tenuous matter. Yet it is gross when compared
+to the lowest grade of astral matter. The matter of
+the mental world is enormously rarer than the most
+tenuous matter of the astral world. In view of these
+facts it requires no stress of the imagination to understand
+that the matter of the higher planes is responsive
+to the vibrations of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The outraying energies of the individualized center
+of consciousness act upon the matter of the plane and
+draw about it a film that slowly grows into a vehicle
+through which consciousness can be more fully expressed,
+and which serves as a point of vantage from
+which its expression can be extended to lower planes.</p>
+
+<p>The seven subdivisions of the mental world fall
+naturally into two groups, composed of the three
+higher and the four lower grades of matter. The ego,
+anchored in the matter of the two planes above the
+mental world, descends to the upper levels of the
+mental and the vesture of matter with which it
+clothes itself is known as the causal body. Sending
+its energies downward, or outward, to the lower
+levels of the mental world, it establishes itself there
+in what slowly becomes a mental body. Again in the
+astral world the process is repeated and a vehicle of
+consciousness is formed of astral matter. The
+physical body is the lowest and last of the vehicles
+to be formed and as it is slowly built, in the months
+preceding birth, the matter it contains falls into place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+under the operation of occult laws which permit no
+element of chance to enter into its construction.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness
+on the plane to which it belongs. The
+soul is evolving simultaneously in each of the worlds,
+physical, astral and mental, and these various bodies
+enable it to receive the vibrations of the plane they
+belong to and thus to be conscious there. The
+mental body is the seat of intellectual activity.
+Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes through
+the astral body into the physical brain. Whenever
+we think we are using the mental body. The astral
+body is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All
+emotion passes from it to the physical body to be
+expressed in the material world. The astral world is
+also called the emotional world, as the mental plane
+is called the mental world. The physical body is the
+soul's instrument of action. It attaches it to the
+physical world, enables the consciousness to contact
+material objects and to move and express on the
+material plane the thoughts and emotions generated
+in the mental and astral bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Another part of the mechanism of consciousness is
+known as the etheric double. But it is only a link in
+the chain and not a body through which the soul can
+function. It is composed of the etheric matter of the
+physical world and connects the astral body with the
+physical body. As every atom of physical matter is
+surrounded and permeated by etheric matter, it follows
+that the physical body has its duplicate in etheric
+matter. "Etheric double" is a very appropriate name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+since it is a perfect duplicate of the physical body in
+etheric matter. It serves the purpose of supplying the
+life force to the nervous system and is the medium
+through which sensation is conveyed. The action of
+an anaesthetic drives out so much of the matter of
+the etheric double that the connection is broken and
+sensation in the physical body ceases.</p>
+
+<p>One of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear
+conception of the constitution of man, and realizing
+that he is a soul functioning through various vehicles
+of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of thought
+common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed
+to thinking of the physical body itself as being
+the man, and if there is any thought at all of the consciousness
+surviving the death of the body it is very
+vague and indefinite as to where it exists and how it
+is expressed. Very little thinking should be necessary
+to show the absurdity of the belief that the body
+is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case
+of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely
+unlike. The real man is superphysical. His
+intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or
+his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are
+but the manifestations of himself through the body
+by which they are expressed. The body itself is a
+mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is,
+so organized that they constitute an instrument for a
+purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body
+is a variable mass. It may increase or diminish
+greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There is no
+permanent relationship between the man and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+physical matter which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness.
+According to the physiologists every
+atom of the body changes within a period of a few
+years. The cells wear out, break down and pass away
+to be replaced by new matter. Not a particle of the
+physical matter that was in our bodies seven years
+ago is there now, and none that is there now will remain.
+Within seven years, or less, we shall have
+bodies composed of new matter as certainly as an
+infant's is.</p>
+
+<p>Of course such reconstruction of the body does
+not change its appearance. It is built on the same
+lines. It is as it would be with some very old
+cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly
+rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The
+roof serves its time and is replaced. The walls
+crumble first in one place and then another until they
+have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand
+years has passed there may be none of the original
+material in the building, yet its appearance is
+unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have
+passed away and will be growing in the trees and
+blooming in the flowers in a few years. The bodies
+we shall then have are now scattered through the
+world. They will be brought together during that time
+and will come from many parts of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The physical senses continually deceive us and
+nowhere more than in our ideas about the physical
+body. It is an unstable mass of matter, in constant
+motion, with great gulfs of space between its atoms.
+Emerson was very far ahead of his time and it took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+science a half century to catch up with him and learn
+that he had recorded a fact in nature when he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Atom from atom yawns as far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As earth from moon, or star from star.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1908 the <cite>Scientific American Supplement</cite>, commenting
+on our reconstructed ideas about matter, remarked
+that the actual mass of the physical body to
+the apparent mass was about one to one million!</p>
+
+<p>If the physical body is merely an organized mass
+of matter, continually varying, constantly coming and
+going, and having no permanent relationship to the
+consciousness that functions through it, what reason
+is there for believing that it is the man? Does it seem
+strange that the center of consciousness should be
+able to draw about itself on the higher planes aggregations
+of matter and finally to express itself on the
+material plane through the mass of matter we call
+the body? If that is mysterious quite as miraculous
+things are going on constantly about us unnoticed.
+Thoreau calls attention to the fact that we become
+so accustomed to the marvelous expressions of life all
+about us that we are oblivious of the phenomena that
+are taking place. Commenting on the magic possible
+to nature he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Though I do not believe that a plant will
+spring up where no seed has been, I have great
+faith in a seed&mdash;a, to me, equally mysterious
+origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed
+there, and I am prepared to expect wonders....
+In the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to
+me from the Patent Office, and labeled, I think,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+'Poitrine jaune grosse,' large yellow squash. Two
+came up, and one bore a squash which weighed
+123&frac12; pounds, the other bore four, weighing together
+186&frac14; pounds. Who would have believed
+that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse
+in that corner of my garden? These seeds were
+the bait I used to catch it, my ferrets which I
+sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which
+unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which
+will find other things in that corner of my garden.
+Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances
+without end, and thus the corner of my
+garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here
+you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold
+merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz
+about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour
+to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat,
+though he tells them it is all deception. Surely,
+men love darkness rather than light."<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>A seed is a center of force through which life, at a
+much lower level than the human, flows and gathers
+about that center the material mass that serves the
+purpose of its lowly evolution. At the human level
+consciousness has become self-consciousness and a
+marvelously complex mechanism is required to express
+it and serve the purpose of its farther evolution.</p>
+
+<p>This complex mechanism of consciousness, composed
+of the various bodies through which the ego
+expresses itself at different levels, is used as a whole
+for functioning on the physical plane. But when the
+ego is functioning no farther down than the astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+plane, the physical body is, of course, temporarily
+discarded. It is then in the condition known as sleep,
+or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the
+consciousness from the physical body. When the
+separation occurs in the case of the medium it is called
+a trance. The cause of the inert condition of the
+physical body is the same in both cases&mdash;the withdrawal
+of the consciousness of the ego. The physical
+body is then unoccupied, but the consciousness maintains
+magnetic connection with it. In death that tie
+is severed and the consciousness can return to the
+body no more. Instances in which the apparently
+dead are brought back to life are cases where the
+magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there is
+every appearance of death.</p>
+
+<p>In form and feature the physical body has its exact
+duplicate in the astral body, and in it we function
+in the astral world whenever the separation between
+the two occurs, whether from sleep or death. In
+sleep the consciousness, expressing itself in the astral
+body in the astral world, may be turned dreamily inward
+or it may be turned outward and be vividly
+aware of the life and activities of that world. But
+there is small chance that any memory of it will come
+through into the physical consciousness upon awakening.
+Occasionally, however, it does occur and then
+it is usually remembered as a very vivid dream. In
+illness, and other abnormal conditions, the connection
+between the physical and astral consciousness is
+much closer. At a comparatively high point in evolution
+the two states of consciousness merge. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+man is then continuously conscious, and has a full
+memory in the physical brain of all his activities in
+the astral world during the hours when the physical
+body was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Consciousness is, of course, at its worst when expressed
+through the limitation of its lower vehicles.
+Any person, whether brilliant or stupid, will be much
+abler and keener on the astral plane than on the
+physical, because in sleep, and after death, he has lost
+the limitations imposed by physical matter. But the
+degree of restriction is variable and depends much
+upon the <em>kind</em> of matter of which the brain and body
+are composed; for the physical atoms vary greatly,
+and as they come and go in the passing years the
+body may either become purified and refined or it
+may grow grosser and coarser. By careful attention
+to food and drink, and by control of the emotions,
+the limitations of physical matter may be lessened
+and a much higher and more efficient state of consciousness
+in the physical body can be attained.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> The Succession of Forest Trees.&mdash;Thoreau.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER VII.</span><br />
+DEATH</h2>
+
+<p>Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly
+associated with a feeling of fear is because we
+give so little thought to it. Most people seem never
+to think of the subject at all until death invades the
+home and threatens some member of the family.
+Then terror fills the mind and all but paralyzes the
+reasoning faculties.</p>
+
+<p>Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental
+civilization, is eloquent testimony to the materialism
+of our times. It is doubt about the future that
+causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific
+basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear
+of death disappear. It is feared because it seems like
+annihilation. If people really believed in a heavenly
+existence beyond the physical life they could not possibly
+be filled with terror at the prospect of entering
+it. If a man's religion has not given him a genuine
+confidence in a future life, and made it as much
+of a reality to him as this life is, it has failed to do
+what we have a right to demand of religion. If it
+does not enable him to look upon the face of his dead
+without a doubt, or a fear, there is something wrong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+either with his religion or with his comprehension of
+it. What possible reason is there for fearing death?
+A thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not
+be pernicious. To regard death as a disastrous thing
+would be an indictment of the sanity of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of
+experience. It is the annihilation of nothing but the
+physical body, in its aspect of an instrument of activity
+and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the
+physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together
+in the human form for temporary use, are, in
+death, released from the cohesive force of a living
+organism and will return whence they came.</p>
+
+<p>In reality there is no such thing as death, unless
+it be strictly applied to the form, regarded as a temporary
+vehicle of consciousness. As for the consciousness,
+there is no death. There is life in a physical
+form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death,
+or cessation, of the individual intelligence. What we
+name "death" is but a change in the orderly evolution
+of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is
+viewed from the physical plane that such a term
+can be applied to it. From this plane it is death, or
+departure. But looked at from the astral world it
+is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning
+of the expression of the soul through a material
+body on the physical plane. It is an arrival.
+But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure and
+therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure
+from a physical body is here. So death and departure
+from one plane is simply birth, or arrival, upon an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>other,
+although it is not, of course, birth as we know
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Every process in nature has a part to play in
+evolution and therefore death is as necessary as life
+and as beneficial as birth. Death is the destroyer of
+the useless. There is a time when each human being
+should die&mdash;that is to say, a time when the physical
+body has fulfilled its mission and completely accomplished
+the purpose for which it exists. To continue
+life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste
+energy and lose time in the evolutionary journey.
+Under the action of what we call "diseases" the body
+becomes inefficient, or through the gradual breaking
+down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain.
+The consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed
+through its impaired machine and it is decidedly to
+the advantage of the ego to withdraw from it. The
+soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work
+with broken and rusted tools. Good results are no
+longer possible. It is then that death comes, beneficently
+destroying the worn out instrument and releasing
+the consciousness from its too-often painful
+situation and permitting its escape into a field of
+unobstructed activity.</p>
+
+<p>Death is painless. The breaking down of the
+body under the ravages of disease may cause pain,
+but that belongs to physical life, not death. Distress
+may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But
+the dying person who does not know that death is
+upon him has no terror, and no pain, and sinks quietly
+to sleep. Very little observation will convince one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on
+the part of surviving friends, not on the part of the
+dying. Those who are left behind remain within the
+limitations of the physical senses, and they are therefore
+separated from the so-called dead man, but he
+is not separated from them. It is because of that
+separation that the terror of death exists for them.</p>
+
+<p>But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary
+value of death. The separation it causes
+intensifies love as nothing else could do. It is only
+when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate
+his real value and comprehend how large a part he
+really played in our existence. As sudden silence
+gives the consciousness a keener realization of the
+sound that has just ceased, so death, by its contrast,
+gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know
+how enormously the heart qualities are quickened by
+the death of a close friend. The whole nature is in
+some degree purified and spiritualized. Selfishness is
+decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for
+others in distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary
+advance is made. We have only to reflect
+upon the fact that separation without death produces
+the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
+value of death. In constant association we
+grow careless and indifferent. But an absence of a
+month or two enables one to get a truer perspective
+of personal associations and thereafter life has new
+zest. A child regards its mother with a certain degree
+of appreciation but a short absence enormously
+increases its appreciation. All human beings come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+into closer and more sympathetic association after a
+period of separation, and the completeness of the
+separation caused by death renders it peculiarly
+efficacious in the development of the spiritual side of
+one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention
+away from materialistic life. Frequently a
+family becomes completely absorbed in material success.
+There is no thought at all given to the higher
+life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities
+of the world, hold them firmly. They become completely
+self-centered. Then suddenly death enters and
+breaks the family circle, and the transient character
+of all they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly
+dawns upon them, and attention is turned to
+the nobler things of life. It is a well known fact
+that great wars are accompanied or followed with
+widespread spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt
+largely because the shadow of death has fallen on
+tens of thousands of households.</p>
+
+<p>It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics
+if it would not be an improvement on nature's plan
+if the sorrow caused by the death of our friends were
+softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
+It is evidently the plan of nature to have the
+physical life and the astral life normally separated at
+our present level of evolution. Some of the reasons
+have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly
+others that we are incapable of understanding, and
+still others that we can readily comprehend. If the
+higher, joyous life of the astral world were open to
+our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+of this life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our
+life in the physical body may be compared to the
+tasks of children in school. They have serious business
+before them in the acquiring of knowledge and
+the development of the intellect. They can best accomplish
+the work when completely isolated from
+other phases of life. Introduce into their work-day
+consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus,
+the military parade, the picnic and the dancing
+parties, and the purpose for which the school exists
+would be defeated. To exactly the extent that the
+consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable
+progress be made with the work of the school-room.
+And so it is with the limitation of our physical
+senses. It serves a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a point in human evolution where
+such limitation of the senses is no longer of any service
+and may be transcended. Some people have attained
+it. They are those who have previously been
+referred to as the psychic scientists, with the higher
+clairvoyance of the cerebro-spinal system developed.
+It is an accomplishment to which all may aspire.
+None need submit to the separation commonly caused
+by death. By hard work in co-operating with nature's
+methods of evolution and by a serious and sustained
+effort to live the highest and most helpful life of
+which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain
+a level of consciousness where one has personal
+knowledge that the dead still live. But in the very
+work of rising to that level, the concentration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+previously enforced by the limitation of the physical
+senses will have been acquired.</p>
+
+<p>One of the common delusions about death is that
+some radical change in the nature of a person then
+takes place. This is no doubt due in part to the
+theological ideas that have come down to us from the
+time of the Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed
+that at death one comes to some sort of a judgment
+that classes him as either a saint qualified for eternal
+bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The
+belief is based on that erroneous view of human nature
+that was common to the melodrama of a past
+generation and that will possibly have eternal life in
+the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly
+good and the villain as absolutely bad. The
+one had no flaw of character and the other had not
+a redeeming feature. But human nature does not
+thus express itself. The spark of divine life is in all,
+notwithstanding it is sometimes darkly hidden. On
+the other hand we find no perfected beings. The perfect
+heroes were merely creations of an imperfect imagination.
+At our halfway stage of evolution we find
+neither the absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.</p>
+
+<p>Why should the change we call death transform
+a human being? It is merely the loss of one part of
+the mechanism of consciousness. The soul, the
+thinker, has lost connection with the physical world
+because the physical body has ceased to exist. The
+mental body and the astral body remain and they
+enable him to think and feel. But he can not think
+more than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+All that has happened in death is that contact with
+the material world has been lost.</p>
+
+<p>One of the misconceptions is that death brings
+great wisdom, and we often hear of people getting
+into communication with those who have passed on,
+with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is
+true that death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness
+and that in the astral world one can see a
+little further ahead and take a few more things into
+consideration. But&mdash;and it is a vital point&mdash;he would
+have no better judgment in determining a course
+of action than he had while here in the physical
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged.
+His grade of morality is neither better nor worse.
+His tolerance or narrowness remains what it previously
+was. If he was bigoted while here he is still
+bigoted there. If he was the unevolved ignoramus
+here he remains precisely that in the astral world.
+Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
+unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development,
+but in a world where emotion is the determining
+factor.</p>
+
+<p>Death merely opens the door to a new and wider
+realm where the evolution of the soul proceeds. It
+would be difficult to say which is the greater misfortune&mdash;the
+delusions that make death the king of
+terrors, or the complacent belief that if death does
+not end all, it at least brings the soul to a judgment
+that ends all personal responsibility and settles one's
+fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+or transform the moral nature than sleep can change
+character or determine destiny.</p>
+
+<p>The theosophical conception of death is as consoling
+as it is scientific. Instead of the fear of death
+it gives us knowledge of continued life. Instead of
+doubt and despair it gives us confidence and joy, for
+it guarantees the companionship once more of those
+we have known and loved, and erroneously supposed
+we have lost.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER VIII.</span><br />
+THE ASTRAL WORLD</h2>
+
+<p>When the physical body dies there is an interval between
+the loss of consciousness here and the dawning
+of the astral consciousness. During that interim a review
+of the life scenes takes place. Everything between birth
+and death passes again through the consciousness, as
+it thus pauses in the etheric double, between the life
+activities of two worlds. Then peaceful unconsciousness
+follows, from which the man awakes in the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>To those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing
+to some remote heaven, where they become angels,
+it will perhaps sound startling to say that a dead man
+is not aware at first that the change we call death has
+taken place. Yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at
+all remarkable that it should be so with many. We have
+only to recall the fact that all physical matter is surrounded
+and permeated with astral matter to realize that
+the physical plane is duplicated in astral matter. Not
+only the physical body of the human being but, of course,
+every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The
+dying man loses consciousness of the physical plane and
+awakes as from a sleep to the astral consciousness. He
+sees then the exact duplicate, in astral matter, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees, too, his
+friends, for their astral bodies are replicas of their
+physical forms.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference,
+though not a difference that enables him to comprehend
+what has occurred. He may know that only yesterday,
+or what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was ill
+and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he
+was about to die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never
+felt so free from aches and pains in all his life. The
+pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth are his again!
+This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally
+speaks to them, but gets no reply and finds that he can
+not attract their attention. It must be remembered that
+he can not see their physical bodies any more than they
+can see his astral body. Yet he truly sees them. If a
+so-called dead man and a living person look at the same
+instant at another living person they will both see him,
+but the latter sees the physical body while the former
+sees the astral body that surrounds and permeates it.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances it is not strange that the
+new arrival in the astral world is seized with a feeling
+of baffling mystery. He is in full possession of his
+reasoning faculties, and will power, but there is a puzzling
+limitation to his efforts to produce expected results.
+A partial analogy may be found in the case of a person
+suddenly stricken with aphasia over night. He rises in
+the morning, dresses, and goes about his accustomed
+duties without the slightest suspicion that any change has
+come to him until he takes up the morning paper and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+discovers that he can not read&mdash;that the familiar print
+simply means nothing to him!</p>
+
+<p>Of course, in time the living dead man gets adjusted
+to the new life. He soon meets others in the astral
+world who have been there longer and they, sooner or
+later, succeed in convincing him that he is not having
+an exceptionally vivid dream.</p>
+
+<p>The astral world, as explained in a previous chapter,
+has seven subdivisions and the astral body contains matter
+belonging to each of them. While we have the
+physical body the matter of the astral body is in rapid
+circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented
+at the surface. But when the connection with the
+material plane is broken, a rearrangement of the matter
+of the astral body automatically takes place (unless it is
+prevented by an exercise of will power) and the grossest
+grade of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently
+the consciousness of the man is limited to that
+subdivision of the astral world represented by the lowest
+grade of matter which his astral body contains at the
+time of his death. This is a fact the importance of
+which it would be difficult to over emphasize, because
+his after-death state of consciousness, his joy or sorrow&mdash;in
+short, his temporary heaven or hell, depends upon
+his location in the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>There are three, and only three modes of death,
+or release from the physical body&mdash;by old age, by disease,
+or by violence. Old age is the natural and desirable
+close of the chapter of physical plane experience. It is
+most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a
+large harvest of experience. To live long and actively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+is excellent fortune. It is not well to pass into the astral
+world with strong physical desires. As old age comes
+on the desire forces subside. Most of that grade of
+astral matter that is capable of expressing them has
+slowly disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual
+loosening of the life forces from the material plane, and
+that has many advantages.</p>
+
+<p>Release from the physical body by disease is next
+in order of desirability. It is a quicker and less complete
+breaking down of the connection with the physical
+world. Nevertheless it is a condition in which much
+progress may be made in getting free from physical desires,
+as those who have had experience with invalids
+are aware. Desires usually grow weaker with the progress
+of the disease that finally ends in death.</p>
+
+<p>Release from the physical form by violence is, of
+course, the least desirable of the three, not merely because
+it is violence, but for the much more important
+reason that sudden death finds the man, as a rule, with
+a considerable amount of the lower grades of astral
+matter in his astral body.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the death by violence is the result of accident,
+murder, suicide or legal execution, the astral
+plane conditions of consciousness are alike unfortunate,
+in that it is sudden death, not the manner of death, that
+permits entry upon the astral life before the lower
+grades of astral matter have been eliminated from the
+astral body. This is one reason why suicide is unfortunate&mdash;because
+it ushers the man into the astral world
+with more of the matter of the lower levels in his astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+vehicle than would be there if he had lived out his normal
+physical life.</p>
+
+<p>Purgatory is a term often applied to the lowest level
+of the astral world. The word is well chosen because
+it is there that the moral nature is purged of its impurities.
+Strong desires cultivated and indulged during the
+life in the physical body are eliminated with the gross
+astral matter through which alone they can be expressed
+and, freed to that extent, the man passes to the next
+subdivision, and into its higher state of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In the astral life some people linger long on the
+lower levels while others know them not at all, but
+awaken to the blissful consciousness of the higher subdivisions.
+Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping together
+people of a kind. It is, however, the manner in
+which one lives during physical life that determines his
+happiness or sorrow after death. The astral body, the
+seat of the emotions, is, like the physical body, constantly
+changing the matter that composes it. An emotion of
+any kind expresses itself as a vibration in the matter of
+the astral body. If it is a base emotion, such as anger,
+hatred, lust or cruelty, it throws into vibration the grossest
+of the astral body's matter, for only in that can it be
+expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love,
+sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects
+only the rarer grades of astral matter, for in them only
+can such feeling be expressed.</p>
+
+<p>With most people there is a constant mingling of a
+wide range of emotions, with a gain in one direction
+and a loss in another. One who fortunately understands
+the law of emotional cause and effect may make absolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+certain of a comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane
+after death. He would make it a rule to watch his
+emotions and control them, knowing that each time he
+indulged a gross one the vibration set up in his astral
+body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of
+matter in it, while pure and exalted emotions would
+strengthen the higher grades. Ultimately, the grossest
+grade, becoming atrophied for the lack of activity, would
+drop away from him.</p>
+
+<p>The descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic
+scientists are calculated to induce even the reckless to
+avoid it. If we could bring together all the vilest men
+and women now living on the physical plane, the crudest
+of murderers, the most besotted drunkards, the vilest
+degenerates, the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends
+of every description, and huddle them together in hovels
+reeking with filth, and let them remain without any outward
+government, free to prey upon each other, we
+should perhaps have a faint comprehension of the reality
+of the lowest subdivision of the astral world. But no
+physical plane comparison can do it full justice, for we
+must remember that it is the emotional world and that
+the feelings of its inhabitants make its atmosphere in a
+way that would here be impossible. Astral matter instantly
+and exactly reproduces emotion, so that the fiend
+or the sensualist looks exactly what he feels. Even in
+the unresponsive physical matter, the evil in a man is
+often sufficiently expressed to fill those who behold him
+with terror. In the astral world every cruel thought
+and hideous emotion would express itself in visible form
+and the multitudinous emotions welling up in the lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+level of the astral world would be as a loathsome swarm
+of reptiles gliding through its horrible life. Add to all
+that the fact that the hopeless despair of its denizens
+gives an atmosphere of utter gloom and desolation, and
+we have a hell that leaves no need of other torture to
+check the course of the erring soul. And yet there is
+no suffering that is not self-imposed. It is both consistent
+and just that a man should associate with his
+kind and look upon himself in others until he grows
+sick of his own vileness and cries out in agony of spirit
+against his own moral offenses. It must not be assumed
+that every person dying with considerable matter belonging
+to the lower astral level still within his emotional
+body will necessarily pass through such experiences. It
+should never be forgotten that we are dealing with a
+matter of the utmost complexity and that even the most
+exhaustive description in print would present only a
+fragment of the truth. The conditions of consciousness
+on any subplane vary as individuals vary. Some people
+on the lowest astral level are wholly unconscious of
+their surroundings. Another variation is that some people
+find themselves floating in darkness and largely cut
+off from others&mdash;a sufficiently undesirable condition, and
+yet better than the fate of some. All states of
+astral consciousness are reactions from previous good
+or evil conduct and are, moreover, temporary conditions
+that will in time be left behind.</p>
+
+<p>In a different way and at a higher level there may
+be suffering on the astral plane that is purifying the
+nature. Not all offenses against nature's laws are of
+so gross a type. There is the abuse of desire and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+violation of conscience that may result in various
+kinds of regret and emotional distress. A desire of
+a refined type strongly built up upon the physical plane
+lives with an intenser vitality on the astral plane after
+the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton
+and a miser have strong desires of a very different
+type. Each of them is likely to suffer on account of it
+during the astral life. They need not dwell upon the
+lowest level to get a reaction from their folly in the
+physical life. We can easily imagine the distress of the
+glutton in a world without food. There could be no
+distress because of hunger, for the astral body is not,
+like the physical body, renewed and maintained by what
+it consumes. But hunger and the gratification of the
+sense of taste are very different things. It is the latter
+that would trouble the gormand, and it is said that
+great suffering, as in the case of the drunkard, is his
+lot until the desire gradually disappears because of the
+impossibility of its gratification.</p>
+
+<p>The miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his
+greed for gold may be quite as intense as that of the
+glutton for sensual gratification. The accumulation of
+money has been the dominant thought of his life. He
+has created in his mind a wholly false value for money
+and it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it.
+Only dire necessity forces him to spend any portion of
+his hoard. It is not difficult to imagine his emotions when
+he is obliged to leave it behind and see others spend it
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>Any kind of a desire that is related to the physical
+body is without means of gratification in the astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+world and if such desire has been cultivated until it
+becomes strong enough to play an important part in one's
+life it will certainly give him more or less trouble after
+the loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of
+an over-refinement and excess in a natural appetite, as
+in the case of the epicure, or is simply an artificial thing
+that is unrelated to any natural demand, as in the case
+of the smoker, the inability to gratify the desire is
+equally distressing. The suffering that results could
+hardly be judged by what would follow on the physical
+plane when desire is thwarted, for in the astral life
+emotion expresses itself much more intensely.</p>
+
+<p>All of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever
+type, is the natural result of the thoughts, emotions and
+acts during the life on the physical plane. The astral
+world is that part of the mechanism for man's evolution
+that brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving
+in the wrong direction. He is not being punished. The
+injurious forces he has generated are simply reacting
+upon him. This reaction, that sets him right, is as
+certain as in the case of the infant that picks up a live
+coal. It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in
+result, and it works itself out in a multiplicity of ways.
+One of the methods of reaction that helps to stamp out
+a fault is the automatic repetition of the unpleasant
+consequences of wrong doing. The murderer will serve
+for a general illustration. In the case of a deliberate,
+premeditated and cruel murder, the assassin is moved
+by such base motives as revenge or jealousy. The results
+of these, so far as their frightful consequences to
+the victim are concerned, do not in the least tend to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+deter the assassin from further deeds of violence. He
+feels gratified with his success and is quite satisfied with
+himself. Only the possibility of detection and punishment
+troubles him. If they follow in due course they
+will accomplish something in correcting his erroneous
+views of life. But they will not be sufficient to register
+indelibly, in the very nature of the man, a proper sense
+of the horror of which he has been guilty. Such a man
+can be impressed and his viewpoint changed only by
+consequences to himself. It is in the reaction in the
+astral life of the forces he has generated here that he
+gets the lesson that forces in upon his consciousness
+the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the
+physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless
+come into contact in the astral world with conditions
+sufficiently horrible. He has made a tie with his
+victim that can not be broken until the scales of justice
+are balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the
+uttermost. Just what form of retribution will follow
+depends, of course, on the nature of the case. But the
+reaction is as certain as it is multiplex. One of its
+variants is the gruesome experience of always fleeing
+from the corpse of the victim, but with the utter impossibility
+of a moment's escape. In the case of a murderer
+who has been apprehended, tried, condemned and
+executed, the whole of the tragedy and its sequel would
+be, not only lived over in imagination but repeated automatically,
+in fact, and worked out in full detail in the
+plastic matter of the astral region. Probably few people
+have the imagination to comprehend what the murderer
+feels of apprehension and fear at his trial when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+his life is in the balance; or what he suffers while
+hiding from justice and making futile efforts to escape
+the pursuing officers of the law; or what his emotions
+are as his hands are tied and he steps upon the death
+trap. All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly.
+As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject&mdash;let
+us say something that is the cause of much anxiety&mdash;finds
+it impossible to turn his attention from it and
+think of other things, or go to sleep, and is impelled
+against his desire to think the matter over and over,
+so the assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his
+crime and can not escape from living and acting it all
+over and over again until a revulsion of feeling arouses
+him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime.</p>
+
+<p>Again it should be said that no attempt is here made
+to give more than a very fragmentary description, and a
+few hints, of the manner in which the retributory laws
+of nature work. A writer on the subject should also be
+careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain
+classes of offenders against nature's laws severe penalties
+accrue, the reader does not get the impression that
+suffering is the common lot in the astral life. The truth
+of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate lives,
+and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to
+others, will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate
+side of astral existence. In the limitations, the vexations,
+the physical aches and ills, the poverty, sorrow and suffering
+of the material plane, most of us are as near to
+hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The
+ordinary man of average morality has so little of the
+matter of the lowest level of the astral plane lingering in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+him that as a rule he would begin his postmortem existence
+on the next higher subdivision, which is the
+counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore
+have no knowledge of the hell that exists on the
+lower level. But that is not at all true of those who
+live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger,
+jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses,
+that often lead to violent crimes. It is possible to live
+the physical life so sanely, usefully, harmoniously and
+unselfishly that at the death of the physical body one will
+pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career
+in the astral world. But while that is quite possible the
+unfortunate fact is that a great many people so color
+all their emotions with selfishness that the astral sojourn
+is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the emotions that
+determine the astral life and it is said that if they are
+directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the
+astral plane that are very unpleasant.</p>
+
+<p>It must be expected that any idea we may form of
+the astral life will be incomplete, and inadequate to give
+a true conception what it is really like. Perhaps the
+most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which
+reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There
+the average man will begin his conscious astral career.
+If we think of the world as we know it here and then
+imagine all that is material to have vanished from it
+we shall gain some comprehension of the situation. Eliminate
+the necessity of providing food, clothing and
+shelter and nearly all of the labor of the race would
+cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining, the building,
+the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+of the products of field and factory, constitute nearly
+the whole of human activity. In the astral life no food
+is required and one is clothed with astral matter from
+which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and
+rapidity of thought. No houses are needed for shelter.
+The astral body is not susceptible to degrees of heat
+and cold, and nothing there corresponds to our temperatures.
+There is no division of night and day, objects
+being self-luminous and light being perpetual.</p>
+
+<p>If we could drop out of physical life all need of
+physical labor, abolish all response to heat or cold, the
+need of food and houses, and add unlimited wealth or,
+to be more exact, give each person the power to possess
+all that wealth can confer and much that it can not,
+we would have an approach to a conception of the astral
+world from one viewpoint. Each one entering the astral
+life has, of course, a fullness of liberty and freedom
+from responsibility that is not instantly comprehensible
+to the physical mind. There is nothing whatever that
+he must do. There is, however, plenty that he can do
+if he desires to be active. On the physical plane many
+people of wealth travel and amuse themselves with sight
+seeing. Thousands of others would do so if it were
+possible. In the astral world it is possible and large
+numbers of people drift aimlessly about with no particular
+plans. Multitudes belonging to various religious sects
+organize themselves into congregations, build edifices
+and spend much time in religious services. Others amuse
+themselves building houses and constructing landscapes.
+It is not at all necessary, but the old habits live and
+influence activities.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p><p>The average person in the astral world gives himself
+to idleness and the enjoyment of the intensified emotions
+of the astral life just as the majority of people would
+do here if it were possible to escape the round of duties
+so sternly imposed by their necessities. For a long time
+the most of them also make daily visits to the homes
+they have left behind on the physical plane. Those who
+have a strong tie of affection with some member of
+the family frequently spend much time lingering around
+and going on little journeys about the premises or elsewhere
+with the loved one. They understand that the
+dead person is not perceived by the living one, but nevertheless
+they desire to be near. They do not have a full
+consciousness of all the living person is thinking and
+doing, but they are fully aware of the state of feeling,
+or emotion, and whether the living friend is pleasantly
+or unpleasantly affected by passing events.</p>
+
+<p>As the astral life becomes more and more familiar
+to the newly arrived individual he gets well settled in
+it and gradually readjusts his viewpoint to a truer perspective
+than he has here. As time passes he is less and
+less in touch with the affairs of the physical life and
+finally loses consciousness of them altogether as he passes
+on to the higher levels of the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>But there are many people who have a more serious
+view of life and who lose no opportunity of acquiring
+knowledge, and the astral world, which is called "the
+hall of learning" by students of the occult, presents
+remarkably good conditions to them. Here we are limited
+in three dimensions of matter and hampered by the very
+narrow range of the physical senses. In the astral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+world matter has four dimensions and new and
+marvelous avenues of learning open before the
+student. Those who are at all interested in music, or
+art of any kind, find both the field and the facilities
+enormously extended. Those who study nature, whether
+by directly probing into her secrets or by cleverly combining
+her principles into new processes and inventions,
+have such opportunities as scientist and discoverer has
+not dreamed of on this plane. And so for all the thoughtful
+and studious there is a life of the most useful and
+fascinating kind in the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>But it must not be supposed that the opportunity of
+usefulness and progress is only for the studious. There
+as here the opportunity for useful work in helping humanity
+forward is boundless; for while poverty and
+disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic
+work of other kinds to be done. People are
+to be taught, for there, as here, the majority are sadly
+in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of nature's
+laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in
+harmony with them in order to get the greatest happiness
+from life. But the work to be done is by no means
+confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes the
+teaching so necessary has brought a great many people
+into the unfortunate condition, where immediate assistance
+is most urgently needed, and there is such a
+variety of helplessness that nobody need be idle.</p>
+
+<p>Because of the false teaching upon the subject of
+life hereafter, people are bewildered when they become
+conscious in the astral life. Many have had their minds
+so vividly impressed with the awful fate that awaits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+those who are not "saved" before death that they fall
+into a state of terror when at last they realize that death
+has really occurred. Others, who may or may not be
+haunted with any such absurd misconceptions, cling so
+tenaciously to the physical life when about to leave it
+that there is not complete separation between the etheric
+double and astral body. The result is that the unfortunate
+person finds himself cut off from the physical world
+and yet not arrived in the astral! Wrapped in a cloud
+of etheric matter he drifts for a time in terror of the
+unknown. Those among the so-called dead who are
+kindly enough to rescue the distressed may come to their
+relief and give valuable assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the commonest thing that engages the attention
+of the astral worker is the fear that death brings to
+most people. They arrive in the astral world with the feeling
+that everything is unknown and uncertain. All preconceived
+ideas about the life after death have suddenly
+been found unreliable and they are afraid of, they know
+not what. They want to cling to anybody who knows
+something of the new world. When we remember that
+people are arriving in the astral world by the tens of
+thousands daily, even under normal conditions, it is
+evident that all who wish to be of service can find plenty
+to do. No special knowledge of the astral plane is necessary.
+Common sense is a sufficient equipment, in such
+simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead
+of giving the entire time to the pleasures of that world.
+The work for the astral helpers ranges upward in complexity,
+of course, and there is profitable activity for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually
+work in well organized groups and render service of
+great practical value.</p>
+
+<p>Life on the astral plane has its end for the same
+reason that it comes to a close on the physical plane.
+Nature's purpose has been accomplished and the man is
+ready to go on farther in his evolution. The length of
+the astral life varies just as it does in the physical world.
+Some physical lives are very long and sometimes only
+when five scores of years, or more, have passed does the
+ego withdraw. Other lives are very short and scarcely
+well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close.
+There is nevertheless a general average to be found. It
+is at least possible to make averages for different classes
+of people and to say that a majority of those who are
+of ordinary health and strength are likely to attain
+a stated age, while it is certain that the majority
+of those who have such, and such, a physical handicap
+will lose their physical bodies when they are much
+younger. Such general rules may also be applied to the
+astral life.</p>
+
+<p>Here a long and alert life is most desirable because
+the purpose of the physical plane is to gather experience
+that shall be transmuted into wisdom on a higher plane.
+It is a seed time against a later harvest. But the astral
+plane is, for the vast majority of the race, related to
+the purgative process. In that life the errors of the
+physical life are largely worked out and desires that
+have grown up like weeds in a garden are rooted out and
+the budding virtues are given a chance to grow. It is a
+corrective plane, where blunders are checked up and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+moral perspective is re-established. Naturally enough
+the sooner that can be done the better. The rule of a
+long life being most desirable on the physical plane is,
+therefore, reversed on the astral plane. It is the shortest
+life in the astral world that is the greatest prize, and it
+comes to those who have lived the purest and noblest
+lives while here. The sooner a man gets through the
+astral world and begins the reaping of his harvest on
+the mental plane, or heaven world, the better it is for him.</p>
+
+<p>The length of the astral sojourn depends primarily
+upon the durability of the astral body and that, in turn,
+depends upon the kind of a life he has lived here. Let
+us suppose that he has lived a very gross and sensual
+life. All of the emotions of that type that he indulged
+built more gross matter in his astral body and also
+strengthened and vivified the lowest grade of matter that
+was already there. Let us also imagine that he had an
+ungovernable temper and frequently gave way to outbursts
+of fury; further, that he was cruel and revengeful,
+seeking and finding many opportunities of inflicting injuries
+upon others. Here we have a case for long life
+on the lower levels of the astral world.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now consider a different type of man. He
+lives peacefully and harmoniously with those about him.
+He feels strong affection for wife and children. He has
+a host of friends because of his cheerful, helpful and
+sympathetic attitude toward others. He lives cleanly
+and thinks nobly. His mind is kept free from trivialities
+and his tongue is never employed in gossip. He makes
+a determined and persistent effort to eliminate pride,
+envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+first of the welfare of others and always last of himself&mdash;in
+short, tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all
+things impersonally. Such a man could know nothing
+whatever of the disagreeable part of the astral life and
+would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions
+and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.</p>
+
+<p>From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually
+to the higher. He remains on a given level so long
+as is required to eliminate the matter of that level from
+his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on
+the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because
+the man has at last stopped sending his life force
+through it. Ungratified desire has finally worn itself out
+and he is free. The process can be greatly hastened or
+retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly
+dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged
+life to them. If he can resolutely turn his mind
+to higher things he hastens his release. His fate is in
+his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he has a
+knowledge of such matters.</p>
+
+<p>One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly
+through the astral world than he would have done had
+he died in the full strength of manhood. As the years
+accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest grades of
+astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter
+in which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is
+an additional reason why it is desirable to live to old
+age in the physical world.</p>
+
+<p>The hold that the material world has upon the mind
+is one of the causes which greatly prolong existence
+in the astral world. Some people give their time and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+thought so exclusively to material things that after they
+lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away
+from the life that lies behind them. This difficulty
+does not necessarily arise wholly from having given one's
+energies entirely to personal ambition and material accumulation.
+Sometimes the ruler of a country is so
+determined to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that
+this vivid interest in the physical world stretches out the
+period of astral life most unfortunately.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively
+short, if we measure it in the terms of physical
+life. A person who has lived here seventy years may
+have thirty or forty years on the astral plane. But that
+will depend not only upon how he lived the physical
+life just closed but also upon his general position in
+human evolution. A savage of low type would have a
+comparatively long astral life while a man at the higher
+levels of civilization would have a comparatively short
+period there, while the man in the lower levels of civilized
+life might be said to come in at about midway
+between the two. But it must be remembered that these
+are very general estimates and that among civilized peoples
+individuals differ enormously. Some will pass very
+slowly and, so far as lower levels are concerned, painfully,
+through astral life, while the sojourn of others
+there is measured in minutes, and they pass happily and
+almost instantaneously from physical death to the heaven
+world. But such people are the exception, not the rule.</p>
+
+<p>Communication with those who have passed on into
+the astral world is possible, but not always desirable, for
+a number of reasons. As an evidence of the continuity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+of consciousness in the hands of the scientific investigator,
+such communications have been of the greatest
+value. As a consolation to those who have thus come
+again in touch with dead friends such messages have
+been of inestimable value to the bereaved, particularly
+when they have been received in the privacy of the family
+circle by some of its members. For a time those who
+have lost the physical body are usually within easy reach
+through the usual methods employed for the purpose and
+perhaps no harm is done by such communications unless
+they arouse anew the grief of those who have been left
+behind and thus greatly depress the departed. But after
+the living dead get farther along, and are practically out
+of touch with the material world, then directing their
+attention backward may be positively injurious to them.
+For that reason careful students of the occult seldom seek
+to obtain messages, or at least do it with proper consideration
+for all the circumstances of the particular
+case.</p>
+
+<p>Due regard for the interests of those who have passed
+on, as well as for those who remain, requires that all
+the facts be given full weight. The truth of the matter
+is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise to
+the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once
+more get into touch with one that seems to be lost to
+us. We are not really thinking much about his welfare.
+As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us and does
+not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able to
+see us at all times and be conscious of our feelings and
+emotions, but during the hours when we are asleep he
+is in the fullest and freest communication with us and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+we with him. On awakening we usually have no memory
+of this and if we do we think it was a dream. But it
+is not so with him. His memory of it is perfect and
+the result is that he has not our sense of separation and
+loss at all.</p>
+
+<p>The result of knowledge upon the subject, that is
+readily gained by a study of the researches of the skilled
+occultists, is that one comes to feel that one should
+rest satisfied with the fact that we do converse with the
+dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to
+the scientific investigators. The natural order of things
+is that the person who passes into the astral world shall
+in time fix his mind exclusively upon the inner life and
+be completely divorced from physical plane affairs. That
+is the mental and emotional condition which permits
+of his rapid passage through levels where he should not
+linger. It is said that to turn his attention backward at
+this time may cause him acute distress.</p>
+
+<p>A reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge
+of occultism often throws a new light upon the
+subject. An instance of this is to be found in the story
+of the woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his
+quest for psychic information about the crisis that has
+been reached in the affairs of his kingdom. The woman
+went into trance and acted as a medium for a communication
+from Samuel, who tells Saul just what will occur
+in the impending battle. Samuel's first words were
+a reproach to Saul. "Why hast thou disquieted me to
+bring me up?"<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> was his greeting. It is the language of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+one who is displeased. Drawing his attention forcibly
+back to the material world by the strong desire Saul
+had to communicate with him was evidently distressing
+to the dead king, hence the rebuke, "Why hast thou
+<em>disquieted</em> me?"</p>
+
+<p>What is here said on the subject of communication,
+however, has reference to general principles only. There
+is no intention of suggesting that it is always undesirable
+to communicate with those who have passed over. Often
+those on the other side seek means of communicating and
+they should then find the most willing co-operation from
+this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical
+plane life has a message of great importance to deliver
+and such a case reverses the general rule&mdash;he would be
+delayed if he could <em>not</em> communicate. It would be decidedly
+to his advantage to free his mind of the matter.
+Until he has done so he may remain in a restless condition
+and his case falls into the category of what the
+spiritualists call "earth bound." He may have left
+undone something that a message will set right, if he
+can get it through, or he may have secreted something
+that cannot be found because he died suddenly and had
+no opportunity to speak of it. Or it may simply be a
+case of desiring to prove to materialistic friends the
+fact that the so-called dead are not dead, and are close
+at hand. It is sometimes possible for the important
+information to come through into physical life in the
+form of a dream by the living, and thus the recovery of
+valuables has followed.<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> In such a case the dream is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+a memory of facts well known in astral life but hidden
+from the waking consciousness by the unresponsive material
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>It sometimes happens that one who thus most earnestly
+desires to communicate but is wholly ignorant
+of how to accomplish his purpose causes a good deal of
+annoyance. His blundering attempts to use psychic
+force may be wholly abortive and result only in meaningless
+noises, raps, the tumbling of books or dishes
+from shelves or the aimless movement of furniture.
+Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention, on the
+part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks.
+It must be remembered that passing on to the astral life
+does not improve one's common sense. If while living
+here, he thought it amusing to astonish or delude somebody,
+or trick a friend into seriously accepting some
+absurd assertion as a fact, he still regards the same
+course as entertaining. This accounts for many of the
+foolish, and sometimes startling messages, or answers to
+questions, received at seances.</p>
+
+<p>It has often been asked why, if communication between
+the physical and astral planes is possible, we do
+not receive information that might lead to valuable discoveries
+and inventions. The very fact that death does
+not confer wisdom explains it in part. But an even more
+important fact is that communication is easy with the
+lower levels and correspondingly difficult as the higher
+levels are reached. All who have had much experience
+with seances are familiar with the fact that "guides"
+or "controls," that is, the persons in the invisible realms
+who direct the seance and frequently speak through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+the medium, are very often Indians or others at a low
+level of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants of
+the astral levels with which communication is easy are
+not the type capable of furnishing ideas of any great
+value. It is on the higher levels that the man of intellectual
+power passes most of his astral life. The
+scientist or the inventor who has given so much thought
+to his work that he has been in some degree successful
+here is not likely to have much consciousness on lower
+levels. It is the highest of the seven subdivisions of the
+astral world that is the habitat of the person who has
+followed intellectual pursuits, during physical life, and
+with that level it is practically impossible for the ordinary
+medium to communicate.</p>
+
+<p>One of the objections to indiscriminate communication
+with the astral plane lies in the very fact that the
+lowest class of entities are most accessible. That not
+only accounts for the commonplace messages in such
+abundance, but it is frequently a source of actual danger,
+especially where people form "circles" for the purpose
+of rendering themselves more sensitive to psychic influences.
+In such cases it is common to accept every
+message as absolute truth. There is no doubt that as
+a rule the astral people in charge of such a gathering
+are earnest and honest. But they are neither all-wise
+nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about that
+some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed by
+astral entities, and that may prove to be an exceedingly
+serious matter. Some people have thus lost their sanity
+and others their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, only the gross type of astral person<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+who has a desire to seize upon the physical body of
+another. The purpose is to gratify desires that have
+outlived the physical body. The dead drunkard is perhaps
+the commonest example of the obsessing entity, and
+if the obsession is only partial it may lead to nothing
+worse than strong and perhaps irresistible impulses
+toward alcoholic stimulation. Obsession may, of course,
+occur without the psychic door being opened deliberately.
+But no obsession is possible, in any case, unless there is
+something within the victim responsive to the moral
+defect of the obsessing entity.</p>
+
+<p>Partial obsessions are rather common and there are
+frequent inquiries as to the best means of treating such
+a case. It may amount only to the slight annoyance
+of astral people hanging about and refusing to depart
+or to actual persecution. In all such cases the victim is,
+of course, in conscious touch and communication with
+the intruders. One of the world's greatest authorities
+on the subject, who is a constant investigator of the unseen
+regions, has given detailed answer to two questioners,
+and what he says is of such practical value that
+it is well worth reproducing. The second question itself
+is enlightening as to the character of the obsessing
+entities. The first inquirer asks:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"What is the best way to get rid of an excarnate
+human being who persists in occupying one's
+body?"</p></div>
+
+<p>The reply follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I should simply and absolutely decline to be so
+obsessed. The best and kindest plan would be to
+have an explanation with the dead person, to enquire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+what he wants and why he makes such persistent
+attempts. Quite probably, he may be some ignorant
+soul who does not at all comprehend his new surroundings,
+and is striving madly to get into touch
+again with the only kind of life that he understands.
+In that case if matters are explained to him, he may
+be brought to a happier frame of mind and induced
+to cease his ill-directed efforts. Or the poor creature
+may have something on his mind&mdash;some duty unfulfilled
+or some wrong unrighted; if this be so, and
+the matter can be arranged to his satisfaction, he
+may then be at peace.</p>
+
+<p>"If, however, he proves not to be amenable to
+reason, if in spite of all argument and explanation
+he refuses to abandon his reprehensible line of
+action, it will be necessary gently but firmly to
+resist him. Every man has an inalienable right to the
+use of his own vehicles, and encroachments of this
+nature should not be permitted. If the lawful possessor
+of the body will confidently assert himself and
+use his own willpower no obsession can take
+place.</p>
+
+<p>"When such things occur, it is almost always because
+the victim has in the first place voluntarily
+yielded himself to the invading influence, and his
+first step therefore is to reverse that act of submission,
+to determine strongly to take matters into his
+own hands again and to resume control over his
+property. It is this reassertion of himself that is
+the fundamental requirement, and though much help
+may be given by wise friends, nothing which they
+can do will take the place of the development of
+willpower on the part of the victim, or obviate the
+necessity for it. The exact method of procedure
+will naturally vary according to the details of the
+case."</p></div>
+
+<p>The same authority answers another question on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+same subject and he is here dealing with particular
+entities that he has evidently seen:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have long been troubled by entities who constantly
+suggest evil ideas and make use of coarse
+and violent language. They are always urging me
+to take strong drink, and goading me on to the consumption
+of large quantities of meat. I have prayed
+earnestly, but with little avail, and am driven to my
+wits' end. What can I do?"</p></div>
+
+<p>To this appeal the psychic scientist replies:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"You have indeed suffered greatly; but now you
+must make up your mind to suffer no more. You
+must take courage and make a firm stand. The
+power of these dead people over you is only in your
+fear of them. Your own will is stronger than all
+theirs combined if you will only know that it is;
+if you turn upon them with vigor and determination
+they must yield before you. You have an inalienable
+right to the undisturbed use of your own vehicles,
+and you should insist on being left in peace. You
+would not tolerate an intrusion of filthy and disgusting
+beings into your house on the physical plane;
+why should you submit to it because the entities
+happen to be astral? If an insolent tramp forces
+himself into a man's house, the owner does not kneel
+down and pray&mdash;he kicks the tramp out; and that
+is precisely what you must do with these astral
+tramps.</p>
+
+<p>"You will no doubt say to yourself that when I
+give you this advice I do not know the terrible power
+of the particular demons who are afflicting you.
+That is exactly what they would like you to believe&mdash;what
+they will try to make you believe; but
+do not be so foolish as to listen to them. I know
+the type perfectly, and mean, despicable, bullying
+villains they are; they will torment a weak woman
+for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+the moment you turn upon them in righteous anger!
+I should just laugh at them, but I would drive them
+out, hold not a moment's parley with them. Of
+course, they will bluster and show fight, because you
+have let them have their own way for so long that
+they will not tamely submit to expulsion; but face
+them with iron determination, set your will against
+them like an immovable rock, and down they will
+go. Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire,
+and by the power of the God within me I order you
+to depart!' Never let yourself think for an instant of
+failure or of yielding; God is within you, and God
+cannot fail."<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Probably there is no astral subject of more vital
+importance to any of us than that of the right attitude
+of mind and emotion toward the living dead. It is
+commonly said that we can do nothing more for them
+when they have passed away from physical plane life,
+but a greater error could not easily be made. The
+connection with us is by no means severed. Not only are
+they emotionally in touch with us but their emotions are
+very much keener than when they had a physical body
+through which to express them. They are now living
+in the astral body, the matter of which is enormously
+more responsive to emotional vibrations. A joyous emotion
+here would be tremendously more joyous there and
+a thing that would produce depression here would be a
+hundred times more depressing there. That fact should
+give pause to those who are inclined to think in sorrow,
+and with something of despair, about their friends who
+have passed on. They are not far away in space and
+our emotions affect them profoundly and instantly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p><p>We are all familiar with the fact that moods are
+communicable. The person who is cheerful cheers up
+others in his vicinity, while the one who is gloomy spreads
+gloom wherever he goes. It is a simple matter of vibrations.
+It is often within the power of a member of the
+family who habitually has "the blues" to destroy the
+happiness of the entire household. If we think of the
+most depressing effect that can be caused by sorrow on
+the physical plane, and then multiply its effectiveness
+by a hundred, we shall have no exaggeration of the astral
+effects of the emotions we indulge in the physical body.
+If, then, the sorrow of a weeping relative distresses us
+here it is clear that it must bring really keen distress
+to the one who is the subject of such grief. His life
+may thus be made miserable by the very persons who
+would be the last to cause him sorrow if they understood
+what they were doing.</p>
+
+<p>We can really help the so-called dead and make them
+very much happier by simply changing our mournful
+attitude toward them. All violent expressions of grief
+should be avoided and a determination to make the best
+of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may
+indeed be bad, but we make it very much worse by our
+mourning. The funeral customs of Occidental civilization
+are quite consistent with its materialism. We act
+as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are
+lost to us absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as
+possible. Yet we are slowly improving. Not so very
+long ago when anybody died those present stopped the
+ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains,
+moved about on tiptoe, and acted generally in a way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+calculated to add as much as possible to the awe and the
+gloom. We still wear somber and depressing black
+and add all we can externally to our inward distress.</p>
+
+<p>A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at
+any theosophical funeral and, with growing frequency,
+at the funerals among thinking people. A funeral should
+not be the occasion of a final expression of grief, but a
+gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and
+helpful good wishes to the comrade whose life work in
+the physical world is finished. The general feeling should
+be very much like that of a party of friends who go
+to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long
+journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of
+many years or possibly a lifetime. There should be
+constant thought of his welfare, not of the loss to his
+friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an expression of
+selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice
+self control in such a matter just as one would control a
+feeling of anger under different circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally enough the control of grief when one we
+love has passed on is none to easy. But any degree
+of success is much better than no effort, and will certainly
+help the one for whom we mourn. Much can
+be accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that
+bring vividly back the keen sense of loss. Many people
+indulge the foolish custom of regularly visiting the
+cemetery where the body has been interred. A little
+analysis will show that this is only another evidence of
+our materialistic modes of thought, and the custom
+serves to perpetuate emotions that should never have
+existed. We can not, of course, think too often nor too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should
+do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead,
+or being far away. The fact that they are alive and
+well and happy and near should constantly fill the mind;
+and all of that, in nearly all cases, will be perfectly true
+if we do not foolishly destroy their peace of mind with
+our selfish sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally a hint on the subject comes from the
+astral plane people themselves. In the recent book<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a>
+by Sir Oliver Lodge, on his experiments in psychic research,
+there is a message from his son, who was killed
+in battle, agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner
+and to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they
+will all refrain from gloomy thoughts about him! No
+one who is informed on the subject of emotional reaction
+on the astral body, after the loss of the physical
+body, could be surprised by the conditions named by
+the young man.</p>
+
+<p>The advocates of cremation have a strong argument
+in the fact that the preservation of the body for a time,
+whether in a tomb or a grave, tends to keep grief alive.
+When the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that the
+body is somehow the man seems to have less of a
+material basis. Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate,
+not alone because they renew grief through thinking
+upon it and thus cause great distress to those for whom
+we mourn, but also because the environment of a cemetery
+is one of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It
+is a dismal park of concentrated griefs where each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+mourner accentuates the emotional distress of all others.
+There is but one sensible attitude to take toward those
+we have lost by death&mdash;to think of them as living a
+joyous, busy life and at least calling on us daily even
+though most of us are not sensitive enough to be conscious
+of the fact. We should try to realize the truth
+of the matter and then readjust our habits to fit the
+facts. The average person who is afflicted with the
+erroneous ideas still so common, is doing an enormous
+amount of injury and bringing into the lives of the very
+people he loves a depression of which he little dreams,
+and which he can change to vivid pleasure by always
+thinking cheerfully of them and sending them daily
+thoughts of serenity and peace.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> 1 Samuel XXVIII&mdash;15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Ch. 3, Dreams and Premonitions.&mdash;L. W. Rogers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> The Inner Life.&mdash;Leadbeater, Vol. I. p. 483.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> Raymond: or Life and Death.&mdash;Lodge.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER IX.</span><br />
+REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS</h2>
+
+<p>Life is the most elusive thing with which science
+has to deal but we have learned much about both
+life and matter in recent years, and it is a noteworthy
+fact that the more we learn the thinner become the
+ranks of the materialists. The only scientist of note
+who still declares his philosophy of materialism is
+Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has written,
+"He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle
+of the nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's
+almost deserted ground in the scientific world, he
+declares that his voice "is as the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of
+an advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a
+standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but
+abandoned by the retreating ranks of his comrades as
+they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic
+direction."</p>
+
+<p>Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism
+being deserted by all progressive scientists. While
+we do not yet know a great deal about life, science
+has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and
+principles from which conclusions may be logically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+drawn and working hypotheses constructed. Sir
+Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the great
+English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's
+most eminent scientists, speaking of his conception
+of life, says that "It is dependent on matter for its
+phenomenal appearance&mdash;for its manifestation to us
+here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities;
+but otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that
+its essential existence is continuous and permanent,
+though its interactions with matter are discontinuous
+and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to
+a law of evolution&mdash;that a linear advance is open to it&mdash;whether
+it be in its phenomenal or in its occult
+state."<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></p>
+
+<p>Later in the same work he expresses the opinion
+"that life is something outside the scheme of
+mechanics&mdash;outside the categories of matter and energy;
+though it can nevertheless control and direct
+material forces...."</p>
+
+<p>In closing his volume on <cite>Life and Matter</cite> this distinguished
+scientist says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"What is certain is that life possesses the power
+of vitalizing the complex material aggregates which
+exist on this planet, and of utilizing their energies
+for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings;
+and then it seems to disappear or evaporate
+whence it came. It is perpetually arriving and perpetually
+disappearing. While it is here, if it is at
+a sufficiently high level, the animated material body
+moves about and strives after many objects, some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain
+individuality, a certain character. It may realize
+itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own
+mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins
+to explore the Mind which, like its own, it conceives
+must underlie the material fabric&mdash;half displayed,
+half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible
+only to a kindred spirit. Thus the scheme
+of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent soul,
+and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth,
+goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of
+permanent value, or a work of art or of literature;
+it may enter the region of emotion and may evolve
+ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below
+the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it the material molecular aggregate that has
+of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality,
+acquired this character, felt these emotions,
+evolved these ideas? There are some who try to think
+that it is. There are others who recognize in this extraordinary
+development a contact between this material
+frame of things and a universe higher and
+other than anything known to our senses; a universe
+not dominated by physics and chemistry; but utilizing
+the interactions of matter for its own purpose;
+a universe where the human spirit is more at home
+than it is among these temporary collocations of
+atoms; a universe capable of infinite development,
+of noble contemplation and of lofty joy, long after
+this planet&mdash;nay, the whole solar system&mdash;shall have
+fulfilled its present sphere of destiny, and retired
+cold and lifeless upon its endless way."</p></div>
+
+<p>Such a conception of life carries us very far from
+the old popular view of the origin of the race, but
+it is a conception that brings science and religion into
+perfect agreement and will enable us to understand
+human evolution and explain facts in life that would
+otherwise remain incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p><p>The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal
+life, was taught and commonly accepted in the
+early Christian period. If we accept the fact of evolution
+at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape
+from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed,
+not even materialism can save one from the necessity
+of accepting the pre-existence of the individualized
+consciousness that we call a human being.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider the human infant as we see it at
+birth. Whence came it&mdash;how can we account for it
+in a universe of law and order? We can understand
+it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse
+of physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few
+months. But its mind, its consciousness, its emotions,
+what of them? The average man replies that
+God made them and they constitute the soul. But
+how and when were they "made"? Even the material
+part of this infant did not spring miraculously and
+instantaneously into existence. How much less possible
+is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made
+it" we have explained nothing. But it is not necessary
+to deny that God creates the soul in order for
+us to move toward an understanding of how the soul
+came to be. It is only necessary to say that the
+process of its creation was evolutionary. Nobody
+denies that the earth was created by evolution, although
+men may differ in opinion on the matter of a
+divine intelligence guiding its evolutionary development.
+The same principle must apply to the human
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Lodge wrote <cite>Life and Matter</cite> as a reply to Haeck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>el's
+<cite>Riddle of the Universe</cite>, which presented the latter's
+philosophy of materialism. But Lodge did more than
+demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not
+an inch of scientific ground to support his theory.
+The English scientist raised questions that have not
+been answered, and cannot be answered, by the scientific
+materialist. He points out that the materialist's
+philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary
+rapidity of development, which results in the production
+of a fully endowed individual in the course of
+some fraction of a century."<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a></p>
+
+<p>With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the
+scientific materialist speechless; for all scientists are
+evolutionists, and it is impossible to account for
+"<em>the extraordinary rapidity of development</em>" by the laws
+of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary
+age of anything depends upon its complexity. A
+simple form is comparatively young while a complex
+one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The
+earth is simple compared to a human being. If, then,
+it has required ages to evolve the earth to its present
+stage how long did it take to evolve the wonderfully
+complex mental and emotional nature of the human
+being that inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge
+bottles Haeckel up on his own premises and shows
+that the very evolutionary principles to which the
+German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He
+practically says to Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir,
+fails to show how it is possible for the vacuous mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
+in thirty or forty years." In other words, if
+the infant is nothing but the form we see it would
+be utter absurdity to say that that mass of matter can
+evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years
+when it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary
+gain.</p>
+
+<p>Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its
+face. One might as well search the surface of a
+squash for some indication of intelligence. But wait
+only a little while and you shall have evidence not
+merely of intelligence but of emotions possible only to
+the highest order of life. Clearly, here is not something
+evolved within a brief period from a mass of
+material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific
+as the popular belief in miraculous creation at
+which the scientific materialist scoffs. The swift
+change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the
+intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a
+century" is not the creation of something but
+its <em>manifestation</em>&mdash;<em>the coming through into visible expression
+of that which already exists</em>. The soul, the
+consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole
+of the mental and emotional nature, which has been
+built up through thousands of years of evolution, is
+coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in
+a material body.</p>
+
+<p>The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument
+of the old soul&mdash;an instrument, as certainly
+as the violin is the instrument and a vehicle for the
+musician's expression. At every turn our material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>istic
+conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception
+of nature's truth. It is because we think of the
+body as being actually the person, that it seems improbable
+that an old soul has entered the infant body.
+We think of the power and intelligence of an old soul
+and then look at the baby and find no indication of
+such things. But that is only because the baby body
+is such a new and undeveloped instrument that
+it is at first useless and only slowly can it be brought
+under control of the soul and made to express its intelligence
+and power. The body is a growing instrument,
+not a completed one.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as
+physical bodies do. Suppose there was a time when
+the piano was keyless, as a baby is toothless. Suppose
+that sounding boards have a period of immaturity
+and that the whole mechanism of the instrument
+is in a state that can only be characterized
+as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play
+on such a piano his performance would by no means
+be an indication of his ability. A competent critic
+who could hear the performance but not see the
+musician would promptly declare that no really great
+musician was touching the keys. And that is precisely
+the mistake we make in assuming that the immature
+body of an infant is capable of expressing
+the intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it
+differently, denying that a returned, old soul is in
+possession of the infant body simply because there
+is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos
+slowly grew to maturity then only when the instru<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>ment
+was mature could the master musician give a
+practical demonstration of his skill; and only when
+the physical body has reached its maturity can the
+soul that is using it fully express itself.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the physical body the soul
+is only very partially expressed through it. The
+entrance of the consciousness into the physical world
+is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth
+of a plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a
+good one, for a plant is very little like a human body.
+It is impossible to find a material equivalent of the
+dawning of consciousness on the physical plane. Beginning
+about four and a half months before the
+birth of the physical body and continuing for a period
+of several years the soul, or consciousness, is engaged
+in the process of anchorage in the physical world.
+For a long time the center of consciousness remains
+above the material plane and during the early years
+of childhood the consciousness is divided between
+the astral and physical worlds, with the result that
+the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments
+of astral consciousness into physical life. When
+the physical body is about seven years old the consciousness
+may be said to be centered on the physical
+plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's
+new instrument are mature has the opportunity come
+for the fullest expression.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the difficulties commonly associated in
+the mind with the thought of the pre-existence and
+rebirth of the soul will disappear if we do not lose
+sight of the fact that the soul is a center of con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>sciousness,
+which is always consciousness somewhere,
+but which very gradually shifts its focus from plane
+to plane. Its permanent home is in that body of
+filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels
+of the heaven world. From that point it sends energies
+outward and draws about itself in the lower
+levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle of consciousness,
+that is not permanent but which will serve
+the purpose of functioning for a period on that plane.
+Downward again the energies are sent, building about
+the center of consciousness on the astral plane a temporary
+body of astral matter, temporary in the same
+sense that the physical body is temporary, and which
+shall serve the consciousness in the astral, or emotional
+world, during the whole of the physical plane
+life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or
+downward, the soul sends its energies till the material
+world is reached, when it begins to function partially,
+and very feebly, through the infant physical body.</p>
+
+<p>For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the
+physical plane where certain lessons are to be learned.
+After the early years of childhood are over the consciousness
+is firmly anchored here, where the chief
+work is to be done, during the hours of the waking
+consciousness. During sleep the ego temporarily lays
+aside the physical body and functions in the astral
+body in the astral world. The material body sleeping
+here is merely a deserted and empty vehicle,
+magnetically connected with the soul, and awaiting
+its return.</p>
+
+<p>As childhood, youth, maturity and old age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+pass, complex experiences come to the soul thus
+functioning here. Other souls functioning through
+physical bodies are encountered and various
+relationships are established. Out of the complexity
+of social, business, religious and political activities
+the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner
+or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter.
+The gathering of such experience has ceased,
+not because the soul has acquired all possible physical
+world knowledge, but because its instrument of consciousness
+here has worn out.</p>
+
+<p>Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection
+and the center of its consciousness is then
+shifted to the astral plane. There the purgative
+process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter.
+As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free
+from one grade of astral matter after another and with
+the loss of each the man becomes conscious on a
+higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but
+the matter of the astral body gradually wears away
+until there is so little left that the soul has lost connection
+with the astral world also. This means that
+the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental
+plane, or heaven world, where the man will function
+on the lower levels.</p>
+
+<p>There in the mental world, functioning through
+the vehicle of mental matter, a very important process
+goes on. The heaven world life is a harvest time in
+which assimilation of experience takes place. The
+consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences
+of life and extracts the essence from them which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+is transmuted into faculty and power for future
+greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in
+wisdom and power through its long evolution.</p>
+
+<p>When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest
+of experience has been threshed out and the net gain
+has been built into the enduring causal body, the
+mental body, like the astral, has been completely dissipated.
+The end of a cycle of experience&mdash;of a day
+in the evolutionary school&mdash;has come and the physical,
+astral and mental bodies have all perished. Nothing
+remains but the soul, the real man, the ego, functioning
+through the causal body which persists. From
+that the ego again sends the forces outward, in the
+first activity toward rebirth, first forming a new
+mental body by drawing about itself the matter of the
+lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new
+astral body on the astral plane and finally taking possession
+of another infant body in process of formation
+on the physical plane, into which it will in due course
+be reborn.</p>
+
+<p>The period between these successive appearances
+of the soul in a succession of physical bodies varies
+greatly and depends on a number of things. The
+length of time spent upon the astral plane has already
+been discussed. The time spent in the heaven world
+depends upon the mental and moral forces generated
+during the physical and astral life. If there is a great
+harvest of experience it will require a longer time to
+transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought
+little and loved but little will have a shorter period
+there, for it is the heart and head forces that have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+their culmination in the mental world. The question
+is a rather complex one and other factors come into
+play, including the intensity of the heaven world life.
+In general terms, however, it can be said that the
+heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will
+commonly be a period several times the length of his
+combined physical and astral life. Some people will
+have only two or three hundred years between incarnations
+while others may have six or seven centuries
+and still others a much longer period.</p>
+
+<p>In getting a right understanding of the subject
+of rebirth, or reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in
+mind the fact that the soul, or center of individualized
+consciousness, is the man and that the physical body
+is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
+that the causal body is his permanent body for the
+whole of human evolution; that the mental plane is
+his home plane and that from there he sends forth
+successive expressions of himself into these lower
+planes. With such facts before us there should be
+no confusion of thought about the successive personalities
+of an individual. Yet we sometimes hear people
+speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
+can be one man in one incarnation and another man
+at a later rebirth. Of course no such thing occurs.
+An individual remains the same individual forever.
+"But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr.
+Jones, in England six hundred years ago, whereas I
+am now certainly Mr. Brown, in America at this
+moment? If so is that not a case of being two individuals?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p><p>It is certainly not a case of being two individuals.
+It is a case of one individual being expressed through
+a physical body six hundred years ago in England,
+dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
+astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing
+himself through another physical body in America
+at the present time. The confusion of thought on
+the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
+physical body as being the man. But it is no more
+the man than the clothing he wears. It is true that
+he is known at one period as Jones and at another as
+Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
+the assumption of an <i>alias</i> by a fleeing criminal
+changes him. The name applies exclusively to the
+physical body, or personality, as distinguished from
+the individuality. That body is but the temporary
+clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's
+name were applied to his clothing and changed with
+his clothing as it does with his body. We might then
+know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and
+as Mr. Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the
+change of clothing or name would in the least degree
+make him somebody else. The majority of women
+change their names in each incarnation. A man may
+know a certain woman as Miss Smith when she is a
+slip of a girl, free from care and with little serious
+thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs.
+Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of
+children. She has changed her name and greatly
+changed in character, too, but she is the same individual.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p><p>It seems probable that a person may change quite
+as much between infancy and old age as between one
+incarnation and the next. Even the difference between
+a youth of twenty years who is an artist and
+the same man at three score and ten who has given
+forty years to scientific study and research, may be
+enormous, but the individuality is, of course, identical.
+It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and
+that is just what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths&mdash;steady
+evolutionary development of the
+eternal individual.</p>
+
+<p>The reincarnating process by which the soul
+evolves is somewhat analogous to the growth of a
+young physical body. The process consists of alternating
+periods of objective and subjective activity.
+How does the body of a child grow? It consumes
+food, the objective activity. It then digests and assimilates
+it, the subjective activity. These periods
+must alternate or there can be no growth, because
+neither alone is the complete process. The one is the
+complement of the other. So it is in the evolution
+of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life
+is the food on which the soul grows. The physical
+plane existence is the objective period in which the
+food is gathered. At death the man passes into the
+invisible realms where the subjective process is carried
+on. He digests and assimilates his experiences
+and the gist is stored in the causal body and its
+growth includes an actual increase in size, just as in
+the case of the child's physical body.</p>
+
+<p>The same law governs mental and moral growth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+as it operates in our daily affairs. A young man is
+in college. How does his intellect grow? By precisely
+the same process of alternating periods of objective
+and subjective activity. In the class room the
+instructor puts a mathematical problem on the blackboard
+and explains it. With the outward senses of
+sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the
+student gathers the food for mental growth. This
+period of objective activity comes to an end and he
+then retires to the privacy of his room and there the
+subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the
+problem. His material, the food for mental growth,
+is only a few notes that serve to keep the experience
+in his mind. At first all that they signify is not obvious,
+but as he turns the various points over and
+over in his mind their significance becomes clearer
+and fuller. It is the subjective process of digestion.
+Little by little new light dawns in the student's mind.
+Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
+principles involved, and the process of assimilation
+is finished. This subjective period is the complement
+of the objective period and they must go on
+alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When
+the process of digestion and assimilation is finished the
+student must return to the classroom for further
+mental food and when he arrives it is by virtue of
+the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that
+he is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And
+precisely so it is with the reincarnating soul. In the
+interval between incarnations it so assimilates the experiences
+of the last physical life that it comes to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take
+higher and more difficult lessons than it could previously
+master.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of both physical growth by eating and
+mental growth by instruction there is no possible
+escape from the law of alternating periods of objective
+and subjective activity. When the child has digested
+and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing
+that can follow&mdash;return to his source of supply for
+another meal. When the student has digested and
+assimilated the lesson given to him the only possibility
+of further mental growth lies in his return to
+the class-room for more material. And so it is with
+the human soul in its work of evolving its latent
+powers and possibilities. There is no other road forward
+but the cyclic one that brings it back to the
+physical life incarnation after incarnation, but always
+at a higher point than it previously touched. The
+very hunger of the child that insures its return to
+the table for more food is analogous to the desire of
+the soul for sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.</p>
+
+<p>These alternating periods with the element of
+constant return are found everywhere in the economy
+of nature. All her evolutionary expressions are
+cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed
+circles. It represents a spiral. The "evolutionary
+ladder" that the soul climbs is a winding stairway.
+In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it
+is always mounting and never returns to the same
+point. In each cycle, that is made up of the journey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+from the heaven world through the astral plane, into
+the physical and then back through the astral plane
+into the heaven world, it touches each of them at a
+higher point, or in a higher state of development, than
+it had previously attained. Each rebirth finds it abler
+here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
+return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it
+abler to digest and assimilate its experiences, and to
+comprehend more of the realities of the life of its
+home plane.</p>
+
+<p>This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral
+and mental regions, is a continuous progressive journey
+of the soul which began away back at the dawn
+of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
+mental and moral being. At each incarnation
+here he gathers experience in proportion to his alertness
+and to the opportunities his previous lives have
+made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic,
+to be tolerant. Such activities will give him
+pleasure in the astral life and joy and wisdom in the
+mental region, or heaven world. But he also does
+some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates
+hatred and he injures others. This will give him distress
+in the astral life and no results for soul growth
+or general progress in the heaven world. If he does
+an equal amount of good and harm his progress will
+be slow. If he does much good and little evil his
+progress will be rapid and his existence happy. If he
+is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
+development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will
+suffer much in the astral life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p><p>It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy
+to be told that the soul passes through the purgation
+of the astral plane and goes on into the heaven
+world only to return to another incarnation and later
+to again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked,
+must one who has thus been purified be again purified?
+The astral reactions are the results of the blunders
+made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
+given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the
+purgatory that awaits him after death. If he does no
+wrong there cannot possibly be any reaction. As a
+matter of occult fact the average good man will find
+the astral plane life a happy existence and will soon
+pass on to the blissful heaven world. As for the evil
+doer the suffering relates only to his evil deeds. Let
+us say he has committed murder. When the reaction
+of the evil force he has generated is over and he
+passes on into the heaven plane it does not mean
+that he is incapable of future evil. It means that he
+has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is
+very foolish to take life. But there are many other
+lessons he has not learned. When he passes into the
+heaven world he leaves all evil behind him. He is
+as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple.
+The astral body, like the physical, has perished and
+it is the freed soul that enters the heaven world. But
+when he returns through the astral plane to reincarnation
+he is clothed again in astral matter and this
+new astral body is exactly representative of his attainments
+in evolution. In his coming incarnation he
+will have other physical plane experiences and learn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+other lessons. The next time probably he will not
+kill, but perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard.
+These errors will react upon him in the astral
+life that follows. In a coming incarnation he will
+be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor
+steal; but perhaps he will be a gossip and work much
+evil through slander. This in turn will bring its pain.
+And so in time he will learn to generate no evil force
+at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward
+everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed,
+his life on all planes will be happy and the painful
+part of human evolution will be over.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than
+the fact of evolution. Evolution is an unfolding
+process in which the latent becomes the active and
+the inner life is more and more fully expressed in
+outer form. The development and improvement in
+form keeps pace with the necessities of the unfolding
+life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the
+form is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller
+and fuller expression, limbs for locomotion and, in
+due course, the organs for hearing, and seeing, and
+the other mechanism of the developing consciousness,
+are evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of
+consciousness comes to its highest possible form and
+then evolution goes on in the perfecting of the physical
+form. In the process of continually changing the
+matter of the body it is possible for the brain to be
+constantly improved and the whole body to grow
+more and more sensitive and gradually to become a
+better and truer expression of the evolving life within.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+In each incarnation the physical body thus improves.
+The evolution of life and form keep pace. Ultimately
+perfection of form, as well as perfection of intellect and
+morality, will be reached and human evolution will
+be finished.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a
+god in the making&mdash;not actually, but only potentially
+a god, a being to whom all wisdom, perfect compassion
+and unlimited power are possible; and by the
+process of evolution he changes the latent into the
+active. He is at first only an individualized center
+of consciousness within the All-Consciousness, a mere
+fragment of the divine life. His relationship to God
+is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product
+of it that has latent within it all the characteristics
+of the plant and the power to become a plant. It is
+not a plant and neither is man a god; but when it
+has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is
+a plant in the making; and when the human being
+has begun to evolve his latent spiritual qualities he
+is a god in the making. The theosophical view is that
+man is essentially divine.</p>
+
+<p>Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally
+divine, it is necessary for him to pass through any
+evolutionary process. Divinity here indicates merely
+the essential nature of the human being, not his possession
+of either knowledge or power or any degree
+of spiritual perfection. It is as though we should say
+that the infant son of a great king is royal. The word
+"royal," like the word "divine," indicates a relationship.
+The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+king in the making. He has much to learn. He
+must be educated in statecraft and he must evolve
+diplomacy. After much experience and development
+he will, in time, be capable of ruling an empire. At
+present this helpless infant bears little resemblance to
+a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his birth he was
+as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense
+the divinity of man represents potential possibilities
+rather than an obvious fact of the moment. Man is an
+embryo god and, in time, he shall evolve faculties
+and powers that his present limited consciousness can
+not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature
+of physical origin that lives a brief span to catch
+a glimpse of immortality and perish, but the deathless
+son of the living God, and by right divine he
+walks the upward way of eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter
+of course, in a general way, but they appear unwilling
+to admit that the race has really made any evolutionary
+progress. Even scientific men have sometimes
+expressed doubt whether the world is growing
+better. In a newspaper interview an English scientist
+was quoted as saying a few years ago that the
+race is just as wicked today as at any time within
+recorded history. But if he was correctly reported
+it must have been a hasty expression of opinion which
+a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It
+is true that things are still bad enough but they are
+certainly enormously better than they were some
+centuries ago. To say that the world is full of crime
+and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+that a civilized nation has reverted to the wartime
+practices of savage life furnish real ground for a pessimistic
+view. What we have to do in determining
+whether there has been any racial progress in morality
+is to take as our standard of measurement something
+that tests the collective conscience. How does
+the world of today view war and how did the world
+in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to
+shock us now but the very fact that it does shock us
+is the best evidence of moral progress. Atrocities
+were expected and taken as a matter of course some
+centuries ago. They are not the rule now but the
+rare exception and those guilty of them are likely to
+make their name a by-word among nations. Well
+within the era of recorded history the usages of nations'
+condemned prisoners of war to become slaves
+for life. Now the rule is to feed and clothe them and
+at the close of the conflict to send them home. A
+simple thing like public sports may be used as a
+measure of public morals. They show what the collective
+conscience approves. In these days there is
+very little of brutality in public sports. Professional
+pugilism still lingers, but barely lingers, in the most
+enlightened nations. In less progressive countries
+like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular. That
+is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment.
+But if we look backward to the Roman
+period we find a cruelty in public sports that is comparatively
+shocking. Gladiators were compelled to
+fight to the death and offenders were devoured by
+starving wild beasts and it all made a Roman holiday.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+Such "sports" would, of course, be utterly impossible
+anywhere in the world today. But at that time they
+were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest
+empire. The fact that the race has evolved morally
+and that the collective conscience marks a higher
+point on the ethical thermometer than in the past is
+too obvious for argument.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted
+for? It will not do to say that the Christian
+religion has wrought the change because, splendid as
+are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
+them and shaped its civilization by them. If
+it had done so the world war would have been impossible.
+Not only have the so-called Christian nations
+wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through
+all their history but class has been arrayed against
+class and every gain in either personal liberty or
+economic improvement has been wrested by force
+from those who profited by the misfortunes of others.
+In other words, the particular improvements that
+should have been brought about by religion were
+compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
+teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may
+for the influence of Christianity, we are still unable to
+account for the change in the common conscience of
+the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
+steadily on since long, long before the coming of the
+Christ. How then shall we account for it?</p>
+
+<p>If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the
+progress of the race in morality becomes simple. The
+majority of the great groups of souls that constituted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+the civilized nations in the time when Rome was
+mistress of the world have had several incarnations
+in that time and in each sojourn on the astral plane
+have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
+from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually
+change the cruel man to the merciful man. In every
+incarnation the soul grows more humane as well as
+more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any
+incarnation are carried forward into the next life, and
+thus compassion grows until there is ultimately perfect
+sympathy with all suffering. Both the progress
+of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from
+the viewpoint of reincarnation.</p>
+
+<p>Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to
+explain such evolutionary progress? Those who do
+not believe in the pre-existence of the soul and hold
+that it is in some way brought into being at the time
+of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical
+position of saying that the reason why the world is
+better now than it was in the Roman period is because
+it pleases God to create a better kind of souls
+now than he created then!</p>
+
+<p>The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or
+nations, to act in a way that imitates, or nearly duplicates,
+what has been done centuries before by other
+tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that
+it has given rise to the declaration that history repeats
+itself. The fact of reincarnation shows why it
+repeats itself. A nation like the Romans, or the Carthaginians,
+are bound together in the subtle ties that
+are formed by the intimate relationships of constant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+association. The group tends to persist and the members
+of it are largely drawn together and regrouped
+in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond
+the level of the previous centuries but the general
+traits and tendencies remain and the same general
+policies are likely to shape the national affairs.
+There comes a time in the existence of the great group,
+or nation, when the old environment will no longer
+serve for its further collective evolution as well as
+some other country. The majority then reincarnate
+elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be
+inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence
+the remarkable difference in the people of a given
+nation in different periods. Compare Rome in the
+time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or
+compare the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with
+modern Egypt. It is high-class egos that make a
+great nation and when a country has no more lessons
+to teach them, or rather when another country will
+serve as a better environment for their further
+progress, they return in rebirth to the more advantageous
+spot on the earth, and a different set of souls
+come into possession of the abandoned environment.
+The valley of the Nile, that was once the home of an
+energetic people with a flourishing civilization would
+not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile
+civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe
+because only that environment, in full touch with the
+great commercial stream of the economic world, can
+serve the purpose. As the world is today what could
+a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+born into Egypt? Nothing but leave it. So they are
+not reincarnated there, but other souls that are at the
+point in evolution where the primitive life of an isolated
+country will give the simpler lessons they must
+acquire, inherit the abandoned environment. As an
+individual moves continually onward in each return
+to incarnation to professional and business environments
+that will enable him to put into effect all the
+new skill and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes
+on to greater and greater opportunities. Souls that
+made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and Rome
+are now making the greatness of Europe and America.
+Such facts explain many things that have seemed
+puzzling. How, for example, was it possible for the
+world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in
+Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined&mdash;declined
+because her people largely reincarnated
+elsewhere&mdash;Europe was inhabited by slightly
+civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a
+few centuries&mdash;a mere passing moment in the great
+lapse of time required for race evolution&mdash;the civilization
+today could arise, would be to ignore the
+fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand
+that great groups of old souls incarnate in the strong
+physical bodies which the more primitive peoples could
+bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid rise of
+a great civilization in Europe is solved.</p>
+
+<p>The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal
+kingdom at a high level in it. The last phase of evolution
+in the animal kingdom is the individualizing
+of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution
+and will be reborn at the lowest human level.
+Previous to its individualization it evolves in a
+group with others of its kind, animated by a
+common ensoulment that has not reached the level
+of complete self-consciousness. At that group-soul
+stage the experience of each animal in the group
+adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical
+teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables
+us to understand many things that would otherwise
+remain mysterious. Instinct has never been explained
+by science. Some of its best known expressions
+are altogether mysterious. Why does a young
+wild animal hide from the enemies of its kind but not
+from friends, when it has never seen either? A quail
+a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small
+stone or bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws
+to hide its body, and remain perfectly motionless at
+the approach of a human being, but will take no alarm
+at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a
+young chick know the difference between a crow and
+a hawk? And why, in remote places like the antarctic
+regions, are both young and old birds and animals
+unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and
+simple explanation of all such phenomena. The
+youngest have the knowledge of the oldest because
+they are attached to the same group-soul, or source of
+consciousness. The young quails of this season come
+back to rebirth from the group-soul that is the storehouse
+of the experiences of the quails that were killed
+by men in past seasons, and thus all young things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred
+to the killing proclivities of the human being
+have not become known and there is no "instinct" to
+warn.</p>
+
+<p>An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the
+group-soul is the fact, often chronicled but not
+explained, that when telephone or telegraph lines are
+built in new countries the birds fly against the wires
+and are killed by thousands, the first season. But
+when the next season's birds are hatched they are
+wise and avoid the wires! If the group-soul were not
+a fact in nature it would naturally require a long time
+for wire education. No such sudden adjustment
+would be possible.</p>
+
+<p>Reincarnation represents continuous evolution
+with no waste of time or loss of energy. Death is not
+the sudden break in the life program that the popular
+belief pictures it. The common view of death is as
+erroneous as the common view of birth. If death were
+what most people believe it to be it would constitute
+a blunder of nature&mdash;an irrational interruption of
+orderly development. In nature's economy there is
+conservation of energy and no loss can arise through
+the change called death. If the popular belief that at
+death we go far away to a totally different kind of
+existence were sound then death would usually mean
+an enormous waste. A young man is educated for
+some particular work, engineering, architecture or
+statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to die soon
+afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting
+such an education would be largely lost either if death<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+ends all, or is the last he will know of the material
+world. But nature does not thus blunder. Her law
+of conservation is always operative. All the skill and
+wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and
+will be used in the future incarnations.</p>
+
+<p>A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in
+evolution. The child cannot get an education in a
+term nor in a year. He must return often to the same
+school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may
+use new books with higher lessons but he returns periodically
+to the same environment. Continuous attendance
+would be as unthinkable as finishing his
+education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns
+periodically to the physical world, or plane, for
+the same reasons. Continuous life here until all
+material experience is gained would be impossible.
+Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring
+and digesting experience the physical body would
+become a hindrance to evolution. Within certain
+limits the physical brain can respond to the requirements
+of the growing soul, but a new body is in time
+an absolute necessity to further evolution.</p>
+
+<p>If we give a little thought to the evolutionary
+progress the ordinary person must make to raise him
+to mental and moral perfection, the absurdity of a
+single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a
+moment, intellectual perfection. It would mean a development
+of the mind to the point of genius in many
+directions. If we combine into one mind the attainments
+of the mathematical genius, the musical genius,
+the inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+until every line of intellectual activity is included, we
+then have only the perfect mental man. On the moral
+side we must add to that the combined qualities of
+the saints. Then we have the perfected human being,
+with nothing more to be learned from incarnation
+here. His further evolution belongs to superphysical
+realms.</p>
+
+<p>In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul,
+that slowly changes it life after life from the savage
+to the civilized state and finally raises it to perfection,
+it is helpful to observe how this great work corresponds
+to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation.
+A great character in history begins with helpless infancy.
+Steadily he progresses, unfolding new power
+at each step. He passes through the graded schools,
+slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows
+with higher and more difficult mental acquirements.
+Then he enters professional life and begins to use his
+intellect with more and more initiative. He moves
+on into public life with increased duties and responsibilities.
+From one post of honor he rises to another
+with increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is
+the head of a nation and has become a world figure.
+Even so it is in the evolution of the soul. Life by
+life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst
+every increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In
+one incarnation we have conditions that evolve courage.
+In another we are thrown into situations that
+develop tolerance. In still another we acquire
+patience and balance. In all of these incarnations we
+steadily evolve intellect and strengthen all previously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+acquired virtues. In each life we find the new conditions
+that are necessary for the exercise of our added
+abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual
+insight and the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves,
+we move forward to higher fields of evolution.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> Life and Matter.&mdash;Lodge, p. 121.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER X.</span><br />
+REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE</h2>
+
+<p>No matter how much we may differ in our view
+of the relationship between God and man there is
+general agreement about the attributes of the Supreme
+Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom,
+love and, of course, the perfection of all those desirable
+qualities we see in human beings. The theosophical
+view is that all we know in man of power,
+wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, et cetera, are
+faint but actual manifestations of the attributes of
+the deity. All who are not materialists, denying the
+existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that the
+wisdom and justice of God must be perfect. It would
+be illogical and inconsistent to limit or qualify His
+attributes. Either He is all-wise and absolutely just,
+or else the materialist is right. We cannot have a
+deity at all unless He represents perfect justice.</p>
+
+<p>Another point on which all but the materialists
+must agree is that creation is so ordered that the
+common welfare of humanity is best served by just
+the conditions of life that surround us. Nothing is
+different from what it should be unless it is because
+of man's failure to do what he should do for his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+welfare. If it were otherwise what would become of
+the argument that an omniscient God has ordered it
+as it is? If, then, things are as they should be in the
+truest interests of man, and we find things in life
+that, according to our views of creation, are not right
+and just, it necessarily follows that the views we hold
+are erroneous.</p>
+
+<p>The popular belief is that human beings constitute
+a special creation; that whenever a baby is born God
+creates a soul or consciousness for that body and that
+after a life of many years, or a few days, or a few
+minutes, as the case may be, the body dies and the
+consciousness goes to dwell in remote regions for
+ever and ever. If the person lived a good life and
+also believed in the current religion he will be "saved"
+and will be eternally happy. If he did not live a good
+life but finally "believed" before death he will be
+saved anyway and be just as happy as though he had
+lived right from the start. If he did live a good life,
+but was not born with the ability to believe easily,
+he will be lost and will be eternally miserable. According
+to this theory of special creation God makes
+people of all sorts. None of them can help being
+what they are created. Some are wise and some are
+foolish. Those who are smart enough to find the way
+of salvation will finally have heaven added to their
+original gift of wisdom. Those who are not smart
+enough to find it will finally have hell added to their
+original lack of sense. This is what some people are
+pleased to call divine justice!</p>
+
+<p>It will hardly do to argue that the possibility that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+all may at last be happy in an endless heaven, makes
+it unimportant that there are inequalities now. The
+majority of the theologians do not admit that such a
+state awaits the whole of the human race, and the
+comparatively few who do believe it will hardly venture
+to assert that present justice can be determined
+by future happiness. Even if we positively knew
+that eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close
+of this physical life how could that make it just that
+one person shall be born a congenital criminal and
+another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How
+could it make it right that one is born to life-long
+illness, suffering and poverty, while another inherits
+both wealth and a sound physical body? Not even
+the certainty of future happiness would be compensation
+for present inequalities. But why should there
+be any such inequalities if God represents unlimited
+power and perfect justice? Why should there be any
+poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously,
+He can as certainly create any necessary
+condition for the soul? Why poverty and disease
+and suffering at all? There must be a better answer
+to such questions than that "it pleased God to have
+it so." It is surely little better than blasphemy to
+suggest that any kind of hard conditions for man are
+pleasing to the deity.</p>
+
+<p>To hold that any future condition of happiness can
+make present justice out of the truly terrible inequalities
+of life, would be much like a millionaire who has
+two sons giving one of them all the advantages of
+wealth, travel, skilled instructors and special care,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+while the other was permitted to wear rags and go
+hungry. If the neglected son asked why he was thus
+treated while his brother was most carefully provided
+for, the father might reply with some indignation,
+"You are to have plenty in the future! My will is so
+drawn that when I die my great wealth will be equally
+divided between you and your brother. You will then
+be a millionaire with more money than you can possibly
+spend. So don't be foolish about your hardships
+now. Learn to starve like a gentleman!" The
+father's position in such a case would be just as
+reasonable as that of those who think a heaven hereafter
+can justify an earthly hell now.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us take some of the particular facts of
+life that puzzle us and test them with the hypothesis
+of special creation, and also with the hypothesis of
+reincarnation, and see which can really explain them
+in a satisfactory manner. We will take some facts of
+real life. In a Massachusetts prison there is an old
+man whose name became familiar to many of us in
+our youth. He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy,
+the boy murderer. The present generation scarcely
+knows him. But forty years or more ago he was
+talked about by all the newspapers. For the crime
+of murdering his playmates the boy was sent to prison
+for life. Why did Pomeroy become a noted criminal
+in childhood? If the theory of special creation is
+sound he was created and put in the world to fit himself
+for a future heaven. But he was created in such
+fashion that he was deficient in moral perception and
+he began life with an act that led to his expulsion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+from society. If God created this soul as we first
+knew him why was he not created with the moral
+balance of a law-abiding citizen so that he could have
+lived long and peacefully in civilized society and have
+been prepared for heaven at death? What could have
+been the purpose of giving him a brain that could not
+think soundly and a conscience that welcomed murder?
+That leads us inevitably to the question, Why are
+criminals created at all? Why are idiots created?
+The deeper we look into the facts of life the more
+unsatisfactory does the theory of special creation become
+because we find a thousand things that contradict
+it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of
+God was to create a heaven to be enjoyed by those
+who reach it we cannot see why He should create a
+humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever
+attaining it. If He creates them as they come into
+the world at birth why are not all of them created
+wise and kind? Why must most of them blunder
+through life, making all sorts of mistakes, bringing
+suffering to others by their unkindness or cruelty and
+only, in the end, to pass from a life of failure to eternal
+punishment for that failure? There is no reason, no
+justice, no sanity in such a theory.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us turn to the explanation of reincarnation.
+According to that, Pomeroy has had many past
+incarnations and will have many more. Like all the
+rest of us he came up from primitive man. We have
+all learned the lessons of civilized life slowly by experience
+like children acquiring lessons from their
+books. The majority have come along well and de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>veloped
+a fair share of intellect in dealing with life's
+problems, and some degree of sympathy for others.
+Some have evolved rapidly like hard working pupils
+and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged behind
+and have learned very little. They are like the
+truants at school who have broken the rules and run
+away from their lessons. These laggards of the
+human race are the dullards and the criminals, who
+have moved so slowly incarnation after incarnation,
+or are so much younger in evolution, that they are
+now bringing savage traits into our present civilized
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Reincarnation not only explains who and what the
+criminal is but it also explains away the hell with
+which special creation threatens him. No hell awaits
+him except that which he has created himself by what
+he has done. By the law of cause and effect all the
+cruelty and suffering he has inflicted will react upon
+him to his sorrow, but will also serve for his enlightenment.
+In his next incarnation the kind of body he
+will have and the environment in which he will live
+will be determined exactly by the thoughts and emotions
+and acts of this and past incarnations. He will
+therefore neither go to a heaven for which he is not
+fitted nor to a hell which he does not justly deserve.
+He will simply come back in another physical body
+and have a chance to try it again, but he will have to
+make the trial under the conditions which his conduct
+has merited.</p>
+
+<p>And what of the idiot? According to special creation
+we cannot possibly explain him. It would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+blasphemous to believe that God creates a mindless
+man. If one soul is given a mind and another is not,
+and for no reason whatever, it is the most monstrous
+injustice that ever forced itself upon the understanding
+of man! Think for a moment of the difference
+between the idiot and the normal person. The man
+of sound mind has before him the opportunity of
+progress, of mental and moral development. The
+avenues of business and professional life are open before
+him. He is free to try his powers and win his
+way. Wealth, power and fame are all possible for
+him. All the joys of social life may be his. Think
+of him surrounded by his family and friends, successful,
+satisfied, happy, and then think of the life of
+the idiot. Language cannot express the horror of the
+contrast! If there were no other explanation of life
+than that of special creation it would change the world
+into the hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation
+saves us from either blasphemy or madness.
+The idiot, like the congenital cripple, differs from the
+normal man only in the body, which is the instrument
+of the soul. Deformity of the body is a limitation of
+the ego who functions through it. A withered arm,
+a club foot, a deformed back, in this incarnation are
+results of unfortunate causes which that soul has generated
+in past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in
+the brain. Of course this is not an accident. There
+is no element of chance which places the limitation
+in one body where it causes but little trouble and in
+another where it prevents mental activity and thus
+produces idiocy. In each case it is the exact work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>ing
+out of the law. The body of the idiot is the
+physical plane representation of a soul that has made
+a serious blunder in the past, possible by limiting
+another with cruel restraint, and the gross misuse of
+his intellect and power in that way has operated to
+prevent his using it at all in the present life. But
+such limitations belong to the outer planes. It is the
+form that limits and when the form perishes the limitation
+disappears. As with the criminal no hell is
+needed to punish the idiot. He has made his own hell
+by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he
+must live in it and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it
+may seem to some that since the idiot is incapable
+of realizing the life of the normal person the situation
+represents no real misfortune for him. But idiocy
+on the physical plane does not mean idiocy in the
+soul. Even from the astral plane the ego may keenly
+feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime through
+such a physical body, as one here would feel the
+anguish of incarceration in a dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>The criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations
+of the failure of the theory of special creation to satisfactorily
+explain the facts of life. But if we turn
+to the other extreme and consider the most fortunate
+people in the world we shall find there, too, precisely
+the same failure to explain. By the hypothesis of
+special creation we find a gross injustice done to the
+soul born an ignoramus. Yet we find others possessing
+enough intelligence for several people. In the
+case of Macaulay we have the evidence in his own
+handwriting in a letter the date of which proves his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+age, that he was reading Greek and Latin and studying
+mathematics deeply when seven years old. There
+are many other cases of the remarkable display of
+talents in childhood, but a single instance will serve
+for all. It is all the better as an illustration because
+it is a contemporaneous case and the facts are known
+to scores of living people. It is recorded of William
+James Sidis, of Brookline, Massachusetts, that at six
+years of age he entered a grammar school and in six
+months had completed the work of seven grades. At
+the age of seven he had gone so far with his mathematical
+studies that his father, Professor Boris Sidis,
+could be of little assistance to him. He worked out
+the most abstruse and difficult problems with the
+greatest ease and invented new systems of computation
+which attracted much attention. When eight
+years old he entered the Brookline High School and
+in six weeks had completed the mathematical course
+and began writing a book on astronomy. He then
+took up the study of French, German, Latin and Russian.
+On leaving school he took up mathematics as
+a specialty and invented a system of logarithms based
+on the number 12 instead of 10. This was inspected
+by several well known mathematicians who pronounced
+it perfect in every detail. He applied for
+admission to Harvard University but the authorities
+refused his petition on account of his youth, only, since
+he could have passed the examination with ease. He
+tried again the next year and was again refused on
+the same ground. But at eleven years of age, having
+passed the entrance examination for the Massachu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>setts
+Institute of Technology, he was judged to know
+enough of chemistry and kindred subjects to make
+him eligible for admission to the Harvard medical
+school. He then entered upon a special course at
+Harvard because the ordinary course in college was
+far below the abilities of this boy of eleven years. Professor
+James, of Harvard, the famous psychologist,
+has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he
+ever knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite
+pages of Shakespeare from memory at an age when
+the ordinary boy is learning his alphabet.</p>
+
+<p>In the same city where young Sidis was born we
+find the idiot. Did God create them both as they
+were born or did they come up to their present difference
+of mental equipment through a process of evolution
+that accounts for it all satisfactorily? If the
+theory of special creation is sound why did not the
+idiot get at least a little of the intellect that Sidis
+could so easily have spared? If they are the work of
+special creation it is impossible to find reason or justice
+in such terrible inequalities. But if reincarnation is
+God's method of creation the explanation of the difference
+between them becomes simple. Sidis is not
+only an old soul but evidently one who has worked
+hard in past lives, throwing off the lassitude of the
+dense bodies and evolving the power of will that enabled
+him to triumph over obstacles, conquering all
+the enemies of intellectual progress and thus earning
+the fine physical body and brain he now possesses.
+His present abilities are but the sum total of the energies
+he has put forth in the past.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p><p>The theory of special creation does not explain
+the facts of life. It lacks justice, it lacks harmony and
+it lacks consistency. It is not in accord with natural
+law. Nature knows no such thing as special creation.
+To believe in special creation is to ignore all
+scientific facts and principles. On the other hand reincarnation
+is in harmony with science and with
+natural law. Reincarnation is evolution and every
+kingdom of nature develops through evolution. The
+difference between the shriveled wild grain that
+struggles with the rock and soil for life enough to
+barely reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of the
+cultivated fields that feeds the world, is the work of
+evolution. The wild stalk produced the seed and from
+that seed came a better stalk. The better stalk produced
+a still better kernel and from that better kernel
+sprang a superior stalk to yield a higher grade of
+wheat than any of its predecessors. The stalk sprouts
+from the ground, matures, stores all its gain of
+growth within the seed and perishes. But from the
+seed springs its reincarnated form, to repeat the
+process that changes poor to good, good to better and
+better into best. And thus it is with the reincarnating
+soul. As the almost worthless grain through
+many seasons is slowly changed to perfect worth, the
+soul is by that same law of evolution slowly changed
+through many incarnations from the chaos of savage
+instincts to the law and order of the moral world.
+Each incarnation yields some improvement. As the
+seed sprouts within the darkness of the soil and, perishing
+there, attains its full results in the higher<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which,
+stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its
+better self, so the soul strikes anchorage in the lower
+planes and draws from its varied experiences that
+which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the
+power to return with greater life.</p>
+
+<p>Attempts have been made to find some explanation
+of the mental and moral inequalities that exist
+at birth. In the earlier days of the study of evolution
+it was usually asserted that the human being inherits
+his mentality and morality from his parents.
+But even if that were true the injustice of one being
+born a genius and another a fool would remain. It
+is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice,
+and it is of no importance whether it comes about
+through heredity or otherwise. But as a matter of
+fact heredity is confined to the physical side of existence.
+As more and more is learned by observation
+the old theory of mental and moral heredity has lost
+ground until it can be said that it now has no recognition
+in the scientific world. Nobody is better qualified
+to speak upon the subject than those with practical
+experience. Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University
+Children's Clinic, that has large numbers of
+defective children in charge, treating no less than
+sixteen hundred in a single year, says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"As to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective
+types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance.
+I do not agree with social or educational doctrinaires
+who assign the causes definitely to liquor,
+poverty, infectious diseases, or other social or moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+shortcomings. The greatest minds of the world are
+hesitant in theorizing about this. There are a complex
+of causes which explain many of these cases, but
+no generalization fits absolutely. We may find a
+case which is not traceable to any of these conditions&mdash;<em>a
+case in which the antecedents would promise a
+perfectly normal child, and yet we are confronted with
+a defective child</em>. On the other hand, bright, normal
+children, even children of superior intelligence sometimes
+spring from such conditions."<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>A little reasoning about the facts concerning both
+genius and idiocy will make it clear that neither is
+inherited. If it were true that genius is inherited
+society would present a different appearance. There
+would be famous families of geniuses living in the
+world, in music, in poetry, in warfare, in invention,
+in art, if genius were inherited. The fact is that it is
+difficult to find even two geniuses in any family. The
+Caesars, Napoleons, Edisons, Lincolns, Wagners,
+Shakespeares, stand alone with neither great ancestors
+nor great descendants. We search in vain for
+great ancestors for such men; but if the theory of
+mental heredity were sound we should know their ancestors
+for precisely the same reason that we know
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Heredity, then, does not explain whence genius
+comes; and if anybody had really traced genius from
+father, or grandfather, to son or grandson, we should
+still have no explanation of what genius is. We could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+then only regard it as the result of some strange
+chance; yet the scientist knows that laws of nature
+contain no such element. But the only reason why
+genius appears so incomprehensible is because we
+have not looked at it in the light of nature's truth.
+We have erroneously assumed that this is the only
+life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the
+time is too short for the evolution of genius. A man
+can become an expert in one lifetime but not a
+genius. But if we give him many incarnations to develop
+along certain lines he can become a genius of
+a given type. The soul that works strenuously at
+building up a certain faculty through many incarnations
+naturally develops qualities in the causal body
+that shine out brilliantly upon its return to a physical
+body and we have the genius. We evolve our mentality
+and morality, and there could be no justice in
+life if it were otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>There is no element of chance in getting a new
+physical body in the next incarnation. The body is
+the material expression of the self. It is as much the
+product of the self as the rose is of the bush, the
+apple of the tree, or the tulip of the bulb. The
+musician can no more get a body suitable to the blacksmith
+than the rose bush can produce an apple. We
+do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people
+drawing clothing by numbers which might result in
+grotesque misfits. We do not get bodies at all, we
+evolve them, and in each incarnation the new body
+expresses all the soul has come to be up to that point
+in its evolution. Such a view of life has a basis of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+absolute justice. Every soul gets exactly what it has
+earned.</p>
+
+<p>The common belief in Occidental civilization is
+that we live here for only sixty or seventy years and
+that then, when we die, we pass on to live eternally
+somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity,
+whether it is filled with pleasure or is horrible with
+pain, is made to depend on how we spent those few
+years of the physical life! Such a fate would be unfair
+and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a
+term it would not be fair to condemn him to lose all
+opportunity of getting an education. We would give
+him another chance at the following term.</p>
+
+<p>A little incident of disobedience from home life
+will illustrate the point involved. A quinine capsule
+was lying on the table. A three-year-old boy reached
+for it. His mother called across the room, "Don't
+eat that, dearie, it isn't candy." But in a spirit of
+reckless mischief he hurried it into his mouth and
+quickly chewed it up! It was a very disagreeable but
+salutary lesson for the little fellow. It is an example
+of nature's methods. She is always consistent, and
+has a balanced relationship between cause and effect.
+But suppose in this case we throw her consistency
+aside as those who believe that eternal results will
+follow temporal effects are obliged to do. An ordinary
+lifetime compared to eternity is somewhat like
+that instant of disobedience compared to eighty years,
+but the illustration is not adequate because eternity
+never ends. As nearly as the principle can be applied
+it would be by saying to the child, "Because you were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+disobedient for a second of time you shall taste quinine
+for eighty years!" If that punishment is injustice
+what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain
+as the result of the errors committed in a lifetime?</p>
+
+<p>Any hypothesis of existence that does not take
+into consideration the welfare of humanity is a false
+hypothesis. What plan can better serve the common
+welfare than a chance to redeem a failure? When a
+prisoner is condemned for a crime we do not deprive
+him of opportunities. We give him every possible
+chance to improve his character. God cannot be less
+just or merciful than man. Rebirth is a new chance.
+Every incarnation is another opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>If the popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell
+is sound, and there be few who find the "narrow way,"
+the time will come when the majority of the race will
+have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime,
+and have failed. If that were really true, it is easy
+to imagine what they would do with another opportunity
+if they had it! How long should opportunity
+be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to
+deprive anybody of it when he is eager to redeem
+past errors is to ignore the principles of human welfare.
+Therefore such a plan cannot be the true one.
+John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Master of human destinies am I!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deserts and seas remote, and passing by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knock unbidden once at every gate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I turn away. It is the hour of fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they who follow me reach every state<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mortals desire, and conquer every foe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Condemned to failure, penury and woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I answer not and I return no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably
+emphasizes the importance of promptly acting
+when the time for action arrives. But there is another
+truth to be expressed on the subject and it is
+well done by Walter Malone, who says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They do me wrong who say I come no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When once I knock and fail to find you in;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every day I stand outside your door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bid you awake and rise to fight and win.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wail not for precious chances passed away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weep not for golden ages on the wane;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each night I burn the records of the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At sunrise every soul is born again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never bind a moment yet to come.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What a magnificent view of human evolution!
+No ultimate failure possible because there is always
+another chance. The failure of one incarnation made
+good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults
+and frailties&mdash;the shadow blots of the past&mdash;vanishing
+in the light of a higher wisdom that has been
+won. No endless hell, no eternal torment; not even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+the ghosts of vanished chances to haunt the mind; but
+only the insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging
+us to wake and rise to strive and win!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XI.</span><br />
+REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY</h2>
+
+<p>There are apparently but three ways in which anybody
+has attempted to explain the origin of the race. If
+two of these are shown to be impossible we have no
+course open to us but to accept the one which remains.
+One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another
+is the common belief that God created an original
+human pair and continues to create souls for babies.
+The third hypothesis is that of the evolution of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that
+the forces of nature, with no directive intelligence, are
+sufficient to account for man as we see him; that a continuing
+consciousness in the human being is a delusion;
+that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has
+neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science
+to which the materialist appeals contradict such conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>This materialistic belief regards the human body as
+a self-sufficient machine whose brain generates thought.
+But the savage has a completely evolved physical body
+with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His
+brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference
+in its material constitution from the brain of civilized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+man. Indeed, his physical body is not only as complete
+a machine as ours but is likely to be materially sounder.
+Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this
+savage produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there
+is no directing soul back of the brain, why the marvelous
+difference in the product of the two brains?</p>
+
+<p>Materialists go too far in the assumption that they
+can explain the phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly
+about it but they must stop short of the source
+of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology they
+know, but the life that flows through the human machine
+remains unexplained. They can trace the circulation of
+the blood from the heart through the arteries, from the
+arteries across to the veins, from the veins back to the
+heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced cannot
+say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been
+explained and cannot be explained from the materialist's
+viewpoint. Every human being is a miracle. A fingernail
+is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from the
+same food that makes the flesh and it will continue to
+be formed regardless of the variety or quality of the
+food. Why do certain particles become flesh or nails?
+Who can draw the division line between them? With
+marvelous instruments and wondrous skill science has
+explored and mapped and charted the "tabernacle of
+clay," but it cannot throw a single ray of light upon the
+intelligence that animates it.</p>
+
+<p>Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but
+still worse as a satisfactory interpretation of the panorama
+of the life about us. It is a philosophy of the
+gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+be that which we are; that we are what we are merely
+because of fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations.
+Had the combinations chanced to be something
+different we should not be in existence. Chance is the
+king of the materialist's world.</p>
+
+<p>According to this theory all abilities are the gifts
+of nature and all lack of them is the blind award of
+chance. No credit whatever is due to anybody for what
+he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his deficiencies.
+All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw
+something from a bag under compulsion. It is not to
+the credit of one that he got a prize nor to the discredit
+of another that he drew a blank. This hypothesis holds
+that recently we were not and that presently we shall
+cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief
+period, suffer or enjoy as it may happen and then pass
+to the oblivion of eternal silence; that all the thought,
+all the toil and the striving, all the effort and endurance
+were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a
+philosophy will not long survive the progress of our
+age. It lacks the balance of nature's principle of conservation.
+It lacks the completeness of universal law.
+It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in every
+human consciousness and without which life would be
+a meaningless mockery and the world a chaos of despair.</p>
+
+<p>But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of
+bad points or undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea
+of a mechanical creation is equally at war with both
+fact and reason. That belief is that God created the
+world as men build houses, and added the human beings
+as men furnish their houses when built. It is the belief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+that He is still making souls as fast as bodies are being
+born in the world, that these souls begin their existence
+at birth, live here but one life and then pass on into
+either endless bliss or eternal pain.</p>
+
+<p>This idea differs from materialism in the matter
+of a governing intelligence and on immortality but it is
+remarkably like it in other ways. Like materialism it is
+fatalistic because it makes man the helpless subject of
+resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent force as
+first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.</p>
+
+<p>The materialist says that all human characteristics
+are the gift of nature while according to the popular
+belief they are the gifts of God. In either case one
+class of human beings gets abilities that they have not
+earned and others get defects that they do not deserve.
+The intellectual man is favored without reason and the
+fool is handicapped without mercy. Some come into the
+world with salvation assured by being well born while
+others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes
+logically with such ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Happily the world has long been growing away from
+the once wide-spread belief in predestination because it
+is too shocking to the modern sense of justice. But is
+the world at the same time catching the point that if
+there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at
+birth, then the very essence of predestination remains,
+because some are created with the wisdom to attain
+salvation and others are created without it?</p>
+
+<p>If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility
+at the time of birth. Neither can it have any
+merit. One is born with a sound mind and moral insight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+These qualities may lead to salvation but the man has
+done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel
+and vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore
+miss salvation, but if he had no pre-existence he
+can have done nothing to deserve such a start in life.
+If we are really here for the first time then justice can
+be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start
+and equal opportunities afterward.</p>
+
+<p>Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between
+human beings at birth. There is every degree of
+vice and virtue from the savage to the saint and every
+mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If
+God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created
+wise and kind though he did nothing to earn it. Another
+is created vicious and depraved. He did nothing to deserve
+it. One is showered with natural gifts to which
+he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a
+stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to
+believe that God made them thus! Such a belief is
+contrary to reason and to justice.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship
+between God and man, salvation was to be by
+faith. It was impossible for a person to be saved by
+his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by
+God at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to
+comprehend spiritual truth and his moral strength to
+resist temptation, were conferred upon him, not earned
+by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings
+should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply
+human automata operated by such degree of mental and
+moral ability as God chose to assign to them. If this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+be true, genius should have no credit for its accomplishments,
+indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice
+no lash of condemnation, tolerance no need of praise,
+cruelty no rebuke, virtue no applause and heroism no
+fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this absurd
+and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of
+people. It is believed because it always has been believed.</p>
+
+<p>If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then
+the popular belief that the soul is created at birth is also
+impossible. It is a theory that encumbers its belief
+in immortality with conditions that destroy justice and
+defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its
+day. It was possible at any time only because there
+was too little information and, like the old belief that
+the world was flat, it must yield place to the newer
+knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest
+friend of religion. It is the foundation on which may be
+built a scientific belief in a Supreme Being, a rational
+faith in immortality and a brotherhood of man that
+has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was
+hastily thought to be destructive of a belief in God and
+heaven and immortality is rapidly becoming the most
+important witness to the truth of them all. While it is
+true that in the earliest days of evolution the most
+eminent scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that
+today the most eminent scientists of the world believe
+in the existence of the soul, and in its immortality, and
+base that belief upon scientific grounds.</p>
+
+<p>What is the essence of the facts of evolution and
+how does it give evidence against materialism and for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+immortality? Evolution is an orderly unfolding from the
+single to the diversified, from the simple to the complex,
+in which process life evolves by passing from lower to
+higher forms and storing within itself the gist of the
+experiences gained in each.</p>
+
+<p>One of the vital facts that evolution establishes is
+that slow building is the order of creation. The horse
+is an example. He is traced backward with certainty
+to a small creature that resembles him very little indeed.
+Ages were required to evolve the horse into his present
+intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important
+fact in evolution is the continuity of life from body to
+body. The butterfly is frequently used as an illustration,
+but the principle holds with all the higher order of
+insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis
+of the caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common
+that most people have personally observed it. Watch, in
+imagination, its transformation that contradicts materialistic
+philosophy. The worm is a physical body occupied
+by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body
+perishes and becomes part of the dust of the street.
+The life enters the grave of the chrysalis. The scientist
+takes that chrysalis, packs it in an ice house and leaves
+it frozen for a number of years. Now a mere frost
+will kill either caterpillar or butterfly, but when the
+chrysalis is removed from the ice and brought into a
+higher temperature the triumphant life emerges in the
+form of the butterfly. This phenomenon proves that
+life does survive the loss of the body. The body of the
+caterpillar is dead and has turned to dust years ago, but
+the caterpillar that lived in it is not dead. It now lives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+again in the physical world in a physical body of a
+higher type.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in an order of existence almost infinitely below
+man, we have an individual life existing in a physical
+form, passing from it and, after a number of years,
+taking possession of another form and living in that.
+Who can admit such continuity of life for the insect and
+deny it for man? Can there be a deathless something in
+a worm and not in a human being? Even without the
+mass of physical evidence that exists upon the subject the
+logic of nature would lead us to confident conclusions.
+The knowledge of evolution which science has so far
+accumulated leads to four natural inferences. One is
+that man is immortal. Another is that he has, like all
+creatures, slowly evolved to what he now is. A third is
+that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together,
+and the fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher
+and continually higher ones. The human soul evolves
+from the savage to the saint&mdash;from animal instincts
+to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot
+escape the conclusion that the race has evolved, is
+evolving and will continue to evolve until mental and
+moral perfection has been attained.</p>
+
+<p>If neither the theory of the materialist nor the popular
+notion that the soul is created at birth is satisfactory,
+we have only reincarnation left as a working hypothesis;
+and if we accept the evolution of the soul as a natural
+truth, then reincarnation becomes a necessity in explaining
+the known facts of life.</p>
+
+<p>But there are some students of life who appear to
+refuse the hypothesis of reincarnation while wishing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+to accept the idea of the evolution of the soul. But
+how would that be possible? If the soul is evolving it
+is under the necessity of developing by the laws of
+growth. They were discussed in Chapter IX.</p>
+
+<p>Those who desire to put their ideas about the soul
+and its immortality into harmony with the facts of
+evolution sometimes ask why it would not be possible
+for the soul to leave the material plane forever at the
+death of the physical body and then pursue its evolution
+on higher planes. In the vast universe there must be
+opportunity for all possible development, it is argued.</p>
+
+<p>But why go on into other regions when the lessons
+here have not been learned? That would be a violation
+of nature's law of the conservation of energy. The
+average human being is in the elementary grades, with
+scores of incarnations ahead of him before he will be
+in a position even to take advantage of his opportunities
+and thus make fairly rapid progress. To talk of going
+on to higher planes for further evolution is like proposing
+that a child shall leave the kindergarten and enter the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>We are evolving along two lines, the mental and
+moral, and a little consideration of the matter will make
+clear two important points&mdash;that we have much to learn
+and that the physical plane is wonderfully arranged for
+our instruction. We have conditions here for developing
+mentality that do not exist on higher planes. The absolute
+necessity of procuring food is an example. Death
+is the penalty for failure to obtain it. Hunger was the
+earliest spur to action at the lowest level of evolution
+and even now at our high point of attainment it is one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+of the chief factors of racial activity. In providing
+the necessities of life and in gratifying our multitude
+of desires mentality is developed. Business and professional
+life rests upon these physical plane necessities and,
+engaged in solving the problems of civilization, the race
+evolves intellect. Such problems do not, of course,
+exist on higher planes.</p>
+
+<p>While the mentality is thus being pushed along in
+evolution by our material necessities, the heart qualities
+are developed by the family ties in a way that could not
+be done elsewhere. In the nature of things the entrance
+of the soul to the physical plane is attended with helplessness.
+From the beginning it must have material necessities
+or die, and yet it can do nothing in its new infant
+body. Again, as a rule, long before it leaves the physical
+plane old age has once more rendered it helpless. Thus
+every human being must depend on the assistance of
+others at two critical periods of each incarnation. The
+help it receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back
+to the race, in the care of both the helpless young and
+the helpless old, when it is in the vigor of mature physical
+life. It is obvious that such experience develops
+the qualities of sympathy and compassion as no phase
+of business life could. The relationship of parent and
+child, husband and wife, evolves the heart qualities in a
+way that would be impossible in the totally different
+environment of higher planes. Naturally enough, each
+plane has a specific work to do in the soul's evolution.
+We can no more learn in the highest planes the lessons
+the material world is designed to teach us than a pupil
+can acquire a knowledge of mathematics from his lessons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+in geography. Hence the necessity for a periodical return
+to this life until its experiences have developed in
+us the qualities we lack.</p>
+
+<p>Not only has each plane its special adaptability to
+particular needs of the soul in its evolution, but the
+two kinds of physical bodies&mdash;masculine and feminine&mdash;through
+which the soul functions, afford special advantages
+for acquiring the lessons of life. The soul
+on its home plane is, of course, sexless. Sex, as we
+know it, is a differentiation arising from the soul's expression
+on lower planes. All characteristics of the soul
+itself, like intelligence, love, or devotion, are common
+to both sexes.</p>
+
+<p>The ego functioning through the masculine body has
+the opportunity of certain experiences that would be
+impossible in the feminine body, while, of course, the
+feminine form enables the ego to get experience that
+could not be known through the masculine body. A
+consideration of the widely different experiences of
+fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, will show how
+true this is. The lessons obtained in the masculine
+body are largely those of the head while in the feminine
+form they are lessons of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>When the ego puts forth its energies and begins
+descent into lower planes for another incarnation it is
+apparently beginning a cycle of experience in which
+either mentality or spirituality shall be the dominant
+note for that incarnation, and probably for several others.
+If it is to evolve for the time being through those experiences
+related to objective activity, with intellect as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+guiding factor, the masculine body can best serve the
+purpose. But if the dominant note is to be spirituality,
+rather than mentality and the soul is, for the time, moving
+along the line of the heart side&mdash;the subjective, the
+intuitive&mdash;then the feminine body is the better vehicle
+in which such experience can be obtained. But to say
+that mentality is the dominant factor of masculine incarnation
+does not at all mean that men have a monopoly
+of the reasoning faculty. Nor does the fact that other
+souls are being expressed through the feminine body mean
+that they have a fundamental spiritual advantage. Some
+women are better reasoners than some men, while some
+men are more spiritual than some women. What it
+does mean is that a certain ego can express intellect
+better through a masculine body and intuition better
+through a feminine body.</p>
+
+<p>Our ordinary language confirms the truth of the
+statement that men normally express more the head
+qualities and women more the heart qualities. We
+speak of men as being reasoners and of women as being
+intuitional and depending upon their impressions. The
+soul in the masculine body is for the time being getting
+experiences of the outer, objective activities. He is the
+home builder and protector, the bread winner, the battle
+fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the time,
+getting experience along the line of the inner, subjective
+life. She is the wife and mother, and her lessons are
+of the heart rather than the head.</p>
+
+<p>As we study nature we are more and more impressed
+with her wonderful mechanism for the evolution of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+soul. It soon becomes clear to the student that every individual
+is, in each incarnation, thrown into precisely the
+circumstances required for the greatest possible progress
+of that particular ego. If the qualities of initiative and
+courage, for example, are to be developed, the masculine
+body admirably serves the purpose, while if sympathy
+and compassion need stimulation the feminine form is
+wonderfully effective for that kind of progress. It requires
+little reasoning to see that the soul would not
+continue to incarnate in one sex indefinitely. It must
+develop all its inner qualities. Both intellect and compassion
+must reach perfect expression. Such a consummation
+can, of course, be best attained by alternating
+sex experiences. But here again there is wide latitude
+in the operation of the law. The rule seems to be that
+ordinarily there are not less than three nor more than
+seven successive incarnations in one sex, and then the
+ego begins to express itself through a body of the other
+sex. By that rule it would commonly be for a period
+of from a few hundred years to some thousands of
+years, that the ego expresses itself through one sex before
+it changes to the other. One case is mentioned by the
+occult investigators in which for about thirty thousand
+years a certain ego had expressed itself only through the
+masculine form. At least no trace of a feminine incarnation
+could be found during that time.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for rebirth becomes clearer and clearer
+as we study the nature of the human being and the
+inherent divine qualities he is unfolding. Reincarnation
+is the method of evolution at the human level. Only by
+physical plane experience can man's potential powers be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+aroused and so tremendous is the evolutionary work to
+be done that only a mere fragment of it can be accomplished
+in an ordinary lifetime. The absolute necessity
+of many rebirths is obvious.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XII.</span><br />
+WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER</h2>
+
+<p>The loss of memory between incarnations and the
+failure to now recall any of our experiences previous
+to the present physical plane life has sometimes been
+cited as a negative kind of evidence against the hypothesis
+of rebirth. The point could not be made,
+however, by one who has studied the matter because
+close scrutiny will show that the loss of memory is a
+necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that we do
+not remember is in perfect harmony with the principles
+of evolution. Indeed, the close student of the
+subject would be very much surprised if we could
+normally remember, because he does not get far until
+he sees, not only why we do not remember past incarnations
+but why we should not remember them.</p>
+
+<p>The very nature of the evolutionary work to be
+done by reincarnation necessitates a sacrifice of
+memory. One useful purpose of the confinement of
+consciousness in matter, through the use of a physical
+body, is that it narrows the scope of consciousness
+and thereby increases its efficiency. The consciousness
+of the ego sweeps over a vast range, forward and
+backward, including all past incarnations. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+limitation of matter which compels consciousness to
+be expressed through a physical body, focuses the
+attention on the evolutionary work immediately in
+hand. The brain becomes the instrument of consciousness
+but also, fortunately, the limitation of consciousness.
+If there were not loss of memory our
+minds would now range over the adventures of thousands
+of years in the past. It would encompass a
+vast drama with countless loves and hates, of many
+lives filled with pathos and tragedy. To thus distract
+the mind from the present life would retard our
+progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place
+one can think better and accomplish more than when
+in the midst of turbulent scenes and throngs of people.
+When there is less to think about the thinking
+is more effective. It is necessary to restrict the consciousness
+and limit the mind to the present life in
+order to get the most satisfactory results. The same
+truth is embodied in that old saying that whoever is
+jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration
+alone can produce satisfactory results. If we would
+master the lessons of this life we must not take other
+lives within the field of consciousness. The very
+process of reincarnation is a coming out of the general
+into the particular, with the consequent narrowing
+of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>We should keep in mind the fact that our true and
+permanent life is in the causal body, and on the mental
+plane, and that there, alone, is unbroken memory possible.
+The descent into matter in each incarnation is
+also beyond reach of the brain memory, of course.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+Getting new bodies is the working out of natural law
+even as instinct works in animals. The whole animal
+kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man,
+nevertheless adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy
+and with a depth of wisdom that is beyond our
+comprehension. And so is human evolution directed
+by impelling forces that are unknown to our waking
+consciousness. But our waking consciousness is only
+a small part of our consciousness&mdash;that fragment of
+it that can be expressed through the physical brain.
+The physical brain is a limitation of consciousness,
+and therefore of memory, as certainly as a mountain
+range is a limitation of sight and prevents one's knowing
+what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know
+our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes
+the memory of our past incarnations. But when we
+come downward into another incarnation it is as
+though we were descending in a narrow vale within
+mountain ranges that stand between us and the wider
+world. Memory is dependent on things not within
+the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish
+facts which we wish to recall. We know, for
+example, the name of a certain person. There is no
+doubt that we know it and yet it is impossible to remember
+it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us,
+but we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now,
+if memory fails to produce its record even when we
+have a mental picture of just how that person looks,
+and know just where we have met him, it is certainly
+not remarkable that with no such immediate connection
+with our last incarnation we fail to recall it. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+was perhaps in another part of the world, and in another
+civilization, and is separated from us by the
+long interval between incarnations. Of course
+memory likewise fails to produce that record. But
+all of our past experiences are within the soul, just
+as the records of all of the experiences of this life are
+in the mind whether we can connect them with the
+present moment or not.</p>
+
+<p>But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not
+remember events that have occurred in past lives and
+people we have seen before, we do not at least now
+have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar
+to us. What the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation
+is not concrete facts but something higher
+and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts
+which gives the understanding of their true relationship;
+and this is the thing we call good judgment or
+common-sense. A man does not succeed in business
+because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows
+what to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full
+of facts but it cannot run a business. Every theorist
+and dreamer is loaded with facts. The successful man
+is the one with balance and judgment.</p>
+
+<p>It might seem on first thought that one who has
+been a carpenter in a previous incarnation should have
+no need to learn the name and use of a saw, or one
+who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to
+hold the pen and fashion the letters. But we must
+remember that the old soul is now breaking in a new
+physical instrument with which to express itself and
+that while it will be able to use all the skill it has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+previously evolved, its full expression must await the
+time when the new instrument has been brought into
+responsive action.</p>
+
+<p>The situation might be fairly illustrated by the
+case of a stenographer who is still using the original
+typewriter, in some remote corner of the earth, and
+who has not even seen or heard of any of the remarkable
+improvements made in such machines in the last
+thirty years. If his old machine were suddenly taken
+from him and a model of the present year were put in
+its place, it is obvious that he could at first make little
+use of it&mdash;not because he has no knowledge but because
+he must become accustomed to the new machine
+before he can express himself through it. It would
+have mechanism and appliances that he could not
+immediately manage. Let us imagine also that all the
+characters are in a foreign language which must be
+mastered before the machine can be used. But the
+difficulties are not great enough yet for a fair illustration.
+We must also suppose that it is a living
+thing, with moods and emotions, and that it must pass
+through stages of growth comparable to infancy and
+youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain
+that the stenographer would appear to have very little
+knowledge and to possess little skill. Yet as a matter
+of fact it is merely the conditions that temporarily
+prevent him from expressing his wisdom and skill.</p>
+
+<p>The gist of knowledge gained in the past represents
+skill that has no dependence whatever upon
+brain memory. If a man should suffer a lapse of
+memory, as sometimes happens, and wander about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+unable to give his name or place of residence, such
+loss of memory does not prevent him using any skill
+he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not
+know in what gymnasium he evolved his great
+strength, but he can use it just as effectively regardless
+of the absence of memory.</p>
+
+<p>One who has been a skillful penman brings all his
+skill to the new incarnation but of course the new
+body must be trained to hold the pen and form the
+letters. Every public school teacher knows that one
+child will quickly learn that and soon become a
+competent penman while another can by no possibility
+exhibit skill in that particular art. The reason is
+that one has previously evolved his skill and the other
+has not, and may not, for several more incarnations.</p>
+
+<p>It is sometimes objected that by the hypothesis of
+reincarnation we are required to go over the same
+ground again and again and learn what we have
+previously learned. But the criticism has no foundation
+in fact. There is undoubtedly some necessary
+recapitulation in the early part of the incarnation, just
+as there may be in the early part of a school term.
+But in the main we are thrown into new conditions
+which are calculated to develop additional faculties.
+We return to the same material world but we find it
+with a higher form of civilization than when we were
+here before. Never before have we who are now here
+seen a civilization like this, with its age of iron and
+steam and electricity, with its marvelous opportunities
+for developing the mechanical faculty in human nature.
+And that is another bit of evidence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+beauty and utility of the evolutionary scheme. We
+come back always to greater opportunities than we
+have yet known.</p>
+
+<p>It is not only clear that the failure to remember
+the past has nothing to do with our ability to use the
+skill and wisdom we have previously evolved but it
+is equally obvious that it is the best of good fortune
+that we cannot remember the past. If we could do
+so that memory would keep alive the personal antagonisms
+of past reincarnations. Nobody will deny that
+we have plenty of them in this incarnation or that the
+world would be the better if we could bury some of
+the present antagonisms in a like oblivion. If all
+quarreling neighbors were to suddenly lose memory
+of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage to
+everybody concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Nature's wisdom in veiling the past from us can
+be understood by observing the pernicious effects of
+remembering too long the blunders people make in
+this incarnation. Take the case of a very young man
+who has charge of his employer's money and who,
+finding himself pressed for ready cash, makes the grave
+mistake of "borrowing" a hundred dollars without his
+employer's knowledge and consent. The young man
+really believes he is borrowing it and knows just
+where the money is to come from to replace it soon,
+and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know anything
+about it. But to his consternation the money
+that was due him in a few days cannot be collected in
+time and an unexpected examination of his books leads
+to his arrest for embezzlement. He is convicted, sent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+to prison for a year, and returns a marked man.
+Thoughtless society closes its doors against him. He
+seeks employment in vain. Nobody wants an ex-convict.
+He explains that he had no criminal intent
+and that he really was guilty of only an indiscretion
+and that he paid back the money later. But the world
+is too busy to listen. It sees only the court record,
+and that was against him. The public forgets, or
+never knows, the extenuating circumstances. But it
+never forgets two things&mdash;the verdict of guilty and
+the prison. The young man would almost give his
+life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible.
+It stands against him for life. But nature is wise.
+She does not permit our vicious traits to extend their
+injury too far. If we could remember from incarnation
+to incarnation that man's misfortune might
+afflict him for thousands of years. But by the wise
+plan of closing all accounts at the end of each incarnation
+the mischief of remembering the blunders of
+others comes to an end. In the next incarnation all
+start with clear records again.</p>
+
+<p>One of the objections that one sometimes hears
+against reincarnation is that it seems to separate us
+for long periods, if not forever, and that even when
+we meet those we have previously known and loved,
+there is no memory of the past. The answer to the
+first point is that the separation is wholly on the lower
+planes and that the time spent on the higher planes
+is often twenty times that given to the lower. Separation
+is, of course, unavoidable on the physical plane,
+even where people live together in the same home.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+The average man spends most of the day at his office
+and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four.
+He is really separated from his family most of the
+time. But there is no such separation on higher planes
+and there is spent most of the whole period of evolution.
+The second point&mdash;that we do not now have
+the pleasure of knowing that our friends are those we
+knew and loved before&mdash;is not an important one.
+What is really important is that we again have them.
+If the ties of affection have been strong between us
+in the past there will be instant friendship when we
+meet for the first time in this incarnation. Those with
+strong heart ties are certain to be drawn into very
+close association life after life. It has been observed
+through the investigations that egos have been husband
+and wife, or parent and child, again and again.
+The probability of such close relationships depends
+upon the strength of the ties of affection. But if such
+real bond between the souls is lacking the mere fact
+that they now have family relationships is no guarantee
+of such future intimate association. When two
+souls have strong ties arising out of past association
+the failure to remember that incarnation does not in
+the least weaken the ties. But it does mercifully hide
+the past contentions that are to be found in nearly
+all lives.</p>
+
+<p>The failure to remember previous incarnations will
+be more clearly understood if we now give some
+thought to the fact that the personality here on the
+material plane is only a fragment of the whole consciousness
+of the soul. As we come down into lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+planes from the mental world each grosser grade of
+matter through which the ego expresses itself is a
+limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane each
+of us, whatever he may be here, is more alive and
+enjoys an actual extension of consciousness. On the
+mental plane he has enormously greater wisdom than
+here, with a still further extension of consciousness
+that is quite beyond the present comprehension of the
+brain intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>To put it differently, the ego really does not come
+into incarnation at all. It merely sends outward a
+ray from itself&mdash;a mere fragment of itself, as a man
+might put his hand down into the water of a shallow
+stream to gather bits of ore from which gold can be
+obtained. So the ego puts a finger, only, down into
+denser matter to get the general experience that can
+be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill.
+That finger of the ego, that we know as the personality,
+gathers the experience and then it is withdrawn
+into the ego. During the incarnation the personality
+has been animated by only a little of the ego's vast
+intelligence and that is why it blunders so often. But,
+veiled in dense matter, not much of the ego's consciousness
+can reach it.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship between the ego and the personality
+may be illustrated by that which exists between
+the brain consciousness and that of the finger-tip. The
+difference, of course, is great. The finger tip cannot
+see of hear or taste or smell. It is limited to one
+sense&mdash;touch. But it is a form of consciousness, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+it can get experience and pass it on to the brain consciousness.
+A man may be addressing an audience
+and see some substance on the table before him. It
+may be sand or sugar. Without interrupting his lecture
+he can put down his finger and get at the truth
+about the matter. The finger-tip gets the information
+and passes it on to the brain consciousness.
+Meantime there has been no pause in the discourse.
+Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought
+has been missed. The intellectual life went on in its
+completeness while the ray of intelligence sent down
+in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as it was.
+Just so the life of the ego&mdash;the true self of each of
+us&mdash;goes forward on its home plane while the personality
+here gropes for its harvest of experience.
+Some of those experiences will be painful to the personality,
+and the event will seem tragic here, but it
+will be a passing incident to the ego. In the illustration
+just used the substance on the table may prove
+to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of glass.
+Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and
+pain follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a
+blinding flash of distress that is overwhelming. But
+to the brain consciousness it is a trivial incident.
+And thus it is with most of our painful experiences
+here. They do a useful work in our evolution and
+they are trifling incidents to the consciousness of the
+ego.</p>
+
+<p>The personality finishes its work and perishes, in
+the sense that it is drawn up and incorporated in the
+ego. Most people identify themselves so fully with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to
+them. But that feeling will trouble them no longer
+when the ego is understood to be the real self. We
+might say that the relationship between the ego and
+the personality is like that between man and child.
+Childhood will perish but only to be merged into
+manhood. When we look at that transformation from
+the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory. But
+if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may
+look appalling. If you should say to your son of three
+summers, "My child, the time will come when all these
+beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your little
+playmates will see you no more," you might cause
+him much distress. It would seem to his limited child
+consciousness nothing less than a tragic destruction
+of what makes life worth while. But when he reaches
+manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial
+things of those early days. If there is something in
+his childhood of real, permanent value, it will persist
+in manhood. All the trivial and transient will have
+disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so, for
+manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego
+is the real self.</p>
+
+<p>As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of
+the man, so the memory of all the hundreds of incarnations
+persists in the causal body and is an eternal
+possession of the ego. When we are sufficiently
+evolved to raise the consciousness to the level of the
+causal body, while still living on the physical plane,
+as some people are now able to do, we shall thus temporarily
+recover the memory of past lives. When that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+time comes, however, the soul is sufficiently advanced
+to use such wider knowledge without injury to itself
+or others.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XIII.</span><br />
+VICARIOUS ATONEMENT</h2>
+
+<p>Back of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is
+a profound and beautiful natural truth, but it has been
+degraded into a teaching that is as selfish and brutal
+as it is false. The natural truth is the sacrifice of the
+solar Logos, or the deity of our system. The sacrifice
+consists of limiting Himself in the matter of manifested
+worlds and it is reflected in the sacrifice of the Christ
+and other great teachers who use their vast consciousness
+through a physical brain for the helping of
+the world. Compared to the descent of such supermen
+into mundane spheres a mere physical death is a trifling
+sacrifice indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The help that such great spiritual beings have given
+mankind is incalculable and altogether beyond what we
+are able to comprehend. But for such sacrifice the race
+would be very, very far below its present evolutionary
+level. But to assume that such sacrifices relieve man
+from the necessity of developing his spiritual nature
+or in any degree nullify his personal responsibility is
+false and dangerous doctrine. Nobody more than the
+theosophist pays to the Christ the tribute of the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+reverent gratitude. He also holds with St. Paul that
+each must work out his own salvation.</p>
+
+<p>The belief in special creation arose in that period of
+our history when our ancestors knew little of nature.
+Modern science was then unborn and superstition filled
+the western world. Now that we do know the truths of
+nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous
+process that is still going on, it is time to abandon the
+old conceptions and bring religious beliefs and scientific
+principles into harmonious relationship.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever it touches the practical affairs of life the
+old idea of special creation and special salvation fail to
+satisfy our sense of justice and of consistency. Intuitively
+we know that any belief that is not in harmony with
+the facts of life is a wrong belief. The idea of special
+creation is not only inconsistent with the facts as science
+has found them, but it does not give us a sound basis
+for moral development. Having started with the false
+idea of the special creation of the soul, which brings
+it into the world free from personal responsibility, it
+became a necessity to invent a special salvation to give
+any semblance of justice at all.</p>
+
+<p>Now the vital point against this plan of salvation is
+that it denies the soul's personal responsibility and
+teaches that whatever the offenses against God and
+nature have been, they may be cancelled by the simple
+act of believing that another suffered and died in order
+that those sins might be forgiven. It is the pernicious
+doctrine that wrong doing by one can be set right by
+the sacrifice of another. It is simply astounding that
+such a belief could have survived the Middle Ages and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+should continue to find millions who accept it in these
+days of clearer thinking. But it seems that when people
+are taught a thing in childhood the mind accepts it
+then without reasoning and afterwards vaguely regards
+it as one of the established facts without thinking further
+of it at all. But upon reflection we see at once the
+impossibility of its being true. We hear of a lingering
+practice in a remote province of China, whereby a
+man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire a substitute
+to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law must have
+its victim and its supremacy must be upheld. We laugh
+at that and know well enough that punishing the unfortunate
+substitute, who sacrifices himself to obtain a
+sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot
+regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his
+willingness to shift the responsibility for his crime upon
+another only sinks him farther into iniquity. The only
+person who can gain in moral strength is the one
+who makes the sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement
+for wrong doing were to be adopted generally.
+Then every murderer who had the means would escape
+the consequences of his crime. Every burglar who was
+successful enough to have the cash on hand could elude
+prison. Every pickpocket could hire a substitute to
+suffer for him and thus continue his criminal career.
+Every embezzler would have the money to purchase
+freedom. Every corruptionist would be safe. Every
+thief could laugh at the law. It would make a mockery
+of justice. It would place a premium upon crime and
+a handicap upon honesty and virtue. However bad the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would
+necessarily lower the standard of their morality by shifting
+the burden of their sins to others. It would destroy
+personal responsibility, and personal responsibility is the
+basis of sound morals and the foundation of civilized
+society.</p>
+
+<p>Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with
+the belief in special creation and special salvation&mdash;the
+teaching that we are not responsible for our sins and
+that by believing that another assumed them and died
+for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing
+and thus be saved. What are we to be saved from?
+From nothing but ourselves. From our selfishness, from
+our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to inflict
+pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and
+from the heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer
+in order that we may escape. Salvation must necessarily
+mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The man who is willing
+to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit for
+heaven and could not recognize it if he were there.
+What do we think of a person here who shifts his sins
+upon another and while that other suffers he goes free
+and enjoys the fruits of his baseness?</p>
+
+<p>A heaven that is populated with those who see in
+vicarious atonement a happy arrangement for letting
+them in pleasantly and easily would not be worth having.
+It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be
+no heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only
+of those who have eliminated selfishness; only of those
+who want to help others instead of trying to dodge the
+consequences of their own acts; only of those who are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+manly and womanly and generous and just and true.
+Nothing less than a recognition of personal responsibility
+can lead to a heaven like that. Yet the theory of special
+salvation ignores it, waves it aside&mdash;in fact denies it!</p>
+
+<p>Reincarnation represents personal responsibility
+and therefore absolute justice. It shows that, not merely
+in all the vast future, but also in this life and in every
+life, and all the time, our degree of happiness depends
+upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were
+generally understood it would necessarily raise the
+average of morality. It furnishes a deterrent for the
+evil doer and a tremendous incentive for the man who
+desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the
+one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds;
+that he must return life after life to associations and
+environments determined by the good or the ill he has
+done; that he can no more escape from his evil deeds
+than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately
+suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation
+of every insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures
+the man of good intentions and right desires that every
+good deed shall rise up in the future to bless him; that
+all whom he has helped shall become his helpers hereafter;
+that even his good intentions that failed in their
+purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy
+in the future.</p>
+
+<p>What a splendid thing it is to know that every
+thought and act adds permanent value to the character;
+that all we learn in any life becomes an eternal possession;
+that we can add to our intellect, to our insight, to
+our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power, as cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>tainly
+and definitely as a man can add to his bank account
+or permanent investments; that whatever we may be in
+this incarnation we can return again stronger and wiser
+and better.</p>
+
+<p>The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent
+divinity and the method by which the latent becomes
+the actual. Instead of the ignoble belief that we can
+fling our sins upon another it makes personal responsibility
+the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It
+is the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion of
+self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the utility as well as of the common-sense
+of a scheme of salvation that really saves us because it
+evolves us; that never denies us a chance to retrieve an
+error; that gives us an opportunity to right every
+wrong; that brings us back life after life until all enemies
+have been changed to friends; until all accounts
+are closed and balanced; until all our powers have
+been evolved, until intellect has become genius; until
+sympathy has become compassion and the last moral
+battle has been fought and won.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XIV.</span><br />
+THE FORCES WE GENERATE</h2>
+
+<p>Every human being is constantly generating three
+classes of forces, and they determine the kind of life
+he will lead here, the degree of success or failure that
+will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
+on the inner planes after the death of his physical body.
