The Theosophical Society,
Theosophy and
Reincarnation
Reincarnation
By
Annie Besant
First Published 1892
PREFACE
FEW words are needed in sending this little book out into the
world. It is the second of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public
demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained
that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive
for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed
in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned;
it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first
glimpse of its teachings,, there may be a few who will be led by them to
penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion,
facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal
and the neophyte's ardour. But these Manuals are not
written for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are
written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make
plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier
to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our
race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Meaning of Reincarnation
What it is that Reincarnates
What it is that does not Reincarnate
The Method of Reincarnation
The Object of Reincarnation
The Cause of Reincarnation
The Proofs of Reincarnation
Objections to Reincarnation
A Last Word
INTRODUCTION
IF it be difficult for a new truth to gain a hearing amid the
strife of tongues that marks our modern civilisation
it is yet more difficult for a truth to make itself heard which has become new
only by force of age. If our eye could sweep over the intellectual history of
the race, unrolled before us for centuries of millenniums, then a gap in the
dominance of some world-wide idea, stretching over some few hundreds of years
among a small number of the nations, would but slightly impress us. But when
that gap-a mere partial fissure in an immemorial past-includes the intellectual
development of
Now Reincarnation is a truth that has swayed the minds of
innumerable millions of our race, and has moulded the
thoughts of the vast majority for uncounted centuries. It dropped out of the
European mind during the Dark Ages, and so ceased to influence
our mental and moral development-very much, be it said in passing, to the
injury of that development. For the last hundred years it has from time to time
flashed through the minds of some of the greater Westerns, as a possible
explanation of some of life's most puzzling problems: and during recent years,
since its clear enunciation as an essential part of the Esoteric Teaching, it
has been constantly debated, and is as constantly gaining ground, among the
more thoughtful students of the mysteries of life and of evolution.
There is, of course, no doubt that the great historical religions
of the East included the teaching of Reincarnation as a fundamental tenet. In
India, as in Egypt, Reincarnation was at the root of ethics. Among the Jews it
was held commonly by the Pharisees,1 and the popular belief comes out in.
various phrases in the New Testament, as when John the Baptist is regarded as a
reincarnation of Elijah or as when the disciples ask whether the man born blind
is suffering for the sin of his parents or for
1Josephus, Antig., xviii. i., § 3, says the
virtuous "shall have power to revive and live again."
some former sin
of his own. The Zohar, again, speaks of souls as
being subjected to transmigration. "All souls are subject to revolution
(metempsychosis, a'leen b'gilgoolah),
but men do not know the ways of the Holy One; blessed be it! they
are ignorant of the way they have been judged in all time, and "before
they came into this world and when they have quitted it."1 The Kether Malkuth evidently has the
same idea as that conveyed by Josephus, when it says: " If she (the soul)
be pure, then shall she obtain favour and rejoice in
the latter day; but if she hath been denied, then shall she wander for a time
in pain and despair," 2 So also, we find the doctrine taught by eminent
Fathers of the Church, and Ruffinus 3 states that
belief in it was common among the primitive Fathers. Needless
to say that the philosophic Gnostics and Neo-Platonists held it as an integral
part of their doctrine. If we glance to the Western Hemisphere we meet
Reincarnation as a firmly rooted belief among many of the tribes of North and
South America. The Mayas, with
1 Zohar, ii.,
fol. 99, b. sq. Quoted in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 198. 2
Quoted in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 198.
3 Letter to Anastasius, quoted by E. D.
Walker, in Reincarnation : A Study of Forgotten Truth.
their deeply
interesting connection in language and symbolism with ancient Egypt, held the
traditional doctrine, as has been shown by the investigations of Dr. and Mme.
le Plongeon. To these, the name of many another tribe might be added, remnants of once famous nations, that
in their decay have preserved the ancestral beliefs that once linked them with
the mightiest peoples of the elder world.
It could scarcely be expected that a teaching of such vast
antiquity and such magnificent intellectual ancestry should fade out of the
mind of mankind; and accordingly we find that the eclipse it suffered a few
centuries ago was very partial, affecting only a small portion of the race. The
ignorance that swamped Europe carried away belief in Reincarnation, as it
carried away all philosophy, all metaphysics, and all science. Mediaeval Europe
did not offer the soil on which could flourish any wide-sweeping and
philosophical view of man's nature and destiny. But in the East, which enjoyed
a refined and gracious civilisation while Europe was
sunk in barbarism; which had its philosophers and its poets while the West was
densely illiterate; in the East, the great doctrine held undisputed sway,
whether in the subtle metaphysics of the Brahmans, or in the noble morality
which finds its home under the shadow of the Buddha and His Good Law.
But while a fact of Nature may in some part of the world for a
time be ignored it cannot be destroyed, and, submerged for a moment, it will
again reassert itself in the sight of men. This has been demonstrated anew in
the history of the doctrine of Reincarnation in Europe, in its occasional
reappearances, traceable from the founding of Christendom to the present time,
in its growing acceptance today.
When Christianity first swept over Europe, the inner thought of
its leaders was deeply tinctured with this truth. The Church tried
ineffectually to eradicate it, and in various sects it kept sprouting forth
beyond the time of Erigena and Benaventura,
its mediaeval advocates. Every great intuitional soul, as Paracelsus, Boehme and Swedenborg, has adhered to it. The Italian
luminaries, Giordano Bruno and Campanella, embraced
it. The best of German philosophy is enriched by it. In Schopenhauer, Lessing, Hegel, Leibnitz, Herder,
and Fichte the younger, it is earnestly advocated.
The anthropological systems of Kant and Schelling
furnish points of contact with it. The younger Helmont,
in De Revolutions Animarum, adduces in two hundred
problems all the arguments which may be urged in favour
of the return of souls into human bodies, according to Jewish ideas. Of English
thinkers, the Cambridge Platonists defended it with much learning and
acuteness, most conspicuously Henry More; and in Cudworth
and Hume, it ranks as the most rational theory of immortality. Glanvil's Lux Orientalis
devotes a curious treatise to it. It captivated the minds of Fourier and Leroux. Andre Pezzani's book on
The Plurality of the Soul's Lines works out the system on the Roman Catholic
idea of expiation.1
1 E. D.
The reader of Schopenhauer will be familiar with the aspect taken
by Reincarnation in his philosophy. Penetrated as was the great German with
Eastern thought from his study of the Upanishads, it would have been passing
strange had this corner-stone of Hindu philosophy found no place in his system.
