CHAPTER III
THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION
The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a
man,
And the man said, "Am I your debtor?"
And the Lord — "Not yet: but make it as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better."
TENNYSON
Once in ten thousand years or more, an idea is
suddenly born into the world, that, like another
Prometlieus, ushers in a new era for men. In
the century behind us, such an idea was born, a
concept of concepts, in that of Evolution.
Like a flash of lightning at night, its light penetrated
into every corner, and ever since men
have seen nature at work, and not merely felt
her heavy hand. In the dim dawn of time
was similarly born another concept, that of
Reincarnation.
Reincarnation — that life, through successive
embodiments, ascends to fuller and nobler
capacities of thought and feeling — and Evolution
— that form ascends, becoming ever more
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and more complex in structure — are as the
right hand and left of the Great Architect who
is fashioning the world. The riddle of the
universe is but half solved in the light of one
truth alone; consider the two as inseparable, the
one the complement of the other, and man then
finds a concept which grows with his growth.
Though Reincarnation is usually thought of
as peculiar to the souls of men, it is in reality a
process which affects all life in all organisms.
The life of the rose that dies returns to its subdivision
of the Rosaceae "group-soul",
and then reincarnates as another rose; the puppy that
dies of distemper returns to its dog "group-soul",
and later reincarnates as the puppy of
another litter. With man, the only difference
is that at death he does not return to any group-soul,
for he is an individual and separate consciousness;
when he reincarnates, he returns
with the faculties which he developed in his
previous lives, undiminished by sharing them
with another individual.
By common usage, however, the word Reincarnation
is restricted to the process as it
affects the souls of men, and it is used in one of
three senses, as follows:
1. That at the birth of a child, God does
not then create for it a soul, because that soul
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existed long before as an individual, in some spiritual condition.
For the first and for the last time, the soul takes birth
in a human form. This is the doctrine of Pre-existence.
2. That the soul of man has already appeared
in earlier embodiments, sometimes in
human forms, but at other times as an animal
or as a plant; and that similarly, after death,
the soul may be reborn as an animal or plant,
before returning once more to a human habitation.
This idea is best known as Transmigration or Metempsychosis.
3. That the soul of man, before birth as a
child, has already lived on earth as man and as
woman, but not as an animal or a plant, except
before "individualization", i.e. before the soul
became a permanent, self-conscious, individual
entity; and that at death, after an interval of
life in a spiritual condition, the soul returns to
earth again, as man or as woman, but never
more taking birth as a plant or as an animal.
This is the doctrine of Reincarnation.
Theosophy teaches that a soul, once become
"individualized" and human, cannot reincarnate
in animal or vegetable forms, and
Theosophists today use the word Reincarnation
only in the third sense above. In modern
Theosophical literature, Reincarnation never
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means rebirth as plant or animal, for, were
such a thing possible, a soul would gain nothing
for his evolution by such a retrograde step.
Since this work is a textbook of Theosophy,
arguments for and against Reincarnation have
here no place. Each inquirer must discover
for himself the fact of Reincarnation by study
and observation, as each student of science
discovers the process of Evolution by similar
means. This section will outline the laws
under which souls reincarnate, in so far as
laws have been discovered by occult investigations.
At the outset, we must clearly understand
who or what it is that reincarnates. For this,
we must understand what is the soul, and what
are his vehicles or instruments of consciousness. (Fig. 28)
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The soul of man is an individual and permanent
Consciousness who lives in a form or body
of invisible matter. This soul-body, composed
of a type of matter called higher mental, is
called in modern Theosophical studies the
Causal Body. Its form is human, but not of
either man or woman with sex characteristics,
but more of the angel of tradition. It is called
the Augoeides. It is surrounded by an ovoid
of fiery, luminous matter, yet delicate as the
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evanescent tints of a sunset. The Augoeides
and the ovoid of luminous matter surrounding
it are the soul's permanent habitation, the
causal body; it is called "causal", because the
best impulses for thought, feeling and action
on all the planes of the soul's operations, are
caused or created in this permanent residence
of the soul. In that causal body the soul lives,
undying and eternal. To him there is no
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birth, childhood, old age or death; he is an
immortal soul, growing in power to love, to
think, to act, as the ages roll by. He lives his
eternal life only in order to make himself an
expert in some department of life by the experiences
which he shall gain, and to find his utmost
happiness in aiding the evolutionary
Plan of his Divine Progenitor.
