Theos-Talk Archives (May 2011 Message tt00074)

The only other reference I have seen addressing this issue is in the SD
Commentaries. During the discussion that took place on June 6, 1889, here
are the questions and HPB's responses.

Mr. B. Keightley: Besides the Nirmanakayas, others escape. There are
numerous cases of speedy reincarnation without Devachan.

Mme. Blavatsky: For instance, children who died before the age of reason.
Immediately they are reincarnated. Persons who did not have a glimpse of
spirituality in them. It is a degree of consciousness. If he is Gautama, of
course he will have a kind of Devachan of his own, but there are children
who have had no consciousness at all.

Mr. Burrows: What form will their incarnation take?

Mme. Blavatsky: A child who dies is but a mistake of nature, a failure.


MKR adds:

In India, where among Hindus, cremation is a rule. However, in case of
children, they are not cremated, but buried. It is likely that behind this
tradition may be there was knowledge that these cases reincarnate
immediately and the burial of the body might act as an attraction. For
example, if a ego was trying to incarnate in a family and failed and the
child dies, the ego may try to reincarnate again in the same family. The
proximity of the location of the burial of the child which died prematurely
might attract the ego to the same family. Just my guess!!!


MKR

MKR


On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 8:43 PM, Cass Silva <silva_cass@IyXEVxFqOSTlaKyw1mK3Bo4e24q9D4twJqjiq91p-Wip-3GQBDb8PIGgR7SZZc3Ufqq52K8fHPkPVwgA.yahoo.invalid> wrote:

>
>
> I was reading this article and was totally surprised to hear HPB say
> "A dead child then is a failure of nature; it must be born again; the same
> pÃrisprit must in such a case pass through the interrupted trial by means
> of
> another birth. The same for the congenital idiot. These are the only cases
> of
> human reincarnation. "
>
> Can someone provide an explanation for this?
>
> Cass
> Theosophists, like the ancient philosophers and their pupil Paul, who said
> that
> the physical body was penetrated and kept alive by the pÃrisprit, PsychÃ,
> consider man as a trinity: body, pÃrisprit, spirit.
> The Buddhists, who distinguish these three entities, divide the pÃrisprit
> still
> further into several parts. Nevertheless, on the point of approaching
> perfectionâNirvÃnaâthey hardly admit more than one of these parts: the
> Spirit.
> The Greeks did the same, dividing the pÃrisprit into life and the passional
>
> nature, or Thumos. The pÃrisprit is thus itself a combination: the
> physiological
> vitality, Bios; the concupiscible nature, Epithumia; and the ideality,
> Phren.
>
> Page 366
>
> The pÃrisprit is constituted of the ethereal substance that fills the
> universe,
> hence it is derived from the cosmic astral fluid, which is not spirit at
> all,
> because although intangible, impalpable, this astral fluid is objective
> matter
> as compared with spirit. Owing to its complex nature, the pÃrisprit can
> ally
> itself intimately enough with the corporeal nature, to escape the moral
> influence of a higher life. In the same way it can unite closely enough
> with the
> spirit to partake of its potency, in which case its vehicle, the physical
> man,
> can appear as a God, even during his terrestrial lifetime. If such a union,
> of
> the spirit and the pÃrisprit, does not take place, a man does not become
> immortal as an entity: the pÃrisprit is sooner or later dissociated.
> Plutarch says that at death, Proserpine separates the body from the soul
> (pÃrisprit), after which the latter becomes a genius or DaÃmon, free and
> independent. A second dissolution has to occur, under the action of the
> Good.
> Demeter separates the pÃrisprit from the spirit. The first in time is
> resolved
> into ethereal particles; the second ascends, assimilates with the divine
> powers,
> and gradually becomes a pure divine spirit.
> Kapila, like all the Oriental philosophers, made little of the perisprital
> nature. It is this agglomeration of gross particles, of human emanations
> teeming
> with imperfections, weaknesses, passions, the very human appetites, able,
> under
> certain conditions, to become objective, that the Buddhists call Skandhas,
> groups, the Theosophists, soul, Allan Kardec, the pÃrisprit.
> The BrÃhmanas and the Buddhists say that the human individuality is not
> secure
> so long as man has not left behind with the last of these groups, the
> remaining
> vestige of terrestrial coloring. Hence their doctrine of metempsychosis, so
> much
> ridiculed but so little understood by our Orientalists themselves. Science
> teaches, indeed, that the material molecules that compose the physical body
> of
> man are, by the process of evolution, replaced by Nature into lower
> physical
> forms. Well, the Buddhists say the very same in regard to the particles of
> the
> astral body; they assert that the semi-material groups of the pÃrisprit are
>
> appropriated to the
>
> Page 367
>
> evolution of lower astral forms and unite with them according to their
> degree of
> refinement. Consequently, so long as a discarnate man contains a single
> particle
> of these skandhas, some parts of his pÃrisprit will have to enter the
> astral
> bodies of plants or animals. So if the astral man is composed of such
> material
> that Demeter cannot find a particle of spirit, the individual is dissolved,
> bit
> by bit, in the crucible of evolution. This is what the Hindus typify by a
> period
> of a thousand years spent in the impure bodies of animals. Theosophists are
> in
> essential agreement with this idea.
> To Theosophists, the great characters, the geniuses, the poets, the true
> artists, are spiritually inspired, and are not âat least in generalâsimply
> mediums, passive instruments in the hands of their guides. They are, on the
>
> contrary, souls (pÃrisprits) richly illuminated, i.e., possessing the
> spiritual
> element in a high degree, and therefore able to collaborate with pure
> Spirits
> for the spiritualization and elevation of mankind.
> In what relates to the phenomena of the pÃrisprit and of mediumship, we
> believe
> that the purely passive medium cannot discern good spirits from bad, that
> to do
> so he must become a conscious mediator. We also know that though the
> incarnated
> man, even if a high adept, cannot compete in power with pure Spirits, who,
> being
> liberated from their skandhas have become subjective to the physical
> senses,
> they can at least equal and even surpass in the matter of phenomenalism
> what is
> produced by ordinary mediums.
> Can a child, i.e., a not completely developed man, who passes into the
> other
> world, exist there in the conditions prepared for the perfected types of
> his
> species, any more than a plant or an animal?
> The child does not yet possess a spirit, so to speak; he is merely a soul,
> and
> his education has only affected his astral nature, has only dealt with
> externals.
> The cycle of man is not complete so long as he has not passed through
> terrestrial life. Not one stage of trial or experience can be skipped; he
> must
> have been a man before he reaches the state of pure Spirit.
>
> Page 368
>
> A dead child then is a failure of nature; it must be born again; the same
> pÃrisprit must in such a case pass through the interrupted trial by means
> of
> another birth. The same for the congenital idiot. These are the only cases
> of
> human reincarnation.
> If the child, indeed, who is only a duality, were immortal, why not the
> animals
> also? The triad alone survives.
> At death, the pÃrisprit becomes the outermost body; within it is formed a
> more
> ethereal body, and the whole is more or less overshadowed by the Spirit.
> The elementaries of the human body are, however, not always dissociated at
> bodily death; it may happen that by a supreme effort they are able to
> retain
> some of the third element, and in that way, slowly and with trouble, to
> ascend
> from sphere to sphere, throwing off at each step the heavier garment, and
> becoming clothed in more radiant vestures; finally arriving at perfection,
> disencumbered of every material particle, and becoming unities, Gods.
> We said that the man who has not one spark of the divine spirit to save him
>
> after death can scarcely he distinguished from the animals.
> There are some sad cases of this kind, not alone among the depraved but
> also
> among the willfully blind and the out-and-out deniers. It is, indeed, the
> will
> of man, his sovereign power, that partly rules his destiny, and if a man
> persists in believing in annihilation after death, it will take place. The
> conditions of the physical life, the kind of death, very often depend on
> the
> will.
> There are some persons who merely by the force of their resolution, escape
> the
> embrace of death, while others yield to trifling maladies. Now, what a man
> can
> do with his body, he can also do with his astral body, i.e., with his
> discarnated perisprit.
> H. P. BLAVATSKY.
>  
>


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