{"id":1253,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:35","slug":"10-rebirth-and-other-worlds-karma-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/19-the-life-divine-volume-19\/10-rebirth-and-other-worlds-karma-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","title":{"rendered":"-10_Rebirth and Other Worlds Karma.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> XXII<\/font> <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/font>Rebirth
\nand Other Worlds; Karma,<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\nthe Soul and Immortality<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t <\/p>\n

\nHe passes in his departure from this world to the
\nphysical Self;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n he passes to the Self of life; he passes to the
\nSelf of mind; he<\/span><\/p>\n

\n passes to the Self of knowledge; he passes to the
\nSelf of bliss;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n he moves through these worlds at will.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taittiriya<\/span><\/span> Upanishad.1<\/sup> <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They say indeed that the conscious being is made of
\ndesire. But of<\/span><\/p>\n

\n whatsoever desire he comes to be, he comes to be
\nof that will, and <\/span><\/p>\n

\nof whatever will he comes to be, he does that action,
\nand whatever<\/span><\/p>\n

\n his action, to (the result of) that he
\nreaches…. Adhered to by his<\/span><\/p>\n

\n Karma, 2 <\/sup>he goes in his subtle body to
\nwherever his mind cleaves,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n then, coming to the end of his Karma, even of
\nwhatsoever action<\/span><\/p>\n

\n he does here, he returns from that world to this
\nworld for Karma.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brihadaranyaka<\/span><\/span> Upanishad.3<\/sup> <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Equipped with qualities, a doer of works and creator of
\ntheir <\/span><\/p>\n

\nconsequences, he reaps the result of his actions; he is
\nthe ruler of <\/span><\/p>\n

\nthe life and he moves in his journey according to his
\nown acts;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n he has idea and ego and is to be known by the
\nqualities of his<\/span><\/p>\n

\n intelligence and his quality of self. Smaller
\nthan the hundredth <\/span><\/p>\n

\npart of the tip of a hair, the soul of the living being
\nis capable of <\/span><\/p>\n

\ninfinity. Male is he not nor female nor neuter, but is
\njoined to<\/span><\/p>\n

\n whatever body he takes as his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Swetaswatara<\/span><\/span> Upanishad.4<\/sup> <\/span><\/p>\n

Mortals, they achieved immortality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n Rig Veda<\/span>5<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nO<\/font><\/b>ur first conclusion on the
\nsubject of reincarnation has been that the rebirth of the soul in successive terrestrial
\nbodies is an inevitable consequence of the original significance and process of
\nthe manifestation in earth-nature; but this conclusion leads to farther
\nproblems and farther results which<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9<\/font> III. 10.
\n5.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00b2<\/font>
\nAction,
\nkarma. In the view expressed in this verse of the Upanishad the Karma or action
\nof this life is exhausted by the life in the world beyond in which its results
\nare fulfilled and the soul returns to earth for fresh Karma. The cause of birth
\nin this world, of Karma, of the soul’s passage to other-world existence and its
\nreturn here is, throughout, the soul’s own consciousness, will and desire.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00b3<\/font>IV. 4.
\n5, 6.         <\/font> 4<\/sup><\/span>V. 7-10.            5<\/sup><\/span> I. 110. 4.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage 792<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

it is necessary to elucidate.
\nThere arises first the question of the process of rebirth; if that process is
\nnot quickly successive, birth immediately following death of the body so as to
\nmaintain an uninterrupted series of lives of the same person, if there are
\nintervals, that in its turn raises the question of the principle and process of
\nthe passage to other worlds,\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>which must
\nbe the scene of these intervals, and the return to earth-life. A third question
\nis the process of the spiritual evolution itself and the mutations which the
\nsoul undergoes in its passage from birth to birth through the stages of its
\nadventure. <\/p>\n

If the physical
\nuniverse were the sole manifested world, or if it were a quite separate world,
\nrebirth as a part of the evolutionary process would be confined to a constant
\nsuccession of direct transmigrations from one body to another; death would be
\nimmediately followed by a new birth without any possibility of an interval,\u2014the
\npassage of the soul would be a spiritual circumstance in the uninterrupted
\nseries of a compulsory, mechanical, material procedure. The soul would have no
\nfreedom from Matter; it would be perpetually bound to its instrument, the body,
\nand dependent on it for the continuity of its manifested existence. But we have
\nfound that there is a life on other planes after death and before the
\nsubsequent rebirth, a life consequent on the old and preparatory of the new
\nstage of terrestrial existence. Other planes co-exist with ours, are part of
\none complex system and act constantly upon the physical which is their own
\nfinal and lowest term, receive its reactions, admit a secret communication and
\ncommerce. Man can become conscious of these planes, can even in certain states
\nproject his conscious being into them, partly in life, presumably therefore
\nwith a full completeness after the dissolution of the body. Such a possibility
\nof projection into other worlds or planes of being becomes then sufficiently
\nactual to necessitate practically its own realisation<\/span>,
\nimmediately and perhaps invariably following on human earth-life if man is from
\nthe beginning endowed with such a power of self-transference, eventual if he
\nonly arrives at it by a gradual progression. For it is possible that at the
\nbeginning he would not be sufficiently developed to carry on his life or his
\nmind into larger Life-worlds
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 793<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

or Mind-worlds and would be
\ncompelled to accept an immediate transmigration from one earthly body to
\nanother as his only present possibility of persistence.<\/p>\n

The necessity
\nfor an interregnum between birth and birth and a passage to other worlds arises
\nfrom a double cause: there is an attraction of the other planes for the mental
\nand the vital being in man’s composite nature due to their affinity with these
\nlevels, and there is the utility or even the need of an interval for
\nassimilation of the completed life-experience, a working out of what has to be
\ndiscarded, a preparation for the new embodiment and the new terrestrial
\nexperience. But this need of a period of assimilation and this attraction of
\nother worlds for kindred parts of our being may become effective only when the
\nmental and vital individuality has been sufficiently developed in the
\nhalf-animal physical man; until then they might not exist or might not be
\nactive: the life experiences would be too simple and elementary to need assimilation
\nand the natural being too crude to be capable of a complex assimilative
\nprocess; the higher parts would not be sufficiently developed to lift
\nthemselves to higher planes of existence. There can be, then, in the absence of
\nsuch connections with other worlds, a theory of rebirth which admits only of a
\nconstant transmigration; here the existence of other worlds and the sojourn of
\nthe soul in other planes are not an actual or at any stage a necessary part of
\nthe system. There can be another theory in which this passage is the obligatory
\nrule for all and there is no immediate rebirth; the soul needs an interval of
\npreparation for the new incarnation and new experience. A compromise between
\nthe two theories is also possible; the transmigration may be the first rule
\nprevailing while the soul is yet unripe for a higher world-existence; the
\npassage to other planes would be the subsequent law. There may even be a third
\nstage, as is sometimes suggested, in which the soul is so powerfully developed,
\nits natural parts so spiritually alive that it needs no interval, but can
\nimmediately resume birth for a more rapid evolution without the retardation of
\na period of intermittence. In the popular ideas which derive from the religions
\nthat admit reincarnation, there is an inconsistency which, after<\/p>\n

\nPage 794<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the manner of popular beliefs,
\nthey have been at no pains to reconcile. On the one hand, there is the belief,
\nvague enough but fairly general, that death is followed immediately or with
\nsomething like immediateness by the assumption of another body. On the other
\nhand, there is the old religious dogma of a life after death in hells and
\nheavens or, it may be, in other worlds or degrees of being, which the soul has
\nacquired or incurred by its merits or demerits in this physical existence; the
\nreturn to earth intervenes only when that merit and demerit are exhausted and
\nthe being is ready for another terrestrial life. This inconsistency would
\ndisappear if we admit a variable movement dependent on the stage of evolution
\nwhich the soul has reached in its manifestation in Nature; all would then turn
\non the degree of its capacity for entering a higher status than the earthly
\nlife. But in the ordinary notion of reincarnation the idea of a spiritual
\nevolution is not explicit, it is only implied in the fact that the soul has to
\nreach the point at which it becomes capable of transcending the necessity of
\nrebirth and returning to its eternal source; but if there is no gradual and
\ngraded evolution, this point can be as well reached by a chaotic zigzag
\nmovement of which the law is not easily determinable. The definitive solution
\nof the question depends on psychic inquiry and experience; here we can only
\nconsider whether there is in the nature of things or in the logic of the evolutionary
\nprocess any apparent or inherent necessity for either movement, for the
\nimmediate transition from body to body or for the retardation or interval
\nbefore a new reincarnation of the self-embodying psychic principle.
\n <\/p>\n

