Fri 5 Sep 2008
THE CASE FOR REINCARNATION by Bernard Parsons
Posted by Andrew Rooke under Theosophical Lectures
When building up the case for reincarnation it is well to consider first the case for reimbodiment. The former applies to human and animal life. Reimbodiment is the general feature applying to all beings.
There are three approaches scholars use to ultimate questions that are dealt with in philosophy. The first is the concept of duality, consisting of God on one hand and the universe, His creation, on the other. The Churches offer a variety of solutions to the question of the purpose of life, the inviolability of God’s laws, justice, evolution and enlightenment. Reimbodiment is a heresy in the doctrines of many religious groups though many church goers feel that the idea has merit.
The materialist or so-called realist takes the stance that God is not essential to explain how things are. Occam’s Razor is wielded with devastating effect. It says that if a case can be argued and proven, then no other thing should be introduced into the argument. God was slashed by the razor gang. With this stern rejection of anything spiritual or mystical from the scientific basic realities went a strong scepticism of such things as telepathy, psycho-kenesis and other occult powers.
One man, learned in philosophy and a realist materialist, told me that if it could be proven that telepathy were a genuine power in human experience, then the materialists would have to make considerable adjustments to their ideas. They would find themselves in the same camp philosophically as the pantheists. I think it would be fair to say that materialists are reluctant to examine or check the experiments in these fields. They prefer to assail those who do with charges of quackery or lack of experimental rigour.
The third approach is that of the pantheists or pan entheists, as G. de Purucker called them. This idea, briefly, is that all being has a positive, yang, side, and a negative, yin, side. Socrates expressed this in terms of universal principals or forms which are real and the expressions of these principles or particulars which are shadows of the real. The ultimate principle that could be said to embody all other principles, he termed The Form of the Good.
H.P. Blavatsky taught of fundamental principles which cover the concepts of universal law, substance, life and consciousness. This teaching of universal principles has some very important corollaries. Each and every being is an expression of each and every universal principle. There is no escape.
This opens the door to a method of proof of any of the ultimate questions referred to earlier. What is the purpose of life, where is justice in life? Is reimbodiment a fact or a myth? The human being is part of the universe and all its energies, life consciousness and substances are in greater or lesser degree expressed in us. Therefore the Theosophical teacher says to the enquirer, look within. Take the inward path, that is where the truth can be found. Brood over or meditate on the implications of universal brotherhood.
G. de Purucker in Golden Precepts gives the three secret causes of reimbodiment.
(a) We hunger for light. We see dimly. We look in wrong places.
(b) We carve out our own destiny.
(c) We are attracted to familiar scenes, to life experience and what it can teach us. Trishna – thirst for life.
These three forces bring us back to birth on earth. We recognise in ourselves the spiritual side of life and desperately yearn for more of the same. What are these spiritual powers? Love of Justice, Love of excellence, rightness, Love of harmony, Love of the joy harmony brings and cooperative effort, Love of wisdom, Love of peace, Love of your neighbour: These are the spiritual powers we seek to strengthen. This is what life is about.
What assists us in these endeavours? The divinity in the heart of all things is our spiritual powerhouse. This is the inner resource we must get good at recognising in ourselves. It gives us our integrity, our destiny. It puts fire in our spiritual boilers. Outside ourselves there is the guidance of our heroes. Every one of us chooses heroes on whom we model our actions and our thinking. That is because we have free will; sometimes spiritual and sometimes not so lofty.
Reimbodiment is not an idea that is merely an interesting feature of human experience, it is part of universal law and we should be able to see it occurring in the small as well as the great in nature. There is in nature a number of plateaux of consciousness, mineral, vegetable, animal, etc., that we are familiar with. Whatever number of these levels there are, we cannot say that higher levels do not exist, only that our self consciousness experience takes us thus far. Reimbodiment means birth or change of a monad from one plane of consciousness to a lower plane. Death means the change of a monad from a lower level of operations to another.
You can observe in the human arena a wide divergence in the ability of individuals to think in general terms, to think without passion, to love impersonally, to be tolerant and compassionate. We say that this wisdom and genius that some show so clearly comes from the repeated dunkings of our monad or spirit into the material world about us.
