CHAPTER XIIREINCARNATIONThereis a good deal of talk indulged in, on the subject of Reincarnation—talk of a rather cheap character. One does not quite see what is the use of saying that theegowill be reincarnated again some day, unless one has some sort of idea what one means by theego, and unless one has some understanding of the sense in which the word “reincarnation” is used. If it is meant that your local and external self, approximately as you and your friends know it to-day—including dress, facial outline, professional skill, accomplishments, habits of mind and body, interests and enthusiasms—is going to repeat itself again in five or five hundred years, or has already appeared in this form in the past; one can only say “impossible!” and “I trust not!” For all these things depend on date, locality, heredity, surrounding institutions, social habits, current morality, and so forth, which—though they have certainly played their part in the spirit’s growth—must infallibly be different at any other period (short of the whole universe repeating itself). And anyhow to have them repeated againda capoat some future time would be terribly dull.But if you say “Of course I don’t mean anything so silly asthat,” it becomes incumbent on you to say what you do mean.Supposing, for instance, you had been planked down a baby in the Arabian desert, and grown up to maturity or middle age there, instead of where you are, would any of your present-day friends recognize you? Where would be your charming piano-playing, your excellent cricket, your rather sloppy water-color painting, your up-to-dateness in the theatrical world? Where your morality (with three wives of course) or your religion (something about “Christian dogs”), or where your Britishsang froidand impeccability? And if it is obvious that in such a case as this you would, owing to the changed conditions, be changed out of all recognition, much more—one might say—would this be the case if you had been born five hundred years ago, or were to be born again five hundred years hence. Your whole outlook on life, and its whole impress on you, would be different.Of course I am not meaning, by these remarks, to say that reincarnation is in itself impossible or absurd; that would be prejudging the question. All I mean at present is that if we are going to study this subject, or theorize upon it, it is really necessary to define in some degree the terms which we use. I do not say that you, the reader, might not be reincarnated, but I think it is clear that if you were, we should have a good deal of trouble in following andfinding you! It is clear that theyou, so reappearing, would not be your well-known local and external self, but some deep nucleus, difficult perhaps for your best friend to recognize, and possibly even unknown or unrecognized by yourself at present. And similarly of some friend that you love for a thousand little tricks and ways. We all have such friends, and at times cherish a sentimental romance of their being restored to us in some future æon habited in their old guise and with their well-worn frocks and coats. But surely it is no good playing at hide-and-seek like that. The common difficulties about the conventional heaven—the difficulty about meeting your old friend who used to be so good at after-dinner stories, about meeting him with a harp in his hand and sitting on a damp cloud—is no whit the less a difficulty whatever future world may be therendezvous. He would be changed (externally) and we should be changed, and it might well happen that if we did seem to recall any former intimacy we should both feel like strangers, and be as shy and tentative in our approaches to each other as school-children.What do we mean by the letter “I”? and what do we mean by the word Reincarnation? These two questions wait for a reply.The first is a terribly difficult question. It lies (though neglected by the philosophers themselves) at the root of all philosophy. Perhaps really all life and experience are nothing but animmense search for the answer. What do we mean by the Ego? It is a sort of fundamental question, which it might be supposed would precede all other questions, but which as a matter of fact seems to be postponed to all others, and is the last to be solved. All we can at the outset be sure of in the way of answer is the enormous extent and depth of the being we are setting out to define. We sometimes think of theegoas a mere point of consciousness, or we think of the ordinary self of daily life as a fragile and ephemeral entity bounded by a few bodily tissues and a few mental views and habits. But even the slight discussion of the subject in former chapters of this book (chapters vi., vii., and so forth) has revealed to us the vast underlying stores and faculties which must be included—the wonderful powers of memory, the subtle capacities of perception at a distance, or without the usual organs of sight and hearing, the power of creating images out of the depths of one’s mind, and of impressing them telepathically upon others, the faculty of clairvoyance in past and future time, and so forth. The more we try to fathom this ego, with which we supposed ourselves so familiar, the more we are amazed at its labyrinthine profundity, and the more we are astonished to think that we should ever have ventured to limit it to such a petty formula and conventional symbol as we commonly do—notonly in our judgment of friends, but even in our estimate of ourselves.Reincarnation, as we have already said, can hardly be the reappearance, in a new life on earth (or even in some other sphere), of the very local and superficial traits which we know so well in ourselves and our friends—which are mainly a response to local and superficial conditions, and which mainly constitute what we call our personalities. If reincarnation does occur, it must obviously consist in the reappearance or remanifestation of some such very interior self as we have just spoken of—some deep individuality (as opposed to personality), some divine æonian soul, some offshoot perhaps of an age-long enduring Race-soul, or World-self—and in that sort of sense only shall I use the word in future.In that sense the idea is feasible and illuminative. It explains the obvious limitations and localism of our personalities, as being more or less passing and temporary embodiments of our true selves; and it represents the latter as immense storehouses of experience from all manner of places and times, and similarly as centres of world-activity operating in different fields of time and space. At the same time, it presents various difficulties. For one thing, it poses the difficulty that for each of us this vast interior being is, as a rule, so deeply buried that both oneself and one’s friends are only faintly conscious—if at all—of its true outline. And if one doesnot recognize this being, of what use is it to us? It is true that we sometimes meet people who at first sight give us a strong impression of far-back intimacy; but this is only a vague impression and hardly sufficient to afford proof of pre-existence. The only way of meeting this difficulty seems to be to suppose, as residing in this inner being or true self, another order of consciousness, faint intimations of which we even now have, and by which, as it grows and develops, we may some day clearly recognize our true selves and true nature.Another difficulty is that (as already said) for any satisfactory sense of survival continuity of memory is needed; and we should have to suppose that the memory of each earth-life was continued into and stored up in this deeper soul or æonian self. Memory would not normally pass from one embodiment or incarnation to another, but each stream would flow into the central self and there be stored. And I think we may admit that this is by no means impossible. Indeed there are not a few facts (some already mentioned) with regard to the recovery of memory which make the mater probable. Though any given earth-life in a given form could not be repeated, thememoryof such an earth-life, fresh and clear, may survive for an indefinite time in the crystal mirror of the deeper consciousness.[127]And it isperhaps allowable to suppose that in this way, and with the lifting of the opaque veil of our present consciousness, we may some day come clearly into the presence of friends we have lost.Here again, however, one has to be on one’s guard. The mere fact of remembering (or thinking one remembers), in this our terrestrial life and with our terrestrial consciousness, some detail or other of a previous terrestrial life proves little—for, for aught we know, quite apart from our psychic selves, a streak of memory of more physical origin from some ancestor may have come down even several generations, and may be surviving in one’s brain.[128]Indeed it is extremely probable that all organic matter carries memory with it, and not unlikely that inorganic matter does so too. If you thought, for instance, that you remembered seeing Charles the First beheaded—if you had a rather distinct picture in your mind of the scene at Whitehall, which you afterwards found by investigation to be corroborated in its details, you might at first jump to the conclusion that you had really lived at that time, and witnessed the scene. But after all it might merely be that an ancestor of yours had beenthere, and that the vividly impressed picture had somehow persevered in some subterranean channel of memory and emerged again in your mind. Even then you might contend that, since it wasyourmemory,youmust have been there—or at any rate some fraction of yourself in the ancestor, which now has become incorporated in your personality. There are a good many stories of this kind going about, which point to the possibility of the transmission of shreds of remembrance through hereditary channels, and suggest the idea of an active Race-memory, or Earth-memory, in itself continuous—a storehouse of experiences, but fed continually by the individuals of the race, and coruscating forth again in other individuals.[129]Indeed one can hardly withhold belief in the existence of such a larger life, or identity, ‘reincarnated’ if one likes to use the expression, in thousands or millions of individuals; but to be satisfactorily assured of the reincarnation of one distinct and individual person is another thing, and would almost demand that there should be forthcoming not only shreds and streaks of remembrance, but a pretty continuous and consistent memory of a whole former life.Thus the whole question which we are discussing is baffled and rendered the more complex by the doubt as to what is meant by the word “I.” It is clear, from what we have already said, that one person may use it to indicate (1) the quite local and superficial self; while another may havein mind (2) a much profounder being (the underlying self) whose depths and qualities we have by no means fathomed; while others, again, may be thinking (3) of the self of the Race or the Earth, or (4) the All-self of the universe.I present these questions and doubts, not—as I have said—for the purpose of discrediting the possibility of Reincarnation, but by way of showing how complex and difficult the problem is, and how muchsomeexact thought and definition is needed in dealing with it. At the same time, in pleading for exact thought I would also urge that in avoiding the whirlpools of sentimentalism we should be careful not to fall upon the rocks of a dry and barren formalism. Systems of hard and fast doctrines on these subjects—even though issued with all the authority of ancient tradition, and enunciated in a long-dead jargon—are the most unfruitful and uninspiring of things. They seem to contain no germ of vitality and are liable to paralyze the mind that feeds upon them. Besides the drawback—as I have pointed out before—that all such systems are inevitably false. Nature does not, in any department, work upon a cut-and-dried system; and while at the outset of an investigation we often seem to discern something of that kind, further study invariably discloses an astounding variety of order and method. It may be well therefore to be prepared to find a general principle of Reincarnation in operation in the world, but worked out, in actual fact, in a great variety of ways.Certainly there comes into our minds, at a certain grade of their development, a deep persuasion of the truth, insomesense, of reincarnation—that “the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, hath had elsewhere its setting.” It blossoms, this persuasion, in a curious way, in the very depths of the mind; and in moments of inner illumination, or deep feeling, is discerned in a way that seems to leave no room for doubt. At the same time, it not only has this intuitive sanction, but it commends itself also to the intellect, because at a certain stage we perceive very clearly both how vast is the whole curve of progress which the soul has to cover from its first birth to its final liberation, and how tiny is the arc represented by a single lifetime—the two thoughts almost compelling us to believe in a succession of lives as the only explanation or solution. We are compelled towards a practical belief in Reincarnation, and yet (as above) we have to confess that our conception of what it really is, or what we mean by it, is only vague. This, however, is no more than what happens in a hundred other cases. The young bird starts building a nest for the first time, driven by some strange instinct to do so, and yet it can only have a very dim notion of the meaning and uses the nest will subserve when finished. Andwefound our lives on deep intuitions—of social solidarity, of personal responsibility, of free will, and so forth—and yet it is only later and by degrees that we learn what these things actually mean.Referring, then, to the four alternative forms of the self given two or three pages back, and taking the last first, we may say definitely, I think, that as far as the self of each one of us is identified (4) with the All-self of the universe, its reincarnation is assured. Its reincarnation indeed is perpetual, inexhaustible, multitudinous beyond words, filling all space and time. Though the consciousness of this self is deeply buried, yet it is there, in each one of us. Occasionally—if even only for a moment—it rises to the surface, bringing a sense of splendor and of joy indescribable—the absolute freedom and password of all creation, the recognition of oneself everywhere and in all forms. But this phase of the self—I need hardly say—is for the most part hidden; and more common is it perhaps for the Race-self (3) to rise into our consciousness with more or less distinct assurance that we live again and are re-embodied in other members of the race to which we belong. The common life of the race carries us away and overmasters us with a strange sense of identity and community of being. Heroisms and devotions—as of men dying for their country, or bees for their hive—spring from this; and superb intoxications of joy. The whole of the life of primitive races and tribes, and the life of the animals and insects, illustrates it—in warfares, migrations, crusades, frantic enthusiasms, mad festivals—the genius of the race rushing on from point to point, inspiring its children, incarnating itself without end in successive individuals.It is not so uncommon, I say, for us to be able to identify ourselves with this great Race-self, and to feel its thrill and pulse within our veins. And it might well be thought that, with these two forms of reincarnation (3) and (4) and the immense joy they bring, we should be content: even as all the tribes of the animals and the