A sort of half
\nnecessity for the life in other worlds, a dynamic and practical rather than an
\nessential necessity, arises from the very fact that the different
\nworld-principles are interwoven with each other and in a way interdependent and
\nthe effect that this fact must have upon the process of our spiritual
\nevolution. But this might be counteracted for a time by the greater pull or
\nattraction of the earth or the preponderant physicality of the evolving nature.
\nOur belief in the birth of an ascending soul into the human form and its repeated
\nrebirth in that form, without which it cannot complete its human evolution,
\nrests, <\/p>\n

\nPage 795<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 from the point of view of the
\nreasoning intelligence, on the basis that the progressive transit of the soul into
\nhigher and higher grades of the earthly existence and, once it has reached the
\nhuman level, its repeated human birth compose a sequence necessary for the
\ngrowth of the nature; one brief human life upon earth is evidently insufficient
\nfor the evolutionary purpose. In the early stages of a series of human
\nreincarnations, during a period of rudimentary humanity, there is a certain
\npossibility at first sight of an often repeated immediate transmigration,\u2014the
\nrepeated assumption of a new human form in a fresh birth mmediately<\/span>
\nthe previous body has been dissolved by a cessation or expulsion of the organised<\/span> Life-energy and the consequent physical
\ndisintegration which we call death. But what necessity of the evolutionary
\nprocess would compel such a series of immediate rebirths? Evidently, it could
\nonly be imperative so long as the psychic individuality,\u2014not the secret
\nsoul-entity itself but the soul-formation in the natural being,\u2014is little
\nevolved, insufficiently developed, so insufficiently formed that it could not
\nabide except by dependence upon the uninterrupted continuance of this life’s
\nmental, vital and physical individuality: unable as yet to persist in itself,
\ndiscard its past Mind-formation and Life-formation and build after a useful
\ninterval new formations, it would be obliged to transfer at once its
\nrudimentary crude personality for preservation to a new body. It is doubtful
\nwhether we should be justified in attributing any such entirely insufficient
\ndevelopment to a being so strongly individualised<\/span> that
\nit has got as far as the human consciousness. Even at his lowest normality the
\nhuman individual is still a soul acting through a distinct mental being,
\nhowever ill-formed his mind may be, however limited and dwarfed, however
\nengrossed and encased in the physical and vital consciousness and unable or
\nunwilling to detach itself from its lower formations. Yet we may suppose that
\nthere is a downward attachment so strong as to compel the being to hasten at
\nonce to a resumption of the physical life because his natural formation is not
\nreally fit for anything else or at home on any higher plane. Or, again, the
\nlife-experience might be so brief and incomplete as to compel the soul to an
\nimmediate
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 796<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

rebirth for its continuance.
\nOther needs, influences or causes there may be in the complexity of
\nNature-process, such as a strong will of earthly desire pressing for fulfilment<\/span>, which would enforce an immediate transmigration
\nof the same persistent form of personality into a new body. But still the
\nalternative process of a reincarnation, a rebirth of the Person not only into a
\nnew body but into a new formation of the personality, would be the normal line
\ntaken by the psychic entity once it had reached the human stage of its
\nevolutionary cycle. <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>For
\nthe soul personality, as it develops, must get sufficient power over its own
\nnature-formation and a sufficient self-expressive mental and vital
\nindividuality to persist without the support of the material body, as well as
\nto overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the
\nphysical life: it would be sufficiently evolved to subsist in the subtle body
\nwhich we know to be the characteristic case or sheath and the proper
\nsubtle-physical support of the inner being. It is the soul-person, the psychic
\nbeing, that survives and carries mind and life with it on its journey, and it
\nis in the subtle body that it passes out of its material lodging; both then
\nmust be sufficiently developed for the transit. But a transference to planes of
\nMind-existence or Life-existence implies also a mind and life sufficiently
\nformed and developed to pass without disintegration and exist for a time on
\nthese higher levels. If these conditions were satisfied, a sufficiently
\ndeveloped psychic personality and subtle body and a sufficiently developed
\nmental and vital personality, survival of the soul-person without an immediate
\nnew birth would be secured and the pull of the other worlds would become
\noperative. But this by itself would mean a return to earth with the same mental
\nand vital personality and there would be no free evolution in the new birth.
\nThere must be an individuation of the psychic person itself sufficient for it
\nnot to depend on its past mind and life formations any more than on its past
\nbody, but to shed them too in time and proceed to a new formation for new
\nexperience. For this discarding of the old and preparation of new forms the
\nsoul must dwell for some time between two births somewhere else than on the
\nentirely material plane in which we now move; for here there would be no
\nabiding place
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 797<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

for a disembodied spirit. A brief
\nstay might indeed be possible if there are subtle envelopes of the
\nearth-existence which belong to earth but are of a vital or mental character:
\nbut even then there would be no reason for the soul to linger there for a long
\nperiod, unless it is still burdened with an overpowering attachment to the
\nearth-life. A survival of the material body by the personality implies a supraphysical<\/span> existence, and this can only be in some plane
\nof being proper to the evolutionary stage of the consciousness or, if there is
\nno evolution, in a temporary second home of the spirit which would be its
\nnatural place of sojourn between life and life,\u2014unless indeed it is its
\noriginal world from which it does not return into material Nature. <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Where
\nthen would the temporary dwelling in the supraphysical<\/span>
\ntake place? what would be the soul’s other habitat? It might seem that it ought
\nto be on a mental plane, in mental worlds, both because on man the mental being
\nthe attraction of that plane, already active in life, must prevail when there
\nis not the obstacle of the attachment to the body, and because the mental plane
\nshould be, evidently, the native and proper habitat of a mental being. But this
\ndoes not automatically follow, because of the complexity of man’s being; he has
\na vital as well as a mental existence,\u2014his vital part often more powerful and
\nprominent than the mental,\u2014and behind the mental being is a soul of which it is
\nthe representative. There are, besides, many planes or levels of
\nworld-existence and the soul has to pass through them to reach its natural
\nhome. In the physical plane itself or close to it there are believed to be
\nlayers of greater and greater subtlety which may be regarded as sub-planes of
\nthe physical with a vital and a mental character; these are at once surrounding
\nand penetrating strata through which the interchange between the higher worlds
\nand the physical world takes place. It might then be possible for the mental
\nbeing, so long as its mentality is not sufficiently developed, so long as it is
\nrestricted mainly to the more physical forms of mind and life activity, to be
\ncaught and delayed in these media. It might even be obliged to rest there
\nentirely between birth and birth; but this is not probable and could only
\nhappen if and in so far as its attachment to the earth-forms of its activity
\nwas so great as
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 798<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

to preclude or hamper the
\ncompletion of the natural upward movement. For the post-mortal state of the
\nsoul must correspond in some way to the development of the being on earth,
\nsince this after-life is not a free upward return from a temporary downward
\ndeviation into mortality, but a normal recurrent circumstance which intervenes
\nto help out the process of a difficult spiritual evolution in the physical
\nexistence. There is a relation which the human being in his evolution on earth
\ndevelops with higher planes of existence, and that must have a predominant
\neffect on his internatal<\/span> dwelling in these planes; it
\nmust determine his direction after death and determine too the place, period
\nand character of his self-experience there. <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It
\nmay be also that he may linger for a time in one of those annexes of the other
\nworlds created by his habitual beliefs or by the type of his aspirations in the
\nmortal body. We know that he creates images of these superior planes, which are
\noften mental translations of certain elements in them, and erects his images
\ninto a system, a form of actual worlds; he builds up also desire-worlds of many
\nkinds to which he attaches a strong sense of inner reality: it is possible that
\nthese constructions may be so strong as to create for him an artificial
\npost-mortal environment in which he may linger. For the image-making power of
\nthe human mind, its imagination, which is in his physical life only an
\nindispensable aid to his acquisition of knowledge and his life-creation, may in
\na higher scale become a creative force which would enable the mental being to
\nlive for a while amid its own images until they were dissolved by the soul’s
\npressure. All these buildings are of the nature of larger Life-constructions;
\nin them his mind translates some of the real conditions of the greater mental
\nand vital worlds into terms of his physical experience magnified, prolonged, extended
\nto a condition beyond physicality: he carries by this translation the vital joy
\nand vital suffering of the physical being into supraphysical<\/span>
\nconditions in which they have a greater scope, fullness and endurance. These
\nconstructive environments must therefore be considered, so far as they have any
\nsupraphysical<\/span> habitat, as annexes of the vital or of
\nthe lower mental planes of existence.
\n <\/p>\n