Nor is Schopenhauer the only philosopher from the Intellectual and mystical
German people who has accepted Reincarnation as a necessary factor in Nature.
The opinions of Fichte, of Herder, of Lessing, may surely claim to be of some weight in the
intellectual world, and these men see in Reincarnation a solution for problems
otherwise insoluble. It is true that the intellectual world is not a despotic
State, and none may impose his opinion on his fellows by personal authority;
none the less are opinions weighed there rather than counted, and the mightier
and more instructed intellects of the West, though they be here in a small
minority, will command respectful hearing for that which they deliberately
advance, from all whose minds are not so hide-bound by modern tradition as to
be unable to appreciate the value of arguments addressed to the support of an
unfashionable truth.
It is interesting to note that the mere idea of Reincarnation is
no longer regarded in the West- at least by educated people-as absurd. It
is-gradually assuming the position of a possible hypothesis, to be considered
on its merits, on its power of explaining puzzling and apparently unrelated
phenomena. Regarding it myself as, to me, a proven fact, I am concerned rather
to put it forward on these pages as a probable hypothesis, throwing more light
than does any other theory on the obscure problems of man's constitution, of
his character, his evolution, and his destiny. Reincarnation and Karma are said
by a Master to be the two doctrines of which the West stands most in. need; so
it cannot he ill done for a believer in the Masters to set forth an outline,
for the ordinary reader, of this central teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy.
THE MEANING OF REINCARNATION
Let us start with a clear understanding of what is meant by
Reincarnation. So far as the derivation of the word is concerned, any repeated
entering into a physical, or fleshly covering, might be included
THE MEANING OF REINCARNATION
thereunder. It
certainly implies the existence of something relatively permanent that enters
into and inhabits successive somethings relatively
impermanent. But the word tells us nothing of the nature of these relatively
permanent and impermanent somethings, save that the
impermanent habitations are of " flesh ".
Another word, often used as synonymous with Reincarnation, the word
Metempsychosis, suggests the other side of the transaction; here the habitation
is ignored, and the stress is laid on the transit of the Psyche, the relatively
permanent. Putting the two together as descriptive of the whole idea, we should
have the entry of a Psyche or " soul" into successive " bodies
" of flesh; and though the word " soul " is open to serious
objections, from its looseness and its theological connotations, it may stand
for the moment as representing in the minds of most people a form of existence
which outlasts the physical frame with which it was connected during a life on
earth.
In this general sense, apart from any special exoteric or
esoteric teaching, Reincarnation and Metempsychosis are words which denote a
theory of existence, according to which a form of visible matter is inhabited
by a more ethereal principle, which outlives its physical encasement, and, on
the death of the latter, passes on, immediately or after an interval, to dwell
in some other frame. Never, perhaps, has this doctrine, in its loftiest form,
been put more clearly or more beautifully than in the famous encouragement of Arjuna by
These bodies of the embodied One, who is eternal, indestructible
and boundless, are known as finite. . . He who regardeth
this as a slayer, and he who thinketh
he is slain, both of them are ignorant. He slayeth
not nor is he slain. He is not born, nor doth he die; nor having been, ceaseth he any more to be; unborn,
perpetual, eternal and ancient, he is not slain when the body is slaughtered.
Who knoweth him indestructible, unborn, undiminishing, how can that man slay, O Partha,
or cause to be slain ? As a man, casting off worn-out
garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the
body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into
others that are new. Weapons cleave him not, nor fire burneth
him, nor waters wet him, nor wind drieth
him away. Indivisible he, incombustible he, and indeed neither to be wetted nor
dried away; perpetual, all-pervasive, stable, immovable, an-cient,
unmanifest, unthinkable, immutable, he is called;
therefore knowing him as such thou shouldst not
grieve.1
The theory of Reincarnation, then, in the Esoteric Philosophy,
asserts the existence of a living and individualised
Principle, which dwells in and informs the body of a man, and Which, on the
death of the body, passes into another body, after a longer or
1 From the translation by Annie Besant, Discourse ii, 18-25.
WHAT IT IS THAT REINCARNATES
shorter interval.
Thus successive bodily lives are linked together like pearls strung upon a
thread, the thread being the living Principle, the pearls upon it the separate
human lives.
WHAT IT is THAT REINCARNATES
Having grasped the idea that Reincarnation is the indwelling of a
living something in a succession of human bodies, we naturally make the
inquiry: What is this living something, this persistent reincarnating Principle ? As our understanding of the whole teaching
hinges on thorough understanding of the answer to this question, it will not be
wasted time to dwell a little on the circumstances which led up to and
surrounded the first incarnation of this living Principle in the human form. To
make this incarnation thoroughly intelligible, we must trace the steps of the
evolution of man.
Those who have read the first of these Manuals will remember that
the Monad or Atma-Euddhi is described as the " mainspring of all evolution, the impelling force at
the root of all things." 1 Those to whom the
technical name is unfamiliar will
1 P. 63.
seize the idea
conveyed by the name to the Theo-sophist, if they will think of the Universal
Life, the Root of all that is, gradually evolving as its own manifestation the
various forms which make up our world. We cannot here retrace our earth's story
in former stages of its aeonian evolution: that will,
I hope, be done in one of this series of Manuals. But here we must be content
to pick up the thread at the beginning of the present stage, when the germ of
what was to become man had appeared, as the result of previous evolution, on
this, our globe. H. P. Blavatsky, in the volumes of The Secret Doctrine, has drawn
the evolution in detail, and to that work I must refer the earnest and thorough
student. Let it suffice to say that the physical form of what was to be man was
slowly and very gradually evolved, two great Root-Races passing through their
full development, and a third Root-Race having run half its course, before
humanity had reached completion so far as its physical, or animal, nature was
concerned. This nature, rightly called animal, because it contains that which
man has in common with the brute- a dense physical body, its etheric double,
its vitality, its passions, appetites and desires-this nature was built up by
terrestrial and other cosmic forces through millions of years. It was brooded
over, enveloped in, permeated by, that Universal Life which is " the Force back of Evolution ", that life which
men have in all ages called Divine.