angels are content.But it seems that man—when the civilization-period sets in, and after that—is not content. The little individual soul, now first coming to the consciousness of its own separateness, sets up a claim for an immortality and a reincarnation of its very own—apart from the Race-self, apart even from the Divine self. It demands that itsegoshould continue indefinitely into the farthest fields of Time—a separate entity, perpetually re-embodied. Can such a claim—in the light of what has been said above—be possibly conceded?Certainly not. We have seen the absurdity of supposing that the local and superficial self (1) can ever recur again or be re-embodied in that form, except as a mere matter of memory (or possibly of a repetition of the whole universal order). And as to the underlying self (2), whatever exactly it may be, there are a thousand reasons for seeing thatas a wholly separate entitythe same must be true of that. I may refer the reader toThe Art of Creation, the whole argument of which is to show that even the mere attempt tothinkof itself as a separate entity involves the human soul in hopeless confusion anddisintegration; and I may remind the reader that we know nothing in the whole universe which is thus separate and apart, and that the conception, whether from a physical point of view or a psychological point of view, is impossible to maintain. That being so, there remains only to consider the possibility of the underlying self or individual soul being re-embodied—not as an absolutely separate entity, but as affiliated to some greater Life which shall afford the basis of successive incarnations. The problem is narrowed down, practically to the question whether the individual may not obtain some kind of individual reincarnation through the Race-self, or possibly through the All-self of the universe.And here I will state what I personally think and believe about this problem, leaving the reasons for the present to commend themselves. I think that in the early stages—in animal and primitive human life—the Race-self is paramount; that each individual self proceeds from it, in much the same way as a bud proceeds from the stem of a growing plant, or even as a single cell forms part of the tissue of the stem; and is absorbed into it again at death. There are no individual and death-surviving souls produced, apart from the Race-soul. In the great race or family of bunny-rabbits, for instance—though there are certainly individual differences of character—just as there are differentiations of tissue-cells in the stem of a plant—it is difficult to believe that there are individualand immortal souls. Each little self springs from the race, and is an embodiment of it, representing in various degree its characteristics; and at death—in some way which we do not yet quite understand[130]—returns thither, yielding its experiences to the stores of the race-experience. The same is probably true of the great mass of the higher animals, even up to the primitive and earliest Man. The Race-self in all these cases moves onward, upgathering the experiences of the individuals, wise with their united knowledge, and rich with their countless memories. And these tracts again, of experience, knowledge and memory, largely in a vague and generalized form, but sometimes in sharp, individualized and detailed form, are transmitted from the Race-self to its later individuals and offshots. Thus a kind of broken reincarnation occurs, by which streaks of memory and habit pass down time from one individual to another, and by which perhaps—in us later races—the persistent ‘intimations of immortality’ and persuasions of having lived before are accounted for.I think that this process, of mixed and broken reincarnation, may go on for countless generations—the animal or animal-human souls so differentiated from the race-soul returning continually to the latter at death. But that a period may come when the Race-self (illustrated by the growing plant-stem) may exhibit distinctbuds—theembryos, as it were, of independent souls—which will not return and be lost again in the race-soul, but will persevere for a long period and continually attain to more differentiation and internal coherence and sense of identity. In such cases any reincarnations that occur connected with these buds—though mingled with the race-life—will become much less broken than before, and more distinctly individual; till at last a phase is reached when such a soul-bud, almost detached from the race-life, may be reincarnated (or let us say ‘re-embodied’) as a separate entity, with a kind of immortality of its own.It must be at this stage that the characteristic human soul of the Civilization-period is evolved—which coheres quite firmly round itself, which protests and revolts against death, which even largely throws off its allegiance to the race-soul, and to the laws and solidarities of the race-life, and which has an enormous and overweening sense of identity and self-importance, claiming for itself, as I have just said, a kind of separate persistence. Here ensues, as may be imagined, a terrible period of confusion and trouble—the whole period of competitive civilization. The splendid claim of identity and immortality is made; but for the time being it is spoiled by what we call ‘selfishness,’ the mirror is cracked through ignorance. The Soul has disowned her allegiance to mere instinct and the race-self, and has yet not found a firm footing beyond—is only floundering in the bogs of self-consciousness andanxiety. What kind of Re-embodiment may belong to this period we shall best perhaps see when we have considered the further course of the argument.For at last the process of transition completes itself. The human soul tossed about beyond endurance at length discovers within itself a divine Nucleus—a nucleus of growth and life and refuge and security, apart from its own fragility, quite apart from the race-life, independent of all the latter’s laws and conventions and sanctions and traditions, independent of caste or color, of world-period or locality; and from that moment it (the soul) rests; it ceases (like the little rose of Jericho) from its desert wanderings; it radiates itself and begins to grow from a new centre; it is born again; it becomes the beginning of what may be called a Divine Soul. The man becomes conscious of an ethereal body forming within, unassailable or at least undestroyable by Death; and it is probable that, during this period, the subtle organism which we have already termed the Inner or Spiritual Body (ch. x.)isactually forming and defining and, so to speak, consolidating itself. The subtle body of a more perfect being is forming—a body which can pass unharmed through walls, fire, water, which can navigate the air and the planetary spaces, and which is built on the basis of the ether, itself the all-pervading life-substance of creation. A divine soul is coming to expression, anegoindeed, marvellously different and distinct fromall otheregos, and ever more majestic and unique growing; but rooted deep in the universal self, and ever from that root expanding and sharing the life of that self and of all its children.With the formation of this divine soul, re-embodiment in its complete and adequate sense commences. The spiritual or subtle body formed within the gross body retains its characteristics after the death of the latter (many of which characteristics no doubt hardly gained expression in the one life just ended)—and passes on to other spheres, there to assume more or less definitely material bodies according to the sphere and the conditions in which it may need to move. It may seek re-embodiment on earth through ordinary heredity and childbirth—in which case presumably it enters into the growing germ, and moulds the development of the latter to an adequate, if not to a quite perfect and unsullied, expression of itself. If the reincarnation is to be into ordinary human and terrestrial life, this is probably the only available method. And it would seem that some advanced and well-nigh perfect souls do adopt this method, appearing as infants with a kind of divinity about them, and a germinal purity so great as to seem to proceed from an ‘immaculate conception.’But to most, in this stage, the toil and tedium of passing through embryonic life and physical birth and infancy may well appear intolerable; and since by now they have developed the subtleor spiritual body and the powers belonging to it, this ordeal is no longer necessary. The subtle body can—as we have gathered from former chapters—by a process of condensation clothe itself in a visible or even tangible vesture,[131]and may function, at any rate for a time, in such outer or apparitional form without going through all theabracadabraof birth. If on the earth, such functioning can only be very temporary, owing to the difficulty here of the conditions, and of the supply of the necessary condensation-material; but in other and less ponderous spheres the difficulty is probably much less, and the formation of suitable bodies comparatively easy. Anyhow, it will be seen that reincarnation of this second kind is unitary and single in character instead of being divided or fragmentary; it is unalloyed instead of being broken and mixed;[132]and a vision rises before us, in connection with it, of ever-growing forms and more perfect life-embodiments carrying out, one after another in long succession, the evolution and expression of each divine soul or separate ray of universal being.Thus in answer to query two, on an early page of this chapter, we may say that there are two kinds of reincarnation proper—quite different from each other:—(1) That of the race-selfin which the individual members of the race share only in a streaky fashion, each going back at death into the race-soul, and emptying its memories and experiences into that soul for general sporadic inheritance, but not for transmission in mass to any one later individual; and (2) that of the individual who has found his divine soul and evolved his inner body to a point where it cannot be broken up again; and who is thus reincarnated or re-embodied complete through successive materializations or condensations, in other spheres and without again undergoing the ordinary race-birth and death.But though these two represent the normal forms of reincarnation, a third kind should be added which represents the transition from one to the other, and which is important for us because it mainly covers the period in which we now are—the great period of civilization. We saw how the soul of the animal is so close to the race-self, and so little differentiated from it, that it probably returns quite easily into the race-self at death; and this is likely to be the same with very early or primitive man. But when the distinctly human soul begins to form and to shape itself, it does not so easily forget its individuality and obliterate itself in that from which it sprang. And so we have the tentative, half-formed human soul, by no means well assured of itself, or certain of its own powers, and by no means perfect or contented, but much persuaded of its own importance and anxiously seeking reincarnationas a separate entity—and seeking this by the only means available to it,i.e.through heredity and birth as a member of the race.It is a painful situation and experience. The soul, as human and not animal soul, is longing to separate itself from the race, to mark its distinction and independence—yet it has not, so far, found the divine nucleus which alone can give it real independence; and it can only gain expression and manifestation through the race-self and the ordinary paraphernalia of birth and death. It has learned no other way. Moreover, it is not yet completely differentiated from the race-self. It thus arrives at what can only be a very mingled and broken expression. Some father-stream and some mother-stream uniting, as it were, in the psychological neighborhood of this half-formed soul give it the desired opportunity; and blending itself with them it comes down into the world—a being of triple nature, embryonic and incompletely formed in itself, and utilizing as best it can the diverse elements of its maternal and paternal sources. Its career, consequently, and its life on earth are marked by a continual inner struggle and conflict—both physiological and psychological (due to the effort of the soul to bend the race-life and the elements of corporeal heredity to its own uses), and in strange contrast both with the hardihood and calm insouciance of the animals, in whom the race-life is untampered,and with the transparent health and serenity of those other beings in whom the divine soul has finally established its sovereignty.Such, briefly described, are I believe the outlines of the reincarnation story. To put it in a few words, the whole process by which the race-self evolves and finally gives birth to myriads of free, independent and deathless individuals curiously resembles and may well be illustrated by a certain biological phenomenon common both in the vegetable and the animal worlds. Some growing stem or portion of tissue, perhaps of a plant, perhaps of a sponge or higher organism, is at first of a simple homogeneous character, fairly uniform and undifferentiated: but after a time it exhibits knobs and inequalities, which presently define themselves in a sort ofbotryoidalor clustered bud-like growth (as, for instance, in the spadix of an arum or the ovary of a mammal); finally these knobs or buds become entirely distinct and fully formed, and are thrown off ‘free,’ as seeds (in the case of plants and animals), or gemmules (in the case of sponges), or spores (in ferns and mosses), or as fresh and complete individuals in many aquatic creatures—in any case to enter on the beginnings of a free and independent life of their own. This kind of process, anyhow, is found in every department of biology, and it may well be that it extends upward even into the highest domains. The growing stem—proliferating cells without number, which are born and die in a kind of evenuniformity within the limits of the stem—corresponds to the race-self in its early stages; the formation of knobs and buds in various degrees of clustered development corresponds to the partial growth of human souls out of the race-soul; and the liberation of the buds and germs corresponds to the liberation of the human souls into the freedom of a universal life.
Thereis a good deal of talk indulged in, on the subject of Reincarnation—talk of a rather cheap character. One does not quite see what is the use of saying that theegowill be reincarnated again some day, unless one has some sort of idea what one means by theego, and unless one has some understanding of the sense in which the word “reincarnation” is used. If it is meant that your local and external self, approximately as you and your friends know it to-day—including dress, facial outline, professional skill, accomplishments, habits of mind and body, interests and enthusiasms—is going to repeat itself again in five or five hundred years, or has already appeared in this form in the past; one can only say “impossible!” and “I trust not!” For all these things depend on date, locality, heredity, surrounding institutions, social habits, current morality, and so forth, which—though they have certainly played their part in the spirit’s growth—must infallibly be different at any other period (short of the whole universe repeating itself). And anyhow to have them repeated againda capoat some future time would be terribly dull.But if you say “Of course I don’t mean anything so silly asthat,” it becomes incumbent on you to say what you do mean.
