At every birth, what appears to be a new life comes into
the world. Slowly the little form grows, it lives and moves among us, it becomes
a factor in our lives; but at last there comes a time when the form ceases to
move and decays. The love that came, whence we know not, has again passed to the
invisible beyond. Then, in sorrow and perplexity we ask ourselves the three
great questions concerning our existence: Whence have we come? Why are we here?
Whither are we going?
Across every threshold the fearsome specter of Death
throws his shadow. It visits alike the palace and the poorhouse. None are safe:
old or young, well or ill, rich or poor. All alike must pass through this gloomy
portal, and down the ages has sounded the piteous cry for a solution of the
riddle of life, the riddle of death.
Unfortunately there has been much vague speculation by
people who did not know, and it has therefore come to be the popularly accepted
opinion that nothing definite can be known about the most important part of our
existence: Life prior to its manifestation through the gate of birth and beyond
the portal of death.
That idea is erroneous. Definite firsthand knowledge may
be had by anyone who will take the trouble to cultivate the "sixth
sense" which is latent in all. When it is acquired it opens our spiritual
eyes so that we perceive the Spirits who are about to enter physical life by
birth, and those who have just re-entered the beyond after death. We see them as
clearly and definitely as we cognize physical beings by our ordinary sight. Nor
is firsthand information about the inner worlds indispensable to satisfy the
inquiring mind any more than it is necessary to visit China to learn about
conditions there. We learn about foreign countries through the reports of
returned travelers. There is as much knowledge concerning the world beyond as
about the interior of Africa, Australia, or China.
The solution of the problem of Life and Being advocated in
the following pages is based upon the concurrent testimony of many who have
cultivated the above-mentioned faculty and are qualified to investigate the
superphysical realms in a scientific manner. It is in harmony with scientific
facts, an eternal truth in Nature which governs human progress, as the law of
gravity serves to keep the stars unchangeably in their orbits about the Sun.
Three Theories
Three theories have been brought forward to solve the
riddle of life and death, and it seems to be universally agreed that a fourth is
an impossible conception. If so, one of the three theories must be the true
solution, or it remains insoluble; at least by man.
The riddle of life and death is a basic problem; everyone
must solve it at some time, and it is of the utmost importance to each
individual human being which of these theories he accepts; for his choice will
color his whole life. In order that we may make an intelligent choice, it is
necessary to know them all, to analyze, compare, and weigh them, holding the
mind open and free from the bias of preconceived ideas, ready to accept or
reject each theory upon its merits. Let us first state the three theories and
then let us see how they agree with established facts of life and how far they
are in harmony with other known laws of Nature, as we should reasonably expect
them to be, if true, for discord in Nature is impossible.
1. THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY holds that life is a journey
form the womb to the tomb; that mind is the product of matter; that man is the
highest intelligence in the cosmos; and that intelligence perishes when the body
dissolves at death.
2. THE THEORY OF THEOLOGY asserts that at each birth a
newly-created soul enters the arena of life fresh from God; that at the end of
one short span of life in the material world it passes through the gate of death
into the invisible beyond, there to remain; and that its happiness or misery
there is determined for all eternity by its belief just prior to death.
3. THE THEORY OF REBIRTH teaches that each Spirit is an
integral part of God; that it enfolds all divine possibilities as a seed enfolds
the plant; that by means of repeated existences in a gradually improving earthly
body those latent powers are being slowly unfolded into dynamic energy; that
none are lost, but that all Egos will ultimately attain the goal of perfection
and reunion with God, bringing with them the cumulative experience which is the
fruitage of their pilgrimage through matter.
The Materialistic Theory
Comparing the materialistic theory with the known laws of
Nature, we find that it is contrary to such well-established laws as those which
declare matter and force indestructible. According to those laws mind cannot be
destroyed at death as the materialistic theory asserts, for when nothing can be
destroyed mind must be included.
Moreover, mind evidently is superior to matter, for it
molds the face so that it mirrors the mind; also, we know that the particles of
our bodies are constantly changing; that an entire change takes place at least
once in seven years. If the materialistic theory were true, our consciousness
ought also to undergo an entire change, with no memory of what preceded; so that
no one could remember an event more than seven years.
