Theos-Talk Archives (October 2004 Message tt00324)

Oct 19 2005

Zakk asks:

-----Original Message-----
From: Zakk
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 10:53 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Chapter 2 page 13 from Deity, Cosmos and Man

1

I have a question. Could you relate to me where the following statement
you made is referenced? I am not familiar with it.

>The Brain of a new-born child is made up of the old life-atoms that are
attracted by Karma to the new incarnation in a newly assembled physical body
of the Individual INTELLIGENCE which is an 'immortal' -- so teaches
THEOSOPHY.<



2 

Would this mean that an infant just born has no mind because of no
memories? An infant, as in this case, also has no thoughts. This
situation has a being with no memories or thoughts. Just curious
as to how this would relate to a definition of mind.

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

Here are some statements that may throw light on your question.

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


THE REINCARNATING SELF IS AN IMMORTAL

The inner Ego (Manas), who reincarnates, taking on body after body, storing
up the impressions of life after life, gaining experience and adding it to
the Divine Ego, suffering and enjoying through an immense period of years,
is the fifth principle -- Manas -- not united to Buddhi. 

This is the permanent individuality which gives to every man the feeling of
being himself and not some other; that which through all the changes of the
days and nights from youth to the end of life makes us feel one identity
through all the period; it bridges the gap made by sleep; in like manner it
bridges the gap made by the sleep of death. It is this, and not our brain,
that lifts us above the animal. 

The depth and variety of the brain convolutions in man are caused by the
presence of Manas, and are not the cause of mind. And when we either wholly,
or now and then, become consciously united with Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul,
we "behold God," as it were. This is what the ancients all desired to see,
but what the moderns do not believe in, the latter preferring rather to
throw away their own right to be great in nature, and to worship an
imaginary god, made up solely of their own fancies, and not very different
from weak human nature. 


DUTY AND WORK OF THE REINCARNATING MIND-MANAS

This permanent individuality in our present race has therefore been through
every sort of experience, for Theosophy insists on its permanence and in the
necessity for its continuing to take part in evolution. It has a duty to
perform, consisting in raising up to a higher state all the matter concerned
in the chain of globes to which the earth belongs. 

We have all lived and taken part in civilization after civilization, race
after race, on earth, and will so continue throughout all the Rounds and
Races until the seventh is complete. At the same time it should be
remembered that the matter of this globe, connected with it, has also been
through every kind of form, with possibly some exceptions in very low planes
of mineral formation. 

But in general all the matter visible, or held in space still
unprecipitated, has been molded at one time or another into forms of all
varieties, many of these being such as we now have no idea of. The processes
of evolution, therefore, in some departments, now go forward with greater
rapidity than in former ages because both Manas and matter have acquired
facility of action. 

Especially is this so in regard to man, who is the farthest ahead of all
things or beings in this evolution. He is now incarnated and projected into
life more quickly than in earlier periods when it consumed many years to
obtain a "coat of skin." This coming into life over and over again cannot be
avoided by the ordinary man because Lower Manas is still bound by Desire,
which is the preponderating principle at the present period. Being so very
influenced by Desire, Manas is continually deluded while in the body, and
being thus deluded is unable to prevent the action upon it of the forces set
up in the life time. 

These forces are generated by Manas, that is, by the thinking of a whole
life time. Each thought makes a physical as well as mental link with the
Desire in which it is rooted. All life is filled with such thoughts, and
when the period of rest after death is ended, Manas is bound by innumerable
electrical magnetic threads to earth by reason of the thoughts of the last
life, and therefore by desire, for it was desire that caused so many
thoughts and ignorance of the true nature of things. This is called by the
Hindu philosophies "maya." (illusion).

An understanding of this doctrine of man being really a thinker and made of
thought, will make clear all the rest in relation to incarnation and
reincarnation. 

The body of the inner man is made of thought, and this being so it must
follow that if the thoughts have more affinity for earth-life than for life
elsewhere a return to life here is inevitable. 

At the present day Manas is not fully active in the race, as Desire still is
uppermost. In the next cycle of the human period Manas will be fully active
and developed in the entire race. Hence the people of the earth have not yet
come to the point of making a conscious choice as to the path they will
take; but when in the cycle referred to, Manas is active, all will then be
compelled to consciously make the choice to right or left, the one leading
to complete and conscious union with Atma, the other to the annihilation of
those beings who prefer that path of an isolated selfishness.