Supposing, for instance, you had been planked down a baby in the Arabian desert, and grown up to maturity or middle age there, instead of where you are, would any of your present-day friends recognize you? Where would be your charming piano-playing, your excellent cricket, your rather sloppy water-color painting, your up-to-dateness in the theatrical world? Where your morality (with three wives of course) or your religion (something about “Christian dogs”), or where your Britishsang froidand impeccability? And if it is obvious that in such a case as this you would, owing to the changed conditions, be changed out of all recognition, much more—one might say—would this be the case if you had been born five hundred years ago, or were to be born again five hundred years hence. Your whole outlook on life, and its whole impress on you, would be different.
Of course I am not meaning, by these remarks, to say that reincarnation is in itself impossible or absurd; that would be prejudging the question. All I mean at present is that if we are going to study this subject, or theorize upon it, it is really necessary to define in some degree the terms which we use. I do not say that you, the reader, might not be reincarnated, but I think it is clear that if you were, we should have a good deal of trouble in following andfinding you! It is clear that theyou, so reappearing, would not be your well-known local and external self, but some deep nucleus, difficult perhaps for your best friend to recognize, and possibly even unknown or unrecognized by yourself at present. And similarly of some friend that you love for a thousand little tricks and ways. We all have such friends, and at times cherish a sentimental romance of their being restored to us in some future æon habited in their old guise and with their well-worn frocks and coats. But surely it is no good playing at hide-and-seek like that. The common difficulties about the conventional heaven—the difficulty about meeting your old friend who used to be so good at after-dinner stories, about meeting him with a harp in his hand and sitting on a damp cloud—is no whit the less a difficulty whatever future world may be therendezvous. He would be changed (externally) and we should be changed, and it might well happen that if we did seem to recall any former intimacy we should both feel like strangers, and be as shy and tentative in our approaches to each other as school-children.
What do we mean by the letter “I”? and what do we mean by the word Reincarnation? These two questions wait for a reply.
The first is a terribly difficult question. It lies (though neglected by the philosophers themselves) at the root of all philosophy. Perhaps really all life and experience are nothing but animmense search for the answer. What do we mean by the Ego? It is a sort of fundamental question, which it might be supposed would precede all other questions, but which as a matter of fact seems to be postponed to all others, and is the last to be solved. All we can at the outset be sure of in the way of answer is the enormous extent and depth of the being we are setting out to define. We sometimes think of theegoas a mere point of consciousness, or we think of the ordinary self of daily life as a fragile and ephemeral entity bounded by a few bodily tissues and a few mental views and habits. But even the slight discussion of the subject in former chapters of this book (chapters vi., vii., and so forth) has revealed to us the vast underlying stores and faculties which must be included—the wonderful powers of memory, the subtle capacities of perception at a distance, or without the usual organs of sight and hearing, the power of creating images out of the depths of one’s mind, and of impressing them telepathically upon others, the faculty of clairvoyance in past and future time, and so forth. The more we try to fathom this ego, with which we supposed ourselves so familiar, the more we are amazed at its labyrinthine profundity, and the more we are astonished to think that we should ever have ventured to limit it to such a petty formula and conventional symbol as we commonly do—notonly in our judgment of friends, but even in our estimate of ourselves.
Reincarnation, as we have already said, can hardly be the reappearance, in a new life on earth (or even in some other sphere), of the very local and superficial traits which we know so well in ourselves and our friends—which are mainly a response to local and superficial conditions, and which mainly constitute what we call our personalities. If reincarnation does occur, it must obviously consist in the reappearance or remanifestation of some such very interior self as we have just spoken of—some deep individuality (as opposed to personality), some divine æonian soul, some offshoot perhaps of an age-long enduring Race-soul, or World-self—and in that sort of sense only shall I use the word in future.
In that sense the idea is feasible and illuminative. It explains the obvious limitations and localism of our personalities, as being more or less passing and temporary embodiments of our true selves; and it represents the latter as immense storehouses of experience from all manner of places and times, and similarly as centres of world-activity operating in different fields of time and space. At the same time, it presents various difficulties. For one thing, it poses the difficulty that for each of us this vast interior being is, as a rule, so deeply buried that both oneself and one’s friends are only faintly conscious—if at all—of its true outline. And if one doesnot recognize this being, of what use is it to us? It is true that we sometimes meet people who at first sight give us a strong impression of far-back intimacy; but this is only a vague impression and hardly sufficient to afford proof of pre-existence. The only way of meeting this difficulty seems to be to suppose, as residing in this inner being or true self, another order of consciousness, faint intimations of which we even now have, and by which, as it grows and develops, we may some day clearly recognize our true selves and true nature.
Another difficulty is that (as already said) for any satisfactory sense of survival continuity of memory is needed; and we should have to suppose that the memory of each earth-life was continued into and stored up in this deeper soul or æonian self. Memory would not normally pass from one embodiment or incarnation to another, but each stream would flow into the central self and there be stored. And I think we may admit that this is by no means impossible. Indeed there are not a few facts (some already mentioned) with regard to the recovery of memory which make the mater probable. Though any given earth-life in a given form could not be repeated, thememoryof such an earth-life, fresh and clear, may survive for an indefinite time in the crystal mirror of the deeper consciousness.[127]And it isperhaps allowable to suppose that in this way, and with the lifting of the opaque veil of our present consciousness, we may some day come clearly into the presence of friends we have lost.
Here again, however, one has to be on one’s guard. The mere fact of remembering (or thinking one remembers), in this our terrestrial life and with our terrestrial consciousness, some detail or other of a previous terrestrial life proves little—for, for aught we know, quite apart from our psychic selves, a streak of memory of more physical origin from some ancestor may have come down even several generations, and may be surviving in one’s brain.[128]Indeed it is extremely probable that all organic matter carries memory with it, and not unlikely that inorganic matter does so too. If you thought, for instance, that you remembered seeing Charles the First beheaded—if you had a rather distinct picture in your mind of the scene at Whitehall, which you afterwards found by investigation to be corroborated in its details, you might at first jump to the conclusion that you had really lived at that time, and witnessed the scene. But after all it might merely be that an ancestor of yours had beenthere, and that the vividly impressed picture had somehow persevered in some subterranean channel of memory and emerged again in your mind. Even then you might contend that, since it wasyourmemory,youmust have been there—or at any rate some fraction of yourself in the ancestor, which now has become incorporated in your personality. There are a good many stories of this kind going about, which point to the possibility of the transmission of shreds of remembrance through hereditary channels, and suggest the idea of an active Race-memory, or Earth-memory, in itself continuous—a storehouse of experiences, but fed continually by the individuals of the race, and coruscating forth again in other individuals.[129]Indeed one can hardly withhold belief in the existence of such a larger life, or identity, ‘reincarnated’ if one likes to use the expression, in thousands or millions of individuals; but to be satisfactorily assured of the reincarnation of one distinct and individual person is another thing, and would almost demand that there should be forthcoming not only shreds and streaks of remembrance, but a pretty continuous and consistent memory of a whole former life.
Thus the whole question which we are discussing is baffled and rendered the more complex by the doubt as to what is meant by the word “I.” It is clear, from what we have already said, that one person may use it to indicate (1) the quite local and superficial self; while another may havein mind (2) a much profounder being (the underlying self) whose depths and qualities we have by no means fathomed; while others, again, may be thinking (3) of the self of the Race or the Earth, or (4) the All-self of the universe.
I present these questions and doubts, not—as I have said—for the purpose of discrediting the possibility of Reincarnation, but by way of showing how complex and difficult the problem is, and how muchsomeexact thought and definition is needed in dealing with it. At the same time, in pleading for exact thought I would also urge that in avoiding the whirlpools of sentimentalism we should be careful not to fall upon the rocks of a dry and barren formalism. Systems of hard and fast doctrines on these subjects—even though issued with all the authority of ancient tradition, and enunciated in a long-dead jargon—are the most unfruitful and uninspiring of things. They seem to contain no germ of vitality and are liable to paralyze the mind that feeds upon them. Besides the drawback—as I have pointed out before—that all such systems are inevitably false. Nature does not, in any department, work upon a cut-and-dried system; and while at the outset of an investigation we often seem to discern something of that kind, further study invariably discloses an astounding variety of order and method. It may be well therefore to be prepared to find a general principle of Reincarnation in operation in the world, but worked out, in actual fact, in a great variety of ways.
Certainly there comes into our minds, at a certain grade of their development, a deep persuasion of the truth, insomesense, of reincarnation—that “the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, hath had elsewhere its setting.” It blossoms, this persuasion, in a curious way, in the very depths of the mind; and in moments of inner illumination, or deep feeling, is discerned in a way that seems to leave no room for doubt. At the same time, it not only has this intuitive sanction, but it commends itself also to the intellect, because at a certain stage we perceive very clearly both how vast is the whole curve of progress which the soul has to cover from its first birth to its final liberation, and how tiny is the arc represented by a single lifetime—the two thoughts almost compelling us to believe in a succession of lives as the only explanation or solution. We are compelled towards a practical belief in Reincarnation, and yet (as above) we have to confess that our conception of what it really is, or what we mean by it, is only vague. This, however, is no more than what happens in a hundred other cases. The young bird starts building a nest for the first time, driven by some strange instinct to do so, and yet it can only have a very dim notion of the meaning and uses the nest will subserve when finished. Andwefound our lives on deep intuitions—of social solidarity, of personal responsibility, of free will, and so forth—and yet it is only later and by degrees that we learn what these things actually mean.
Referring, then, to the four alternative forms of the self given two or three pages back, and taking the last first, we may say definitely, I think, that as far as the self of each one of us is identified (4) with the All-self of the universe, its reincarnation is assured. Its reincarnation indeed is perpetual, inexhaustible, multitudinous beyond words, filling all space and time. Though the consciousness of this self is deeply buried, yet it is there, in each one of us. Occasionally—if even only for a moment—it rises to the surface, bringing a sense of splendor and of joy indescribable—the absolute freedom and password of all creation, the recognition of oneself everywhere and in all forms. But this phase of the self—I need hardly say—is for the most part hidden; and more common is it perhaps for the Race-self (3) to rise into our consciousness with more or less distinct assurance that we live again and are re-embodied in other members of the race to which we belong. The common life of the race carries us away and overmasters us with a strange sense of identity and community of being. Heroisms and devotions—as of men dying for their country, or bees for their hive—spring from this; and superb intoxications of joy. The whole of the life of primitive races and tribes, and the life of the animals and insects, illustrates it—in warfares, migrations, crusades, frantic enthusiasms, mad festivals—the genius of the race rushing on from point to point, inspiring its children, incarnating itself without end in successive individuals.
It is not so uncommon, I say, for us to be able to identify ourselves with this great Race-self, and to feel its thrill and pulse within our veins. And it might well be thought that, with these two forms of reincarnation (3) and (4) and the immense joy they bring, we should be content: even as all the tribes of the animals and the angels are content.
But it seems that man—when the civilization-period sets in, and after that—is not content. The little individual soul, now first coming to the consciousness of its own separateness, sets up a claim for an immortality and a reincarnation of its very own—apart from the Race-self, apart even from the Divine self. It demands that itsegoshould continue indefinitely into the farthest fields of Time—a separate entity, perpetually re-embodied. Can such a claim—in the light of what has been said above—be possibly conceded?
Certainly not. We have seen the absurdity of supposing that the local and superficial self (1) can ever recur again or be re-embodied in that form, except as a mere matter of memory (or possibly of a repetition of the whole universal order). And as to the underlying self (2), whatever exactly it may be, there are a thousand reasons for seeing thatas a wholly separate entitythe same must be true of that. I may refer the reader toThe Art of Creation, the whole argument of which is to show that even the mere attempt tothinkof itself as a separate entity involves the human soul in hopeless confusion anddisintegration; and I may remind the reader that we know nothing in the whole universe which is thus separate and apart, and that the conception, whether from a physical point of view or a psychological point of view, is impossible to maintain. That being so, there remains only to consider the possibility of the underlying self or individual soul being re-embodied—not as an absolutely separate entity, but as affiliated to some greater Life which shall afford the basis of successive incarnations. The problem is narrowed down, practically to the question whether the individual may not obtain some kind of individual reincarnation through the Race-self, or possibly through the All-self of the universe.