+The law of rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but
+it is the law of action and reaction under which we
+evolve while here.</p>
+
+<p>The three classes of energies which we generate
+are those of thought, desire and action. They belong,
+in the order named, to the mental world, the astral
+world and the physical world. All people are constantly
+thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees
+of energy, are putting thought and desire into
+action. These forces sent out into the worlds of
+thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions,
+or consequences, and to them the man is bound
+until justice is done and the soul has learned its evolutionary
+lesson.</p>
+
+<p>That thought and desire are forces as certainly as
+electricity is, the student of the occult well knows,
+but the world is not quite yet at the point where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the history
+of all human progress. When Franklin began
+his experiments with electrical force almost nobody
+believed there was any such thing in existence. Yet
+today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains
+and drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all
+that at the time of the first experiments he would have
+been considered extraordinarily foolish. What the
+world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually
+has very little to do with the facts. The general
+public can be expected to come trailing along, about
+a half century late, with its acceptance and approval.
+Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would
+be impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>The mental body grows by the process of thinking.
+The force generated in thinking reacts in the production
+of greater faculty for thinking, so that we
+literally create our mental abilities. The activities
+of thought change the mental body into a better
+and constantly better instrument through which the
+ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect
+others and we thereby make ties with them that must
+work out sooner or later in associated experience.</p>
+
+<p>Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a
+most important role in the drama of human evolution.
+The law operates to bring together the desirer and the
+object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only
+judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the
+result of gratifying them. Thus do we acquire discrimination.
+It is usually a strong desire nature that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of
+desire it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through
+experience the soul finally learns to control desire,
+to raise lower desires into higher ones and thus ultimately
+to attain non-attachment and liberation.</p>
+
+<p>Actions are the physical expression of thoughts
+and desires and, as we are constantly simultaneously
+thinking, desiring and acting, very complex results
+arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set
+up relationships with other souls, some of the results
+of which reach far into the future. The average man,
+with no knowledge of the laws under which he is
+evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for
+future incarnations and is often unwittingly laying
+up pain and sorrow for himself that a little occult
+knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every injury
+that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily
+in kind. Nature does not punish. She merely
+teaches and knows nothing of retaliations. Her great
+concern seems to be that all souls shall get on in
+evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose
+appears to be accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>The forces we generate in each incarnation shape
+and determine the next and succeeding ones. Our
+friends, our families, our business associates, our nation,
+are determined by what we have thought and
+felt and done in the past and by the lessons it is
+necessary we shall learn. Our wealth or poverty, our
+fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our intelligence
+or stupidity, our good or bad environment,
+our freedom or limitations, all grow out of the thoughts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+and emotions and acts in the past. From their consequences
+there is no possibility of escape.</p>
+
+<p>But that does not mean that we are the helpless
+slaves of fate from which there is no release. We
+who generated the forces can neutralize them. We
+can undo anything we have done. It only means that
+for a time we must work within the self-imposed
+limitations created by a wrong course in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Those who are interested in the long-time discussion
+over free-will and determinism have often been
+impressed with the remarkably strong arguments that
+can be marshaled by each side to the controversy.
+Either side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive.
+The explanation lies in the fact that each
+is right, but only to a certain point. Both free will
+and necessity are factors and when the theosophical
+viewpoint is understood the apparent contradiction
+disappears. We are temporarily bound, <em>but we did
+the binding</em>, by the desires we indulged and the emotions
+we freely harbored in the past.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of temporary restraint in which we
+now find ourselves may be likened to that of a party
+of gold hunters who go into Alaska to locate mines.
+They are all aware that in that remote northern country
+navigation closes very early and that after the
+last boat leaves there is no possibility of getting out
+of that region until navigation opens again in the next
+season. Some of them are discreet and reach the landing
+in ample time. Others are careless. They continue
+their search for gold a little too long, and arrive
+at the river a day too late. The boat has sailed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a
+great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They
+cannot escape from Alaska for many months but
+within Alaska they are absolutely free. They can build
+a cabin and either waste the time with idle games
+or seriously think and study. They are limited but
+free within the limitation, and the limitation itself was
+of their own making. It is precisely so with us in
+the environment of the present incarnation and with
+our various fortunes. We made them and, when the
+forces with which we did it are exhausted, we shall
+be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification
+and improvement.</p>
+
+<p>The reactions from the forces we generate naturally
+do us exact justice just because they <em>are</em> reactions. We
+reap precisely what we sow. The reaction may sometimes
+seem harsh but consideration of the matter from
+all points of view will show that mercy as well as
+justice is always a factor. Let us consider the
+method by which nature changes recklessness into caution.
+A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a
+cigar and throwing the burning match down wherever
+it may happen to fall. He may go on doing that a long
+time with no serious result, yet all careful people
+know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago
+a newspaper told the story of such a man, who passed
+along the street, lighted a cigaret and carelessly flung
+the flaming match from him. A nurse was passing
+with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell
+on some of the light, airy wraps of the infant and they
+burst into a blaze. Before the fire could be extin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>guished
+the child was so badly burned that it died
+the next day.</p>
+
+<p>The moment such a case is stated we realize the
+necessity of something that will cure the man of such
+fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the lives and
+property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be
+invoked. He had no criminal intent but he is none
+the less dangerous for that, as the incident proved.
+We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
+carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the
+law of action and reaction he must reap as he has
+sown. It may be in the latter part of this incarnation,
+or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later his
+carelessness will react and he will lose his physical
+body in pain and distress and come to know personally
+just what his recklessness means. In the reaction, a
+part only of which is on the physical plane, he gets the
+experience that is necessary to set him right. The
+folly of his course is so driven in on his consciousness
+that he is changed from the careless man to the careful
+man. In no other way could his cure be brought
+about.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as
+the result of our wrong thinking and acting in a past
+life we can now know nothing of its cause and therefore
+we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we
+do not know in the limited consciousness of the physical
+brain the soul does know and in the wider consciousness
+the lesson is registered.</p>
+
+<p>The principles of justice are never violated in
+teaching the soul its evolutionary lessons. Nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+can come to a man that he does not merit and that
+which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
+working of the law seen from an angle that
+makes it illusory. But, it may be objected, how does
+theosophy see "beneficent working of the law" in the
+burning of a theater where a score of people lose their
+lives, including several children? How can theosophy
+explain that?</p>
+
+<p>How can it be explained by those who hold that
+the soul is created at birth? If God really brings the
+soul into its original expression in an infant body,
+why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
+months? What can be the purpose? It would be
+difficult indeed to explain the death of children if the
+soul were created at birth. But let us look at it from
+the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul
+with a young body. Hark back to the case of the
+man whose carelessness caused the death of the baby
+in its carriage. He, and others like him, are again in
+incarnation and in the burning theater they get the
+reaction of the unfortunate forces they have generated.
+But why so many in some catastrophes? it may be
+asked. A principle is not affected by the number involved.
+If we can see justice in the death of one person
+we can see justice in the death of a hundred. It is
+simply class instruction. People of a kind have been
+drawn together.</p>
+
+<p>We should not forget that we see only a small
+fragment of any such case from the physical plane. We
+form an opinion, however, on that inadequate survey
+and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+injustice involved. But our verdict depends wholly
+upon a viewpoint. Let us suppose, for example, that a
+man strolls down the street and that, as he turns a
+corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of
+life. A young man is lying on the ground, battered
+and bleeding, while two others stand over him. What
+would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene
+say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The
+ruffians!" and he would be inclined to assist the man
+who was down. But let us suppose that he had been
+a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to
+turn around the corner with the other men and would
+have seen him rush upon a defenseless woman, push
+her down, snatch her purse and dash away, but, fortunately,
+in the direction of the men who assaulted
+and stopped him. Had the last arrival seen the entire
+affair he would have reversed his opinion and said that
+the thief got what he deserved. And so it is in our
+inadequate physical plane view of what we call a
+calamity. It may appear to involve an injustice, but
+only because we do not see the entire transaction.</p>
+
+<p>Those who study the occult laws that shape human
+destiny may learn to use them for their rapid progress
+and for insuring a comfortable, as well as spiritually
+profitable, life journey.</p>
+
+<p>But before we can work successfully within the
+law we must know that the law really exists. Most
+people seem either to believe there is no law that will
+certainly bring them the results of their good or evil
+thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they
+can in some way dodge it and escape the consequence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+and so we see them go along through life always
+doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing. They
+misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil
+thoughts, they have their enemies and hate them, they
+scheme to bring discomfort and humiliation upon those
+whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest from
+this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled
+by the falsehoods of others to their loss and injury,
+when they fall into the company of schemers and are
+swindled, when a false story is started about them,
+when&mdash;through no fault of the moment&mdash;they are
+plunged into discomfort and humiliation, they merely
+call it so much bad luck and go blindly on with their
+generation of wrong forces that will in due time bring
+another enforced reaping of pain.</p>
+
+<p>There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain
+of daily life as certainly as there is a law that guides
+the earth in its orbit about the sun. That law of action
+and reaction is just as constant, accurate and
+immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet
+upon the ground while we come and go and think
+nothing at all about it.</p>
+
+<p>There is something almost terrifying in the immutability
+of all natural laws and their utterly impersonal
+aspect. They are the operation of forces
+which, in themselves, are not related to what we call
+good and bad. They simply are. The law of gravity
+will illustrate the point. It operates with no consideration
+whatever for character or motives. It holds all
+people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while
+it whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+over a precipice, it will hurl them both to the bottom
+with perfect impartiality. If the fiend, who may just
+have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the
+saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored
+him. He has merely reaped the reward of his alertness
+in spite of his bad morals. The saintly man
+may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but
+the law of gravity takes no account of that. When he
+stepped over the precipice, and was dashed to death,
+he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless of his
+benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words
+"God is no respecter of persons," for, of course, all
+natural laws are but the expression of the divine will.</p>
+
+<p>But this immutability of natural law is not in the
+least terrifying when we come to look more closely at
+it. On the contrary it is within that very immutability
+that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It
+is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we
+can calculate with absolute certainty and surely attain the
+results at which we aim. It is because of the certainty
+that the doing of evil brings pain and the doing of good
+yields a return of happiness that we can control circumstances
+and determine destiny.</p>
+
+<p>Why should there be such a law operating in the
+mental and moral realm? Because only thus can we
+evolve. We must not only change from ignorance to
+wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong
+doing to perfect harmlessness. How would that be
+possible without the law of cause and effect, without
+action and reaction which brings pleasure for righteousness
+and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+law can we learn what is the right and what is the
+wrong thing to do. If it is agreed that we are souls,
+that evolution is a fact, and that perfection is the goal
+of the human race, then the necessity for the law of
+action and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a
+law of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The existence and operation of this law of cause and
+effect are set forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures.
+"With what measures ye mete it to others it shall be
+measured to you," is certainly explicit. In Proverbs<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a> we
+have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit
+shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall
+return upon him." Of course the language is figurative.
+No writer of common sense would assert that every time
+a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into it nor that
+whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon
+him! We dig pits in the moral world whenever we
+undermine the character of another with a false story,
+whether we originate it or merely repeat it, and into
+such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the
+law. We have loosened and set rolling the stones of
+envy and hatred and they shall return to crush us down
+to failure and humiliation in the reaction that follows.
+We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law
+when we could have used it for our success and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement
+of the law of action and reaction. It is not an
+assertion that we should not judge because we are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong another
+with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that
+the consequence of judging others is that we, in turn,
+shall be judged. If we criticize, we shall be criticized.
+If we condemn others for their faults and failures, we
+shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant and
+remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be
+tolerantly regarded by others.</p>
+
+<p>All of us who have studied the subject find in our
+daily lives the evidence of the truth of such Biblical
+declarations. We know perfectly well that anger provokes
+anger and that conciliation wins concessions, while
+retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort
+calls out retort, while silence restores the peace. In
+these little things it is usually within the power of either
+party to the trouble to have peace instead of turmoil&mdash;just
+a matter of self control. But in the larger events
+it is not always so. They are not invariably within our
+immediate control because they are often the results of
+causes generated in the past which we can no longer
+modify. And this brings us to a wider view of this law
+of cause and effect.</p>
+
+<p>If we look at the life history of an individual as it
+stretches out from birth to death it presents a remarkable
+record of events that appear to have no logical relationship
+to each other. In childhood, there may have
+been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering
+regardless of the qualities of character we are considering,
+and there is nothing in the present life of the child
+to explain either. The child itself may be gentle and
+affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+abuse and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may
+find still greater mysteries. Invariably there are mingled
+successes and failures, pleasures and pains. But when
+we come to analyze them we fail to find a satisfactory
+reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
+when they are not warranted by anything that was done
+to win them, and for the want of any rational explanation
+we call it "good luck." We also observe that sometimes
+failure after failure comes when the man is not
+only doing his very best but when all of his plans will
+stand the test of sound business procedure. Baffled
+again we throw logic to the winds and call it "bad luck."</p>
+
+<p>Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and
+our inability to trace the working of the law. Suppose
+we were to ask a savage to explain how it is that a few
+minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
+know what happened yesterday in London. He knows
+nothing of reporters and cables and presses. He cannot
+explain it. He cannot even comprehend it. But if he
+is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
+he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is
+because we are lucky; and he would be using the word
+just as sensibly as we use it!</p>
+
+<p>If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing
+in this world. Chance means chaos and the absence
+of law. From the magnificent, orderly procession of
+a hundred million suns and their world systems that
+wheel majestically through space down to the very atom,
+with all of its electrons, the universe is a stupendous
+proclamation of the all-pervading presence of law. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+is a mighty panorama of cause and effect. There is no
+such thing as chance.</p>
+
+<p>What then <em>is</em> good luck? We know that people do
+receive benefits which they apparently have not earned.
+There simply cannot be a result without a cause. They
+have earned it in other lives when the conditions did
+not permit immediate harvesting of the results of the
+good forces generated and Nature is paying the debt and
+making the balance of her books at a later period. It
+may be in the case of one that some specific act is attracting
+its reward, or it may be in the case of another
+that he is nearing the point in evolution where he no
+longer desires things for himself, only to discover that
+nature fairly flings her treasures at his feet. He has
+put himself in harmony with evolutionary law&mdash;with the
+divine plan, and nature withholds nothing.</p>
+
+<p>When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to
+seek the cause of unexplained good or bad fortune beyond
+the boundaries of this life because there is nothing
+else we can do. We have results to explain and we
+know they do not come from causes that belong to this
+life. They must of necessity arise from causes generated
+in a past life.</p>
+
+<p>Now the moment we get away from the narrow view
+that we began existence when we were born, all the
+mysteries about us disappear and we can fall back on
+natural law and logically explain everything. Why does
+one person begin life with a good mind while another is
+born with small mental capacity? Because one worked
+hard at life's problems in past incarnations while the
+other led a butterfly existence and merely amused him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>self.
+Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances
+always maintaining a cheerful view of life
+while another loses control of his temper at the slightest
+annoyance and wears himself out with the trifling vexations
+of existence? Only because one has for a long
+period practiced self control while the other has never
+given a thought to the matter. Why is one so thoughtful
+of others that he wins universal love and admiration
+while another is so self centered that he makes no true
+friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The
+one has studied the laws of destiny and lived by them
+while the other has not yet even learned of their existence.</p>
+
+<p>Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created
+at birth, and keeping in mind the newer and scientific
+view that we have all lived many lives before, all the
+difficulties and perplexities at once disappear. We are
+no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some
+good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to
+deserve it, for we see that he must have set the forces
+in motion in a previous life which now culminate in
+this result. We are no longer mystified because apparent
+causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that
+in the nature of things he did generate the causes in the
+past. A single incarnation has the same relation to the
+whole of the soul's evolution that a single day has to one
+incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights
+and yet all the days are related by the acts which run
+through them, so the incarnations are separated by periods
+of rest in the heaven world and yet all the incarnations
+are related by the thoughts and acts running through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+them. What a man does in his youth affects his old
+age, and what we did in our last incarnation is affecting
+the present one. The one is no more remarkable than
+the other. As we mould old age by youth so we are
+shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we
+shall be able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth
+that what we are now is the result of our past we must
+have a clear understanding of the relationship between
+the soul and the body. The physical body in each incarnation
+is the material expression of the soul, of its moral
+power or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its
+purity or its grossness, just as one's face is, at each moment
+the expression of one's thought and emotion in
+physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers
+itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of
+joy and his face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry,
+and the change from joy to anger is registered in physical
+matter so that all who see his face are aware of the
+change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These
+are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they
+are obvious to all. But we know that as the years pass
+the constant influence of consciousness moulds even
+physical matter into permanent form. A soul of sunny
+disposition finally comes to have benevolent features
+while one of morose tendency as certainly has a face of
+settled gloom. Nobody can contact the soul of another
+with any physical sense we possess yet nobody has the
+slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a
+sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony
+with life. We know the difference only because consciousness
+moulds matter. But this is merely the sur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>face
+indication. Consciousness is continually influencing
+matter and the major part of its work is not visible to
+us. What the consciousness is, the body becomes.
+Whether we are now brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed,
+is the result of the activities of consciousness,
+and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
+physical body are the registrations in matter of what we,
+the soul, thought and did in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall
+begin to see just why and how it may have come about.
+If in a past life a person was guilty of deliberate cruelty
+to another, and on account of it suffered great mental
+and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
+thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted
+on his victim are reproduced in himself. In idiocy
+we have apparently merely a distorted brain so that the
+consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
+that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result
+of violent reaction from cruelties in a past life? The
+consciousness that can be guilty of cruelty is seeing things
+crooked&mdash;out of proportion. Otherwise it could not be
+cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register
+a corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is
+the faithful and accurate reflection of that consciousness.
+It is just because the body is the true and exact expression
+of the consciousness in physical matter that the
+palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such
+remarkable delineations of character. The record is
+there in hand and head for those who can read it.</p>
+
+<p>This broader outlook on the life journey, extending
+over a very long series of incarnations, gives us a wholly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+different view of the difficulties with which we have to
+contend and of the limitations which afflict us. It at
+once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
+there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody;
+that all good fortune has been earned; that all
+bad fortune is deserved, and that each of us is, mentally
+and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
+it well when he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All that I rightly think or do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or make or spoil or bless or blast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is curse or blessing justly due<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sloth or effort in the past.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My life's a statement of the sum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of vice indulged or overcome.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as I journey on the roads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall be helped and healed and blessed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To urge to heights as yet unguessed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My road shall be the road I made.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that I gave shall be repaid.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth
+more inspiring? It is surely a satisfying thought that
+every effort shall give increased power of intellect; that
+all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own protection
+in time of need; that every impulse of affection
+shall ripen into the love of comrades; that all noble
+thinking builds heroic character, with which we shall return,
+in some future time, to play to a still noble part in
+the world of men.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Proverbs, XXVI, 27.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="norm">CHAPTER XV.</span><br />
+SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION</h2>
+
+<p>If we accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot
+escape the conclusion that there is superphysical evolution.
+The belief that man is the highest intelligence in
+the universe, except God himself, would be utterly inconsistent
+with evolutionary facts and principles. Evolution
+is a continuous unfolding from within, and it is
+only the limitation of our senses that leads us to set
+limitations to it. The one great life of the universe
+expresses itself in myriad forms and at innumerable
+levels of development. One of those levels is humanity.
+But as certainly as our consciousness has evolved to its
+present stage it shall go on to higher ones.</p>
+
+<p>Orderly gradation is clearly nature's method of expression.
+A continuous, unbroken line of life reaches
+downward from man. Its successive stages are seen in
+the animals, the reptiles, the insects and the microbes.
+Even the great kingdoms into which the biologist divides
+life fade into each other almost imperceptibly and it
+becomes difficult to say where the vegetable kingdom
+stops and the animal kingdom begins. Just as that
+continuous chain of life runs downward from man it
+must also rise above him until it merges in the Supreme<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+Being. There must necessarily be the higher as well
+as the lower products of evolution. Man is merely one
+link in the evolutionary chain. The human level is the
+point where consciousness has become completely individualized
+and is capable of turning back upon itself and
+studying its own inner processes.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Occidental civilization has been sadly
+fettered with materialism. It has scarcely dared to
+think beyond that which could be grasped with the
+hands. The physical senses were its outposts of investigation.
+What could not be seen or heard or felt
+had no existence for it. Modern science explored the
+material universe and perfected its methods until the vast
+panorama of worlds could be intimately studied, and
+its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat
+comprehended. But there was no study of life comparable
+to the vast stretch of worlds; for material science
+had made the remarkable blunder of assuming that the
+last word on the nature of matter had been said. Then
+came the startling discoveries that revolutionized the
+accepted views of matter, that proved that the supposedly
+indivisible atom was a miniature universe, a tiny
+cosmos of force. The old theories about matter had to
+be thrown aside. They were as much out of date as
+the belief that the earth is flat. Stripped of technical
+terms of expression the revised view of matter is, substantially,
+that it is the lowest expression of life; and
+now modern science is turning tardy attention to a
+study of the life side of the universe. The moment that
+is done the sense of consistency and the law of correspondence
+compel us to postulate a gradation of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>telligences
+rising above man as man does above the
+insects.</p>
+
+<p>The scientific mind instantly grasps the inherent
+reasonableness of the existence of superphysical beings.
+Writing on the subject of energy, Nicola Tesla says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"We can conceive of organized beings living without
+nourishment and deriving all the energy they
+need for the performance of their life functions
+from the ambient medium.*** There may be ***
+individualized material systems of beings, perhaps
+of gaseous constitution, or composed of substance
+still more tenuous. In view of this possibility&mdash;nay,
+probability&mdash;we cannot apodictically deny the
+existence of organized beings on a planet merely because
+the conditions on the same are unsuitable for
+the existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot
+even, with positive assurance, assert that some of
+them might not be present here in this our world,
+in the very midst of us, for their constitution and
+life manifestation may be such that we are unable
+to perceive them."<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Alfred Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand
+old man of science," wrote in one of his latest books:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think we have got to recognize that between
+man and the ultimate God there is an almost infinite
+multitude of beings working in the universe at large,
+at tasks as definite and important as any we have
+to perform on earth. I imagine that the universe is
+peopled with spirits&mdash;that is, with intelligent beings
+with powers and duties akin to our own, but vaster.
+I think there is a gradual ascent from man upward
+and onward."</p></div>
+
+<p>While the scientist, still lacking the absolutely con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>clusive
+evidence, goes only to the point of asserting that
+it is reasonable and probable that supermen exist, the
+occultist asserts it as a fact within his personal knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a>
+So we have the direct testimony of the occultists,
+the endorsement of the scientists as to its probability,
+and, perhaps the most important of all, the inherent
+reasonableness of the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship of the supermen, or great spiritual
+hierarchy, to the human race is that of teachers,
+guardians and directors. They superintend human
+evolution. But this does not mean in the very least
+the relationship that is expressed in the term "spirit
+guides" so frequently use by the spiritualist. That is
+a totally different thing. They seem to imply that the
+"spirit guide" gives direct instructions or orders to the
+person known as a "medium." If we were all thus controlled
+and directed what would become of free will?
+Evolution can proceed only if we use our initiative in
+the affairs of life. If we were to be directed by the
+wisdom and will of others we would not evolve at all.
+We would be merely automata directed by others, and
+no matter how great they were we could never thus
+develop our judgment and self-reliance. It is not thus
+that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution.
+It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse
+and bringing mental and moral forces to play upon them,
+thus stimulating latent spiritual forces from within. It
+is also by directly, or indirectly placing ideals instead
+of commands before the race. In another direction it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+is actual superintendence, or administration, or teaching,
+in a way that does not interfere with one's initiative or
+will. If the soul is to evolve it must have liberty&mdash;even
+the freedom to make mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>It is sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist,
+those who are in incarnation do not come out into the
+world and give us ocular evidence of the fact. It is
+pointed out that they could speedily convince the world
+by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably
+not in the least interested in convincing anybody
+of their existence. They <em>are</em> interested in raising the
+general level of morality, of course, but such an exhibition
+would not make people morally better. The work
+of the supermen can best be done from higher planes
+than the physical. As for the very small number of the
+supermen who take physical bodies to better do their
+special work, they can best accomplish it from secluded
+places; and if they sometimes have reason to come out
+into the seething vibrations of our modern civilization it
+is easy to understand that they would not be conspicuously
+different from other men, to the ordinary observer.</p>
+
+<p>It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the
+religions of the world. There the question may arise,
+"Then why do they differ so greatly?" Because the
+peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The
+difference of temperament and viewpoint between the
+Orient and the Occident is enormous. We are evolving
+along the outer, the objective, and our civilization represents
+the material conquest of nature. They are
+evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the
+common trend of conversation is philosophical, just as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+in the Occident it is commercial. Such different types
+of mind require somewhat different statements of ethics,
+but the fundamental principles of all religions are identical.</p>
+
+<p>When a new era in human evolution begins a World
+Teacher comes into voluntary incarnation and founds a
+religion that is suited to the requirements of the new
+era. Humanity is never left to grope along alone. All
+that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the
+various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and
+saviours of the race, have been appearing at propitious
+times since humanity began existence.</p>
+
+<p>Most readers will probably agree that a World
+Teacher known as the Christ did come and found a
+religion nearly two thousand years ago. Why do they
+think so? They reply that God so loved the world that
+he sent his Son, the Christ, to bring it light and life.
+If that is true how can we avoid the conclusion that
+He, or his predecessors, must have come many a time
+before? The belief that He came but once is consistent
+only with the erroneous notion that Genesis is
+history instead of allegory, and that the earth is about
+six thousand years old! Science has not determined
+its age but we know that it is very old, indeed. Many
+eminent scientists have made rough estimates, taking
+into consideration all that we have learned from astronomy,
+geology and archeology. Phillips, the geologist,
+basing his calculations upon the time required for the
+depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum
+age at thirty-eight million years and the maximum age
+at ninety-six million years. Sir George Darwin, bas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>ing
+his calculation wholly upon astronomical data, puts
+the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years.
+Joly arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time
+required to produce the sodium content of the ocean,
+and concluded that the age of the earth is between
+eighty million and one hundred million years. Sollas is
+said to have made careful study of the matter and he
+finds the minimum to be eighty million, and the maximum
+age to be one hundred and fifty million years. But
+perhaps the most exhaustive study of the matter, and
+that made by the use of the later scientific knowledge,
+was by Bosler, of the French scientists. He bases his
+calculations upon the radio-activity of rocks and arrives
+at a minimum earth age of seven hundred and ten
+millions of years. Thus it will be observed that as our
+knowledge grows the estimated age of the earth increases.</p>
+
+<p>In the face of such facts what becomes of the assertion
+that God so loved the world that he sent His Son
+to help ignorant humanity about two thousand years
+ago&mdash;but never before? What about the hundreds of
+millions of human beings who lived and died before that
+time? Did He care nothing for them? Did He give
+his attention to humanity for a period of only two
+thousand years and neglect it for millions of years?
+Two thousand years, compared to the age of the earth,
+is less than an hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does
+anybody believe that God, in his great compassion,
+sent just one World Teacher for that brief period?
+What would we say of a father who gave one hour of
+his whole life to his child and neglected him absolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+before and after that? Countless millions of the people
+who lived and died prior to the coming of the Christ
+were very much like ourselves. They belonged to
+ancient civilizations that often surpassed our own in
+many desirable characteristics. They were educated and
+cultured in their time and fashion. They were fathers
+and sons and mothers and daughters and husbands and
+wives, with the same kind of heart ties that we have.
+What of them? Were they permitted to grope in the
+moral wilderness without a Teacher or a ray of light?
+Of course the idea is preposterous. If God so loved
+the world that He sent his Son two thousand years
+ago He sent Him, or some predecessor, very many times
+before. By the same token He will come again. The
+only logical escape from such a conclusion is in the
+materialist's belief that He never came at all.</p>
+
+<p>All religions crystalize, become materialized, and
+lose their spiritual significance. That is precisely what
+has happened to the various great religions of the modern
+world, including Christianity. It is no longer the dynamic
+thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why
+a world war was possible. The fault is not with the
+teachings of the Christ. The trouble is that the world has
+not lived by them. We need a restatement of the old
+teachings in the terms of modern life that shall again
+make it a living force in the lives of men. It is when the
+World Teacher is most needed that he comes; and when
+has the need been greater than now? The world war has
+demonstrated the failure of so-called Christian civilization.
+We have seen the highest type of that civilization
+revert to the law of the jungle, deliberately disregard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+the usages of civilized warfare, and commit atrocities
+that would shame barbarians. We surely need no further
+proof that the Christian religion has not accomplished
+all that the spiritual hierarchy had a right to
+hope for, and that the coming of the Christ again is a
+necessity.</p>
+
+<p>But the spiritual hierarchy sends its great ambassadors
+only when the time is propitious, only when the
+world is ready to listen. Perhaps such an event can
+never be predicted in terms of time, but only in those of
+conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent,
+when the slain totals appalling numbers, when few
+homes of high or low degree are without their terrible
+sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled with anguish,
+when famine and disease have done their awful work,
+and humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed,
+lust, cruelty and revenge actually means, the world will
+be ready to listen as it never listened before, and after
+that we may reasonably expect the Christ to again appear
+to re-proclaim the ancient truth in terms of modern life.</p>
+
+<p>The supermen are not myths nor figments of imagination.
+They are as natural and comprehensive as human
+beings. In the regular order of evolution we shall
+reach their level and join their ranks while younger humanities
+shall attain our present estate. As the supermen
+rose we, too, shall rise. Our past has been evolution's
+night. Our present is its dawn. Our future
+shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from
+which we have emerged&mdash;a chaos of contending forces,
+a world in which might was the measure of right, a civilization
+of scepter and sword, of baron and serf, of master<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+and slave. That, we have left behind us. Think of the
+grey dawn that our civilization has reached&mdash;the dawn
+of a public conscience, of individual liberty, of collective
+welfare, of the sacredness of life, but with armed force
+still dominant, with war the arbiter of national destiny,
+with industrial slavery still lingering, with conflict between
+the higher aspirations and the lower desires still
+raging&mdash;a world of selfishness masked by civilized usage,
+a world of veneered cruelty and refined brutality. In all
+that we now live. But think of the coming results of
+evolution!&mdash;an era in which love shall replace force,
+when saber and cannon shall be unknown, when selfish
+desires shall be transmuted into noble service, when,
+finally, we shall finish the painful period of human evolution
+and join the spiritual hierarchy to direct the
+faltering steps of a younger race.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> "The Conservation of Energy," Nicola Tesla, Century
+Magazine, June 1900.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> An Outline of Theosophy, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 6-12.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tn">
+<h4 class="u">Transcriber's Note:</h4>
+
+<p>The following corrections were made:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#Page_6">p. 6</a>: pretention to pretension (no pretension is made)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_12">p. 12</a>: An to In (In another aspect it is a religion.)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_12">p. 12</a>: thesosophy to theosophy (While theosophy is distinctly a science)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_13">p. 13</a>: discusison to discussion (A detailed discussion of such methods)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_16">p. 16</a>: nevertheelss to nevertheless (is nevertheless just that relationship)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_17">p. 17</a>: explicilt to explicit (is certainly very explicit)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_19">p. 19</a>: period to semi-colon (who's true to man;)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_34">p. 34</a>: communciating to communicating (dead man who is communicating?)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_35">p. 35</a>: extra 'the' removed (more convincing than the evidence)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_47">p. 46-47</a>: envelopes to envelops (because it envelops it)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_63">p. 63</a>: oftens to often (often requires death)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_74">p. 74</a>: repreduces to reproduces (exactly reproduces emotion)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_82">p. 82</a>: consciouness to consciousness (finally loses consciousness)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_83">p. 83</a>: of to or (or by cleverly combining)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_86">p. 86</a>: strengthend to strengthened (strengthened and vivified)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_89">p. 89</a>: slight to sight (has not lost sight of us)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_91">p. 91</a>: communciate to communicate (had to communicate with him)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_91">p. 91</a>: communcation to communication (subject of communication)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_92">p. 92</a>: communciate to communicate (desires to communicate)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_93">p. 93</a>: influnces to influences (sensitive to psychic influences)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_94">p. 94</a>: persist to persists (who persists in occupying)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_95">p. 95</a>: confidenty to confidently (will confidently assert himself)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_96">p. 96</a>: close quote added (What can I do?")</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_103">p. 103</a>: missing comma added (While we do not yet know a great deal about life, science)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_105">p. 105</a>: perect to perfect (perfect agreement)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_109">p. 109</a>: extra 'and' removed (new and undeveloped)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_115">p. 115</a>: thoughtul to thoughtful (a thoughtful matron)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_117">p. 117</a>: methematical to mathematical (a mathematical problem)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_120">p. 120</a>: If to It (It often puzzles)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_121">p. 121</a>: from to form (highest possible form)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_124">p. 124</a>: missing apostrophe added (of nations' condemned prisoners)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_128">p. 128</a>: extra 'to' removed (civilization today could arise)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_129">p. 129</a>: two erroneously reversed lines corrected (consciousness. The young quails of this season come / they are attached to the same group-soul, or source of)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_138">p. 138</a>: crminal to criminal (a noted criminal)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_142">p. 142</a>: possesing to possessing (we find others possessing)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_146">p. 146</a>: blockquote formatted to match others in text</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_158">p. 158</a>: meed to need (no need of praise)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_181">p. 181</a>: incalcuable to incalculable (is incalculable and altogether beyond)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_185">p. 185</a>: responsibilty to responsibility (personal responsibility and therefore)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_191">p. 191</a>: hapen to happen (may happen to fall)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_191">p. 191-192</a>: extinquished to extinguished (Before the fire could be extinguished)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_193">p. 193</a>: beneficient to beneficent ("beneficent working of the law")</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_193">p. 193</a>: phsical to physical (from the physical plane)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_195">p. 195</a>: mistate to misstate (misstate facts)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_196">p. 196</a>: atain to attain (and surely attain)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_203">p. 203</a>: idocy to idiocy (In idiocy we have)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_204">p. 204</a>: Maesfield to Masefield (Masefield put it well)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_204">p. 204</a>: blest to blessed (I shall be helped and healed and blessed.)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_207">p. 207</a>: appodictically to apodictically (cannot apodictically deny)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_209">p. 209</a>: superman to supermen (small number of the supermen)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_209">p. 209</a>: it to is (it is easy to understand)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_211">p. 211</a>: calcualations to calculations (He bases his calculations upon)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_212">p. 212</a>: chrystalize to crystalize (All religions crystalize)</li>
+<li><a href="#Page_213">p. 213</a>: embassadors to ambassadors (sends its great ambassadors)</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>Irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. wide-spread vs. widespread, class-room vs. classroom) and variant spellings (e.g. cigaret) have not been corrected.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Elementary Theosophy
+
+Author: L. W. Rogers
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2009 [EBook #30134]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by V. L. Simpson, S.D., and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY
+
+
+         L. W. ROGERS
+
+
+         LOS ANGELES
+  THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN
+            1917
+
+
+          Copyright
+             By
+        L. W. Rogers
+            1917
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+To comprehend the significance of great world changes, before Time has
+fully done his work, is difficult. While mighty events are still in
+their formative period the future is obscure. But our inability to
+outline the future cannot blind us to the unmistakable trend of the
+evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted
+Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most
+un-Christian war of recorded history and in which human atrocity has
+reached a point that leaves us vaguely groping for a rational
+explanation of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than twenty
+nations involved have been forced into measures and methods before
+unknown and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of
+governments. With these startling facts of religious and political
+significance before us thoughtful people are beginning to ask if we are
+not upon the threshold of a complete breaking down of modern
+civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in which direct
+government by the people throughout the entire world will be coincident
+with the rise of a universal religion based on the brotherhood of man.
+
+In such a time any contribution to current literature that will help to
+clear the ground of misconceptions and to bring to the attention of
+those interested in such things, that set of fundamental natural truths
+known as theosophy, may perhaps be helpful. Whether or not the world is
+about to recast its ethical code there can at least be no doubt that it
+is eagerly seeking reliable evidence that we live after bodily death and
+that it will welcome a hypothesis of immortality that is inherently
+reasonable and therefore satisfies the intellect as well as the heart.
+Those who are dissatisfied with the old answers to the riddle of
+existence and demand that Faith and Reason shall walk hand in hand, may
+find in the following pages some explanation of the puzzling things in
+life--an explanation that disregards neither the intuitions of religion
+nor the facts of science.
+
+Of course no pretension is made of fully covering the ground. The book
+is a student's presentation of some of the phases of theosophy as he
+understands them. They are presented with no authority whatever, and are
+merely an attempt to discuss in simple language some of the fundamental
+truths about the human being. No claim is made to originality but it is
+hoped that by putting the old truths in a somewhat different way, with
+new illustrations and arguments, they may perhaps be seen from a new
+viewpoint. The intention has been to present elementary theosophy simply
+and clearly and in the language familiar to the ordinary newspaper
+reader. All technical terms and expressions have been avoided and the
+reader will not find a single foreign word in the book.
+
+L. W. R.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  I.    THEOSOPHY                            9
+
+  II.   THE IMMANENCE OF GOD                15
+
+  III.  THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL           23
+
+  IV.   LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH             29
+
+  V.    THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD              43
+
+  VI.   THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS      49
+
+  VII.  DEATH                               59
+
+  VIII. THE ASTRAL WORLD                    69
+
+  IX.   REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS        103
+
+  X.    REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE               135
+
+  XI.   REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY             153
+
+  XII.  WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER             167
+
+  XIII. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT                181
+
+  XIV.  THE FORCES WE GENERATE             187
+
+  XV.   SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION            205
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THEOSOPHY
+
+
+Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress. Very much that we believe
+to be original with us at the time of its discovery or invention proves
+in time to have been known to earlier civilizations. The elevator, or
+lift, is a very modern invention and we supposed it to be a natural
+development of our civilization, with its intensive characteristics,
+until an antiquarian startled us with the announcement that it was used
+in Rome over two thousand years ago; not, of course, as we use it, but
+for the same purpose, and involving the same principles. A half century
+ago our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths of evolution
+that were being discovered and placed before western civilization. But
+as we learn more and more of the thought and intellectual life of the
+Orient it becomes clear that the idea of evolution permeated that part
+of the world centuries ago. Even the most recent and startling
+scientific discoveries occasionally serve to prove that what we supposed
+to be the fantastic beliefs of the ancients were really truths of nature
+that we were not yet able to comprehend! The transmutation of metals is
+an example. We have already gone far enough in that direction to show
+that the alchemists of old were not the foolish and superstitious people
+we supposed them to be. We have given far too little credit to past
+civilizations and we are coming to understand now that we have rated
+them too low. Our modesty must necessarily increase as it becomes
+clearer that much of our supposed contribution to the world's progress
+is not invention but rediscovery. We are beginning to see that it is not
+safe to put aside without careful examination an idea or a belief that
+was current in the world thousands of years ago. Like the supposed folly
+of the alchemists it may contain profound truths of nature that have
+thus far been foreign to our modes of thinking.
+
+Theosophy is both very old and very new--very old because the principles
+it contains were known and taught in the oldest civilizations, and very
+new because it includes the latest investigations of the present day. It
+is sometimes said by those who desire to speak lightly of it that it is
+a philosophy borrowed from the Buddhists, or at least from the Orient.
+That is, of course, an erroneous view. It is true that the Buddhists
+hold some beliefs in common with theosophists. It is also true that
+Methodists hold some beliefs in common with Unitarians, but that does
+not show that Unitarianism was borrowed from Wesley! When different
+people study the same facts of nature they are likely to arrive at
+substantially the same conclusions. Theosophy is based upon certain
+truths of nature. Those who study those truths and formulate a belief
+from them must reasonably be expected to resemble theosophists in their
+views. Buddhism is not unique in resembling theosophy. In the same list
+may be placed the Vedanta philosophy, the Cabala of the Jews, the
+teachings of the Christian Gnostics, and the philosophy of the Stoics.
+The more general charge must also be denied; theosophy is not something
+transplanted from the Orient. It belongs to the race, as the earth does,
+and cannot be localized, even to a continent. As it is taught today in
+Europe and America it is probably unknown to the masses of the Orient,
+for the great general truths it embodies have here the special
+application and peculiar emphasis required by a totally different
+civilization. But that theosophical principles were earlier known and
+more widely accepted in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no
+possible way lessen their value to us. Precisely the same thing is true
+of the principles of mathematics. The science of mathematics reached
+European civilization directly from the Arabs, but we do not foolishly
+decline to make use of the knowledge on that account.
+
+The literal meaning of the word theosophy is self-evident--knowledge of
+God. It has three aspects, determined by the different ways in which the
+human being acquires knowledge--through the study of concrete facts, by
+the study of the relationship of the individual consciousness to its
+source, and through the use of reasoning faculties in constructing a
+logical explanation of life and its purpose. In one aspect it is,
+therefore, a science. It deals with the tangible, with the facts and
+phenomena of the material scientist and makes its appeal to the evidence
+of the physical senses. In another aspect it is a religion. It deals
+with the relationship between the source of all consciousness and its
+multiplicity of individual expressions; with the complex relationships
+that arise between these personalities; with the duties and obligations
+which thus come into existence; with the evolution of the individual
+consciousness and its ultimate translation to higher spheres. In its
+other aspect it is a philosophy of life. It deals with man, his origin,
+his evolution, his destiny. It seeks to explain the universe and to
+throw a flood of light upon the problem of existence that will enable
+those who study its wisdom to go forward in their evolution rapidly,
+safely and comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the darkness of
+ignorance, reaping as they go the painful harvests of misdirected
+energy.
+
+While theosophy is distinctly a science and a philosophy it is not, in
+the same full sense, a religion. It has its distinctive religious
+aspect, it is true, but when we speak of a religion we usually have in
+mind a certain set of religious dogmas and a church that propagates
+them. Theosophy is a universal thing like mathematics--a body of natural
+truths applicable to all phases of life. It sees all religions as
+equally important, as peculiarly adapted to the varying civilizations in
+which they are found, and it presents a synthesis of the fundamental
+principles upon which all of them rest.
+
+From all of this it will be seen that there is a vast difference
+between theosophy and theology. Theosophy declares the immortality of
+man but not as a religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in
+relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no such word as
+"faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its faith arises from the constancy
+of natural law, the balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious
+adjustment of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient in that it is the
+great fund of ancient wisdom about man and his earth, that has come down
+through countless centuries, reaching far back into prehistoric times.
+But added to that hoary wisdom are the up-to-date facts that have been
+acquired by its most successful students, who have evolved their
+consciousness to levels transcending the physical senses--facts which,
+however, do not derive their authority from the method of their
+discovery but from their inherent reasonableness. A detailed discussion
+of such methods of consciousness and the proper value to be placed upon
+such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter. It is enough now
+to warn the reader against the error of confusing the pronouncements of
+pseudo psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who have already
+done much toward placing a scientific foundation beneath the universal
+hope of immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
+
+
+The antagonism between scientific and religious thought was the cause of
+the greatest controversy in the intellectual world in the nineteenth
+century. If the early teaching of the Christian Church had not been lost
+the conflict could not have arisen. The Gnostic philosophers, who were
+the intellect and heart of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true
+that it could not possibly come into collision with any fact of science.
+But unfortunately they were enormously outnumbered by the ignorant and
+the authority passed wholly into their hands. It was inevitable that
+misunderstanding should follow. The gross materialization of the early
+teaching, the superstition, the bigotry and the persecution of the
+Middle Ages was a perfectly natural result. That perverted,
+materialistic view has come down to us, and even now gives trend to the
+religious thought of Western civilization. Of that degradation of the
+early teaching the Encyclopedia Britannica says:
+
+      The conception of God as wholly external to man, a purely
+      mechanical theory of creation, is throughout Christendom
+      regarded as false to the teaching of the New Testament as
+      also to Christian experience.
+
+It is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but if it is so
+regarded "throughout Christendom" it is only on the part of its
+scholars; most certainly not by the masses of the people. The popular
+conception is undeniably that the relationship between God and man is
+identical with that between an inventor and an animated machine. It is
+an absolutely anthropomorphic view of the Supreme Being and thinks of
+God as being apart from man in precisely the same sense that a father is
+apart from his son. It may be an exalted, idealized conception of the
+relationship of father and son but it is nevertheless just that
+relationship, and along that line runs practically all the teaching and
+preaching of those who speak officially in modern religious
+interpretation. Emerson sought to counteract that popular misconception
+but he was regarded as a heretic by all but an infinitesimal portion of
+the church.
+
+The idea of the immanence of God is as different from the popular
+conception as noontide is different from midnight. It is so radically
+different that one who accepts that ancient belief must put aside his
+old ideas of what man is and raise him in dignity and potential power to
+a level that will, at first, seem actually startling; for it means, in
+its uttermost significance that God and man are but two phases of the
+one eternal life and consciousness that constitute our universe! The
+idea of the immanence of God is that He _is_ the universe; that the
+solar system is an emanation of the Supreme Being as clouds are an
+emanation of the sea, and that the relationship between God and man is
+not merely that of father and son but also that of ocean and raindrop.
+This conception makes man _a part of_ God, having potentially within him
+all the attributes and powers of the Supreme Being. It is the idea that
+nothing exists except God and that humanity is one portion of Him, and
+one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression of the waters that
+constitute the sea. The immanence of God is a conception of the universe
+that puts science and religion into perfect harmony with each other
+because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary creation takes
+its place.
+
+Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has such widespread dominion in
+Occidental thought the immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly
+emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him we live, and move,
+and have our being," is certainly very explicit and admits of no
+anthropomorphic interpretation. It could not be said that a son lives
+and moves in his father. The declaration presents the relationship of a
+lesser consciousness within a greater, and constituting a part of it.
+The essentially divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration in
+Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that the likeness is on the
+material side would, of course, be absurd. In divine essence, in latent
+power, in potential spirituality, man is an image of God, because he is
+a part of Him. The same idea is more directly put in the Psalms with the
+assertion, "ye are gods."[A] If the idea of the immanence of God is
+sound man, as a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
+Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve his latent powers
+into perfect expression.
+
+The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus in his teaching.
+Emerson's teaching of the immanence of God is unmistakable in both his
+prose and poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the soul where
+man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause, begins." Still more
+explicitly he puts it:
+
+      The realms of being to no other bow;
+      Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.
+
+The statement is as complete as it is emphatic. "Not only all are Thine,
+_but all are thou_." It's an unqualified assertion that humanity is a
+part of God, as leaves are part of a tree--not something a tree has
+created in the sense that a man creates a machine but something that is
+an emanation of the tree, and is a living part of it. Thus only has God
+made man. Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation, an
+evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being.
+
+It is upon the unity of all life that theosophy bases its declaration of
+universal brotherhood, regarding it as a fact in nature. The immanence
+of God gives a scientific basis of morality. The theosophical conception
+is that men are separated in form but are united in the one
+consciousness which is the life base of the universe. Their relationship
+to each other is somewhat like that of the fingers to each other--they
+are separate individuals on the form side but they are united in the
+one consciousness that animates the hand. If we imagine each finger to
+possess a consciousness of its own, which is limited to itself and
+cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall have a fair analogy of the
+unity and identity of interests of all living things. Under such
+circumstances an injury to one finger would not appear to the others as
+an injury to them, but if the finger consciousness could be extended to
+the hand the reality of the injury to all would be apparent. Likewise an
+injury to any human being is literally an injury to the race. The race
+does not recognize the truth of it just because, and only because, of
+the limitation of consciousness. Lowell put the fact clearly when he
+said:
+
+      He's true to God who's true to man;
+      Wherever wrong is done
+      To the humblest and weakest
+      'Neath the all-beholding sun,
+      That wrong is also done to us;
+      And they are slaves most base
+      Whose love of right is for themselves,
+      And not for all the race.
+
+He's true to God who's true to man because they are one life; because
+they are but different expressions of the one eternal consciousness;
+because they are as inseparable as the light and warmth of the sun. It
+follows that being true to man is fidelity to God.