We know that is not the case. We remember our whole life;
the smallest incident, though forgotten in ordinary life, is vividly remembered
by a drowning person; also in the trance state. Materialism takes no account of
these states of subconsciousness or superconsciousness; it cannot explain them,
so it ignores them, but in the face of scientific investigations which have
established the verity of psychic phenomena beyond cavil, the policy of ignoring
rather than disproving these alleged facts is a fatal defect in a theory which
lays claim to solve the greatest problem of life: Life itself.
The materialistic theory has many more defects which
render it unworthy of our acceptance; but sufficient has been said to justify us
in casting it aside and turning to the other two.
The Theory of Theology
One of the greatest difficulties in the doctrine of the
theologians is its entire and confessed inadequacy. According to their theory
that a new soul is created at each birth, myriads of souls have been created
since the beginning of existence (even if that beginning goes back only 6,000
years). According to certain sects, only 144,000 are to be saved; the rest are
to be tortured forever. And that is called "God's plan of salvation";
extolled as proof of God's wonderful love.
Let us suppose a wireless message is received at New York,
stating that a large transatlantic liner is sinking just outside Sandy Hook;
that 3,000 people are in danger of drowning. Would we hail it as a glorious plan
of salvation if a small, fast motorboat were sent to their relief, and succeeded
in rescuing two or three people? Certainly not. Only when some adequate means
was provided to save the great majority at least would it be hailed as a plan of
salvation."
The "plan of salvation" which the theologians
are offering is worse than sending a motorboat to save the people on an Atlantic
liner, for two or three are a larger proportion saved out of a total of 3,000
than 144,000 of all the myriads of souls created on the plan of theology. If God
had really evolved that plan, it would seem to the logical mind that He cannot
be good. If He cannot help Himself, He is not all-powerful. In neither case can
He therefore be God. Such suppositions are, however, unthinkable as actualities,
for that cannot be God's plan, and it is a gross libel to attribute it to Him.
The Doctrine of Reincarnation
If we turn to the doctrine of reincarnation (rebirth in
human bodies) which postulates a slow process of development carried on with
unwavering persistence through repeated embodiment in human forms of increasing
efficiency, whereby all beings are in time brought to a height of spirituality
inconceivable to our present limited understanding, we can readily perceive its
harmony with nature's methods. EVERYWHERE IN NATURE IS FOUND THIS SLOW AND
PERSISTENT STRIVING FOR PERFECTION; AND NOWHERE IS FOUND A SUDDEN PROCESS OF
EITHER CREATION OR DESTRUCTION ANALOGOUS TO THE PLAN WHICH THE THEOLOGIANS AND
MATERIALISTS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE.
Science recognizes the process of evolution as Nature's
method of development alike for the star and the starfish, the microbe and the
man. It is the progression of spirit in time, and as we look about and note
evolution in our three-dimensional universe, we cannot escape the obvious fact
that its path is also three-dimensional, a spiral; each loop of the spiral is a
cycle, and cycle follows cycle in unbroken progression, as the loops of the
spiral succeed each other, each cycle being the improved product of the
preceding and the basis of progress in the succeeding cycles.
A straight line is but the extension of a point, and
analogous to the theories of the materialist and the theologians. The
materialistic line of existence goes from birth to death; the theologian
commences the lines at a point just previous to birth and carries it into the
invisible beyond at death.
There is no return. Existence thus lived would extract but
a minimum of the experience from the school of life, such as might be had by
one-dimensional beings incapable of broadening out or rising to sublime heights
of attainment.
The Spiral Progression
A two-dimensional zigzag path for the evolving life would
be no better, a circle would mean a never-ending round of the same experiences.
Everything in Nature has a purpose, the third dimension included. In order that
we may live up to the opportunities of a three dimensional universe, the path of
evolution must be a spiral. So it is. Everywhere in heaven and on earth all
things are going onward, upward forever.
The modest little plant in the garden and the giant
redwood of California with its forty-foot diameter alike show the spiral in the
arrangement of their branches, twigs, and leaves. If we study the great vaulted
arch of heaven and examine the spiral nebulae, which are worlds in the making,
or the path of the solar systems, the spiral is evidently the way of
progression.
We find another illustration of spiral progression in the
yearly course of our planet. In the spring she emerges from her period of rest,
her wintry sleep. We see the life budding everywhere. All the activities of
Nature are exerted to bring forth. Time passes; the corn and the grape are
ripened and harvested, and again the silence and inactivity of winter take the
place of the activity of the summer; again the snowy coverlet wraps the Earth.
But she will not sleep forever; she will wake again to the song of a new spring,
and will then be a little farther progressed along the pathway of time.
The Law of Alternating Cycles
Is it possible that a law, universal in all other realms
of Nature, should be abrogated in the case of man? Shall the Earth wake each
year from its wintry slumber; shall the tree and the flower live again, and man
die? No, that is impossible in a universe governed by immutable law. The same
law that wakes the life in the plant to new growth must wake the human being to
further progress toward the goal of perfection. Therefore the doctrine of
rebirth, or repeated human embodiment in gradually improving vehicles, is in
perfect accord with evolution and the phenomena of Nature, when it states that
birth and death follow each other in succession. It is in full harmony with the
law of alternating cycles which decrees that activity and rest, ebb and flood,
summer and winter, must follow each other in unbroken sequence. It is also in
perfect accord with the spiral phase of the Law of Evolution when it states that
each time the Spirit returns to a new birth it takes on a better body, and as
man progresses in mental, moral, and spiritual attainment in consequence of the
accumulated experiences of past lives he comes into an improved environment.
When we seek to solve the riddle of life and death; to
find an answer that shall satisfy both head and heart as to the difference in
the endowment of human beings, and give a reason for the existence of sorrow and
pain; when we ask why one is reared in the lap of luxury while another receives
more kicks than crusts; why one obtains a moral education, but another is taught
to steal and lie; why one has the face and figure of a Venus, while another has
the head of a Medusa; why one has perfect health and another never knows a
moment's rest from pain; why one has the intellect of a Socrates, and another
can only count "one, two, many," as do the Australian aborigines, we
receive no satisfaction from the materialist or the theologian. Materialism
gives the law of heredity as the reason for sickness, and in regard to economic
conditions a Spencer tells us that in the animal world the law of existence is
"eat, or be eaten"; in civilized society it is "cheat, or be
cheated."
Accounting for Moral Proclivities
Heredity accounts partly for the PHYSICAL constitution.
Like begets like, so far as the FORM is concerned, but heredity does not account
for the moral proclivities and mental trend, which differ in each human being.
Heredity is a fact in the lower kingdoms where all the animals of a certain
species look nearly alike, eat the same kind of food, and act similarly in
similar circumstances, because they have no individual will, but are dominated
by a common Group Spirit. In the human kingdom it is different. Each man acts
differently from others. Each requires a different diet. As the years of infancy
and youth pass the indwelling Ego molds its instrument so that it reflects
itself in the features. Thus no two look exactly alike. Even twins who could not
be distinguished in childhood grow to look different as the features of each
express the thought of the Ego within.
On the moral plane a like condition prevails. Police
records show that though the children of habitual criminals generally possess
criminal tendencies, they invariably keep out of the courts, and in the
"rogues' galleries" of Europe and America it is impossible to find
both father and son. Thus criminals are the sons of honest people, and so
heredity is unable to account for moral proclivities.
When we come to a consideration of the higher intellectual
and artistic faculties we find that the children of a genius are mediocre and
often even idiots. Cuvier's brain was the greatest brain ever weighed and
analyzed by science. His five children died of paresis. The brother of Alexander
the Great was an idiot, and so cases could be cited ad lib. to show that
heredity only partially accounts for similarity of Form, and not at all for
mental and moral conditions. The Law of Attraction, which causes musicians to
congregate in concert halls, and brings about meetings of literary people
because of similarity of tastes; and the Law of Consequence, which draws one who
has developed criminal tendencies into association with criminals, that he may
learn to do good by beholding the trouble incident to wrong-doing, account more
logically than heredity for the facts of associations and character.
The theologian explains that all conditions are made by
the will of God, who in His inscrutable wisdom has seen fit to make some rich
and poor; some clever and others dull, etc.; that He sends trouble and trials to
all, much to the many and little to a favored few, and they say we must accept
our lot without murmur. But it is hard to look with love to the skies when one
realizes that thence, according to divine caprice, comes all our misery, be it
little or much, and the benevolent human mind revolts at the thought of a father
who lavishes love, comfort, and luxury upon a few, and sends sorrow, suffering,
and misery to millions. Surely there must be another solution to the problems of
life than this. Is it not more reasonable to think that the theologians may have
misinterpreted the Bible than to saddle such monstrous conduct upon God?