And here I will state what I personally think and believe about this problem, leaving the reasons for the present to commend themselves. I think that in the early stages—in animal and primitive human life—the Race-self is paramount; that each individual self proceeds from it, in much the same way as a bud proceeds from the stem of a growing plant, or even as a single cell forms part of the tissue of the stem; and is absorbed into it again at death. There are no individual and death-surviving souls produced, apart from the Race-soul. In the great race or family of bunny-rabbits, for instance—though there are certainly individual differences of character—just as there are differentiations of tissue-cells in the stem of a plant—it is difficult to believe that there are individualand immortal souls. Each little self springs from the race, and is an embodiment of it, representing in various degree its characteristics; and at death—in some way which we do not yet quite understand[130]—returns thither, yielding its experiences to the stores of the race-experience. The same is probably true of the great mass of the higher animals, even up to the primitive and earliest Man. The Race-self in all these cases moves onward, upgathering the experiences of the individuals, wise with their united knowledge, and rich with their countless memories. And these tracts again, of experience, knowledge and memory, largely in a vague and generalized form, but sometimes in sharp, individualized and detailed form, are transmitted from the Race-self to its later individuals and offshots. Thus a kind of broken reincarnation occurs, by which streaks of memory and habit pass down time from one individual to another, and by which perhaps—in us later races—the persistent ‘intimations of immortality’ and persuasions of having lived before are accounted for.
I think that this process, of mixed and broken reincarnation, may go on for countless generations—the animal or animal-human souls so differentiated from the race-soul returning continually to the latter at death. But that a period may come when the Race-self (illustrated by the growing plant-stem) may exhibit distinctbuds—theembryos, as it were, of independent souls—which will not return and be lost again in the race-soul, but will persevere for a long period and continually attain to more differentiation and internal coherence and sense of identity. In such cases any reincarnations that occur connected with these buds—though mingled with the race-life—will become much less broken than before, and more distinctly individual; till at last a phase is reached when such a soul-bud, almost detached from the race-life, may be reincarnated (or let us say ‘re-embodied’) as a separate entity, with a kind of immortality of its own.
It must be at this stage that the characteristic human soul of the Civilization-period is evolved—which coheres quite firmly round itself, which protests and revolts against death, which even largely throws off its allegiance to the race-soul, and to the laws and solidarities of the race-life, and which has an enormous and overweening sense of identity and self-importance, claiming for itself, as I have just said, a kind of separate persistence. Here ensues, as may be imagined, a terrible period of confusion and trouble—the whole period of competitive civilization. The splendid claim of identity and immortality is made; but for the time being it is spoiled by what we call ‘selfishness,’ the mirror is cracked through ignorance. The Soul has disowned her allegiance to mere instinct and the race-self, and has yet not found a firm footing beyond—is only floundering in the bogs of self-consciousness andanxiety. What kind of Re-embodiment may belong to this period we shall best perhaps see when we have considered the further course of the argument.
For at last the process of transition completes itself. The human soul tossed about beyond endurance at length discovers within itself a divine Nucleus—a nucleus of growth and life and refuge and security, apart from its own fragility, quite apart from the race-life, independent of all the latter’s laws and conventions and sanctions and traditions, independent of caste or color, of world-period or locality; and from that moment it (the soul) rests; it ceases (like the little rose of Jericho) from its desert wanderings; it radiates itself and begins to grow from a new centre; it is born again; it becomes the beginning of what may be called a Divine Soul. The man becomes conscious of an ethereal body forming within, unassailable or at least undestroyable by Death; and it is probable that, during this period, the subtle organism which we have already termed the Inner or Spiritual Body (ch. x.)isactually forming and defining and, so to speak, consolidating itself. The subtle body of a more perfect being is forming—a body which can pass unharmed through walls, fire, water, which can navigate the air and the planetary spaces, and which is built on the basis of the ether, itself the all-pervading life-substance of creation. A divine soul is coming to expression, anegoindeed, marvellously different and distinct fromall otheregos, and ever more majestic and unique growing; but rooted deep in the universal self, and ever from that root expanding and sharing the life of that self and of all its children.
With the formation of this divine soul, re-embodiment in its complete and adequate sense commences. The spiritual or subtle body formed within the gross body retains its characteristics after the death of the latter (many of which characteristics no doubt hardly gained expression in the one life just ended)—and passes on to other spheres, there to assume more or less definitely material bodies according to the sphere and the conditions in which it may need to move. It may seek re-embodiment on earth through ordinary heredity and childbirth—in which case presumably it enters into the growing germ, and moulds the development of the latter to an adequate, if not to a quite perfect and unsullied, expression of itself. If the reincarnation is to be into ordinary human and terrestrial life, this is probably the only available method. And it would seem that some advanced and well-nigh perfect souls do adopt this method, appearing as infants with a kind of divinity about them, and a germinal purity so great as to seem to proceed from an ‘immaculate conception.’
But to most, in this stage, the toil and tedium of passing through embryonic life and physical birth and infancy may well appear intolerable; and since by now they have developed the subtleor spiritual body and the powers belonging to it, this ordeal is no longer necessary. The subtle body can—as we have gathered from former chapters—by a process of condensation clothe itself in a visible or even tangible vesture,[131]and may function, at any rate for a time, in such outer or apparitional form without going through all theabracadabraof birth. If on the earth, such functioning can only be very temporary, owing to the difficulty here of the conditions, and of the supply of the necessary condensation-material; but in other and less ponderous spheres the difficulty is probably much less, and the formation of suitable bodies comparatively easy. Anyhow, it will be seen that reincarnation of this second kind is unitary and single in character instead of being divided or fragmentary; it is unalloyed instead of being broken and mixed;[132]and a vision rises before us, in connection with it, of ever-growing forms and more perfect life-embodiments carrying out, one after another in long succession, the evolution and expression of each divine soul or separate ray of universal being.
Thus in answer to query two, on an early page of this chapter, we may say that there are two kinds of reincarnation proper—quite different from each other:—(1) That of the race-selfin which the individual members of the race share only in a streaky fashion, each going back at death into the race-soul, and emptying its memories and experiences into that soul for general sporadic inheritance, but not for transmission in mass to any one later individual; and (2) that of the individual who has found his divine soul and evolved his inner body to a point where it cannot be broken up again; and who is thus reincarnated or re-embodied complete through successive materializations or condensations, in other spheres and without again undergoing the ordinary race-birth and death.
But though these two represent the normal forms of reincarnation, a third kind should be added which represents the transition from one to the other, and which is important for us because it mainly covers the period in which we now are—the great period of civilization. We saw how the soul of the animal is so close to the race-self, and so little differentiated from it, that it probably returns quite easily into the race-self at death; and this is likely to be the same with very early or primitive man. But when the distinctly human soul begins to form and to shape itself, it does not so easily forget its individuality and obliterate itself in that from which it sprang. And so we have the tentative, half-formed human soul, by no means well assured of itself, or certain of its own powers, and by no means perfect or contented, but much persuaded of its own importance and anxiously seeking reincarnationas a separate entity—and seeking this by the only means available to it,i.e.through heredity and birth as a member of the race.
It is a painful situation and experience. The soul, as human and not animal soul, is longing to separate itself from the race, to mark its distinction and independence—yet it has not, so far, found the divine nucleus which alone can give it real independence; and it can only gain expression and manifestation through the race-self and the ordinary paraphernalia of birth and death. It has learned no other way. Moreover, it is not yet completely differentiated from the race-self. It thus arrives at what can only be a very mingled and broken expression. Some father-stream and some mother-stream uniting, as it were, in the psychological neighborhood of this half-formed soul give it the desired opportunity; and blending itself with them it comes down into the world—a being of triple nature, embryonic and incompletely formed in itself, and utilizing as best it can the diverse elements of its maternal and paternal sources. Its career, consequently, and its life on earth are marked by a continual inner struggle and conflict—both physiological and psychological (due to the effort of the soul to bend the race-life and the elements of corporeal heredity to its own uses), and in strange contrast both with the hardihood and calm insouciance of the animals, in whom the race-life is untampered,and with the transparent health and serenity of those other beings in whom the divine soul has finally established its sovereignty.
Such, briefly described, are I believe the outlines of the reincarnation story. To put it in a few words, the whole process by which the race-self evolves and finally gives birth to myriads of free, independent and deathless individuals curiously resembles and may well be illustrated by a certain biological phenomenon common both in the vegetable and the animal worlds. Some growing stem or portion of tissue, perhaps of a plant, perhaps of a sponge or higher organism, is at first of a simple homogeneous character, fairly uniform and undifferentiated: but after a time it exhibits knobs and inequalities, which presently define themselves in a sort ofbotryoidalor clustered bud-like growth (as, for instance, in the spadix of an arum or the ovary of a mammal); finally these knobs or buds become entirely distinct and fully formed, and are thrown off ‘free,’ as seeds (in the case of plants and animals), or gemmules (in the case of sponges), or spores (in ferns and mosses), or as fresh and complete individuals in many aquatic creatures—in any case to enter on the beginnings of a free and independent life of their own. This kind of process, anyhow, is found in every department of biology, and it may well be that it extends upward even into the highest domains. The growing stem—proliferating cells without number, which are born and die in a kind of evenuniformity within the limits of the stem—corresponds to the race-self in its early stages; the formation of knobs and buds in various degrees of clustered development corresponds to the partial growth of human souls out of the race-soul; and the liberation of the buds and germs corresponds to the liberation of the human souls into the freedom of a universal life.