+
+The popular idea is that people should be moral because that sort of
+conduct is pleasing to the Supreme Being and that He will, in the life
+beyond physical existence, in some way punish those who have broken the
+moral laws. It is belief in an external authority that threatens
+punishment as a deterrent to law breaking, as a state devises penalties
+commensurate with offenses. But the immanence of God represents a
+condition in which not punishments, but consequences, automatically
+follow all violations of natural law. Under such a state of affairs it
+would require no penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct,
+for it would be perceived that there is no possible escape from the
+consequences of an evil act.
+
+It is not difficult to see the relative value of the two systems of
+thought when put to a practical test in human affairs. Imagine an
+unscrupulous man of great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous
+fortune through sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings
+of others while he safely keeps just within the limits of the law. We
+can point out to him that while he is not violating the law, and cannot
+therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting injury upon
+others and consequently public opinion will condemn him. But such a man
+usually cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no good
+reason why he should not continue in his injurious work. But if he can
+be made to understand that all life is one and that we are so knit
+together in consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately
+react upon the person who inflicts it; if he once clearly understands
+that to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that to maim
+another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an
+exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow
+a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest
+could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of
+all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence
+of God furnishes a scientific basis of morality.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Psalms LXXXII--6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL
+
+
+If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we shall be forced to
+abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous creation of man and the
+earth on which he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible idea
+that the race came from an original human pair must be replaced by the
+hypothesis of the evolution of the soul.
+
+It was about the fact of evolution that the great storm of controversy
+raged between scientists and theologians in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first well
+understood. They seemed to question or deny the existence of God. Deep
+within humanity is intuitive religious belief. It is a natural faith
+that transcends all facts, like the faith of a child in its mother.
+Because evolution was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's
+inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy hope, and
+against fact and reason itself rose the protest of intuition with
+spiritual intensity. People felt more than they reasoned and cried out
+that science was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has proved
+that they had merely misinterpreted the meaning of evolution. Further
+understanding has shown that, instead of destroying the belief in God,
+evolution has given us a new and better understanding of the whole
+matter and has placed the hope of immortality on firmer ground than it
+previously occupied.
+
+Evolution is an established and generally accepted fact. No educated
+person now thinks of questioning it. It is settled beyond dispute that
+all things in the physical world have become what they are through a
+long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the most perfect in
+form and most complex in function have evolved from simpler ones. The
+age of miracle has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as its
+relation to the material world is concerned. It is no longer necessary
+to have a belief in an anthropomorphic God, performing feats in defiance
+of natural law, in order to account for that which exists. Science has
+reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown that, given nebulous
+physical matter, we can understand how the earth came into existence.
+
+But why should we stop with the application of the laws of evolution to
+material things? Only the outright materialist, who asserts that life is
+a product of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority in
+the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has asserted that there is no
+longer any such thing as scientific materialism.[B] Those who accept the
+idea of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily accept the
+idea of the evolution of the soul. How can consciousness possibly
+escape the laws that evolve the media for the expression of
+consciousness? There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as there
+is evolution of matter. The material and the spiritual, form and life,
+are inseparable. Indeed, scientific progress has now brought us to the
+point where matter, as such, practically disappears and we are face to
+face with the fact that matter is really but a manifestation of force.
+How, then, is it longer possible to speak of the soul and not accept the
+evolution of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than physiology.
+The phenomena of consciousness are as definitely studied as physical
+phenomena, and it is no more difficult to account for a myriad souls
+than to account for a million suns and their planets. The scientists who
+have taken the position that the universe has a spiritual side as well
+as a material side are among the most eminent and distinguished of the
+modern world. If evolution has produced the starry heavens from the
+material side it has likewise evolved the human souls of our world and
+others from the spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand
+the one than the other.
+
+From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief in the creation of
+the earth and the race by an act suddenly accomplished is, of course,
+preposterous. If we could know nothing back of the present moment and
+were called upon to account for the world as we see it--with its cities,
+its ships and railways, its cultivated fields and parks--many people who
+still believe in instantaneous creation of the soul would save
+themselves much mental exertion by declaring that God had made it all as
+it stands for the use and entertainment of man. But we know that it is
+utterly absurd to think of the world leaping into existence
+instantaneously--nothing existing one day and all trains running on time
+between ready-made cities the next, carrying ready-made people about. It
+sounds ridiculous only because we are putting it in material terms, but
+in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of the instantaneous
+creation of the creators of cities and railways.
+
+The idea that we are a sudden creation is only possible because of the
+very vague ideas of what human souls are. The chief difficulty with the
+popular notion that a human soul is as new as the body it inhabits is
+that it is a vague and indefinite conception of life, and the moment we
+begin to think seriously about it the weakness of the idea becomes
+apparent. Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of
+reasoning. How can one reason with a man who believes it possible for a
+soul to spring into existence from the void? What is the use in
+reasoning about the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole
+matter to say: "God did it"?
+
+One thing that prevents us from believing not only that millions of
+souls were created in the twinkling of an eye, but also that the world
+as it now is was likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know
+quite definitely the history of the world a little way into the past,
+and that history affirms that the earth and all life on it is the
+product of slow evolutionary growth.
+
+The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion on a scientific
+basis. Not only the origin of the soul but its development and its
+destiny at once appear in a new light. The mind is instinctively
+impressed with the dignity of the idea of the evolution of the soul,
+which, with its corollary, the immanence of God, makes the divinity of
+man a fact in nature.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Raymond: or Life and Death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH
+
+
+One of the really remarkable facts of modern life is the disinclination
+to accept at apparent value the scientific and other evidence there is
+to prove that consciousness persists after the death of the physical
+body. There is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much of
+it is offered by scientists of the highest standing; and yet the average
+man continues to speak of the subject as though nothing about it had yet
+been definitely learned. It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust
+itself very slowly to the truth, as it is discovered. Sometimes a
+generation passes away between the discovery and the general acceptance
+of a great truth. When we recall the intense opposition to the
+introduction of steam-driven boats and vehicles, and the slowness with
+which the world settles down to any radical change in its methods of
+thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the truth about the
+life after bodily death has waited so long for general recognition.
+
+The evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of consciousness is
+based is of two kinds--that furnished by physical science and that
+furnished by psychic science. Together they make a very complete case.
+
+The printed evidence of the first division--physical science--is
+voluminous. In addition to that gathered by the Society for Psychical
+Research there are the researches and experiments by the scientists of
+England, France and Italy, among whom are Crookes, Lodge, Flammarion and
+Lombroso. Crookes was a pioneer in the work of studying the human
+consciousness and tracing its activities beyond the change called death.
+All of that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge, which
+has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries and inventions, and
+has won for him world-wide fame, were brought to bear upon the subject,
+and for a period of four years he patiently investigated and
+experimented. Many illustrated articles prepared by him, fully
+describing his work, were published at the time in _The Journal of
+Science_ of which he was then the editor.
+
+Three vital points in psychic research were established by Sir William
+Crookes. One was that there is psychic force. He demonstrated its
+existence by levitation. He showed next, that the force is directed by
+intelligence. By various clever experiments he obtained most conclusive
+evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated that the intelligence
+directing the force is not that of living people. Crookes also went
+exhaustively into the subject of materialization and here, again, he was
+remarkably successful. He was the first scientist to photograph the
+materialized human form and engage in direct conversation with the
+person who thus returned from the mysterious life beyond. This evidence
+from the camera must be regarded as particularly interesting. It was
+received with much amazement at the time, but that was before we had
+revised our erroneous ideas about the nature of matter and before the
+day of liquid air. Materialization is no longer a startling idea, for
+that is precisely what liquid air is--a condensation of invisible matter
+to the point where it becomes tangible and can be weighed, measured,
+seen and otherwise known to the physical senses.
+
+All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his own premises and under
+the most rigid scientific conditions. All the methods and mechanism
+known to modern science were employed and he finally announced his
+complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness of the phenomena
+observed.
+
+As Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver Lodge is the latest
+of the famous scientists who have taken up the investigation of the
+continuity of consciousness. In a lecture upon the subject, before the
+Society for the Advancement of Science, he declared not only that the
+subject of life after physical death was one which science might
+legitimately and profitably investigate but that the existence of an
+invisible realm had been established. He declared the continent of an
+invisible world had been discovered, and added, "already a band of
+daring investigators have landed on its treacherous but promising
+shores."
+
+Different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds of psychic
+investigation and while Crookes made a detailed and careful study of
+materialization Lodge has given equally painstaking efforts to
+investigations by the use of that class of sensitives known as
+"mediums." A medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is
+not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric matter easily
+separates from the physical matter is a medium and can readily be
+utilized as a sort of telephone between the visible and the invisible
+planes. A medium is an abnormal person and is a good medium in
+proportion to the degree of abnormality. If the etheric matter of the
+body is easily extruded the physical body readily falls into the trance
+condition and the mechanism of conversation can be operated by the
+so-called "dead" person who has temporarily taken possession of it. In
+such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living-dead
+communicator. He is speaking directly himself, but he may often do it
+with great difficulty and not always succeed in accurately expressing
+the thought he has in mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts,
+moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand something of
+his difficulties it is not strange that such communications are
+frequently unsatisfactory. It is not often that an analogy can be found
+that will give a physical plane comprehension of a superphysical
+condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be had by thinking of a
+"party line" telephone that any one of a dozen people may use at any
+moment he can succeed in getting possession of it. A listener attempting
+to communicate with one of them may find that several others are
+constantly "switching in," much to his confusion. If distinction of
+voices due to sound were eliminated and then a stenographic record were
+to be made of all words reaching the listener he would find that it
+would often be fragmentary and trivial. That would not, however, prove
+that the conversation did not come from living beings nor that there
+was not at least one intelligent person among them. That scientists
+engaged in psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing
+more.
+
+It seems to be a common opinion that the evidential value of such
+psychic communications, even under the direction of a skilful scientist,
+cannot be very great. But there are ways of knowing. It is not at all
+difficult for the investigator to confine his work, not only to
+incidents unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts which the
+medium can not possibly comprehend. It is a matter of common knowledge
+that mediums are usually people without technical scientific knowledge.
+Some of them have some degree of education and some of them are
+illiterate. Some of the most celebrated belong to the peasant class of
+Europe.
+
+Let us suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge is about to attempt to communicate
+with a scientist who has passed on to join the living dead. He will ask
+technical scientific questions that nobody but a scientist can answer
+and that the medium can by no possibility even understand when they are
+answered. Or suppose he gets a communication from the medium's hand
+signed by a great author. The living dead man writes a criticism, let us
+say, of some new book and does it in his characteristic style, full of
+the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment. Surely nobody
+can believe that the medium is producing such things on her own account.
+If she could do so she would not be earning her living as a medium. But
+the scientists do not stop there. We often hear the expression
+"cross-correspondence." Just what do they mean by that and in what way
+does it prove the personal identity of a dead man who is communicating?
+The principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method. Sometimes
+a guest leaves a sum of money with the clerk, and he wishes to be
+perfectly sure of his identity when he returns to claim it. He requests
+the guest to put his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in two,
+gives him one piece and keeps the other. That gives him a double proof
+of identity. When he comes for his money he must first give his name and
+then produce the piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the
+piece the clerk has retained, the two together making the whole and
+restoring the signature. It's one of the simplest but most satisfactory
+proofs possible. Neither piece of that card alone is intelligible. If
+one piece should be lost and others should find it nobody could read it
+or make anything of it. Nobody could guess the name unless he had the
+other piece. He knows only about the part he holds. He may be a thief
+and may earnestly desire to use what he has found to defraud, but he is
+helpless because he has only one of the two parts it requires to make an
+intelligible whole. That is the principle involved in identity by
+cross-correspondence. Part of a message is written through one medium
+and part through another medium at another time in another place and
+neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence until it is
+fitted into the other part; and that prevents a medium who is dishonest
+from manufacturing a story that may be more or less plausible.
+
+We are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific investigation for
+evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently
+sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is
+far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the
+average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult
+experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed
+relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of
+thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances
+which, while possessing little evidential value from the scientific
+viewpoint, nevertheless have a legitimate place in the great mass of
+psychic phenomena. But more convincing is the evidence furnished in
+hundreds of homes where some member of the family acts as automatic
+writer or medium.
+
+The most convincing evidence is not always scientific evidence. What can
+be more convincing than the evidence furnished in one's home by members
+of the family? There is much such evidence, obtained both through
+mediums and by automatic writing.
+
+Automatic writing--that is, the control of the hand of a living person
+to record the thoughts of another who has lost the physical body--is
+perhaps one of the least objectionable ways in which communications have
+come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted for some useful
+books with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions. Here,
+of course, as elsewhere, discrimination must be used, for the wise and
+foolish, the useful and useless are to be found side by side. In
+accepting or rejecting, one must use his common sense just as he does on
+this plane in separating the valuable from the worthless. In such
+matters we should not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are
+unchanged in intellect and morality. The genius here is the genius there
+and the living fool is not different from the dead one. It is often
+those who know the least who are the most anxious to tell it and the
+medium or automatic writer sometimes gives them the opportunity.
+Consequently we get many foolish communications and an enormous amount
+of commonplace platitude is delivered at seances. But it is equally true
+that unquestionable proof of personal identity is sometimes secured.
+
+There is much valuable non-scientific evidence that the consciousness
+survives the loss of the physical body and it frequently comes from
+sources that insure respectful attention. The two following stories of
+that kind are cited as corroboration of the scientific evidence.
+
+Little touches of the personality often constitute the most convincing
+of all evidence. It is one thing to show that people in general live
+after physical death. It is quite a different matter to establish the
+personal identity of one of them who is communicating, and that is one
+of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent journalist,
+gives us some valuable evidence on personal identity. In his earlier
+years he had studied art in London. Shortly before the death of Turner,
+the great artist had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on
+painting, but had not redeemed the promise at the time of passing away.
+Stillman had a friend whose daughter was mediumistic and he decided to
+experiment. Immediately on beginning the seance the young girl was taken
+possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman asked his
+question silently, speaking no words, but mentally requesting Turner to
+write his name. The only reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He
+then asked if he would give some advice on painting. The response was
+another decided negative. Stillman felt that he was foolishly wasting
+his time and declared the seance at an end. But the girl sat silent.
+Then after a moment she slowly arose with the air of decrepitude, took a
+lithograph from the wall and went through the pantomime of stretching a
+sheet of paper on a drawing board, sharpening a pencil, tracing the
+outline, the washing-in of a drawing, etc., and then proceeded to show a
+simple but surprising method of taking out the lights. "Do you mean to
+say that Turner got his effects in that way?" asked the incredulous
+young artist. The answer was an emphatic affirmative. Stillman then
+asked if the central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain in the
+well known drawing "Llanthony Abbey" by Turner, had been done in that
+way and was answered by another emphatic affirmative. So sure was the
+young artist that this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust
+and abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling upon Ruskin
+and related the experience. Ruskin, who had known the celebrated dead
+artist intimately, declared that the contrariness of the medium at the
+beginning of the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But
+what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence, was that the
+drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession and eagerly it was
+brought down from the wall for examination. After close scrutiny the
+great art critic and the young artist agreed that, beyond dispute, the
+drawing _had_ been done in the way described.
+
+Such evidence has an added value when it comes from those who are
+neither spiritualists nor professional investigators, but who have the
+things they doubt thrust upon them in such convincing manner that they
+feel impelled to record their experience for the enlightenment of
+others. In the last literary work[C] done by Carl Schurz, we are given,
+quite incidentally, his testimony that at a seance soon after the Civil
+War he was told the future in such detail as to leave no possible room
+for the explanation of coincidence. It was in July, 1865, when Schurz
+was on his way to Washington, whither he had been summoned by President
+Johnson, that he stopped in Philadelphia at the home of his friend, Dr.
+Tiedemann. The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years old, could do
+automatic writing. As a matter of interest and amusement in the family
+circle the girl gave an exhibition of her psychic abilities. When Schurz
+was invited to ask for a communication he not unnaturally requested one
+from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for he had been personally
+acquainted with him. The girl wrote a message purporting to come from
+Lincoln. It related to politics and proved, in time, to have been an
+accurate prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not transpire for
+more than three years! Schurz lived in Wisconsin at the time and had no
+intention of changing his residence, nor did he do so until two years
+later. The message which the girl wrote asserted that Schurz would be
+elected to the United States senate _from Missouri_. He did not regard
+the message as authentic and naturally enough considered the prophecy
+absurd. In 1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in January,
+1869, he was elected United States senator by the Missouri legislature.
+
+So far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will be understood,
+of course, that no attempt is here made to present that. The intention
+is merely to call attention to some of the eminent scientists who have
+done notable work and to mention a few of the more interesting
+discoveries made. Those who desire to come into possession of the
+evidence in full will find upon examination that it is voluminous.
+
+From the viewpoint of physical science alone the evidence of the
+continuity of consciousness is not only convincing but conclusive. Yet
+occult science has much more to offer. To those who have no personal
+knowledge of the existence of occult faculties, such evidence can be
+offered only upon the inherent reasonableness of the statements made.
+
+The truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, must slowly win its
+way to general acceptance. While large numbers of people still scoff at
+it, even as the world not so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a
+fantastic theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless a
+large and rapidly growing number who personally know the truth about
+clairvoyance. There is every conceivable grade of clairvoyant power and
+some degree of superphysical sensitiveness is becoming rather common.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that which is most in
+evidence with the public is not calculated to inspire confidence. It is
+employed almost exclusively in what is known as "fortune telling" and
+is often practiced by those who are interested only in the money they
+can earn by it. As a matter of course, trickery and fraud are found
+associated with it among such people, and those amongst them who are
+both capable and honest suffer on account of it.
+
+The fortune telling clairvoyant is usually one who was born with "second
+sight," as the Scotch have named it, and almost without an exception
+they do not in the least understand its rationale. They find certain
+facts in their consciousness that could not be known to them by the
+physical senses, but why or how they get the information they do not
+know. That form of clairvoyance is a sensitiveness related to the
+sympathetic nervous system, the center of which is the solar plexus. It
+has no relationship whatever to the mind, no association with
+intelligence, and will often--indeed, commonly--be possessed by the most
+ignorant and uncouth. It is much more common among Indians and negroes
+than among more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and will slowly
+disappear from the race. It belongs to the realm of emotion, not
+thought.
+
+The higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing," is associated
+with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and its seat is in the brain. It
+is not a "natural gift"[D] like the other, although it is latent in all
+human beings. It has been highly developed in some who have had the
+unusual opportunity of long training under the direct supervision of
+great psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never to be found among
+the fortune tellers. Only people with serious views of life and intense
+devotion to human service would have the patience and endurance to
+undergo such training and only those of singular purity of life would
+have any possibility of success. Such clairvoyants are people of keen
+intelligence. By special training and tremendous effort, not possible to
+most of us, they have pressed forward in evolution and attained a
+development that the race will be many a century in reaching.
+
+It is by the use of this exalted order of clairvoyance that invisible
+realms are explored, and additional knowledge is accumulated to the
+ancient wisdom. Such a clairvoyant is not a medium. The medium
+surrenders his physical mechanism for the use of another, who speaks
+through it, and at the close of the seance the medium knows nothing of
+what has occurred. The clairvoyant is always in possession of his senses
+and is fully aware of what is occurring. He is the explorer and
+discoverer. He deals with the facts of the life after bodily death in a
+different way than the physical scientist does but it is soon found by
+the student that the physical scientist and the psychic scientist
+corroborate each other. Together they bring overwhelming evidence to
+support the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness we
+have at this moment will never cease to be; that our individuality, with
+all its present memories, will eternally persist; that what we call
+death is in reality but a forward step in an orderly evolutionary
+journey and an entrance upon a more joyous phase of life, which is not
+remarkably different from that we live today. The sum total of the
+knowledge that we have gained through the combined work of the physical
+scientists and the occult scientists leads us to the conclusion that the
+death of the physical body means neither the annihilation of
+consciousness nor a radical change in consciousness. It is, in fact, but
+the release of consciousness from its confinement to the physical form,
+as a song-bird is released from a cage to the joyous freedom of a wider
+world, where woods and stream and field and sky give new impulse to its
+innate characteristics.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p. 154.
+
+[D] There are, of course, really no natural gifts. Nature does not favor
+some and ignore others. When a few possess what others do not have, they
+earned it by giving special attention to its development or as in the
+case of the psychic sensitiveness of the sympathetic nervous system, it
+is vestigial, and has been possessed by the race in earlier ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD
+
+
+In a treatise on elementary theosophy the solar system may be reckoned
+as our universe and we shall have no need of considering more than a
+small fragment of even that. It is septenary in constitution, as may be
+seen in its vibrations expressed in color and sound. Beyond the seven
+colors of the prism we have only tints and outside the seven notes we
+can get only overtones or undertones. There are likewise seven planes in
+the system but less than half of them require our attention, for the
+evolutionary field of the human soul is the three lower planes, known as
+the physical, astral and mental. When the human being has outgrown them
+in evolution he passes on to superhuman evolution.
+
+The word "plane," so often encountered in theosophical literature,
+should perhaps have some definition. It has a wide application and is
+used as a synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring to
+the physical plane the term embraces all we know of earth and sky and
+life through the physical senses.
+
+There are seven planes in our solar system because of the seven
+different combinations of its ultimate atoms. Each plane consists of a
+totally different grade of matter than the next plane, but all have for
+their base the ultimate atom of the solar system. When modern science
+discovered, to its astonishment, that the physical atom was a composite
+body it confirmed the theosophical teaching that the ultimate physical
+atom was _not_ the final point of division. Theosophy teaches that when
+the ultimate physical atom is disintegrated its particles become the
+coarsest matter of the next plane or region above it--the astral plane.
+The process repeated with astral matter results in driving its ultimate
+atom from the highest level of the astral plane or world to the lowest
+of the mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom is the brick
+of the universe stated a great truth, for of its combinations all forms
+are built; and if the idea be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar
+system it will then be true that of such "bricks" all the planes are
+built.
+
+The relationship of the planes to each other is that of interpenetrating
+spheres of matter. The physical plane, consisting of the earth and its
+atmosphere, is surrounded and interpenetrated by the astral plane, or
+world, which is an enormously larger globe of exceedingly tenuous
+matter. This vast sphere of invisible matter is _within_ the earth as
+well as beyond it, interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the
+earth's center. Its grossest grade of matter is so rare, and its
+vibrations so intense, that they cannot affect the physical senses and
+therefore we remain unconscious of it while that matter moves freely
+through all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life and
+activities for precisely the same reason that we know nothing of the
+messages of intelligence carried on the vibrations of the wireless
+telegraph, although they pass through the room where we sit. We have no
+sense organs with which it is possible to register such vibrations.
+Messages conveying intelligence of tremendous import, involving the
+movements of vast armies, the fall of empires and the destinies of great
+nations, flow through the very space we occupy but we are wholly
+unconscious of them. Even so we remain blind and deaf to the stupendous
+activities of life and consciousness in the astral world,
+notwithstanding the fact that it surrounds and permeates us while its
+forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the physical world as freely as
+water flows through a sieve.
+
+The mental world constitutes a region of our earth still more vast than
+the astral portion of it. As the astral sphere encloses the physical
+globe, the mental encompasses both, enclosing them and also
+interpenetrating them to the earth's center. The term "mental world" may
+seem confusing to some because we are accustomed to think of the mental
+and the material as being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or
+plane, of theosophy, is a world of _matter_, not merely thought. It is
+matter, however, of such remarkable tenuosity that it may properly be
+called mind-stuff, and in its rarest levels it is said to be "formless"
+so far as the existence of what the physical senses know as form is
+concerned.
+
+All three of these worlds, or planes--the physical, astral and
+mental--are, then, worlds of matter, of form, of activity, of thought
+and of enterprise. They are concentric globes, the physical enclosed by
+the astral, and both physical and astral enclosed by the mental. Within
+and without all physical matter are both astral and mental matter. Every
+physical atom is surrounded and permeated by astral and mental matter.
+The relationship is precisely that which exists between the ether and
+the lower grades of physical matter.
+
+If the relationship of the three worlds--physical, astral and mental--is
+fully understood later confusion of thought will be avoided. Physical
+language is not capable of fully expressing much with which students of
+the occult must deal. Because there is nothing better for the purpose,
+words must be used that express but a part of the truth and may
+sometimes prove misleading unless the constitution and relationship of
+the three spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary to speak of
+higher and lower worlds, or planes, inner or outer, and of the soul
+coming "down" into the material world when, as a matter of fact, _no
+movement in space_ is under consideration. The astral is commonly spoken
+of as an inner plane and while it truly is so because it can be known
+only to astral senses by a withdrawal of the consciousness from its
+exterior, material body, it is also true that the astral world is
+outside the physical because it envelops it as the sea does a sponge.
+We usually speak of coming down from higher planes to lower and that may
+be true not only in the sense of changing the state of consciousness
+from higher vibrations to lower ones but it _could_ mean a journey in
+space from a point in the astral plane above the physical globe to a
+point at its surface. "Up" and "down" are relative, not absolute. "Down"
+for us is toward the earth's center and "up" is the opposite direction.
+A spire in the Occident and a spire in the Orient are both said to be
+pointing upward but they are pointing in opposite directions. On most
+parts of the earth's surface we have four directions, while at the poles
+there is, of course, but one direction--south or north, as the case may
+be. East, west and north disappear at the north pole. Reflection upon
+such facts leads one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility of
+space itself disappearing from the inner planes--space as we know it.
+
+The matter of each of the planes consists of seven classes. We are
+familiar with the solids, liquids and gases of the physical plane, and
+to them must be added four grades of the ether. The seven grades of
+matter of the astral and mental worlds constitute an important part of
+the mechanism for the soul's evolution, for they determine the state of
+consciousness in the life beyond the physical plane. But a study of
+those states of consciousness belongs to a later chapter.
+
+A difficulty which the student of theosophy should make an early effort
+to eliminate, is the tendency to think of invisible realms as unreal. It
+should not be forgotten that it is only the limitation of the physical
+senses that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond the visible.
+We should keep in mind the fact that the invisible realms are composed
+of matter as certainly as the air is matter, or a stone is matter. The
+water in a pan may evaporate, but it does not cease to be matter because
+it has passed beyond the ken of the physical senses. It will some time
+condense once more and play its part as the liquid, water, or as the
+solid, ice. Only when matter is in certain forms can we know of its
+existence through the physical senses.
+
+We frequently hear people who are students of the occult speak of a
+deceased person as having left the earth. But passing into the astral
+plane, or world, is not, of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral
+world and the mental world are divisions of the earth. As the atmosphere
+is invisible and yet is a part of the earth's physical matter, so the
+invisible astral and mental regions are other parts of the earth. They
+are properly called worlds because the activities in consciousness that
+make up existence there are as remote from ours as though they were upon
+another planet. We have erroneously supposed that with the physical
+senses we really see and know the earth, whereas we have known only that
+small fragment of the earth that consists of physical matter. Beyond the
+limitation of our poor senses stretch in unsuspected grandeur vaster
+regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations of an intenser life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+The soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness, or
+the life of the solar Logos; an individualized portion of the universal
+mind. That fragment of the divine life, with its latent God-like
+attributes, is expressed through a mechanism of consciousness that is
+formed of the matter of the various planes. Naturally enough it is
+expressed more fully upon the higher planes than upon the lower. At a
+very high level it is known as the monad. When it reaches down into the
+higher subdivisions of the mental world it is the ego, a lesser
+expression of the same divine life that pours from the Logos through the
+monad--lesser because it is then functioning through the denser matter
+of a lower level.
+
+The knowledge that has been gained about the nature of matter in recent
+years is helpful in understanding the activities of consciousness. The
+atom is found to be a center of force, and we are at the point where
+matter, as we have known it, disappears. All the force and consciousness
+of the solar system is, of course, but the life of the Logos, and on
+higher planes the distinctions we observe here fade out. Matter becomes
+a very different thing from the matter we know. The ether of the
+physical world is almost inconceivably tenuous matter. Yet it is gross
+when compared to the lowest grade of astral matter. The matter of the
+mental world is enormously rarer than the most tenuous matter of the
+astral world. In view of these facts it requires no stress of the
+imagination to understand that the matter of the higher planes is
+responsive to the vibrations of consciousness.
+
+The outraying energies of the individualized center of consciousness act
+upon the matter of the plane and draw about it a film that slowly grows
+into a vehicle through which consciousness can be more fully expressed,
+and which serves as a point of vantage from which its expression can be
+extended to lower planes.
+
+The seven subdivisions of the mental world fall naturally into two
+groups, composed of the three higher and the four lower grades of
+matter. The ego, anchored in the matter of the two planes above the
+mental world, descends to the upper levels of the mental and the vesture
+of matter with which it clothes itself is known as the causal body.
+Sending its energies downward, or outward, to the lower levels of the
+mental world, it establishes itself there in what slowly becomes a
+mental body. Again in the astral world the process is repeated and a
+vehicle of consciousness is formed of astral matter. The physical body
+is the lowest and last of the vehicles to be formed and as it is slowly
+built, in the months preceding birth, the matter it contains falls into
+place under the operation of occult laws which permit no element of
+chance to enter into its construction.
+
+Each of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness on the plane
+to which it belongs. The soul is evolving simultaneously in each of the
+worlds, physical, astral and mental, and these various bodies enable it
+to receive the vibrations of the plane they belong to and thus to be
+conscious there. The mental body is the seat of intellectual activity.
+Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes through the astral body
+into the physical brain. Whenever we think we are using the mental body.
+The astral body is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All emotion
+passes from it to the physical body to be expressed in the material
+world. The astral world is also called the emotional world, as the
+mental plane is called the mental world. The physical body is the soul's
+instrument of action. It attaches it to the physical world, enables the
+consciousness to contact material objects and to move and express on the
+material plane the thoughts and emotions generated in the mental and
+astral bodies.
+
+Another part of the mechanism of consciousness is known as the etheric
+double. But it is only a link in the chain and not a body through which
+the soul can function. It is composed of the etheric matter of the
+physical world and connects the astral body with the physical body. As
+every atom of physical matter is surrounded and permeated by etheric
+matter, it follows that the physical body has its duplicate in etheric
+matter. "Etheric double" is a very appropriate name since it is a
+perfect duplicate of the physical body in etheric matter. It serves the
+purpose of supplying the life force to the nervous system and is the
+medium through which sensation is conveyed. The action of an anaesthetic
+drives out so much of the matter of the etheric double that the
+connection is broken and sensation in the physical body ceases.
+
+One of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear conception of the
+constitution of man, and realizing that he is a soul functioning through
+various vehicles of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of thought
+common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed to thinking of the
+physical body itself as being the man, and if there is any thought at
+all of the consciousness surviving the death of the body it is very
+vague and indefinite as to where it exists and how it is expressed. Very
+little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity of the belief
+that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of
+twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real
+man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial
+disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are
+but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are
+expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a
+planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument for a
+purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body is a variable mass. It
+may increase or diminish greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There
+is no permanent relationship between the man and the physical matter
+which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness. According to the
+physiologists every atom of the body changes within a period of a few
+years. The cells wear out, break down and pass away to be replaced by
+new matter. Not a particle of the physical matter that was in our bodies
+seven years ago is there now, and none that is there now will remain.
+Within seven years, or less, we shall have bodies composed of new matter
+as certainly as an infant's is.
+
+Of course such reconstruction of the body does not change its
+appearance. It is built on the same lines. It is as it would be with
+some very old cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly
+rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The roof serves its time
+and is replaced. The walls crumble first in one place and then another
+until they have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand years
+has passed there may be none of the original material in the building,
+yet its appearance is unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have
+passed away and will be growing in the trees and blooming in the flowers
+in a few years. The bodies we shall then have are now scattered through
+the world. They will be brought together during that time and will come
+from many parts of the earth.
+
+The physical senses continually deceive us and nowhere more than in our
+ideas about the physical body. It is an unstable mass of matter, in
+constant motion, with great gulfs of space between its atoms. Emerson
+was very far ahead of his time and it took science a half century to
+catch up with him and learn that he had recorded a fact in nature when
+he wrote:
+
+      Atom from atom yawns as far
+      As earth from moon, or star from star.
+
+In 1908 the _Scientific American Supplement_, commenting on our
+reconstructed ideas about matter, remarked that the actual mass of the
+physical body to the apparent mass was about one to one million!
+
+If the physical body is merely an organized mass of matter, continually
+varying, constantly coming and going, and having no permanent
+relationship to the consciousness that functions through it, what reason
+is there for believing that it is the man? Does it seem strange that the
+center of consciousness should be able to draw about itself on the
+higher planes aggregations of matter and finally to express itself on
+the material plane through the mass of matter we call the body? If that
+is mysterious quite as miraculous things are going on constantly about
+us unnoticed. Thoreau calls attention to the fact that we become so
+accustomed to the marvelous expressions of life all about us that we are
+oblivious of the phenomena that are taking place. Commenting on the
+magic possible to nature he says:
+
+      "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where
+      no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed--a, to me,
+      equally mysterious origin for it. Convince me that you have
+      a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.... In
+      the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the
+      Patent Office, and labeled, I think, 'Poitrine jaune
+      grosse,' large yellow squash. Two came up, and one bore a
+      squash which weighed 123-1/2 pounds, the other bore four,
+      weighing together 186-1/4 pounds. Who would have believed
+      that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that
+      corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to
+      catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace
+      of terriers which unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which
+      will find other things in that corner of my garden. Perfect
+      alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end,
+      and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible
+      treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value
+      which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz
+      about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour to see a
+      juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them
+      it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than
+      light."[E]
+
+A seed is a center of force through which life, at a much lower level
+than the human, flows and gathers about that center the material mass
+that serves the purpose of its lowly evolution. At the human level
+consciousness has become self-consciousness and a marvelously complex
+mechanism is required to express it and serve the purpose of its farther
+evolution.
+
+This complex mechanism of consciousness, composed of the various bodies
+through which the ego expresses itself at different levels, is used as a
+whole for functioning on the physical plane. But when the ego is
+functioning no farther down than the astral plane, the physical body
+is, of course, temporarily discarded. It is then in the condition known
+as sleep, or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the
+consciousness from the physical body. When the separation occurs in the
+case of the medium it is called a trance. The cause of the inert
+condition of the physical body is the same in both cases--the withdrawal
+of the consciousness of the ego. The physical body is then unoccupied,
+but the consciousness maintains magnetic connection with it. In death
+that tie is severed and the consciousness can return to the body no
+more. Instances in which the apparently dead are brought back to life
+are cases where the magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there is
+every appearance of death.
+
+In form and feature the physical body has its exact duplicate in the
+astral body, and in it we function in the astral world whenever the
+separation between the two occurs, whether from sleep or death. In sleep
+the consciousness, expressing itself in the astral body in the astral
+world, may be turned dreamily inward or it may be turned outward and be
+vividly aware of the life and activities of that world. But there is
+small chance that any memory of it will come through into the physical
+consciousness upon awakening. Occasionally, however, it does occur and
+then it is usually remembered as a very vivid dream. In illness, and
+other abnormal conditions, the connection between the physical and
+astral consciousness is much closer. At a comparatively high point in
+evolution the two states of consciousness merge. The man is then
+continuously conscious, and has a full memory in the physical brain of
+all his activities in the astral world during the hours when the
+physical body was asleep.
+
+Consciousness is, of course, at its worst when expressed through the
+limitation of its lower vehicles. Any person, whether brilliant or
+stupid, will be much abler and keener on the astral plane than on the
+physical, because in sleep, and after death, he has lost the limitations
+imposed by physical matter. But the degree of restriction is variable
+and depends much upon the _kind_ of matter of which the brain and body
+are composed; for the physical atoms vary greatly, and as they come and
+go in the passing years the body may either become purified and refined
+or it may grow grosser and coarser. By careful attention to food and
+drink, and by control of the emotions, the limitations of physical
+matter may be lessened and a much higher and more efficient state of
+consciousness in the physical body can be attained.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[E] The Succession of Forest Trees.--Thoreau.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DEATH
+
+
+Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly associated with a
+feeling of fear is because we give so little thought to it. Most people
+seem never to think of the subject at all until death invades the home
+and threatens some member of the family. Then terror fills the mind and
+all but paralyzes the reasoning faculties.
+
+Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental civilization, is
+eloquent testimony to the materialism of our times. It is doubt about
+the future that causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific
+basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear of death
+disappear. It is feared because it seems like annihilation. If people
+really believed in a heavenly existence beyond the physical life they
+could not possibly be filled with terror at the prospect of entering it.
+If a man's religion has not given him a genuine confidence in a future
+life, and made it as much of a reality to him as this life is, it has
+failed to do what we have a right to demand of religion. If it does not
+enable him to look upon the face of his dead without a doubt, or a fear,
+there is something wrong, either with his religion or with his
+comprehension of it. What possible reason is there for fearing death? A
+thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not be pernicious. To
+regard death as a disastrous thing would be an indictment of the sanity
+of nature.
+
+Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of experience. It is the
+annihilation of nothing but the physical body, in its aspect of an
+instrument of activity and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the
+physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together in the human form
+for temporary use, are, in death, released from the cohesive force of a
+living organism and will return whence they came.
+
+In reality there is no such thing as death, unless it be strictly
+applied to the form, regarded as a temporary vehicle of consciousness.
+As for the consciousness, there is no death. There is life in a physical
+form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death, or cessation,
+of the individual intelligence. What we name "death" is but a change in
+the orderly evolution of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is
+viewed from the physical plane that such a term can be applied to it.
+From this plane it is death, or departure. But looked at from the astral
+world it is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning of
+the expression of the soul through a material body on the physical
+plane. It is an arrival. But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure
+and therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure from a
+physical body is here. So death and departure from one plane is simply
+birth, or arrival, upon another, although it is not, of course, birth
+as we know it.
+
+Every process in nature has a part to play in evolution and therefore
+death is as necessary as life and as beneficial as birth. Death is the
+destroyer of the useless. There is a time when each human being should
+die--that is to say, a time when the physical body has fulfilled its
+mission and completely accomplished the purpose for which it exists. To
+continue life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste energy
+and lose time in the evolutionary journey. Under the action of what we
+call "diseases" the body becomes inefficient, or through the gradual
+breaking down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain. The
+consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed through its impaired
+machine and it is decidedly to the advantage of the ego to withdraw from
+it. The soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work with
+broken and rusted tools. Good results are no longer possible. It is then
+that death comes, beneficently destroying the worn out instrument and
+releasing the consciousness from its too-often painful situation and
+permitting its escape into a field of unobstructed activity.
+
+Death is painless. The breaking down of the body under the ravages of
+disease may cause pain, but that belongs to physical life, not death.
+Distress may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But the dying
+person who does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and no
+pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation will convince
+one that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on the part of
+surviving friends, not on the part of the dying. Those who are left
+behind remain within the limitations of the physical senses, and they
+are therefore separated from the so-called dead man, but he is not
+separated from them. It is because of that separation that the terror of
+death exists for them.
+
+But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary value of
+death. The separation it causes intensifies love as nothing else could
+do. It is only when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate his
+real value and comprehend how large a part he really played in our
+existence. As sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener
+realization of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its
+contrast, gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how
+enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death of a close
+friend. The whole nature is in some degree purified and spiritualized.
+Selfishness is decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for others in
+distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary advance is made. We
+have only to reflect upon the fact that separation without death
+produces the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
+value of death. In constant association we grow careless and
+indifferent. But an absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer
+perspective of personal associations and thereafter life has new zest. A
+child regards its mother with a certain degree of appreciation but a
+short absence enormously increases its appreciation. All human beings
+come into closer and more sympathetic association after a period of
+separation, and the completeness of the separation caused by death
+renders it peculiarly efficacious in the development of the spiritual
+side of one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention away
+from materialistic life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed
+in material success. There is no thought at all given to the higher
+life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities of the world, hold
+them firmly. They become completely self-centered. Then suddenly death
+enters and breaks the family circle, and the transient character of all
+they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly dawns upon them, and
+attention is turned to the nobler things of life. It is a well known
+fact that great wars are accompanied or followed with widespread
+spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the shadow of
+death has fallen on tens of thousands of households.
+
+It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics if it would not be an
+improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow caused by the death of our
+friends were softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
+It is evidently the plan of nature to have the physical life and the
+astral life normally separated at our present level of evolution. Some
+of the reasons have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly others
+that we are incapable of understanding, and still others that we can
+readily comprehend. If the higher, joyous life of the astral world were
+open to our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties of this
+life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our life in the physical
+body may be compared to the tasks of children in school. They have
+serious business before them in the acquiring of knowledge and the
+development of the intellect. They can best accomplish the work when
+completely isolated from other phases of life. Introduce into their
+work-day consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus, the
+military parade, the picnic and the dancing parties, and the purpose for
+which the school exists would be defeated. To exactly the extent that
+the consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable progress
+be made with the work of the school-room. And so it is with the
+limitation of our physical senses. It serves a purpose.
+
+But there is a point in human evolution where such limitation of the
+senses is no longer of any service and may be transcended. Some people
+have attained it. They are those who have previously been referred to as
+the psychic scientists, with the higher clairvoyance of the
+cerebro-spinal system developed. It is an accomplishment to which all
+may aspire. None need submit to the separation commonly caused by death.
+By hard work in co-operating with nature's methods of evolution and by a
+serious and sustained effort to live the highest and most helpful life
+of which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain a level of
+consciousness where one has personal knowledge that the dead still live.
+But in the very work of rising to that level, the concentration
+previously enforced by the limitation of the physical senses will have
+been acquired.
+
+One of the common delusions about death is that some radical change in
+the nature of a person then takes place. This is no doubt due in part to
+the theological ideas that have come down to us from the time of the
+Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some
+sort of a judgment that classes him as either a saint qualified for
+eternal bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The belief is
+based on that erroneous view of human nature that was common to the
+melodrama of a past generation and that will possibly have eternal life
+in the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good and
+the villain as absolutely bad. The one had no flaw of character and the
+other had not a redeeming feature. But human nature does not thus
+express itself. The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding it
+is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand we find no perfected
+beings. The perfect heroes were merely creations of an imperfect
+imagination. At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither the
+absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.
+
+Why should the change we call death transform a human being? It is
+merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of consciousness. The soul,
+the thinker, has lost connection with the physical world because the
+physical body has ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body
+remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he can not think more
+than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved. All that has happened
+in death is that contact with the material world has been lost.
+
+One of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom, and we
+often hear of people getting into communication with those who have
+passed on, with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is true that
+death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness and that in the
+astral world one can see a little further ahead and take a few more
+things into consideration. But--and it is a vital point--he would have
+no better judgment in determining a course of action than he had while
+here in the physical world.
+
+Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is
+neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it
+previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there.
+If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the
+astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
+unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world
+where emotion is the determining factor.
+
+Death merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where the evolution
+of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult to say which is the greater
+misfortune--the delusions that make death the king of terrors, or the
+complacent belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings the
+soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility and settles
+one's fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility or
+transform the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine
+destiny.
+
+The theosophical conception of death is as consoling as it is
+scientific. Instead of the fear of death it gives us knowledge of
+continued life. Instead of doubt and despair it gives us confidence and
+joy, for it guarantees the companionship once more of those we have
+known and loved, and erroneously supposed we have lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ASTRAL WORLD
+
+
+When the physical body dies there is an interval between the loss of
+consciousness here and the dawning of the astral consciousness. During
+that interim a review of the life scenes takes place. Everything between
+birth and death passes again through the consciousness, as it thus
+pauses in the etheric double, between the life activities of two worlds.
+Then peaceful unconsciousness follows, from which the man awakes in the
+astral world.
+
+To those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing to some remote
+heaven, where they become angels, it will perhaps sound startling to say
+that a dead man is not aware at first that the change we call death has
+taken place. Yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at all
+remarkable that it should be so with many. We have only to recall the
+fact that all physical matter is surrounded and permeated with astral
+matter to realize that the physical plane is duplicated in astral
+matter. Not only the physical body of the human being but, of course,
+every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The dying man loses
+consciousness of the physical plane and awakes as from a sleep to the
+astral consciousness. He sees then the exact duplicate, in astral
+matter, of the familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees, too, his
+friends, for their astral bodies are replicas of their physical forms.
+
+And yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference, though not a
+difference that enables him to comprehend what has occurred. He may know
+that only yesterday, or what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was
+ill and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he was about to
+die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never felt so free from aches and
+pains in all his life. The pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth
+are his again! This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally
+speaks to them, but gets no reply and finds that he can not attract
+their attention. It must be remembered that he can not see their
+physical bodies any more than they can see his astral body. Yet he truly
+sees them. If a so-called dead man and a living person look at the same
+instant at another living person they will both see him, but the latter
+sees the physical body while the former sees the astral body that
+surrounds and permeates it.
+
+Under these circumstances it is not strange that the new arrival in the
+astral world is seized with a feeling of baffling mystery. He is in full
+possession of his reasoning faculties, and will power, but there is a
+puzzling limitation to his efforts to produce expected results. A
+partial analogy may be found in the case of a person suddenly stricken
+with aphasia over night. He rises in the morning, dresses, and goes
+about his accustomed duties without the slightest suspicion that any
+change has come to him until he takes up the morning paper and
+discovers that he can not read--that the familiar print simply means
+nothing to him!
+
+Of course, in time the living dead man gets adjusted to the new life. He
+soon meets others in the astral world who have been there longer and
+they, sooner or later, succeed in convincing him that he is not having
+an exceptionally vivid dream.
+
+The astral world, as explained in a previous chapter, has seven
+subdivisions and the astral body contains matter belonging to each of
+them. While we have the physical body the matter of the astral body is
+in rapid circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented at
+the surface. But when the connection with the material plane is broken,
+a rearrangement of the matter of the astral body automatically takes
+place (unless it is prevented by an exercise of will power) and the
+grossest grade of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently
+the consciousness of the man is limited to that subdivision of the
+astral world represented by the lowest grade of matter which his astral
+body contains at the time of his death. This is a fact the importance of
+which it would be difficult to over emphasize, because his after-death
+state of consciousness, his joy or sorrow--in short, his temporary
+heaven or hell, depends upon his location in the astral world.
+
+There are three, and only three modes of death, or release from the
+physical body--by old age, by disease, or by violence. Old age is the
+natural and desirable close of the chapter of physical plane experience.
+It is most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a large
+harvest of experience. To live long and actively is excellent fortune.
+It is not well to pass into the astral world with strong physical
+desires. As old age comes on the desire forces subside. Most of that
+grade of astral matter that is capable of expressing them has slowly
+disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual loosening of the life
+forces from the material plane, and that has many advantages.
+
+Release from the physical body by disease is next in order of
+desirability. It is a quicker and less complete breaking down of the
+connection with the physical world. Nevertheless it is a condition in
+which much progress may be made in getting free from physical desires,
+as those who have had experience with invalids are aware. Desires
+usually grow weaker with the progress of the disease that finally ends
+in death.
+
+Release from the physical form by violence is, of course, the least
+desirable of the three, not merely because it is violence, but for the
+much more important reason that sudden death finds the man, as a rule,
+with a considerable amount of the lower grades of astral matter in his
+astral body.
+
+Whether the death by violence is the result of accident, murder, suicide
+or legal execution, the astral plane conditions of consciousness are
+alike unfortunate, in that it is sudden death, not the manner of death,
+that permits entry upon the astral life before the lower grades of
+astral matter have been eliminated from the astral body. This is one
+reason why suicide is unfortunate--because it ushers the man into the
+astral world with more of the matter of the lower levels in his astral
+vehicle than would be there if he had lived out his normal physical
+life.
+
+Purgatory is a term often applied to the lowest level of the astral
+world. The word is well chosen because it is there that the moral nature
+is purged of its impurities. Strong desires cultivated and indulged
+during the life in the physical body are eliminated with the gross
+astral matter through which alone they can be expressed and, freed to
+that extent, the man passes to the next subdivision, and into its higher
+state of consciousness.
