The
Writings of C
Reincarnation
From
A Textbook of
Theosophy
By
C
This
life of the ego in his own world, which is so glorious and so fully satisfying
for the developed man, plays but a very small part in the life of the ordinary
person, for in his case the ego has not yet reached a sufficient stage of
development to be awake in his causal body. In obedience to the law of nature
he
has withdrawn into it, but in doing so he has lost the sensation of vivid life,
and restless desire to feel this once more pushes him in the direction of
another descent into matter.
This
is the scheme of evolution appointed for man at the present stage – that he
shall develop by descending into grosser matter, and then ascend to carry back
into himself the result of the experiences so obtained. His real life,
therefore, covers millions of years, and what we are in the habit of calling a
life is only one day of this greater existence. Indeed, it is in reality only a
small part of one day; for a life of seventy years in the physical world is
often succeeded by a period of twenty times that length spent in higher spheres.
Every
one of us has a long line of these physical lives behind him, and the ordinary
man has a fairly long line still in front of him. Each of such lives is a day
at school. The ego puts upon himself his garment of flesh and goes forth into
the school of the physical world to learn certain lessons. He learns them, or
does not learn them, or partially learns them, as the case may be, during his
school day of earth life; then he lays aside the vesture of the flesh and
returns home to his own level for rest and refreshment. In the morning of each
new life he takes up again his lesson at the point where he left it the night
before. Some lessons he may be able to learn in one day, while others may take
him many days.
If
he is an apt pupil and learns quickly what is needed, if he obtains an
intelligent grasp of the rules of the school, and takes the trouble to adapt
his conduct to them, his school life is comparatively short, and when it is
over he goes forth fully equipped into the real life of the higher worlds for
which all this is only a preparation. Other egos are duller boys who do not
learn so quickly; some of them do not understand the rules of the school, and
through that ignorance are constantly breaking them; others are wayward, and
even when they see the rules they cannot at once bring themselves to act in
harmony with them. All of these have a longer school life, and by their own
actions they delay their entry upon the real life of the higher worlds.
For
this is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to theend.
He has no choice as to that; but the length of time which he will take in
qualifying himself for the higher examinations is left entirely to his own
discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school life is not a thing in itself,
but only a preparation for a more glorious and far wider life, endeavors to
comprehend as fully as possible the rules of his school, and shapes his life in
accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no time may be lost in the
learning of whatever lessons are necessary. He co-operates intelligently with
the Teachers, and sets himself to do the maximum of work which is possible for
him, in order that as soon as he can he may come of age and enter into his
kingdom as a glorified ego.
Theosophy
explains to us the laws under which this school life must be lived, and in that
way gives a great advantage to its students. The first great law is that of
evolution. Every man has to become a perfect man, to unfold to the fullest
degree the divine possibilities which lie latent within him, for that
unfoldment is the object of the entire scheme so far as he is concerned. This
law of evolution steadily presses him onward to higher and higher achievements.
The
wise man tries to anticipate its demands – to run ahead of the necessary
curriculum, for in that way he not only avoids all collision with it, but he
obtains the maximum of assistance from its action. The man who lags behind in
the race of life finds its steady pressure constantly constraining him – a
pressure which, if resisted, rapidly becomes painful. Thus the laggard on the
path of evolution has always the sense of being hunted and driven by fate,
while the man who intelligently co-operates is left perfectly free to choose
the direction in which he shall move, so long as it is onward and upward.
The
second great law under which this evolution is taking place is the law of cause
and effect. There can be no effect without its cause, and every cause must
produce its effect. They are in fact not two but one, for the effect is really
part of the cause, and he who sets one in motion sets the other also. There is in Nature no
such idea as that of reward or punishment, but only of cause and
effect.
Any one can see this in connection with mechanics or chemistry; the clairvoyant
sees it equally clearly with regard to the problems of evolution.
The
same law obtains in the higher as in the lower worlds; there, as here, the
angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence. It is a law of
mechanics that action and reaction are equal and opposite. In the almost
infinitely finer matter of the higher worlds the reaction is by no means always
instantaneous;
it may sometimes be spread over long periods of time, but it returns inevitably
and exactly.
Just
as certain in its working as the mechanical law in the physical world is the
higher law, according to which the man who sends out a good thought or does a
good action receives good in return, while the man who sends out an evil
thought or does an evil action receives evil in return with equal accuracy –
once more, not in the least as a reward or punishment administered by some
external will, but simply as the definite and mechanical result of his own
activity. Man has learnt to appreciate a mechanical result in the physical
world, because the reaction is usually almost immediate and can be seen by him.
He does not invariably understand the reaction in the higher worlds because
that takes a wider sweep, and often returns not in this physical life, but in
some future one.
The
action of this law affords the explanation of a number of the problems of
ordinary life. It accounts for the different destinies imposed upon people, and
also for the differences in the people themselves. If one man is clever in a
certain direction and another is stupid, it is because in a previous life the
clever man has devoted much effort to practice in that particular direction,
while the stupid man is trying it for the first time. The genius and the precocious
child are examples not of the favoritism of some deity but of the result
produced by previous lives of application. All the varied circumstances which
surround us are the result of our own actions in the past, precisely as are the
qualities of which we find ourselves in possession. We are what we have made
ourselves, and our circumstances are such as we have deserved.
There
is, however, a certain adjustment or apportionment of these effects. Though the
law is a natural law and mechanical in its operation, there are nevertheless
certain great Angels who are concerned with its administration.
They
cannot change by one feather weight the amount of the result which follows upon
any given thought or act, but they can within certain limits expedite or delay
its action, and decide what form it shall take.
If
this were not done there would be at least a possibility that in his earlier
stages the man might blunder so seriously that the results of his blundering
might be more than he could bear. The plan of the Deity is to give man a
limited amount of freewill; if he uses that small amount well, he earns the
right to a little more next time; if he used it badly, suffering comes upon him
as the result of such evil use, and he finds himself restrained by the result
of his previous actions. As the man learns how to use his free will, more and
more of it is entrusted to him, so that he can acquire for himself practically
unbounded freedom in the direction of good, but his power to do wrong is
strictly restricted. He can progress as rapidly as he will, but he cannot wreck
his life in his ignorance. In the earlier stages of the savage life of
primitive man it is natural that there should be on the whole more of evil than
of good, and if the entire result of his actions came at once upon a man as yet
so little developed, it might well crush the newly evolved powers which are
still so feeble.
Besides
this, the effects of his actions are varied in character. While some of them
produce immediate results, others need much more time for their action, and so
it comes to pass that as the man develops he has above him a hovering cloud of
undischarged results, some of them good, some of them bad. Out of this mass
(which we may regard for the purposes of analogy much as though it were a debt
owing to the powers of nature) a certain amount falls due in each of his
successive births; and that amount, so assigned, may be thought of as the man’s
destiny for that particular life.
All
that it means is that a certain amount of joy and a certain amount of suffering
are due to him, and will unavoidably happen to him; how he will meet this
destiny and what use he will make of it, that is left entirely to his own
option. It is a certain amount of force which has to work itself out. Nothing
can prevent the action of that force, but its action may always be modified by
the application of a new force in another direction, just as is the case in
mechanics. The result of past evil is like any other debt; it may be paid in
one large check upon the bank of life – by some one supreme catastrophe; or it
may be paid in a number of smaller notes, in minor troubles and worries; in
some cases it may even be paid in the small change of a vast number of petty
annoyances. But one thing is quite certain – that, in some form or other, paid
it will have to be.
The
conditions of our present life, then, are absolutely the result of our own
action in the past; and the other side of that statement is that our actions in
this life are building up conditions for the next one. A man who finds himself
limited
either in powers or in outer circumstances may not always be able to make
himself or his conditions all that he would wish in this life; but he can
certainly secure for the next one whatever he chooses.
Man’s
every action ends not with himself, but invariably affects others around him.
In some cases this effect may be comparatively trivial, while in others it may
be of the most serious character. The trivial results, whether good or bad are
simply small debits or credits in our account with Nature; but
the
greater effects, whether good or bad, make a personal account which is to be
settled with the individual concerned.
A
man who gives a meal to a hungry beggar, or cheers him by a kindly word, will
receive the result of his good action as part of a kind of general fund of
Nature’s benefits; but one who by some good action changes the whole current of
another man’s life will assuredly have to meet that same man again in a future
life, in order that he who has been benefited may have the opportunity of
repaying the kindness that has been done to him. One who causes annoyance to
another will suffer proportionately for it somewhere, somehow, in the future,
though he may never meet again the man whom he has troubled; but one who does
serious harm to another, one who wrecks his life or retards his evolution, must
certainly meet his victim again at some later point in the course of their
lives, so that he may have the opportunity, by kindly and self-sacrificing
service, of counterbalancing the wrong which he has done. In short, large debts
must be paid personally, but small ones go into the general fund.
In
every nation there exist an almost infinite number of diverse conditions,
riches and poverty, a wide field of opportunities or a total lack of them,
facilities for development or conditions under which development is difficult
or well-nigh impossible. Amidst all these infinite possibilities the pressure
of the law of evolution tends to guide the man to precisely those which best
suit his needs at the stage at which he happens to
be.