The growth of the soul commences first by
experimenting with life on realms lower than
those where is his true home. For this he
reincarnates; that is,
1. He gathers matter of the lower mental
plane and shapes it into a mental body, with
which to think, that is, to translate the outer
world of phenomena in terms of thoughts and
laws;
2. He gathers astral matter and shapes it
into an astral body, with which to feel, that is,
to translate the phenomenal world in terms of
personal desires and emotions;
3. He is provided with an appropriate
physical body, with which to act; using that
body, he translates the world in terms of physical properties —
heavy or light, hot or cold,
movable or immovable, and others.
This process of taking up these three bodies
by the soul is Reincarnation. During the life
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of the physical body, every vibration to which
the nerves respond first causes a sensorial reaction
in the brain; this reaction is noted then
by the astral body as pleasant or unpleasant;
the mental body next notes the report of the
astral, and translates the impression as a
thought; that thought is finally noted by the
soul in the causal body. The soul then sends,
through the mental body to the astral body,
and through the astral to the physical brain,
its response to the phenomenon of the physical
world. At every moment of time, when consciousness
works, there is this telegraphing to
and from the causal body. After many ideas
are thus gained, the soul analyses them, tabulates
them, and finally generalizes all life's
experiences into ideals of thought and action.
He thus transmutes the phenomenal world
into eternal concepts which become a part of
himself.
The return process in Reincarnation, called
Death, makes no difference whatsoever to the
soul in the causal body. First, the physical
body is put aside, and a response is no longer
made through it to physical phenomena. But
he has still the mental body and the astral body.
Then the astral is cast aside, and attention is no
longer paid to astral phenomena, and the soul
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observes only the world of the lower mental
plane. Lastly, the mental body itself is discarded,
and the soul is fully himself in the
causal body; he no longer possesses any lower
vehicles. (See Chapter VI — "Man in Life
and in Death".) He has returned home once
more, as it were, though as a matter of fact he
never left his real abode at all; he did but focus
a part of his consciousness and will through
his vehicles of lower matter, and men called
it Reincarnation. He used his vehicles for
varying lengths of time and, when he no longer
needed them, he cast them aside. What we
call life and death are, to the soul, only the
sending forth of some of his consciousness to
lower planes, and then its withdrawal to the
higher once more.
The method of studying the laws of Reincarnation
is to observe souls as they are born
into physical bodies, as they live in them, as
they cast them aside at death, as they later free
themselves from their astral and mental bodies,
and as they are finally fully themselves in their
causal bodies. Every incident of this process
is recorded in the Memory of the Logos, and
the investigator who can put himself in touch
with that Memory can watch the reincarnations
of any soul time after time.
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Investigations by this method have been
made, and enough facts have been gathered
already to enable us to deduce laws. The
first important fact in Reincarnation is that
its laws differ for various types of souls. All
souls at any given epoch are not of equal capacity,
for some are older souls and others are
younger. (Why there should be this difference
in age will be explained in Chapter VII —
"The Evolution of Animals".) The aim of
Reincarnation is to enable a soul to be wiser
and better after the experiences of each incarnation;
but it is found that while one soul has
the ability of learning quickly from an experience,
another will be extremely slow to
learn, and needs each experience to be repeated
over and over again. This difference in capacity
for assimilating experience is due to the
difference in age of the two souls, and, according to such differences, souls naturally fall into
five broad classes, as in Fig. 29.
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The youngest souls are those who are unable
to control their violent and crude desire-natures and are lacking in mental ability; in
the world today, these souls appear in the
savage and semi-civilized races, as also in the
backward or criminal-minded individuals in
civilized communities (No.5). Somewhat
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further evolved, and so older, are those souls
who have passed beyond the savage stage, but
are still simple-minded, unimaginative, and
lacking in initiative (No.4). These two classes
include more than nine-tenths of humanity.