An Occult Commentary, quoted in The Secret Doctrine? speaking of this stage of evolution, mentions the forms,
technically called " astral doubles", which had evolved into the
physical bodies of men, and thus describes the situation at the point we have
reached:
Rupa (Form) has
become the vehicle of Monads (Seventh and Sixth Principles) that had completed
their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas
(Rounds). Then they (the astral doubles) become the men of the first Human Race
of the Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless.
Here were, we may say, the two poles of the evolving
Life-manifestation: the Animal with all its potentialities on the lower plane,
but necessarily mindless, conscienceless, errant aimlessly over the earth,
unconsciously tending onwards by reason of the impelling force within it that
drove it ever forward: this force, the Divine, itself too lofty in
1 Vol. i,
235, 1962 Edition.
its pure
ethereal nature to reach consciousness on the lower planes, and so unable to
bridge the gulf that stretched between it and the animal brain it vivified but
could not illumine. Such was the organism that was to become man, a creature of
marvellous potentialities, an instrument with strings
all ready to break into music; where was the power that should make the
potentialities actual, where the touch that should waken the melody and send it
forth thrilling into space?
When the hour had struck, the answer came from the mental or manasic plane. Whilst this double evolution above
described, the monadic and the physical, had been going on upon our globe, a
third line of evolution, which was to find its goal in man, had been proceeding
in a higher sphere. This line was that of intellectual evolution, and the
subjects of the evolution are the lower of the Sons of Mind (Manasaputra), self-conscious intelligent entities, as is implied
by their name. The Manasa-putras are spoken of under
many different names: Lords of Light, Dhyan Chohans, Kumaras,
Dragons of Wisdom, Solar Pitris, etc., etc., allegorical and poetical names,
that become attractive and familiar to the student in the course of his
reading, but which cause much trouble and confusion to the beginner, who cannot
make out whether he is dealing with one class of beings or with a dozen. As a
matter of fact the name covers many grades. But the one thing that the beginner
needs to grasp is that, at a certain stage of evolution, there entered into,
incarnated in men. certain self-conscious intelligent
entities, with a long past of intellectual evolution behind them, who found in
physical man the instrument ready, and fitted, for their further evolution.
The coming of
these Sons of Mind is given in poetical phrase in the Stanzas from the
The Sons of Wisdom, The Sons of Night,
ready for rebirth, came down. . . . The Third Race were
ready. " In these shall we dwell," said the
Lords of the Flame. .... The Third Race became the Vahan
(Vehicle] of the Lords of Wisdom.
These Lords of Wisdom incarnated as teachers, and became the
fathers of the reincarnating Egos of men, while Solar Pitris of a lower grade
became themselves the reincarnating Egos of the leading races; these are the
Mind, or rather Minds, in
1 The Secret Doctrine iii, 168, 179, 1962 Ed.
REINCARNATION
men, the
Manas, or Fifth Principle, sometimes described as the Human or Rational Soul. I
prefer to speak of the reincarnating Ego as the Thinker, rather than as Mind,
in man; for the word Thinker suggests an individual entity, whereas the word
Mind suggests a vague generality.
It is interesting and significant that the word man, running
through so many languages, is related back to this
Manas, to its root man, to think. Skeat 1 gives the
word in English, Swedish, Danish, German, Icelandish,
Gothic, Latin (mas, for mans), deriving it from the
Sanskrit root man, and therefore defining man as a "
thinking animal". So that whenever we say Man, we say Thinker, and
are carried back to that period at which the Thinkers "
came down ", i.e., became incarnate in the physical vehicle built
for their reception, when the senseless animal became the thinking being, by
virtue of the Manas that entered into him andr dwelt
in him. It was then that the Man became clothed in his "
coat of skin", after his fall into physical matter in order that he
might eat of the Tree of Knowledge and thus become a " God."
1 Etymological Dictionary, under " Man
".
This man is the link between the Divine and the Animal, that we
have viewed as essentially connected and yet held apart from close
intercommunion. He stretches one hand upwards towards the Divine Monad, to the
Spirit whose offspring he is, striving upwards, that he may assimilate that
loftier nature, that his intelligence may become spiritual, his knowledge
wisdom; he lays his other hand upon the Animal, which is to bear him to
conquest of the lower planes, that he may train and subdue it to his own ends,
and make it a perfect instrument for manifestation of the higher life. Long is
the task that lies before him; no less than to raise the Animal to the Divine,
to Sublime Matter into Spirit, to lead up the ascending arc the life that has
traversed the descending, and has now to climb upwards, bearing with it all the
fruits of its long exile from its true home. Finally he is to reunite the
separated aspects of the One, to bring the Spirit to self-consciousness on all
planes, Matter to be its perfect manifestation. Such his
sublime task for the accomplishment of which reincarnation is to be his tool.
This Man, then, is our real Human Self, and we err when we think
of our body as " I", and too much exalt our
temporary " coat of skin ". It is as though a man should regard his
coat as himself, himself as a mere appendage of his clothes. As our clothes
exist for us and not we for them, and they are only
things rendered necessary by climate, comfort and custom, so our bodies are
only necessary to us because of the conditions that surround us, and are for
our service, not for our subjugation. Some Indians will never speak of bodily
wants as theirs: they say, " My body is
hungry," " My body is tired," not " I am hungry," or
" I am tired." And though in our ears the phrase may sound fantastic,
it is truer to facts than our self-identification with our body. If we were in
the habit of identifying ourselves in thought, not with the habitation we live
in but with the Human Self, that dwells therein, life would become a greater
and a serener thing. We should brush off troubles as we brush the dust from our
garments, and we should realise that the measure of
all things happening to us is not the pain or pleasure they bring to our
bodies, but the progress or retardation they bring to the Man within us; and
since all things are matters of experience and lessons may be learned from
each, we should take the sting out of griefs
by searching
in each for the wisdom enwrapped in it as the petals are folded within the bud.
In the light of reincarnation life changes its aspect, for it becomes the
school of the eternal Man within us, who seeks therein his development, the Man
that was and is and shall be, for whom the hour will never strike.