But
the action of this law is limited by that other law of which we spoke, the law
of cause and effect. The man’s actions in the past may not have been such as to
deserve (if we may put it so) the best possible opportunities; he may have set
in motion in his past certain forces the inevitable result of which will be to
produce limitations; and these limitations may operate to prevent his receiving
that best possible of opportunities, and so as the result of his own actions in
the past he may have to put up with the second-best. So we may say that the
action of the law of evolution, which if left to itself would do the very best
possible for every man, is restrained by the man’s own previous actions.
An
important feature in that limitation – one which may act most powerfully for
good or for evil – is the influence of the group of egos with which the man has
made definite links in the past – those with whom he has formed strong ties of
love or hate, of helping or of injury – those souls whom he must meet again
because
of connections made with them in days of long ago. His relation with them is a
factor which must be taken into consideration before it can be determined where
and how he shall be reborn.
The
will of the Deity is man’s evolution. The effort of that nature which is an
expression of the Deity is to give the man whatever is most suitable for that
evolution; but this is conditioned by the man’s deserts in the past and by the
links which he has already formed. It may be assumed that a man descending into
incarnation could learn the lessons necessary for that life in any one of a
hundred positions. From half of these or more than half he may be debarred by
the consequences of some of his many and varied actions in the past.
Among
the few possibilities which remain open to him, the choice of one possibility
in particular may be determined by the presence in that family or in that
neighborhood of other egos upon whom he has a claim for services rendered, or
to whom he in his turn owes a debt of love.
For more info on Theosophy
Try these
Cardiff
Theosophical Society meetings are informal
and there’s always a cup of tea afterwards
The Cardiff
Theosophical Society Website
The National Wales Theosophy
Wesbsite
Dave’s
Streetwise Theosophy Boards
If you run a Theosophy
Group then please
Feel free to use any
material on this Website
Theosophy Cardiff’s
Instant Guide to Theosophy
One
Liners & Quick Explanations
The main criteria for the
inclusion of
links on this site is that
they are have some
relationship (however tenuous)
to Theosophy
and are lightweight, amusing
or entertaining.
Topics include Quantum Theory
and Socks,
Dick Dastardly and Legendary Blues Singers.
No Aardvarks were harmed
in the
History
of the Theosophical Society
General pages about Wales,
Welsh History
and The History of Theosophy
in Wales
Her Teachers Morya & Koot Hoomi
The Most
Basic Theosophy Website in the Universe
If you run a Theosophy Group
you can use
this as an introductory
handout
Lentil burgers, a thousand
press ups before breakfast and
the daily 25 mile run may put
it off for a while but death
seems to get most of us in the
end. We are pleased to
present for your
consideration, a definitive work on the
subject by a Student of
Katherine Tingley entitled
Theosophy and the Number Seven
A selection of articles relating to the esoteric
significance of the Number 7 in Theosophy
The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
The Earth Base for Evolutionary Theosophy
The Birmingham Annie Besant Lodge
_____________________
Camberley,
Surrey, England GU15 - 2LF
Tekels Park to be Sold to a
Developer
Concerns are
raised about the fate of the wildlife as
The Spiritual
Retreat, Tekels Park in Camberley,
Surrey, England is to be sold to a developer
Tekels Park is a
50 acre woodland park, purchased
for the Adyar Theosophical Society in England
in 1929.
In addition to
concern about the park, many are
worried about the future of the Tekels Park
Deer
as they are not a protected species.
Many feel that
the sale of a sanctuary
for wildlife to a developer can
only mean
disaster for the park’s animals
Confusion as the
Theoversity moves out of
Tekels Park to Southampton,
Glastonbury &
Chorley in Lancashire while the
leadership claim
that the Theosophical Society will
carry on using
Tekels Park despite its sale to a
developer
Future of Tekels Park Badgers
in Doubt
Tekels Park & the Loch
Ness Monster
A Satirical view
of the sale of Tekels Park
in Camberley,
Surrey to a developer
The Toff’s Guide to the Sale
of Tekels Park
What the men in
top hats have to
say about the
sale of Tekels Park
____________________
Theosophy Cardiff
Nirvana Pages
The
Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
The
Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
The
Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
The Terraced Maze of Glastonbury Tor
Glastonbury and Joseph of Arimathea
The
Grave of King Arthur & Guinevere
Views
of Glastonbury High Street
The
Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
__________________________
Classic Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy
By C
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
Try these if you are looking for a
local Theosophy
Group or Centre
UK
Listing of Theosophical Groups
Worldwide
Directory of Theosophical Links
General pages about Wales,
Welsh History
and The History of Theosophy
in Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom
and has an
eastern border with England.
The land area is
just over 8,000 square miles.
Snowdon in North
Wales is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long.
The population of Wales as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.
#theosophy_headquarters
#theosophical events #theosophy_cardiff
#theosophy_wales #national_wales_theosophy
#blavatsky #olcott #judge #secret_doctrine
#isis_unveiled