The COMPLEXITY OF NATURE IS FOCUSED IN MAN

How man has come to be the complex being that he is and why, are questions
that neither Science nor Religion makes conclusive answer to. 

This immortal thinker having such vast powers and possibilities, all his
because of his intimate connection with every secret part of Nature from
which he has been built up, stands at the top of an immense and silent
evolution. 

He asks why Nature exists, what the drama of life has for its aim, how that
aim may be attained. But Science and Religion both fail to give a reasonable
reply. Science does not pretend to be able to give the solution, saying that
the examination of things as they are (as Nature has arranged them), is
enough of a task. Religion offers an explanation both illogical and
unmeaning and acceptable but to the bigot, as it requires us to consider the
whole of Nature as a mystery and to seek for the meaning and purpose of
life, with all its sorrow, in the whimsical and fanciful pleasure of a God
who cannot be found out. The educated and enquiring mind knows that dogmatic
religion can only give an answer invented by man while it pretends to be
from God. 



WHY DOES MAN AND THE UNIVERSE EXIST AT ALL ?

What then is the universe for, and for what final purpose is man the
immortal thinker here in evolution? It is all for the experience and
emancipation of the soul, for the purpose of raising the entire mass of
manifested matter up to the stature, nature, and dignity of conscious
god-hood. The great aim is to reach self-consciousness; not through a race
or a tribe or some favored nation, but by and through the perfecting, after
transformation, of the whole mass of matter as well as what we now call
soul. 

Nothing is or is to be left out. The aim for present man is his initiation
into complete knowledge, and for the other kingdoms below him that they may
be raised up gradually from stage to stage to be in time initiated also. 

This is evolution carried to its highest power; it is a magnificent
prospect; it makes of man a god, and gives to every part of nature the
possibility of being one day the same; there is strength and nobility in it,
for by this no man is dwarfed and belittled, for no one is so originally
sinful that he cannot rise above all sin. 

Treated from the materialistic position of Science, evolution takes in but
half of life; while the religious conception of it is a mixture of nonsense
and fear. Present religions keep the element of fear, and at the same time
imagine that an Almighty being can think of no other earth but this and has
to govern this one very imperfectly. But the old theosophical view makes the
universe a vast, complete, and perfect whole. 


EVOLUTION A DUAL PROCESS

Now the moment we postulate a double evolution, physical and spiritual, we
have at the same time to admit that it can only be carried on by
reincarnation. 

This is, in fact, demonstrated by science. It is shown that the matter of
the earth and of all things physical upon it was at one time either gaseous
or molten; that it cooled; that it altered; that from its alterations and
evolutions at last were produced all the great variety of things and beings.


This, on the physical plane, is transformation or change from one form to
another.

The total mass of matter is about the same as in the beginning of this
globe, with a very minute allowance for some star dust. Hence it must have
been changed over and over again, and thus been physically reformed and
re-embodied. Of course, to be strictly accurate, we cannot use the word
reincarnation, because "incarnate" refers to flesh. Let us say
"re-embodied," and then we see that both for matter and for man there has
been a constant change of form and this is, broadly speaking,
"reincarnation." 


MATTER MADE OF IMMORTAL EVOLVING MONADS

As to the whole mass of matter, the doctrine is that it will all be raised
to man's estate when man has gone further on himself. 

There is no residuum left after man's final salvation which in a mysterious
way is to be disposed of or done away with in some remote dust-heap of
nature. The true doctrine allows for nothing like that, and at the same time
is not afraid to give the true disposition of what would seem to be a
residuum. It is all worked up into other states, for as the philosophy
declares there is no inorganic matter whatever but that every atom is alive
and has the germ of self-consciousness, it must follow that one day it will
all have been changed. 

Thus what is now called human flesh is so much matter that one day was
wholly mineral, later on vegetable, and now refined into human atoms. At a
point of time very far from now the present vegetable matter will have been
raised to the animal stage and what we now use as our organic or fleshy
matter will have changed by transformation through evolution into
self-conscious thinkers, and so on up the whole scale until the time shall
come when what is now known as mineral matter will have passed on to the
human stage and out into that of thinker. 

Then at the coming on of another great period of evolution the mineral
matter of that time will be some which is now passing through its lower
transformations on other planets and in other systems of worlds. This is
perhaps a "fanciful" scheme for the men of the present day, who are so
accustomed to being called bad, sinful, weak, and utterly foolish from their
birth that they fear to believe the truth about themselves, but for the
disciples of the ancient theosophists it is not impossible or fanciful, but
is logical and vast. And no doubt it will one day be admitted by everyone
when the mind of the western race has broken away from Mosaic chronology. 