Let the beginner, then, get firm grip of the idea that the
Thinker is the Man, the Individual, the reincarnating Ego, and that this Ego
seeks to become united to the divine Monad, while training and purifying the
animal self to which it is joined during earth-life. United to that divine
Monad, a spark of the Universal Life and inseparable from it, the Thinker
becomes the Spiritual Ego, the Divine Man.1 The Thinker is spoken of sometimes
as the vehicle of the Monad, the ethereal encasement, as it were, through which
the Monad may act on all planes; hence, we often find theosophical writers
saying that the Triad, or Trinity, in Man, is that which reincarnates, and the
expression, though loose, may pass, if the student remembers that the Monad is
Universal, not particular, and that it is only our ignorance which deludes us
into
1 The Seven Principles of Man,
by Annie Besant, p. 60.
separating ourselves from our brothers, arid seeing any
difference between the Light in one and the Light in another.1 The Monad being
Universal and not differing in different persons or individuals, it is really
only the Thinker that can in strictness, be said to reincarnate, and it is with
this Thinker, as the Individual, that we are concerned.
Now in this Thinker reside all the powers that we class as Mind.
In it are memory, intuition, will. It gathers up all
the experiences of the earth-lives through which it passes, and stores these
accumulated treasures of knowledge, to be transmuted within itself, by its own
divine alchemy, into that essence of experience arid knowledge which is Wisdom.
Even in our brief span of earth-life we distinguish between the knowledge we
acquire and the wisdom we gradually-alas! too
rarely-distil from that knowledge. Wisdom is. the
fruitage of a life's experience, the crowning possession of the aged. Arid in a
much fuller and richer sense, Wisdom is the fruitage of many incarnations, in
which knowledge has been gained,.
1 Ibid., p. 68. The relation between the
three Higher Principles, is clearly explained in this
little book, which appeared originally in Lucifer as a series of articles, and
is supposed to have been, studied by the readers of the present manual. experience garnered, patience has had her perfect work, so
that at length the divine Man is the glorious product of the centuries
evolution. In the Thinker, then, is our store of experiences, reaped in all
past lives, harvested through many rebirths, a heritage into which each one
shall surely come when he learn to rise above the thrall of the senses, out of
the storm and stress of earthly life, to that purer region, to that higher
plane, where our true Self resides.
WHAT IT IS THAT DOES NOT REINCARNATE
We have seen in the preceding Section, that man's outer
"form, his physical nature, was built up slowly, through two and a half
Races, until it was ready to receive the Son of Mind.1 This is the nature we
have called animal, and it consists of four distinguishable parts or "
principles "; I. the body; II. the etheric
double; III. the vitality; IV. the
passional nature-passions, appetites and desires.
This is, in very truth, the animal man, differing from its relatives which are
purely animal by the influence exerted over it by the Thinker, who has
1 See ante, pp. 11, 12.
come to train
and ennoble it. Take away the Thinker, as in the case of the congenital idiot,
and you have an animal merely, albeit its form be
human.
Now the Thinker, connected with and informing the animal-man,
imparts to this lower nature such of its own capacities as that animal-man is
able to manifest, and these capacities, working in and through the human brain,
are recognised by us as the brain-mind, or the lower
mind. In the West the development of this brain-mind is regarded as marking the
distinction, in ordinary parlance, between the brute and the human being. That
which the Theosophist looks on as merely the lower or brain-mind, is considered
by the average Western to be the mind itself, and hence arises much confusion
when the Theosophist and the non-Theosophist foregather. We say that the
Thinker, striving to reach and influence the animal-man, sends out a Ray that
plays on and in the brain, and that through the brain are manifested so much of
the mental powers as that brain, by its configuration and other physical
qualities, is able to translate. This Ray sets the molecules of the brain
nerve-cells vibrating, as a ray of light sets quivering the molecules of the retinal
nerve cells and so gives rise to consciousness on the physical plane. Reason,
judgment,, memory, will, ideation-as these faculties are known to us,
manifested when the brain is in full activity- all these are the outcome of the
Ray sent forth by the Thinker, modified by the material conditions through
which it must work. These conditions include healthy nerve-cells, properly
balanced development of the respective groups of nerve cells, a full supply of
blood containing nutritive matter that can be assimilated by the cells so as to
supplant waste, and carrying oxygen easily set free from its vehicles. If these
conditions, or any of them, are absent, the brain cannot function, and thought
processes can no more be carried out through such a brain than a melody can be
produced from an organ the bellows of which is broken. The brain no more
produces the thought than the organ produces the melody; in both cases there is
a player working through the instrument. But the power of the player to
manifest himself, in thought or in melody, is limited by the capacities of the
instrument.
It is absolutely necessary that the student should clearly appreciate this
difference between
the Thinker and the animal-man whose brain is played on by the
Thinker, for any confusion between the two will render unintelligible the doctrine
of reincarnation. For while the Thinker reincarnates, the animal-man does not.
Here is really the difficulty which leads to so many other
difficulties. The animal-man is born, .and the true Man is linked to him;
through the brain of the animal-man the true Man works, Incarnation after
incarnation, and remains one. It informs in turn the animal-men Sashital Dev, Caius Glabrio, Johanna Wirther, William
Johnson -let us say-and in each reaps experience, through each gathers
knowledge, from each takes the material it supplies, and weaves it into its own
eternal Being. The animal-man wins his immortality by union with his true self;
Sashital Dev does not reincarnate as Gaius Glabrio, and then as
Johanna Wirther, blossoming out as William Johnson in
nineteenth century England, but it is the one eternal Son of Mind that dwells
in each of these in turn, gathering up from each such indwelling new
experience, fresh knowledge. It is this reincarnating Ego alone that can look
back along the line of its rebirths, remember each earthly life, the story of
each pilgrimage from cradle to grave, the whole drama unrolled act by act, century after century. Taking my imaginary actors, William
Johnson in the nineteenth century cannot look back on, nor remember, his
rebirths, for he has never been born before, nor have his eyes seen the light
of an earlier day. But the innate character of William Johnson, the character
with which he came into the world, is the character wrought and hammered out by
Johanna Wirther in Germany, Gaius
Glabrio in Rome, Sashital
Dev in Hindustan, and by many another of his earthly predecessors in many lands
and under many civilisations; he is adding new
touches to this work of the ages by his daily life, so that it will pass from
his hands different from what it was, baser or nobler, into the hands of his
heir and successor on the life-stage, who is thus, in a very real but not
external sense, himself.