Then come the more advanced and cultured
souls in all races, whose intellectual horizon is
not altogether limited by family or nation, who
crave an ideal of perfection, and are consciously
aiming to achieve it (No.3). Fewer still are
those souls who have discovered that the
meaning of life is self-sacrifice and dedication,
and are "on the Path" and consciously
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moulding their future (No.2). And as the
rare blossoms on our tree of Humanity are the
Adepts, the Masters of the Wisdom, those
mighty Elder Brothers of Humanity who are
the Shadows of God upon earth, who stand
guiding evolution according to the Divine
Plan (No.1).
Reincarnation takes place in the sub-races of
the Root-races studied in the last chapter; but
before we come to its laws, we must first exempt
from their working two classes — that of the
Adepts and that of those "on the Path ". The
Adept is past any need of Reincarnation; he
has already gained all experiences which civilizations
can give him; he has "wrought the
purpose through of what did make him man".
Though he has become "a pillar in the temple
of my God" and "shall go no more out", yet
many an Adept reincarnates among men to be
a Lawgiver and Guide, to at-one mankind with
God. As the Adept takes birth, he chooses
where and when he will be born, for he is the
absolute master of his destiny.
Those "on the Path" are the disciples of the
Masters of the Wisdom, and usually, after
death, they reincarnate within a few months
or years, without discarding their mental and
astral bodies, as is normally the case before
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rebirth. The general law is that, after the
death of the physical body, the soul has a brief
period of life on the astral plane; and then, after
discarding the astral body, spends several
centuries in the lower mental world. This
lower mental world is in the Lower Heaven
(often called Devachan in Theosophical literature),
and there the longings and aspirations
of the earth-life are lived over again, but with
complete realization now of all the happinesses
longed for. Centuries are thus spent in happy
activity, till the forces of aspiration work themselves
out, and the soul discards the mental
body itself. He has then finished his incarnation,
and is himself, in his causal body only,
with all his experiences transmuted into ideals
and capacities. But as he has still much to do
towards perfecting himself, he reincarnates
again, taking three new bodies — the mental,
the astral and the physical.
An exception to this usual method of evolution
is the disciple "on the Path"; he puts by
the centuries of happiness which he might
have in the heaven world, for he is eager to
continue on the physical plane the work for
his Master; he therefore renounces the happiness
which is his due, in order to serve mankind
with his work. His Master chooses for him
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when and where he shall be born, and he returns
to birth with the astral and mental bodies
of the life just closed, taking only a new physical
body.
The laws of Reincarnation, which apply to
souls who are neither disciples, nor Adepts,
can be deduced as we analyse the facts in
Figs. 30-33.
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The charts give us, in tabular
form, facts concerning the past lives of four
individuals.1 All four have of course behind
them several hundred lives; but, for purposes of
study, only their more recent lives have been
investigated. These four belong to the cultured
class of souls, but the study of the laws
governing their evolution will give us also
some facts concerning the reincarnation of the
other two classes — the simple-minded and the
undeveloped.
From the particulars given as to the place,
time, sex and race of the incarnations, and
from the time intervening between lives, we
can deduce the following:
1. There are among the cultured souls two
sub-types: one of those whose period between ...
1 These four individuals, A, B, C and D, are respectively the
character-egos. Sirius, Orion, Alcyone and Erato of "The Lives of
Alcyone". Sirius and Alcyone do not, strictly speaking, belong
anymore to class 3 of Fig. 29, since they are now "on the Path".
But as they entered "the Path" only recently — in the case of Sirius,
in his Greek incarnation, 524 B.C., and in the case of Alcyone, in A.D.
1910 — their lives are probably typical of class 3.
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death and rebirth averages about 1,200 years
(Subjects A, Band D, Figs. 30, 31 and 33),
and the other, of those whose interval between
lives is only about 700 years (Subject C, Fig. 32).