But there are
\nalso the true vital worlds,\u2014original construc<\/span>– <\/p>\n

\nPage 799<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

tions<\/span>, organised<\/span> developments, native habitats of the universal
\nLife-principle, the cosmic vital Anima, acting in its own field and in its own
\nnature. On his internatal<\/span> journey he may be held
\nthere for a period by force of the predominantly vital character of the
\ninfluences which have shaped his earthly existence,\u2014for these influences are
\nnative to the vital world and their hold on him would detain him for a while in
\ntheir proper province: he may be kept in the grasp of that which held him in
\nits grasp even in the physical being. Any residence of the soul in annexes or
\nin its own constructions could be only a transitional stage of the
\nconsciousness in its passage from the physical to the supraphysical<\/span>
\nstate; it must pass from these structures into the true worlds of supraphysical<\/span> Nature.
\n <\/p>\n

It may enter at
\nonce into the worlds of other-life, or it may remain first, as a transitional
\nstage, in some region of subtle-physical experience whose surroundings may seem
\nto it a prolongation of the circumstances of physical life, but in freer
\nconditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of
\nmind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these subtle-physical planes
\nof experience and the life-worlds there are also mental or spiritual-mental
\nplanes to which the soul seems to have an internatal<\/span>
\naccess and into which it may pursue its internatal<\/span>
\njourney; but it is not likely to live consciously there if there has not been a
\nsufficient mental or soul development in this life. For these levels must
\nnormally be the highest the evolving being can internatally<\/span>
\ninhabit, since one who has not gone beyond the mental rung in the ladder of
\nbeing would not be able to ascend to any supramental<\/span>
\nor overmental<\/span> state; or if he had so developed as to
\noverleap the mental level and could attain so far, it might not be possible for
\nhim to return so long as the physical evolution has not developed here an organisation<\/span> of an overmental<\/span> or supramental<\/span> life in Matter. But, even so, the mental worlds
\nare not likely to be the last normal stage of the after-death passage; for man
\nis not entirely mental; it is the soul, the psychic being, and not the mind,
\nthat is the traveller<\/span> between death and birth, and
\nthe mental being is only a predominant element in the figure of its
\nself-expression. There must then be a final resort to a plane of pure psychic
\nexistence in which the soul would await rebirth; there it could <\/p>\n

\nPage 800<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

assimilate the energies of its
\npast experience and life and prepare its future. Ordinarily, the normally
\ndeveloped human being, who has risen to a sufficient power of mentality, might
\nbe expected to pass successively through all these planes, subtle-physical,
\nvital and mental, on his way to his psychic habitation. At each stage he would
\nexhaust and get rid of the fractions of formed personality-structure, temporary
\nand superficial, that belonged to the past life; he would cast off his mind-sheath
\nand life-sheath as he had already cast off his body-sheath: but the essence of
\nthe personality and its mental, vital and physical experiences would remain in
\nlatent memory or as a dynamic potency for the future. But if the development of
\nmind were insufficient, it is possible that it would not be able to go
\nconsciously beyond the vital level and the being would either fall back from there,
\nreturning from its vital heavens or purgatories to earth, or, more
\nconsistently, would pass at once into a kind of psychic assimilative sleep
\nco-extensive with the internatal<\/span> period; to be awake
\nin the highest planes a certain development would be indispensable. <\/p>\n

All this,
\nhowever, is a matter of dynamic probability, and that, though amounting in
\npractice to a necessity, though justified by certain facts of subliminal
\nexperience, is still for the reasoning mind not in itself quite conclusive. We
\nhave to ask whether there is any more essential necessity for these internatal<\/span> intervals, or at least any of so great a dynamic
\npower as to lead to an irresistible conclusion. We shall find one such
\nnecessity in the decisive part played by the higher planes in the earth-evolution
\nand the relation that it has created between them and the evolving
\nsoul-consciousness. Our development takes place very largely by their superior
\nbut hidden action upon the earth-plane. All is contained in the inconscient<\/span> or the subconscient<\/span>,
\nbut in potentiality; it is the action from above that helps to compel an
\nemergence. A continuance of that action is necessary to shape and determine the
\nprogression of the mental and vital forms which our evolution takes in material
\nnature; for these progressive movements cannot find their full momentum or
\nsufficiently develop their implications against the resistance of an inconscient<\/span> or inert and ignorant <\/p>\n

\nPage 801<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

material Nature except by a
\nconstant though occult resort to higher supraphysical<\/span>
\nforces of their own character. This resort, the action of this veiled alliance,
\ntakes place principally in our subliminal being and not on the surface: it is
\nfrom there that the active power of our consciousness emerges, and all that it realises<\/span> it sends back constantly into the subliminal being
\nto be stored up, developed and re-emerge in stronger forms hereafter. This
\ninteraction of our larger hidden being and our surface personality is the main
\nsecret of the rapid development that operates in man once he has passed beyond
\nthe lower stages of Mind immersed in Matter. <\/p>\n

This resort must
\ncontinue in the internatal<\/span> stage; for a new birth, a
\nnew life is not a taking up of the development exactly where it stopped in the
\nlast, it does not merely repeat and continue our past surface personality and
\nformation of nature. There is an assimilation, a discarding and strengthening
\nand rearrangement of the old characters and motives, a new ordering of the
\ndevelopments of the past and a selection for the purposes of the future without
\nwhich the new start cannot be fruitful or carry forward the evolution. For each
\nbirth is a new start; it develops indeed from the past, but is not its mechanical
\ncontinuation: rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression, it is
\nthe machinery of an evolutionary process. Part of this rearrangement, the
\ndiscarding especially of past strong vibrations of the personality, can only be
\neffected by an exhaustion of the push of previous mental, vital, physical
\nmotives after death, and this internal liberation or lightening of impedimenta
\nmust be put through on the planes proper to the motives that are to be
\ndiscarded or otherwise manipulated, those planes which are themselves of that
\nnature; for it is only there that the soul can still continue the activities
\nwhich have to be exhausted and rejected from the consciousness so that it can
\npass on to a new formation. It is probable also that the integrating positive
\npreparation would be carried out and the character of the new life would be
\ndecided by the soul itself in a resort to its native habitat, a plane of
\npsychic repose, where it would draw all back into itself and await its new
\nstage in the evolution. This would mean a passage of the soul <\/p>\n

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progressively through subtle-physical,
\nvital and mental worlds to the psychic dwelling-place from which it would
\nreturn to its terrestrial pilgrimage. The terrestrial gathering up and
\ndevelopment of the materials thus prepared, their working out in the earth-life
\nwould be the consequence of this internatal<\/span> resort,
\nand the new birth would be a field of the resultant activity, a new stadium or
\nspiral curve in the individual evolution of the embodied Spirit. <\/p>\n