+
+In the astral life some people linger long on the lower levels while
+others know them not at all, but awaken to the blissful consciousness of
+the higher subdivisions. Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping
+together people of a kind. It is, however, the manner in which one lives
+during physical life that determines his happiness or sorrow after
+death. The astral body, the seat of the emotions, is, like the physical
+body, constantly changing the matter that composes it. An emotion of any
+kind expresses itself as a vibration in the matter of the astral body.
+If it is a base emotion, such as anger, hatred, lust or cruelty, it
+throws into vibration the grossest of the astral body's matter, for only
+in that can it be expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love,
+sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects only the rarer
+grades of astral matter, for in them only can such feeling be expressed.
+
+With most people there is a constant mingling of a wide range of
+emotions, with a gain in one direction and a loss in another. One who
+fortunately understands the law of emotional cause and effect may make
+absolutely certain of a comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane after
+death. He would make it a rule to watch his emotions and control them,
+knowing that each time he indulged a gross one the vibration set up in
+his astral body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of matter
+in it, while pure and exalted emotions would strengthen the higher
+grades. Ultimately, the grossest grade, becoming atrophied for the lack
+of activity, would drop away from him.
+
+The descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic scientists are
+calculated to induce even the reckless to avoid it. If we could bring
+together all the vilest men and women now living on the physical plane,
+the crudest of murderers, the most besotted drunkards, the vilest
+degenerates, the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends of every
+description, and huddle them together in hovels reeking with filth, and
+let them remain without any outward government, free to prey upon each
+other, we should perhaps have a faint comprehension of the reality of
+the lowest subdivision of the astral world. But no physical plane
+comparison can do it full justice, for we must remember that it is the
+emotional world and that the feelings of its inhabitants make its
+atmosphere in a way that would here be impossible. Astral matter
+instantly and exactly reproduces emotion, so that the fiend or the
+sensualist looks exactly what he feels. Even in the unresponsive
+physical matter, the evil in a man is often sufficiently expressed to
+fill those who behold him with terror. In the astral world every cruel
+thought and hideous emotion would express itself in visible form and the
+multitudinous emotions welling up in the lower level of the astral
+world would be as a loathsome swarm of reptiles gliding through its
+horrible life. Add to all that the fact that the hopeless despair of its
+denizens gives an atmosphere of utter gloom and desolation, and we have
+a hell that leaves no need of other torture to check the course of the
+erring soul. And yet there is no suffering that is not self-imposed. It
+is both consistent and just that a man should associate with his kind
+and look upon himself in others until he grows sick of his own vileness
+and cries out in agony of spirit against his own moral offenses. It must
+not be assumed that every person dying with considerable matter
+belonging to the lower astral level still within his emotional body will
+necessarily pass through such experiences. It should never be forgotten
+that we are dealing with a matter of the utmost complexity and that even
+the most exhaustive description in print would present only a fragment
+of the truth. The conditions of consciousness on any subplane vary as
+individuals vary. Some people on the lowest astral level are wholly
+unconscious of their surroundings. Another variation is that some people
+find themselves floating in darkness and largely cut off from others--a
+sufficiently undesirable condition, and yet better than the fate of
+some. All states of astral consciousness are reactions from previous
+good or evil conduct and are, moreover, temporary conditions that will
+in time be left behind.
+
+In a different way and at a higher level there may be suffering on the
+astral plane that is purifying the nature. Not all offenses against
+nature's laws are of so gross a type. There is the abuse of desire and
+the violation of conscience that may result in various kinds of regret
+and emotional distress. A desire of a refined type strongly built up
+upon the physical plane lives with an intenser vitality on the astral
+plane after the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton and a
+miser have strong desires of a very different type. Each of them is
+likely to suffer on account of it during the astral life. They need not
+dwell upon the lowest level to get a reaction from their folly in the
+physical life. We can easily imagine the distress of the glutton in a
+world without food. There could be no distress because of hunger, for
+the astral body is not, like the physical body, renewed and maintained
+by what it consumes. But hunger and the gratification of the sense of
+taste are very different things. It is the latter that would trouble the
+gormand, and it is said that great suffering, as in the case of the
+drunkard, is his lot until the desire gradually disappears because of
+the impossibility of its gratification.
+
+The miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his greed for gold
+may be quite as intense as that of the glutton for sensual
+gratification. The accumulation of money has been the dominant thought
+of his life. He has created in his mind a wholly false value for money
+and it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it. Only dire
+necessity forces him to spend any portion of his hoard. It is not
+difficult to imagine his emotions when he is obliged to leave it behind
+and see others spend it freely.
+
+Any kind of a desire that is related to the physical body is without
+means of gratification in the astral world and if such desire has been
+cultivated until it becomes strong enough to play an important part in
+one's life it will certainly give him more or less trouble after the
+loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of an over-refinement
+and excess in a natural appetite, as in the case of the epicure, or is
+simply an artificial thing that is unrelated to any natural demand, as
+in the case of the smoker, the inability to gratify the desire is
+equally distressing. The suffering that results could hardly be judged
+by what would follow on the physical plane when desire is thwarted, for
+in the astral life emotion expresses itself much more intensely.
+
+All of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever type, is the
+natural result of the thoughts, emotions and acts during the life on the
+physical plane. The astral world is that part of the mechanism for man's
+evolution that brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving in the
+wrong direction. He is not being punished. The injurious forces he has
+generated are simply reacting upon him. This reaction, that sets him
+right, is as certain as in the case of the infant that picks up a live
+coal. It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in result, and it
+works itself out in a multiplicity of ways. One of the methods of
+reaction that helps to stamp out a fault is the automatic repetition of
+the unpleasant consequences of wrong doing. The murderer will serve for
+a general illustration. In the case of a deliberate, premeditated and
+cruel murder, the assassin is moved by such base motives as revenge or
+jealousy. The results of these, so far as their frightful consequences
+to the victim are concerned, do not in the least tend to deter the
+assassin from further deeds of violence. He feels gratified with his
+success and is quite satisfied with himself. Only the possibility of
+detection and punishment troubles him. If they follow in due course they
+will accomplish something in correcting his erroneous views of life. But
+they will not be sufficient to register indelibly, in the very nature of
+the man, a proper sense of the horror of which he has been guilty. Such
+a man can be impressed and his viewpoint changed only by consequences to
+himself. It is in the reaction in the astral life of the forces he has
+generated here that he gets the lesson that forces in upon his
+consciousness the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the
+physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless come into
+contact in the astral world with conditions sufficiently horrible. He
+has made a tie with his victim that can not be broken until the scales
+of justice are balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the
+uttermost. Just what form of retribution will follow depends, of course,
+on the nature of the case. But the reaction is as certain as it is
+multiplex. One of its variants is the gruesome experience of always
+fleeing from the corpse of the victim, but with the utter impossibility
+of a moment's escape. In the case of a murderer who has been
+apprehended, tried, condemned and executed, the whole of the tragedy and
+its sequel would be, not only lived over in imagination but repeated
+automatically, in fact, and worked out in full detail in the plastic
+matter of the astral region. Probably few people have the imagination to
+comprehend what the murderer feels of apprehension and fear at his trial
+when his life is in the balance; or what he suffers while hiding from
+justice and making futile efforts to escape the pursuing officers of the
+law; or what his emotions are as his hands are tied and he steps upon
+the death trap. All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly.
+As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject--let us say
+something that is the cause of much anxiety--finds it impossible to turn
+his attention from it and think of other things, or go to sleep, and is
+impelled against his desire to think the matter over and over, so the
+assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his crime and can not escape
+from living and acting it all over and over again until a revulsion of
+feeling arouses him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime.
+
+Again it should be said that no attempt is here made to give more than a
+very fragmentary description, and a few hints, of the manner in which
+the retributory laws of nature work. A writer on the subject should also
+be careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain classes of
+offenders against nature's laws severe penalties accrue, the reader does
+not get the impression that suffering is the common lot in the astral
+life. The truth of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate
+lives, and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to others,
+will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate side of astral existence.
+In the limitations, the vexations, the physical aches and ills, the
+poverty, sorrow and suffering of the material plane, most of us are as
+near to hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The ordinary
+man of average morality has so little of the matter of the lowest level
+of the astral plane lingering in him that as a rule he would begin his
+postmortem existence on the next higher subdivision, which is the
+counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore have no knowledge
+of the hell that exists on the lower level. But that is not at all true
+of those who live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger,
+jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses, that often lead
+to violent crimes. It is possible to live the physical life so sanely,
+usefully, harmoniously and unselfishly that at the death of the physical
+body one will pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career in
+the astral world. But while that is quite possible the unfortunate fact
+is that a great many people so color all their emotions with selfishness
+that the astral sojourn is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the
+emotions that determine the astral life and it is said that if they are
+directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the astral plane
+that are very unpleasant.
+
+It must be expected that any idea we may form of the astral life will be
+incomplete, and inadequate to give a true conception what it is really
+like. Perhaps the most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which
+reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There the average
+man will begin his conscious astral career. If we think of the world as
+we know it here and then imagine all that is material to have vanished
+from it we shall gain some comprehension of the situation. Eliminate the
+necessity of providing food, clothing and shelter and nearly all of the
+labor of the race would cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining, the
+building, the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange of the
+products of field and factory, constitute nearly the whole of human
+activity. In the astral life no food is required and one is clothed with
+astral matter from which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and
+rapidity of thought. No houses are needed for shelter. The astral body
+is not susceptible to degrees of heat and cold, and nothing there
+corresponds to our temperatures. There is no division of night and day,
+objects being self-luminous and light being perpetual.
+
+If we could drop out of physical life all need of physical labor,
+abolish all response to heat or cold, the need of food and houses, and
+add unlimited wealth or, to be more exact, give each person the power to
+possess all that wealth can confer and much that it can not, we would
+have an approach to a conception of the astral world from one viewpoint.
+Each one entering the astral life has, of course, a fullness of liberty
+and freedom from responsibility that is not instantly comprehensible to
+the physical mind. There is nothing whatever that he must do. There is,
+however, plenty that he can do if he desires to be active. On the
+physical plane many people of wealth travel and amuse themselves with
+sight seeing. Thousands of others would do so if it were possible. In
+the astral world it is possible and large numbers of people drift
+aimlessly about with no particular plans. Multitudes belonging to
+various religious sects organize themselves into congregations, build
+edifices and spend much time in religious services. Others amuse
+themselves building houses and constructing landscapes. It is not at all
+necessary, but the old habits live and influence activities.
+
+The average person in the astral world gives himself to idleness and
+the enjoyment of the intensified emotions of the astral life just as the
+majority of people would do here if it were possible to escape the round
+of duties so sternly imposed by their necessities. For a long time the
+most of them also make daily visits to the homes they have left behind
+on the physical plane. Those who have a strong tie of affection with
+some member of the family frequently spend much time lingering around
+and going on little journeys about the premises or elsewhere with the
+loved one. They understand that the dead person is not perceived by the
+living one, but nevertheless they desire to be near. They do not have a
+full consciousness of all the living person is thinking and doing, but
+they are fully aware of the state of feeling, or emotion, and whether
+the living friend is pleasantly or unpleasantly affected by passing
+events.
+
+As the astral life becomes more and more familiar to the newly arrived
+individual he gets well settled in it and gradually readjusts his
+viewpoint to a truer perspective than he has here. As time passes he is
+less and less in touch with the affairs of the physical life and finally
+loses consciousness of them altogether as he passes on to the higher
+levels of the astral world.
+
+But there are many people who have a more serious view of life and who
+lose no opportunity of acquiring knowledge, and the astral world, which
+is called "the hall of learning" by students of the occult, presents
+remarkably good conditions to them. Here we are limited in three
+dimensions of matter and hampered by the very narrow range of the
+physical senses. In the astral world matter has four dimensions and new
+and marvelous avenues of learning open before the student. Those who are
+at all interested in music, or art of any kind, find both the field and
+the facilities enormously extended. Those who study nature, whether by
+directly probing into her secrets or by cleverly combining her
+principles into new processes and inventions, have such opportunities as
+scientist and discoverer has not dreamed of on this plane. And so for
+all the thoughtful and studious there is a life of the most useful and
+fascinating kind in the astral world.
+
+But it must not be supposed that the opportunity of usefulness and
+progress is only for the studious. There as here the opportunity for
+useful work in helping humanity forward is boundless; for while poverty
+and disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic work
+of other kinds to be done. People are to be taught, for there, as here,
+the majority are sadly in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of
+nature's laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in harmony with
+them in order to get the greatest happiness from life. But the work to
+be done is by no means confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes
+the teaching so necessary has brought a great many people into the
+unfortunate condition, where immediate assistance is most urgently
+needed, and there is such a variety of helplessness that nobody need be
+idle.
+
+Because of the false teaching upon the subject of life hereafter, people
+are bewildered when they become conscious in the astral life. Many have
+had their minds so vividly impressed with the awful fate that awaits
+those who are not "saved" before death that they fall into a state of
+terror when at last they realize that death has really occurred. Others,
+who may or may not be haunted with any such absurd misconceptions, cling
+so tenaciously to the physical life when about to leave it that there is
+not complete separation between the etheric double and astral body. The
+result is that the unfortunate person finds himself cut off from the
+physical world and yet not arrived in the astral! Wrapped in a cloud of
+etheric matter he drifts for a time in terror of the unknown. Those
+among the so-called dead who are kindly enough to rescue the distressed
+may come to their relief and give valuable assistance.
+
+Perhaps the commonest thing that engages the attention of the astral
+worker is the fear that death brings to most people. They arrive in the
+astral world with the feeling that everything is unknown and uncertain.
+All preconceived ideas about the life after death have suddenly been
+found unreliable and they are afraid of, they know not what. They want
+to cling to anybody who knows something of the new world. When we
+remember that people are arriving in the astral world by the tens of
+thousands daily, even under normal conditions, it is evident that all
+who wish to be of service can find plenty to do. No special knowledge of
+the astral plane is necessary. Common sense is a sufficient equipment,
+in such simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead of giving
+the entire time to the pleasures of that world. The work for the astral
+helpers ranges upward in complexity, of course, and there is profitable
+activity for those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually
+work in well organized groups and render service of great practical
+value.
+
+Life on the astral plane has its end for the same reason that it comes
+to a close on the physical plane. Nature's purpose has been accomplished
+and the man is ready to go on farther in his evolution. The length of
+the astral life varies just as it does in the physical world. Some
+physical lives are very long and sometimes only when five scores of
+years, or more, have passed does the ego withdraw. Other lives are very
+short and scarcely well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close.
+There is nevertheless a general average to be found. It is at least
+possible to make averages for different classes of people and to say
+that a majority of those who are of ordinary health and strength are
+likely to attain a stated age, while it is certain that the majority of
+those who have such, and such, a physical handicap will lose their
+physical bodies when they are much younger. Such general rules may also
+be applied to the astral life.
+
+Here a long and alert life is most desirable because the purpose of the
+physical plane is to gather experience that shall be transmuted into
+wisdom on a higher plane. It is a seed time against a later harvest. But
+the astral plane is, for the vast majority of the race, related to the
+purgative process. In that life the errors of the physical life are
+largely worked out and desires that have grown up like weeds in a garden
+are rooted out and the budding virtues are given a chance to grow. It is
+a corrective plane, where blunders are checked up and the moral
+perspective is re-established. Naturally enough the sooner that can be
+done the better. The rule of a long life being most desirable on the
+physical plane is, therefore, reversed on the astral plane. It is the
+shortest life in the astral world that is the greatest prize, and it
+comes to those who have lived the purest and noblest lives while here.
+The sooner a man gets through the astral world and begins the reaping of
+his harvest on the mental plane, or heaven world, the better it is for
+him.
+
+The length of the astral sojourn depends primarily upon the durability
+of the astral body and that, in turn, depends upon the kind of a life he
+has lived here. Let us suppose that he has lived a very gross and
+sensual life. All of the emotions of that type that he indulged built
+more gross matter in his astral body and also strengthened and vivified
+the lowest grade of matter that was already there. Let us also imagine
+that he had an ungovernable temper and frequently gave way to outbursts
+of fury; further, that he was cruel and revengeful, seeking and finding
+many opportunities of inflicting injuries upon others. Here we have a
+case for long life on the lower levels of the astral world.
+
+Let us now consider a different type of man. He lives peacefully and
+harmoniously with those about him. He feels strong affection for wife
+and children. He has a host of friends because of his cheerful, helpful
+and sympathetic attitude toward others. He lives cleanly and thinks
+nobly. His mind is kept free from trivialities and his tongue is never
+employed in gossip. He makes a determined and persistent effort to
+eliminate pride, envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking
+first of the welfare of others and always last of himself--in short,
+tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all things impersonally.
+Such a man could know nothing whatever of the disagreeable part of the
+astral life and would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions
+and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.
+
+From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually to the higher. He
+remains on a given level so long as is required to eliminate the matter
+of that level from his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on
+the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because the man has
+at last stopped sending his life force through it. Ungratified desire
+has finally worn itself out and he is free. The process can be greatly
+hastened or retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly
+dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged life to
+them. If he can resolutely turn his mind to higher things he hastens his
+release. His fate is in his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he
+has a knowledge of such matters.
+
+One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly through the astral
+world than he would have done had he died in the full strength of
+manhood. As the years accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest
+grades of astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in
+which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is an additional
+reason why it is desirable to live to old age in the physical world.
+
+The hold that the material world has upon the mind is one of the causes
+which greatly prolong existence in the astral world. Some people give
+their time and thought so exclusively to material things that after
+they lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away from the life
+that lies behind them. This difficulty does not necessarily arise wholly
+from having given one's energies entirely to personal ambition and
+material accumulation. Sometimes the ruler of a country is so determined
+to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that this vivid interest in
+the physical world stretches out the period of astral life most
+unfortunately.
+
+Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively short, if
+we measure it in the terms of physical life. A person who has lived here
+seventy years may have thirty or forty years on the astral plane. But
+that will depend not only upon how he lived the physical life just
+closed but also upon his general position in human evolution. A savage
+of low type would have a comparatively long astral life while a man at
+the higher levels of civilization would have a comparatively short
+period there, while the man in the lower levels of civilized life might
+be said to come in at about midway between the two. But it must be
+remembered that these are very general estimates and that among
+civilized peoples individuals differ enormously. Some will pass very
+slowly and, so far as lower levels are concerned, painfully, through
+astral life, while the sojourn of others there is measured in minutes,
+and they pass happily and almost instantaneously from physical death to
+the heaven world. But such people are the exception, not the rule.
+
+Communication with those who have passed on into the astral world is
+possible, but not always desirable, for a number of reasons. As an
+evidence of the continuity of consciousness in the hands of the
+scientific investigator, such communications have been of the greatest
+value. As a consolation to those who have thus come again in touch with
+dead friends such messages have been of inestimable value to the
+bereaved, particularly when they have been received in the privacy of
+the family circle by some of its members. For a time those who have lost
+the physical body are usually within easy reach through the usual
+methods employed for the purpose and perhaps no harm is done by such
+communications unless they arouse anew the grief of those who have been
+left behind and thus greatly depress the departed. But after the living
+dead get farther along, and are practically out of touch with the
+material world, then directing their attention backward may be
+positively injurious to them. For that reason careful students of the
+occult seldom seek to obtain messages, or at least do it with proper
+consideration for all the circumstances of the particular case.
+
+Due regard for the interests of those who have passed on, as well as for
+those who remain, requires that all the facts be given full weight. The
+truth of the matter is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise
+to the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once more get into
+touch with one that seems to be lost to us. We are not really thinking
+much about his welfare. As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us
+and does not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able to see us
+at all times and be conscious of our feelings and emotions, but during
+the hours when we are asleep he is in the fullest and freest
+communication with us and we with him. On awakening we usually have no
+memory of this and if we do we think it was a dream. But it is not so
+with him. His memory of it is perfect and the result is that he has not
+our sense of separation and loss at all.
+
+The result of knowledge upon the subject, that is readily gained by a
+study of the researches of the skilled occultists, is that one comes to
+feel that one should rest satisfied with the fact that we do converse
+with the dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to the
+scientific investigators. The natural order of things is that the person
+who passes into the astral world shall in time fix his mind exclusively
+upon the inner life and be completely divorced from physical plane
+affairs. That is the mental and emotional condition which permits of his
+rapid passage through levels where he should not linger. It is said that
+to turn his attention backward at this time may cause him acute
+distress.
+
+A reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge of occultism
+often throws a new light upon the subject. An instance of this is to be
+found in the story of the woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his
+quest for psychic information about the crisis that has been reached in
+the affairs of his kingdom. The woman went into trance and acted as a
+medium for a communication from Samuel, who tells Saul just what will
+occur in the impending battle. Samuel's first words were a reproach to
+Saul. "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?"[F] was his greeting.
+It is the language of one who is displeased. Drawing his attention
+forcibly back to the material world by the strong desire Saul had to
+communicate with him was evidently distressing to the dead king, hence
+the rebuke, "Why hast thou _disquieted_ me?"
+
+What is here said on the subject of communication, however, has
+reference to general principles only. There is no intention of
+suggesting that it is always undesirable to communicate with those who
+have passed over. Often those on the other side seek means of
+communicating and they should then find the most willing co-operation
+from this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical plane life has a
+message of great importance to deliver and such a case reverses the
+general rule--he would be delayed if he could _not_ communicate. It
+would be decidedly to his advantage to free his mind of the matter.
+Until he has done so he may remain in a restless condition and his case
+falls into the category of what the spiritualists call "earth bound." He
+may have left undone something that a message will set right, if he can
+get it through, or he may have secreted something that cannot be found
+because he died suddenly and had no opportunity to speak of it. Or it
+may simply be a case of desiring to prove to materialistic friends the
+fact that the so-called dead are not dead, and are close at hand. It is
+sometimes possible for the important information to come through into
+physical life in the form of a dream by the living, and thus the
+recovery of valuables has followed.[G] In such a case the dream is a
+memory of facts well known in astral life but hidden from the waking
+consciousness by the unresponsive material brain.
+
+It sometimes happens that one who thus most earnestly desires to
+communicate but is wholly ignorant of how to accomplish his purpose
+causes a good deal of annoyance. His blundering attempts to use psychic
+force may be wholly abortive and result only in meaningless noises,
+raps, the tumbling of books or dishes from shelves or the aimless
+movement of furniture. Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention,
+on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be
+remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's
+common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or
+delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd
+assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining.
+This accounts for many of the foolish, and sometimes startling messages,
+or answers to questions, received at seances.
+
+It has often been asked why, if communication between the physical and
+astral planes is possible, we do not receive information that might lead
+to valuable discoveries and inventions. The very fact that death does
+not confer wisdom explains it in part. But an even more important fact
+is that communication is easy with the lower levels and correspondingly
+difficult as the higher levels are reached. All who have had much
+experience with seances are familiar with the fact that "guides" or
+"controls," that is, the persons in the invisible realms who direct the
+seance and frequently speak through the medium, are very often Indians
+or others at a low level of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants
+of the astral levels with which communication is easy are not the type
+capable of furnishing ideas of any great value. It is on the higher
+levels that the man of intellectual power passes most of his astral
+life. The scientist or the inventor who has given so much thought to his
+work that he has been in some degree successful here is not likely to
+have much consciousness on lower levels. It is the highest of the seven
+subdivisions of the astral world that is the habitat of the person who
+has followed intellectual pursuits, during physical life, and with that
+level it is practically impossible for the ordinary medium to
+communicate.
+
+One of the objections to indiscriminate communication with the astral
+plane lies in the very fact that the lowest class of entities are most
+accessible. That not only accounts for the commonplace messages in such
+abundance, but it is frequently a source of actual danger, especially
+where people form "circles" for the purpose of rendering themselves more
+sensitive to psychic influences. In such cases it is common to accept
+every message as absolute truth. There is no doubt that as a rule the
+astral people in charge of such a gathering are earnest and honest. But
+they are neither all-wise nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about
+that some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed by astral
+entities, and that may prove to be an exceedingly serious matter. Some
+people have thus lost their sanity and others their lives.
+
+It is, of course, only the gross type of astral person who has a desire
+to seize upon the physical body of another. The purpose is to gratify
+desires that have outlived the physical body. The dead drunkard is
+perhaps the commonest example of the obsessing entity, and if the
+obsession is only partial it may lead to nothing worse than strong and
+perhaps irresistible impulses toward alcoholic stimulation. Obsession
+may, of course, occur without the psychic door being opened
+deliberately. But no obsession is possible, in any case, unless there is
+something within the victim responsive to the moral defect of the
+obsessing entity.
+
+Partial obsessions are rather common and there are frequent inquiries as
+to the best means of treating such a case. It may amount only to the
+slight annoyance of astral people hanging about and refusing to depart
+or to actual persecution. In all such cases the victim is, of course, in
+conscious touch and communication with the intruders. One of the world's
+greatest authorities on the subject, who is a constant investigator of
+the unseen regions, has given detailed answer to two questioners, and
+what he says is of such practical value that it is well worth
+reproducing. The second question itself is enlightening as to the
+character of the obsessing entities. The first inquirer asks:
+
+      "What is the best way to get rid of an excarnate human
+      being who persists in occupying one's body?"
+
+The reply follows:
+
+      "I should simply and absolutely decline to be so obsessed.
+      The best and kindest plan would be to have an explanation
+      with the dead person, to enquire what he wants and why he
+      makes such persistent attempts. Quite probably, he may be
+      some ignorant soul who does not at all comprehend his new
+      surroundings, and is striving madly to get into touch again
+      with the only kind of life that he understands. In that
+      case if matters are explained to him, he may be brought to
+      a happier frame of mind and induced to cease his
+      ill-directed efforts. Or the poor creature may have
+      something on his mind--some duty unfulfilled or some wrong
+      unrighted; if this be so, and the matter can be arranged to
+      his satisfaction, he may then be at peace.
+
+      "If, however, he proves not to be amenable to reason, if in
+      spite of all argument and explanation he refuses to abandon
+      his reprehensible line of action, it will be necessary
+      gently but firmly to resist him. Every man has an
+      inalienable right to the use of his own vehicles, and
+      encroachments of this nature should not be permitted. If
+      the lawful possessor of the body will confidently assert
+      himself and use his own willpower no obsession can take
+      place.
+
+      "When such things occur, it is almost always because the
+      victim has in the first place voluntarily yielded himself
+      to the invading influence, and his first step therefore is
+      to reverse that act of submission, to determine strongly to
+      take matters into his own hands again and to resume control
+      over his property. It is this reassertion of himself that
+      is the fundamental requirement, and though much help may be
+      given by wise friends, nothing which they can do will take
+      the place of the development of willpower on the part of
+      the victim, or obviate the necessity for it. The exact
+      method of procedure will naturally vary according to the
+      details of the case."
+
+The same authority answers another question on the same subject and he
+is here dealing with particular entities that he has evidently seen:
+
+      "I have long been troubled by entities who constantly
+      suggest evil ideas and make use of coarse and violent
+      language. They are always urging me to take strong drink,
+      and goading me on to the consumption of large quantities of
+      meat. I have prayed earnestly, but with little avail, and
+      am driven to my wits' end. What can I do?"
+
+To this appeal the psychic scientist replies:
+
+      "You have indeed suffered greatly; but now you must make up
+      your mind to suffer no more. You must take courage and make
+      a firm stand. The power of these dead people over you is
+      only in your fear of them. Your own will is stronger than
+      all theirs combined if you will only know that it is; if
+      you turn upon them with vigor and determination they must
+      yield before you. You have an inalienable right to the
+      undisturbed use of your own vehicles, and you should insist
+      on being left in peace. You would not tolerate an intrusion
+      of filthy and disgusting beings into your house on the
+      physical plane; why should you submit to it because the
+      entities happen to be astral? If an insolent tramp forces
+      himself into a man's house, the owner does not kneel down
+      and pray--he kicks the tramp out; and that is precisely
+      what you must do with these astral tramps.
+
+      "You will no doubt say to yourself that when I give you
+      this advice I do not know the terrible power of the
+      particular demons who are afflicting you. That is exactly
+      what they would like you to believe--what they will try to
+      make you believe; but do not be so foolish as to listen to
+      them. I know the type perfectly, and mean, despicable,
+      bullying villains they are; they will torment a weak woman
+      for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the
+      moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just
+      laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a
+      moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and
+      show fight, because you have let them have their own way
+      for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion;
+      but face them with iron determination, set your will
+      against them like an immovable rock, and down they will go.
+      Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire, and by the
+      power of the God within me I order you to depart!' Never
+      let yourself think for an instant of failure or of
+      yielding; God is within you, and God cannot fail."[H]
+
+Probably there is no astral subject of more vital importance to any of
+us than that of the right attitude of mind and emotion toward the living
+dead. It is commonly said that we can do nothing more for them when they
+have passed away from physical plane life, but a greater error could not
+easily be made. The connection with us is by no means severed. Not only
+are they emotionally in touch with us but their emotions are very much
+keener than when they had a physical body through which to express them.
+They are now living in the astral body, the matter of which is
+enormously more responsive to emotional vibrations. A joyous emotion
+here would be tremendously more joyous there and a thing that would
+produce depression here would be a hundred times more depressing there.
+That fact should give pause to those who are inclined to think in
+sorrow, and with something of despair, about their friends who have
+passed on. They are not far away in space and our emotions affect them
+profoundly and instantly.
+
+We are all familiar with the fact that moods are communicable. The
+person who is cheerful cheers up others in his vicinity, while the one
+who is gloomy spreads gloom wherever he goes. It is a simple matter of
+vibrations. It is often within the power of a member of the family who
+habitually has "the blues" to destroy the happiness of the entire
+household. If we think of the most depressing effect that can be caused
+by sorrow on the physical plane, and then multiply its effectiveness by
+a hundred, we shall have no exaggeration of the astral effects of the
+emotions we indulge in the physical body. If, then, the sorrow of a
+weeping relative distresses us here it is clear that it must bring
+really keen distress to the one who is the subject of such grief. His
+life may thus be made miserable by the very persons who would be the
+last to cause him sorrow if they understood what they were doing.
+
+We can really help the so-called dead and make them very much happier by
+simply changing our mournful attitude toward them. All violent
+expressions of grief should be avoided and a determination to make the
+best of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may indeed be
+bad, but we make it very much worse by our mourning. The funeral customs
+of Occidental civilization are quite consistent with its materialism. We
+act as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are lost to us
+absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as possible. Yet we are slowly
+improving. Not so very long ago when anybody died those present stopped
+the ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains, moved about on
+tiptoe, and acted generally in a way calculated to add as much as
+possible to the awe and the gloom. We still wear somber and depressing
+black and add all we can externally to our inward distress.
+
+A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at any theosophical
+funeral and, with growing frequency, at the funerals among thinking
+people. A funeral should not be the occasion of a final expression of
+grief, but a gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and helpful
+good wishes to the comrade whose life work in the physical world is
+finished. The general feeling should be very much like that of a party
+of friends who go to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long
+journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of many years or
+possibly a lifetime. There should be constant thought of his welfare,
+not of the loss to his friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an
+expression of selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice
+self control in such a matter just as one would control a feeling of
+anger under different circumstances.
+
+Naturally enough the control of grief when one we love has passed on is
+none to easy. But any degree of success is much better than no effort,
+and will certainly help the one for whom we mourn. Much can be
+accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that bring vividly back
+the keen sense of loss. Many people indulge the foolish custom of
+regularly visiting the cemetery where the body has been interred. A
+little analysis will show that this is only another evidence of our
+materialistic modes of thought, and the custom serves to perpetuate
+emotions that should never have existed. We can not, of course, think
+too often nor too tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should
+do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead, or being far
+away. The fact that they are alive and well and happy and near should
+constantly fill the mind; and all of that, in nearly all cases, will be
+perfectly true if we do not foolishly destroy their peace of mind with
+our selfish sorrow.
+
+Occasionally a hint on the subject comes from the astral plane people
+themselves. In the recent book[I] by Sir Oliver Lodge, on his
+experiments in psychic research, there is a message from his son, who
+was killed in battle, agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner and
+to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they will all refrain from
+gloomy thoughts about him! No one who is informed on the subject of
+emotional reaction on the astral body, after the loss of the physical
+body, could be surprised by the conditions named by the young man.
+
+The advocates of cremation have a strong argument in the fact that the
+preservation of the body for a time, whether in a tomb or a grave, tends
+to keep grief alive. When the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that
+the body is somehow the man seems to have less of a material basis.
+Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate, not alone because they renew
+grief through thinking upon it and thus cause great distress to those
+for whom we mourn, but also because the environment of a cemetery is one
+of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It is a dismal park of
+concentrated griefs where each mourner accentuates the emotional
+distress of all others. There is but one sensible attitude to take
+toward those we have lost by death--to think of them as living a joyous,
+busy life and at least calling on us daily even though most of us are
+not sensitive enough to be conscious of the fact. We should try to
+realize the truth of the matter and then readjust our habits to fit the
+facts. The average person who is afflicted with the erroneous ideas
+still so common, is doing an enormous amount of injury and bringing into
+the lives of the very people he loves a depression of which he little
+dreams, and which he can change to vivid pleasure by always thinking
+cheerfully of them and sending them daily thoughts of serenity and
+peace.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[F] 1 Samuel XXVIII--15.
+
+[G] Ch. 3, Dreams and Premonitions.--L. W. Rogers.
+
+[H] The Inner Life.--Leadbeater, Vol. I. p. 483.
+
+[I] Raymond: or Life and Death.--Lodge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS
+
+
+Life is the most elusive thing with which science has to deal but we
+have learned much about both life and matter in recent years, and it is
+a noteworthy fact that the more we learn the thinner become the ranks of
+the materialists. The only scientist of note who still declares his
+philosophy of materialism is Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has
+written, "He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the
+nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's almost deserted ground
+in the scientific world, he declares that his voice "is as the voice of
+one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an
+advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still
+bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his
+comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic
+direction."
+
+Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism being deserted by all
+progressive scientists. While we do not yet know a great deal about
+life, science has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and
+principles from which conclusions may be logically drawn and working
+hypotheses constructed. Sir Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the
+great English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's most eminent
+scientists, speaking of his conception of life, says that "It is
+dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation
+to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but
+otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that its essential
+existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with
+matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is
+subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to
+it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state."[J]
+
+Later in the same work he expresses the opinion "that life is something
+outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and
+energy; though it can nevertheless control and direct material
+forces...."
+
+In closing his volume on _Life and Matter_ this distinguished scientist
+says:
+
+      "What is certain is that life possesses the power of
+      vitalizing the complex material aggregates which exist on
+      this planet, and of utilizing their energies for a time to
+      display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it
+      seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is
+      perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it
+      is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the
+      animated material body moves about and strives after many
+      objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a
+      certain individuality, a certain character. It may realize
+      itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and
+      spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind
+      which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the
+      material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the
+      environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit.
+      Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent
+      soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth,
+      goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent
+      value, or a work of art or of literature; it may enter the
+      region of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest
+      kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may
+      soar till it is almost divine.
+
+      "Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own
+      unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired
+      this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas?
+      There are some who try to think that it is. There are
+      others who recognize in this extraordinary development a
+      contact between this material frame of things and a
+      universe higher and other than anything known to our
+      senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry;
+      but utilizing the interactions of matter for its own
+      purpose; a universe where the human spirit is more at home
+      than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a
+      universe capable of infinite development, of noble
+      contemplation and of lofty joy, long after this
+      planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled
+      its present sphere of destiny, and retired cold and
+      lifeless upon its endless way."
+
+Such a conception of life carries us very far from the old popular view
+of the origin of the race, but it is a conception that brings science
+and religion into perfect agreement and will enable us to understand
+human evolution and explain facts in life that would otherwise remain
+incomprehensible.
+
+The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal life, was taught
+and commonly accepted in the early Christian period. If we accept the
+fact of evolution at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape
+from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed, not even
+materialism can save one from the necessity of accepting the
+pre-existence of the individualized consciousness that we call a human
+being.
+
+Let us consider the human infant as we see it at birth. Whence came
+it--how can we account for it in a universe of law and order? We can
+understand it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse of
+physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few months. But its mind,
+its consciousness, its emotions, what of them? The average man replies
+that God made them and they constitute the soul. But how and when were
+they "made"? Even the material part of this infant did not spring
+miraculously and instantaneously into existence. How much less possible
+is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made it" we have explained
+nothing. But it is not necessary to deny that God creates the soul in
+order for us to move toward an understanding of how the soul came to be.
+It is only necessary to say that the process of its creation was
+evolutionary. Nobody denies that the earth was created by evolution,
+although men may differ in opinion on the matter of a divine
+intelligence guiding its evolutionary development. The same principle
+must apply to the human intelligence.
+
+Lodge wrote _Life and Matter_ as a reply to Haeckel's _Riddle of the
+Universe_, which presented the latter's philosophy of materialism. But
+Lodge did more than demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not
+an inch of scientific ground to support his theory. The English
+scientist raised questions that have not been answered, and cannot be
+answered, by the scientific materialist. He points out that the
+materialist's philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary
+rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully
+endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century."[K]
+
+With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the scientific materialist
+speechless; for all scientists are evolutionists, and it is impossible
+to account for "_the extraordinary rapidity of development_" by the laws
+of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary age of anything
+depends upon its complexity. A simple form is comparatively young while
+a complex one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The earth is
+simple compared to a human being. If, then, it has required ages to
+evolve the earth to its present stage how long did it take to evolve the
+wonderfully complex mental and emotional nature of the human being that
+inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge bottles Haeckel up on his own
+premises and shows that the very evolutionary principles to which the
+German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He practically says to
+Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir, fails to show how it is possible for the
+vacuous mind of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher
+in thirty or forty years." In other words, if the infant is nothing but
+the form we see it would be utter absurdity to say that that mass of
+matter can evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years when
+it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary gain.
+
+Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its face. One might as well
+search the surface of a squash for some indication of intelligence. But
+wait only a little while and you shall have evidence not merely of
+intelligence but of emotions possible only to the highest order of life.
+Clearly, here is not something evolved within a brief period from a mass
+of material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific as the popular
+belief in miraculous creation at which the scientific materialist
+scoffs. The swift change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the
+intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a century" is not
+the creation of something but its _manifestation_--_the coming through
+into visible expression of that which already exists_. The soul, the
+consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole of the mental and
+emotional nature, which has been built up through thousands of years of
+evolution, is coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in a
+material body.
+
+The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument of the old
+soul--an instrument, as certainly as the violin is the instrument and a
+vehicle for the musician's expression. At every turn our materialistic
+conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception of nature's truth. It
+is because we think of the body as being actually the person, that it
+seems improbable that an old soul has entered the infant body. We think
+of the power and intelligence of an old soul and then look at the baby
+and find no indication of such things. But that is only because the baby
+body is such a new and undeveloped instrument that it is at first
+useless and only slowly can it be brought under control of the soul and
+made to express its intelligence and power. The body is a growing
+instrument, not a completed one.
+
+Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as physical bodies do.
+Suppose there was a time when the piano was keyless, as a baby is
+toothless. Suppose that sounding boards have a period of immaturity and
+that the whole mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only
+be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play on
+such a piano his performance would by no means be an indication of his
+ability. A competent critic who could hear the performance but not see
+the musician would promptly declare that no really great musician was
+touching the keys. And that is precisely the mistake we make in assuming
+that the immature body of an infant is capable of expressing the
+intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it differently, denying
+that a returned, old soul is in possession of the infant body simply
+because there is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos
+slowly grew to maturity then only when the instrument was mature could
+the master musician give a practical demonstration of his skill; and
+only when the physical body has reached its maturity can the soul that
+is using it fully express itself.
+
+In the early years of the physical body the soul is only very partially
+expressed through it. The entrance of the consciousness into the
+physical world is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth of a
+plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a good one, for a plant is
+very little like a human body. It is impossible to find a material
+equivalent of the dawning of consciousness on the physical plane.
+Beginning about four and a half months before the birth of the physical
+body and continuing for a period of several years the soul, or
+consciousness, is engaged in the process of anchorage in the physical
+world. For a long time the center of consciousness remains above the
+material plane and during the early years of childhood the consciousness
+is divided between the astral and physical worlds, with the result that
+the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments of astral
+consciousness into physical life. When the physical body is about seven
+years old the consciousness may be said to be centered on the physical
+plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's new instrument are
+mature has the opportunity come for the fullest expression.
+
+Some of the difficulties commonly associated in the mind with the
+thought of the pre-existence and rebirth of the soul will disappear if
+we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is a center of
+consciousness, which is always consciousness somewhere, but which very
+gradually shifts its focus from plane to plane. Its permanent home is in
+that body of filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels of
+the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws
+about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle
+of consciousness, that is not permanent but which will serve the purpose
+of functioning for a period on that plane. Downward again the energies
+are sent, building about the center of consciousness on the astral plane
+a temporary body of astral matter, temporary in the same sense that the
+physical body is temporary, and which shall serve the consciousness in
+the astral, or emotional world, during the whole of the physical plane
+life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or downward, the soul
+sends its energies till the material world is reached, when it begins to
+function partially, and very feebly, through the infant physical body.
+
+For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the physical plane where
+certain lessons are to be learned. After the early years of childhood
+are over the consciousness is firmly anchored here, where the chief work
+is to be done, during the hours of the waking consciousness. During
+sleep the ego temporarily lays aside the physical body and functions in
+the astral body in the astral world. The material body sleeping here is
+merely a deserted and empty vehicle, magnetically connected with the
+soul, and awaiting its return.
+
+As childhood, youth, maturity and old age pass, complex experiences
+come to the soul thus functioning here. Other souls functioning through
+physical bodies are encountered and various relationships are
+established. Out of the complexity of social, business, religious and
+political activities the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner
+or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter. The
+gathering of such experience has ceased, not because the soul has
+acquired all possible physical world knowledge, but because its
+instrument of consciousness here has worn out.
+
+Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection and the
+center of its consciousness is then shifted to the astral plane. There
+the purgative process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter.
+As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free from one grade of astral
+matter after another and with the loss of each the man becomes conscious
+on a higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but the matter of
+the astral body gradually wears away until there is so little left that
+the soul has lost connection with the astral world also. This means that
+the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental plane, or heaven
+world, where the man will function on the lower levels.
+
+There in the mental world, functioning through the vehicle of mental
+matter, a very important process goes on. The heaven world life is a
+harvest time in which assimilation of experience takes place. The
+consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences of life and
+extracts the essence from them which is transmuted into faculty and
+power for future greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in
+wisdom and power through its long evolution.
+
+When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest of experience has
+been threshed out and the net gain has been built into the enduring
+causal body, the mental body, like the astral, has been completely
+dissipated. The end of a cycle of experience--of a day in the
+evolutionary school--has come and the physical, astral and mental bodies
+have all perished. Nothing remains but the soul, the real man, the ego,
+functioning through the causal body which persists. From that the ego
+again sends the forces outward, in the first activity toward rebirth,
+first forming a new mental body by drawing about itself the matter of
+the lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new astral body on
+the astral plane and finally taking possession of another infant body in
+process of formation on the physical plane, into which it will in due
+course be reborn.
+
+The period between these successive appearances of the soul in a
+succession of physical bodies varies greatly and depends on a number of
+things. The length of time spent upon the astral plane has already been
+discussed. The time spent in the heaven world depends upon the mental
+and moral forces generated during the physical and astral life. If there
+is a great harvest of experience it will require a longer time to
+transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought little and loved but
+little will have a shorter period there, for it is the heart and head
+forces that have their culmination in the mental world. The question is
+a rather complex one and other factors come into play, including the
+intensity of the heaven world life. In general terms, however, it can be
+said that the heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will
+commonly be a period several times the length of his combined physical
+and astral life. Some people will have only two or three hundred years
+between incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries and
+still others a much longer period.
+
+In getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth, or
+reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the soul,
+or center of individualized consciousness, is the man and that the
+physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
+that the causal body is his permanent body for the whole of human
+evolution; that the mental plane is his home plane and that from there
+he sends forth successive expressions of himself into these lower
+planes. With such facts before us there should be no confusion of
+thought about the successive personalities of an individual. Yet we
+sometimes hear people speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
+can be one man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth. Of
+course no such thing occurs. An individual remains the same individual
+forever. "But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr. Jones, in
+England six hundred years ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in
+America at this moment? If so is that not a case of being two
+individuals?"
+
+It is certainly not a case of being two individuals. It is a case of
+one individual being expressed through a physical body six hundred years
+ago in England, dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
+astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing himself through
+another physical body in America at the present time. The confusion of
+thought on the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
+physical body as being the man. But it is no more the man than the
+clothing he wears. It is true that he is known at one period as Jones
+and at another as Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
+the assumption of an _alias_ by a fleeing criminal changes him. The name
+applies exclusively to the physical body, or personality, as
+distinguished from the individuality. That body is but the temporary
+clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were applied to
+his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his body. We
+might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and as Mr.
+Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name
+would in the least degree make him somebody else. The majority of women
+change their names in each incarnation. A man may know a certain woman
+as Miss Smith when she is a slip of a girl, free from care and with
+little serious thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs.
+Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of children. She has
+changed her name and greatly changed in character, too, but she is the
+same individual.
+
+It seems probable that a person may change quite as much between
+infancy and old age as between one incarnation and the next. Even the
+difference between a youth of twenty years who is an artist and the same
+man at three score and ten who has given forty years to scientific study
+and research, may be enormous, but the individuality is, of course,
+identical. It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and that is just
+what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths--steady evolutionary
+development of the eternal individual.
+
+The reincarnating process by which the soul evolves is somewhat
+analogous to the growth of a young physical body. The process consists
+of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. How does
+the body of a child grow? It consumes food, the objective activity. It
+then digests and assimilates it, the subjective activity. These periods
+must alternate or there can be no growth, because neither alone is the
+complete process. The one is the complement of the other. So it is in
+the evolution of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life is
+the food on which the soul grows. The physical plane existence is the
+objective period in which the food is gathered. At death the man passes
+into the invisible realms where the subjective process is carried on. He
+digests and assimilates his experiences and the gist is stored in the
+causal body and its growth includes an actual increase in size, just as
+in the case of the child's physical body.
+
+The same law governs mental and moral growth as it operates in our
+daily affairs. A young man is in college. How does his intellect grow?
+By precisely the same process of alternating periods of objective and
+subjective activity. In the class room the instructor puts a
+mathematical problem on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward
+senses of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the student
+gathers the food for mental growth. This period of objective activity
+comes to an end and he then retires to the privacy of his room and there
+the subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the problem. His
+material, the food for mental growth, is only a few notes that serve to
+keep the experience in his mind. At first all that they signify is not
+obvious, but as he turns the various points over and over in his mind
+their significance becomes clearer and fuller. It is the subjective
+process of digestion. Little by little new light dawns in the student's
+mind. Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical
+principles involved, and the process of assimilation is finished. This
+subjective period is the complement of the objective period and they
+must go on alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When the
+process of digestion and assimilation is finished the student must
+return to the classroom for further mental food and when he arrives it
+is by virtue of the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that he
+is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And precisely so it is
+with the reincarnating soul. In the interval between incarnations it so
+assimilates the experiences of the last physical life that it comes to
+rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take higher and more
+difficult lessons than it could previously master.
+
+In the case of both physical growth by eating and mental growth by
+instruction there is no possible escape from the law of alternating
+periods of objective and subjective activity. When the child has
+digested and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing that can
+follow--return to his source of supply for another meal. When the
+student has digested and assimilated the lesson given to him the only
+possibility of further mental growth lies in his return to the
+class-room for more material. And so it is with the human soul in its
+work of evolving its latent powers and possibilities. There is no other
+road forward but the cyclic one that brings it back to the physical life
+incarnation after incarnation, but always at a higher point than it
+previously touched. The very hunger of the child that insures its return
+to the table for more food is analogous to the desire of the soul for
+sentient expression that brings it to rebirth.
+
+These alternating periods with the element of constant return are found
+everywhere in the economy of nature. All her evolutionary expressions
+are cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed circles. It
+represents a spiral. The "evolutionary ladder" that the soul climbs is a
+winding stairway. In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it is
+always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that
+is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral
+plane, into the physical and then back through the astral plane into the
+heaven world, it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a higher
+state of development, than it had previously attained. Each rebirth
+finds it abler here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
+return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler to digest
+and assimilate its experiences, and to comprehend more of the realities
+of the life of its home plane.