The Law of Consequence
The Law of Rebirth offers a reasonable solution to all the
inequalities of life, its sorrow and pains, when coupled with its companion
law--the Law of Consequence--besides showing the road to emancipation.
The Law of Consequence is Nature's law of justice. It
decrees that whatever a man sows, he reaps. What we are, what we have, all our
good qualities are the result of our labor in the past, thence our talents. What
we lack in physical, moral, or mental accomplishments is due to neglect of
opportunities in the past or to lack of them, but sometime, somewhere, we shall
have other chances, and retrieve the loss. As to our obligations to others or
their debts to us, the Law of Consequence also takes care of that. What cannot
be liquidated in one life holds over to future lives. Death does not cancel our
obligations any more than moving to another city pays our debts here. The Law of
Rebirth provides a new environment, but in it are our old friends, and our old
enemies. We know them, too, for when we meet a person for the first time, yet
feel as if we had known him all our lives, that is but the recognition of the
Ego who pierces the veil of flesh and recognizes an old friend. When we meet a
person who at once inspires us with fear or repugnance, it is again a message
from the Ego, warning us of our old-time enemy.
The School of Life
The occult teaching regarding life, which bases its
solution upon the twin Laws of Consequence and Rebirth, is simply that the world
about us is a school of experience; that even as we send a child to school day
after day and year after year in order that it may learn more and more as it
advances through the different grades from kindergarten to college, so the Ego
in man, as a child of the Father, goes to the school of life, day after day. But
in that larger life of the Ego, each day at school is a life on earth and the
night which intervenes between two days at the child's school corresponds to the
sleep of death in the larger life of the human Ego (the Spirit in man).
In a school there are many grades. The older children who
have attended school many times have very different lessons from the tots in the
kindergarten. So in the school of life, those in high positions, endowed with
great faculties, are our Elder Brothers, and the savages are but entering the
lowest class. What they are we have been, and all will in time reach a point
where they will be wiser than the wisest we know. Nor should it surprise the
philosopher that the powerful crush the weak; the elder children are cruel to
their younger brothers at a certain stage of their growth because they have not
at that time evolved the true sense of right, but as they grow they learn to
protect weakness. So will the children of the larger life. Altruism is flowering
more and more everywhere, and the day will come when all men will be as good and
benevolent as are the greatest saints.
There is but one sin--Ignorance; and but one
salvation--Applied Knowledge. All sorrow, suffering and pain are traceable to
ignorance of how to act, and the school of life is as necessary to bring out our
latent capabilities as is the daily school which evokes those of the child.
We are Masters of Our Destiny
When we realize that this is so, life will at once take on
an altogether different aspect. It does not matter then what the conditions are
in which we find ourselves, the knowledge that WE have made them helps us to
bear them in patience; and, best of all, the glorious feeling that we are
masters of our destiny and can make the FUTURE what we will, is of itself a
power. It rests with us to develop what we lack. Of course we still have the
past to reckon with, and perhaps much misfortune may yet accrue from wrong
deeds, but if we will cease to do evil we may look with joy to every affliction
as liquidating an old score and bringing the day nearer when we shall have a
clear record. It is no valid objection, that often the most upright suffer the
greatest. The great intelligences who apportion to each man the amount of his
past score which is to be liquidated in each life always help the man who pays
the debts of his past without adding new delinquencies, by giving him as much as
he can bear, to hasten the day of emancipation; and in that sense it is strictly
true that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."
The doctrine of rebirth is sometimes confounded with the
theory of transmigration, which teaches that a human soul may incarnate in an
animal. That has no foundation in Nature. Each species of animal is the
emanation from a Group Spirit, which governs them FROM THE OUTSIDE, by
suggestion. It functions in the Desire World; and as distance does not exist
there, it can thus influence its members, no matter where located. The human
Spirit, the Ego, on the other hand, enters right into a dense body; there is an
individual Spirit in each person, dwelling in its instrument and guiding it FROM
WITHIN. These are two entirely different stages of evolution, and it is as
impossible for man to incarnate in an animal body as for a Group Spirit to take
human shape.