CHAPTER XIIITHE DIVINE SOULTheliberation of buds and germs, as in the biological processes alluded to in the last chapter, is in general connected with sex, and brought about by its operation. And, similarly, I think we may say that the liberation of human souls and their disengagement from the race-matrix is brought about by love. I have already pointed out (ch. ix.) the intensely personal and individualizing character of human love. If one can imagine a love-relation going on between two members of a race—two portions, as it were, of the race-soul—at present only slightly individualized, one can see how the attraction to each other, the drawing away from their surroundings, the excitement, the agitation, all tend to further their growth as individuals—to give them form, apart from the matrix in which they are embedded, and definition and character. Of course all experience does this, but most of all and most deeply does love. It breeds souls out of the Race-self, and finally brings them away to an independent life. “It is for this that the body exercises its tremendous attraction—that mortal love torments and tears asunder the successivegenerations of mankind—That underneath and after all the true men and women may appear, by long experience emancipated.”As said in an early chapter, in love, though we do not know exactly what is happening, we are persuaded that something very profound and far-reaching is working itself out. And one such thing, I am sure, is the liberation of the soul of the lover—and, in less degree, the soul of the loved one. The tremendous experiences and convulsions, the profound stirrings, and the wrenchings from old ties and associations, do at last not only build the soul up into a distinct individuality, but they dig it up from its roots in the race and plant it out in the great Eden garden of emancipated humanity—the beginning of a new career.[133]Another thing that I think is happening is that when love is strongly reciprocated the elements (as we have seen several times already), whether physical or psychical, pass over from one to the other and are interchanged—regenerating and immensely enlarging the life and capacity of each individual. This happens, I believe, in all grades of the universal life, from the Protozoaupwards. Two individuals drawn together interchange some elements of their being, and grow thereby into a larger and grander life; or may even in cases fuse completely into one individual person. As Swedenborg says somewhere:—“Those who are truly married on earth are in heaven one Angel.”Thirdly, I think that the reciprocated love of two sometimes creates anew soul. We are familiar with the idea that the love (sexual) of two bodies commonly creates a new body; and there is an age-long tradition that the same is true in the world of souls. There is in that world also, not only regeneration but generation. “Love is the desire of generation in the beautiful, bothwith relation to the soul and the body,” says Plato;[134]and Ellen Key, in a passage already quoted above (ch. iv., p. 61), says that “two beingsthroughone another may become a new being, and a greater than either could be of itself alone.” By love a new soul is sometimes generated which takes possession of both persons, and which suggests—as in the Swedenborg phrase above—that in some other sphere they really become one. And by love, we may also think, between man and wife, a new soul or soul-bud is sometimes created, which may descend into and vivify the physical germ of their future child.To consider this last point a moment. The connection between heredity and the individual self is very mysterious. We acknowledge ourdescent, and what we owe, both mentally and bodily, to our parentage; but we are fain to think of ouregoas something apart, something not to be confused with parents, and by no means merely derivative from them. Sometimes indeed there is great harmony between thisegoand the parental inheritance, sometimes much the reverse; sometimes the line between the two is doubtful and uncertain. What is the explanation of all this? and what are the true facts of the relationship?Does it not seem likely that, in the intense organic excitement which attends sexual union, this excitement—especially if strong love be also present—reaches right down into the soul-depths of each person, stirring these also, and the race oversoul at that point, most profoundly? So that, at the same moment that the germ of a bodily child is being fertilized, there is formed in the race-soul a soul-bud corresponding, which consequently descends into the physical germ and becomes its organizing life—the soul-bud thus being related to the souls of the parents, somewhat as the physical germ is related to their bodies? It springs, in fact, from a related portion of the race-oversoul.Or again, does it not seem likely that in some cases, instead of a quite new bud being formed, the profound stirring of the race-life in that vicinity causes some older and more developed soul-bud—which has perhaps already had some earth-experiences—to wake into activity and takepossession of the germ? In the first case mentioned the child born will be singularly like the parents, and in nature harmonious with them, with very little extraneous in its character, and with the fair prospect before it of a smooth and even career. But in this latter case, though the child will be harmonious with the parents it will have great depths beside, of authentic character of its own which will show out as time goes on.And again, if deep love be absent, and consequently there is no special birth or awakening of souls in that region where they should be related to the body which is being born—what is likely to happen? Is it not likely that some other soul-bud, or soul which chance or other indication of destiny may bring that way, may enter in and possess the developing organism? And is it not likely, then, that strife and conflict and doubt may also enter in, causing a character of mixed elements, possibly leading to heroic developments, but also probably to a broken or tragic life-story?As in the earliest and most primitive developments of life, so in the latest and most exalted, the soul is born through love, and through love it grows and expands. It may indeed be asked whether any other way is possible. Oppositions and conflicts may give form to the growing thing, and help to carve its outlines; but this gives it expansion. Every profound attachment necessarily modifies and enlarges the man. Itpulls him out of his little orbit into a wider path—even if for the moment with some amount of eccentricity. Something is incorporated in his life which was not part of it before—something possibly which he did not before appreciate or understand. What we now are—whether mentally or physically—is an epitome of multitudinous loves in the past. The very cell-alliances which constitute our bodies are the records of endless heart-yearnings and romances (dating from far-back ages, and even now enduring) among a tiny people to us well-nigh invisible. And we may ask ourselves whether in the regions above and beyond our present life there may not be soul-alliances and even soul-fusions, by which we humans in our turn build up the very life of the gods? Plato in hisSymposium, speaking of the strange desire of lovers for each other, makes Aristophanes say:[135]—“But the soul of each manifestly thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons thus affected, ‘My good people, what is it that you want with one another?’ And if, while they were hesitating what to answer, he should proceed to ask—‘Do you not desire the closest union and singleness to exist between you, so that you may never be divided night or day? If so, I will melt you together, and make you grow into one, so that both in life and death yemay be undivided. Consider, is this what you desire? Will it content you if you become that which I propose?’—We all know that no one would refuse such an offer, but would at once feel that this was what he had ever sought; and intimately to mix and melt and to be melted together with his beloved, so that one should be made out of two.” And we may think—though this strange and intimate longing is never fulfilled, as we know, in the actual earth-life—that it still may possibly be an indication (as happens in other cases) of something which really is working itself out in the unseen world.It was suggested, in the end of chapter xi. above, that limitation and hindrance are a part of the cosmic scheme of the creation of souls, and that there is a purpose in these things in regard to this mortal life. It was also suggested that the profound soul-stuff of which we are made is capable of infinitely swifter and more extended perceptions than those of which we are usually aware; and that there is a good deal of evidence to show that perceptive powers of this kind—quite independent of the usual end-organs of sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, still linger buried deep down within us. The question then naturally arises, If this limitation of faculty really exists as a fundamental fact of our mortal life, what purpose does it subserve?—And the answer to this is, I think, very clear.It subserves the evolution of Self-consciousness and of the sense of Identity. It is obvious thatdiffused faculties and perceptions, however swift and powerful, could never have brought these gifts with them. It was only by pinning sensitiveness down to a point in space and time, by means of a body, andlimitingits perceptions by means of bodily end-organs, that these new values could be added to creation—the local self and the sense of Identity. All the variety of human and animal nature, all the endless differences of points of view, all diversity and charm of form and character and temperament must be credited to this principle; and whatever vagaries and delusions the consequent growth of self-consciousness and selfness may have caused, it is incontestable that through the development of Identity mankind and all creation must ultimately rise to a height of glory and splendor otherwise unimaginable.And not only limitation but also hindrance. These things give an intensity and passion to life, and a power and decisiveness to individuality, the absence of which would indeed be sad. As a water-conduit by limiting the spread of the stream and confining it in a close channel gives it velocity and force to drive the mill, so limitation and hindrance in human life give the individualized energy from which, for good or evil, all our world-activities spring. As the Lord says in Goethe’s Prologue toFaust:—“Of all the spirits of denialThe mischief-maker I most tolerate,For man’s activity doth all too soon unravel;Of slumber he seems never satiate;Therefore I gladly hand him to a mateWho’ll plague and prick, and play in fact the Devil.”Over a long period in this cosmic process this action, we may think, goes on. The vast and pervasive soul-stuff of the universe, in its hidden way omniscient and omnipresent, suffers an obscuration and a limitation, and is condensed into a bodily prison in a point of space and time; but with a consequent explosive energy incalculable. The Devil—diabolosthe slanderer and the sunderer, the principle of division—reigns. To him, the ‘milk and water’ heaven of universal but vague benevolence is detestable. He builds up the actual, fascinating, tragic, indispensable world that we know. Selfishness and ignorance, the two great Powers of discord and separation, are his ministers; the earth is his theatre of convulsive hatreds and soul-racking passion; and our mortal life, instead of being the fair channel of cosmic activities, becomes a “stricture knot,” as Whitman calls it, and a symbol of disease.But this diabolonian process is only one segment of the whole. After the long descent and condensation and imprisonment of the spirit in its most limited and inert and self-regarding forms, after its saturation in matter, and its banishment in the world of death and suffering, the rising curve of liberation sets in, and the long process of its return. It is through love mainly, as we have seen, that this second process worksitself out. From point to point through unison with others, by absorbing something from their experience, by sharing a wider life, the spirit’s manifestation grows. By this the great tree of organic life spreads upon the earth; by this each race-stem multiplies its tissues and expands; by this the buds of human souls are formed; and by this the souls themselves are freed to independent life, and ultimately to circle again “dancing and sporting” as Plutarch says, “like joyous satellites round about their sun in heaven.” There is continual Transformation; but there is also continuity from end to end. For every being there is continuance, but continuance only by change. Each soul is a gradual rising to consciousness of the All-soul; a gradual liberation and self-discovery of the divine germ within it. First the race-soul rising toward this consciousness, and then the individual souls thrown off, rising each independently toward the same. It is when the latter are moving over from their (instinctive and so to speak organic) community with the race-soul to a distinct and separate knowledge of and allegiance to the divine germ now declaring within themselves, that all this period of confusion and dismay, naturally enough, occurs—this that we have called the period of Civilization and the Fall of man—the period in which indeed we are now so fatefully involved. But it is in this period too that ‘divine souls’ are formed, and their feet first set upon the path of splendor.Love indicates immortality. No sooner does the human being perceive this divine nucleus within himself than he knows his eternal destiny. Plunged in matter and the gross body he has learned the lesson of identity and separateness. All that the devil can teach him he has faithfully absorbed. Now he has to expand that identity, for ever unique, into ever vaster spheres of activity—to become finally a complete and finished aspect of the One.
Theliberation of buds and germs, as in the biological processes alluded to in the last chapter, is in general connected with sex, and brought about by its operation. And, similarly, I think we may say that the liberation of human souls and their disengagement from the race-matrix is brought about by love. I have already pointed out (ch. ix.) the intensely personal and individualizing character of human love. If one can imagine a love-relation going on between two members of a race—two portions, as it were, of the race-soul—at present only slightly individualized, one can see how the attraction to each other, the drawing away from their surroundings, the excitement, the agitation, all tend to further their growth as individuals—to give them form, apart from the matrix in which they are embedded, and definition and character. Of course all experience does this, but most of all and most deeply does love. It breeds souls out of the Race-self, and finally brings them away to an independent life. “It is for this that the body exercises its tremendous attraction—that mortal love torments and tears asunder the successivegenerations of mankind—That underneath and after all the true men and women may appear, by long experience emancipated.”
As said in an early chapter, in love, though we do not know exactly what is happening, we are persuaded that something very profound and far-reaching is working itself out. And one such thing, I am sure, is the liberation of the soul of the lover—and, in less degree, the soul of the loved one. The tremendous experiences and convulsions, the profound stirrings, and the wrenchings from old ties and associations, do at last not only build the soul up into a distinct individuality, but they dig it up from its roots in the race and plant it out in the great Eden garden of emancipated humanity—the beginning of a new career.[133]
Another thing that I think is happening is that when love is strongly reciprocated the elements (as we have seen several times already), whether physical or psychical, pass over from one to the other and are interchanged—regenerating and immensely enlarging the life and capacity of each individual. This happens, I believe, in all grades of the universal life, from the Protozoaupwards. Two individuals drawn together interchange some elements of their being, and grow thereby into a larger and grander life; or may even in cases fuse completely into one individual person. As Swedenborg says somewhere:—“Those who are truly married on earth are in heaven one Angel.”
Thirdly, I think that the reciprocated love of two sometimes creates anew soul. We are familiar with the idea that the love (sexual) of two bodies commonly creates a new body; and there is an age-long tradition that the same is true in the world of souls. There is in that world also, not only regeneration but generation. “Love is the desire of generation in the beautiful, bothwith relation to the soul and the body,” says Plato;[134]and Ellen Key, in a passage already quoted above (ch. iv., p. 61), says that “two beingsthroughone another may become a new being, and a greater than either could be of itself alone.” By love a new soul is sometimes generated which takes possession of both persons, and which suggests—as in the Swedenborg phrase above—that in some other sphere they really become one. And by love, we may also think, between man and wife, a new soul or soul-bud is sometimes created, which may descend into and vivify the physical germ of their future child.
To consider this last point a moment. The connection between heredity and the individual self is very mysterious. We acknowledge ourdescent, and what we owe, both mentally and bodily, to our parentage; but we are fain to think of ouregoas something apart, something not to be confused with parents, and by no means merely derivative from them. Sometimes indeed there is great harmony between thisegoand the parental inheritance, sometimes much the reverse; sometimes the line between the two is doubtful and uncertain. What is the explanation of all this? and what are the true facts of the relationship?
Does it not seem likely that, in the intense organic excitement which attends sexual union, this excitement—especially if strong love be also present—reaches right down into the soul-depths of each person, stirring these also, and the race oversoul at that point, most profoundly? So that, at the same moment that the germ of a bodily child is being fertilized, there is formed in the race-soul a soul-bud corresponding, which consequently descends into the physical germ and becomes its organizing life—the soul-bud thus being related to the souls of the parents, somewhat as the physical germ is related to their bodies? It springs, in fact, from a related portion of the race-oversoul.