+
+This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral and mental regions,
+is a continuous progressive journey of the soul which began away back at
+the dawn of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
+mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he gathers experience
+in proportion to his alertness and to the opportunities his previous
+lives have made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to
+be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure in the astral life
+and joy and wisdom in the mental region, or heaven world. But he also
+does some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates hatred and he
+injures others. This will give him distress in the astral life and no
+results for soul growth or general progress in the heaven world. If he
+does an equal amount of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he
+does much good and little evil his progress will be rapid and his
+existence happy. If he is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
+development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will suffer much in the
+astral life.
+
+It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy to be told that
+the soul passes through the purgation of the astral plane and goes on
+into the heaven world only to return to another incarnation and later to
+again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who has
+thus been purified be again purified? The astral reactions are the
+results of the blunders made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
+given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the purgatory that awaits
+him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly be any
+reaction. As a matter of occult fact the average good man will find the
+astral plane life a happy existence and will soon pass on to the
+blissful heaven world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only
+to his evil deeds. Let us say he has committed murder. When the reaction
+of the evil force he has generated is over and he passes on into the
+heaven plane it does not mean that he is incapable of future evil. It
+means that he has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is very
+foolish to take life. But there are many other lessons he has not
+learned. When he passes into the heaven world he leaves all evil behind
+him. He is as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple. The astral
+body, like the physical, has perished and it is the freed soul that
+enters the heaven world. But when he returns through the astral plane to
+reincarnation he is clothed again in astral matter and this new astral
+body is exactly representative of his attainments in evolution. In his
+coming incarnation he will have other physical plane experiences and
+learn other lessons. The next time probably he will not kill, but
+perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard. These errors will
+react upon him in the astral life that follows. In a coming incarnation
+he will be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor steal; but
+perhaps he will be a gossip and work much evil through slander. This in
+turn will bring its pain. And so in time he will learn to generate no
+evil force at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward
+everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed, his life on all
+planes will be happy and the painful part of human evolution will be
+over.
+
+The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than the fact of evolution.
+Evolution is an unfolding process in which the latent becomes the active
+and the inner life is more and more fully expressed in outer form. The
+development and improvement in form keeps pace with the necessities of
+the unfolding life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the form
+is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller and fuller expression,
+limbs for locomotion and, in due course, the organs for hearing, and
+seeing, and the other mechanism of the developing consciousness, are
+evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of consciousness comes to its
+highest possible form and then evolution goes on in the perfecting of
+the physical form. In the process of continually changing the matter of
+the body it is possible for the brain to be constantly improved and the
+whole body to grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a
+better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each
+incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and
+form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of
+intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will be
+finished.
+
+The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a god in the
+making--not actually, but only potentially a god, a being to whom all
+wisdom, perfect compassion and unlimited power are possible; and by the
+process of evolution he changes the latent into the active. He is at
+first only an individualized center of consciousness within the
+All-Consciousness, a mere fragment of the divine life. His relationship
+to God is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product of it
+that has latent within it all the characteristics of the plant and the
+power to become a plant. It is not a plant and neither is man a god; but
+when it has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is a plant
+in the making; and when the human being has begun to evolve his latent
+spiritual qualities he is a god in the making. The theosophical view is
+that man is essentially divine.
+
+Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally divine, it is necessary
+for him to pass through any evolutionary process. Divinity here
+indicates merely the essential nature of the human being, not his
+possession of either knowledge or power or any degree of spiritual
+perfection. It is as though we should say that the infant son of a great
+king is royal. The word "royal," like the word "divine," indicates a
+relationship. The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a king in the
+making. He has much to learn. He must be educated in statecraft and he
+must evolve diplomacy. After much experience and development he will, in
+time, be capable of ruling an empire. At present this helpless infant
+bears little resemblance to a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his
+birth he was as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense the
+divinity of man represents potential possibilities rather than an
+obvious fact of the moment. Man is an embryo god and, in time, he shall
+evolve faculties and powers that his present limited consciousness can
+not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature of physical origin
+that lives a brief span to catch a glimpse of immortality and perish,
+but the deathless son of the living God, and by right divine he walks
+the upward way of eternal life.
+
+Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter of course, in a
+general way, but they appear unwilling to admit that the race has really
+made any evolutionary progress. Even scientific men have sometimes
+expressed doubt whether the world is growing better. In a newspaper
+interview an English scientist was quoted as saying a few years ago that
+the race is just as wicked today as at any time within recorded history.
+But if he was correctly reported it must have been a hasty expression of
+opinion which a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It is
+true that things are still bad enough but they are certainly enormously
+better than they were some centuries ago. To say that the world is full
+of crime and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact that a
+civilized nation has reverted to the wartime practices of savage life
+furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to do in
+determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality is to
+take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective
+conscience. How does the world of today view war and how did the world
+in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to shock us now but the
+very fact that it does shock us is the best evidence of moral progress.
+Atrocities were expected and taken as a matter of course some centuries
+ago. They are not the rule now but the rare exception and those guilty
+of them are likely to make their name a by-word among nations. Well
+within the era of recorded history the usages of nations' condemned
+prisoners of war to become slaves for life. Now the rule is to feed and
+clothe them and at the close of the conflict to send them home. A simple
+thing like public sports may be used as a measure of public morals. They
+show what the collective conscience approves. In these days there is
+very little of brutality in public sports. Professional pugilism still
+lingers, but barely lingers, in the most enlightened nations. In less
+progressive countries like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular.
+That is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment. But
+if we look backward to the Roman period we find a cruelty in public
+sports that is comparatively shocking. Gladiators were compelled to
+fight to the death and offenders were devoured by starving wild beasts
+and it all made a Roman holiday. Such "sports" would, of course, be
+utterly impossible anywhere in the world today. But at that time they
+were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest empire. The
+fact that the race has evolved morally and that the collective
+conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer than in the
+past is too obvious for argument.
+
+Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted for? It will not
+do to say that the Christian religion has wrought the change because,
+splendid as are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
+them and shaped its civilization by them. If it had done so the world
+war would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called Christian
+nations wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through all their
+history but class has been arrayed against class and every gain in
+either personal liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by
+force from those who profited by the misfortunes of others. In other
+words, the particular improvements that should have been brought about
+by religion were compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
+teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of
+Christianity, we are still unable to account for the change in the
+common conscience of the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
+steadily on since long, long before the coming of the Christ. How then
+shall we account for it?
+
+If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress of the race in
+morality becomes simple. The majority of the great groups of souls that
+constituted the civilized nations in the time when Rome was mistress of
+the world have had several incarnations in that time and in each sojourn
+on the astral plane have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
+from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually change the cruel man
+to the merciful man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane as
+well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any incarnation
+are carried forward into the next life, and thus compassion grows until
+there is ultimately perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the
+progress of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the
+viewpoint of reincarnation.
+
+Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such
+evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the pre-existence of
+the soul and hold that it is in some way brought into being at the time
+of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical position of saying
+that the reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman
+period is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now
+than he created then!
+
+The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or nations, to act in a
+way that imitates, or nearly duplicates, what has been done centuries
+before by other tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that it
+has given rise to the declaration that history repeats itself. The fact
+of reincarnation shows why it repeats itself. A nation like the Romans,
+or the Carthaginians, are bound together in the subtle ties that are
+formed by the intimate relationships of constant association. The group
+tends to persist and the members of it are largely drawn together and
+regrouped in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond the
+level of the previous centuries but the general traits and tendencies
+remain and the same general policies are likely to shape the national
+affairs. There comes a time in the existence of the great group, or
+nation, when the old environment will no longer serve for its further
+collective evolution as well as some other country. The majority then
+reincarnate elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be
+inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence the remarkable
+difference in the people of a given nation in different periods. Compare
+Rome in the time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or compare
+the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt. It is
+high-class egos that make a great nation and when a country has no more
+lessons to teach them, or rather when another country will serve as a
+better environment for their further progress, they return in rebirth to
+the more advantageous spot on the earth, and a different set of souls
+come into possession of the abandoned environment. The valley of the
+Nile, that was once the home of an energetic people with a flourishing
+civilization would not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile
+civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe because only
+that environment, in full touch with the great commercial stream of the
+economic world, can serve the purpose. As the world is today what could
+a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if born into Egypt?
+Nothing but leave it. So they are not reincarnated there, but other
+souls that are at the point in evolution where the primitive life of an
+isolated country will give the simpler lessons they must acquire,
+inherit the abandoned environment. As an individual moves continually
+onward in each return to incarnation to professional and business
+environments that will enable him to put into effect all the new skill
+and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes on to greater and greater
+opportunities. Souls that made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and
+Rome are now making the greatness of Europe and America. Such facts
+explain many things that have seemed puzzling. How, for example, was it
+possible for the world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in
+Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined--declined because her
+people largely reincarnated elsewhere--Europe was inhabited by slightly
+civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a few centuries--a mere
+passing moment in the great lapse of time required for race
+evolution--the civilization today could arise, would be to ignore the
+fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand that great groups of
+old souls incarnate in the strong physical bodies which the more
+primitive peoples could bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid
+rise of a great civilization in Europe is solved.
+
+The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal kingdom at a high
+level in it. The last phase of evolution in the animal kingdom is the
+individualizing of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or
+dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution and will be
+reborn at the lowest human level. Previous to its individualization it
+evolves in a group with others of its kind, animated by a common
+ensoulment that has not reached the level of complete
+self-consciousness. At that group-soul stage the experience of each
+animal in the group adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical
+teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to
+understand many things that would otherwise remain mysterious. Instinct
+has never been explained by science. Some of its best known expressions
+are altogether mysterious. Why does a young wild animal hide from the
+enemies of its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen either?
+A quail a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small stone or
+bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws to hide its body, and
+remain perfectly motionless at the approach of a human being, but will
+take no alarm at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a young
+chick know the difference between a crow and a hawk? And why, in remote
+places like the antarctic regions, are both young and old birds and
+animals unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and simple
+explanation of all such phenomena. The youngest have the knowledge of
+the oldest because they are attached to the same group-soul, or source
+of consciousness. The young quails of this season come back to rebirth
+from the group-soul that is the storehouse of the experiences of the
+quails that were killed by men in past seasons, and thus all young
+things know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred to the
+killing proclivities of the human being have not become known and there
+is no "instinct" to warn.
+
+An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the group-soul is the
+fact, often chronicled but not explained, that when telephone or
+telegraph lines are built in new countries the birds fly against the
+wires and are killed by thousands, the first season. But when the next
+season's birds are hatched they are wise and avoid the wires! If the
+group-soul were not a fact in nature it would naturally require a long
+time for wire education. No such sudden adjustment would be possible.
+
+Reincarnation represents continuous evolution with no waste of time or
+loss of energy. Death is not the sudden break in the life program that
+the popular belief pictures it. The common view of death is as erroneous
+as the common view of birth. If death were what most people believe it
+to be it would constitute a blunder of nature--an irrational
+interruption of orderly development. In nature's economy there is
+conservation of energy and no loss can arise through the change called
+death. If the popular belief that at death we go far away to a totally
+different kind of existence were sound then death would usually mean an
+enormous waste. A young man is educated for some particular work,
+engineering, architecture or statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to
+die soon afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting such an
+education would be largely lost either if death ends all, or is the
+last he will know of the material world. But nature does not thus
+blunder. Her law of conservation is always operative. All the skill and
+wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and will be used in the
+future incarnations.
+
+A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in evolution. The child
+cannot get an education in a term nor in a year. He must return often to
+the same school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may use new
+books with higher lessons but he returns periodically to the same
+environment. Continuous attendance would be as unthinkable as finishing
+his education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns
+periodically to the physical world, or plane, for the same reasons.
+Continuous life here until all material experience is gained would be
+impossible. Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring and
+digesting experience the physical body would become a hindrance to
+evolution. Within certain limits the physical brain can respond to the
+requirements of the growing soul, but a new body is in time an absolute
+necessity to further evolution.
+
+If we give a little thought to the evolutionary progress the ordinary
+person must make to raise him to mental and moral perfection, the
+absurdity of a single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a moment,
+intellectual perfection. It would mean a development of the mind to the
+point of genius in many directions. If we combine into one mind the
+attainments of the mathematical genius, the musical genius, the
+inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on until every line of
+intellectual activity is included, we then have only the perfect mental
+man. On the moral side we must add to that the combined qualities of the
+saints. Then we have the perfected human being, with nothing more to be
+learned from incarnation here. His further evolution belongs to
+superphysical realms.
+
+In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul, that slowly changes
+it life after life from the savage to the civilized state and finally
+raises it to perfection, it is helpful to observe how this great work
+corresponds to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation. A great
+character in history begins with helpless infancy. Steadily he
+progresses, unfolding new power at each step. He passes through the
+graded schools, slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows
+with higher and more difficult mental acquirements. Then he enters
+professional life and begins to use his intellect with more and more
+initiative. He moves on into public life with increased duties and
+responsibilities. From one post of honor he rises to another with
+increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is the head of a nation
+and has become a world figure. Even so it is in the evolution of the
+soul. Life by life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst every
+increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In one incarnation we
+have conditions that evolve courage. In another we are thrown into
+situations that develop tolerance. In still another we acquire patience
+and balance. In all of these incarnations we steadily evolve intellect
+and strengthen all previously acquired virtues. In each life we find
+the new conditions that are necessary for the exercise of our added
+abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual insight and
+the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves, we move forward to higher
+fields of evolution.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[J] "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120.
+
+[K] Life and Matter.--Lodge, p. 121.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE
+
+
+No matter how much we may differ in our view of the relationship between
+God and man there is general agreement about the attributes of the
+Supreme Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom, love and, of
+course, the perfection of all those desirable qualities we see in human
+beings. The theosophical view is that all we know in man of power,
+wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, et cetera, are faint but actual
+manifestations of the attributes of the deity. All who are not
+materialists, denying the existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that
+the wisdom and justice of God must be perfect. It would be illogical and
+inconsistent to limit or qualify His attributes. Either He is all-wise
+and absolutely just, or else the materialist is right. We cannot have a
+deity at all unless He represents perfect justice.
+
+Another point on which all but the materialists must agree is that
+creation is so ordered that the common welfare of humanity is best
+served by just the conditions of life that surround us. Nothing is
+different from what it should be unless it is because of man's failure
+to do what he should do for his own welfare. If it were otherwise what
+would become of the argument that an omniscient God has ordered it as it
+is? If, then, things are as they should be in the truest interests of
+man, and we find things in life that, according to our views of
+creation, are not right and just, it necessarily follows that the views
+we hold are erroneous.
+
+The popular belief is that human beings constitute a special creation;
+that whenever a baby is born God creates a soul or consciousness for
+that body and that after a life of many years, or a few days, or a few
+minutes, as the case may be, the body dies and the consciousness goes to
+dwell in remote regions for ever and ever. If the person lived a good
+life and also believed in the current religion he will be "saved" and
+will be eternally happy. If he did not live a good life but finally
+"believed" before death he will be saved anyway and be just as happy as
+though he had lived right from the start. If he did live a good life,
+but was not born with the ability to believe easily, he will be lost and
+will be eternally miserable. According to this theory of special
+creation God makes people of all sorts. None of them can help being what
+they are created. Some are wise and some are foolish. Those who are
+smart enough to find the way of salvation will finally have heaven added
+to their original gift of wisdom. Those who are not smart enough to find
+it will finally have hell added to their original lack of sense. This is
+what some people are pleased to call divine justice!
+
+It will hardly do to argue that the possibility that all may at last be
+happy in an endless heaven, makes it unimportant that there are
+inequalities now. The majority of the theologians do not admit that such
+a state awaits the whole of the human race, and the comparatively few
+who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that present justice can
+be determined by future happiness. Even if we positively knew that
+eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close of this physical life
+how could that make it just that one person shall be born a congenital
+criminal and another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How could it
+make it right that one is born to life-long illness, suffering and
+poverty, while another inherits both wealth and a sound physical body?
+Not even the certainty of future happiness would be compensation for
+present inequalities. But why should there be any such inequalities if
+God represents unlimited power and perfect justice? Why should there be
+any poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously,
+He can as certainly create any necessary condition for the soul? Why
+poverty and disease and suffering at all? There must be a better answer
+to such questions than that "it pleased God to have it so." It is surely
+little better than blasphemy to suggest that any kind of hard conditions
+for man are pleasing to the deity.
+
+To hold that any future condition of happiness can make present justice
+out of the truly terrible inequalities of life, would be much like a
+millionaire who has two sons giving one of them all the advantages of
+wealth, travel, skilled instructors and special care, while the other
+was permitted to wear rags and go hungry. If the neglected son asked why
+he was thus treated while his brother was most carefully provided for,
+the father might reply with some indignation, "You are to have plenty in
+the future! My will is so drawn that when I die my great wealth will be
+equally divided between you and your brother. You will then be a
+millionaire with more money than you can possibly spend. So don't be
+foolish about your hardships now. Learn to starve like a gentleman!" The
+father's position in such a case would be just as reasonable as that of
+those who think a heaven hereafter can justify an earthly hell now.
+
+Now let us take some of the particular facts of life that puzzle us and
+test them with the hypothesis of special creation, and also with the
+hypothesis of reincarnation, and see which can really explain them in a
+satisfactory manner. We will take some facts of real life. In a
+Massachusetts prison there is an old man whose name became familiar to
+many of us in our youth. He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy, the boy
+murderer. The present generation scarcely knows him. But forty years or
+more ago he was talked about by all the newspapers. For the crime of
+murdering his playmates the boy was sent to prison for life. Why did
+Pomeroy become a noted criminal in childhood? If the theory of special
+creation is sound he was created and put in the world to fit himself for
+a future heaven. But he was created in such fashion that he was
+deficient in moral perception and he began life with an act that led to
+his expulsion from society. If God created this soul as we first knew
+him why was he not created with the moral balance of a law-abiding
+citizen so that he could have lived long and peacefully in civilized
+society and have been prepared for heaven at death? What could have been
+the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think soundly and a
+conscience that welcomed murder? That leads us inevitably to the
+question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The
+deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the
+theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that
+contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to
+create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He
+should create a humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever
+attaining it. If He creates them as they come into the world at birth
+why are not all of them created wise and kind? Why must most of them
+blunder through life, making all sorts of mistakes, bringing suffering
+to others by their unkindness or cruelty and only, in the end, to pass
+from a life of failure to eternal punishment for that failure? There is
+no reason, no justice, no sanity in such a theory.
+
+Now let us turn to the explanation of reincarnation. According to that,
+Pomeroy has had many past incarnations and will have many more. Like all
+the rest of us he came up from primitive man. We have all learned the
+lessons of civilized life slowly by experience like children acquiring
+lessons from their books. The majority have come along well and
+developed a fair share of intellect in dealing with life's problems,
+and some degree of sympathy for others. Some have evolved rapidly like
+hard working pupils and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged
+behind and have learned very little. They are like the truants at school
+who have broken the rules and run away from their lessons. These
+laggards of the human race are the dullards and the criminals, who have
+moved so slowly incarnation after incarnation, or are so much younger in
+evolution, that they are now bringing savage traits into our present
+civilized life.
+
+Reincarnation not only explains who and what the criminal is but it also
+explains away the hell with which special creation threatens him. No
+hell awaits him except that which he has created himself by what he has
+done. By the law of cause and effect all the cruelty and suffering he
+has inflicted will react upon him to his sorrow, but will also serve for
+his enlightenment. In his next incarnation the kind of body he will have
+and the environment in which he will live will be determined exactly by
+the thoughts and emotions and acts of this and past incarnations. He
+will therefore neither go to a heaven for which he is not fitted nor to
+a hell which he does not justly deserve. He will simply come back in
+another physical body and have a chance to try it again, but he will
+have to make the trial under the conditions which his conduct has
+merited.
+
+And what of the idiot? According to special creation we cannot possibly
+explain him. It would be blasphemous to believe that God creates a
+mindless man. If one soul is given a mind and another is not, and for no
+reason whatever, it is the most monstrous injustice that ever forced
+itself upon the understanding of man! Think for a moment of the
+difference between the idiot and the normal person. The man of sound
+mind has before him the opportunity of progress, of mental and moral
+development. The avenues of business and professional life are open
+before him. He is free to try his powers and win his way. Wealth, power
+and fame are all possible for him. All the joys of social life may be
+his. Think of him surrounded by his family and friends, successful,
+satisfied, happy, and then think of the life of the idiot. Language
+cannot express the horror of the contrast! If there were no other
+explanation of life than that of special creation it would change the
+world into the hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation saves
+us from either blasphemy or madness. The idiot, like the congenital
+cripple, differs from the normal man only in the body, which is the
+instrument of the soul. Deformity of the body is a limitation of the ego
+who functions through it. A withered arm, a club foot, a deformed back,
+in this incarnation are results of unfortunate causes which that soul
+has generated in past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in the brain.
+Of course this is not an accident. There is no element of chance which
+places the limitation in one body where it causes but little trouble and
+in another where it prevents mental activity and thus produces idiocy.
+In each case it is the exact working out of the law. The body of the
+idiot is the physical plane representation of a soul that has made a
+serious blunder in the past, possible by limiting another with cruel
+restraint, and the gross misuse of his intellect and power in that way
+has operated to prevent his using it at all in the present life. But
+such limitations belong to the outer planes. It is the form that limits
+and when the form perishes the limitation disappears. As with the
+criminal no hell is needed to punish the idiot. He has made his own hell
+by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he must live in it
+and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it may seem to some that since the
+idiot is incapable of realizing the life of the normal person the
+situation represents no real misfortune for him. But idiocy on the
+physical plane does not mean idiocy in the soul. Even from the astral
+plane the ego may keenly feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime
+through such a physical body, as one here would feel the anguish of
+incarceration in a dungeon.
+
+The criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations of the failure of
+the theory of special creation to satisfactorily explain the facts of
+life. But if we turn to the other extreme and consider the most
+fortunate people in the world we shall find there, too, precisely the
+same failure to explain. By the hypothesis of special creation we find a
+gross injustice done to the soul born an ignoramus. Yet we find others
+possessing enough intelligence for several people. In the case of
+Macaulay we have the evidence in his own handwriting in a letter the
+date of which proves his age, that he was reading Greek and Latin and
+studying mathematics deeply when seven years old. There are many other
+cases of the remarkable display of talents in childhood, but a single
+instance will serve for all. It is all the better as an illustration
+because it is a contemporaneous case and the facts are known to scores
+of living people. It is recorded of William James Sidis, of Brookline,
+Massachusetts, that at six years of age he entered a grammar school and
+in six months had completed the work of seven grades. At the age of
+seven he had gone so far with his mathematical studies that his father,
+Professor Boris Sidis, could be of little assistance to him. He worked
+out the most abstruse and difficult problems with the greatest ease and
+invented new systems of computation which attracted much attention. When
+eight years old he entered the Brookline High School and in six weeks
+had completed the mathematical course and began writing a book on
+astronomy. He then took up the study of French, German, Latin and
+Russian. On leaving school he took up mathematics as a specialty and
+invented a system of logarithms based on the number 12 instead of 10.
+This was inspected by several well known mathematicians who pronounced
+it perfect in every detail. He applied for admission to Harvard
+University but the authorities refused his petition on account of his
+youth, only, since he could have passed the examination with ease. He
+tried again the next year and was again refused on the same ground. But
+at eleven years of age, having passed the entrance examination for the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was judged to know enough of
+chemistry and kindred subjects to make him eligible for admission to the
+Harvard medical school. He then entered upon a special course at Harvard
+because the ordinary course in college was far below the abilities of
+this boy of eleven years. Professor James, of Harvard, the famous
+psychologist, has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he ever
+knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite pages of Shakespeare
+from memory at an age when the ordinary boy is learning his alphabet.
+
+In the same city where young Sidis was born we find the idiot. Did God
+create them both as they were born or did they come up to their present
+difference of mental equipment through a process of evolution that
+accounts for it all satisfactorily? If the theory of special creation is
+sound why did not the idiot get at least a little of the intellect that
+Sidis could so easily have spared? If they are the work of special
+creation it is impossible to find reason or justice in such terrible
+inequalities. But if reincarnation is God's method of creation the
+explanation of the difference between them becomes simple. Sidis is not
+only an old soul but evidently one who has worked hard in past lives,
+throwing off the lassitude of the dense bodies and evolving the power of
+will that enabled him to triumph over obstacles, conquering all the
+enemies of intellectual progress and thus earning the fine physical body
+and brain he now possesses. His present abilities are but the sum total
+of the energies he has put forth in the past.
+
+The theory of special creation does not explain the facts of life. It
+lacks justice, it lacks harmony and it lacks consistency. It is not in
+accord with natural law. Nature knows no such thing as special creation.
+To believe in special creation is to ignore all scientific facts and
+principles. On the other hand reincarnation is in harmony with science
+and with natural law. Reincarnation is evolution and every kingdom of
+nature develops through evolution. The difference between the shriveled
+wild grain that struggles with the rock and soil for life enough to
+barely reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of the cultivated fields
+that feeds the world, is the work of evolution. The wild stalk produced
+the seed and from that seed came a better stalk. The better stalk
+produced a still better kernel and from that better kernel sprang a
+superior stalk to yield a higher grade of wheat than any of its
+predecessors. The stalk sprouts from the ground, matures, stores all its
+gain of growth within the seed and perishes. But from the seed springs
+its reincarnated form, to repeat the process that changes poor to good,
+good to better and better into best. And thus it is with the
+reincarnating soul. As the almost worthless grain through many seasons
+is slowly changed to perfect worth, the soul is by that same law of
+evolution slowly changed through many incarnations from the chaos of
+savage instincts to the law and order of the moral world. Each
+incarnation yields some improvement. As the seed sprouts within the
+darkness of the soil and, perishing there, attains its full results in
+the higher realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which,
+stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its better self, so
+the soul strikes anchorage in the lower planes and draws from its varied
+experiences that which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the
+power to return with greater life.
+
+Attempts have been made to find some explanation of the mental and moral
+inequalities that exist at birth. In the earlier days of the study of
+evolution it was usually asserted that the human being inherits his
+mentality and morality from his parents. But even if that were true the
+injustice of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain. It
+is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice, and it is of
+no importance whether it comes about through heredity or otherwise. But
+as a matter of fact heredity is confined to the physical side of
+existence. As more and more is learned by observation the old theory of
+mental and moral heredity has lost ground until it can be said that it
+now has no recognition in the scientific world. Nobody is better
+qualified to speak upon the subject than those with practical
+experience. Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University Children's Clinic,
+that has large numbers of defective children in charge, treating no less
+than sixteen hundred in a single year, says:
+
+      "As to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective
+      types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance. I do not
+      agree with social or educational doctrinaires who assign
+      the causes definitely to liquor, poverty, infectious
+      diseases, or other social or moral shortcomings. The
+      greatest minds of the world are hesitant in theorizing
+      about this. There are a complex of causes which explain
+      many of these cases, but no generalization fits absolutely.
+      We may find a case which is not traceable to any of these
+      conditions--_a case in which the antecedents would promise
+      a perfectly normal child, and yet we are confronted with a
+      defective child_. On the other hand, bright, normal
+      children, even children of superior intelligence sometimes
+      spring from such conditions."[L]
+
+A little reasoning about the facts concerning both genius and idiocy
+will make it clear that neither is inherited. If it were true that
+genius is inherited society would present a different appearance. There
+would be famous families of geniuses living in the world, in music, in
+poetry, in warfare, in invention, in art, if genius were inherited. The
+fact is that it is difficult to find even two geniuses in any family.
+The Caesars, Napoleons, Edisons, Lincolns, Wagners, Shakespeares, stand
+alone with neither great ancestors nor great descendants. We search in
+vain for great ancestors for such men; but if the theory of mental
+heredity were sound we should know their ancestors for precisely the
+same reason that we know them.
+
+Heredity, then, does not explain whence genius comes; and if anybody had
+really traced genius from father, or grandfather, to son or grandson, we
+should still have no explanation of what genius is. We could then only
+regard it as the result of some strange chance; yet the scientist knows
+that laws of nature contain no such element. But the only reason why
+genius appears so incomprehensible is because we have not looked at it
+in the light of nature's truth. We have erroneously assumed that this is
+the only life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the time is
+too short for the evolution of genius. A man can become an expert in one
+lifetime but not a genius. But if we give him many incarnations to
+develop along certain lines he can become a genius of a given type. The
+soul that works strenuously at building up a certain faculty through
+many incarnations naturally develops qualities in the causal body that
+shine out brilliantly upon its return to a physical body and we have the
+genius. We evolve our mentality and morality, and there could be no
+justice in life if it were otherwise.
+
+There is no element of chance in getting a new physical body in the next
+incarnation. The body is the material expression of the self. It is as
+much the product of the self as the rose is of the bush, the apple of
+the tree, or the tulip of the bulb. The musician can no more get a body
+suitable to the blacksmith than the rose bush can produce an apple. We
+do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people drawing clothing by
+numbers which might result in grotesque misfits. We do not get bodies at
+all, we evolve them, and in each incarnation the new body expresses all
+the soul has come to be up to that point in its evolution. Such a view
+of life has a basis of absolute justice. Every soul gets exactly what
+it has earned.
+
+The common belief in Occidental civilization is that we live here for
+only sixty or seventy years and that then, when we die, we pass on to
+live eternally somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity, whether
+it is filled with pleasure or is horrible with pain, is made to depend
+on how we spent those few years of the physical life! Such a fate would
+be unfair and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a term it would
+not be fair to condemn him to lose all opportunity of getting an
+education. We would give him another chance at the following term.
+
+A little incident of disobedience from home life will illustrate the
+point involved. A quinine capsule was lying on the table. A
+three-year-old boy reached for it. His mother called across the room,
+"Don't eat that, dearie, it isn't candy." But in a spirit of reckless
+mischief he hurried it into his mouth and quickly chewed it up! It was a
+very disagreeable but salutary lesson for the little fellow. It is an
+example of nature's methods. She is always consistent, and has a
+balanced relationship between cause and effect. But suppose in this case
+we throw her consistency aside as those who believe that eternal results
+will follow temporal effects are obliged to do. An ordinary lifetime
+compared to eternity is somewhat like that instant of disobedience
+compared to eighty years, but the illustration is not adequate because
+eternity never ends. As nearly as the principle can be applied it would
+be by saying to the child, "Because you were disobedient for a second
+of time you shall taste quinine for eighty years!" If that punishment is
+injustice what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain as the
+result of the errors committed in a lifetime?
+
+Any hypothesis of existence that does not take into consideration the
+welfare of humanity is a false hypothesis. What plan can better serve
+the common welfare than a chance to redeem a failure? When a prisoner is
+condemned for a crime we do not deprive him of opportunities. We give
+him every possible chance to improve his character. God cannot be less
+just or merciful than man. Rebirth is a new chance. Every incarnation is
+another opportunity.
+
+If the popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell is sound, and there be
+few who find the "narrow way," the time will come when the majority of
+the race will have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime, and
+have failed. If that were really true, it is easy to imagine what they
+would do with another opportunity if they had it! How long should
+opportunity be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to deprive
+anybody of it when he is eager to redeem past errors is to ignore the
+principles of human welfare. Therefore such a plan cannot be the true
+one. John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:
+
+      Master of human destinies am I!
+         Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait;
+         Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
+      Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
+         Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late
+         I knock unbidden once at every gate.
+      If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before
+         I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
+         And they who follow me reach every state
+      Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
+         Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
+      Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
+         Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
+         I answer not and I return no more.
+
+That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably emphasizes the
+importance of promptly acting when the time for action arrives. But
+there is another truth to be expressed on the subject and it is well
+done by Walter Malone, who says:
+
+      They do me wrong who say I come no more,
+          When once I knock and fail to find you in;
+      For every day I stand outside your door,
+          And bid you awake and rise to fight and win.
+      Wail not for precious chances passed away;
+          Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
+      Each night I burn the records of the day,
+          At sunrise every soul is born again.
+      Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;
+          To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
+      My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
+          But never bind a moment yet to come.
+      Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,
+      I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."
+
+What a magnificent view of human evolution! No ultimate failure possible
+because there is always another chance. The failure of one incarnation
+made good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults and
+frailties--the shadow blots of the past--vanishing in the light of a
+higher wisdom that has been won. No endless hell, no eternal torment;
+not even the ghosts of vanished chances to haunt the mind; but only the
+insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging us to wake and rise to
+strive and win!
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[L] Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY
+
+
+There are apparently but three ways in which anybody has attempted to
+explain the origin of the race. If two of these are shown to be
+impossible we have no course open to us but to accept the one which
+remains. One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another
+is the common belief that God created an original human pair and
+continues to create souls for babies. The third hypothesis is that of
+the evolution of the soul.
+
+The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that the forces of
+nature, with no directive intelligence, are sufficient to account for
+man as we see him; that a continuing consciousness in the human being is
+a delusion; that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has
+neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science to which the
+materialist appeals contradict such conclusions.
+
+This materialistic belief regards the human body as a self-sufficient
+machine whose brain generates thought. But the savage has a completely
+evolved physical body with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His
+brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference in its material
+constitution from the brain of civilized man. Indeed, his physical body
+is not only as complete a machine as ours but is likely to be materially
+sounder. Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this savage
+produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there is no directing soul
+back of the brain, why the marvelous difference in the product of the
+two brains?
+
+Materialists go too far in the assumption that they can explain the
+phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop
+short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology
+they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains
+unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart
+through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the
+veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced
+cannot say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been explained and
+cannot be explained from the materialist's viewpoint. Every human being
+is a miracle. A fingernail is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from
+the same food that makes the flesh and it will continue to be formed
+regardless of the variety or quality of the food. Why do certain
+particles become flesh or nails? Who can draw the division line between
+them? With marvelous instruments and wondrous skill science has explored
+and mapped and charted the "tabernacle of clay," but it cannot throw a
+single ray of light upon the intelligence that animates it.
+
+Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but still worse as a
+satisfactory interpretation of the panorama of the life about us. It is
+a philosophy of the gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance
+to be that which we are; that we are what we are merely because of
+fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations. Had the combinations
+chanced to be something different we should not be in existence. Chance
+is the king of the materialist's world.
+
+According to this theory all abilities are the gifts of nature and all
+lack of them is the blind award of chance. No credit whatever is due to
+anybody for what he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his
+deficiencies. All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw something
+from a bag under compulsion. It is not to the credit of one that he got
+a prize nor to the discredit of another that he drew a blank. This
+hypothesis holds that recently we were not and that presently we shall
+cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief period, suffer or
+enjoy as it may happen and then pass to the oblivion of eternal silence;
+that all the thought, all the toil and the striving, all the effort and
+endurance were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a philosophy
+will not long survive the progress of our age. It lacks the balance of
+nature's principle of conservation. It lacks the completeness of
+universal law. It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in
+every human consciousness and without which life would be a meaningless
+mockery and the world a chaos of despair.
+
+But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of bad points or
+undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea of a mechanical creation is
+equally at war with both fact and reason. That belief is that God
+created the world as men build houses, and added the human beings as men
+furnish their houses when built. It is the belief that He is still
+making souls as fast as bodies are being born in the world, that these
+souls begin their existence at birth, live here but one life and then
+pass on into either endless bliss or eternal pain.
+
+This idea differs from materialism in the matter of a governing
+intelligence and on immortality but it is remarkably like it in other
+ways. Like materialism it is fatalistic because it makes man the
+helpless subject of resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent
+force as first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.
+
+The materialist says that all human characteristics are the gift of
+nature while according to the popular belief they are the gifts of God.
+In either case one class of human beings gets abilities that they have
+not earned and others get defects that they do not deserve. The
+intellectual man is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped
+without mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured by being
+well born while others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes
+logically with such ideas.
+
+Happily the world has long been growing away from the once wide-spread
+belief in predestination because it is too shocking to the modern sense
+of justice. But is the world at the same time catching the point that if
+there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at birth, then
+the very essence of predestination remains, because some are created
+with the wisdom to attain salvation and others are created without it?
+
+If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility at the
+time of birth. Neither can it have any merit. One is born with a sound
+mind and moral insight. These qualities may lead to salvation but the
+man has done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel and
+vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore miss salvation,
+but if he had no pre-existence he can have done nothing to deserve such
+a start in life. If we are really here for the first time then justice
+can be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start and equal
+opportunities afterward.
+
+Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between human beings at
+birth. There is every degree of vice and virtue from the savage to the
+saint and every mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If
+God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created wise and kind
+though he did nothing to earn it. Another is created vicious and
+depraved. He did nothing to deserve it. One is showered with natural
+gifts to which he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a
+stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to believe that God
+made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason and to justice.
+
+It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between God
+and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible for a person to
+be saved by his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by God
+at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to comprehend spiritual
+truth and his moral strength to resist temptation, were conferred upon
+him, not earned by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings
+should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human automata
+operated by such degree of mental and moral ability as God chose to
+assign to them. If this be true, genius should have no credit for its
+accomplishments, indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of
+condemnation, tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue no
+applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this
+absurd and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of people.
+It is believed because it always has been believed.
+
+If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that
+the soul is created at birth is also impossible. It is a theory that
+encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions that destroy justice
+and defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its day. It was
+possible at any time only because there was too little information and,
+like the old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place to the
+newer knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest friend of
+religion. It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific belief
+in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality and a brotherhood of
+man that has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was hastily
+thought to be destructive of a belief in God and heaven and immortality
+is rapidly becoming the most important witness to the truth of them all.
+While it is true that in the earliest days of evolution the most eminent
+scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that today the most eminent
+scientists of the world believe in the existence of the soul, and in its
+immortality, and base that belief upon scientific grounds.
+
+What is the essence of the facts of evolution and how does it give
+evidence against materialism and for immortality? Evolution is an
+orderly unfolding from the single to the diversified, from the simple to
+the complex, in which process life evolves by passing from lower to
+higher forms and storing within itself the gist of the experiences
+gained in each.
+
+One of the vital facts that evolution establishes is that slow building
+is the order of creation. The horse is an example. He is traced backward
+with certainty to a small creature that resembles him very little
+indeed. Ages were required to evolve the horse into his present
+intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important fact in evolution
+is the continuity of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently
+used as an illustration, but the principle holds with all the higher
+order of insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis of the
+caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common that most people have
+personally observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation that
+contradicts materialistic philosophy. The worm is a physical body
+occupied by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body perishes
+and becomes part of the dust of the street. The life enters the grave of
+the chrysalis. The scientist takes that chrysalis, packs it in an ice
+house and leaves it frozen for a number of years. Now a mere frost will
+kill either caterpillar or butterfly, but when the chrysalis is removed
+from the ice and brought into a higher temperature the triumphant life
+emerges in the form of the butterfly. This phenomenon proves that life
+does survive the loss of the body. The body of the caterpillar is dead
+and has turned to dust years ago, but the caterpillar that lived in it
+is not dead. It now lives again in the physical world in a physical
+body of a higher type.
+
+Here, in an order of existence almost infinitely below man, we have an
+individual life existing in a physical form, passing from it and, after
+a number of years, taking possession of another form and living in that.
+Who can admit such continuity of life for the insect and deny it for
+man? Can there be a deathless something in a worm and not in a human
+being? Even without the mass of physical evidence that exists upon the
+subject the logic of nature would lead us to confident conclusions. The
+knowledge of evolution which science has so far accumulated leads to
+four natural inferences. One is that man is immortal. Another is that he
+has, like all creatures, slowly evolved to what he now is. A third is
+that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together, and the
+fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher and continually higher
+ones. The human soul evolves from the savage to the saint--from animal
+instincts to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot escape
+the conclusion that the race has evolved, is evolving and will continue
+to evolve until mental and moral perfection has been attained.
+
+If neither the theory of the materialist nor the popular notion that the
+soul is created at birth is satisfactory, we have only reincarnation
+left as a working hypothesis; and if we accept the evolution of the soul
+as a natural truth, then reincarnation becomes a necessity in explaining
+the known facts of life.
+
+But there are some students of life who appear to refuse the hypothesis
+of reincarnation while wishing to accept the idea of the evolution of
+the soul. But how would that be possible? If the soul is evolving it is
+under the necessity of developing by the laws of growth. They were
+discussed in Chapter IX.
+
+Those who desire to put their ideas about the soul and its immortality
+into harmony with the facts of evolution sometimes ask why it would not
+be possible for the soul to leave the material plane forever at the
+death of the physical body and then pursue its evolution on higher
+planes. In the vast universe there must be opportunity for all possible
+development, it is argued.
+
+But why go on into other regions when the lessons here have not been
+learned? That would be a violation of nature's law of the conservation
+of energy. The average human being is in the elementary grades, with
+scores of incarnations ahead of him before he will be in a position even
+to take advantage of his opportunities and thus make fairly rapid
+progress. To talk of going on to higher planes for further evolution is
+like proposing that a child shall leave the kindergarten and enter the
+university.
+
+We are evolving along two lines, the mental and moral, and a little
+consideration of the matter will make clear two important points--that
+we have much to learn and that the physical plane is wonderfully
+arranged for our instruction. We have conditions here for developing
+mentality that do not exist on higher planes. The absolute necessity of
+procuring food is an example. Death is the penalty for failure to obtain
+it. Hunger was the earliest spur to action at the lowest level of
+evolution and even now at our high point of attainment it is one of the
+chief factors of racial activity. In providing the necessities of life
+and in gratifying our multitude of desires mentality is developed.
+Business and professional life rests upon these physical plane
+necessities and, engaged in solving the problems of civilization, the
+race evolves intellect. Such problems do not, of course, exist on higher
+planes.
+
+While the mentality is thus being pushed along in evolution by our
+material necessities, the heart qualities are developed by the family
+ties in a way that could not be done elsewhere. In the nature of things
+the entrance of the soul to the physical plane is attended with
+helplessness. From the beginning it must have material necessities or
+die, and yet it can do nothing in its new infant body. Again, as a rule,
+long before it leaves the physical plane old age has once more rendered
+it helpless. Thus every human being must depend on the assistance of
+others at two critical periods of each incarnation. The help it
+receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back to the race, in the care
+of both the helpless young and the helpless old, when it is in the vigor
+of mature physical life. It is obvious that such experience develops the
+qualities of sympathy and compassion as no phase of business life could.
+The relationship of parent and child, husband and wife, evolves the
+heart qualities in a way that would be impossible in the totally
+different environment of higher planes. Naturally enough, each plane has
+a specific work to do in the soul's evolution. We can no more learn in
+the highest planes the lessons the material world is designed to teach
+us than a pupil can acquire a knowledge of mathematics from his lessons
+in geography. Hence the necessity for a periodical return to this life
+until its experiences have developed in us the qualities we lack.
+
+Not only has each plane its special adaptability to particular needs of
+the soul in its evolution, but the two kinds of physical
+bodies--masculine and feminine--through which the soul functions, afford
+special advantages for acquiring the lessons of life. The soul on its
+home plane is, of course, sexless. Sex, as we know it, is a
+differentiation arising from the soul's expression on lower planes. All
+characteristics of the soul itself, like intelligence, love, or
+devotion, are common to both sexes.
+
+The ego functioning through the masculine body has the opportunity of
+certain experiences that would be impossible in the feminine body,
+while, of course, the feminine form enables the ego to get experience
+that could not be known through the masculine body. A consideration of
+the widely different experiences of fathers and mothers, sons and
+daughters, will show how true this is. The lessons obtained in the
+masculine body are largely those of the head while in the feminine form
+they are lessons of the heart.
+
+When the ego puts forth its energies and begins descent into lower
+planes for another incarnation it is apparently beginning a cycle of
+experience in which either mentality or spirituality shall be the
+dominant note for that incarnation, and probably for several others. If
+it is to evolve for the time being through those experiences related to
+objective activity, with intellect as the guiding factor, the masculine
+body can best serve the purpose. But if the dominant note is to be
+spirituality, rather than mentality and the soul is, for the time,
+moving along the line of the heart side--the subjective, the
+intuitive--then the feminine body is the better vehicle in which such
+experience can be obtained. But to say that mentality is the dominant
+factor of masculine incarnation does not at all mean that men have a
+monopoly of the reasoning faculty. Nor does the fact that other souls
+are being expressed through the feminine body mean that they have a
+fundamental spiritual advantage. Some women are better reasoners than
+some men, while some men are more spiritual than some women. What it
+does mean is that a certain ego can express intellect better through a
+masculine body and intuition better through a feminine body.
+
+Our ordinary language confirms the truth of the statement that men
+normally express more the head qualities and women more the heart
+qualities. We speak of men as being reasoners and of women as being
+intuitional and depending upon their impressions. The soul in the
+masculine body is for the time being getting experiences of the outer,
+objective activities. He is the home builder and protector, the bread
+winner, the battle fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the
+time, getting experience along the line of the inner, subjective life.
+She is the wife and mother, and her lessons are of the heart rather than
+the head.
+
+As we study nature we are more and more impressed with her wonderful
+mechanism for the evolution of the soul. It soon becomes clear to the
+student that every individual is, in each incarnation, thrown into
+precisely the circumstances required for the greatest possible progress
+of that particular ego. If the qualities of initiative and courage, for
+example, are to be developed, the masculine body admirably serves the
+purpose, while if sympathy and compassion need stimulation the feminine
+form is wonderfully effective for that kind of progress. It requires
+little reasoning to see that the soul would not continue to incarnate in
+one sex indefinitely. It must develop all its inner qualities. Both
+intellect and compassion must reach perfect expression. Such a
+consummation can, of course, be best attained by alternating sex
+experiences. But here again there is wide latitude in the operation of
+the law. The rule seems to be that ordinarily there are not less than
+three nor more than seven successive incarnations in one sex, and then
+the ego begins to express itself through a body of the other sex. By
+that rule it would commonly be for a period of from a few hundred years
+to some thousands of years, that the ego expresses itself through one
+sex before it changes to the other. One case is mentioned by the occult
+investigators in which for about thirty thousand years a certain ego had
+expressed itself only through the masculine form. At least no trace of a
+feminine incarnation could be found during that time.
+
+The necessity for rebirth becomes clearer and clearer as we study the
+nature of the human being and the inherent divine qualities he is
+unfolding. Reincarnation is the method of evolution at the human level.
+Only by physical plane experience can man's potential powers be aroused
+and so tremendous is the evolutionary work to be done that only a mere
+fragment of it can be accomplished in an ordinary lifetime. The absolute
+necessity of many rebirths is obvious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER
+
+
+The loss of memory between incarnations and the failure to now recall
+any of our experiences previous to the present physical plane life has
+sometimes been cited as a negative kind of evidence against the
+hypothesis of rebirth. The point could not be made, however, by one who
+has studied the matter because close scrutiny will show that the loss of
+memory is a necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that we do not
+remember is in perfect harmony with the principles of evolution. Indeed,
+the close student of the subject would be very much surprised if we
+could normally remember, because he does not get far until he sees, not
+only why we do not remember past incarnations but why we should not
+remember them.
+
+The very nature of the evolutionary work to be done by reincarnation
+necessitates a sacrifice of memory. One useful purpose of the
+confinement of consciousness in matter, through the use of a physical
+body, is that it narrows the scope of consciousness and thereby
+increases its efficiency. The consciousness of the ego sweeps over a
+vast range, forward and backward, including all past incarnations. But
+the limitation of matter which compels consciousness to be expressed
+through a physical body, focuses the attention on the evolutionary work
+immediately in hand. The brain becomes the instrument of consciousness
+but also, fortunately, the limitation of consciousness. If there were
+not loss of memory our minds would now range over the adventures of
+thousands of years in the past. It would encompass a vast drama with
+countless loves and hates, of many lives filled with pathos and tragedy.
