Reincarnation by Annie Besant
Published in the 1900's
THERE are but three
explanations of human inequalities, whether of faculties, of opportunities, of circumstances
:
1. Special Creation by God,
implying that man is helpless, his destiny being controlled by an arbitrary and
incalculable will.
2. Heredity, as suggested by
science, implying an equal helplessness on man's part, he being the result of a
past over which he has no control.
3. Reincarnation, implying that
man can become master of his destiny, he being the result of his own individual
past, being what he has made himself.
Evolution is taken for granted
in everything except in the life of spiritual intelligence, called man; he has no
individual past, although he has an individual endless future. The character he
brings with him- on which more than on anything else his destiny on earth
depends- is, on this hypothesis, specially created for him by God, and imposed
on him without any choice of his own; out of the lucky bag of creation he may
draw a prize or a blank, the blank being a doom of misery; such as it is he
must take it.
Further, science can offer no
explanation of the facts of high intelligence and saintly life. The child of a saint
may be a profligate; the child of a genius may be a dolt. Genius "comes
out of the blue".
Reincarnation restores justice
to God and power to man. Every human spirit enters into life a germ, without
knowledge, without conscience, without discrimination. By experience, pleasant
and painful, man gathers materials, and builds them into mental and moral
faculties. Thus the character with which he is born is self-made, and marks the
stage he has reached in his long evolution. The good disposition, the fine
capacities, the noble nature, are the spoils of many a hard-fought field, the
wages of heavy and arduous toil. The reverse marks an early stage of growth,
the small development of the spiritual germ.
MEMORY
No question is more often
heard, when reincarnation is mentioned, than: "If I have been here before,
why do I not remember it?" A little consideration of facts will answer the
question.
First of all, let us note the
fact that we forget more of our present lives than we remember. Many people cannot
remember learning to read; yet the fact that they can read proves the learning.
Incidents of childhood and youth have faded
from our memory, yet they have left traces on our character. A fall in babyhood
is forgotten, yet the victim is none the less a cripple. And this although we
are using the same body in which the forgotten
events were experienced.
If this be true of experiences
encountered in the present body, how much more must it be true of experiences
encountered in former bodies, which died and decayed many centuries ago. Our
present body and brain have had no share in those far-off happenings; how
should memory assert itself through them ? Our permanent body, which remains
with us throughout the cycle of reincarnation, is the spiritual body; the lower
garments fall away and return to their elements ere we can become reincarnated.
The new mental, astral and physical matter in which we are re-clothed for a new
life on earth receives from the spiritual intelligence, garbed only in the
spiritual body, not the experiences of the past but the qualities, tendencies
and capacities which have been made out of those experiences. Our conscience, our
instinctive response to emotional and intellectual appeals, our recognition of
the force of a logical argument, our assent to fundamental principles of right
and wrong, these are the traces of past experiences. A man of low intellectual
type cannot "see" a logical or mathematical proof; a man of low moral
type cannot "feel" the compelling force of a high moral ideal.
GROWTH OF CAPACITY
When a philosophy or a science
is quickly grasped and applied, when an art is mastered without study, memory
is there in power though past facts of learning are forgotten; as Plato said,
it is a reminiscence.
When we feel intimate with a
strange on first meeting, memory is there. Whenever we shrink back with strong
repulsion from another stranger, memory is there, the spirit's recognition of
an ancient foe.
These affinities, these
warnings, come from the undying spiritual intelligence which is yourself: we remember,
though working in the body we cannot impress it on our brain memory. The mind,
body, the brain, are new; the spirit
furnishes the mind with the results of the past, not with the memory of its
events.
As a merchant, closing the
year's ledger and opening a new one does not enter in the new one all the items
of the old, but only its balances, so does the spirit hand on to the new brain
his judgements on the experiences of a life that is closed, the conclusions to
which he has come, the decisions at which he has arrived. This is the stock
handed on to the new life, the mental furniture for its new dwelling - a real memory.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH
Moreover, memory of past lives
can be gained. But the gaining is a matter of steady effort, of prolonged meditation,
whereby the restless mind, ever running outwards, may be controlled and
rendered quiescent, so that it may be sensitive and responsive to the spirit
and receive from him the memory of the past. Only as we can hear the still
small voice of the spirit may the story of the past be unrolled, for the spirit
alone can remember, and cast down the rays of his memory to enlighten the
darkness of the fleeting lower nature to which he is temporarily attached.
Pain follows on mistakes and is
ever remedial; strength is developed by struggle; we reap after every sowing
the inevitable result, happiness growing out of the right, sorrow out of the
wrong.
A high moral standard, though
placing a man at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, perhaps even
leading to the sacrifice of his physical life, builds a noble character for his
future lives and shapes him to become a servant of the nation.
In every case the individual
past explains the individual present, and when the laws of growth are known and
obeyed a man can build with a sure hand his future destiny, shaping his growth
in lives of ever increasing beauty until he reaches the stature of the Perfect
Man.
There is no religion higher
than truth.
1-To form a nucleus of the
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste
or colour .
2-To encourage the study of
comparative religion, philosophy and science.
3-To investigate unexplained
laws of nature and the powers latent in man.
***************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment