Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00305)

March 15th 2004

Re: Personal earlier incarnations of living persons.

Dear C.

As far as I know this aspect of a personal nature was avoided. I do
recall an indirect mention of a certain prominent Roman official in
connection with Sinnett, but that was only a hint.

H P B did hive us an insight into an earlier personal incarnation of
Frederick the 3rd of Prussia (Germany) -- and the interesting thing is
this was published in LUCIFER, just after he DIED. See "KARMIC
VISIONS." Reprinted in U L T H P B Articles Vol. I, p 382....

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

an excerpt

P. 384	Among millions of other Souls, a Soul-Ego is reborn: for weal or
for woe.Captive in its new human Form, it grows with it, and together
they become, at last, conscious of their existence.For them all is the
joyful Present: for the Soul-Ego is unaware that it had ever lived in
other human tabernacles, it knows not that it shall be again reborn, and
it takes no thought of the morrow. 

P. 388	Flitting between two eternities, far away from its birth-place,
solitary.the Form is drawn with every day nearer to its Spirit-Soul.
Another light unapproached and unapproachable in days of joy, softly
descends upon the weary prisoner. It sees now that which it had never
perceived before. . . 

P. 388	To the grief-furrowed soul those twinkling orbs [the stars] are
the eyes of angels. They look down with ineffable pity on the suffering
of mankind. It is not the night dew that falls on the sleeping flowers,
but sympathetic tears that drop from those orbs, at the sight of the
Great HUMAN SORROW. . .

P. 389	Hot and feverish its body tosses about in restless agony.Through
the mental agony of the soul, there lies a transformed man. Through the
physical agony of the frame, there flutters in it a fully awakened Soul.
The veil of illusion has fallen off from the cold idols of the world.The
thoughts of the Soul fall like dark shadows on the cogitative faculties
of the fast disorganizing body, haunting the thinker daily, nightly,
hourly. . . . 

P. 389-90	Visions of another kind now haunt his weary days and
long sleepless nights. . . . What he now sees is a throng.thousands of
mangled corpses covering the ground, torn and cut to shreds by the
murderous weapons devised by science and civilization, blessed to
success by the servants of his God. What he now dreams of are bleeding,
wounded and dying men.

P. 390-1 .he hears a voice--the voice of the Soul-Ego--saying in
him:-- "Fame and victory are vainglorious words. . . . Thanksgiving and
prayers for lives destroyed--wicked lies and blasphemy!" . . . . "What
have they brought thee or to thy fatherland, those bloody victories!"
whispers the Soul in him. it replies. ". A people, henceforth deaf to
the peaceful voice of the honest citizen's duty, averse to a life of
peace, blind to the arts and literature, indifferent to all but lucre
and ambition.Oh woe and horror! I foresee once more for earth the
suffering I have already witnessed. But if I live and have the power,
never, oh never shall my country take part in it again! 

P. 391-2	Firmer and firmer grows in the Soul-Ego the feeling of
intense hatred for the terrible butchery called war; deeper and deeper
does it impress its thoughts upon the Form that holds it captive. Hope
awakens at times in the aching breast the moments of dreamy hope are
generally followed by hours of still blacker despair. Why, oh why, thou
mocking Nemesis.kindled the flame of holy brotherly love for man in the
breast of one whose heart already feels the approach of the icy hand of
death and decay, whose strength is steadily deserting him and whose very
life is melting away like foam on the crest of a breaking wave? 

P. 393	The Soul-Ego takes its flight into Dreamland. . . into Helheim,
the Kingdom of the Dead, where a Black-Elf reveals to him a series of
its lives and their mysterious concatenation. "Why does man suffer?"
enquires the Soul-Ego. "Because he would become one," is the mocking
answer. 

P. 393	Forthwith, the Soul-Ego stands in the presence of the holy
goddess, Saga.She shows the soul the mighty warriors fallen by the hands
of many of its past Forms, on battlefield, as also in the sacred
security of home.In each case the mists of death are dispersed, and pass
from the eyes of the Soul-Ego... In every instance the beliefs of the
Mortal take objective life and shape for the Immortal, as soon as it
spans the Bridge. Then they begin to fade, and disappear. . . . 

P. 393-4	"What is my Past?" enquires the Soul-Ego of Urd, the
eldest of the Norn sisters. "Why do I suffer?" A long parchment is
unrolled in her hand, and reveals a long series of mortal beings, in
each of whom the Soul-Ego recognises one of its dwellings. When it comes
to the last but one, it sees a blood-stained hand doing endless deeds of
cruelty. "What is my Future?" asks despairingly of Skuld, the third
Norn sister, the Soul-Ego. "Is it to be for ever with tears, and
bereaved of Hope?" . . . 

But the Dreamer feels whirled through space, and suddenly .the soft
mellow voice of the incessant ripple of the light waves now assumes
human speech, and reminds the Soul-Ego of the vows formed more than once
on that spot. And the Dreamer repeats with enthusiasm the words
pronounced before. 

"Never, oh, never shall I, henceforth, sacrifice for vainglorious fame
or ambition a single son of my motherland! Our world is so full of
unavoidable misery, so poor with joys and bliss, and shall I add to its
cup of bitterness the fathomless ocean of woe and blood, called WAR?
Avaunt, such thought! . . . Oh, never more. . . ." 

P. 394-5	Strange sight and change. . . . Still greater bliss, the
Soul-Ego finds himself as strong and as healthy as he ever was. In a
stentorian voice he sings to the four winds a loud and a joyous song. He
feels a wave of joy and bliss in him, and seems to know why he is happy.


He is suddenly transported into what looks a fairy-like Hall, lit with
most glowing lights and built of materials, the like of which he had
never seen before. He perceives the heirs and descendants of all the
monarchs of the globe gathered in that Hall in one happy family. They
wear no longer the insignia of royalty, but, as he seems to know, those
who are the reigning Princes, reign by virtue of their personal merits.
It is the greatness of heart, the nobility of character, their superior
qualities of observation, wisdom, love of Truth and Justice, that have
raised them to the dignity of heirs to the Thrones, of Kings and Queens.
The crowns, by authority and the grace of God, have been thrown off, and
they now rule by "the grace of divine humanity," chosen unanimously by
recognition of their fitness to rule, and the reverential love of their
voluntary subjects.

All around seems strangely changed. Ambition, grasping greediness or
envy--miscalled Patriotism--exist no longer. Cruel selfishness has made
room for just altruism, and cold indifference to the wants of the
millions no longer finds favour in the sight of the favoured few.
Useless luxury, sham pretences--social and religious--all has
disappeared. No more wars are possible, for the armies are abolished.
Soldiers have turned into diligent, hard-working tillers of the ground,
and the whole globe echoes his song in rapturous joy. Kingdoms and
countries around him live like brothers. The great, the glorious hour
has come at last! That which he hardly dared to hope and think about in
the stillness of his long, suffering nights, is now realized. The great
curse is taken off, and the world stands absolved and redeemed in its
regeneration! . . . . 

Trembling with rapturous feelings, his heart overflowing with love and
philanthropy, he rises to pour out a fiery speech that would become
historic, when suddenly he finds his body gone, or, rather, it is
replaced by another body. . . . Yes, it is no longer the tall, noble
Form with which he is familiar, but the body of somebody else, of whom
he as yet knows nothing. 

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

2


Earlier you (or was it Zakk?) had asked about visions relating to the
Astral Plane. 

In one of her "occult tales" H P B gave quite an insight into this
phenomenon. 

The article was titled: "A BEWITCHED LIFE." 