Or again, does it not seem likely that in some cases, instead of a quite new bud being formed, the profound stirring of the race-life in that vicinity causes some older and more developed soul-bud—which has perhaps already had some earth-experiences—to wake into activity and takepossession of the germ? In the first case mentioned the child born will be singularly like the parents, and in nature harmonious with them, with very little extraneous in its character, and with the fair prospect before it of a smooth and even career. But in this latter case, though the child will be harmonious with the parents it will have great depths beside, of authentic character of its own which will show out as time goes on.
And again, if deep love be absent, and consequently there is no special birth or awakening of souls in that region where they should be related to the body which is being born—what is likely to happen? Is it not likely that some other soul-bud, or soul which chance or other indication of destiny may bring that way, may enter in and possess the developing organism? And is it not likely, then, that strife and conflict and doubt may also enter in, causing a character of mixed elements, possibly leading to heroic developments, but also probably to a broken or tragic life-story?
As in the earliest and most primitive developments of life, so in the latest and most exalted, the soul is born through love, and through love it grows and expands. It may indeed be asked whether any other way is possible. Oppositions and conflicts may give form to the growing thing, and help to carve its outlines; but this gives it expansion. Every profound attachment necessarily modifies and enlarges the man. Itpulls him out of his little orbit into a wider path—even if for the moment with some amount of eccentricity. Something is incorporated in his life which was not part of it before—something possibly which he did not before appreciate or understand. What we now are—whether mentally or physically—is an epitome of multitudinous loves in the past. The very cell-alliances which constitute our bodies are the records of endless heart-yearnings and romances (dating from far-back ages, and even now enduring) among a tiny people to us well-nigh invisible. And we may ask ourselves whether in the regions above and beyond our present life there may not be soul-alliances and even soul-fusions, by which we humans in our turn build up the very life of the gods? Plato in hisSymposium, speaking of the strange desire of lovers for each other, makes Aristophanes say:[135]—“But the soul of each manifestly thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons thus affected, ‘My good people, what is it that you want with one another?’ And if, while they were hesitating what to answer, he should proceed to ask—‘Do you not desire the closest union and singleness to exist between you, so that you may never be divided night or day? If so, I will melt you together, and make you grow into one, so that both in life and death yemay be undivided. Consider, is this what you desire? Will it content you if you become that which I propose?’—We all know that no one would refuse such an offer, but would at once feel that this was what he had ever sought; and intimately to mix and melt and to be melted together with his beloved, so that one should be made out of two.” And we may think—though this strange and intimate longing is never fulfilled, as we know, in the actual earth-life—that it still may possibly be an indication (as happens in other cases) of something which really is working itself out in the unseen world.
It was suggested, in the end of chapter xi. above, that limitation and hindrance are a part of the cosmic scheme of the creation of souls, and that there is a purpose in these things in regard to this mortal life. It was also suggested that the profound soul-stuff of which we are made is capable of infinitely swifter and more extended perceptions than those of which we are usually aware; and that there is a good deal of evidence to show that perceptive powers of this kind—quite independent of the usual end-organs of sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, still linger buried deep down within us. The question then naturally arises, If this limitation of faculty really exists as a fundamental fact of our mortal life, what purpose does it subserve?—And the answer to this is, I think, very clear.
It subserves the evolution of Self-consciousness and of the sense of Identity. It is obvious thatdiffused faculties and perceptions, however swift and powerful, could never have brought these gifts with them. It was only by pinning sensitiveness down to a point in space and time, by means of a body, andlimitingits perceptions by means of bodily end-organs, that these new values could be added to creation—the local self and the sense of Identity. All the variety of human and animal nature, all the endless differences of points of view, all diversity and charm of form and character and temperament must be credited to this principle; and whatever vagaries and delusions the consequent growth of self-consciousness and selfness may have caused, it is incontestable that through the development of Identity mankind and all creation must ultimately rise to a height of glory and splendor otherwise unimaginable.
And not only limitation but also hindrance. These things give an intensity and passion to life, and a power and decisiveness to individuality, the absence of which would indeed be sad. As a water-conduit by limiting the spread of the stream and confining it in a close channel gives it velocity and force to drive the mill, so limitation and hindrance in human life give the individualized energy from which, for good or evil, all our world-activities spring. As the Lord says in Goethe’s Prologue toFaust:—
“Of all the spirits of denialThe mischief-maker I most tolerate,For man’s activity doth all too soon unravel;Of slumber he seems never satiate;Therefore I gladly hand him to a mateWho’ll plague and prick, and play in fact the Devil.”
“Of all the spirits of denialThe mischief-maker I most tolerate,For man’s activity doth all too soon unravel;Of slumber he seems never satiate;Therefore I gladly hand him to a mateWho’ll plague and prick, and play in fact the Devil.”
“Of all the spirits of denial
The mischief-maker I most tolerate,
For man’s activity doth all too soon unravel;
Of slumber he seems never satiate;
Therefore I gladly hand him to a mate
Who’ll plague and prick, and play in fact the Devil.”
Over a long period in this cosmic process this action, we may think, goes on. The vast and pervasive soul-stuff of the universe, in its hidden way omniscient and omnipresent, suffers an obscuration and a limitation, and is condensed into a bodily prison in a point of space and time; but with a consequent explosive energy incalculable. The Devil—diabolosthe slanderer and the sunderer, the principle of division—reigns. To him, the ‘milk and water’ heaven of universal but vague benevolence is detestable. He builds up the actual, fascinating, tragic, indispensable world that we know. Selfishness and ignorance, the two great Powers of discord and separation, are his ministers; the earth is his theatre of convulsive hatreds and soul-racking passion; and our mortal life, instead of being the fair channel of cosmic activities, becomes a “stricture knot,” as Whitman calls it, and a symbol of disease.
But this diabolonian process is only one segment of the whole. After the long descent and condensation and imprisonment of the spirit in its most limited and inert and self-regarding forms, after its saturation in matter, and its banishment in the world of death and suffering, the rising curve of liberation sets in, and the long process of its return. It is through love mainly, as we have seen, that this second process worksitself out. From point to point through unison with others, by absorbing something from their experience, by sharing a wider life, the spirit’s manifestation grows. By this the great tree of organic life spreads upon the earth; by this each race-stem multiplies its tissues and expands; by this the buds of human souls are formed; and by this the souls themselves are freed to independent life, and ultimately to circle again “dancing and sporting” as Plutarch says, “like joyous satellites round about their sun in heaven.” There is continual Transformation; but there is also continuity from end to end. For every being there is continuance, but continuance only by change. Each soul is a gradual rising to consciousness of the All-soul; a gradual liberation and self-discovery of the divine germ within it. First the race-soul rising toward this consciousness, and then the individual souls thrown off, rising each independently toward the same. It is when the latter are moving over from their (instinctive and so to speak organic) community with the race-soul to a distinct and separate knowledge of and allegiance to the divine germ now declaring within themselves, that all this period of confusion and dismay, naturally enough, occurs—this that we have called the period of Civilization and the Fall of man—the period in which indeed we are now so fatefully involved. But it is in this period too that ‘divine souls’ are formed, and their feet first set upon the path of splendor.
Love indicates immortality. No sooner does the human being perceive this divine nucleus within himself than he knows his eternal destiny. Plunged in matter and the gross body he has learned the lesson of identity and separateness. All that the devil can teach him he has faithfully absorbed. Now he has to expand that identity, for ever unique, into ever vaster spheres of activity—to become finally a complete and finished aspect of the One.
CHAPTER XIVTHE RETURN JOURNEYWehave seen that there is some reason for believing that, simultaneously with the birth or coming to consciousness of what we have called the divine soul, there occurs within us the formation of a ‘spiritual’ or very subtly material body. This body, if only composed of atoms, may easily be so fine and subtle as to pass practically unchanged through ordinary gross matter—the walls, for instance, and other obstacles that surround us. (At this moment there is an astronomical theory current that the stellar universe consists of two vast star-systems which are passing in nearly opposite directions rightthrough each other.) If composed of electrons its subtlety and pervasive powers must be much greater. Moreover, its fineness and subtlety would make it difficult of destruction. The ordinary agents of death—physical violence, water, fire, and so forth—would, as already pointed out, hardly reach it; and it is easy to suppose that it might continue onwards and perdure in stability and activity for thousands of years. Even the Atom of matter, which is now regarded as a complex system of electrons, is supposed to have an immenselyextended lifetime—nearly two thousand years in the case of Radium, and much longer in the case of all other substances; and if two thousand years or thereabouts is the minimum lifetime of an atom, it is not difficult to suppose that the lifetime of a subtle body composed as above described may be equally or much more extended.During its lifetime, the radio-active atom, slowly disintegrating, pours out a prodigious amount of energy; and in the process apparently is transformed and takes on other characters and qualities. Radium for instance, or rather some products of its disintegration, are thought to take on the characters of Helium and of Lead. And similarly we have every reason to believe that the subtle body of Man is continually pouring out energy on all sides, radiating like a sun—pouring out mental states, sensible forms, influences of all kinds, even images of itself, and so continually entering into a wider life and touch with others, and undergoing a slow transformation of its outer form. At the same time—and leading to the same results—it is continually storing up in its recesses impressions and memories for the seed of future expression and development.It may be imagined that the gross terrestrial body—though splendidly necessary for the localizing of the Self, and the establishment of the sense of identity, and for the electric accumulation of stores of emotion and passion, and so forth—acts on the whole in such a way as to greatlyhamper and limit the activities of the inner body; and we can imagine that (as at death and under other special conditions) the liberation from the gross body is naturally accompanied by an enormous extension of faculty. The soul in its new and subtler form passes out into an immensely wider sphere of action and perception—so much so, indeed, as to make direct converse between the two worlds (the new world it is in, and the old one it has left) difficult to establish and very difficult permanently to maintain. The author ofInterwovensays (p. 221) that the first body and the second body differ greatly in their chemical particles, “and so the same degree of sight and hearing is not possible....Wehave just as much trouble to see the outsides of things as mortals have to see the insides.”Nor can we place a necessary limit to the birth of finer bodies. There may be a succession of such things. The electron brings us very near to amentalstate; for whereas an Atom—conceived as similar to the speck of dust which one can roll between one’s fingers, only much more minute—seems to have no relation to mentality, a tiny electric charge, capable of conveying ashock, comes very close! And at that stage the truth becomes apparent that the inner intelligent being in all things is the core, and the body is only the surface of contact—the surface, in fact, along which one intelligence administers shocks to another! With liberation from the gross body that surface may growenormously extended, and it may become possible totouchorsee, or to render oneself visible or tangible, to others far beyond all ordinary possibilities of contact or perception.The succession of finer bodies may exist in any gradation, from what we call gross matter to the subtlest ether of emotion. At any rate we can see that at every stage there will be a finer body which ismoreof the nature of thought, and an outer and coarser which is less so. As the gifted author ofThe Science of Peace, Bhagavan Das, says:—“At each stage the Jiva-core (i.e.the core of the living individual) consists of matter of the inner plane, while its outer upâdhi (or sheath) consists of matter of the outer plane; and when a person says, I think, I act, it means that the matter of the inner core, which is the I, for the time being, is actually, positively, modified by, or is itself modifying in a certain manner, the outer real world.” The inner film of matter (or mind), as he says, “is posing and masquerading, for the time being, as the truly immaterial self.”This central Self we can neverwhollyreach, but the movement of each divine soul is toward it; and the assurance and salvation of each soul is in the growing sense of union with it. The personal self can only ‘survive’ by ever fading and changing toward the universal. Our inner identity is fixed, but our outward identity we can only preserve by, as it were, forever losing it.After life’s fitful fever—after the insurgence and resurgence of passions; after the heart-breaking struggles which are forced upon some for the sake of a mere material footing upon the earth; after the deadly sufferings which others must undergo in order to gain scantiest allowance and expression of their inner and spiritual selves; after the mortal conflict and irreconcilableness of material and mental needs; the battles with opponents, the betrayal of friends, the fading and souring of pleasures, and the dissipation of ideals—the consent of mankind goes to affirm and confirm the conclusion that sleep is well, sleep is desirable. As after a hard day’s labor, when the sinews are torn and the mind is racked, Nature’s soft nurse commends a period of rest and healing—so it would seem fitting that a similar period should follow, for the human soul, on the toil and the dislocation of life.It seems indeed probable—and a long tradition confirms the idea—that the human soul at death does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of memories and qualities, into some intermediate region,astralrather thancelestial(if we may use words which we do not understand), some Purgatory or Hades, rather than Paradise or Olympus; and for a long period does remain there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering from the shocks and outrages of mortal experience, knitting up and smoothing out the broken and tangled threads, trying hard to understand the pattern. It seems probable that there is along period of such digestion and reconcilement and slow brooding over the new life which has to be formed. Indeed when one comes to think of it, it seems difficult—if there is to be continuance at all—to imagine anything else. When one thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal life, the hopelessly antagonistic elements, the warring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the stupor of monotony: the soul like a bird shut in a cage, or with bright wings draggled in the mire; the horrible sense of sin which torments some people, the mad impulses which tyrannize over others; the alternations of one’s own personality on different days, or at different depths and planes of consciousness; the supraliminal and the subliminal; the smug Upper-self with its petty satisfactions and its precise and precious logic, and the great Under-self now rising (in the hour of death) like some vast shadowy figure or genius, out of the abyss of being—when one thinks of all this one feels that if there is to be any sanity or sequence in the conclusion, it must mean a long period of brooding and reconciliation, and of readjustment, and even of sleep.At first it may well be a troubled period, of nightmare-like confusion; but at last there must come a time when harmony is restored. The past lifetime is spread out like a map before one—all its events fall into their places, composed and clear. The genius, rising from the depths, throws a strange light upon them. “This was necessary. That could not have been otherwise. And thatagain which seemed so fatal, do you not now see its profound meaning?” The soul surveying gradually redeems the past. It comes to understand.Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.It beholds, far down, the little fugitive among the shadows, pursued by the hideous and imbecile mask—the sense of Sin—and, recognizing a fleeting embodiment of itself, it smiles: for that mask has been seen through and is useless any longer. It beholds another—or is it the same?—pursued by the Terror of Death; and again it smiles: forthatshadow—like the vast moonshadow in a total eclipse of the sun, which seemed so solid and all-devouring, has swept by; it has been passed through, and it was only a shadow.And it may well be also that this whole process of reconciliation and adjustment and the building up of diverse elements into one harmonious being may occupy more than one such interval between two lifetimes; it may require several periods of incubation, so to speak. Looking at the matter from the physical side, and seeing how the inner and subtle body has probably to be formed during all this time—as in a chrysalis—and differentiated into an independent life, it seems likely that several intervals of outer rest and inner growth may be needed, and a series of successive moultings! But in the end, when the string of earth-lives is finished, and the reconciliation is complete, then the essential, the divine, self has become manifest, and is ready for a whole newworld, a new order of experience, even to the farthest confines of the universe.I have suggested in a former chapter that Memory—that very wonderful faculty—is probably our best test of Identity, our best test of Survival. If we apply this canon to the evolution of the independent soul out of the race-life, it may help us. When an animal dies, the group of memories, which is its life’s-experience, probably passes back and is transmitted in a more or less diffused way into the general race-life or soul.[136]In the case of some higher animals it is possible that the memory-group thus returning may cohere for a time or to a certain degree, and not be immediately diffused. In the case of the higher types ofManit is probable that such group may cohere for a long time and rather persistently; and though embedded in the general race-life and memory, and much mingled with and modified by these, it may still form to some degree an independent centre of intelligence and organization (something like a nerve-plexus in the brain or body). It will form, in fact, what I have already called a soul-bud or budding soul, and will be capable of that mixed or partial reincarnation of which I have spoken—in which sometruly individual streaks of memory will be mixed with general memories of race-life.But after each successive reincarnation the group of memories returning—and allying themselves to the former groups—will necessarily give more and more definition to such budding soul, till at last the time will come when its individuality will be complete; its severance from the race-life will follow as a matter of course; and it will float out into the sea of the all-pervading and divine consciousness.During this budding period of the human soul, which generally speaking may be said to coincide with the civilization-period of human history, the memory of each earth-life will go back into the race-soul there to swell the nucleus of the individual soul which is being brought to birth; but it will not generally revive intoevidencein the next earth-life, for, being so deeply buried within, it will be too much overlaid by external layers and happenings to come distinctly into consciousness. It is not probably till the completion of the whole series of its earth-lives that the soul will resume all these memories and come into its complete heritage. Then, at some deep stage or state all its incarnations (clarified and comprehended) will become manifest to it—a glorious kingdom beyond the imagination of man at present to conceive. All its various lives it may live over again; but with as much difference in its understanding of their meaning as there is between an accomplished player’srendering of a piece of music, and a child’s first stumbling performance of the same.It will perceive that, in a sense, it haspre-existedfrom eternity. For though certainly there was a time when it first sprang as a bud from the Race, and entered into a gradually evolving and self-defining series of personal lives, yet that first bud was itself but a particular limitation and condensation of the Race-self; andthatagain, far back and beyond, a limitation through many intermediate stages of the All-self. It (the human-divine soul) will perceive that it pre-existed from eternity as the All-self; that it suffered in its time the necessary obscurations and limitations; that it abdicated the high prerogative of universal consciousness; and that it was born again as a tiny Cinderella-spark; destined to rise through all the circles of personal and individual life, and the enacting of the great drama of Love and Death—the great cycle of Evolution and Transfiguration—once more to the eternal Throne.The glory of that Heaven where the All-self dwells radiant as the Sun, and each lesser or partial soul knows itself as a ray conveying the whole light, but in a direction of its own—we need not dwell on or attempt to portray. As the emancipated soul, just described, may include the personalities of many earth-lives and bodies, so there may be—probably are—larger inclusive selves, special gods, having troops of souls unitedto them in the bonds of love and devotion. Telepathic radiations, travelling as it were on lines of light, and with the velocity and directness of light, bring each unit into possible touch with every other, and over an enormous field. As the modern theory of electricity supposes that every electric charge, however small, or associated with the smallest atom, is connected by lines of force with some other and complementary chargesomewhere—even perhaps at a practically infinite distance—negative with positive, and positive with negative; so the idea is suggested that in the free world of the spirit every need felt by one atom of personality anywhere is felt also and answered to by some complementary impulse and personalitysomewhere. In the bringing together of these needs and affections, in the recovery and the building up and the presentation in sensible form of all the worlds of memory, slumber infinite possibilities, and the outlines of endless situations and developments. The individual is clearly not lost in any ‘Happy Mass’; but may contribute to the formation of such a thing in the sense that he comes into such wide and extended touch with others as to have a practically unlimited range of experience, memory, knowledge, creative power, and so forth, to draw on.Nor is there any call to think of abodilessheaven or bodiless state of being in any plane of existence. The body in any stage or state is, I repeat, a surface of contact. Wherever oneintelligent being comes into touch with another—whether actively, by impressing itself on the other, or passively by being impressed—there immediately arises a body. There arises the sense of matter, which is in fact theimpressionmade by one being upon another. The external senses, of sight, hearing and the rest, are modifications or limitations of more extended inner faculties, of vision, audition, and so forth. The actual world of Nature which we know, in the bodies of the woods and streams, and of animals and men, is built up out of the material of our senses; out of the kind of impressionability of which our senses are susceptible; but if these materials, of our sight and hearing and touch and taste, were altered but slightly in their range, the whole world would be different. They would create for us another world. And so, if these present end-organs of sense were destroyed, the soul, furnished with the inner faculties corresponding, would create another world of sense and of Nature, which would become the medium of expression and communication on that new plane, and the material of its bodily manifestation there. At present, owing to entanglement in the grosser senses, life is certainly in the main a matter of food and drink, of sex, of money-making, and the exercise of rather rude recreations and arts. With a finer range of sense, there would still remain the roots and realities of these things; the need of sustenance would still survive in the finer body, and the needof interchange and the indrawing of vitality; the hunger of union and of intercourse would remain—to be expressed in some shape or other; the delight in music and in beauty of form would be no less, though sounds and colors might be different from those we know; and all the faculties that we have—and others too that are now only embryonic with us—would demand their exercise and expression. Out of such demands and needs would arise a corresponding world.I have suggested above (ch. xi.) how, deep in the subliminal self, there lies a marvellous faculty of producing visible and audible phenomena—Visions and Voices and Forms. Out of the depths of being these can be evoked, and bodied forth into the actual world.[137]In other words, each such Self, in its moods of power, can call forth its own thoughts and mental images with such force as to impress them irresistibly on others within its range—with such force, in fact, as to give them a material vesture and location. What we have said of the vastness and range of the human Under-self, of its swift interrelation with others, of the immensity of its memory extending far back into the deeps of time, must convince us that its powers of creation must be correspondingly wonderful. The phenomena exhibited by entranced mediums, and by hypnotized subjects, are only a sample of these powers; but they hint dimly to us that when we understand ourselves, and whatwe are, and when we understand others, and what they are, Time and Space and Estrangement will no longer avail against us; they will no longer hinder us from recognition of each other, nor hold us back from the spheres to which we truly belong, and the fulfilment of our real needs and desires.Man is the Magician who whether in dreams or in trance or in actual life can, if he wills it, raise up and give reality to the forms of his desire and his love. It is not necessary for us feverishly to pursue our loved ones through all the fading and dissolving outlines of their future or their past embodiments. They are ours already, in the deepest sense—and one day we shall wake up to know we can call them at any moment to our side; we shall wake up to know that they are ever present and able to manifest themselves to us out of the unseen.
Wehave seen that there is some reason for believing that, simultaneously with the birth or coming to consciousness of what we have called the divine soul, there occurs within us the formation of a ‘spiritual’ or very subtly material body. This body, if only composed of atoms, may easily be so fine and subtle as to pass practically unchanged through ordinary gross matter—the walls, for instance, and other obstacles that surround us. (At this moment there is an astronomical theory current that the stellar universe consists of two vast star-systems which are passing in nearly opposite directions rightthrough each other.) If composed of electrons its subtlety and pervasive powers must be much greater. Moreover, its fineness and subtlety would make it difficult of destruction. The ordinary agents of death—physical violence, water, fire, and so forth—would, as already pointed out, hardly reach it; and it is easy to suppose that it might continue onwards and perdure in stability and activity for thousands of years. Even the Atom of matter, which is now regarded as a complex system of electrons, is supposed to have an immenselyextended lifetime—nearly two thousand years in the case of Radium, and much longer in the case of all other substances; and if two thousand years or thereabouts is the minimum lifetime of an atom, it is not difficult to suppose that the lifetime of a subtle body composed as above described may be equally or much more extended.
During its lifetime, the radio-active atom, slowly disintegrating, pours out a prodigious amount of energy; and in the process apparently is transformed and takes on other characters and qualities. Radium for instance, or rather some products of its disintegration, are thought to take on the characters of Helium and of Lead. And similarly we have every reason to believe that the subtle body of Man is continually pouring out energy on all sides, radiating like a sun—pouring out mental states, sensible forms, influences of all kinds, even images of itself, and so continually entering into a wider life and touch with others, and undergoing a slow transformation of its outer form. At the same time—and leading to the same results—it is continually storing up in its recesses impressions and memories for the seed of future expression and development.
It may be imagined that the gross terrestrial body—though splendidly necessary for the localizing of the Self, and the establishment of the sense of identity, and for the electric accumulation of stores of emotion and passion, and so forth—acts on the whole in such a way as to greatlyhamper and limit the activities of the inner body; and we can imagine that (as at death and under other special conditions) the liberation from the gross body is naturally accompanied by an enormous extension of faculty. The soul in its new and subtler form passes out into an immensely wider sphere of action and perception—so much so, indeed, as to make direct converse between the two worlds (the new world it is in, and the old one it has left) difficult to establish and very difficult permanently to maintain. The author ofInterwovensays (p. 221) that the first body and the second body differ greatly in their chemical particles, “and so the same degree of sight and hearing is not possible....Wehave just as much trouble to see the outsides of things as mortals have to see the insides.”