For when we say
\nthat the soul on earth evolves successively the physical, the vital, the
\nmental, the spiritual being, we do not mean that it creates them and that they
\nhad no previous existence. On the contrary, what it does is to manifest these principles
\nof its spiritual entity under the conditions imposed by a world of physical
\nNature; this manifestation takes the form of a structure of frontal personality
\nwhich is a translation of the inner self into the terms and possibilities of
\nthe physical existence. In fact we must accept the ancient idea that man has
\nwithin him not only the physical soul or Purusha<\/span> with
\nits appropriate nature, but a vital, a mental, a psychic, a supramental<\/span>,
\na supreme spiritual being;1<\/sup> and either the whole or the greater
\npresence or force of them is concealed in his subliminal or latent and
\nunformulated in his superconscient<\/span> parts. He has to
\nbring forward their powers in his active consciousness and to awake to them in
\nits knowledge. But each of these powers of his being is in relation with its
\nown proper plane of existence and all have their roots there. It is through
\nthem that there takes place the subliminal resort of the being to the shaping
\ninfluences from above, a resort which may become more and more conscious as we
\ndevelop. It is logical then that according to the development of their powers
\nin our conscious evolution should be the internatal<\/span>
\nresort which this nature of our birth here and its evolutionary object and
\nprocess necessitate. The circumstances and the stages of that resort must be
\ncomplex and not of the crudely and trenchantly simple character which the
\npopular religions imagine: but in itself it can be accepted as an inevitable consequence
\nof the very origin and nature of the soul-life in the body. All is a closely woven
\nweb, an evolution <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> Taittiriya<\/span> Upanishad.<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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 and an interaction whose links
\nhave been forged by a Conscious-Force following out the truth of its own
\nmotives according to a dynamic logic of these finite workings of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

If this view of
\nrebirth and the soul’s temporary passage into other planes of existence is
\ncorrect, both rebirth and the after-life assume a different significance from
\nthe colour<\/span> put on them by the long-current belief
\nabout reincarnation and the after-death sojourn in worlds beyond us. Reincarnation
\nis commonly supposed to have two aspects, metaphysical and moral, an aspect of
\nspiritual necessity, an aspect of cosmic justice and ethical discipline. The
\nsoul,\u2014in this view or for this purpose supposed to have a real individual
\nexistence,\u2014is on earth as a result of desire and ignorance; it has to remain on
\nearth or return to it always so long as it has not wearied of desire and
\nawakened to the fact of its ignorance and to the true knowledge. This desire
\ncompels it to return always to a new body; it must follow always the revolving
\nwheel of birth till it is enlightened and liberated. It does not, however,
\nremain always on earth, but alternates between earth and other worlds, celestial
\nand infernal, where it exhausts its accumulated store of merit or demerit due
\nto the enactment of sin or virtue and then returns to the earth and to some
\nkind of terrestrial body, sometimes human, sometimes animal, sometimes even vegetable.
\nThe nature of this new incarnation and its fortunes are determined
\nautomatically by the soul’s past actions, Karma; if the sum of past actions was
\ngood, the birth is in the higher form, the life happy or successful or
\nunaccountably fortunate; if bad, a lower form of Nature may house us or the
\nlife, if human, will be unhappy, unsuccessful, full of suffering and
\nmisfortune. If our past actions and character were mixed, then Nature, like a
\ngood accountant, gives us, according to the pitch and values of our former
\nconduct, a well-assorted payment of mixed happiness and suffering, success and
\nfailure, the rarest good luck and the severest ill-fortune. At the same time a
\nstrong personal will or desire in the past life may also determine our new
\navatar. A mathematical aspect is often given to these payments of Nature, for
\nwe are supposed to incur a precise penalty for our misdeeds, undergo or return
\nthe replica or equivalent
\n <\/p>\n

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of what we have inflicted or
\nenacted; the inexorable rule of a tooth for a tooth is a frequent principle of
\nthe Karmic Law: for this Law is an arithmetician with his abacus as well as a
\njudge with his code of penalties for long-past crimes and misdemeanours<\/span>.
\nIt is also to be noted that in this system there is a double punishment and a
\ndouble reward for sin and virtue; for the sinner is first tortured in hell and
\nafterwards afflicted for the same sins in another life here and the righteous
\nor the puritan is rewarded with celestial joys and afterwards again pampered
\nfor the same virtues and good deeds in a new terrestrial existence. <\/p>\n

These are very
\nsummary popular notions and offer no foothold to the philosophic reason and no
\nanswer to a search for<\/p>\n

the true significance of life. A
\nvast world-system which exists only as a convenience for turning endlessly on a
\nwheel of Ignorance with no issue except a final chance of stepping out of it,
\nis not a world with any real reason for existence. A world which serves only as
\na school of sin and virtue and consists of a system of rewards and whippings,
\ndoes not make any better appeal to our intelligence. The soul or spirit within
\nus, if it is divine, immortal or celestial, cannot be sent here solely to be
\nput to school for this kind of crude and primitive moral education; if it
\nenters into the Ignorance, it must be because there is some larger principle or
\npossibility of its being that has to be worked out through the Ignorance. If,
\non the other hand, it is a being from the Infinite plunged for some cosmic
\npurpose into the obscurity of Matter and growing to self-knowledge within it,
\nits life here and the significance of that life must be something more than
\nthat of an infant coddled and whipped into virtuous ways; it must be a growth
\nout of an assumed ignorance towards its own full spiritual stature with a final
\npassage into an immortal consciousness, knowledge, strength, beauty, divine
\npurity and power, and for such a spiritual growth this law of Karma is all too
\npuerile. Even if the soul is something created, an infant being that has to
\nlearn from Nature and grow into immortality, it must be by a larger law of
\ngrowth and not by some divine code of primitive and barbaric justice. This idea
\nof Karma is a construction of the smaller part of the human vital mind
\n <\/p>\n

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concerned with its petty rules of
\nlife and its desires and joys and sorrows and erecting their puny standards
\ninto the law and aim of the cosmos. These notions cannot be acceptable to the
\nthinking mind; they have too evidently the stamp of a construction fashioned by
\nour human ignorance. <\/p>\n

But the same
\nsolution can be elevated to a higher level of reason and given a greater
\nplausibility and the colour<\/span> of a cosmic principle.
\nFor, first, it may be based on the unassailable ground that all energies in
\nNature must have their natural consequence; if any are without visible result
\nin the present life, it may well be that the outcome is only delayed, not
\nwithheld for ever. Each being reaps the harvest of his works and deeds, the
\nreturns of the action put forth by the energies of his nature, and those which
\nare not apparent in his present birth must be held over for a subsequent
\nexistence. It is true that the result of the energies and actions of the
\nindividual may accrue not to himself but to others when he is gone; for that we
\nsee constantly happening,\u2014it happens indeed even during a man’s lifetime that
\nthe fruits of his energies are reaped by others; but this is because there is a
\nsolidarity and a continuity of life in Nature and the individual cannot
\naltogether, even if he so wills, live for himself alone. But, if there is a
\ncontinuity of his own life by rebirth for the individual and not only a
\ncontinuity of the mass-life and the cosmic life, if he has an ever-developing
\nself, nature and experience, then it is inevitable that for him too the working
\nof his energies should not be cut off abruptly but must bear their consequence
\nat some time in his continuous and developing existence. Man’s being, nature,
\ncircumstances of life are the result of his own inner and outer activities, not
\nsomething fortuitous and inexplicable: he is what he has made himself; the past
\nman was the father of the man that now is, the present man is the father of the
\nman that will be. Each being reaps what he sows; from what he does he profits,
\nfor what he does he suffers. This is the law and chain of Karma, of Action, of
\nthe work of Nature-Energy, and it gives a meaning to the total force of our
\nexistence, nature, character, action which is absent from other theories of
\nlife. It is evident on this principle that a man’s past and present Karma must
\ndetermine his future birth and its happenings and circumstances; for these too
\nmust be the <\/p>\n

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fruit of his energies: all that
\nhe was and did in the past must be the creator of all that he now is and
\nexperiences in his present, and all that he is and is doing in the present must
\nbe the creator of what he will be and experience in the future. Man is the
\ncreator of himself; he is the creator also of his fate. All this is perfectly
\nrational and unexceptionable so far as it goes and the law of Karma may be
\naccepted as a fact, as part of the cosmic machinery; for it is so
\nevident,\u2014rebirth once admitted,\u2014as to be practically indisputable. <\/p>\n