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

an excerpt



"Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the two
witnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot decide the
point. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing in
the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But whether this process
lasted half a second or three hours, I have never since been able to
settle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction. I can recall every
detail of the scene up to that moment when I took up the mirror with the
left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the mystic characters
between the thumb and finger of the right, when all of a sudden I seemed
to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects. The passage from
the active waking state to one that I could compare with nothing I had
ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyes had ceased to
perceive external objects and had completely lost sight of the Bonze,
the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could nevertheless distinctly see
the whole of my head and my back, as I sat leaning forward with the
mirror in my hand. Then came a strong sensation or an involuntary rush
forward, of snapping off, so to say, from my place -- I had almost said
from my body. And, then, while every one of my other senses had become
totally paralyzed, my eyes, as I thought, unexpectedly caught a clearer
and far more vivid glimpse than they had ever had in reality, of my
sister's new house at Nuremberg, which I had never visited and knew only
from a sketch, and other scenery with which I had never been very
familiar. Together with this, and while feeling in my brain what seemed
like flashes of a departing consciousness -- dying persons must feel so,
no doubt -- the very last, vague thought, so weak as to have been hardly
perceptible, was that I must look very, very ridiculous . . . This
feeling -- for such it was rather than a thought -- was interrupted,
suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear mental vision (I cannot
characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which I regarded as, and
knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on a settee, dead to all
intents and purposes, but still staring with the cold and glassy eyes of
a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, with his two emaciated hands
cutting the air in every direction over its white face, stood the tall
figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I felt at that instant an
inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was going, in thought, to
pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old men, the room
itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in a reddish glowing
light, and seemed to float rapidly away from "me." A few more grotesque,
distorted shadows before "my" sight; and, with a last feeling of terror
and a supreme effort to realize who then was I now, since I was not that
corpse -- a great veil of darkness fell over me, like a funeral pall,
and every thought in me was dead. 

IV -- A VISION OF HORROR

How strange! . . . . Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had
once more returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing that
I was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer, strange
sensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or effort on my
part, and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself to me
was that of a long subterranean passage of water, of earth, and stifling
air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of the presence or
contact of any of these. I tried to utter a few words, to repeat my last
sentence, "I desire but one thing: to learn the reason or reasons why my
sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me" -- but the only words I
heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, "to learn," and these,
instead of their coming out of my own larynx, came back to me in my own
voice, but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me. In short, they
were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips. . . . 

One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into the Cymmerian
darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw myself standing --
actually standing underground, as it seemed. I was compactly and thickly
surrounded on all sides, above and below, right and left, with earth,
and in the mould, and yet it weighed not, and seemed quite immaterial
and transparent to my senses. I did not realize for one second the utter
absurdity, nay, impossibility of that seeming fact! One second more, one
short instant, and I perceived -- oh, inexpressible horror, when I think
of it now; for then, although I perceived, realized, and recorded facts
and events far more clearly than ever I had done before, I did not seem
to be touched in any other way by what I saw. Yes -- I perceived a
coffin at my feet. It was a plain, unpretentious shell, made of deal,
the last couch of the pauper, in which, notwithstanding its closed lid,
I plainly saw a hideous, grinning skull, a man's skeleton, mutilated and
broken in many of its parts, as though it had been taken out of some
hidden chamber of the defunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected
to torture. "Who can it be?" -- I thought. 

At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice -- my
voice. . . . "the reason or reasons why" . . . . it said; as though
these words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of which
it had just repeated the two words "to learn." It sounded near, and yet
as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the idea that the
long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental reflexions and
discoveries, had occupied no time; had been performed during the short,
almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words of
the sentence, begun, at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myself
in my room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing, in interrupted,
broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and voice. . . . 

Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form, and, to
me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined together one to
the other, the bones became covered once more with flesh, and I
recognized in these disfigured remains -- with some surprise, but not a
trace of feeling at the sight -- my sister's dead husband, my own
brother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so truly. "How was it, and
how did he come to die such a terrible death?" -- I asked myself. To put
oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to instantly solve
it. Hardly had I asked myself the question, when as if in a panorama, I
saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl's death, in all its horrid
vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every one of which, however,
left me then entirely and brutally indifferent. Here he is, the dear old
fellow, full of life and joy at the prospect of more lucrative
employment from his principal, examining and trying in a wood-sawing
factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America. He bends over,
to examine more closely an inner arrangement, to tighten a screw. His
clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel in full motion,
and suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his limbs half severed,
torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with the mechanism, can stop
it. He is taken out, or what remains of him, dead, mangled, a thing of
horror, an unrecognisable mass of palpitating flesh and blood! I follow
the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap to the hospital, hear the
brutally given order that the messengers of death should stop on their
way at the house of the widow and orphans. I follow them, and find the
unconscious family quietly assembled together. I see my sister, the dear
and beloved, and remain indifferent at the sight, only feeling highly
interested in the coming scene. My heart, my feelings, even my
personality, seem to have disappeared, to have been left behind, to
belong to somebody else. 