Thus the question which arises so naturally in the mind and which
is so often asked: "Why do I not remember my past lives
? " is really based on a misconception of the theory of
reincarnation. " I", the true "I",
does remember; but the animal-man, not yet in full responsive union with his
true Selfs cannot remember a past in which he,
personally, had no share. Brain-memory can contain only a record of the events
in which the brain has been concerned, and the brain of the present William
Johnson is not the brain of Johanna Wirther, nor that
of Gaius Glabrio, nor that
of Sashital Dev. William Johnson can only obtain
memory of the past lives linked with his, by his brain becoming able to vibrate
in answer to the subtle delicate vibrations sent down to it through that Ray
which is the bridge between his transient personal self and his eternal SELF.
To do this he must be closely united to that real Self, and must be living in
the consciousness that he is not William Johnson but that Son of Mind, and that
William Johnson is only the temporary house in which he is living for his own
purposes. Instead of living in the brain-consciousness, he must live in the
higher consciousness; instead of thinking of his true Self as without, as
something outside, and of the transitory William Johnson as " I", he
must identify himself with the Thinker, and look on William Johnson as the
external organ, useful for work on the material plane, and to be educated and
trained up to the highest point of efficiency,
WHAT IT IS THAT DOES NOT REINCARNATE
That efficiency including the quick
responsiveness of the William Johnson brain to its real owner.
As this difficult opening of the man of flesh to influences from
the higher planes is gradually carried on, and as the true Self is increasingly
able to affect its bodily habitation, glimpses of past incarnations will flash
on the lower consciousness, and these will become less like flashes and more
like permanent visions, until finally the past is recognised
as " mine " by the continuous thread of memory that gives the feeling
of individuality,. Then the present incarnation is recognised
as being merely the last garment in which the Self has clothed itself, and it
is in no wise identified with that Self, any more than a coat which a man puts
on is regarded by him as being part of himself. A man does not regard his coat
as part of himself, because he is consciously able to put it off and look at it
separated from himself When the true man does that
with his body, consciously on this plane, certainty becomes complete.
The coat then-the "coat of skin", the etheric double,
the vitality, the passional nature-does not
reincarnate, but its elements disintegrate, and return to those to which they
belong in the lower worlds. All that was best in William Johnson passes on with
the Ego into a period of blissful rest, until the impulse that carried it out
of earth-life is exhausted, and it falls back to earth.
THE METHOD OF REINCARNATION
Having now gained a clear idea of the reincarnating Ego, or Thinker,
and of the distinction between it and the transitory animal-man, the student
must address himself to the understanding of the method of Reincarnation.
This method will be best appreciated by considering the plane to
which the Thinker belongs, and the Force wherewith it works. The Thinker is
what is called the Fifth Principle in man; and this Fifth Principle in the
microcosm, man, answers to the Fifth Plane of the macrocosm, the universe
outside man. These planes are differentiations of primary Substance, according
to the Esoteric Philosophy, and consciousness works on each plane through the
conditions, whatever they may be, of each plane. Substance is a word used to
express Existence in its earliest objective form, the primary manifestation of
the periodical aspect of the ONE, the first film of the future Kosmos, in the dim beginnings of all manifested
things. This Substance has in it the
potentiality of all, of most ethereal Spirit, of densest Matter. The Esoteric Philosophy posits a primary
Substance, out of which Kosmos is evolved, which at its rarest is Spirit,
Energy, Force, and its densest the most solid Matter, every varying form in all
worlds being of this Substance, aggregated into more or less dense masses,
instinct with more or less Force. A
plane only means a stage of existence in which this Spirit-Matter varies within
certain limits, and acts under certain "laws". Thus the physical
plane means our visible, audible, tangible, odorous, gustable
world, in which we come into contact
with Spirit-Matter-Science calls it Force and Matter, as though separable-by
way of the senses, whether it be as solid, liquid, gas, etc And so on with
other planes, each being distinguishable by the characteristics of its
Spirit-Matter. On each of these planes consciousness shows itself, working
through the Spirit-Matter of the plane. One further fact must be added to this
rough and very condensed statement, that these planes are not,
as has been
said, like skins of an
onion, one over the
other, but, like the air and the ether in our bodies, they
interpenetrate each other.
Answering to these are seven principles, which bear relation by
analogy to the seven planes in Kosmos. Of these the Thinker is the Fifth.
Now this fifth principle in man corresponds to the fifth plane in
Kosmos, that of Mahat, the Universal Mind, Divine
Ideation, from which proceeds directly the moulding,
guiding, directing Force, which is the essence of all the differentiations that
we call forces on the physical plane. [This plane is often called the third,
because starting from Atma as the first, it is the third. It does not matter by
what number it is called, if the student understands what it is in relation to
the rest.] All the world of form, be the form subtle or dense, is evolved by
and through this Force of the Universal Mind, aggregating and separating the
atoms, integrating them into forms, disintegrating them again, building up and
pulling down, constructing and destroying, attracting and repelling. One Force in the eye of the philosopher, many forces to the
observation of the scientist, verily one in its. essence
and manifold in its manifestations. Thus from the fifth plane come all the
creation of forms, using creation in the sense of moulding
pre-existent material,, fashioning it into new forms. This Thought Force is, in
the Esoteric Philosophy, the one source of form; it is spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky
as The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external,
perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy.1
As in the fifth plane of Kosmos, so in the fifth principle of
man; in the Thinker lies the Force by which all things are made and it is in
this creative power of thought that we shall find the secret of the method of
reincarnation.