As to reincarnation and metempsychosis we say that they are first to be
applied to the whole cosmos and not alone to man. But as man is the most
interesting object to himself, we will consider in detail its application to
him. 


NO RETURN TO ANIMAL BODIES

Reincarnation does not mean that we go into animal forms after death, as is
believed by some Eastern peoples. "Once a man always a man" is the saying in
the Great Lodge. But it would not be too much punishment for some men were
it possible to condemn them to rebirth in brute bodies; however nature does
not go by sentiment but by law, and we, not being able to see all, cannot
say that the brutal man is brute all through his nature. And evolution
having brought Manas the Thinker and Immortal Person on to this plane,
cannot send him back to the brute which has not Manas. 

By looking into two explanations for the literal acceptation by some people
in the East of those laws of Manu which seem to teach the transmigrating
into brutes, insects, and so on, we can see how the true student of this
doctrine will not fall into the same error. 

The first is, that the various verses and books teaching such transmigration
have to do with the actual method of reincarnation, that is, with the
explanation of the actual physical processes which have to be undergone by
the Ego in passing from the disembodied to the embodied state, and also with
the roads, ways, or means of descent from the invisible to the visible
plane.

This has not yet been plainly explained in Theosophical books, because on
the one hand it is a delicate matter, and on the other the details would not
as yet be received even by Theosophists with credence, although one day they
will be. And as these details are not of the greatest importance they are
not now expounded. 

But as we know that no human body is formed without the union of the sexes,
and that the germs for such production are locked up in the sexes and must
come from food which is taken into the body, it is obvious that foods have
something to do with the reincarnating of the Ego. Now if the road to
reincarnation leads through certain food and none other, it may be possible
that if the Ego gets entangled in food which will not lead to the germ of
physical reproduction.


MAN: A CRUCIBLE FOR THE PROGRESS OF ALL MONADS

The second explanation is, that inasmuch as nature intends us to use the
matter which comes into our body and astral body for the purpose, among
others, of benefiting the matter by the impress it gets from association
with the human Ego, if we use it so as to give it only a brutal impression
it must fly back to the animal kingdom to be absorbed there instead of being
refined and kept on the human plane. 

And as all the matter which the human Ego gathered to it retains the stamp
or photographic impression of the human being, the matter (as "life-atoms,"
or Monads of lesser experience) transmigrates to the lower level when given
an animal impress by the Ego. 

This actual fact in the great chemical laboratory of nature could easily be
misconstrued by the ignorant. But present-day students know that once Manas
the Thinker has arrived on the scene he does not return to baser forms;
first, because he does not wish to, and second, because he cannot. For just
as the blood in the body is prevented by valves from rushing back and
engorging the heart, so in this greater system of universal circulation the
door is shut behind the Thinker and prevents his retrocession. Reincarnation
as a doctrine applying to the real man does not teach transmigration into
kingdoms of nature below the human.

In the West, where the object of life is commercial, financial, social, or
scientific success, that is, personal profit, aggrandizement, and power, the
real life of man receives but little attention, and we, unlike the
Orientals, give scant prominence to the doctrine of preexistence and
reincarnation. 


WHY DO WE NOT REMEMBER OUR PAST LIVES ?

It is said, if we reincarnate, how is it that we do not remember the earlier
life; and further, as we cannot remember the deeds for which we suffer, is
it not unjust for that reason to suffer now? 

Those who ask this, ignore the fact that they also have enjoyment and reward
in this life, and are content to accept them without question. For if it is
unjust to be punished for deeds we do not remember, then it is also
inequitable to be rewarded for other acts of ours, done then, which have
been forgotten. 


JUSTICE: REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

Mere entry into life is no fit foundation for any reward or punishment. 

Reward and punishment must be the just desert for prior conduct. Nature's
law of justice is not imperfect, and it is only the imperfection of human
justice that requires the offender to know and remember in this life a deed
to which a penalty is annexed. 



In the prior life the doer was then quite aware of what he did, and nature
affixes consequences to his acts, being thus just. We well know that she
will make the effect follow the cause whatever we wish and whether we
remember or forget what we did. 