The period between incarnations is
largely spent in the lower heaven world, in
"Devachan", and the length of life there
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depends on the amount and intensity of aspiration
during the earthly life. In the case or
the undeveloped and the simple-minded souls,
a life in the physical body of some sixty years
will create spiritual force which will give a life
in Devachan, for the former from five to fifty
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years, and for the latter of some two or three-
centuries; should, however, the physical life
be short, as when death occurs in childhood or
youth, the Devachan will be much shorter,.
since the spiritual force generated will be
smaller in quantity.
In the case of the majority of cultured souls,
a life of sixty years may need from 1,000 to
1,200 years in Devachan; the period of time
depends on the quantity of force to be transmuted
into faculty. Among these cultured
souls, however, is a small group, of the type of
Subject C in Fig. 32, who, though they may
generate the same quantity of aspirational
force as the others who require twelve centuries
in Devachan, yet condense their heaven-world life into some seven centuries.
2. Cultured souls of the first sub-type are
born, in one cycle, in the sub-race of a Root-race at
least twice in each sub-race, and generally in their numerical order. When we
consider Subject A of Fig. 30, we find him
born, in 23,650 B.C., in the first sub-race of the
Atlantean Root-race; his subsequent lives
occur in its other sub-races in their order. At
his incarnation in the sixth sub-race, he changes
sex. After his life in the seventh sub-race, he
returns to the first again, and then is born in
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the next sub-races in numerical order. As he
returns to these, he changes sex in the second
and fifth sub-races. As he is born for the
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second time in the sub-races, he omits the
seventh sub-race; when a sub-race is altogether
missed, it is because the soul has already acquired
elsewhere the qualities which are usually
to be gained only in that race. In A's case,
evidently one life in the seventh sub-race was
enough to gain from it what he required.
Similarly, where a life in a sub-race is repeated
more than twice, the extra incarnation is needed
for the soul to accomplish the purpose planned.
The second sub-type, represented by Subject
C, must also follow some general law, but
no such law can be deduced as we consult Fig. 32; later on, no doubt, when other individuals
of the same sub-type are examined,
some law may be seen.
3. Concerning the sex of the body, we may
observe that these four individuals vary considerably.
An incarnation as man or woman
is for the purpose of gaining qualities more
readily developed in the one sex than in the
other. Since, however, the capacity for assimilating
experiences varies with different souls,
and since, further, the needs change as the
lives are lived, there is no hard and fast rule
as to the number of incarnations in the sexes.
Usually, there are not more than seven lives
consecutively, nor less than three, in one sex,
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before changing to the other; but there are
exceptions, and we find our Subject A, after
a series of three as a man, changes to two as a
woman, and then reverts to the male sex again.
There has been observed the case of a soul
having as many as nine consecutive lives as a
woman.
4. There is no general principle to be
deduced as to the length of life in the physical
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body. The time of birth is determined by the
ending of the life in the heaveh world; the time
of death is usually fixed beforehand by the
"Lords of Karma" — those Angels of God's
Plan whose work is to adjust the good and the
evil of man's past and present, so that through
their interaction the maximum of good may
result for the future. The life may be brought
early to a close through accident or disease, if
they see that that is best for the soul's future
evolution; if, on the other hand, a long life is
just then needed to enable the soul to acquire
some faculty, then the length of life will be
adjusted to that end.
Though the main incidents and the close of
an incarnation are fixed by these commissaries
of God according to the soul's "Karma"" — i.e.,
according to the services due by him to others,
and by them to him, as the result of past lives —
nevertheless the general plan may be modified
by an exercise of initiative by the individual
himself, or by others whose actions directly
affect him. For instance, when death is by
accident, it is not infrequently the ending
planned by the Lords of Karma for that incarnation;
but sometimes it is not so intended,
and the accidental death is therefore an interference
by new forces brought to bear on the
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life. In such a case, the disturbed plan will
be adjusted in the beginning of the next life,
so that there will not be anything lost in the
end to the soul whose destiny has been changed
for the moment by others.
In no case is suicide in the plan of a man's
life; for such an act the soul is directly responsible,
though that responsibility may also be
shared by others. There are many varieties of
suicide, some in order to escape the result of
evil-doing, some due from mental derangement,
and some due to noble motives. According to the
causes and motives of the suicide
will be the karmic result which follows.