Those who desire to prove to themselves that thought gives rise
to images, to " thought-forms ", so that in
most literal truth " a thought is a thing ", may find what they seek
in the records now so widely scattered of so-called hypnotic experiments. The
thought-form of an idea may be projected on a blank paper, and there become
visible to a hypnotised person: or it may be made so
objective that the hypnotised person will see and
feel it as though it were an actual physical object. Again, a " medium
" will see as a " spirit " a thought of a human being in the
mind of a person present, this thought
1 Secret Doctrine, i, 333, 1962 Ed.
being imaged in
his aura, the magnetic atmosphere that surrounds him. Or a clairvoyant,
entranced or awake, will recognise and describe an
image deliberately formed by a person present, no word being spoken, but the
will being exercised to outline the image clearly in thought. All persons who " visualise " much are
to some extent clairvoyant, and may prove to themselves by personal experiment
this power to mould subtle matter by the will. The less subtle astral matter,
again, may be thus moulded, as H. P. Blavatsky, at
the Eddy farmhouse, moulded the projected astral
image of the medium into likenesses of persons known to herself and unknown to
the others present. Nor can this be considered strange when we remember how
habits of thought mould even the dense matter of which our physical bodies are
composed, until the character of the aged becomes stamped on the face, their
beauty consisting not in form and colouring but in
expression-expression which is the mask moulded on
the inner self. Any habitual line of thought, vice or virtue, makes its impress
on the physical features, and we do not need clairvoyant eyes to scan the aura
to tell if the mental attitude be generous or grasping, trustful or suspicious,
loving or hating. This is a fact so common that it makes on us no impression,
and yet it is significant enough; for if the dense matter of the body be thus moulded by the forces of thought, what is there incredible,
or even strange, in the idea that the subtler forms of matter should be equally
plastic, and should submissively take the shapes into which they are moulded by the deft fingers of the immortal Artist,
thinking Man?
The position, then, that is here taken is that Manas, in its
inherent nature, is a form-producing energy, and that the succession of events
in the manifestation of an external object is: Manas puts forth a thought, and
this thought takes form on the manasic or mind world;
it passes out into the kama-manasic, there becoming
denser; thence to the astral, where, being yet denser, it is visible to the eye
of the clairvoyant; if directed consciously by a trained will it may pass at
once to the physical plane and be there clothed in physical matter, thus
becoming objective to ordinary eyes, whereas in ordinary cases it remains on
the astral plane as a mould which will be built into objective life when
circumstances occur which draw it thitherwards. A
MASTER has written of the Adept being able
To project into and materialise in the visible world the forms that his
imagination has constructed out of inert cosmic matter in the invisible world. The Adept
does not create anything new, but only utilises and
manipulates material which Nature has in store around him and material which
throughout eternities has passed through all the forms. He has but to choose
the one he wants and recall it into objective existence1
A reference to well-known facts on the physical plane may perhaps
help the reader to realise how the invisible may thus
become the visible; I have spoken of a form gradually densifying
as it passes from the manasic to the kama-manasic world, from the latter to the astral, from the
astral to the physical. Think of a glass receiver, apparently .empty, but in
reality filled with the invisible gases, hydrogen and oxygen; a spark causes
combination and. "water" exists there, but in a state of gas; the
receiver is cooled, and gradually a steamy vapour
becomes visible; then the vapour condenses on the
glass as drops of water; then the water congeals and becomes a film of solid
ice crystals. So when the manasic spark flashes out
it combines subtle matter into a thought-form; this densifies
1 The
Occult World, 5th ed., p. 88.
Into the kama-manasic form-our analogy
is the steamy vapour; this into the astral-our
analogy is the water; and so into the physical-for which the ice may stand. The
student of the Esoteric Philosophy will know that in the evolution of Nature
all proceeds in orderly sequence, and he will be accustomed to see in the substates of matter on the physical plane analogies to its
states on the different planes of the " invisible" worlds. But for
the non-Theosophist, the illustration is offered only by way of giving a
concrete physical picture of the densifying process,
showing how the invisible may condense itself into the visible.
In truth, however, this process of condensation of rarer into
grosser matter is one of the commonest facts of our experience. The vegetable
world grows by taking in gases from the atmosphere, and transforming their
materials into solids and liquids. The activity of the vital force shows itself
by this constant building up of visible forms out of invisible; and whether the
thought-process named be true or not, there is nothing in it inherently
impossible or even extraordinary. Its truth is a matter of evidence, and here
the evidence of those who can see the thought-forms on the different planes is
surely more valuable than the evidence of those who cannot. The word of a
hundred blind men denying a visible object is of less weight than the word of
one man who can see and who testifies to his seeing it. In this matter the
Theosophist may be content to wait, knowing that facts do not alter for
denials, and that the world will gradually come round to a knowledge of the
existence of thought-forms, as it has already come round-after a similar period
of scoffing-to a knowledge of the existence of some of the facts asserted by Mesmer at the close of the eighteenth century.
It has been iound, then, that events
take their rise on the manasic or kama-manasic
plane, in ideas, or as thought of passion or emotion, etc.; they then take
astral form, and lastly appear objectively on the physical plane as acts or
events, so that the latter are effects of pre-existing mental causes. Now the
body is such an effect, according to the Esoteric Philosophy, and it is moulded on the etheric double, a term which will, by this
time, be sufficiently familiar to my readers. The idea must be clearly grasped
of a body of etheric matter, serving as a mould into which denser matter may be
built, and if the method of reincarnation is to
THE METHOD OF REINCARNATION
be at all
understood, this conception of the dense body as the result of the building of
dense molecules into a pre-existing etheric mould must, for the moment, be
accepted.
And now let us return to the idea of the Thinker, creating forms,
working certainly through the lower manas, or
Man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of
his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and
passions.1
[The consideration of the effect of this on others belongs to the
subject of Karma, to be hereafter dealt with.] These thought-forms remain in
his aura, or magnetic atmosphere, and as time goes on their increased number
acts on him with ever-gathering force, repetition of thoughts and of types of
thought adding to their intensity day by day, with cumulative energy; until
certain kinds of thought-forms so dominate his mental life that the man rather
answers to their impulse than decides anew, and what we call a habit, the outer
reflection of this.
A MASTER in The Occult World, p. 90.
stored-up force, is
set up. Thus "character" is built, and if we are intimately
acquainted with any one of mature character, we are able to predicate with
tolerable certainty his action in any given set of circumstances.
When the death hour comes the subtler bodies free themselves from
the physical, the etheric double disintegrating gradually with the dense frame.
The thought-body resulting from the past life persists for a considerable time
and goes through various processes of consolidation of experiences,
assimilation of much differentiated thoughts, and, handing on its results to
the causal body, it in turn disintegrates. As the period for reincarnation
approaches the causal body, or reincarnating Ego, builds a new mental and a new
astral body, while the Lords of Karma provide a mould suited to express the
Karma to be worked out, and after this the. etheric
double is built. Since the brain, in common with the rest of the dense body, is
built into this etheric double, this brain is by conformation, the physical
expression, however imperfect, of the mental habits and qualities of the human
being then to be incarnated, the fitting physical vehicle for the exercise of
the capacities which his experience now enables him to manifest on the
physical plane.