Remembering Past Lives
The question, "Why do we not remember our past
existences?" is another apparent difficulty. But if we realize that we have
an entirely new brain at each birth, and that the human Spirit is weak and
engrossed in its new environment, so that it fails to make a full impression on
the brain in the days of childhood, when it is most sensitive, it is not so
surprising after all. Some children do remember the past, especially in the
earliest years, and it is one of the most pathetic phases of childhood that they
are so thoroughly misunderstood by their elders. When they speak of the past,
they are ridiculed, and even punished for being "imaginary." If
children speak of their invisible playmates, and of "seeing things,"
for many children are clairvoyant, they meet the same harsh treatment, and the
inevitable result is that the little ones learn to keep still until they lose
the faculty. Sometimes it happens, however, that the prattle of a child is
listened to and results in some wonderful revelations. The writer heard of such
a case a few years ago on the Pacific Coast.
A Remarkable Story
A little child in Santa Barbara ran up to a gentleman by
the name of Roberts on the street and called him papa, persisting that she had
lived with him and another mama in a little house by a brook, and that one
morning he had left the cabin and never returned. She and her mother had both
died of starvation and the little one finished quaintly, "But I didn't die;
I came here." The story was not told at once, or succinctly, but in the
course of an afternoon, by intermittent questioning it came out. Mr. Roberts'
story of an early elopement, marriage and emigration from England to Australia,
of the building of a cabin by a stream with no other houses near, of leaving his
wife and baby, of being arrested, denied permission to notify his wife because
the officers feared a trap, of being driven to the coast at the point of a gun,
of being taken to England and tried for a bank robbery committed the night he
sailed for Australia, of proving his innocence; of how only then notice was
taken of his persistent ravings about a wife and child who must starve to death,
of the telegram sent, the search party organized and the answer that they had
found but the skeletons of a woman and a child. All these things corroborated
the story of the little three-year-old tot; and being shown some photographs in
a casual way, she picked out the pictures of Mr. Roberts and his wife, though
Mr. Roberts had altered much in the eighteen years which intervened between the
tragedy and the Santa Barbara incident.
Frequency of Rebirth
It must not be supposed, however, that all who pass
through the gate of death reenter as quickly as that. Such a short interim would
give the Ego no chance to do the important work of assimilating experiences and
preparation for a new Earth-life. But a three year old child has had no
experience to speak of, so it seeks a new embodiment quickly, often incarnating
in the same family as before. Children often die because a change in the
parents' habits has frustrated the working out of their past acts. It is then
necessary to seek another chance, or they are born and die to teach the parents
a needed lesson. In one case an Ego incarnated eight times in the same family
for that purpose before the lesson was learned. Then it incarnated elsewhere. It
was a friend of the family who acquired great merit by thus helping them.
The Law of Rebirth, where it is not modified by the Law of
Consequence to such an extent as in the above cases, works according to the
movement of the Sun known as the precession of the equinoxes, by which the Sun
goes backward through the twelve signs of the zodiac in the so-called sidereal
or world-year comprising 25,868 of our ordinary solar years.
As the passage of the Earth in her orbit around the Sun
makes the climatic changes which alter our conditions according to seasons and
change our activities, so the passage of the Sun through the great world-year
makes still greater changes in climate and topographical conditions, in respect
to civilization, and it is necessary that the Ego should learn to cope with it
all.
Therefore the Ego incarnates twice in the time it takes
the Sun to go through each one of the signs of the zodiac, which is about 2,100
years. There are thus normally about 1,000 years between two incarnations and,
while the experiences of a man are widely different from those of a woman, the
conditions are not materially different in a thousand years, so the Spirit
usually incarnates alternately as a man and a woman. But that is not a hard and
fast rule; it is subject to modification when such is required by the Law of
Consequence.
Solution of the Riddle
Thus occult science resolves the riddle of life into the
Ego's quest for experience, all conditions having that purpose in view, and all
being automatically determined by desert; it robs death of its terror and its
sting, by placing it where it belongs, as an incident in a larger life, similar
to the removal to another city for a time; it makes the parting from loved ones
easier by assuring us that the very love we feel will be the means of reuniting
us, and it gives us the grandest hope in life that some day we shall all obtain
the knowledge which illumines all problems, links all our lives, and best of
all, as taught by occult science, we have it in our own power, by application,
to hasten that glorious day when faith shall be swallowed up in knowledge. Then
we shall realize in a higher sense the beauty of Sir Edwin Arnold's poetic
statement of the doctrine of rebirth: