Rama Prasad - Karma and Reincarnation

The subject before us is of so vast and varied a range, that it is impossible to do it even a small amount of justice, in two papers like these, which howsoever long must still be too short for the important subject of Karma and Reincarnation. This is my only excuse for the rather unusual length of these papers, which will no doubt be somewhat of a strain upon the kind patience of my readers.

The Laws of Karma and Reincarnation are to my mind absolutely necessary for the explanation of the present phenomena of human life. A full and comprehensive view of the life of man, as it has been, is, and is bound to become in future, leaves no doubt as to the truth of these all-pervading laws. We therefore divide the subject into three heads naturally. Under the first head we register the various and multifarious phenomena of life, which make up the sum total of human existence, together with the laws which govern birth, preservation, and death; under the second head we discuss the genesis of our present human life; and under the third, what we learn from the past and the present of our life-manifestations, leads us on naturally to the future. Thus before we can hope to understand the doctrine of Karma and Reincarnation we must take a comprehensive view of

1. What we are now;

2. What we were in the past, and how we have become what we now are; and

3. What we are bound to become in future and how.

The answer to these questions in brief is this: –

1. We are now such beings as live entirely in and by Karma. Our life is nothing more than a bundle of Karmas (actions).

2. Our life begins with Karma, and we have become what we are by Karma.

3. We are bound to develope yet further along the same lines of development on which we have been proceeding in the past, and this development is to take place by Karma.

The Law of Karma may then be enunciated as follows: –

1. Human life is nothing more than a bundle of certain actions.

2. Present actions are always the uniform consequents of past actions, and are in their turn bound to become the invariable antecedents of other consequents. This is the Law of Karma. From this is drawn a corollary.

Cor. – Human life is eternal.

The facts of incarnation and reincarnation are found to be the necessary results of the Law of Karma. But before proceeding further, let me enunciate the Law of Reincarnation also.

1. Incarnation means the manifestation of life in gross matter.

2. The conditions of the manifesting life must always be consonant with the gross matter wherein it manifests. 65 3. Reincarnation means a change of the sum total of the conditions of the manifesting life, and thus a change of the gross body.

I shall now proceed to explain and establish these laws.

Human life, as we see it, is divided into two sets of experiences.

1. Physical experiences, which consist in the manifestations of what is called our physiological self – the prânamaya kosha.

2. Mental experiences, which consist in our cognitions, emotions, wills and desires.

These physiological and mental manifestations are objects of observation, and so are their laws. Nobody can deny them.

Our physiological experiences may be classified with ancient Indian philosophers under five heads: –

1. Prâna: – This is that manifestation of life which draws atmospheric air from without into the system.

2. Apâna: – This is that manifestation of life which throws out of the system things which are not wanted there.

3. Vyâna: – This is that manifestation of life which keeps the gross body in its particular state of preservation.

4. Sumâna: – This is that manifestation of life which draws food and drink into the system, and distributes its essence all over the body.

5. Udâna: – This manifestation of life consists in all movements of the human body, or its various parts, from its state of rest or action. It also means the tending of life in general towards an escape from the present gross body.

There is no manifestation of human life which does not fall under one or other of these heads. Upon the manifestation which is called Vyâna, depend all other manifestations. Unless the anatomical systems of the human body were preserved, the other manifestations would evidently be nowhere. Without bone, muscle, nerve, vein, hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, &c., there would be no life-manifestations. Vyana therefore is the most important, inasmuch as it is the basic manifestation of human life.

This important manifestation of life, in the very act of maintaining intact the anatomical systems of the human body, consumes it; and the external forces of nature help it in this consumption. The necessity therefore arises of replacing these lost materials, and this is done by the life-manifestations known as Samâna and Prâna.

It is needless to further specifically describe these manifestations. All that is necessary to see is that these manifestations, each and all of them, are motions of one kind or other, along certain well-marked lines.

We learn then from observation that life is a certain force, acting in the gross human body, and manifesting itself in various acts and states, that is, performing all the functions of the human body, with which all of us are more or less familiar. But the questions now arise: Whence has this force come into the gross body ? What is the nature and constitution of this life-force? To answer these questions at once, let me tell you that the human life-force has its source in the sun, and that its constitution is of the solar ethers of Prana. In Sanskrit, while we give the name of Prâna to the individual life-force, we give to the sun the name of Paraprâna, the upper, higher (macrocosmic) Prâna. But I need not quote here the authority of Sanskrit philosophy. It is a well-known fact that the sun is the source of all earth-life. If you study the phenomena of individualized life, you will find them to be identically the same with all those that the solar forces: perform in external nature. Take for example the important function of breathing. Why do you draw a certain amount of atmospheric air into your lungs? A vacuity is produced there, and air rushes in. Why is vacuity produced? Because the lungs tend to and do expand, for without expansion there can be produced no vacuity. Now why is expansion produced? By the effect of some one of the five tatwas, which as you know 66 are different modes of motion, and have a certain degree of heat as their inseparable accident.

This then is the explanation of the phenomenon of breathing. A certain amount of tatwic heat causes the lungs to expand, a vacuity is produced and air, of course, rushes in. Now, see what the sun does in external nature. All of you are familiar with the part which the sun plays in causing the monsoon. The sun heats a certain portion of atmospheric air, expands it so as to produce a vacuum, and air rushes in from other portions of atmospheric space to fill it in. Is not this portion of the phenomenon in external nature quite identical with inspiration? The effect being the same, the cause too must be the same, and what other conclusion follows naturally from this, but that the pulmonary power of our constitution is solar in its nature?

Let us again analyze all the acts which constitute the phenomena of eating and digesting. We take a certain piece of the edible substance into our hand. The muscles of our fingers move in a certain familiar way, and arrange themselves round the substance so as to constitute the act of holding. Now what is motion? The muscles of your fingers expand or contract, and motion along the lines of expansion or contraction results. You may take it as a general rule that all physiological motion – all the movements of your body and its various parts – are in general the results of muscular contraction or expansion, or more strictly speaking of muscular tatwic vibration. What is it that you do in putting the edible substance in your hand into your mouth? What is it that you do in chewing? What is it that you do in swallowing? What is it again that happens in your stomach when your food is digesting? All is the result of muscular tatwic motion, or in more common language, of muscular expansion and contraction. The movements of your eyes, your face, your feet, your tongue, all are the results of muscular expansion and contraction. Even the keeping up of the form of your gross body is the result of motion.

If you now turn to external nature, you will find that all those movements of nature which we call external life are the result of some sort of expansion or contraction along various and varying lines, and that they are the result of solar life.

Professor Roscoe has somewhere remarked that physiology is nothing more than the chemistry and physics of the human body. This means that the life-principle in man performs the same functions which the solar forces of light, heat, chemical action, &c., perform in external nature. This is a very vast subject, and I must needs drop it here. But if you study and compare the phenomena of individualized human life with solar life as it manifests itself in our planet, you will find both to be identically the same. As the ancient philosophers used to say, the microcosm is an exact picture of the macrocosm. Man is a little universe in himself. We come then to the conclusion that all the phenomena of human life are motions of some sort, and that the sources of all these motions are identically the same as the various solar powers. The individual life-principle is in fact a picture of the sun. The principles of Universal Causation and Uniformity of Nature which are now universally recognized, point to the same cause when the effect is the same.