Let us, as an example, take the case of the practice of a vicious
and of a virtuous type of thought, say of a selfish and of an unselfish
character. One person continually gives birth to thought-forms of selfishness,
desires for self, hopes for self, plans for self, and these forms clustering
round him react again upon him, and he tends to become unscrupulous in his
self-service, disregarding the claims of others, and seeking but his own ends.
He dies, and his character has hardened into the selfish type. This persists,
and in due course is given etheric form, as mould for the next dense body.
Drawn towards a family of similar type, towards parents physically able to
supply materials stamped with similar characteristics, the dense body is built
into this etheric mould, and the brain takes the shape physically fitted for
the manifestation of the brute tendencies to self-gratification, with a
corresponding lack of the physical basis for the manifestation of the social
virtues. In an extreme case of persistent and unscrupulous selfishness during
one incarnation, we have the cause of the building of the " criminal type
of brain " for the succeeding one, and the child comes into the world with
this instrument of miserable quality, from which the Immortal Thinker will be
able to draw scarce a note of pure and tender melody, strive as he may. All the
life through the Ray of Manas incarnated in this personality will be dimmed,
broken, struggling through kamic clouds. Sometimes,
despite all opposing circumstances, the glorious radiant quality will illumine
and transform to some extent its physical vehicle, and with anguish and effort
the lower nature will now and again be trampled under foot, and, however slowly,
a painful step or two of progress will be achieved. But all the life through,
the past will dominate the present, and the cup filled in forgotten days must
be drained to the last drop by the quivering lips.
In the second supposed case, a person continually gives birth to
thought-forms of unselfishness, helpful desires for others, loving plans for
the welfare of others, earnest hopes for the good of others. These culster round him and react on him, and he tends to become
habitually selfless, habitually placing the welfare of others before his own,
and so, when he dies, his character has become
ingrainedly unselfish.
Coming back to earth-life, . the model form which represents his previous characteristics
is drawn to a family fitted to supply materials of a pure kind, habituated to
respond to the promptings of the Higher Man. These, built .
into the etheric mould, yield a brain physically
fitted for the manifestation of the self-sacrificing tendencies, and a
corresponding lack of the physical basis for the manifestation of the brute
instincts. So here, in an extreme case of self-sacrificing habit through one
incarnation, we have the cause of the building of the benevolent and
philanthropic type of brain for the succeeding one, and the child comes into
the world with this Instrument of splendid quality, which thrills beneath the
lightest touch of the Immortal Thinker, breathing forth divine melodies of love
and service, till the world wonders at the glory of a human life, at results
that seem the mere outflow of the nature rather than the crown of effort
deliberately made. But these royal natures that overflow in blessing are the
outer symbol of long conflicts gallantly waged, of conflicts of a past unknown
to the present, but known to the inner Conqueror, and one day to be known to
the personality he informs.
Thus step by step is brought about the evolution of man,
character being moulded in personality-after
personality, gains and -losses rigidly recorded in astral and mental forms, and
these governing the succeeding physical manifestations. Every virtue is thus
the outer sign and symbol of a step forward made, of repeated victories won
over the lower nature, and the "innate-quality", the mental or moral
characteristic with which a child is born, is the indubitable proof of past
struggle, of past triumphs, or of past failures. A distasteful doctrine enough
to the morally or mentally slothful and cowardly, but a most cheering and
heartening teaching for those who do not ask to be pensioners on any charity,
human or divine, but are content to earn patiently and laboriously all they
claim to own.
Very nobly has Edward Carpenter put this truth in Towards
Democracy, in the " Secret of Time and
Satan."
The art of creation, like every other art, has to be learned;
Slowly, slowly, through many years, thou buildest
up thy body,
And the power that thou now hast (such as it is) to build up this
present body, thou hast acquired in the past in other bodies;
So in the future shalt thou use again
the power that thou now acquirest.
But the power to build up the body includes all powers.
Beware how thou seekest this for
thyself and that for thyself. I do not say, Seek not;
but, Beware how thou seekest.
For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what fresh
furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he may leave behind;
Knowing well that every additional
thing which he cannot freely use and handle is an impediment to him.
So if thou seekest fame, or ease, or
pleasure, or aught for thyself, the image of that thing which thou seekest will come and cling to thee-and thou wilt have to
carry it about-
And the images and powers which thou hast thus evoked will gather
round and form for thee a new body-clamouring for
sustenance and satisfaction.
And if thou art not able to discard this image now, thou wilt not
be able to discard that body then; but wilt have to carry it about.
Beware then lest it become thy grave and thy prison-instead of
thy winged abode and palace of joy.
And seest thou not that except for
Death thou couldst never overcome ?
For since by being a slave to things of sense thou hast clothed
thyself with a body which thou art not master of, thou wert condemned to a
living tomb were that body not to be destroyed. .But now through pain and
suffering out on this tomo snalt
thou come; and through the experience thou hast acquired shah build thyself a
new and better body.;
And so on many times, till thou spreadest
wings and hast all powers diabolic and angelic concentred
in thy flesh.
And the bodies which I took on yield before him, and were like
cinctures of flame upon me, but I flung them aside;
And the pains which I endured in one body were powers which I
wielded in the next.
Great truths, greatly spoken. And one
day men will believe them in the West, as they believe them, and have ever
believed them, in the East.
Through thousands of generations the Immortal Thinker thus
patiently toils at his mission of leading the animal-man upwards till he is fit
to become one with the Divine. Out of a life, he wins perchance but a mere
fragment for his work, yet the final model is of type a little less animal than
the man, whose life-work is therein embodied, was when he came into earth-life.
