Book Description

Reincarnation is the serial and periodical rebirth of every individual monad, from pralaya to pralaya. Reincarnation is indissolubly linked with Karma, the Divine Law of Truth and Justice. Astral monad is the shell of the deceased personality, disintegrating together with the corpse. In Hinduism it is known as bhut; in Greek philosophy, as eidolon; in Theosophy, as elementary. That shell is the deceptive image of lingering desires (Kama-loka), the Limbus of the Catholics, the Hades of the Greeks. The evocation of the dead (necromancy) as well as the preservation of corpses is a violation of the laws of nature; it is an outrage on the modesty of death, which hides the works of destruction, as we should hide those of reproduction. Death is exhaled by death. The cemeteries poison the atmosphere of towns and the miasma of corpses blight the children even in the bosoms of their mothers. As spirit and matter run along parallel lines and are readily convertible to each other, so the spiritual evolution goes hand in hand with the physical. The immortal Ego is the root of every new incarnation, the string on which are threaded one after the other the ephemeral “personalities” of man. When the post-mortem period of lethargic stupor is over, and the last ante-mortem desire dissipated, the Spiritual Soul enters in full consciousness the blessed region of Devachan, where all earthly mists have been dispersed, and where the scenes of the past life come clearly before the spiritual sight. Thence one can neither be reborn before its appointed period, nor reappear on earth visibly or invisibly in the interim. Unless the spiritual fruition the Higher Ego merges into, and its aroma absorbed by the reincarnating Ego (Atma-Buddhi), the latter becomes non-existent — for it can only receive spiritual colouring from each lower ego during incarnation. All transient, non-reincarnating principles are left behind soulless and lifeless, firstly as a material residue, and later on as a reflection on the mirror of Astral light. Reincarnation is a cyclic necessity for the Eternal Pilgrim — the Protean differentiation in space and time of the One Absolute Unknowable. Nature never leaves her work unfinished; if baffled at the first attempt, she tries again. No one can progress beyond this world without becoming perfected physically, morally, and spiritually. And as Nature never proceeds backwards in her evolutionary progress, so man cannot regress physically to lower forms of life — but he can retrogress morally, yielding to the seductive influences which converge towards him. Selfishness is the single most important cause of all sin and suffering on earth. Its effects can only be counterbalanced on earth, hence the endless cycles of tears watering the parched soil of pain and sorrow until harmony is restored. Like the revolutions of a wheel, there is a regular succession of death and rebirth, the moral cause of which is clinging desperately to life on earth — while the instrumental cause is Karma, the law of merit and demerit. The entire bundle of egotism disappears after death, as the costume of the part he played disappears from the actor’s body after he leaves the theatre and goes to bed. Nothing remains of that bundle to go to the next incarnation, except the seed for future Karma. The soul of the wicked will go on wandering about in the earth’s sphere assuming at times the forms of human phantoms, and even those of animals. The ancient profane never seemed sure any more than the modern whether an apparition was that of a relative, or the genius of the locality. Man is a Unity only at his origin and at his end. In-between, spirits and souls, gods and dæmons emanate from the Soul of the Universe. But the rabble is the same in every age: superstitious, self-opinionated, materializing the most spiritual, noble, and idealistic conceptions, and dragging them down to its own low level. The earth conceals the flesh; the shade flits round the tomb. The underworld receives the image; the spirits seeks the stars. Abortion is much worse than foeticide, it is a crime against Nature. Abortion will also shorten the mother’s life on earth only to prolong it with dreary percentage in Kama-loka.