Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00286)

Mar 15 2004

Re: REINCARNATION and the MAHATMA LETTERS 


Dear friends:

I found quite a few references to reincarnation in the MAHATMA LETTERS
(Barker Edition pages)

Please have a look at pages: 46, 101, 104, 117, 172, 175-6, 179, 182-3,
187, 198, 265, 328, 397, 404, 

We might note that ISIS UNVEILED was published in 1877, and from 1879 to
1888 (when the SECRET DOCTRINE was issued) many articles on
reincarnation appeared in the THEOSOPHIST, PATH and LUCIFER.  

Here is one, which I reprint because it is dated in 1882 at the height
of the time when the MAHATMA LETTERS were being exchanged

----------------------------

"ISIS UNVEILED" AND THE "THEOSOPHIST" ON REINCARNATION

Article by H. P. Blavatsky

IN LIGHT (July 8,’82) C.C.M. quotes from the THEOSOPHIST (June 1882) a
sentence which appeared in the Editor's Note at the foot of an article
headed "SEEMING DISCREPANCIES."

Then, turning to the review of "THE PERFECT WAY" in the same number, he
quotes at length from "an authoritative teaching of the later period,"
as he adds rather sarcastically. Then, again, a long paragraph from
ISIS. The three quotations and the remarks of our friend run thus: 


"There never was, nor can there be, any radical discrepancy between the
teachings in 'Isis' ('Isis Unveiled') and those of this later period, as
both proceed from one and the same source--the ADEPT BROTHERS. (Editor's
Note in Seeming Discrepancies.") 


Having drawn the attention of his readers to the above assertion C.C.M.
proceeds to show--as he thinks--its fallacy: 


"To begin with, re-Incarnation--if other worlds besides this are taken
into account--is the regular routine of nature. But re-Incarnation in
the next higher objective world is one thing; re-Incarnation on this
earth is another. Even that takes place over and over again till the
highest condition of humanity, as known on this earth, is attained, but
not afterwards, and here is the clue to the mystery.... But once let a
man be as far perfected by successive re-incarnations as the present
race will permit, and then his next re-incarnation will be among the
early growths of the next higher world, where the earliest growths are
far higher than the highest here. The ghastly mistake that the modern
re-incarnationists make is in supposing that there can be a return on
this earth to lower bodily forms";--not, therefore, that man is
re-incarnated as man again and again upon this earth, for that is laid
down as truth in the above cited passages in the most positive and
explicit form." (Review of T.P.W. in the Theosophist.) 


And now for "Isis": 


"We will now present a few fragments of this mysterious doctrine of
re-Incarnation--as distinct from metempsychosis--which we have from an
authority. Re-Incarnation, i.e., the appearance of the same
individual--or rather, of his astral monad--twice on the same planet is
not a rule in nature; it is an exception, like the teratological
phenomenon of a two-headed infant. It is preceded by a violation of the
laws of harmony of nature and happens only when the latter, seeking to
restore its disturbed equilibrium, violently throws back into earth-life
the astral monad, which has been tossed out of the circle of necessity
by crime or accident. Thus in cases of abortion, of infants dying before
a certain age, and of congenital and incurable idiocy, nature's original
design to produce a perfect human being has been interrupted.


Therefore, while the gross matter of each of these several entities is
suffered to disperse itself at death through the vast realm of being,
the immortal Spirit and astral monad of the individual--the latter
having been set apart to animate a frame, and the former to shed its
divine light on the corporeal organization--must try a second time to
carry out the purpose of the creative intelligence. If reason has been
so far developed as to become active and discriminative, there is no
re-incarnation on, this earth, for the three parts of the triune man
have been united together, and he is capable of running the race. But
when the new being has not passed beyond the condition of monad, or
when, as in the idiot, the trinity has not been completed, the immortal
spark which illuminates it has to re-enter on the earthly planet, as it
was frustrated in its first attempt. . . . 


Further, the same occult doctrine recognizes another possibility, albeit
so rare and so vague that it is really useless to mention it. Even the
modern Occidental Occultists deny it, though it is universally accepted
in Eastern countries." . . . 