There "I" stand, and witness her unprepared reception of the ghastly
news. I realize clearly, without one moment's hesitation or mistake, the
effect of the shock upon her, I perceive clearly, following and
recording, to the minutest detail, her sensations and the inner process
that takes place in her. I watch and remember, missing not one single
point. 

As the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hear the
long agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and the dull thud of the
living body falling upon the remains of the dead one. I followed with
curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation in her
brain that follow it, and watch with attention the worm-like,
precipitate, and immensely intensified motion of the tubular fibres, the
instantaneous change of colour in the cephalic extremity of the nervous
system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to bright red and
then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice the sudden flash of a
phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance, its tremor and its sudden
extinction followed by darkness -- complete darkness in the region of
memory -- as the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a human shape,
oozes out suddenly from the top of the head, expands, loses its form and
scatters. And I say to myself: "This is insanity; life-long, incurable
insanity, for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzed or
extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted the tabernacle for ever,
ejected from it by the terrible force of the sudden blow . . . . The
link between the animal and the divine essence is broken" . . . . And as
the unfamiliar term "divine" is mentally uttered my "THOUGHT" -- laughs.


Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncing emphatically
and close by me the words. . . . "why my sister has so suddenly ceased
writing". . . . And before the two final words "to me" have completed
the sentence, I see a long series of sad events, immediately following
the catastrophe. 

I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot, in the lunatic
asylum attached to the city hospital, the seven younger children
admitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boy
of fifteen and a girl a year younger, my favourites, both taken by
strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel carries away
my nephew, an old Jewess adopts the tender girl. I see the events with
all their horrors and thrilling details, and record each, to the
smallest detail, with the utmost coolness. 

For, mark well: when I use such expressions as horrors " etc., they are
to be understood as an afterthought. During the whole time of the events
described I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. My feelings
seemed to be paralyzed as well as my external senses; it was only after
"coming back" that I realized my irretrievable losses to their full
extent. 
Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days, owing to
sad personal experience I have to admit now. Had I been told by any one
at that time, that man could act and think and feel, irrespective of his
brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious, and to this day, for me,
incomprehensible power, he could be transported mentally, thousands of
miles away from his body, there to witness not only present but also
past events, and remember these by storing them in his memory -- I would
have proclaimed that man as a madman. Alas, I can do so no longer, for I
have become myself that "madman." Ten, twenty, forty, a hundred times
during the course of this wretched life of mine, have I experienced and
lived over such moments of existence, outside of my body. Accursed be
that hour when this terrible power was first awakened in me! I have not
even the consolation left of attributing such glimpses of events at a
distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see that which exists not in the
realm they belong to. My visions have proved invariably correct. But to
my narrative of woe. 

I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her new
Israelitish home, when I felt a shock of the same nature as the one that
had sent me "swimming" through the bowels of the earth, as I had
thought. I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first thing I fixed
upon, by accident, was the clock. The hands of the dial showed seven
minutes and a half past five!. 
. . . I had thus passed through these most terrible experiences which it
takes me hours to narrate, in precisely half a minute of time! 


But this, too, was an afterthought. For one brief instant I recollected
nothing of what I had seen. The interval between the time I had glanced
at the clock when taking the mirror from the Yamabooshi's hand and this
second glance, seemed to me merged in one. I was just opening my lips to
hurry on the Yamabooshi with his experiment, when the full remembrance
of what I had just seen flashed lightning -- like into my brain.
Uttering a cry of horror and despair, I felt as though the whole
creation were crushing me under its weight. For one moment I remained
speechless, the picture of human ruin amid a world of death and
desolation. My heart sank down in anguish: my doom was closed; and a
hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my life for ever. 

V -- RETURN OF DOUBTS .....


Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I fail to recognize the
Yamabooshi's power, and that the peace of my whole life was departing
with him, from that moment for ever? But I did so fail. Even the fell
demon of my long fears -- uncertainty -- was now entirely overpowered by
that fiend scepticism -- the silliest of all. A dull, morbid unbelief, a
stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses, and a determined will
to regard the whole vision as a fancy of my overwrought mind, had taken
firm hold of me. 