+To thus distract the mind from the present life would retard our
+progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place one can think better
+and accomplish more than when in the midst of turbulent scenes and
+throngs of people. When there is less to think about the thinking is
+more effective. It is necessary to restrict the consciousness and limit
+the mind to the present life in order to get the most satisfactory
+results. The same truth is embodied in that old saying that whoever is
+jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration alone can produce
+satisfactory results. If we would master the lessons of this life we
+must not take other lives within the field of consciousness. The very
+process of reincarnation is a coming out of the general into the
+particular, with the consequent narrowing of consciousness.
+
+We should keep in mind the fact that our true and permanent life is in
+the causal body, and on the mental plane, and that there, alone, is
+unbroken memory possible. The descent into matter in each incarnation is
+also beyond reach of the brain memory, of course. Getting new bodies is
+the working out of natural law even as instinct works in animals. The
+whole animal kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man, nevertheless
+adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy and with a depth of wisdom
+that is beyond our comprehension. And so is human evolution directed by
+impelling forces that are unknown to our waking consciousness. But our
+waking consciousness is only a small part of our consciousness--that
+fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical brain. The
+physical brain is a limitation of consciousness, and therefore of
+memory, as certainly as a mountain range is a limitation of sight and
+prevents one's knowing what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know
+our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes the memory of our
+past incarnations. But when we come downward into another incarnation it
+is as though we were descending in a narrow vale within mountain ranges
+that stand between us and the wider world. Memory is dependent on things
+not within the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish
+facts which we wish to recall. We know, for example, the name of a
+certain person. There is no doubt that we know it and yet it is
+impossible to remember it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us, but
+we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now, if memory fails to
+produce its record even when we have a mental picture of just how that
+person looks, and know just where we have met him, it is certainly not
+remarkable that with no such immediate connection with our last
+incarnation we fail to recall it. It was perhaps in another part of the
+world, and in another civilization, and is separated from us by the long
+interval between incarnations. Of course memory likewise fails to
+produce that record. But all of our past experiences are within the
+soul, just as the records of all of the experiences of this life are in
+the mind whether we can connect them with the present moment or not.
+
+But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not remember events that
+have occurred in past lives and people we have seen before, we do not at
+least now have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar to us. What
+the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation is not concrete facts but
+something higher and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts
+which gives the understanding of their true relationship; and this is
+the thing we call good judgment or common-sense. A man does not succeed
+in business because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows what
+to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full of facts but it cannot run
+a business. Every theorist and dreamer is loaded with facts. The
+successful man is the one with balance and judgment.
+
+It might seem on first thought that one who has been a carpenter in a
+previous incarnation should have no need to learn the name and use of a
+saw, or one who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to hold the
+pen and fashion the letters. But we must remember that the old soul is
+now breaking in a new physical instrument with which to express itself
+and that while it will be able to use all the skill it has previously
+evolved, its full expression must await the time when the new instrument
+has been brought into responsive action.
+
+The situation might be fairly illustrated by the case of a stenographer
+who is still using the original typewriter, in some remote corner of the
+earth, and who has not even seen or heard of any of the remarkable
+improvements made in such machines in the last thirty years. If his old
+machine were suddenly taken from him and a model of the present year
+were put in its place, it is obvious that he could at first make little
+use of it--not because he has no knowledge but because he must become
+accustomed to the new machine before he can express himself through it.
+It would have mechanism and appliances that he could not immediately
+manage. Let us imagine also that all the characters are in a foreign
+language which must be mastered before the machine can be used. But the
+difficulties are not great enough yet for a fair illustration. We must
+also suppose that it is a living thing, with moods and emotions, and
+that it must pass through stages of growth comparable to infancy and
+youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain that the stenographer
+would appear to have very little knowledge and to possess little skill.
+Yet as a matter of fact it is merely the conditions that temporarily
+prevent him from expressing his wisdom and skill.
+
+The gist of knowledge gained in the past represents skill that has no
+dependence whatever upon brain memory. If a man should suffer a lapse of
+memory, as sometimes happens, and wander about unable to give his name
+or place of residence, such loss of memory does not prevent him using
+any skill he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not know in
+what gymnasium he evolved his great strength, but he can use it just as
+effectively regardless of the absence of memory.
+
+One who has been a skillful penman brings all his skill to the new
+incarnation but of course the new body must be trained to hold the pen
+and form the letters. Every public school teacher knows that one child
+will quickly learn that and soon become a competent penman while another
+can by no possibility exhibit skill in that particular art. The reason
+is that one has previously evolved his skill and the other has not, and
+may not, for several more incarnations.
+
+It is sometimes objected that by the hypothesis of reincarnation we are
+required to go over the same ground again and again and learn what we
+have previously learned. But the criticism has no foundation in fact.
+There is undoubtedly some necessary recapitulation in the early part of
+the incarnation, just as there may be in the early part of a school
+term. But in the main we are thrown into new conditions which are
+calculated to develop additional faculties. We return to the same
+material world but we find it with a higher form of civilization than
+when we were here before. Never before have we who are now here seen a
+civilization like this, with its age of iron and steam and electricity,
+with its marvelous opportunities for developing the mechanical faculty
+in human nature. And that is another bit of evidence of the beauty and
+utility of the evolutionary scheme. We come back always to greater
+opportunities than we have yet known.
+
+It is not only clear that the failure to remember the past has nothing
+to do with our ability to use the skill and wisdom we have previously
+evolved but it is equally obvious that it is the best of good fortune
+that we cannot remember the past. If we could do so that memory would
+keep alive the personal antagonisms of past reincarnations. Nobody will
+deny that we have plenty of them in this incarnation or that the world
+would be the better if we could bury some of the present antagonisms in
+a like oblivion. If all quarreling neighbors were to suddenly lose
+memory of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage to everybody
+concerned.
+
+Nature's wisdom in veiling the past from us can be understood by
+observing the pernicious effects of remembering too long the blunders
+people make in this incarnation. Take the case of a very young man who
+has charge of his employer's money and who, finding himself pressed for
+ready cash, makes the grave mistake of "borrowing" a hundred dollars
+without his employer's knowledge and consent. The young man really
+believes he is borrowing it and knows just where the money is to come
+from to replace it soon, and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know
+anything about it. But to his consternation the money that was due him
+in a few days cannot be collected in time and an unexpected examination
+of his books leads to his arrest for embezzlement. He is convicted,
+sent to prison for a year, and returns a marked man. Thoughtless
+society closes its doors against him. He seeks employment in vain.
+Nobody wants an ex-convict. He explains that he had no criminal intent
+and that he really was guilty of only an indiscretion and that he paid
+back the money later. But the world is too busy to listen. It sees only
+the court record, and that was against him. The public forgets, or never
+knows, the extenuating circumstances. But it never forgets two
+things--the verdict of guilty and the prison. The young man would almost
+give his life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible. It
+stands against him for life. But nature is wise. She does not permit our
+vicious traits to extend their injury too far. If we could remember from
+incarnation to incarnation that man's misfortune might afflict him for
+thousands of years. But by the wise plan of closing all accounts at the
+end of each incarnation the mischief of remembering the blunders of
+others comes to an end. In the next incarnation all start with clear
+records again.
+
+One of the objections that one sometimes hears against reincarnation is
+that it seems to separate us for long periods, if not forever, and that
+even when we meet those we have previously known and loved, there is no
+memory of the past. The answer to the first point is that the separation
+is wholly on the lower planes and that the time spent on the higher
+planes is often twenty times that given to the lower. Separation is, of
+course, unavoidable on the physical plane, even where people live
+together in the same home. The average man spends most of the day at
+his office and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four. He is
+really separated from his family most of the time. But there is no such
+separation on higher planes and there is spent most of the whole period
+of evolution. The second point--that we do not now have the pleasure of
+knowing that our friends are those we knew and loved before--is not an
+important one. What is really important is that we again have them. If
+the ties of affection have been strong between us in the past there will
+be instant friendship when we meet for the first time in this
+incarnation. Those with strong heart ties are certain to be drawn into
+very close association life after life. It has been observed through the
+investigations that egos have been husband and wife, or parent and
+child, again and again. The probability of such close relationships
+depends upon the strength of the ties of affection. But if such real
+bond between the souls is lacking the mere fact that they now have
+family relationships is no guarantee of such future intimate
+association. When two souls have strong ties arising out of past
+association the failure to remember that incarnation does not in the
+least weaken the ties. But it does mercifully hide the past contentions
+that are to be found in nearly all lives.
+
+The failure to remember previous incarnations will be more clearly
+understood if we now give some thought to the fact that the personality
+here on the material plane is only a fragment of the whole consciousness
+of the soul. As we come down into lower planes from the mental world
+each grosser grade of matter through which the ego expresses itself is a
+limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane each of us, whatever he
+may be here, is more alive and enjoys an actual extension of
+consciousness. On the mental plane he has enormously greater wisdom than
+here, with a still further extension of consciousness that is quite
+beyond the present comprehension of the brain intelligence.
+
+To put it differently, the ego really does not come into incarnation at
+all. It merely sends outward a ray from itself--a mere fragment of
+itself, as a man might put his hand down into the water of a shallow
+stream to gather bits of ore from which gold can be obtained. So the ego
+puts a finger, only, down into denser matter to get the general
+experience that can be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill.
+That finger of the ego, that we know as the personality, gathers the
+experience and then it is withdrawn into the ego. During the incarnation
+the personality has been animated by only a little of the ego's vast
+intelligence and that is why it blunders so often. But, veiled in dense
+matter, not much of the ego's consciousness can reach it.
+
+The relationship between the ego and the personality may be illustrated
+by that which exists between the brain consciousness and that of the
+finger-tip. The difference, of course, is great. The finger tip cannot
+see of hear or taste or smell. It is limited to one sense--touch. But it
+is a form of consciousness, and it can get experience and pass it on to
+the brain consciousness. A man may be addressing an audience and see
+some substance on the table before him. It may be sand or sugar. Without
+interrupting his lecture he can put down his finger and get at the truth
+about the matter. The finger-tip gets the information and passes it on
+to the brain consciousness. Meantime there has been no pause in the
+discourse. Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought has been
+missed. The intellectual life went on in its completeness while the ray
+of intelligence sent down in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as
+it was. Just so the life of the ego--the true self of each of us--goes
+forward on its home plane while the personality here gropes for its
+harvest of experience. Some of those experiences will be painful to the
+personality, and the event will seem tragic here, but it will be a
+passing incident to the ego. In the illustration just used the substance
+on the table may prove to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of
+glass. Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and pain
+follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a blinding flash of
+distress that is overwhelming. But to the brain consciousness it is a
+trivial incident. And thus it is with most of our painful experiences
+here. They do a useful work in our evolution and they are trifling
+incidents to the consciousness of the ego.
+
+The personality finishes its work and perishes, in the sense that it is
+drawn up and incorporated in the ego. Most people identify themselves so
+fully with the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to them.
+But that feeling will trouble them no longer when the ego is understood
+to be the real self. We might say that the relationship between the ego
+and the personality is like that between man and child. Childhood will
+perish but only to be merged into manhood. When we look at that
+transformation from the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory.
+But if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may look appalling.
+If you should say to your son of three summers, "My child, the time will
+come when all these beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your
+little playmates will see you no more," you might cause him much
+distress. It would seem to his limited child consciousness nothing less
+than a tragic destruction of what makes life worth while. But when he
+reaches manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial things of
+those early days. If there is something in his childhood of real,
+permanent value, it will persist in manhood. All the trivial and
+transient will have disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so,
+for manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego is the real
+self.
+
+As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of the man, so the memory
+of all the hundreds of incarnations persists in the causal body and is
+an eternal possession of the ego. When we are sufficiently evolved to
+raise the consciousness to the level of the causal body, while still
+living on the physical plane, as some people are now able to do, we
+shall thus temporarily recover the memory of past lives. When that time
+comes, however, the soul is sufficiently advanced to use such wider
+knowledge without injury to itself or others.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
+
+
+Back of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is a profound and
+beautiful natural truth, but it has been degraded into a teaching that
+is as selfish and brutal as it is false. The natural truth is the
+sacrifice of the solar Logos, or the deity of our system. The sacrifice
+consists of limiting Himself in the matter of manifested worlds and it
+is reflected in the sacrifice of the Christ and other great teachers who
+use their vast consciousness through a physical brain for the helping of
+the world. Compared to the descent of such supermen into mundane spheres
+a mere physical death is a trifling sacrifice indeed.
+
+The help that such great spiritual beings have given mankind is
+incalculable and altogether beyond what we are able to comprehend. But
+for such sacrifice the race would be very, very far below its present
+evolutionary level. But to assume that such sacrifices relieve man from
+the necessity of developing his spiritual nature or in any degree
+nullify his personal responsibility is false and dangerous doctrine.
+Nobody more than the theosophist pays to the Christ the tribute of the
+most reverent gratitude. He also holds with St. Paul that each must
+work out his own salvation.
+
+The belief in special creation arose in that period of our history when
+our ancestors knew little of nature. Modern science was then unborn and
+superstition filled the western world. Now that we do know the truths of
+nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous process that is
+still going on, it is time to abandon the old conceptions and bring
+religious beliefs and scientific principles into harmonious
+relationship.
+
+Wherever it touches the practical affairs of life the old idea of
+special creation and special salvation fail to satisfy our sense of
+justice and of consistency. Intuitively we know that any belief that is
+not in harmony with the facts of life is a wrong belief. The idea of
+special creation is not only inconsistent with the facts as science has
+found them, but it does not give us a sound basis for moral development.
+Having started with the false idea of the special creation of the soul,
+which brings it into the world free from personal responsibility, it
+became a necessity to invent a special salvation to give any semblance
+of justice at all.
+
+Now the vital point against this plan of salvation is that it denies the
+soul's personal responsibility and teaches that whatever the offenses
+against God and nature have been, they may be cancelled by the simple
+act of believing that another suffered and died in order that those sins
+might be forgiven. It is the pernicious doctrine that wrong doing by one
+can be set right by the sacrifice of another. It is simply astounding
+that such a belief could have survived the Middle Ages and should
+continue to find millions who accept it in these days of clearer
+thinking. But it seems that when people are taught a thing in childhood
+the mind accepts it then without reasoning and afterwards vaguely
+regards it as one of the established facts without thinking further of
+it at all. But upon reflection we see at once the impossibility of its
+being true. We hear of a lingering practice in a remote province of
+China, whereby a man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire a
+substitute to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law must have its
+victim and its supremacy must be upheld. We laugh at that and know well
+enough that punishing the unfortunate substitute, who sacrifices himself
+to obtain a sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot
+regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his willingness to
+shift the responsibility for his crime upon another only sinks him
+farther into iniquity. The only person who can gain in moral strength is
+the one who makes the sacrifice.
+
+Let us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement for wrong doing
+were to be adopted generally. Then every murderer who had the means
+would escape the consequences of his crime. Every burglar who was
+successful enough to have the cash on hand could elude prison. Every
+pickpocket could hire a substitute to suffer for him and thus continue
+his criminal career. Every embezzler would have the money to purchase
+freedom. Every corruptionist would be safe. Every thief could laugh at
+the law. It would make a mockery of justice. It would place a premium
+upon crime and a handicap upon honesty and virtue. However bad the
+dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would necessarily lower
+the standard of their morality by shifting the burden of their sins to
+others. It would destroy personal responsibility, and personal
+responsibility is the basis of sound morals and the foundation of
+civilized society.
+
+Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief in
+special creation and special salvation--the teaching that we are not
+responsible for our sins and that by believing that another assumed them
+and died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing and thus be
+saved. What are we to be saved from? From nothing but ourselves. From
+our selfishness, from our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to
+inflict pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the
+heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may
+escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The
+man who is willing to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit
+for heaven and could not recognize it if he were there. What do we think
+of a person here who shifts his sins upon another and while that other
+suffers he goes free and enjoys the fruits of his baseness?
+
+A heaven that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement a
+happy arrangement for letting them in pleasantly and easily would not be
+worth having. It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be no
+heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those who have
+eliminated selfishness; only of those who want to help others instead of
+trying to dodge the consequences of their own acts; only of those who
+are manly and womanly and generous and just and true. Nothing less than
+a recognition of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that.
+Yet the theory of special salvation ignores it, waves it aside--in fact
+denies it!
+
+Reincarnation represents personal responsibility and therefore absolute
+justice. It shows that, not merely in all the vast future, but also in
+this life and in every life, and all the time, our degree of happiness
+depends upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were
+generally understood it would necessarily raise the average of morality.
+It furnishes a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive
+for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the
+one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds; that he must
+return life after life to associations and environments determined by
+the good or the ill he has done; that he can no more escape from his
+evil deeds than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately
+suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation of every
+insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures the man of good
+intentions and right desires that every good deed shall rise up in the
+future to bless him; that all whom he has helped shall become his
+helpers hereafter; that even his good intentions that failed in their
+purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy in the future.
+
+What a splendid thing it is to know that every thought and act adds
+permanent value to the character; that all we learn in any life becomes
+an eternal possession; that we can add to our intellect, to our insight,
+to our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power, as certainly and
+definitely as a man can add to his bank account or permanent
+investments; that whatever we may be in this incarnation we can return
+again stronger and wiser and better.
+
+The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent divinity and the
+method by which the latent becomes the actual. Instead of the ignoble
+belief that we can fling our sins upon another it makes personal
+responsibility the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It is
+the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion of self-respect.
+
+Think of the utility as well as of the common-sense of a scheme of
+salvation that really saves us because it evolves us; that never denies
+us a chance to retrieve an error; that gives us an opportunity to right
+every wrong; that brings us back life after life until all enemies have
+been changed to friends; until all accounts are closed and balanced;
+until all our powers have been evolved, until intellect has become
+genius; until sympathy has become compassion and the last moral battle
+has been fought and won.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE FORCES WE GENERATE
+
+
+Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and
+they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success
+or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
+on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of
+rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and
+reaction under which we evolve while here.
+
+The three classes of energies which we generate are those of thought,
+desire and action. They belong, in the order named, to the mental world,
+the astral world and the physical world. All people are constantly
+thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting
+thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into the worlds of
+thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions, or consequences,
+and to them the man is bound until justice is done and the soul has
+learned its evolutionary lesson.
+
+That thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity is, the
+student of the occult well knows, but the world is not quite yet at the
+point where the fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the
+history of all human progress. When Franklin began his experiments with
+electrical force almost nobody believed there was any such thing in
+existence. Yet today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains and
+drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that at the time of the
+first experiments he would have been considered extraordinarily foolish.
+What the world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually has
+very little to do with the facts. The general public can be expected to
+come trailing along, about a half century late, with its acceptance and
+approval. Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be
+impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.
+
+The mental body grows by the process of thinking. The force generated in
+thinking reacts in the production of greater faculty for thinking, so
+that we literally create our mental abilities. The activities of thought
+change the mental body into a better and constantly better instrument
+through which the ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect
+others and we thereby make ties with them that must work out sooner or
+later in associated experience.
+
+Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role in
+the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the
+desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only
+judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying
+them. Thus do we acquire discrimination. It is usually a strong desire
+nature that brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of desire
+it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul
+finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires into higher
+ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment and liberation.
+
+Actions are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and, as we
+are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very
+complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up
+relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far
+into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under
+which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future
+incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for
+himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every
+injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in
+kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of
+retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on
+in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be
+accomplished.
+
+The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next
+and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates,
+our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in
+the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth
+or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our
+intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or
+limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the
+past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape.
+
+But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from
+which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize
+them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time
+we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong
+course in the past.
+
+Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and
+determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong
+arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either
+side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation
+lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both
+free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint
+is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily
+bound, _but we did the binding_, by the desires we indulged and the
+emotions we freely harbored in the past.
+
+The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may
+be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to
+locate mines. They are all aware that in that remote northern country
+navigation closes very early and that after the last boat leaves there
+is no possibility of getting out of that region until navigation opens
+again in the next season. Some of them are discreet and reach the
+landing in ample time. Others are careless. They continue their search
+for gold a little too long, and arrive at the river a day too late. The
+boat has sailed and they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a
+great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from
+Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely free. They
+can build a cabin and either waste the time with idle games or seriously
+think and study. They are limited but free within the limitation, and
+the limitation itself was of their own making. It is precisely so with
+us in the environment of the present incarnation and with our various
+fortunes. We made them and, when the forces with which we did it are
+exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification
+and improvement.
+
+The reactions from the forces we generate naturally do us exact justice
+just because they _are_ reactions. We reap precisely what we sow. The
+reaction may sometimes seem harsh but consideration of the matter from
+all points of view will show that mercy as well as justice is always a
+factor. Let us consider the method by which nature changes recklessness
+into caution. A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a cigar and
+throwing the burning match down wherever it may happen to fall. He may
+go on doing that a long time with no serious result, yet all careful
+people know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago a newspaper
+told the story of such a man, who passed along the street, lighted a
+cigaret and carelessly flung the flaming match from him. A nurse was
+passing with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell on some of
+the light, airy wraps of the infant and they burst into a blaze. Before
+the fire could be extinguished the child was so badly burned that it
+died the next day.
+
+The moment such a case is stated we realize the necessity of something
+that will cure the man of such fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the
+lives and property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be invoked. He
+had no criminal intent but he is none the less dangerous for that, as
+the incident proved. We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
+carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the law of action and
+reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be in the latter part of
+this incarnation, or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later
+his carelessness will react and he will lose his physical body in pain
+and distress and come to know personally just what his recklessness
+means. In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane,
+he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right. The folly of
+his course is so driven in on his consciousness that he is changed from
+the careless man to the careful man. In no other way could his cure be
+brought about.
+
+It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as the result of our
+wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can now know nothing of its
+cause and therefore we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we do
+not know in the limited consciousness of the physical brain the soul
+does know and in the wider consciousness the lesson is registered.
+
+The principles of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its
+evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he does not merit
+and that which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
+working of the law seen from an angle that makes it illusory. But, it
+may be objected, how does theosophy see "beneficent working of the law"
+in the burning of a theater where a score of people lose their lives,
+including several children? How can theosophy explain that?
+
+How can it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created at
+birth? If God really brings the soul into its original expression in an
+infant body, why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
+months? What can be the purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain
+the death of children if the soul were created at birth. But let us look
+at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul with a
+young body. Hark back to the case of the man whose carelessness caused
+the death of the baby in its carriage. He, and others like him, are
+again in incarnation and in the burning theater they get the reaction of
+the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why so many in some
+catastrophes? it may be asked. A principle is not affected by the number
+involved. If we can see justice in the death of one person we can see
+justice in the death of a hundred. It is simply class instruction.
+People of a kind have been drawn together.
+
+We should not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such case
+from the physical plane. We form an opinion, however, on that inadequate
+survey and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or injustice
+involved. But our verdict depends wholly upon a viewpoint. Let us
+suppose, for example, that a man strolls down the street and that, as he
+turns a corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of life. A young
+man is lying on the ground, battered and bleeding, while two others
+stand over him. What would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene
+say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The ruffians!" and he
+would be inclined to assist the man who was down. But let us suppose
+that he had been a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to
+turn around the corner with the other men and would have seen him rush
+upon a defenseless woman, push her down, snatch her purse and dash away,
+but, fortunately, in the direction of the men who assaulted and stopped
+him. Had the last arrival seen the entire affair he would have reversed
+his opinion and said that the thief got what he deserved. And so it is
+in our inadequate physical plane view of what we call a calamity. It may
+appear to involve an injustice, but only because we do not see the
+entire transaction.
+
+Those who study the occult laws that shape human destiny may learn to
+use them for their rapid progress and for insuring a comfortable, as
+well as spiritually profitable, life journey.
+
+But before we can work successfully within the law we must know that the
+law really exists. Most people seem either to believe there is no law
+that will certainly bring them the results of their good or evil
+thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they can in some way
+dodge it and escape the consequence, and so we see them go along
+through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing.
+They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts,
+they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort
+and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest
+from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the
+falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the
+company of schemers and are swindled, when a false story is started
+about them, when--through no fault of the moment--they are plunged into
+discomfort and humiliation, they merely call it so much bad luck and go
+blindly on with their generation of wrong forces that will in due time
+bring another enforced reaping of pain.
+
+There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain of daily life as
+certainly as there is a law that guides the earth in its orbit about the
+sun. That law of action and reaction is just as constant, accurate and
+immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet upon the ground
+while we come and go and think nothing at all about it.
+
+There is something almost terrifying in the immutability of all natural
+laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They are the operation of
+forces which, in themselves, are not related to what we call good and
+bad. They simply are. The law of gravity will illustrate the point. It
+operates with no consideration whatever for character or motives. It
+holds all people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it
+whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice,
+it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality. If the
+fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the
+saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored him. He has
+merely reaped the reward of his alertness in spite of his bad morals.
+The saintly man may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law
+of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over the precipice,
+and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless
+of his benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words "God is no
+respecter of persons," for, of course, all natural laws are but the
+expression of the divine will.
+
+But this immutability of natural law is not in the least terrifying when
+we come to look more closely at it. On the contrary it is within that
+very immutability that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It
+is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we can calculate
+with absolute certainty and surely attain the results at which we aim.
+It is because of the certainty that the doing of evil brings pain and
+the doing of good yields a return of happiness that we can control
+circumstances and determine destiny.
+
+Why should there be such a law operating in the mental and moral realm?
+Because only thus can we evolve. We must not only change from ignorance
+to wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong doing to
+perfect harmlessness. How would that be possible without the law of
+cause and effect, without action and reaction which brings pleasure for
+righteousness and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a law can we
+learn what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do. If it is
+agreed that we are souls, that evolution is a fact, and that perfection
+is the goal of the human race, then the necessity for the law of action
+and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a law of gravity.
+
+The existence and operation of this law of cause and effect are set
+forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures. "With what measures ye
+mete it to others it shall be measured to you," is certainly explicit.
+In Proverbs[M] we have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit
+shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon
+him." Of course the language is figurative. No writer of common sense
+would assert that every time a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into
+it nor that whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon him!
+We dig pits in the moral world whenever we undermine the character of
+another with a false story, whether we originate it or merely repeat it,
+and into such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the law.
+We have loosened and set rolling the stones of envy and hatred and they
+shall return to crush us down to failure and humiliation in the reaction
+that follows. We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law
+when we could have used it for our success and happiness.
+
+"Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement of the law of
+action and reaction. It is not an assertion that we should not judge
+because we are not qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong
+another with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that the
+consequence of judging others is that we, in turn, shall be judged. If
+we criticize, we shall be criticized. If we condemn others for their
+faults and failures, we shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant
+and remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be tolerantly
+regarded by others.
+
+All of us who have studied the subject find in our daily lives the
+evidence of the truth of such Biblical declarations. We know perfectly
+well that anger provokes anger and that conciliation wins concessions,
+while retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort calls out
+retort, while silence restores the peace. In these little things it is
+usually within the power of either party to the trouble to have peace
+instead of turmoil--just a matter of self control. But in the larger
+events it is not always so. They are not invariably within our immediate
+control because they are often the results of causes generated in the
+past which we can no longer modify. And this brings us to a wider view
+of this law of cause and effect.
+
+If we look at the life history of an individual as it stretches out from
+birth to death it presents a remarkable record of events that appear to
+have no logical relationship to each other. In childhood, there may have
+been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of
+the qualities of character we are considering, and there is nothing in
+the present life of the child to explain either. The child itself may be
+gentle and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross abuse
+and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find still greater
+mysteries. Invariably there are mingled successes and failures,
+pleasures and pains. But when we come to analyze them we fail to find a
+satisfactory reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
+when they are not warranted by anything that was done to win them, and
+for the want of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We also
+observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not
+only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test
+of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds
+and call it "bad luck."
+
+Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and our inability to
+trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask a savage to explain
+how it is that a few minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
+know what happened yesterday in London. He knows nothing of reporters
+and cables and presses. He cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend
+it. But if he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
+he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because we are
+lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly as we use it!
+
+If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world. Chance
+means chaos and the absence of law. From the magnificent, orderly
+procession of a hundred million suns and their world systems that wheel
+majestically through space down to the very atom, with all of its
+electrons, the universe is a stupendous proclamation of the
+all-pervading presence of law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and
+effect. There is no such thing as chance.
+
+What then _is_ good luck? We know that people do receive benefits which
+they apparently have not earned. There simply cannot be a result without
+a cause. They have earned it in other lives when the conditions did not
+permit immediate harvesting of the results of the good forces generated
+and Nature is paying the debt and making the balance of her books at a
+later period. It may be in the case of one that some specific act is
+attracting its reward, or it may be in the case of another that he is
+nearing the point in evolution where he no longer desires things for
+himself, only to discover that nature fairly flings her treasures at his
+feet. He has put himself in harmony with evolutionary law--with the
+divine plan, and nature withholds nothing.
+
+When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to seek the cause of
+unexplained good or bad fortune beyond the boundaries of this life
+because there is nothing else we can do. We have results to explain and
+we know they do not come from causes that belong to this life. They must
+of necessity arise from causes generated in a past life.
+
+Now the moment we get away from the narrow view that we began existence
+when we were born, all the mysteries about us disappear and we can fall
+back on natural law and logically explain everything. Why does one
+person begin life with a good mind while another is born with small
+mental capacity? Because one worked hard at life's problems in past
+incarnations while the other led a butterfly existence and merely amused
+himself. Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances always
+maintaining a cheerful view of life while another loses control of his
+temper at the slightest annoyance and wears himself out with the
+trifling vexations of existence? Only because one has for a long period
+practiced self control while the other has never given a thought to the
+matter. Why is one so thoughtful of others that he wins universal love
+and admiration while another is so self centered that he makes no true
+friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The one has studied
+the laws of destiny and lived by them while the other has not yet even
+learned of their existence.
+
+Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created at birth, and
+keeping in mind the newer and scientific view that we have all lived
+many lives before, all the difficulties and perplexities at once
+disappear. We are no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some
+good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we
+see that he must have set the forces in motion in a previous life which
+now culminate in this result. We are no longer mystified because
+apparent causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that in the nature
+of things he did generate the causes in the past. A single incarnation
+has the same relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single
+day has to one incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights and
+yet all the days are related by the acts which run through them, so the
+incarnations are separated by periods of rest in the heaven world and
+yet all the incarnations are related by the thoughts and acts running
+through them. What a man does in his youth affects his old age, and
+what we did in our last incarnation is affecting the present one. The
+one is no more remarkable than the other. As we mould old age by youth
+so we are shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we shall be
+able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth that what we are now
+is the result of our past we must have a clear understanding of the
+relationship between the soul and the body. The physical body in each
+incarnation is the material expression of the soul, of its moral power
+or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its purity or its grossness,
+just as one's face is, at each moment the expression of one's thought
+and emotion in physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers
+itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of joy and his
+face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry, and the change from joy to
+anger is registered in physical matter so that all who see his face are
+aware of the change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These
+are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they are obvious to
+all. But we know that as the years pass the constant influence of
+consciousness moulds even physical matter into permanent form. A soul of
+sunny disposition finally comes to have benevolent features while one of
+morose tendency as certainly has a face of settled gloom. Nobody can
+contact the soul of another with any physical sense we possess yet
+nobody has the slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a
+sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony with life. We
+know the difference only because consciousness moulds matter. But this
+is merely the surface indication. Consciousness is continually
+influencing matter and the major part of its work is not visible to us.
+What the consciousness is, the body becomes. Whether we are now
+brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities
+of consciousness, and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
+physical body are the registrations in matter of what we, the soul,
+thought and did in the past.
+
+Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall begin to see just
+why and how it may have come about. If in a past life a person was
+guilty of deliberate cruelty to another, and on account of it suffered
+great mental and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
+thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on his victim are
+reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have apparently merely a distorted
+brain so that the consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
+that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result of violent
+reaction from cruelties in a past life? The consciousness that can be
+guilty of cruelty is seeing things crooked--out of proportion. Otherwise
+it could not be cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register a
+corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the faithful and
+accurate reflection of that consciousness. It is just because the body
+is the true and exact expression of the consciousness in physical matter
+that the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such remarkable
+delineations of character. The record is there in hand and head for
+those who can read it.
+
+This broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very long
+series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different view of the
+difficulties with which we have to contend and of the limitations which
+afflict us. It at once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
+there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody; that all good
+fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune is deserved, and that each
+of us is, mentally and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
+it well when he wrote:
+
+      All that I rightly think or do,
+          Or make or spoil or bless or blast,
+      Is curse or blessing justly due
+          For sloth or effort in the past.
+      My life's a statement of the sum
+      Of vice indulged or overcome.
+      And as I journey on the roads
+          I shall be helped and healed and blessed.
+      Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads
+          To urge to heights as yet unguessed.
+      My road shall be the road I made.
+      All that I gave shall be repaid.
+
+Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth more inspiring? It is
+surely a satisfying thought that every effort shall give increased power
+of intellect; that all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own
+protection in time of need; that every impulse of affection shall ripen
+into the love of comrades; that all noble thinking builds heroic
+character, with which we shall return, in some future time, to play to a
+still noble part in the world of men.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[M] Proverbs, XXVI, 27.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION
+
+
+If we accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot escape the
+conclusion that there is superphysical evolution. The belief that man is
+the highest intelligence in the universe, except God himself, would be
+utterly inconsistent with evolutionary facts and principles. Evolution
+is a continuous unfolding from within, and it is only the limitation of
+our senses that leads us to set limitations to it. The one great life of
+the universe expresses itself in myriad forms and at innumerable levels
+of development. One of those levels is humanity. But as certainly as our
+consciousness has evolved to its present stage it shall go on to higher
+ones.
+
+Orderly gradation is clearly nature's method of expression. A
+continuous, unbroken line of life reaches downward from man. Its
+successive stages are seen in the animals, the reptiles, the insects and
+the microbes. Even the great kingdoms into which the biologist divides
+life fade into each other almost imperceptibly and it becomes difficult
+to say where the vegetable kingdom stops and the animal kingdom begins.
+Just as that continuous chain of life runs downward from man it must
+also rise above him until it merges in the Supreme Being. There must
+necessarily be the higher as well as the lower products of evolution.
+Man is merely one link in the evolutionary chain. The human level is the
+point where consciousness has become completely individualized and is
+capable of turning back upon itself and studying its own inner
+processes.
+
+The thought of Occidental civilization has been sadly fettered with
+materialism. It has scarcely dared to think beyond that which could be
+grasped with the hands. The physical senses were its outposts of
+investigation. What could not be seen or heard or felt had no existence
+for it. Modern science explored the material universe and perfected its
+methods until the vast panorama of worlds could be intimately studied,
+and its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat
+comprehended. But there was no study of life comparable to the vast
+stretch of worlds; for material science had made the remarkable blunder
+of assuming that the last word on the nature of matter had been said.
+Then came the startling discoveries that revolutionized the accepted
+views of matter, that proved that the supposedly indivisible atom was a
+miniature universe, a tiny cosmos of force. The old theories about
+matter had to be thrown aside. They were as much out of date as the
+belief that the earth is flat. Stripped of technical terms of expression
+the revised view of matter is, substantially, that it is the lowest
+expression of life; and now modern science is turning tardy attention to
+a study of the life side of the universe. The moment that is done the
+sense of consistency and the law of correspondence compel us to
+postulate a gradation of intelligences rising above man as man does
+above the insects.
+
+The scientific mind instantly grasps the inherent reasonableness of the
+existence of superphysical beings. Writing on the subject of energy,
+Nicola Tesla says:
+
+      "We can conceive of organized beings living without
+      nourishment and deriving all the energy they need for the
+      performance of their life functions from the ambient
+      medium.*** There may be *** individualized material systems
+      of beings, perhaps of gaseous constitution, or composed of
+      substance still more tenuous. In view of this
+      possibility--nay, probability--we cannot apodictically deny
+      the existence of organized beings on a planet merely
+      because the conditions on the same are unsuitable for the
+      existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot even, with
+      positive assurance, assert that some of them might not be
+      present here in this our world, in the very midst of us,
+      for their constitution and life manifestation may be such
+      that we are unable to perceive them."[N]
+
+Alfred Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand old man of science,"
+wrote in one of his latest books:
+
+      "I think we have got to recognize that between man and the
+      ultimate God there is an almost infinite multitude of
+      beings working in the universe at large, at tasks as
+      definite and important as any we have to perform on earth.
+      I imagine that the universe is peopled with spirits--that
+      is, with intelligent beings with powers and duties akin to
+      our own, but vaster. I think there is a gradual ascent from
+      man upward and onward."
+
+While the scientist, still lacking the absolutely conclusive evidence,
+goes only to the point of asserting that it is reasonable and probable
+that supermen exist, the occultist asserts it as a fact within his
+personal knowledge.[O] So we have the direct testimony of the
+occultists, the endorsement of the scientists as to its probability,
+and, perhaps the most important of all, the inherent reasonableness of
+the idea.
+
+The relationship of the supermen, or great spiritual hierarchy, to the
+human race is that of teachers, guardians and directors. They
+superintend human evolution. But this does not mean in the very least
+the relationship that is expressed in the term "spirit guides" so
+frequently use by the spiritualist. That is a totally different thing.
+They seem to imply that the "spirit guide" gives direct instructions or
+orders to the person known as a "medium." If we were all thus controlled
+and directed what would become of free will? Evolution can proceed only
+if we use our initiative in the affairs of life. If we were to be
+directed by the wisdom and will of others we would not evolve at all. We
+would be merely automata directed by others, and no matter how great
+they were we could never thus develop our judgment and self-reliance. It
+is not thus that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution.
+It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse and bringing mental and
+moral forces to play upon them, thus stimulating latent spiritual forces
+from within. It is also by directly, or indirectly placing ideals
+instead of commands before the race. In another direction it is actual
+superintendence, or administration, or teaching, in a way that does not
+interfere with one's initiative or will. If the soul is to evolve it
+must have liberty--even the freedom to make mistakes.
+
+It is sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist, those who are in
+incarnation do not come out into the world and give us ocular evidence
+of the fact. It is pointed out that they could speedily convince the
+world by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably not in
+the least interested in convincing anybody of their existence. They
+_are_ interested in raising the general level of morality, of course,
+but such an exhibition would not make people morally better. The work of
+the supermen can best be done from higher planes than the physical. As
+for the very small number of the supermen who take physical bodies to
+better do their special work, they can best accomplish it from secluded
+places; and if they sometimes have reason to come out into the seething
+vibrations of our modern civilization it is easy to understand that they
+would not be conspicuously different from other men, to the ordinary
+observer.
+
+It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the religions of the
+world. There the question may arise, "Then why do they differ so
+greatly?" Because the peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The
+difference of temperament and viewpoint between the Orient and the
+Occident is enormous. We are evolving along the outer, the objective,
+and our civilization represents the material conquest of nature. They
+are evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the common trend
+of conversation is philosophical, just as in the Occident it is
+commercial. Such different types of mind require somewhat different
+statements of ethics, but the fundamental principles of all religions
+are identical.
+
+When a new era in human evolution begins a World Teacher comes into
+voluntary incarnation and founds a religion that is suited to the
+requirements of the new era. Humanity is never left to grope along
+alone. All that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the
+various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and saviours of the race,
+have been appearing at propitious times since humanity began existence.
+
+Most readers will probably agree that a World Teacher known as the
+Christ did come and found a religion nearly two thousand years ago. Why
+do they think so? They reply that God so loved the world that he sent
+his Son, the Christ, to bring it light and life. If that is true how can
+we avoid the conclusion that He, or his predecessors, must have come
+many a time before? The belief that He came but once is consistent only
+with the erroneous notion that Genesis is history instead of allegory,
+and that the earth is about six thousand years old! Science has not
+determined its age but we know that it is very old, indeed. Many eminent
+scientists have made rough estimates, taking into consideration all that
+we have learned from astronomy, geology and archeology. Phillips, the
+geologist, basing his calculations upon the time required for the
+depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum age at thirty-eight
+million years and the maximum age at ninety-six million years. Sir
+George Darwin, basing his calculation wholly upon astronomical data,
+puts the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years. Joly
+arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time required to produce
+the sodium content of the ocean, and concluded that the age of the earth
+is between eighty million and one hundred million years. Sollas is said
+to have made careful study of the matter and he finds the minimum to be
+eighty million, and the maximum age to be one hundred and fifty million
+years. But perhaps the most exhaustive study of the matter, and that
+made by the use of the later scientific knowledge, was by Bosler, of the
+French scientists. He bases his calculations upon the radio-activity of
+rocks and arrives at a minimum earth age of seven hundred and ten
+millions of years. Thus it will be observed that as our knowledge grows
+the estimated age of the earth increases.
+
+In the face of such facts what becomes of the assertion that God so
+loved the world that he sent His Son to help ignorant humanity about two
+thousand years ago--but never before? What about the hundreds of
+millions of human beings who lived and died before that time? Did He
+care nothing for them? Did He give his attention to humanity for a
+period of only two thousand years and neglect it for millions of years?
+Two thousand years, compared to the age of the earth, is less than an
+hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does anybody believe that God, in
+his great compassion, sent just one World Teacher for that brief period?
+What would we say of a father who gave one hour of his whole life to his
+child and neglected him absolutely before and after that? Countless
+millions of the people who lived and died prior to the coming of the
+Christ were very much like ourselves. They belonged to ancient
+civilizations that often surpassed our own in many desirable
+characteristics. They were educated and cultured in their time and
+fashion. They were fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and
+husbands and wives, with the same kind of heart ties that we have. What
+of them? Were they permitted to grope in the moral wilderness without a
+Teacher or a ray of light? Of course the idea is preposterous. If God so
+loved the world that He sent his Son two thousand years ago He sent Him,
+or some predecessor, very many times before. By the same token He will
+come again. The only logical escape from such a conclusion is in the
+materialist's belief that He never came at all.
+
+All religions crystalize, become materialized, and lose their spiritual
+significance. That is precisely what has happened to the various great
+religions of the modern world, including Christianity. It is no longer
+the dynamic thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why a
+world war was possible. The fault is not with the teachings of the
+Christ. The trouble is that the world has not lived by them. We need a
+restatement of the old teachings in the terms of modern life that shall
+again make it a living force in the lives of men. It is when the World
+Teacher is most needed that he comes; and when has the need been greater
+than now? The world war has demonstrated the failure of so-called
+Christian civilization. We have seen the highest type of that
+civilization revert to the law of the jungle, deliberately disregard
+the usages of civilized warfare, and commit atrocities that would shame
+barbarians. We surely need no further proof that the Christian religion
+has not accomplished all that the spiritual hierarchy had a right to
+hope for, and that the coming of the Christ again is a necessity.
+
+But the spiritual hierarchy sends its great ambassadors only when the
+time is propitious, only when the world is ready to listen. Perhaps such
+an event can never be predicted in terms of time, but only in those of
+conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent, when the slain
+totals appalling numbers, when few homes of high or low degree are
+without their terrible sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled
+with anguish, when famine and disease have done their awful work, and
+humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed, lust, cruelty and
+revenge actually means, the world will be ready to listen as it never
+listened before, and after that we may reasonably expect the Christ to
+again appear to re-proclaim the ancient truth in terms of modern life.
+
+The supermen are not myths nor figments of imagination. They are as
+natural and comprehensive as human beings. In the regular order of
+evolution we shall reach their level and join their ranks while younger
+humanities shall attain our present estate. As the supermen rose we,
+too, shall rise. Our past has been evolution's night. Our present is its
+dawn. Our future shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from
+which we have emerged--a chaos of contending forces, a world in which
+might was the measure of right, a civilization of scepter and sword, of
+baron and serf, of master and slave. That, we have left behind us.
+Think of the grey dawn that our civilization has reached--the dawn of a
+public conscience, of individual liberty, of collective welfare, of the
+sacredness of life, but with armed force still dominant, with war the
+arbiter of national destiny, with industrial slavery still lingering,
+with conflict between the higher aspirations and the lower desires still
+raging--a world of selfishness masked by civilized usage, a world of
+veneered cruelty and refined brutality. In all that we now live. But
+think of the coming results of evolution!--an era in which love shall
+replace force, when saber and cannon shall be unknown, when selfish
+desires shall be transmuted into noble service, when, finally, we shall
+finish the painful period of human evolution and join the spiritual
+hierarchy to direct the faltering steps of a younger race.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] "The Conservation of Energy," Nicola Tesla, Century Magazine, June
+1900.
+
+[O] An Outline of Theosophy, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 6-12.
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following corrections were made:
+
+p. 6: pretention to pretension (no pretension is made)
+
+p. 12: An to In (In another aspect it is a religion.)
+
+p. 12: thesosophy to theosophy (While theosophy is distinctly a science)
+
+p. 13: discusison to discussion (A detailed discussion of such methods)
+
+p. 16: nevertheelss to nevertheless (is nevertheless just that
+relationship)
+
+p. 17: explicilt to explicit (is certainly very explicit)
+
+p. 19: period to semi-colon (who's true to man;)
+
+p. 34: communciating to communicating (dead man who is communicating?)
+
+p. 35: extra 'the' removed (more convincing than the evidence)
+
+p. 46-47: envelopes to envelops (because it envelops it)
+
+p. 63: oftens to often (often requires death)
+
+p. 74: repreduces to reproduces (exactly reproduces emotion)
+
+p. 82: consciouness to consciousness (finally loses consciousness)
+
+p. 83: of to or (or by cleverly combining)
+
+p. 86: strengthend to strengthened (strengthened and vivified)
+
+p. 89: slight to sight (has not lost sight of us)
+
+p. 91: communciate to communicate (had to communicate with him)
+
+p. 91: communcation to communication (subject of communication)
+
+p. 92: communciate to communicate (desires to communicate)
+
+p. 93: influnces to influences (sensitive to psychic influences)
+
+p. 94: persist to persists (who persists in occupying)
+
+p. 95: confidenty to confidently (will confidently assert himself)
+
+p. 96: close quote added (What can I do?")
+
+p. 103: missing comma added (While we do not yet know a great deal about
+life, science)
+
+p. 105: perect to perfect (perfect agreement)
+
+p. 109: extra 'and' removed (new and undeveloped)
+
+p. 115: thoughtul to thoughtful (a thoughtful matron)
+
+p. 117: methematical to mathematical (a mathematical problem)
+
+p. 120: If to It (It often puzzles)
+
+p. 121: from to form (highest possible form)
+
+p. 124: missing apostrophe added (of nations' condemned prisoners)
+
+p. 128: extra 'to' removed (civilization today could arise)
+
+p. 129: two erroneously reversed lines corrected (consciousness. The
+young quails of this season come / they are attached to the same
+group-soul, or source of)
+
+p. 138: crminal to criminal (a noted criminal)
+
+p. 142: possesing to possessing (we find others possessing)
+
+p. 146: blockquote formatted to match others in text
+
+p. 158: meed to need (no need of praise)
+
+p. 181: incalcuable to incalculable (is incalculable and altogether
+beyond)
+
+p. 185: responsibilty to responsibility (personal responsibility and
+therefore)
+
+p. 191: hapen to happen (may happen to fall)
+
+p. 191-192: extinquished to extinguished (Before the fire could be
+extinguished)
+
+p. 193: beneficient to beneficent ("beneficent working of the law")
+
+p. 193: phsical to physical (from the physical plane)
+
+p. 195: mistate to misstate (misstate facts)
+
+p. 196: atain to attain (and surely attain)
+
+p. 203: idocy to idiocy (In idiocy we have)
+
+p. 204: Maesfield to Masefield (Masefield put it well)
+
+p. 204: blest to blessed (I shall be helped and healed and blessed.)
+
+p. 207: appodictically to apodictically (cannot apodictically deny)
+
+p. 209: superman to supermen (small number of the supermen)
+
+p. 209: it to is (it is easy to understand)
+
+p. 211: calcualations to calculations (He bases his calculations upon)
+
+p. 212: chrystalize to crystalize (All religions crystalize)
+
+p. 213: embassadors to ambassadors (sends its great ambassadors)
+
+Irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. wide-spread vs. widespread,
+class-room vs. classroom) and variant spellings (e.g. cigaret) have not
+been corrected.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Elementary Theosophy, by L. W. Rogers
+
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