This is the occasional return of the terribly depraved human Spirits
which have fallen to the eighth sphere--it is unnecessary to quote the
passage at length. Exclusive of that rare and doubtful possibility, then
"ISIS"--I have quoted from volume I, pp. 351-2--allows only three
cases--abortion, very early death, and idiocy--in which re-Incarnation
on this earth occurs. 
I am a long-suffering student of the mysteries, more apt to accuse my
own stupidity than to make "seeming discrepancies" an occasion for
scoffing. 


But after all, two and three will not make just four; black is not
white, nor, in reference to plain and definite statements, is "Yes"
equivalent to "No." If there is one thing which I ardently desire to be
taught, it is the truth about this same question of re-Incarnation. I
hope I am not, as a dutiful Theosophist, expected to reconcile the
statement of "Isis" with that of this authoritative Reviewer. But there
is one consolation. The accomplished authoress of "Isis" cannot have
totally forgotten the teaching on this subject therein contained. She,
therefore, certainly did not dictate the statements of the Reviewer. If
I may conjecture that Koot Hoomi stands close behind the latter, then
assuredly Koot Hoomi is not, as has been maliciously suggested, an alias
for Madame Blavatsky. 
       
"C.C.M."


We hope not--for Koot Hoomi's sake. Mme. B. would become too vain and
too proud, could she but dream of such an honour. But how true the
remark of the French classic: La critique est aisée, mais l'art est
difficile--though we feel more inclined to hang our diminished head in
sincere sorrow and exclaim: Et tu Brute!--than to quote old truisms.
Only, where that (even) "seeming discrepancy" is to be found between the
two passages--except by those who are entirely ignorant of the occult
doctrine--will be certainly a mystery to every Eastern Occultist who
reads the above and who studies at the same school as the reviewer of
"The Perfect Way." Nevertheless the latter is chosen as the weapon to
break our head with. It is sufficient to read No. 1 of the Fragments of
Occult Truth, and ponder over the septenary constitution of man into
which the triple human entity is divided by the occultists, to perceive
that the "astral" monad is not the "Spiritual" monad and vice versa.
That there is no discrepancy whatsoever between the two statements, may
be easily shown, and we hope will be shown, by our friend the
"reviewer." The most that can be said of the passage quoted from Isis
is, that it is incomplete, chaotic, vague, perhaps--clumsy, as many more
passages in that work, the first literary production of a foreigner, who
even now can hardly boast of her knowledge of the English language.
Therefore, in the face of the statement from the very correct and
excellent review of "The Perfect Way"--we say again that "Reincarnation,
i.e., the appearance of the same individual--or rather, of his astral
monad (or the personality as claimed by the modern
Reincarnationists)--twice on the same planet is not a rule in nature
"and that it is an exception." Let us try once more to explain our
meaning. The reviewer speaks of the "Spiritual Individuality" or the
Immortal Monad as it is called, i.e. the 7th and 6th Principles in the
Fragments. In Isis we refer to the personality or the Finite astral
monad, a compound of imponderable elements composed of the 5th and 4th
principles. The former as an emanation of the ONE absolute is
indestructible; the latter as an elementary compound is finite and
doomed sooner or later to destruction with the exception of the more
spiritualized portions of the 5th principle (the Manas or mind) which
are assimilated by the 6th principle when it follows the 7th to its
"gestation state" to be reborn or not reborn, as the case may be, in the
Arupa Loka (the Formless World). The seven principles, forming, so to
say, a triad and a Quaternary, or, as some have it a "Compound Trinity"
subdivided into a triad and two duads may be better understood in the
following groups of Principles : 

 
And now we ask,--where is the "discrepancy" or contradiction? Whether
man was good, bad, or indifferent, Group II has to become either a
"shell," or to be once or several times more reincarnated under
"exceptional circumstances." There is a mighty difference in our Occult
doctrine between an impersonal Individuality, and an individual
Personality. C.C.M. will not be reincarnated; nor will he be in his next
re-birth C.C.M., but quite a new being, born of the thoughts and deeds
of C.C.M.: his own creation, the child and fruit of his present life,
the effect of the causes he is now producing. Shall we say then with the
Spiritists that C.C.M., the man, we know, will be re-born again? No; but
that his divine Monad will be clothed thousands of times yet before the
end of the Grand Cycle, in various human forms, every one of them a new
personality. Like a mighty tree that clothes itself every spring with a
new foliage, to see it wither and die towards autumn, so the eternal
Monad prevails through the series of smaller cycles, ever the same, yet
ever changing and putting on, at each birth, a new garment. The bud,
that failed to open one year, will re-appear in the next; the leaf that
reached its maturity and died a natural death--can never be re-born on
the same tree again. While writing Isis, we were not permitted to enter
into details; hence--the vague generalities. We are told to do so
now--and we do as we are commanded. 