"My mind," I argued, "what is it? Shall I believe with the superstitious
and the weak that this production of phosphorus and grey matter is
indeed the superior part of me; that it can act and see independently of
my physical senses? Never! As well believe in the planetary
'intelligences' of the astrologer, as in the 'Daij-Dzins' of my
credulous though well-meaning friend, the priest. As well confess one's
belief in Jupiter and Sol, Saturn and Mercury, and that these worthies
guide their spheres and concern themselves with mortals, as to give one
serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed to have guided my
'soul' in its unpleasant dream! I loathe and laugh at the absurd idea. I
regard it as a personal insult to the intellect and rational reasoning
powers of a man, to speak of invisible creatures, 'subjective
intelligences,' and all that kind of insane superstition." In short, I
begged my friend the Bonze to spare me his protests, and thus the
unpleasantness of breaking with him for ever. 

Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentleman, doing
all in my power to leave on his mind the indelible conviction of my
having gone suddenly mad. But his admirable forbearance proved more than
equal to my idiotic passion; and he implored me once more, for the sake
of my whole future, to submit to certain "necessary purificatory rites."
...

"Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time," he began, "learn that
unless the holy and venerable man; who, to relieve your distress, opened
your 'soul vision,' is permitted to complete his work, your future life
will, indeed, be little worth living. He has to safeguard you against
involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character. Unless you
consent to it of your own free will, however, you will have to be left
in the power of Forces which will harass and persecute you to the verge
of insanity. Know that the development of 'Long Vision' [clairvoyance]
-- which is accomplished at will only by those for whom the Mother of
Mercy, the great Kwan-On, has no secrets -- must, in the case of the
beginner, be pursued with help of the air Dzins (elemental spirits)
whose nature is soulless, and hence wicked. Know also that, while the
Arihat, 'the destroyer of the enemy,' who has subjected and made of
these creatures his servants, has nothing to fear; he who has no power
over them becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not in your great pride and
ignorance, but listen further. During the time of the vision and while
the inner perceptions are directed toward the events they seek, the
Daij-Dzin has the seer -- when, like yourself, he is an inexperienced
tyro -- entirely in its power; and for the time being that seer is no
longer himself. He partakes of the nature of his 'guide.' The Dali-Dzin,
which directs his inner sight, keeps his soul in durance vile, making of
him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself. Bereft of his divine
light, man is but a soulless being; hence during the time of such
connection, he will feel no human emotions, neither pity nor fear, love
nor mercy." 

"Hold!" I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly brought back to
my recollections the indifference with which I had witnessed my sister's
despair and sudden loss of reason in my "hallucination," "Hold! . . .
But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed or find any sense in
your ridiculous tale! But if you knew it to be so dangerous why have
advised the experiment at all?" -- I added mockingly. 


....Several days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw my venerable
friend, the Bonze, no more. Evidently on that last, and to me for ever
memorable evening, he had been seriously offended with my more than
irreverent, my downright insulting remark about one whom he so justly
respected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of passion and pride was
too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single moment of remorse.
What was it that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath, that when, for
one instant, I happened to lose sight of my supposed grievance toward
the Yamabooshi, I forthwith lashed myself back into a kind of artificial
fury against him. He had only accomplished what he had been expected to
do, and what he had tacitly promised; not only so, but it was I myself
who had deprived him of the possibility of doing more, even for my own
protection if I might believe the Bonze -- a man whom I knew to be
thoroughly honourable and reliable. Was it regret at having been forced
by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution, or was it the fear of
remorse that made me rake together, in my heart, during those evil
hours, the smallest details of the supposed insult to that same suicidal
pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly remarked, "is like the heart in
which it grows: . . . . 


". . . if proud and gloomy,. . . Perchance, it was the indefinite fear
of something of that sort which caused me to remain so obdurate, and led
me to excuse, under the plea of terrible provocation, even the
unprovoked insults that I had heaped upon the head of my kind and
all-forgiving friend, the priest. However, it was now too late in the
day to recall the words of offence I had uttered; and all I could do was
to promise myself the satisfaction of writing him a friendly letter, as
soon as I reached home. Fool, blind fool, elated with insolent
self-conceit, that I was! So sure did I feel, that my vision was due
merely to some trick of the Yamabooshi, that I actually gloated over my
coming triumph in writing to the Bonze that I had been right in
answering his sad words of parting with an incredulous smile, as my
sister and family were all in good health -- happy! 

I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to remember his
words of warning! 

>From the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I perceived a great
change in my whole state, and I attributed it, at first, to the mental
depression I had struggled against for so many months. During the day I
very often found myself absent from the surroundings scenes, losing
sight for several minutes of things and persons. My nights were
disturbed, my dreams oppressive, and at times horrible. Good sailor I
certainly was; and besides, the weather was unusually fine, the ocean as
smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I often felt a strange
giddiness, and the familiar faces of my fellow-passengers assumed at
such times the most grotesque appearances. Thus, a young German I used
to know well was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old
father, whom we had laid in the little burial place of the European
colony some three years before. We were talking on deck of the defunct
and of a certain business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner's head
appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film. A thick
greyish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around and upon
his healthy countenance, settled suddenly into the grim old head I had
myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another occasion, as the
captain was talking of a Malay thief whom he had helped to secure and
lodge in goal, I saw near him the yellow, villainous face of a man
answering to his description. I kept silence about such hallucinations;
but as they became more and more frequent, I felt very much disturbed,
though still attributing them to natural causes, such as I had read
about in medical books

One night I was abruptly awakened by a long and loud cry of distress. It
was a woman's voice, plaintive like that of a child, full of terror and
of helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself on land, in a
strange room. A young girl, almost a child, was desperately struggling
against a powerful middle-aged man, who had surprised her in her own
room, and during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door, I saw
listening an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish
expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately recognized
it: it was the face of the Jewess who had adopted my niece in the dream
I had at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her share in the foul
crime, and was now keeping her part of the covenant . . . . But who was
the victim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! When I realized
the situation after coming back to my normal state, I found it was my
own child-niece. 

But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the nature of that
despair born of affection that fills one's heart, at the sight of a
wrong done to, or a misfortune befalling, those one loves; nothing but a
manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the weak
and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and seized the
wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened upon him with powerful
grasp, but, the man heeded it not, he seemed not even to feel my hand.
The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerful arm
and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy hammer upon the sunny
locks, felled the child to the ground. It was with a loud cry of the
indignation of a stranger, not with that of a tigress defending her cub,
that I sprang upon the lewd beast and sought to throttle him. I then
remarked, for the first time, that, a shadow myself, I was grasping but
another shadow! . . . . 

My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole steamer. They
were attributed to a nightmare. I did not seek to take anyone into my
confidence; but, from that day forward, my life became a long series of
mental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witness of
some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death or crime, whether past,
present or even future -- as I ascertained later on. It was as though
some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of making me go
through the vision of everything that was bestial, malignant and
hopeless, in this world of misery. No radiant vision of beauty or virtue
ever lit with the faintest ray these pictures of awe and wretchedness
that I seemed doomed to witness. Scenes of wickedness, of murder, of
treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight, and I was brought
face to face with the vilest results of man's passions, the most
terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings. 

Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results, when he spoke of
Daij-Dzins to whom I left "an ingress" "a door open" in me? Nonsense!
There must be some physiological, abnormal change in me. Once at
Nuremberg, when I have ascertained how false was the direction taken by
my fears -- I dared not hope for no misfortune at all -- these
meaningless visions will disappear as they came. The very fact that my
fancy follows but one direction, that of pictures of misery, of human
passions in their worst, material shape, is a proof, to me, of their
unreality."

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

If you wish I can send you full copies of these articles. They are rich
in psychological content.

Let me know.

Best wishes,

Dallas

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


-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro Oliveira [mailto:prmoliveira@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 4:32 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World RE: HPB reincarnated? ML and REINCARNATION

Thank you, Dallas, for taking the trouble of selecting
a number of passagens on reincarnation from the
original literature.

I am afraid in your reply you did not address the
questions I raised. I am quite familiar with the
teaching on reincarnation both in the Mahatma Letters
and in HPB's writings. What I wrote was: 

"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."

In none of the quotes supplied in your posting I find
any reference to past incarnations of present day
individuals. Do you know of any passage in the
original literature where there is any statement
about, for example, HPB's, Olcott's, Sinnett's,
Judge's, Anna Kingsford's, past lives? If you do,
please let us know. 

With warm good wishes,

Pedro Oliveira








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