A feature that arises from universal brotherhood apart from the obvious differences we see is the integrity of the universe. By this I understand that no one being is beyond or above the law except by being obedient, in harmony with the law. Miracles as such, for instance, may appear to break nature’s laws but in fact they use natural powers that are unusual to the observer – wonderful but not unnatural.
Another feature rising from the integrity of the universe is that the universal laws are interrelated each to the other. It is as though they spring from the same source. This is behind what Einstein calls the ”field theory” in which he seeks to express in mathematical equations, the relationship of each of the array of energies to the others. How did Einstein get hold of this brilliant concept? It is known from his daughter that he wore out one copy of the Secret Doctrine and asked her to go to the T.S. bookshop and buy him another copy.
Man has links of consciousness, of intelligence and of the whole field of energies with the whole universe and there is a path by which this knowledge can be proven is an inward journey and Theosophy will give some advice as to how to manage that process which is to develop in a natural fashion the awareness we have of life as it passes.
It is not that Theosophy rejects reason and logic. Far from it. However, it does reject the premises of a purely material universe or of a universe created by a “wholly other” God, who is ever at a distance from his creation, however benevolent he may be reputed to be. There is no lack of parallels to the concept of reincarnation. Birth, growth, maturity, decay and death are part of every being’s experiences, even the minutest particles which may switch from a being manifest as matter to living unmanifest as energy in a micro-second of our time.
We die daily, says the New Testament. Waking and sleeping are but imperfect examples of death. There are some who, with a little training, can with an effort of will, keep their consciousness of what is happening when they drop off to sleep. Thus they have a foretaste of the death experience. There are those who have had remarkable results taking subjects under hypnosis back in time to past life experiences. Theosophy acknowledges the power of the human consciousness to carry itself to places far distant or in time past, or both.
No doubt other paths to the realisation of the truth of reincarnation exist but the main basis to the structure rests on the Greatest of the Universal Laws. That law is the law of Compassion. Evolution is not a chance occurrence but an expression of nature itself, of an urge for growth that exists in all beings.
Couple this concept with the idea of a universe that is alive, inescapable and from which nothing can be lost, and you may be able to see the necessity for the cyclic program of birth, death, rest, birth, death, rest, etc. this gives the means for all relationships between humans to take on more than a passing significance. It requires also the universal feature of the act of memory. One of our higher principles, Buddhi, is an individualisation of akasa and it is in a sense beyond space-time as we know it. It looks both before and after. It is the seat of our memory, our possible future, our intuition, our spiritual will. Memory provides the instant link between cause and effect, the continuum factor. It enables us to recognise chains of causation.
As before, the way to prove this is the inward one. Many people are sufficiently sensitive to catch the atmosphere of a place. An example of using this power called psychometry, is to hold an object and if necessary place it against the solar plexus. A skilled sensitive can “see” the memories stored in the so-called inanimate object.
Memory is a spiritual power and it is through this power that as well as karma, the evolutionary impulse, the power of compassion and the cyclic character of things and events, that reincarnation as a teaching becomes a logical necessity. Without it there is no rhythm, no purpose, no justice, no economy of effort, no peace, no self-conquest.
A field for investigation within our own self experience is of the rhythms that are occurring in our life. Books are written about bio-rhythms and one of the themes of this popular study seems to be that each individual has a personal pattern of rhythms and they urge that it is important to be aware of these. H.P. Blavatsky talks of the rhythms of the spirit. Birth-death is a half cycle of such a rhythm, the proper period of which is about eighty-odd years. It is the function of our spirit to determine the time and manner of our death, not our personal desires nor our bodily state.
There are no doubt a number of spiritual rhythms one that he talks about is an hourly rhythm and it would be relatively easy to observe and make use of. That is the increase of spiritual energy in the odd hours throughout the day starting from sun-rise. Seminaries in olden times kept these divisions of the day and distributed the hours of work and meditation accordingly. I wonder if researchers and students would find evidence of this should they note the times of day when ideas flow most freely. If we do not observe we will never know. That is the whole thrust of the maxim that is offered students who ask basic questions about life and that maxim is well known to all: “Man, know thyself”.
The above is the text of a lecture presented to the Theosophical Society Pasadena in
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