And thus, it seems, after all, that "two and three" will "make just
four," if the "three" was only mistaken for that number. And, we have
heard of cases when that, which was universally regarded and denounced
as something very "black"--shockingly so--suddenly re-became "white," as
soon as an additional light was permitted to shine upon it. Well, the
day may yet come when even the much misunderstood occultists will appear
in such a light. Vaut mieux tard que jamais! 


Meanwhile we will wait and see whether C.C.M. will quote again from our
present answer--in Light. Theosophist, August, 1882 

------------------------------------------------------------

2


SEEMING "DISCREPANCIES"


Article by H. P. Blavatsky



TO THE EDITOR OF THE "THEOSOPHIST"


I have lately been engaged in devoting a few evenings' study to your
admirable article, "FRAGMENTS OF OCCULT TRUTH," which deserves far more
attention than a mere casual reading. It is therein stated that the
translated Ego cannot span the abyss separating its state from ours, or
that it cannot descend into our atmosphere and reach us; that it
attracts but cannot be attracted, or, in short, that no departed SPIRIT
can visit us. 


In Vol. I., page 67, of "Isis," I find it said that many of the spirits,
subjectively controlling mediums, are human disembodied spirits, that
their being benevolent or wicked in quality largely depends upon the
medium's private morality, that "they cannot materialise, but only
project their ætherial reflections on the atmospheric waves." On page
69: "Not every one can attract human spirits, who likes. One of the most
powerful attractions of our departed ones is their strong affection for
those whom they have left on earth. It draws them irresistibly, by
degrees, into the current of the astral light vibrating between the
person sympathetic to them and the universal soul." On page 325:
"Sometimes, but rarely, the planetary spirits . . . produce them
(subjective manifestations); sometimes the spirits of our translated and
beloved friends, &c." 


>From the foregoing it would appear as if both teachings were not
uniform, but it may be that souls, instead of spirits, are implied, or
that I have misunderstood the meaning. 
Such difficult subjects are rather puzzling to Western students,
especially to one who, like myself, is a mere tyro, though always
grateful to receive knowledge from those who are in a position to impart
such. 
       
Yours, &c.,
CALEDONIAN THEOSOPHIST
9th January, 1882 


_____


EDITOR'S NOTE.--It is to be feared that our valued Brother has both
misunderstood our meaning in "Isis" and that of the "Fragments of Occult
Truth." Read in their correct sense, the statements in the latter do not
offer the slightest discrepancy with the passages quoted from "Isis,"
but both teachings are uniform. 


Our "Caledonian" Brother believes that, because it is stated in "Isis,"
that "many, among those who control the medium subjectively, are human
disembodied spirits," and in the "Fragments," in the words of our
critic, that "the Ego cannot span the abyss separating its state from
ours . . . cannot descend into our atmosphere, . . . or, in short, that
no departed SPIRIT can visit us"--there is a contradiction between the
two teachings? We answer--"None at all." We reiterate both statements,
and will defend the proposition. Throughout "Isis"--although an attempt
was made in the Introductory Chapter to show the great difference that
exists between the terms "soul" and "spirit"--one the reliquiœ of the
personal EGO, the other the pure essence of the spiritual
INDIVIDUALITY--the term "spirit" had to be often used in the sense given
to it by the Spiritualists, as well as other similar conventional terms,
as, otherwise, a still greater confusion would have been caused.
Therefore, the meaning of the three sentences, cited by our friend,
should be thus understood: 


On page 67 wherein it is stated that many of the spirits, subjectively
controlling mediums, are human disembodied spirits," &c., the word
"controlling" must not be understood in the sense of a "spirit"
possessing himself of the organism of a medium; nor that, in each case,
it is a "spirit"; for often it is but a shell in its preliminary stage
of dissolution, when most of the physical intelligence and faculties are
yet fresh and have not begun to disintegrate, or fade out. A "spirit,"
or the spiritual Ego, cannot descend to the medium, but it can attract
the spirit of the latter to itself, and it can do this only during the
two intervals--before and after its "gestation period." Interval the
first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the
spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat esoteric
doctrine as "Bar-do." We have translated this as the "gestation" period,
and it lasts from a few days to several years, according to the evidence
of the adepts. Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of the
old Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of its reward in its new
regenerated Ego-ship. It occurs after the gestation period is over, and
the new spiritual Ego is reborn--like the fabled Phœnix from its
ashes--from the old one. The locality, which the former inhabits, is
called by the northern Buddhist Occultists "Deva-chan," the word
answering, perhaps, to Paradise or the Kingdom of Heaven of the
Christian elect. Having enjoyed a time of bliss, proportionate to his
deserts, the new personal Ego gets re-incarnated into a personality when
the remembrance of his previous Egoship, of course, fades out, and he
can "communicate" no longer with his fellowmen on the planet he has left
forever, as the individual he was there known to be. After numberless
re-incarnations, and on numerous planets and in various spheres, a time
will come, at the end of the Maha-Yug or great cycle, when each
individuality will have become so spiritualised that, before its final
absorption into the One All, its series of past personal existences will
marshall themselves before him in a retrospective order like the many
days of some one period of a man's existence. 


The words--"their being benevolent or wicked in quality largely depends
upon the medium's private morality"--which conclude the first quoted
sentence mean simply this: a pure medium's Ego can be drawn to and made,
for an instant, to unite in a magnetic (?) relation with a real
disembodied spirit, whereas the soul of an impure medium can only
confabulate with the astral soul, or "shell," of the deceased. The
former possibility explains those extremely rare cases of direct writing
in recognized autographs, and of messages from the higher class of
disembodied intelligences. We should say then that the personal morality
of the medium would be a fair test of the genuineness of the
manifestation. As quoted by our friend, "affection to those whom they
have left on earth" is "one of the most powerful attractions" between
two loving spirits--the embodied and the disembodied one. 


Whence the idea, then, that the two teachings are "not uniform"? We may
well be taxed with too loose and careless a mode of expression, with a
misuse of the foreign language in which we write, with leaving too much
unsaid and depending unwarrantably upon the imperfectly developed
intuition of the reader. But there never was, nor can there be, any
radical discrepancy between the teachings in "Isis" and those of this
later period, as both proceed from one and the same source--the ADEPT
BROTHERS. 

THEOSOPHIST,	June, 1882 

------------------------------------------------------

3

ISIS UNVEILED AND THE VISHISHTADWAITA
 
CORRESPONDENCE

SIR,--

"R.P." attempts in the October number of our Magazine to prove that I
have taught in Isis Unveiled substantially the doctrine of
Visishtadwaita, to which view I take exception.

I am quite aware of the fact that Isis is far from being as complete a
work as, with the same materials, it might have been made by a better
scholar; and that it lacks symmetry, as a literary production, and
perhaps here and there accuracy. But I have some excuse for all that. It
was my first book; it was written in a language foreign to me--in which
I had not been accustomed to write; the language was even more
unfamiliar to certain Asiatic philosophers who rendered assistance; and,
finally, Colonel Olcott, who revised the manuscript and worked with me
throughout, was then--in the years 1875 and 1876--almost entirely
ignorant of Aryan Philosophy, and hence unable to detect and correct
such errors as I might so readily fall into when putting my thoughts
into English. 

Still, despite all this, I think "R.P.'s" criticism is faulty. 

If I erred in making too little distinction between an Impersonal God,
or Parabrahm, and a Personal God, I scarcely went to the length of
confounding the one with the other completely. The pages (vol. ii.
216-17; and 153; and pref. p. 2) that he relies upon, represent not my
own doctrine but the ideas of others. 


The first two are quotations from Manu, and show what an educated
Brahman and a Buddhist might answer to Prof. Max Müller's affirmation
that Moksha and Nirvana mean annihilation; while the third (vol. ii. p.
153) is a defense and explanation of the inner sense of the Bible, as
from a Christian mystic's standpoint. Of course this would resemble
Visishtadwaitism, which, like Christianity, ascribes personal attributes
to the Universal Principle. As for the reference to the Preface, it
seems that even when read in the dead-letter sense, the paragraph could
only be said to reflect my personal opinion and not the Esoteric
Doctrine. 