On that slightly improved model will be moulded the
next man, and from him, at death, is obtained a mould which is again a little
less animal, to serve for the next physical body, and so on and on, again and
again, generation after generation, millennium after millennium; with many
retrogressions constantly recovered; with many failures gallantly made good;
with many wounds slowly healed; yet on the whole, upward; yet, on the whole
forward; the animal lessening, the human increasing: such is the story of human
evolution, such the slowly accomplished task of the Ego, as he raises himself
to divine manhood. At a stage in this progress the personalities begin to
become translucent, to answer to the vibrations from the Thinker, and dimly to
sense that they are something more than isolated lives, are attached to
something permanent, immortal. They may not quite recognise
their goal, but they begin to thrill and quiver under the touch of the Light,
as buds quiver in the springtime within their cases, preparing to burst them
open and to expand in the sunshine. This sense of inborn eternity, and of
wondering as to the end, comes out strongly in one of Walt Whitman's poems:
Facing West from
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
a child,
very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,
the land of
migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;
For starting westward from
THE OBJECT OF REINCARNATION
We have already seen generally that the object of reincarnation
is to train the animal-man until it becomes the perfect instrument of the
Divine, and that the agent in this training is the reincarnating
Ego. Let us briefly trace the road by which this
goal is reached.
When the Manasaputra come down to ensoul the animal-man, their habitation is of matter that
has not yet reached its maximum of density. The Thinker, working through this,
produces at first what are called psychic qualities in contradistinction to
intellectual; the spiritual, on its first contact with astral matter,
translates itself into the psychic, and only gradually becomes intellectual,
i.e., logical, reasoning, deliberative, by prolonged contact with matter of the
denser type. At first intuitive, clairvoyant, communicating with its fellows by
thought-transference, as it has to work with denser materials and throw their
heavier particles into vibrations, intuition is transformed to reasoning and
thought-transference into language. The process is best realised
by conceiving of vibrations being set up in ever denser and denser matter, the
vibrations in the less dense translating themselves as psychic, in the more
dense as rational qualities. The psychic are the swifter, subtler, more direct^
faculties, including clairvoyance, clairaudience, lower forms of intuition,
power to transmit and receive thought-impressions without speech; the rational
are slower, and include all the processes of the brain-mind, their
characteristic being deliberative reasoning, the forging of a local chain,
hammering it out link by link, and, as a necessary condition of this mental
labour, the elaboration of language. When this process has been perfected, and
the brain has reached its highest point of intellection, responding swiftly to
the astral impulses as they reach it, and at once translating them into their
intellectual analogues, then the time has come for the next great step onwards,
the training of the brain to respond directly to the subtler vibrations, and
take them into brain-consciousness without the delaying process of translation.
Then the exercise of psychic faculties becomes part of the
conscious equipment of the developing man, and they are employed normally and
without effort or strain, the brain-mind and the psyche thus becoming unified,
and all psychic powers regained with the "addition of the intellectual
experience. The temporary obscuration, due to the accretion of the densest
matter round the developing man, gradually diminishes as the matter grows
ductile and translucent, and thus gross matter is "
redeemed," i.e., trained into a perfect vehicle of manifestation
for Spirit. " Civilisation
has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic
and spiritual," 1 but without this development animal-man could not become
divine, the " perfect septenary being" whom
it is the object of reincarnation to evolve.
In the human race we are on the ascending arc; intellectuality pure
and simple is reaching its highest possibilities, and on all sides are
appearing signs of psychic activities, which, when developed beyond the
intellect and not behind it, are the marks of the commencing triumph of the
spiritual Man In some men of our race this triumph has been consummated, and
these are they who are spoken of as Arhats, Mahatmas,
and Masters, With Them the body is the mere vehicle of the spiritual Man, who
is no longer cabined and confined by the body he inhabits, but for whom the body
is the convenient instrument for work on the physical plane, obediently
answering every impulse of its owner, and placing at his disposal powers and
faculties for use in the world of gross matter otherwise unattainable by a
spiritual Being. A Spirit may be active on the spiritual plane, but is
senseless
1 The Secret Doctrine, iii, 318, 1962 ed.
on all
others, being unable to act by its subtle essence on planes of grosser matter.
A spiritual Intelligence may be active on the spiritual and mental planes, but
is still too subtle to work on the grosser. Only, as by incarnation it conquers
matter through matter, can it become active on all planes, the" perfect septenary being." This is the meaning of Arhatship; the Arhat is the spiritual
Intelligence that has conquered, subdued, and trained matter, until his body is
but the materialised expression of himself, and he is
ready for the step that makes him " Master,"
or the Christ triumphant.
Naturally, in such a perfected septenary
being are gathered up all the forces of the universe,
spiritual, psychic and material. As man's living body has in it in miniature
the forces found in the physical universe, so, as the psychic arid spiritual
natures make their impulses felt, the forces of the psychic and spiritual
universes can be brought to bear upon the physical. Hence the apparently "
miraculous," the bringing about of effects the causes of which are hidden,
but which are not therefore non-existent; just as the closing of a galvanic circuit
may bring about an explosion many miles from the point of closure, so may the action
of the trained will manifest itself in material phenomena on a plane far
beneath its own. Man's ignorance makes the supernatural; knowledge reduces all
to the natural; for Nature is but one aspect of the ALL, that aspect which, at
the time, is in manifestation.
The question may here arise: And this object attained, what end
is thereby served? At this point, several Paths stretch before the triumphant
spiritual
Never will I seek, nor receive, private individual salvation-
never enter into final peace alone; but for ever, and
everywhere, will I live and strive for the universal redemption of every
creature throughout the world.
The nature and purpose of this choice has been told in the Book
of the Golden Precepts, fragments
1 Quoted in Moncure D.
from which have
been done into such noble English "by H. P. Blavatsky. The conqueror stands
triumphant; "his mind like a becalmed and boundless ocean, spreadeth out in shoreless space.
He holdeth life and death in his strong hand."
Then the question comes:
Now, he shall surely reach his great reward! Shall he not use the
gifts which it confers for his own rest and bliss, his well-earned weal and
glory-he, the subduer of the great Delusion
?
But the answer rings clearly out:
Nay, O thou candidate for Nature's hidden lore! If one would follow in the steps of holy Tathagata, those gifts and powers are .not for self. .... Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge, and the Deva-Wisdom thou hast won, must, from thyself, the channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another bed. Know, O Narjol, thou of the Secret Path, its pure fresh waters must be used to sweeter make the Ocean's bitter waves-that mighty sea of sorrow, formed by the tears of men. Self-doomed to live through future Kalpas, unthanked and unperceived by man; wedged as a stone with countless other stones which form the