For souls of the two classes — the simple-minded
and the undeveloped — the law of
Reincarnation is modified to the extent that
they will be born repeatedly in a sub-race before
passing on to the next. This will be due
to their inability to gain the required experience
during two or three lives in a sub-race.
The period between their incarnations
is sometimes only a few years, though it may
be as long as two or three centuries. They
are in reality millions of years behind the cultured
class, so far as their general evolution is
concerned. Yet the backwardness of classes
4 and 5 is not due to any evil in them; it is
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merely a matter of the age of the soul; they
are young souls. The larger outlook on life
and the wider sympathies, which are natural
today to a cultured soul, will some day be
possessed by the undeveloped and the simple-minded
souls also. Growth comes to all,
sooner or later, in the endless life of the soul.
Looking at these charts of lives, and noting
the particulars therein of place and date and
race, it may be asked how the occult investigator
is certain as to any of them. How is he
sure that a man in Poseidonis (Subject D) and
an Eskimo woman of the next life are the same
soul? Granted that there is a Memory of the
Logos, how can these things be found out?
The question is natural, and the answer will
perhaps make clear that the methods of occult
investigation are not radically different from
those employed by the scientists today. The
locating of any part of the earth where an
individual is born is not a difficult matter; the
investigator will see the birth of the child, and
then he will have to look round the surrounding
country to note its relation to seas and
mountains and lakes and rivers; his present
knowledge of geography will then enable him
to locate the place. If the epoch is remote,
and the configuration of the surface of the
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globe is different, he must for one moment
look at the place as it was then, and the next
moment put himself in touch with the Divine
Memory, at the same place, but in later historical
times or even today; he can then know what
name geographers give to the place today.
To know the race and sub-race, much previous
study in ethnology is required. To one
who has travelled much, there is little difficulty
in distinguishing a Chinaman from a Japanese, or
even a French Celt from an Italian
Celt, or a Norwegian from an Englishman.
Similarly, observations of the race peculiarities,
and especially of the variations in the
constituents of the subtle invisible bodies of
the sub-races, will enable the investigator to
find the information which he seeks.
The fixing of dates is a more difficult task.
As the investigator reads the Memory of the
Logos, he can watch the events on earth as fast
or as slowly as he desires. He may, if he likes,
watch the incidents of a day of long ago,
minute by minute; or he can in the course of a
few seconds swiftly note summer, autumn,
winter and spring, and summer once more, at
any place he chooses, and so count time by
seasons. If he desires perfect accuracy, he
must watch the seasons as they fly thus,
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rapidly counting the passage of time, year by year.
Within historical times, for instance, if he is
watching a scene in Egypt, and desires to know
the date, he may perhaps need to observe
some court ceremony, catch the Pharaoh's
name as it is pronounced by someone, and then
consult an encycloproia to find the date of
that monarch. In Greece he may need to
see someone write a letter or document, and
note the number of the Olympiad, or he may
fix upon some well-known event, like the Battle
of Marathon, and then count the number of
years from that to the incident in which he is
interested. In Rome he must find a scribe
dating a letter "such and such a year from
the founding of the City", or he could find
the date by watching some debate in the Senate
and noting the names of the Consuls for the
year, and then by getting their date from an
historical list. Sometimes he will count backwards
or forwards from a landmark in time,
like the sinking of Atlantis, 9564 B.C. — that
time having been once and for all fixed by him
by previous counting. When hundreds of
thousands of years are needed to be counted,
the investigator will need to know something
of astronomy so as to calculate the large periods
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by the relative position of the Pole Star to the
earth's axis. As with modern scientific research,
so too the value of the work of the
occult investigator depends upon his care in
observation, and upon his general culture and
ability to present his observations in a methodical manner.
In recognizing a soul in his different incarnations, a careful investigator need never make
any mistake in identification. It is quite true
that the subject's physical body is a different
one in each incarnation; but his soul-body, the
Causal Body with the Augoeides in it, does not
change. Once the investigator has noted the
appearance of that permanent body of the
soul, he will recognize it life after life, whatever be the changes in the temporary physical
body. It is that causal body which is the certain mark of identification, and that will be
the same, whether the physical body be that
of a new-born infant or that of a man tottering
to the grave.