A sceptic in my early life, I had sought and obtained through the
Masters the full assurance of the existence of a principle (not Personal
God)--"a boundless and fathomless ocean" of which my "soul" was a drop. 


Like the Adwaitis, I made no difference between my Seventh Principle and
the Universal Spirit, or Parabrahm; nor did, or do I believe in an
individual, segregated spirit in me, as a something apart from the
whole. And see, for proof, my remark about the "omnipotence of man's
immortal spirit"--which would be a logical absurdity upon any theory of
egoistic separation. 


My mistake was that throughout the whole work I indifferently employed
the words Parabrahm and God to express the same idea: a venial sin
surely, when one knows that the English language is so poor that even at
this moment I am using the Sanskrit word to express one idea and the
English one for the other! 


Whether it be orthodox Adwaita or not, I maintain as an occultist, on
the authority of the Secret Doctrine, that though merged entirely into
Parabrahm, man's spirit while not individual per se, yet preserves its
distinct individuality in Paranirvana, owing to the accumulation in it
of the aggregates, or skandhas that have survived after each death, from
the highest faculties of the Manas.


The most spiritual--i.e., the highest and divinest aspirations of every
personality follow Buddhi and the Seventh Principle into Devachan
(Swarga) after the death of each personality along the line of rebirths,
and become part and parcel of the Monad. The personality fades out,
disappearing before the occurrence of the evolution of the new
personality (rebirth) out of Devachan: but the individuality of the
spirit-soul [dear, dear, what can be made out of this English!] is
preserved to the end of the great cycle (Maha-Manwantara) when each Ego
enters Paranirvana, or is merged in Parabrahm. 


To our talpatic, or mole-like, comprehension the human spirit is then
lost in the One Spirit, as the drop of water thrown into the sea can no
longer be traced out and recovered. But de facto it is not so in the
world of immaterial thought. 


This latter stands in relation to the human dynamic thought, as, say,
the visual power through the strongest conceivable microscope would to
the sight of a half-blind man: and yet even this is a most insufficient
simile--the difference is "inexpressible in terms of foot-pounds." 


That such Parabrahmic and Paranirvanic "spirits," or units, have and
must preserve their divine (not human) individualities, is shown in the
fact that, however long the "night of Brahma" or even the Universal
Pralaya (not the local Pralaya affecting some one group of worlds) yet,
when it ends, the same individual Divine Monad resumes its majestic path
of evolution, though on a higher, hundredfold perfected and more pure
chain of earths than before, and brings with it all the essence of
compound spiritualities from its previous countless rebirths. 
Spiral evolution, it must be remembered, is dual, and the path of
spirituality turns, corkscrew-like, within and around physical,
semi-physical, and supra-physical evolution. 


But I am being tempted into details which had best be left for the full
consideration which their importance merits to my forthcoming work, the
Secret Doctrine. 
       
H. P. BLAVATSKY
Theosophist, January, 1886




====================================

I hope this may readjust our correspondent's thinking.

Best wishes,

Dallas


-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro Oliveira [mailto:prmoliveira@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 2:49 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Theos-World HPB reincarnated?

If The Mahatma Letters are anything to go by in
understanding what is really important in true
spiritual unfoldment, then one cannot fail to notice
the total absence in the Letters to references about
past incarnations of present day individuals. Also in
the entire corpus of HPB's writings there is not one
single reference nor mention to any of her supposed
past lives. 

That these two important sources of modern Theosophy
treat the subject of past lives of present day
individuals by been silent about it should make
serious students to ponder over it. The silence may
indicate two things: 1) that it is not an important
subject at all; 2) that the individual will know about
it when he/she is inwardly prepared for it.

Tradition says that the Buddha, after he attained
enlightenment, could see ALL his previous lives in
their entirety, without being in any way affected by
the vision.

Perhaps it would not be unkind to say that whenever
there is a claim about the reincarnation of a past
teacher or mystic, that claim in inherently false for
the simple reason that no real wise person would make
it. 

It is possible that only deep-seated psychological
inadequacies or some form of mental illness could
create in the mind the notion "I am so and so...". The
true Self within has no claims.

Pedro


PS Thanks for the welcome, Bart. I am glad to be here.
 

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