There are,
\nhowever, two riders to this first proposition which are less general and
\nauthentic and bring in a doubtful note; for though they may be true in part,
\nthey are overstated and create a wrong perspective, because they are put
\nforward as<\/p>\n

the whole sense of Karma. The
\nfirst is that as is the nature of the energies so must be the nature of the
\nresults,\u2014the good must bring good results, the evil must bring evil results:
\nthe second is that the master word of Karma is justice and therefore good deeds
\nmust bear the fruit of happiness and good fortune and evil deeds must bear the
\nfruit of sorrow, misery and ill-fortune. Since there must be a cosmic justice
\nwhich is looking on and controlling in some way the immediate and visible operations
\nof Nature in life, but is not apparent to us in the facts of life as seen by
\nus, it must be present and evident in the totality of her unseen dealings; it
\nmust be the subtle and hardly visible, but strong and firm secret thread that
\nholds together the otherwise incoherent details of her dealings with her
\ncreatures. If it be asked why actions alone, good or bad deeds alone, should
\nhave a result, it might be conceded that good or evil thoughts, feelings,
\nactions have all their corresponding results, but since action is the greater
\npart of life and the test and formulated power of a man’s values of being,
\nsince also he is not always responsible for his thoughts and feelings, as they
\nare often involuntary, but is or must be held responsible for what he does, as
\nthat is subject to his choice, it is mainly his actions that construct his
\nfate; they are the chief or the most forceful determinants of his being and his
\nfuture. This is the whole law of Karma. <\/p>\n

But we have
\nfirst to observe that a law or chain of Karma is only an outward machinery and
\ncannot be elevated to a greater <\/p>\n

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position as the sole and absolute
\ndeterminant of the life-workings of the cosmos, unless the cosmos is itself
\nentirely mechanical in its character. It is indeed held by many that all is Law
\nand Process and there is no conscious Being or Will in or behind the cosmos; if
\nso, here is a Law and Process that satisfies our human reason and our mental
\nstandards of right and justice and it has the beauty and truth of a perfect
\nsymmetry and a mathematical accuracy of working. But all is not Law and
\nProcess, there is also Being and Consciousness; there is not only a machinery
\nbut a Spirit in things, not only Nature and law of cosmos but a cosmic Spirit,
\nnot only a process of mind and life and body but a soul in the natural
\ncreature. If it were not so, there could be no rebirth of a soul and no field
\nfor a law of Karma. But if the fundamental truth of our being is spiritual and
\nnot mechanical, it must be ourself<\/span>, our soul that
\nfundamentally determines its own evolution, and the law of Karma can only be
\none of the processes it uses for that purpose: our Spirit, our Self must be
\ngreater than its Karma. There is Law, but there is also spiritual freedom. Law
\nand Process are one side of our existence and their reign is over our outer mind,
\nlife and body, for these are mostly subject to the mechanism of Nature. But
\neven here their mechanical power is absolute only over body and Matter; for Law
\nbecomes more complex and less rigid, Process more plastic and less mechanical
\nwhen there comes in the phenomenon of Life, and yet more is this so when Mind
\nintervenes with its subtlety; an inner freedom already begins to intervene and,
\nthe more we go within, the soul’s power of choice is increasingly felt: for Prakriti<\/span> is the field of law and process, but the soul, the
\nPurusha<\/span>, is the giver of the sanction, anumant<\/span>\\=a, and even if ordinarily it chooses to remain a
\nwitness and concede an automatic sanction, it can be, if it wills, the master
\nof its nature, Ishwara.<\/span> <\/p>\n

It is not
\nconceivable that the Spirit within is an automaton in the hands of Karma, a
\nslave in this life of its past actions; the truth must be less rigid and more
\nplastic. If a certain amount of results of past Karma is formulated in the
\npresent life, it must be with the consent of the psychic being which presides
\nover the new formation of its earth-experience and assents not merely to an
\noutward compulsory process, but to a secret Will and Guidance. <\/p>\n

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           That secret Will is not
\nmechanical, but spiritual; the guidance comes from an Intelligence which may
\nuse mechanical processes but is not their subject. Self-expression and
\nexperience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is
\nnecessary for the self-expression and experience of this life, whether it
\nintervenes as an automatic outcome of past lives or as a free selection of
\nresults and a continuity or as a new development, whatever is a means of
\ncreation of the future, that will be formulated: for the principle is not the
\nworking out of a mechanism of Law, but the development of the nature through
\ncosmic experience so that eventually it may grow out of the Ignorance. There
\nmust therefore be two elements, Karma as an instrument, but also the secret
\nConsciousness and Will within working through the mind, life and body as the
\nuser. Fate, whether purely mechanical or created by ourselves, a chain of our
\nown manufacture, is only one factor of existence; Being and its consciousness
\nand its will are a still more important factor. In Indian astrology which considers
\nall life-circumstances to be Karma, mostly predetermined or indicated in the
\ngraph of the stars, there is still provision made for the energy and force of
\nthe being which can change or cancel part or much of what is so written or even
\nall but the most imperative and powerful bindings of Karma. This is a
\nreasonable account of the balance: but there is also to be added to the
\ncomputation the fact that destiny is not simple but complex; the destiny which
\nbinds our physical being, binds it so long or in so far as a greater law does
\nnot intervene. Action belongs to the physical part of us, it is the physical
\noutcome of our being; but behind our surface is a freer Life-power, a freer
\nMind-power which has another energy and can create another destiny and bring it
\nin to modify the primary plan, and when the soul and self emerges, when we
\nbecome consciously spiritual beings, that change can cancel or wholly remodel
\nthe graph of our physical fate. Karma, then,\u2014or at least any mechanical law of
\nKarma,\u2014cannot be accepted as the sole determinant of circumstances and the
\nwhole machinery of rebirth and of our future evolution. <\/p>\n

But this is not
\nall; for the statement of the Law errs by an over-simplification and the
\narbitrary selection of a limited principle. Action is a resultant of the energy
\nof the being, but this <\/p>\n

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energy is not of one sole kind;
\nthe Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of
\nenergies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire,
\npassion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of
\ntruth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a
\npursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure,
\nlife-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or
\ncollective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction
\nof the body. All this makes an exceedingly complex sum of the manifold
\nexperience and many-sided action of the Spirit in life, and its variety cannot
\nbe set aside in favour<\/span> of a single principle, neither
\ncan it be hammered into so many sections of the single duality of ethical good
\nand evil; ethics, the maintenance of human standards of morality, cannot,
\ntherefore, be the sole preoccupation of the cosmic Law or the sole principle of
\ndetermination of the working of Karma. If it is true that the nature of the
\nenergy put forth must determine the nature of the result or outcome, all these
\ndifferences in the nature of the energy have to be taken into account and each
\nmust have its appropriate consequence. An energy of seeking for truth and
\nknowledge must have as its natural outcome,\u2014its reward or recompense, if you
\nwill,\u2014a growth into truth, an increase in knowledge; an energy used for
\nfalsehood should result in an increase of falsehood in the nature and a deeper
\nimmersion in the Ignorance. An energy of pursuit of beauty should have as its
\noutcome an increase in the sense of beauty, the enjoyment of beauty or, if so
\ndirected, in the beauty and harmony of the life and the nature. A pursuit of
\nphysical health, strength and capacity should create the strong man or the
\nsuccessful athlete. An energy put out in the pursuit of ethical good must have
\nas its outcome or reward or recompense an increase in virtue, the happiness of
\nethical growth or the sunny felicity and poise and purity of a simple and
\nnatural goodness, while the punishment of opposite energies would be a deeper
\nplunge into evil, a greater disharmony and perversion of the nature and, in
\ncase of excess, a great spiritual perdition, mahatī<\/i><\/span> vinastih<\/i><\/span>. An energy put forward
\nfor power or other vital ends must lead to an increase of the capacity for
\ncommanding these results or to the development of a vital strength and
\nplenitude. <\/p>\n

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           This is the ordinary disposition
\nof things in Nature and, if justice be demanded of her, this surely is justice
\nthat the energy and capacity put forward should have in its own kind its
\nfitting response from her. The prize of the race is assigned by her to the swift,
\nthe victory in battle to the brave and strong and skilful, the rewards of
\nknowledge to the capable intellect and the earnest seeker: these things she
\nwill not give to the good man who is sluggish or weak or skilless<\/span>
\nor stupid merely because he is righteous or respectable; if he covets these
\nother powers of life, he must qualify for them and put forward the right kind
\nof energy. If Nature did otherwise, she could well be accused of injustice;
\nthere is no reason to accuse her of injustice for this perfectly right and
\nnormal arrangement or to demand from her a rectification of the balance in a
\nfuture life so that the good man may be given as a natural reward for his
\nvirtue a high post or a large bank-balance or a happy, easy and well-appointed
\nlife. That cannot be the significance of rebirth or a sufficient basis for a
\ncosmic law of Karma.
\n <\/p>\n