If a baby is hurt in its first years, so as to lay the ground for a
crippling disease in after life, as is often the case, the crippling disease
will come although the child neither brought on the present cause nor
remembered aught about it. But reincarnation, with its companion doctrine of
Karma, rightly understood, shows how perfectly just the whole scheme of
nature is. 

Memory of a prior life is not needed to prove that we passed through that
existence, nor is the fact of not remembering a good objection. We forget
the greater part of the occurrences of the years and days of this life, but
no one would say for that reason we did not go through these years. They
were lived, and we retain but little of the details in the brain. But the
entire effect of them on the character is kept and made a part of ourselves.
The whole mass of detail of a life is preserved in the inner man to be one
day fully brought back to the conscious memory in some other life when we
are perfected. And even now, imperfect as we are, and little as we know, the
experiments in hypnotism show that all the smallest details are registered
in what is for the present called the "sub-conscious" mind. The theosophical
doctrine is that not a single one of these happenings is forgotten in fact,
and at the end of life when the eyes are closed and those about say we are
dead, every thought and circumstance of life flash vividly into and across
the mind, and are transferred to the inner, the astral and the spiritual man
which are now leaving the body.


SOME MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

Many persons do, however, remember that they have lived before. Poets have
sung of this, children know it well, until the constant living in an
atmosphere of unbelief drives the recollection from their minds for the
present. All are subject to the limitations imposed upon the Ego by the new
brain in each life. 

This is why we are not able to keep the pictures of the past, whether of
this life or the preceding ones. 

The brain is the instrument for the memory of the soul, and, being new in
each life with but a certain limited capacity, the Ego is only able to use
it for the new life up to that capacity. That capacity will be fully availed
of, or the contrary, just according to the Ego's own desire and prior
conduct, because such past living will have increased or diminished its
power to overcome the forces of material existence. 

By living according to the dictates of the Soul, the brain may at least be
made porous to the Soul's recollections. If the contrary sort of a life is
led, then more and more will clouds obscure that reminiscence. But as the
presently organized brain did not live as such in the life last lived, it is
in general unable to remember. And this is a wise law, for we should be very
miserable if the deeds and scenes of our former lives were not hidden from
our view, until by discipline, we become able to bear a knowledge of them. 


CHARACTER: INDIVIDUAL AND NATIONAL

Each human being has a definite character different from every other human
being. And masses of beings aggregated into nations show as a whole that
there is not only a communal force, but there is also a national force.
Its distinguishing peculiarities go to make up a definite and separate
national character. 

These differences, both individual and national, are due to essential
character and not to education. Even the doctrine of the "survival of the
fittest" should show this, for the fitness can not come from nothing but
must show itself, as coming to the surface of the actual inner character.
Both individuals and nations exhibit an immense force in their character, we
must find a place and time where the force was evolved. These, Theosophy
says, are this Earth and the whole period during which the human race has
been on the planet. 

Heredity has something to do with the difference in character, as to force
and morale, swaying the soul and mind a little and furnishing also the
appropriate place for receiving reward and punishment, it is not the cause
for the essential nature shown by every one. 

But all these differences, such as those shown by babes from birth, and by
adults as character, and by nations in their history, are due to long
experience gained during many lives on earth.  

They are the outcome of the soul's own evolution. 


ONE LIFE IS INSUFFICIENT

A survey of one short human life gives no ground for the production of a
man's inner nature. 

It is needful that each soul should have all possible experience, and one
life cannot give this even under the best conditions. It would be folly, as
for instance, for the "Almighty," to put us here for such a short time,
only to remove us just when we had begun to see the object of life and the
possibilities in it. The mere selfish desire of a person to escape the
trials and discipline of life is not enough to set nature's laws aside. 

The Soul must be reborn until it has ceased to set in motion the cause of
rebirth, after having developed character up to its possible limit as
indicated by all the varieties of human nature, when every experience has
been passed through, and not until all of truth that can be known has been
acquired. 

The vast disparity among men in respect to capacity compels us, if we wish
to ascribe justice to Nature or to God, to admit reincarnation and to trace
the origin of the disparity back to the past lives of the Ego. 

For people are as much hindered and handicapped, abused and made the victims
of seeming injustice because of limited capacity, as they are by reason of
circumstances of birth or education. We see the uneducated rising above
circumstances of family and training, and often those born in good families
have very small capacity; but the troubles of nations and families arise
from want of capacity more than from any other cause. 

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I hope that this helps.

Dallas
 
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