Two more diagrams remain to be considered
in this chapter. They are Figs. 34 and 35.
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The three souls, A, Band C, whom we have
studied, are closely linked by bonds of affection, by bonds, that were forged many, many
lives ago. Each soul evolves under the pressure
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of his own separate Eternity, but he does not tread the path to his Deification alone, but
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in companionship with other souls whom he
learns to love. A true bond of deep affection
is always one between souls, and not merely
between their earthly garments; and whatever these latter may be, love will flash through
them from soul to soul. Physical relationships are of minor consequence; the one
many-dimensional power of love will manifest itself —
always as love and service, whatever be the
earthly channel marked out for it by the Lords of Karma.
Of the three subjects A, B and C, A and B
belong to that sub-type among cultured souls.
who have 1,200 years in Devachan, while C
belongs to the second sub-type with only 700
years interval between lives. It is obvious
that A and B cannot appear in all the lives of
C, unless they both die in each life at that age
which will entitle them to some 700 years only
of Devachan. What has really happened is
given in Fig. 34. During the time that C has
lived 31 incarnations, A has lived only 19, and
B only 23. In the first of A's lives in this series,
he meets C, and they become husband and
wife; but in that life A does not meet his other
friend B. When A is next born again, he is
husband to B, and brother-in-law to C; but in
the meantime B has had three lives and C one,
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where they have not met A. Studying the
chart, we shall find that during 31 lives C
meets A twelve times, while he meets both A
and B together only eight times. The bond
between A and C is specially strong, as will be
seen from the diagram; whatever is the physical
relation — as husband and wife, or wife and
husband, as brother and sister, or as lovers to
whom the fates are unpropitious, so that they
do not. marry — soul speaks to soul. Once B as
a woman adopts a little girl, A; that debt is
paid later by A when as a man he adopts a
little boy, B.
In fourteen of the lives of Subjects E and F,
Fig. 35, in which they meet, we see how the
bond of love appears in varying forms.
When E changes sex and has two lives as a woman,
her beloved is with her, first as son, and then as
husband. When F changes sex and has three
lives as a man, in the third of them he meets his
friend E as a man; between the two men there
springs up an unusual bond of sympathy and
affection. In the next life, E is a priest, and a
little orphan girl is brought to him to be admitted to the temple; little need for many
months to elapse before they are great friends,
and the priest is father and guide. Then
comes a life where they are husband and wife
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again, and then two lives in which they meet
and love springs up between them, but the
course of true love does not run smooth. Follows then a life where F does not meet her
beloved; but they meet again as husband and
wife in Rome. In their present life they have
not yet met each other; though the plans of
the Lords of Karma for each has kept them
apart this time, the bond, soul to soul, is strong
and unbroken, and they will meet again in
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future lives, — as wife and husband, as son and
father, or as friends. They will be true lovers
once more, capable of that many-dimensional
love which goes out in devotion and sacrifice
to its beloved, in whatever channel for it the
Lords of Fate give.
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Act first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe,
You all but sicken at the shifting scenes.
And yet be patient. Our playwright may show
In some fifth Act what this wild Drama means.
Life, without Reincarnation as a clue, is a
wild, wild drama indeed, as it seemed to
Tennyson once, in spite of his Christian faith.
A cruel process is Evolution, careful of the type
and careless of the single lite. But grant that
Life, indestructible and undying, also evolves,
then the future of each individual is bright indeed. In the light of Reincarnation, death
loses its sting and the grave its victory; for men
go ever onwards to Deification, hand in hand
with those they love, with never a fear of
parting. Mortality is but a role which the
soul plays for a while; and when the play is
done, when all lives are lived and all deaths
are dead, then the soul begins his destiny as a
...
- 91 -
Master of the Wisdom, as a Shadow of God
upon earth, even as "the Word made flesh".
To us one and all, cultured or savage now, this
is the future that awaits us, the glory that shall
be revealed.
- 92 -
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