There is indeed
\nin our life a very large element of what we call luck or fortune, which baulks
\nour effort of result or gives the prize without effort or to an inferior energy:
\nthe secret cause of these caprices of Destiny,\u2014or causes, for the roots of
\nFortune may be manifold,\u2014must be no doubt partly sought for in our hidden past;
\nbut it is difficult to accept the simple solution that good luck is a return
\nfor a forgotten virtuous action in a past life and bad luck a return for a sin
\nor crime. If we see the righteous man suffering here, it is difficult to
\nbelieve that this paragon of virtue was in the last life a scoundrel and is
\npaying, even after his exemplary conversion by a new birth, for sins he then
\ncommitted; nor, if the wicked triumphs, can we easily suppose that he was in
\nhis last life a saint who has suddenly taken a wrong turn but continues to
\nreceive a cash-return for his previous virtue. A total change of this kind
\nbetween life and life is possible though not likely to be frequent, but to
\nsaddle the new opposite personality with the rewards or punishments of the old
\nlooks like a purposeless and purely mechanical procedure. This and many other
\ndifficulties arise, and the too simple logic of the correlation is not so strong
\nas it claims to be; the idea <\/p>\n

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of retribution of Karma as a
\ncompensation for the injustice of life and Nature is a feeble basis for the
\ntheory, for it puts forward a shallow and superficial human feeling and
\nstandard as the sense of the cosmic Law and is based on an unsound reasoning;
\nthere must be some other and stronger foundation for the law of Karma. <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Here,
\nas so often, the error comes by our forcing a standard which is the creation of
\nour human mind into the larger, freer and more comprehensive ways of the cosmic
\nIntelligence. In the action attributed to the law of Karma two values are selected
\nout of the many created by Nature, moral good and evil, sin and virtue, and
\nvital-physical good and evil, outward happiness and suffering, outward good
\nfortune and ill-fortune, and it is supposed that there must be an equation
\nbetween them, the one must be the reward or punishment of the other, the final
\nsanction which it receives in the secret justice of Nature. This collocation is
\nevidently made from the viewpoint of a common vital-physical desire in our
\nmembers: because happiness and good fortune are what the lower part of our
\nvital being most desires, misfortune and suffering what it most hates and
\ndreads, it proceeds, when it accepts the moral demand upon it for the curbing
\nof its propensities, for self-restraint from doing evil and self-exertion
\ntowards doing what is good, to strike a bargain, to erect a cosmic Law which
\nwill compensate it for this strenuous self-compulsion and help it by the dread
\nof punishment to adhere to its difficult path of self-denial. But the truly
\nethical being does not need a system of rewards and punishments to follow the
\npath of good and shun the path of evil; virtue to him is its own reward, sin
\nbrings with it its own punishment in the suffering of a fall from his own law
\nof nature: this is the true ethical standard. On the contrary, a system of
\nrewards and punishments debases at once the ethical values of good, turns
\nvirtue into selfishness, a commercial bargain of self-interest, and replaces
\nthe right motive of abstinence from evil by a baser motive. Human beings have
\nerected the rule of reward and punishment as a social necessity in order to
\nrestrain the doing of things harmful to the community and encourage what is
\nhelpful to it; but to erect this human device into a general law of cosmic
\nNature or a law of the <\/p>\n

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supreme Being or the supreme law
\nof existence is a procedure of doubtful value. It is human, but also puerile,
\nto impose the insufficient and narrow standards of our own Ignorance on the
\nlarger and more intricate operations of cosmic Nature or on the action of the
\nsupreme Wisdom and supreme Good which draws or raises us towards itself by a
\nspiritual power working slowly in ourselves through our inner being and not by
\na law of temptation and compulsion upon our outer vital nature. If the soul is
\npassing through an evolution by a many-sided and complex experience, any law of
\nKarma or return to action and output of Energy, if it is to fit itself into
\nthat experience, must also be complex and cannot be of a simple and exiguous texture
\nor rigid and one-sided in its incidence. <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>At
\nthe same time, a partial truth of fact, not of fundamental or general
\nprinciple, may be admitted for this doctrine; for although the lines of the
\naction of energy are distinct and independent, they can act together and upon
\neach other, though not by any rigidly fixed law of correspondence. It is
\npossible that in the total method of the returns of Nature there intervenes a \u00a0s<\/span>trand<\/span> of connection
\nor rather of interaction between vital-physical good and ill and ethical good
\nand ill, a limited correspondence and meeting-point between divergent dualities
\nnot amounting to an inseparable coherence. Our own varying energies, desires,
\nmovements are mixed together in their working and can bring about a mixed
\nresult: our vital part does demand substantial and external rewards for virtue,
\nfor knowledge, for every intellectual, aesthetic, moral or physical effort; it
\nbelieves firmly in punishment for sin and even for ignorance. This may well
\neither create or else reply to a corresponding cosmic action; for Nature takes
\nus as we are and to some extent suits her movements to our need or our demands
\non her. If we accept the action of invisible Forces upon us, there may be also
\ninvisible Forces in Life-Nature that belong to the same plane of
\nConsciousness-Force as this part of our being, Forces that move according to
\nthe same plan or the same power-motive as our lower vital nature. It can be
\noften observed that when a self-assertive vital egoism goes on trampling on its
\nway without restraint or scruple all that opposes its will or desire, it raises
\na <\/p>\n

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mass of reactions against itself,
\nreactions of hatred, antagonism, unease in men which may have their result now
\nor hereafter, and still more formidable adverse reactions in universal Nature.
\nIt is as if the patience of Nature, her willingness to be used were exhausted;
\nthe very forces that the ego of the strong vital man seized and bent to its
\npurpose rebel and turn against him, those he had trampled on rise up and
\nreceive power for his downfall: the insolent vital force of Man strikes against
\nthe throne of Necessity and is dashed to pieces or the lame foot of Punishment
\nreaches at last the successful offender. This reaction to his energies may come
\nupon him in another life and not at once, it may be a burden of consequence he
\ntakes up in his return to the field of these Forces; it may happen on a small
\nas well as a large scale, to the small vital being and his small errors as well
\nas in these larger instances. For the principle will be the same; the mental
\nbeing in us seeking for success by a misuse of force which Nature admits but
\nreacts in the end against it, receives the adverse return in the guise of
\ndefeat and suffering and failure. But the promotion of this minor line of
\ncauses and results to the status of an invariable absolute Law or the whole
\ncosmic rule of action of a supreme Being is not valid; they belong to a middle region
\nbetween the inmost or supreme Truth of things and the impartiality of material
\nNature. <\/p>\n

In any case the
\nreactions of Nature are not in essence meant as reward or punishment; that is
\nnot their fundamental value, which is rather an inherent value of natural
\nrelations and, in so far as it affects the spiritual evolution, a value of the lessons
\nof experience in the soul’s cosmic training. If we touch fire, it burns, but there
\nis no principle of punishment in this relation of cause and effect, it is a
\nlesson of relation and a lesson of experience; so in all Nature’s dealings with
\nus there is a relation of things and there is a corresponding lesson of
\nexperience. The action of the cosmic Energy is complex and the same Forces may
\nact in different ways according to circumstances, to the need of the being, to
\nthe intention of the cosmic Power in its action; our life is affected not only
\nby its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces, and
\nall this vast interplay cannot be determined in its results solely by the one
\nfactor of an <\/p>\n