Nor can we place a necessary limit to the birth of finer bodies. There may be a succession of such things. The electron brings us very near to amentalstate; for whereas an Atom—conceived as similar to the speck of dust which one can roll between one’s fingers, only much more minute—seems to have no relation to mentality, a tiny electric charge, capable of conveying ashock, comes very close! And at that stage the truth becomes apparent that the inner intelligent being in all things is the core, and the body is only the surface of contact—the surface, in fact, along which one intelligence administers shocks to another! With liberation from the gross body that surface may growenormously extended, and it may become possible totouchorsee, or to render oneself visible or tangible, to others far beyond all ordinary possibilities of contact or perception.
The succession of finer bodies may exist in any gradation, from what we call gross matter to the subtlest ether of emotion. At any rate we can see that at every stage there will be a finer body which ismoreof the nature of thought, and an outer and coarser which is less so. As the gifted author ofThe Science of Peace, Bhagavan Das, says:—“At each stage the Jiva-core (i.e.the core of the living individual) consists of matter of the inner plane, while its outer upâdhi (or sheath) consists of matter of the outer plane; and when a person says, I think, I act, it means that the matter of the inner core, which is the I, for the time being, is actually, positively, modified by, or is itself modifying in a certain manner, the outer real world.” The inner film of matter (or mind), as he says, “is posing and masquerading, for the time being, as the truly immaterial self.”
This central Self we can neverwhollyreach, but the movement of each divine soul is toward it; and the assurance and salvation of each soul is in the growing sense of union with it. The personal self can only ‘survive’ by ever fading and changing toward the universal. Our inner identity is fixed, but our outward identity we can only preserve by, as it were, forever losing it.
After life’s fitful fever—after the insurgence and resurgence of passions; after the heart-breaking struggles which are forced upon some for the sake of a mere material footing upon the earth; after the deadly sufferings which others must undergo in order to gain scantiest allowance and expression of their inner and spiritual selves; after the mortal conflict and irreconcilableness of material and mental needs; the battles with opponents, the betrayal of friends, the fading and souring of pleasures, and the dissipation of ideals—the consent of mankind goes to affirm and confirm the conclusion that sleep is well, sleep is desirable. As after a hard day’s labor, when the sinews are torn and the mind is racked, Nature’s soft nurse commends a period of rest and healing—so it would seem fitting that a similar period should follow, for the human soul, on the toil and the dislocation of life.
It seems indeed probable—and a long tradition confirms the idea—that the human soul at death does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of memories and qualities, into some intermediate region,astralrather thancelestial(if we may use words which we do not understand), some Purgatory or Hades, rather than Paradise or Olympus; and for a long period does remain there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering from the shocks and outrages of mortal experience, knitting up and smoothing out the broken and tangled threads, trying hard to understand the pattern. It seems probable that there is along period of such digestion and reconcilement and slow brooding over the new life which has to be formed. Indeed when one comes to think of it, it seems difficult—if there is to be continuance at all—to imagine anything else. When one thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal life, the hopelessly antagonistic elements, the warring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the stupor of monotony: the soul like a bird shut in a cage, or with bright wings draggled in the mire; the horrible sense of sin which torments some people, the mad impulses which tyrannize over others; the alternations of one’s own personality on different days, or at different depths and planes of consciousness; the supraliminal and the subliminal; the smug Upper-self with its petty satisfactions and its precise and precious logic, and the great Under-self now rising (in the hour of death) like some vast shadowy figure or genius, out of the abyss of being—when one thinks of all this one feels that if there is to be any sanity or sequence in the conclusion, it must mean a long period of brooding and reconciliation, and of readjustment, and even of sleep.
At first it may well be a troubled period, of nightmare-like confusion; but at last there must come a time when harmony is restored. The past lifetime is spread out like a map before one—all its events fall into their places, composed and clear. The genius, rising from the depths, throws a strange light upon them. “This was necessary. That could not have been otherwise. And thatagain which seemed so fatal, do you not now see its profound meaning?” The soul surveying gradually redeems the past. It comes to understand.Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.It beholds, far down, the little fugitive among the shadows, pursued by the hideous and imbecile mask—the sense of Sin—and, recognizing a fleeting embodiment of itself, it smiles: for that mask has been seen through and is useless any longer. It beholds another—or is it the same?—pursued by the Terror of Death; and again it smiles: forthatshadow—like the vast moonshadow in a total eclipse of the sun, which seemed so solid and all-devouring, has swept by; it has been passed through, and it was only a shadow.
And it may well be also that this whole process of reconciliation and adjustment and the building up of diverse elements into one harmonious being may occupy more than one such interval between two lifetimes; it may require several periods of incubation, so to speak. Looking at the matter from the physical side, and seeing how the inner and subtle body has probably to be formed during all this time—as in a chrysalis—and differentiated into an independent life, it seems likely that several intervals of outer rest and inner growth may be needed, and a series of successive moultings! But in the end, when the string of earth-lives is finished, and the reconciliation is complete, then the essential, the divine, self has become manifest, and is ready for a whole newworld, a new order of experience, even to the farthest confines of the universe.
I have suggested in a former chapter that Memory—that very wonderful faculty—is probably our best test of Identity, our best test of Survival. If we apply this canon to the evolution of the independent soul out of the race-life, it may help us. When an animal dies, the group of memories, which is its life’s-experience, probably passes back and is transmitted in a more or less diffused way into the general race-life or soul.[136]In the case of some higher animals it is possible that the memory-group thus returning may cohere for a time or to a certain degree, and not be immediately diffused. In the case of the higher types ofManit is probable that such group may cohere for a long time and rather persistently; and though embedded in the general race-life and memory, and much mingled with and modified by these, it may still form to some degree an independent centre of intelligence and organization (something like a nerve-plexus in the brain or body). It will form, in fact, what I have already called a soul-bud or budding soul, and will be capable of that mixed or partial reincarnation of which I have spoken—in which sometruly individual streaks of memory will be mixed with general memories of race-life.
But after each successive reincarnation the group of memories returning—and allying themselves to the former groups—will necessarily give more and more definition to such budding soul, till at last the time will come when its individuality will be complete; its severance from the race-life will follow as a matter of course; and it will float out into the sea of the all-pervading and divine consciousness.
During this budding period of the human soul, which generally speaking may be said to coincide with the civilization-period of human history, the memory of each earth-life will go back into the race-soul there to swell the nucleus of the individual soul which is being brought to birth; but it will not generally revive intoevidencein the next earth-life, for, being so deeply buried within, it will be too much overlaid by external layers and happenings to come distinctly into consciousness. It is not probably till the completion of the whole series of its earth-lives that the soul will resume all these memories and come into its complete heritage. Then, at some deep stage or state all its incarnations (clarified and comprehended) will become manifest to it—a glorious kingdom beyond the imagination of man at present to conceive. All its various lives it may live over again; but with as much difference in its understanding of their meaning as there is between an accomplished player’srendering of a piece of music, and a child’s first stumbling performance of the same.
It will perceive that, in a sense, it haspre-existedfrom eternity. For though certainly there was a time when it first sprang as a bud from the Race, and entered into a gradually evolving and self-defining series of personal lives, yet that first bud was itself but a particular limitation and condensation of the Race-self; andthatagain, far back and beyond, a limitation through many intermediate stages of the All-self. It (the human-divine soul) will perceive that it pre-existed from eternity as the All-self; that it suffered in its time the necessary obscurations and limitations; that it abdicated the high prerogative of universal consciousness; and that it was born again as a tiny Cinderella-spark; destined to rise through all the circles of personal and individual life, and the enacting of the great drama of Love and Death—the great cycle of Evolution and Transfiguration—once more to the eternal Throne.
The glory of that Heaven where the All-self dwells radiant as the Sun, and each lesser or partial soul knows itself as a ray conveying the whole light, but in a direction of its own—we need not dwell on or attempt to portray. As the emancipated soul, just described, may include the personalities of many earth-lives and bodies, so there may be—probably are—larger inclusive selves, special gods, having troops of souls unitedto them in the bonds of love and devotion. Telepathic radiations, travelling as it were on lines of light, and with the velocity and directness of light, bring each unit into possible touch with every other, and over an enormous field. As the modern theory of electricity supposes that every electric charge, however small, or associated with the smallest atom, is connected by lines of force with some other and complementary chargesomewhere—even perhaps at a practically infinite distance—negative with positive, and positive with negative; so the idea is suggested that in the free world of the spirit every need felt by one atom of personality anywhere is felt also and answered to by some complementary impulse and personalitysomewhere. In the bringing together of these needs and affections, in the recovery and the building up and the presentation in sensible form of all the worlds of memory, slumber infinite possibilities, and the outlines of endless situations and developments. The individual is clearly not lost in any ‘Happy Mass’; but may contribute to the formation of such a thing in the sense that he comes into such wide and extended touch with others as to have a practically unlimited range of experience, memory, knowledge, creative power, and so forth, to draw on.
Nor is there any call to think of abodilessheaven or bodiless state of being in any plane of existence. The body in any stage or state is, I repeat, a surface of contact. Wherever oneintelligent being comes into touch with another—whether actively, by impressing itself on the other, or passively by being impressed—there immediately arises a body. There arises the sense of matter, which is in fact theimpressionmade by one being upon another. The external senses, of sight, hearing and the rest, are modifications or limitations of more extended inner faculties, of vision, audition, and so forth. The actual world of Nature which we know, in the bodies of the woods and streams, and of animals and men, is built up out of the material of our senses; out of the kind of impressionability of which our senses are susceptible; but if these materials, of our sight and hearing and touch and taste, were altered but slightly in their range, the whole world would be different. They would create for us another world. And so, if these present end-organs of sense were destroyed, the soul, furnished with the inner faculties corresponding, would create another world of sense and of Nature, which would become the medium of expression and communication on that new plane, and the material of its bodily manifestation there. At present, owing to entanglement in the grosser senses, life is certainly in the main a matter of food and drink, of sex, of money-making, and the exercise of rather rude recreations and arts. With a finer range of sense, there would still remain the roots and realities of these things; the need of sustenance would still survive in the finer body, and the needof interchange and the indrawing of vitality; the hunger of union and of intercourse would remain—to be expressed in some shape or other; the delight in music and in beauty of form would be no less, though sounds and colors might be different from those we know; and all the faculties that we have—and others too that are now only embryonic with us—would demand their exercise and expression. Out of such demands and needs would arise a corresponding world.
I have suggested above (ch. xi.) how, deep in the subliminal self, there lies a marvellous faculty of producing visible and audible phenomena—Visions and Voices and Forms. Out of the depths of being these can be evoked, and bodied forth into the actual world.[137]In other words, each such Self, in its moods of power, can call forth its own thoughts and mental images with such force as to impress them irresistibly on others within its range—with such force, in fact, as to give them a material vesture and location. What we have said of the vastness and range of the human Under-self, of its swift interrelation with others, of the immensity of its memory extending far back into the deeps of time, must convince us that its powers of creation must be correspondingly wonderful. The phenomena exhibited by entranced mediums, and by hypnotized subjects, are only a sample of these powers; but they hint dimly to us that when we understand ourselves, and whatwe are, and when we understand others, and what they are, Time and Space and Estrangement will no longer avail against us; they will no longer hinder us from recognition of each other, nor hold us back from the spheres to which we truly belong, and the fulfilment of our real needs and desires.
Man is the Magician who whether in dreams or in trance or in actual life can, if he wills it, raise up and give reality to the forms of his desire and his love. It is not necessary for us feverishly to pursue our loved ones through all the fading and dissolving outlines of their future or their past embodiments. They are ours already, in the deepest sense—and one day we shall wake up to know we can call them at any moment to our side; we shall wake up to know that they are ever present and able to manifest themselves to us out of the unseen.