We have now arrived at a very important point. We have in fact established that the life-principle of man is a material body. Those of you who are accustomed to call gross matter only by that name, will be surprised to see this assertion made. “A wonder for once”, you will perhaps think. “What we have all our life been accustomed to recognize as force is now termed matter.” A little reflection will however show you that this is a hard fact in nature. All force is in fact material. Light is a mode of motion. Of what? Of the very rarefied matter, which science now recognizes as luminiferous ether. What is heat? A mode of motion. Of 67 what? Of ether of course, but with this difference, that light is invariably constituted by a greater number of vibrations per second than heat. There is only a difference of planes between the two forces. What is chemical action? Why, simply a particular manifestation of light and heat, and therefore only a mode of motion of ether. What is electricity ? What is magnetism? Both, without a shadow of doubt, are different modes of motion. Statical electricity becomes dynamical only while changing its present conditions and environments into others. Of what then are these two forces the modes of motion. Of nothing else evidently but of matter, and that, too, ethereal matter.

Now that substance of which all these forces are the modes of motion, is called by Sanskrit philosophy – the Vedanta – Prâna. This Prâna is a very rarefied material substance, and it fills all space. Prâna performs all those functions which modern science assigns to luminiferous ether and more. Thus Prâna is said to be a component whole of five ethers – the luminiferous of course, but along with it the soniferous – âkâsa, the tangiferous – vayu, the gustiferous – âpas, and the odoriferous – prithivi.

According to the Indian philosopher, light, as well as sound, touch, taste, and smell, are all different modes of motion of this substance, the Prâna which fills all space. This Prâna in connection with our planetary life assumes four progressive states of existence.

1. Solar, the suns being the highest centres of Prâna.

2. Lunar and Planetary. This is solar Prâna reflected, and has properties different from the sun. Planetary Prânas differ from each other, on account of the difference of distance and the absorption of certain spectral rays on different planets to the exclusion of others.

3. The atmospheric Prâna, which changes vapour into rain water, and which in its luminiferous aspect shows itself as electricity.

4. Terrestrial Prâna, whose motions are now known as magnetism. There is nothing in the cause which will not be present in the effect, and hence every earthy product must have more or less of all these descriptions of Prâna.

That the Sanskrit philosophers recognized all this, a quotation coming further on will clearly establish. Here let me return to the subject in hand. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and all other forces whose working constitutes life, are different modes of motion of a rarefied etherial material substance which fills all space, which is the component whole of five ethers, and which is found on earth existing on four different planes.

Our life-principle then is material, and all our actions and states are modes of motion of this material body. As this material life-body of solar ethers moves, the motion manifests itself in gross matter, the gross physical body is born, lives and dies. As I have already told you, this life-body is an exact counterpart of the gross body. A little reflection will show you that the external form of the gross body, too, cannot but have its source in the life-principle. For what is the external form of the gross body? A longer or shorter stature, a more or less bulky body; a proportion of varying lengths and breadths of the various parts of the body constitute what is called its form. If you analyze the phenomenon, the whole of it comes to this; the external body grows (moves) to a certain extent in length and breadth, and so do the various parts of the body in varying proportions, along different lines. It is these growths along various lines combined that give you the idea of what is called form.

It is from this evident that the external body, with all its various and varying qualities, and all its acts and movements, is an effect of the sun. The life of man is an ethereal body of matter, an exact counterpart of the external body. Its higher form of motion serves to govern the gross body. The mode of this government is determined by the various directions along which it tends to move in various degrees and proportions. 68 Having arrived so far, look a little around yourselves. You will find that no two human beings are exactly alike in their acts and appearances, although the substratum of these acts and appearances is the same in all of them. Every human life-body is in its constitution different from another. It has different tendencies to act and move no doubt; but it has also a different form, and a different period of active manifestation, i.e., a different length of life. For whence otherwise the difference of form and length of life in a gross body? As we have already seen, even the form of the external body is a complex notion resulting from the various parts of the body growing to a certain extent along certain lines, and death simply means the passing of the present-life lines of motion into the âkâsa state for the time being.

It is not hard to understand that what we call our life is in fact a body of the ethers of Prâna, just as our external body is made of the Mahabhutas which form the gross vesture of our mother earth. The important question, however, which now arises is this: Can and does this life-body survive without the gross body which for some time is its habitation; or does it lose its form and actions, and dissolve into chaos with death ? In order to answer this question we must first answer another. We have seen that the form of our external body is caused by our individualized life-body, for otherwise there would be no difference of form between two gross bodies. The earth, or terrestrial matter of which the external bodies are formed, is just as formless comparatively as Prâna appears to be. Whence then the different ideas of generic, specific and individual types? Did in fact these types exist before actual incarnation into their various gross vestures, or what ?

Now every effect must have a cause. “No being out of non-being” (na sato vidyate bhavo), says the Bhagavad Gita. Besides the antecedent must always have all the elements of the consequent phenomenon; the cause must be adequate. Solar spatial Prâna must then possess in itself the generic, specific, and individual types of our earth. Every human or other body must have pre-existing determinate lines of life-motion before they can show themselves in gross matter. In simpler words, our life-bodies must have existed before actual incarnation. But they of course existed potentially, as compared with actual earth-life. Without the pre-existence of these solar types the forms of earth-life would be simply impossible, for where otherwise would be the adequate cause? But Prâna appears to us to be formless. There appear to be no typical life-bodies in the ocean of Prâna. Can Prâna be moulded into any forms? Whence do they come into the formless ocean of Prâna. which fills all space? A little reflection will make it plain that Prâna can be moulded into forms. You know that Prâna is matter just as the gross matter you are familiar with, and all matter can be moulded into forms. The only thing that is necessary is a higher form of motion, which will determine the direction and extent of the various lines of motion which constitute form. This higher form of matter – for higher motion must always live in a higher state of matter – is known as manas, mind, or thought-matter. Thoughts are the various forms of this mental matter which imprint forms upon solar matter. Before however rising higher, you must make yourselves sure of the existence in the ocean of ethereal matter which fills all space of life-forms, the type of the genera, species and individuals of our planet. The capability of Prâna carrying into it invisible forms and imprinting them elsewhere upon sensitive matter is now a well-known fact. Hence do we come to the conclusions that:

1. The life force of the human constitution is none other than individualized solar matter.

2. Every existing form has a pre-existing type in the ocean of solar matter which fills all space and which Sanskrit philosophy calls Prâna.

And now comes the question, Are these pre-existing life-bodies 69 destroyed or dissolved into chaos with death? “Matter is indestructible” says modern science. “Whatever is being can never pass into non-being”, says the ancient Indian philosopher. It would be absurd to suppose that a thing which existed before birth would be destroyed with death. Solar matter is and remains there; the lines and motion which determine form are there. They cannot be destroyed. All that can be done is the lengthening or shortening of these lines of action as an effect of active life, and thus a change of external appearance as the effect of the change of proportion which the lengthening or shortening of various lines must necessarily entail. In simpler words no life-body can be destroyed or dissolved; it can only change its form. Hence the human life-body survives after death; in what state we shall see further on.

214 In the meanwhile we must make ourselves master of what happens when a child is conceived, for it has been said that the child inherits everything from the parents. With conception begins the life of a child. Conception results when the germ and sperm cells – the sukra and rajas of the Hindus – come together. These cells have a certain form, and although it is impossible to see in them the future fully developed human being, it might very well be said that they bear the stamp of the forms of the father and the mother, and that it is these parental impressions which give birth to the form, &c., of the future child. This is the theory of heredity. This theory holds that the whole life of a child – form, tendencies, characteristics, &c. – come to him or her from the parents, by way of impressions upon the germ and sperm cells. Now there is no doubt that the germ and sperm cells in the mother’s womb have in them all the impressions which are to develope into the future child; for there can be nothing in the consequent which is not present in the antecedent. The same thing is always present in the antecedent as in the consequent; in the latter, however, it is in esse, while in the former in posse. But the question is, Whence do these impressions come? The theory of heredity says from the parents. Let us examine this assertion – with reference to that factor of these impressions which causes length of life.

The child when born has a certain amount of the life-energy, which carries it through a long or short term of life as the case may be. Life is indestructible, and the impulse of solar life, when energizing the gross matter of earth, is coëxistent with the sun. When, therefore, it is individualized in a gross organism, it is never deprived of its power of throwing out impulses of energization, because individual life is as it were a continuation of solar life. But if this energization be taken to be the source of length of life, as on the principle of heredity it must be, then it must be granted that the impulse of energization, which one organism imparts to another, can only be proportionate to its own strength. Can it indeed be possible for any living organism to impart to its child a longer term of life than is its own portion? While the parents may die a decade after the birth of their child, the child may live on to seventy. Is it not anomalous that the same life-force which could, or could not, keep the parents alive for ten years, should impart to another portion of matter a life of seventy years or only of a single hour! But that objection, it might be said, applies to the sun as well. Why does not the sun always keep alive a gross body? Why does a gross body die, when the sun is yet living? Now there is no doubt that gross bodies would die when the sun dies. Why does not, therefore, a child die with the death of the parents? Because, it might be said, the life of a child-organism depends after birth upon its living according to the laws of life and health, and not upon 215 the impulse imparted by the parent organisms. This presupposes two things: first, that the child who lives longer than its parents must have the tendency to live according to the laws of health to a stronger degree than the parents. Is this tendency inherited, or what? If inherited, the same question repeats itself in another form. If not, we must give up the theory of heredity as insufficient to account for the tendency to live according to the laws of life. The second question that arises in this connection is, Why does a child sometimes die immediately after birth? It has not certainly lived against the laws of life. Will it be said that it was but an imperfect attempt of nature? If so, we must throw the theory of heredity to the winds; for whence in that case the imperfection? Such an assertion would again beg the question. The riddle of human life will never be solved with any amount of satisfaction, unless and until we admit the existence of the individual types of child and parent, independently of each other, the one being drawn to the other by some affinity and depending on it only for birth.

Now, however, to answer the question, Why does the gross body die when the sun is yet alive? In the first place, this question seems to suggest that the life of the parent-organism is co-eternal with the sun, for otherwise there would be no use in comparing the two. This in fact is the case, and it is this fact which among other things demolishes the theory of heredity most completely. When every parent-organism is co-eternal with the sun, every individual life-body must have existed before the actual life of any gross organism.

But the question might be taken as an objection to the theory of the co-eternity of human life with the sun. But, someone may say, had individual life been co-eternal with the sun, the gross body would never have died. The answer to this question is that the life of the sun enters gross matter only little by little, and is rising into perfection by grades. The conditions of earth life as dependent upon the sun are such that sometimes the negative forces prevail upon the positive, and at others the positive upon the negative. There must therefore be a recurring of the positive and negative states of sun-matter, as living in and upon earth. Death is the negative state, and life the positive state of solar matter. The senses work and rest; the organs of action work and rest; the lungs alternately work and rest; the stomach works and rests; in fact every power of the human constitution that can be made the subject of observation is seen to exist alternately in an essential and potential state, the one succeeding the other. None of these powers can live for ever in the potential or essential state; each must succeed the other in regular order. Hence the conclusion is inevitable that the power of Vyâna which gives form to gross matter and keeps up the anatomical structures, must also live alternately in the two states – potential and essential, rest and work, negative and positive. The potential state of the manifestation of Vyâna is death, and its essential state, life. There must therefore be recurring births and deaths of human life-types, until the soul progresses far enough to pass out of the dominion of the sun. This, however, by the way. The laws which govern the passing of human life out of one of these states into the other, are a little complicated; they cannot be completely discussed in this paper. What is necessary, however, will appear in the context. The negative force of the parent-organism being destined to overpower the positive force in a certain fixed period, the same law cannot be asserted with regard to an individual organism. Besides the child organism is not seen to depend upon the parent-organism, as the earth upon the sun. The child is not seen to be in the positive or negative state when the parent is in either state. Hence we may conclude that the parent organism has at least nothing to do with the length or shortness of life in the child. The energy which causes this has not come from the parents; and it is obviously not 216 dependent always upon living according to the laws of life. Whence then ? according to the theory of Karma and Reincarnation, from the lengthening or shortening of the lines of our life-motion, which is caused by our own actions in a former birth. Without this theory it is impossible to explain all the facts of human life, and there is no phenomenon of life which does not receive the most intelligible explanation from this theory. The theory of heredity falls to the ground by the very patent fact that children are never absolutely like their parents, and sometimes very remarkably different from them – in colour, features, virtue, vice, knowledge, &c. But the theory of Karma is fully equal to the explanation of all these phenomena, and many more, which the theory of heredity will never even dream of explaining. The subject might be enlarged upon, but the limits of my paper will not allow it. Suffice it to say that if you study the subject a little deeply, you will find the theory of heredity to be very inadequate. Hence it must be rejected in favour of the theory of Karma and Reincarnation.

We have now arrived at the following important conclusions: –

1. That human life – and in fact all life – is material.

2. That the ethereal solar matter is the source of life.

3. That the individualized human life is the source of the form, appearance, colour, height, breadth, and all the various and varying actions of human life.

4. That the bodies of life – the prânamâyakoshas – are just as good bodies in every way as the bodies of gross matter.

5. That the solar matter of which our life-bodies are made, being indestructible, the types of all the genera, species and individuals of our planet are eternal. They exist as such before the birth and after the death of the gross organisms in which they manifest themselves periodically.