\nPage 814<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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all-governing moral law and its
\nexclusive attention to the merits and demerits, the sins and virtues of
\nindividual human beings. Nor can good fortune and evil fortune, pleasure and
\npain, happiness and misery and suffering be taken as if they existed merely as
\nincentives and deterrents to the natural being in its choice of good and evil.
\nIt is for experience, for growth of the individual being that the soul enters
\ninto rebirth; joy and grief, pain and suffering, fortune and misfortune are
\nparts of that experience, means of that growth: even, the soul may of itself
\naccept or choose poverty, misfortune and suffering as helpful to its growth,
\nstimulants of a rapid development, and reject riches and prosperity and success
\nas dangerous and conducive to a relaxation of its spiritual effort. Happiness
\nand success bringing happiness are, no doubt, a legitimate demand of humanity;
\nit is an attempt of Life and Matter to catch a pale reflection or a gross image
\nof felicity: but a superficial happiness and material success, however
\ndesirable to our vital nature, are not the main object of our existence; if
\nthat had been the intention, life would have been otherwise arranged in the
\ncosmic ordinance of things. All the secret of the circumstances of rebirth centres<\/span> around the one capital need of the soul, the need
\nof growth, the need of experience; that governs the line of its evolution and
\nall the rest is accessory. Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system
\nof universal justice with a cosmic Law of recompense and retribution as its
\nmachinery or a divine Legislator and Judge at its centre. It is seen by us
\nfirst as a great automatic movement of energy of Nature, and in it emerges a
\nself-developing<\/span> movement of consciousness, a movement
\ntherefore of Spirit working out its own being in the motion of energy of
\nNature. In this motion takes place the cycle of rebirth, and in that cycle the
\nsoul, the psychic being, prepares for itself,\u2014or the Divine isdom<\/span>
\nor the cosmic Consciousness-Force prepares for it and through its
\naction,\u2014whatever is needed for the next step in ts<\/span>
\nevolution, the next formation of personality, the coming nexus of necessary
\nexperiences constantly provided and organised<\/span> out of
\nthe continuous flux of past, present and future energies for each new birth,
\nfor each new step of the Spirit backward or forward or else still in a circle,
\nbut always a step in the growth <\/p>\n

\nPage 815<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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of the being towards its destined
\nself-unfolding in Nature.<\/p>\n

This brings us
\nto another element of the ordinary conception of rebirth which is not
\nacceptable, since it is an obvious error of the physical mind,\u2014the idea of the
\nsoul itself as a limited personality which survives unchanged from one birth to
\nanother. This too simple and superficial idea of the soul and personality is
\nborn of the physical mind’s inability to look beyond its own apparent
\nself-formation in this single existence. In its conception, what returns in the
\nreincarnation must be not only the same spiritual being, the same psychic
\nentity, but the same formation of nature that inhabited the body of the last
\nbirth; the body changes, the circumstances are different, but the form of the
\nbeing, the mind, the character, the disposition, temperament, tendencies are
\nthe same: John Smith in his new life is the same John Smith that he was in his
\nlast avatar. But if that were so, there would be no spiritual utility or
\nmeaning at all in rebirth; for there would be the repetition of the same little
\npersonality, the same small mental and vital formation to the end of Time. For
\nthe growth of the embodied being towards the full stature of its reality, not
\nonly a new experience, but a new personality is indispensable; to repeat the
\nsame personality would only be helpful if something had been incomplete in its
\nformation of its experience which needed to be worked out in the same cadre of
\nself, in the same building of mind and with the same formed capacity of energy.
\nBut normally this would be quite otiose: the soul that has been John Smith
\ncannot gain anything or fulfil<\/span> itself by remaining
\nJohn Smith for ever; it cannot achieve growth or perfection by repeating the
\nsame character, interests, occupations, types of inner and outer movements for
\never. Our life and rebirth would be always the same recurring decimal; it would
\nbe not an evolution but the meaningless continuity of an eternal repetition.
\nOur attachment to our present personality demands such a continuity, such a
\nrepetition; John Smith wants to be John Smith for ever: but the demand is
\nobviously ignorant and, if it were satisfied, that would be a frustration, not
\na fulfilment<\/span>. It is only by a change of outer self, a
\nconstant progression of the nature, a growth in the spirit that we can justify
\nour existence.<\/p>\n

Personality is
\nonly a temporary mental, vital, physical <\/p>\n

\nPage 816<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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formation which the being, the
\nreal Person, the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface,\u2014it is not the
\nself in its abiding reality. In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha<\/span>, makes a new formation, builds a new personal
\nquantum suitable for a new experience, for a new growth of its being. When it
\npasses from its body, it keeps still the same vital and mental form for a time,
\nbut the forms or sheaths dissolve and what is kept is only the essential
\nelements of the past quantum, of which some will but some may not be used in
\nthe next incarnation. The essential form of the past personality may remain as
\none element among many, one personality among many personalities of the same
\nPerson, but in the background, in the subliminal behind the veil of the surface
\nmind and life and body, contributing from there whatever is needed of itself to
\nthe new formation; but it will not itself be the whole formation or build anew
\nthe old unchanged type of nature. It may even be that the new quantum or
\nstructure of being will exhibit a quite contrary character and temperament,
\nquite other capacities, other very different tendencies; for latent potentials
\nmay be ready to emerge, or something already in action but inchoate may have
\nbeen held back in the last life which needed to be worked out but was kept over
\nfor a later and more suitable combination of the possibilities of the nature.
\nAll the past is indeed there, with its accelerated impetus and potentialities
\nfor the formation of the future, but all of it is not ostensibly present and
\nactive. The greater the variety of formations that have existed in the past and
\ncan be utilised<\/span>, the more rich and multitudinous the
\naccumulated buildings of experience, the more their essential result of
\ncapacity for knowledge, power, action, character, manifold response to the
\nuniverse can be brought forward and harmonised<\/span> in the
\nnew birth, the more numerous the veiled personalities mental, vital,
\nsubtle-physical that combine to enrich the new personality on the surface, the
\ngreater and more opulent will be that personality and the nearer to the
\npossible transition out of the completed mental stage of evolution to something
\nbeyond it. Such a complexity and gathering up of many personalities in one
\nperson can be a sign of a very advanced stage of the individual’s evolution
\nwhen there is a strong central being that holds all together and works towards harmonization <\/p>\n

\nPage 817<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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and integration of the whole
\nmany-sided movement of the nature. But this opulent taking up of the past would
\nnot be a repetition of personality; it would be a new formation and large
\nconsummation. It is not as a machinery for the persistent renewal or
\nprolongation of an unchanging personality that rebirth exists, but as a means
\nfor the evolution of the spiritual being in Nature. <\/p>\n

It becomes at
\nonce evident that in this plan of rebirth the false importance which our mind
\nattaches to the memory of past lives disappears altogether. If indeed rebirth
\nwere governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life’s whole intention
\nwere to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral,\u2014supposing that that is
\nthe intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in
\nthis presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retribution without
\nany reformatory meaning or purpose,\u2014then there is evidently a great stupidity
\nand injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its
\npast births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise<\/span> why he is rewarded or punished or to get any
\nadvantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue and the unprofitableness<\/span> of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on
\nhim. Even, since life seems often to teach the opposite lesson,\u2014for he sees the
\ngood suffer for their goodness and the wicked prosper by their wickedness,\u2014he
\nis rather likely to conclude in this perverse sense, because he has not the
\nmemory of an assured and constant result of experience which would show him
\nthat the suffering of the good man was due to his past wickedness and the
\nprosperity of the sinner due to the splendour<\/span> of his
\npast virtues, so that virtue is the best policy in the long run for any
\nreasonable and prudent soul entering into this dispensation of Nature. It might
\nbe said that the psychic being within remembers; but such a secret memory would
\nseem to have little effect or value on the surface. Or it may be said that it realises<\/span> what has happened and learns its lesson when it
\nreviews and assimilates its experiences after issuing from the body: but this
\nintermittent memory does not very apparently help in the next birth; for most
\nof us persist in sin and error and show no tangible signs of having profited by
\nthe teaching of our past experience. <\/p>\n

But if a
\nconstant development of being by a developing <\/p>\n

\nPage 818<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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cosmic experience is the meaning
\nand the building of a new personality in a new birth is the method, then any
\npersistent or complete memory of the past life or lives might be a chain and a
\nserious obstacle: it would be a force for prolonging the old temperament,
\ncharacter, preoccupations, and a tremendous burden hampering the free
\ndevelopment of the new personality and its formulation of new experience. A
\nclear and detailed memory of past lives, hatreds, rancours<\/span>,
\nattachments, connections would be equally a stupendous inconvenience; for it
\nwould bind the reborn being to a useless repetition or a compulsory
\ncontinuation of his surface past and stand heavily in the way of his bringing
\nout new possibilities from the depths of the spirit. If, indeed, a mental
\nlearning of things were the heart of the matter, if that were the process of
\nour development, memory would have a great importance: but what happens is a
\ngrowth of the soul-personality and a growth of the nature by an assimilation
\ninto our substance of being, a creative and effective absorption of the
\nessential results of past energies; in this process conscious memory is of no
\nimportance. As the tree grows by a subconscient<\/span> or inconscient<\/span> assimilation of action of sun and rain and wind
\nand absorption of earth-elements, so the being grows by a subliminal or intraconscient<\/span> assimilation and absorption of its results
\nof past becoming and an output of potentialities of future becoming. The law
\nthat deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom and
\nserves, not disserves its evolutionary purpose. <\/p>\n

The absence of
\nany memory of past existences is wrongly and very ignorantly taken as a
\ndisproof of the actuality of rebirth; for if even in this life it is difficult
\nto keep all the memories of our past, if they often fade into the background or
\nfade out altogether, if no recollection remains of our infancy, and yet with
\nall this hiatus of memory we can grow and be, if the mind is even capable of
\ntotal loss of memory of past events and its own identity and yet it is the same
\nbeing who is there and the lost memory can one day be recovered, it is evident
\nthat so radical a change as a transition to other worlds followed by new birth
\nin a new body ought normally to obliterate altogether the surface or mental
\nmemory, and yet that would not annul the identity of the soul or
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 819<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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he growth of the nature. This
\nobliteration of the surface mental memory is all the more certain and quite
\ninevitable if there is a new personality of the same being and a new
\ninstrumentation which takes the place of the old, a new mind, a new life, a new
\nbody: the new brain cannot be expected to carry in itself the images held by
\nthe old brain; the new life or mind cannot be summoned to keep the deleted
\nimpressions of the old mind and life that have been dissolved and exist no
\nmore. There is, no doubt, the subliminal being which may remember, since it
\ndoes not suffer from the disabilities of the surface; but the surface mind is
\ncut off from the subliminal memory which alone might retain some clear
\nrecollection or distinct impression of past lives. This separation is necessary
\nbecause the new personality has to be built up on the surface without conscious
\nreference to what is within; as with all the rest of the superficial being, so
\nour surface personality too is indeed formed by an action from within, but of
\nthat action it is not conscious, it seems to itself to be self-formed or
\nready-made or formed by some ill-understood action of universal Nature. And yet
\nfragmentary recollections of past births do sometimes remain in spite of these
\nalmost insuperable obstacles; there are even a very few cases of astonishingly
\nexact and full memory in the child-mind. Finally, at a certain stage of
\ndevelopment of the being when the inner begins to predominate over the outer
\nand come to the front, past-life memory does sometimes begin to emerge as if
\nfrom some submerged layer, but more readily in the shape of a perception of the
\nstuff and power of past personalities that are effective in the composition of
\nthe being in the present life than in any precise and accurate detail of event
\nand circumstance, although this too can recur in parts or be recovered by
\nconcentration from the subliminal vision, from some secret memory or from our inner
\nconscious-substance. But this detailed memory is of minor importance to Nature
\nin her normal work and she makes small or no provision for it: it is the
\nshaping of the future evolution of the being with which she is concerned; the
\npast is put back, kept behind the veil and used only as an occult source of
\nmaterials for the present and the future.
\n <\/p>\n

This conception
\nof the Person and Personality, if accepted, <\/p>\n

\nPage 820<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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must modify at the same time our
\ncurrent ideas about the immortality of the soul; for, normally, when we insist
\non the soul’s undying existence, what is meant is the survival after death of a
\ndefinite unchanging personality which was and will always remain the same
\nthroughout eternity. It is the very imperfect superficial \u201cI\u201d of the moment, evidently
\nregarded by Nature as a temporary form and not worth preservation, for which we
\ndemand this stupendous right to survival and immortality. But the demand is
\nextravagant and cannot be conceded; the \u201cI\u201d of the moment can only merit
\nsurvival if it consents to change, to be no longer itself but something else,
\ngreater, better, more luminous in knowledge, more moulded<\/span>
\nin the image of the eternal inner beauty, more and more progressive towards the
\ndivinity of the secret Spirit. It is that secret Spirit or divinity of Self in
\nus which is imperishable, because it is unborn and eternal. The psychic entity
\nwithin, its representative, the spiritual individual in us, is the Person that
\nwe are; but the \u201cI\u201d of this moment, the \u201cI\u201d of this life is only a formation, a
\ntemporary personality of this inner Person: it is one step of the many steps of
\nour evolutionary change, and it serves its true purpose only when we pass
\nbeyond it to a farther step leading nearer to a higher degree of consciousness
\nand being. It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists
\nbefore birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless
\nSpirit into the terms of Time.<\/p>\n

What our normal
\ndemand of survival asks for is a similar survival for our mind, our life, even
\nour body; the dogma of the resurrection of the body attests to this last
\ndemand,\u2014even as it has been the root of the age-long effort of man to discover the
\nelixir of immortality or any means magical, alchemic or scientific to conquer
\nphysically the death of the body. But this aspiration could only succeed if the
\nmind, life or body could put on something of the immortality and divinity of
\nthe indwelling Spirit. There are certain circumstances in which the survival of
\nthe outer mental personality representative of the inner mental Purusha<\/span> could be possible. It could happen if our mental
\nbeing came to be so powerfully individualised<\/span> on the
\nsurface and so much one with the inner mind and inner mental Purusha<\/span> and at the same time so open plastically to the
\nprogressive action of the Infinite <\/p>\n

\nPage 821<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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that the soul no longer needed to
\ndissolve the old form of mind and create a new one in order to progress. A
\nsimilar individualisation<\/span>, integration and openness
\nof the vital being on the surface would alone make possible a similar survival
\nof the life-part in us, the outer vital personality representative of the inner
\nlife-being, the vital Purusha<\/span>. What would really happen
\nthen is that the wall between the inner self and the outer man would have
\nbroken down and the permanent mental and vital being from within, the mental
\nand vital representatives of the immortal psychic entity, would govern the
\nlife. Our mind-nature and our life-nature could then be a continuous
\nprogressive expression of the soul and not a nexus of successive formations
\npreserved only in their essence. Our mental personality and life-personality
\nwould then subsist without dissolution from birth to birth; they would be in
\nthis sense immortal, persistently surviving, continuous in their sense of
\nidentity. This would be evidently an immense victory of soul and mind and life
\nover the Inconscience<\/span> and the limitations of material
\nNature. <\/p>\n

But such a
\nsurvival could only persist in the subtle body; the being would still have to
\ndiscard its physical form, pass to other worlds and in its return put on a new
\nbody. The awakened mental Purusha<\/span> and vital Purusha<\/span>, preserving the mind-sheath and the life-sheath of
\nthe subtle body which are usually discarded, would return with them into a new
\nbirth and keep a vivid and sustained sense of a permanent being of mind and
\nlife constituted by the past and continuing into the present and future; but
\nthe basis of physical existence, the material body, could not be preserved even
\nby this change. The physical being could only endure, if by some means its
\nphysical causes of decay and disruption could be overcome and at the same time
\nit could be made so plastic and progressive in its structure and its
\nfunctioning that it would answer to each change demanded of it by the progress
\nof the inner Person;1 <\/sup>it must be able to keep pace <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> Even if Science,\u2014 physical Science or occult
\nScience, \u2014 were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite
\nsurvival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become
\na fit instrument of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some
\nway to abandon it and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical
\ncauses of death are not its sole or its true cause; its true inmost reason is
\nthe spiritual necessity for the evolution of a new being.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage 822<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

with the soul in its formation of
\nself-expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity
\nand the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual
\nexistence. This consummation of a triple immortality,\u2014immortality of the nature
\ncompleting the essential immortality of the Spirit and the psychic survival of death,\u2014might
\nbe the crown of rebirth and a momentous indication of the conquest of the
\nmaterial Inconscience<\/span> and Ignorance even in the very
\nfoundation of the reign of Matter. But the true immortality would still be the
\neternity of the Spirit; the physical survival could only be relative,
\nterminable at will, a temporal sign of the Spirit’s victory here over Death and
\nMatter. <\/p>\n

\nPage 823<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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