We have thus come to know certain very important facts about what our physiological life is. We must now go a little higher before we can fully understand what human life is as a whole. I have already hinted at the existence in the universe of a form of matter, higher in energy than solar matter. This matter I have named thought-matter, or Manas as it is called in Sanskrit. The centres of this thought-matter are called Manus. A Manu is in fact that bundle of ideas for the Universe, which in man is called the mind – Sanskrit Manas. It is these ideas which are the immediate cause of the substance and form and powers of prâna. And it is these ideas which have caused the existence of life-bodies in the ocean of prâna. You know very well that the human mind has a very great power upon the human life-body, and I may tell you here in brief that the object of Yoga is to give it the fullest power over every manifestation of human life, to render even the involuntary manifestations voluntary.

While speaking of cosmic evolution it becomes necessary for us to posit the existence in the universe of this ocean of thought-matter, and of various mental bodies in this ocean. We have seen that life-bodies must exist in the ocean of prâna, for otherwise the existence of planetary gross organic forms would be unintelligible. We find also existing in the universe innumerable suns which, as we have seen, are centres of prâna; or as we might say the common reservoirs of the life-types of the planets. The suns differ from each other in the greater or less presence of the tatwic forces of prâna, and thus in size, in colour, in being single, double, triple, or multiple, and thus in those characteristics of planetary life which emanate from them. The nature of this difference is the same as that which obtains among individuals of a species. Here then is a clear difference of form among the suns themselves. The solar prototypes of planetary life must then have their own prototypes, for otherwise their existence would be impossible.

These prototypes of solar material forms must have the following characteristics: –

217 (1) They must be made of matter in such a form as would give birth to prâna. Arguing on the analogy of gross matter and prâna, we might say that (2) this next higher matter must be in substance the same as prâna, but that its constituent energy must be higher than that of prâna; so that the higher energy might impart to prâna such motions as would be adequate to give birth to the solar prototypes of planetary forms.

We have seen that prâna has five general modes of motion – the tatwas; and that the action of these tatwas explains all the phenomena of life with which our earth is familiar. Hence, in fact, the higher matter must be capable of giving birth to these tatwas of prâna. And in order that these tatwas might appear as forms of prâna, that higher matter must have the capability of bringing them together and separating them from each other.

These truths are expressed in the Sânkhya philosophy by saying that Manas, as well as all the lower and higher modifications, are the outcome of prakriti (noumenon-matter), that is, their substance is the same; that it is the immediate source of the five tanmâtras, which are nothing more than the five tatwas of prâna; and that the function of Manas is sankalpa and vikalpa, i.e., synthesizing and analyzing. On the subject of sankalpa and vikalpa, I shall make some remarks further on. Here I have only to impress upon your mind that the existence of a Universal Mind or Thought-Matter-Centre is necessary for explaining the existence of prâna and the solar prototypes of planetary life.

Every individual life-body must then have an individual mind. This individual mental monad would, from the very nature of its constitution, perform the function of creating out of prâna an individual life-type. The individual creation goes on in reality as an aspect of cosmic creation. The life-types created out of the cosmic tanmâtras must have all the powers which the tatwas are capable of exercising on gross matter. Hence the life- types which, as we have seen, must pre-exist before the creation of planetary forms begins, must have all the powers of life to the highest possible extent – which is the solar state itself.

The senses are but the modifications of the tanmâtras. They come into existence by the individual tanmâtras concentrating themselves by-and-bye into the gross body. The greater the concentration, the greater the power of the senses. In ages yet to come our senses are bound to develope to a very high stage of perfection. This, however, is by the way here. What I have to tell you now is that our sensations being impressions of form, from external nature, are bound together in the upward evolution in the common reservoir of the tanmâtras, the mind. Manas, or mind, then is the common sense of the human constitution. Sensations, and all the consequent habits of the brain, known as inference, verbal authority, emotions, wills and desires, gather into the one common reservoir of the mind. On this head I might have to say something more further on. Here I have only to say that a fully developed mind with a fully developed life-type must exist before the creation of terrestrial forms begins on earth. Every individual human being has thus a pre-existing life-type and mental type.

If I were to trace these types to their primal source in parabrahma, I would be making this paper too long and unnecessarily abstruse. I would therefore tell you that there is a higher state of existence also, both in man and the universe. This is called self-consciousness, ego, or soul. This self-consciousness is the immediate source of Manas, or mental bodies. Its name is Vijnâna, and the macrocosmic appearance of this Vijnâna is called Iswara.

It is very difficult to do justice to all these conceptions in the short space here allotted to me; but I may tell you one thing more, which you will come fully to understand, when you devote a greater amount of time and attention than I can expect from you at present. It is this: the 218 egoism also of the self-consciousness is a superposed element, and the highest state of human life is pure unalloyed consciousness. This in the individual is called purusha or spirit.

We see then that before the fabrication of forms began on our planet, a four-fold being existed.

1. Absolute consciousness.

2. Self-consciousness.

3. A mind or thought-centre.

4. A physiological life-type, prâna, and

5. There also existed the gross matter of the earth, which was capable of receiving the impressions of the four forces enumerated above.

I might tell you here, that the higher of these forces manifests only through the immediately lower, and not all at once. Thus the mind can only manifest itself through prâna, the ego through the mind, and the highest spirit through the ego. Thus when the fabrication of gross organic forms began, at first the physiological life alone could manifest itself in the gross organism and in none of the higher ones. As long as this was the case, the life-monad remained in the vegetable kingdom. When, however, the prâna had concentrated sufficiently, the mind began to show itself in the gross organism, and then the life-monad passed into the animal kingdom. The soul begins to manifest itself in the gross organism when the mind acquires a certain degree of strength, and then the monad enters the human kingdom. In man prâna and mind have developed to a certain extent, and are bound to develope yet more. But this subject I must now leave for the present. I have to tell you how the solar type first incarnates in the gross matter of our planet. Before, however, I can expect you to understand this subject fully, I must tell you something of cosmology, for as I have already told you, the individual life-body is but an aspect of cosmic prâna.

The Sanskrit philosopher holds that gross matter has come out of prâna. Now if you turn to modern science, she will tell you that there is only a difference of temperature between solar and planetary matter, and that solar matter cooled down becomes planetary matter. She posits the primal existence of a substance called fire-mist, and believes it to be the source of planets by the process of cooling down. The first state of planetary matter she holds was gaseous, the next igneous, the third aqueous, and the fourth solid.

Sanskrit philosophy posits the primal existence of a substance which it calls prâna. This prâna is not exactly fire-mist, for fire, that is light, is but one mode of its motion, while we find in the gross material product of this substance five distinct modes of motion. As I have already told you, Sanskrit philosophy recognizes the existence of five ethers instead of the one ether known to modern science.

Moreover, instead of four it believes in the existence of five states of planetary matter while modern science only recognizes three. I hope, however, to show you that planetary matter exists in subtle states, and that modern science indirectly recognizes the two remaining states.

Let us apply to planetary evolution the celebrated dictum of Sanskrit philosophy, that the prithivî comes out of âpas, the âpas out of têjas, the têjas out of vâyu, and the vâyu out of âkâsa. It would mean that the first state of a planet was âkâsic, the next gaseous (vâyava), the third igneous (taijasa), the fourth fluid (âpava), and the fifth solid (parthiva.)

In order to illustrate, and thus to better explain this doctrine, let us take the following phenomenon. Take a piece of ice, and try to turn it into liquid by the application of heat, you will find that 78° of heat are consumed before solidity changes into liquidity. As soon, however, as the change has taken place, the thermometer has ceased to indicate the 78° of heat. It falls down again to zero. Modern science explains this by saying that so much heat has become latent. Sanskrit philosophy would explain 219 it by saying that aqueous prâna has come out of âkâsa, while the prâna of ice has passed into the âkâsic state. Turn again the liquid into the gaseous state; the same phenomenon happens. A certain amount of heat, in the terminology of modern science, passes into latency; while in the terminology of Sanskrit philosophy the aqueous prâna passes into the âkâsic state.

Now reverse the process. As the gaseous state disappears, the thermometer indicates a certain amount of heat. Where is the gaseous state now? It evidently exists no longer as such, for while the true state of aqua existed, the thermometer indicated no heat. Sanskrit philosophy tells us that the gaseous state has passed into âkâsa, while the igneous state (agni) has made its appearance. Now, then, if the process is continued, the thermometer no longer indicates the heat, and the fluid state of water makes its appearance. Sanskrit philosophy explains it by saying that the igneous state has gone into the âkâsa, and the aqueous state (âpas has made its appearance. Similarly it says that the aqueous state passing into the âkâsic state the solid state appears. It will, however, be seen that while the âkâsa only makes its appearance when the vâyu passes into agni, both vâyu, in the shape of mobility, and âkâsa in the shape of latency make their appearance; and while the liquid is changing into solid, the âkâsa, the vâyu, and the agni, all three make their appearance. Thus, says the Sanskrit philosopher, the qualities of all the higher tatwas make their appearance in the lower ones. It is in this way then that planetary matter comes out of solar prâna. A certain degree of the higher energy of solar prâna passes into the âkâsic state, and thence emerges planetary vâyu. By-and-bye the igneous, the aqueous, and the solid states make their appearance. Not that the whole of vâyu is transferred into agni, before the latter begins to change into âpas, for in the present state of our planet all the four states exist in combination.

I have now told you that planetary matter, as a whole, independent of internal states, exists on the substratum of a certain degree of the motion of prâna having passed into the âkâsic state. In involution all the four states, and the earth as a whole, passes back into the âkâsic state, and what is known in modern times as the flying away of atoms on account of the passing out of heat, is in reality the gradual passing of these atoms back into the âkâsic state, and no lawless flight into unknown space. This is a very important fact in nature, and is of the utmost importance in explaining the process of the incarnation, death and reincarnation of the human Monad. To this I shall recur in the proper place. Here I have to tell you that as terrestrial gross matter has come out of and exists in solar prâna, so also does prâna exist in subjective thought (manasâtma), and manas in egoism, and egoism in absolute consciousness. Thus out of consciousness has come the macrocosm; and it exists therein, passing periodically into the laya state, and coming out of it again.

Now what are known to us as human spirits are but the aspects of this All, its formless forms. Subjectively there is no difference among souls. All souls are in nature the same; all are free, omniscient, omnipresent, and absolute. They are, as I have already told you, but the aspects of the one Sat, Chit and Ânanda. As every point of light in the solar system is a picture of the sun, so every Monad of consciousness is but an aspect of parabrahma. In short, what we call man, or rather the spirit of man, is subjectively identical with parabrahma. As long as the human soul remains in pure subjectivity, there is for it no bond of Karma. It is the state of what the Indian philosopher calls jnâna, divine wisdom – theosophia; and, as he tells us, by the fire of jnâna all Karmas are destroyed. With the evolution of the Universe from absolute consciousness to egoism, thought, prâna and gross matter have also evolved the individual aspects of the All. These individual aspects are called pratyagâtma. These, as I 220 have told you, exist before the beginning of organic formation on a planet.

I shall now trace the formation of organic life, and take for my illustration a moonless planet, because a moonless planet is the primary state of planetary life.

The existence of a new planet begins with its solar life-type passing into the âkâsic state, and thence coming out in the state of terrestrial gas. In this state it represents all the aspects of consciousness. The germs of all the types of the future genera, species, and individuals, are there present in the gaseous state. Such was the case with our moon, at the time of the first inception of her life. These types of gross matter were then in the most elementary germinal state, a state out of which were to evolve all the higher forms of life – mineral, vegetable, animal and human. While the process of solidification was going on in the moon, the sun and the other higher macrocosmic Powers began naturally to exercise their influence from without as well as from within. The fact is that all the Powers of the universe work harmoniously from within as well as from without; and while the Monads of consciousness – the purushas – from their internal power tend to rise through gross matter back again to consciousness, the macrocosmic powers perform the function of raising around the soul a world of Mâyâ, and through Mâyâ bring it again to its state of pristine purity.

Thus the seed already exists, living by its internal life. The sun, however, enters the seed from without also, and makes it to appear in the form of a new organism, say a tree. The mode of the entrance of a solar organic type into a planetary seed is of very great importance. It follows anew the same line of manifestation which the planet has already followed. A certain degree of the solar energy of the type passes into the âkâsic state, and emerges thence into the gaseous state (vâyava). As this emergence takes place, the planetary vâyu, which is already present there, in the objective germinal states, by affinity gathers round this manifesting type. Thus you see that the germinal planetary vesture in the gaseous state of which we are now talking is quite distinct from the gaseous state into which the solar organic type has now passed, although both of them are co-existent in one organism. Without the entrance of the solar type into the seed, there would have been no expansion, no organic life, no tree. When the type passes out again, the gross carbonic vesture collapses, and death ensues. The passing out of the type follows the reverse process exactly. From the gaseous it passes back into the âkâsic state, to come out again after some time.

This happens when a planet is yet in the gaseous state. When it passes into the igneous state, the external appearance of the germs of course changes. Gas and heat both become necessary constituents. Similarly with the change of the igneous to the liquid, and the liquid to the solid state. When all the four states come to exist simultaneously upon any planet, its life is similar to earth life under its present conditions. The gross seeds exist, with the three preceding states in latency. When the type enters these gross seeds, what happens? Out of the âkâsic state it emerges into the gaseous state. It finds a portion of its seed on earth in a gaseous state, brought about by the action of water and heat. These two being in the same state then adhere to each other. The type that is to say enters the seed. Thence, a portion of it remaining in the gaseous state, the rest passes into the igneous, and thence into the liquid and the solid states. It becomes in the end a perfect picture of terrestrial life, all the four states of matter being present. The gross vesture, too, remains in the same fourfold state. Thus we see that the astral type of a gross organism lives in it in a state of life in which all the four tatwic states exist simultaneously. In fact it is a perfect picture of the gross organism, and is quite distinct from it. The regular change of the tatwas with the fifth âkâsa intervening between all of them, which is noticed in the “Science of Breath”, is 221 due to this fourfold existence of the life-type, with the âkâsa of course intervening as the substratum of all the different and changing states. As we have seen above in the illustration of water, âkâsa intervenes between all these states.

When death comes, the solid (parthiva) state of the solar type becomes latent first, and with it the solid portions of the body become lifeless. Then the liquid state passes into latency, and with it liquids of the gross body die. Then the tâijas (igneous) state becomes latent, and with it the gross organism cools down. The gaseous state then passes into latency, and with it ceases the breath, which after birth is the chief manifestation of the gaseous state.

The solar type has now passed into the âkâsic state, to emerge thence at the appointed time again, as we shall see further on. This is the course of life followed by a solar life-type on a moonless planet. During death it remains in the terrestrial âkâsa, on account of the planetary affinities constructed during life. It cannot pass back again into the solar state. In the case of those planets, however, which have a moon attached to them, the life-type passes from âkâsa into the lunar state.

I shall have something to say presently about the further transformation of the life-type. In the meanwhile I shall try to examine what this lunar state of life is at present, and what connection it must have with earth-life.

At one time the moon was in the condition in which our earth now is. All the four states of matter were present there. It could not have been otherwise. Any contrary supposition would clash with the Law of Uniformity. At that time the course of life run by the life-type on the moon was what I have described it to be for a moonless planet. Gradually the conditions of life changed on the moon as they were bound to change. As I have shown, the first stage of planetary life is gaseous, and then by-and-bye the igneous, the aqueous, and the solid states appear, until the four states are simultaneously present together. But the same change still goes on. The gases which have not yet changed will proceed to do so, until in time all of them have passed into the next state. The gaseous state is then nowhere. Next the igneous state passes into the liquid, and finally the whole of the liquid into the solid state. The moon is at present in this state of existence. The whole of it is entirely solid; the gaseous, the igneous, and the liquid states are all latent. The solar types that lived and died on the moon when she was alive, can live there now in a state of latent lunar life alone. This latent lunar life is pregnant with all gaseous, igneous, liquid and solid tendencies and affinities. There is no destruction possible of the mighty kingdom of mâyâvic life developed by the sun on the moon. It lives, though in a state of latency. When the time comes for this lunar life to re-manifest itself, where can it do so? It would be natural to expect that it would be drawn to wherever adequate conditions exist. From our moon this reviving life travels to this earth of ours. Thus while on the moon, life was purely solar, on the earth it is luni-solar. And so the Rik says that the sun and moon are our joint parents.

These are inevitable conclusions. It would be absurd to suppose that the moon was born simply to give light to man. It would be absurd to suppose that the moon has always been in her present dead state; and finally it would not do to hold that lunar mâyâvic life is destroyed with the death of the moon. As we have seen, life and its types are indestructible. Evolution had so far proceeded on the moon as to give birth to the human life-body. The human life-body came to earth so far fully developed. Its first terrestrial vesture was as usual gaseous, and it went on solidifying and becoming more beautiful as time proceeded. We thus in time arrive at the present state of the development of our body. We have now, therefore, twofold tendencies of action, for the moon has not yet entirely passed 222 out of being, and like a veritable mother exercises a vast influence over our lives.

Such has been the genesis of human life-bodies. They cannot pass out of the dominion of the sun and moon, as long as solar life is not perfected in manifestation. When that is effected the solar life-wave will have passed out of gross matter altogether, with perfect manufactured images of solar life. This will be the final escape from terrestrial Mâyâ.

Thus then you see that the life-body, which is at present human, has passed through all the states of mineral, vegetable, and animal life. This indeed is the theory of evolution, which now in some form or other is adhered to by the entire thinking portion of humanity.

If you compare the physical life of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, you will find there is no radical difference in the processes of life which obtain among them. There is only a difference of degree. As you rise higher and higher in the scale of life, the organism becomes more and more perfect, complex and refined. As Emerson says: – “Trees are but imperfect men”.

307 As I have already remarked, the solar life-type enters the gross vesture gradually and not all at once. As the organism is subjected during

life to its constant influences, the solar forces entering the body are constantly raising its various energies higher and higher. This entering of the solar energies into the human body is known by the name of Vâsana; and it is by Vâsana, by experiencing the solar manifestations of external nature, that the energies of our bodies have arisen, and are yet bound to rise higher. Such is the lesson of the past. The sun will not cease to influence us until our life-bodies have received all the energies it can impart to them. There is no reason why we should cease to move along the same line of perfection on which we have been moving, but quite the reverse. While the source of all these energies is capable of imparting them to us in an increasing degree, it is not certainly going to change its past line of action but to complete it. Thus the present phenomena of life and their genesis tell us that life in its generic, specific and individual capacities, is but an upward march from solar beginnings to solar perfection. The only difference that we find existing in more and less highly developed life-organisms is that in the former solar energies are present to a greater extent and degree than in the latter. Why this difference? There can be no reason but that the more highly developed bodies have been longer subjected to the source of those energies, and have therefore been more influenced by them. All organic motion becomes heat, and the production of this heat means increase in organic strength. When organic life-matter is eternal, and the motive forces are ever present, it must of necessity rise to the highest perfection of power the solar system possesses. The evolutionary causes which have brought any individual unit to its present state of perfection, being still present there, it must yet make further progress. And that progress must be made on this earth, for the very simple reason that it can be made here. It is quite possible for this earth to contain human life of a still more highly developed form, and nature always utilizes the capabilities of her products to the highest possible extent. So far as the individuals of the present race of man are concerned, a vast range of the degrees of development is clearly perceptible. Multifarious and almost infinitely various as human life is, you can very easily convince yourselves of this difference of development. For individuals then, there is a possibility of more developed existence during the present racial conditions. The science of Yoga, divested of many an excrescence which has now become attached to it, aims at proving practically the possibility of this evolution, and the hope which man always entertains of living a higher and a better life is only the shadow of coming events cast before their actual appearance. An 308 individual must then be reincarnated on this earth for the purpose of future physiological development. Otherwise the very purpose of his life would be defeated.

Thus the nature and history of the physiological evolution of man, demand future existence and rebirth on this earth as a necessity. I shall now take up the nature and history of mental development, and show you that these too lead to the same necessary conclusion. I shall then proceed to show you how this reincarnation takes place, together with some other important and connected facts.

I have already pointed out that before the fabrication of life-forms by the sun began, the entity which has now become man existed as a four-fold being.

Absolute Consciousness; Spirit.
Self-consciousness, or Egoism; Soul.
Manas; Subjective Mind.
Prâna; Physiological Life-Type.

I have also told you that the sun is manufacturing another so-called superposed prâna. This prâna is not the fourth principle of the above classification. That existed before the evolution began, and is an aspect of the cosmic solar prâna, not capable of any further development. When the superposed prâna becomes fully developed it will have merged totally into the fourth principle, and will have passed beyond its present limitations. It is in fact a limited manifestation of the fourth principle, and its limitations define its peculiar personality. This finite manifestation of the subjective solar type is what might be called its mâyâvi rûpa; and it is this mâyâvi rûpa which, forming our present active life, deludes us into a belief of its actual existence. Our true individuality comes thus to be afflicted by the very undesirable existence of objectivity to terrestrial phases of finite life. Evolution consists in passing out of absolute objectivity into absolute subjectivity. Until this point is reached the mâyâvi prâna binds the fourth principle to the extent of its own limitations, and thus draws it into the vortex of births and deaths. These remarks apply equally well to mind, for as there is a mâyâvi prâna, so there is also a mâyâvi manas. This is the limited manifestation, through external appearances centred in the brain, of sankalpa and vikalpa, to which reference has already been made. When some remarks upon mâyâvi manas have been made, I shall add the two mâyâvi principles to the four noticed above, and thus present you, along with the gross body, with a sevenfold division of the human constitution.

The solar pictures of the external objects of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, coming constantly into contact with the vegetable organism, develop into it the five sensuous organs. When these begin to make their appearance the life-monad has entered the animal kingdom. From that moment begins the development of the animal mind, or lower manas. The various sensations, while by constant influence developing the brain reservoir of the impressions, lay down there the seed of the fully-developed future mind. In my essay on Astrology, now published in the Theosophist, I have shown how this brain-mind develops. Here I shall only state the conclusions.

The two basic notions of the human mind are those of Universal Causation and Uniformity of Nature. They are the beginning and end of all knowledge. What is science, what is philosophy, but the knowledge of causes and effects? The uniform causal link of the external world leaves through the senses its impression upon the brain, and thus, by the working of the universal law of Vâsana, the brain is accustomed to the two basic notions of Causation and Uniformity.

Let us try to answer the questions, “What is mental improvement? What is the education of the mind?” I have no doubt that the end of 309 mental development is the perception of a cause and the only cause of every natural phenomenon. We know very well how a cultured mind at once grasps at the only true cause of any phenomenon for the time being there present. In fact the attainment of this power is the only true culture. The inferential processes of logic, and the mental faculties of comparison, memory, and representation, are only temporary helps to the end. When the mind in its development reaches the high stage of at once knowing the cause and the only true cause of every phenomenon presented to it, memory, imagination, comparison, all become useless. They are but the temporary manifestations of the brain-mind, the lower manas. They are originated by the third principle being forced to peep through the nerve-motions of the animal brain. The perfection of the brain-mind brought about by the forces of external nature is exactly measurable by the degree of this manifestation of the higher manas. Hence with every new birth a new brain-mind. To this point I shall come further on. I have now only to tell you that the higher manas, the third principle of the above classification, has only the basic notions of Causation and Uniformity, in a state of the highest possible development. Sanskrit philosophy expresses this truth by saying that the manas in its nature is sankalpa and vikalpa. Now the word sankalpa comes from the root kalpa, to make, to form, and the prefix gives the idea of together or connection. Its radical idea is connected making. It means the running of the mind towards the cause of any phenomenon. It is the natural tendency of the mind to trace the causal chain of any phenomenon. Vikalpa is the opposite of sankalpa, and makes the mind run towards the effect.

In fact sankalpa means synthesizing, and vikalpa means analyzing. The synthesis and analysis refer to the Sânkhya-yoga system of evolution. It is well known that the Sânkhya philosophy refers the whole universe to Prakriti. Now the referring of all the infinite varieties of the phenomena of the world to one Prakriti is what is meant by sankalpa (synthesis). In other words, it means the referring of effects to their causes. Vikalpa is the reverse process, and means the referring of causes to their effects. When the manas synthesizes and analyses itself into the five tanmâtras, and the astral types which these go to make, it is evidently in full possession of the entire causal chain; and this state, forcing itself up through the limitations of terrestrial mâyâ, means the discovering and knowing of causes and effects, which alone, as we have seen, constitutes mental perfection. If the human mind does this it knows everything. The whole object of mental exercise is to attain this power of at once coming into contact with the causes and effects of every phenomenon. When this high state of perfection is reached, memory, comparison, and all other mental faculties are not needed, and therefore do not exist, or at best exist only in latency.

We have thus the following arrangement of principles in the human constitution: –

Absolute Consciousness, Spirit.
Self-consciousness, Soul.
Higher Manas, Mind.
Brain-mind, Mâyâvi Manas.
Higher Prâna.
Mâyâvi Prâna.
The gross body, Sthûla-Sharîra.

Now the fact is that the mâyâvi manas and mâyâvi prâna, the fourth and sixth principles of the above classification, are absolutely under the control of the sun, and other astral centres of the solar system. They will not pass out of their influence unless they become so perfect as to merge absolutely into the higher manas and higher prâna. When this is done the individual human unit will have become a god. Before that period, however, there is no release from the bonds of earth. When these are destroyed, objectivity 310 is destroyed, and subjectivity re-established. Subjectivity means freedom and mastery, and is moksha. Now what happens when the mâyâvi prâna and manas are being manufactured, is this. Their vibrations evoke the same vibrations in the two higher entities, and the two become subjectively the perfect picture of the lower principles for the time being. Although in true nature they are all-powerful, the aroma of limitation which they receive from the lower principles bind them to earth to the same extent. It is for this reason that these principles also appear comparatively more limited, and it is through this limitation that the soul loses itself. It is these limitations too that necessitate evolution, and govern its future lines.

We have thus arrived at the following positions: –

The human mind and prâna (mâyâvi) are destined to be developed, the one to omniscience, and the other to the highest perfection of physiological powers.
This is the very necessity of the evolution which is taking place naturally under the influence of the macrocosmic powers.
That this attainment of perfection is possible on this earth (for the race generally and all the more so for individuals).
That nature utilizes all her products to the best of their capabilities, and that therefore it will not send the human units for development to any other sphere, before the earth’s capabilities are exhausted.
That a man must by the very laws of his existence incarnate upon the earth more than once, because during one birth the possible amount of perfection is evidently not attained.

Perfection means the attainment of the highest knowledge, and that is moksha. This knowledge means the actual presence for all time of the causal chain of life-events in consciousness, and it thus means in other words the most perfect consonance with the law of existence which obtains in nature. This is no doubt the much to be desired state of perfect bliss. This is the final state of human life-development, and the reincarnations of well-regulated human lives are but so many rungs of the ladder reaching to perfection.

I shall now make some remarks on the following important questions:

What are those mental and physiological actions (karmas) which expedite moksha?
What are those actions which check the process, and thus tend to multiply rebirths unnecessarily?
What is the time of rebirth, and the order and mode of the fructification of various actions?
Where does the human Monad live during intervals of rebirth, and in what state?
What is the process of rebirth?
What is the Freedom of the Will, and where are we free and where not?
Is the doctrine of Karma fatalism?
What of memory and personal identity; reminiscence and resurrection?

The word Karma, as you know, means action. Action may be either mental or physiological. Every action, whether on the mental or physical plane, is a motion of some sort, and it is the motion of matter in either case. Prâna is matter, and manas is matter too – only a higher form. Now it is well known that matter is indestructible, and that when a certain motion is imparted to it, matter only changes its form in obedience to and on the lines determined by that motion. From what we have seen it is plain that the lines of human progress never change, and are in fact unchangeable under the circumstances. Hence the human individuality never changes along the line. But the external appearance must change according to the aggregate effect of those multifarious motions which make up 311 the life of man – physiological and mental. This external appearance is called the personality, while the unchanging substance working along the same lines is called the individuality. In our classification of principles, consciousness, egoism, higher manas and higher prâna make up the human individuality, while the mâyâvi manas and mâyâvi prâna make up the personality.

For some time in the course of evolution the individuality is in absolute subjection to the personality. In the present race, however, the bonds of this slavery have loosened a little, and individuality is now both subjective and objective, and there is a possibility by human action of making it more and more subjective. Hence, action may be divided into two kinds: –

Those actions which accelerate the evolutionary upward march of the prâna and the mind.
Those that check that upward tendency.

With reference to this twofold division you must understand one very important thing. The evolutionary upward current can never be checked absolutely and for ever. The cause of this eternal upward march lies in the superposed influence of the macrocosmic powers known as Sun, Manu and Ishvara, and in the consequential heavenward aspiration of the soul. That influence in its nature never ceases, and hence the progressive march of man can only be thrown back for a certain time, never entirely destroyed.

What then are those actions, which check for a time the progress of the life and mind of man? And what are those that accelerate it?

When the soul revels in absolute subjectivity, with an all-knowing mind and an all-powerful physiological life working at its self-conscious beck, there remain no causes for distraction or misery. The self-conscious entity is in a perfect state of bliss, because then its existence is in perfect consonance with the law.

This is our ideal life as we have seen, and with this ideal in view both our questions become easy to answer. Before, however, entering upon a discussion of this important point, let me name the former set of actions as the Progressive, and the latter as the Retrogressive.

The Progressive actions are good, inasmuch as they tend to and do accelerate the march of the human Monad towards its ideal state of perfection.

The Retrogressive ones are bad, because they check this upward march, and become the cause of many an ill which flesh is heir to.

The whole fabric of the human mind is based upon sensuous perceptions, which bear in Sanskrit the name of pratyaksha. The senses produce upon the mind the various impressions of life. The eyes impart the impressions of the infinite variety of colour and form. In the heavens we see the sun, the moon, the planets, the blue sky, and the innumerable luminous denizens of starry space. On the earth we cognise the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, with all their generic, specific and individual varieties. We see organic growth and decay; we see the changing states of life; we see the co-existences and disjunctions, the antecedental and consequential connections of the innumerable phenomena of visible nature. We see all these phenomena, and they are imprinted upon our brain. Similarly are imprinted upon the brain the infinite varieties of the sensations of hearing, touch, taste and smell. Philosophers have classified these various sensations, and those of you who would study the subject would receive the necessary help from any ordinary book on the subject. It is not my present object to enter into these discussions. My only object in introducing the subject here is to tell you that the phenomena of the human mind are based upon these sensations. In themselves there is nothing bad in these sensations. They may, however, turn out to be good or bad according to circumstances. If you were to sense and at once knew all the causes and effects of sensuous phenomena, you would be omniscient. But 312 then you would not be in the bondage of finitude (mâyâ). As it is you are rising through finitude. That finitude becomes the cause of these sensations giving birth by Vâsana little by little,

To imperfect notions of causation and uniformity, or according to a slightly varying conception, of sankalpa and vikalpa.
To the manifestations of verbal knowledge.
To the manifestations of what is termed unreal knowledge (viparyaya).
To unreal verbal knowledge (vikalpa).
To memory, and
To sleep.

All these phenomena are different kinetic states of the brain. But there is one very important fact which this division comprehends. You will observe that the two most important divisions of mental phenomena herein contained, are Real and Unreal Knowledge, or what are generally said to be True and False Knowledge. Here lies the whole gist of the question under discussion. Real knowledge always leads the mind to its ideal perfection, whereas unreal knowledge places a check in its course. Real knowledge is called vidyâ or jnâna, and unreal knowledge avidyâ or viparyaya. Vidyâ or real knowledge is the knowledge of things as they are in themselves. Avidyâ or unreal knowledge is the knowledge of things as they are not in themselves, but what they only appear to be on account of Vâsana.

Real knowledge is produced by the senses, by induction and deduction, by verbal information and by memory.

Unreal knowledge is produced by imperfect or diseased senses, by wrong induction and deduction, by wrong or false verbal information, and is helped just like the other by memory.

Both these descriptions of knowledge are produced by Vâsana, and the manifestation of sleep is the necessary result of the exercise brought about by the process of Vâsana.

Vâsasa is the indwelling of the impressions brought by the senses from without, and of the compound impressions manufactured out of these, into the brain-mind. I shall not here trace the real and unreal impressions of the human mind from sensuous impressions step by step. I shall, however, explain to you a little more in detail what is meant by the two descriptions of mental phenomena.

I see a flower. The visual impression produced on my mind sets into play with regard to it my notion of causation. I try to discover and know all the antecedent and consequent states of this floral impression. My powers of sankalpa and vikalpa are strengthened; and I know the entire past and future of the flower. A fondness is produced in my mind for the flower which does not leave me at rest, unless I discover its true nature, and know all that might be known about it – the causal chain in fact which connects the flower with the universal life force which alone could have given it its colour, its softness, its form, its mysterious powers of growth, preservation and decay, its reappearance under certain conditions, and its destiny.

These are all acts which tend to real knowledge. Now again, think that the flower produces upon the mind certain visual, tactual and odoriferous impressions. I am habituated to these impressions, and by-and-by a sort of hunger is produced in my brain for that flower. Whenever that flower is not before me I feel miserable, and a feeling of pleasure is engendered at its sight. Just for the sake of this pleasure I run after the flower and ever sense in it a cause of my pleasure. This is unreal knowledge and is caused by the sickly hunger of my brain. There is no pleasure or pain in any earthly object. You believe them to be objects of pleasure or pain simply because Vâsana has created in your brain a sickly hunger for. 313 the same. Here then is the end of the whole thing. Take whatever worldly object you may; let its impression be produced on your brain; know what its antecedents and consequents are; exercise your sankalpa and vikalpa, and in the end be blissful in the higher mental energy it gives you. Know what you are and what your surroundings; know what is your duty as human beings to yourselves and to your surroundings, and act accordingly. Do not however deceive yourselves that there is any pleasure or pain in the objects of this world; do not let pleasure be the end of your life; do not be contented with seeking after and receiving with satisfaction worldly objects as the objects of your pleasure. The object of human existence is not to run after sensuous pleasures, for then plainly enough the mind, becoming more and more addicted to sensuous terrestrial objects, is chained to them for long, long ages, and misery is thus perpetuated. But the object of human life is to develop the mind to so great an extent that it may become possible for the soul to shine through it into the human constitution, and thus lead it into perfect consonance with the law of human life. No man can ever hope to make spiritual progress unless his mind becomes capable of, or is marching on the road to, omniscience, and his prâna attains physiological omnipotence. It is only when the soul shines into the mind that man will learn altruism; and the soul will not shine into it while it is opaque through the presence of appetites. If after you have entered the domain of spiritual life you give up mental embellishment, you let the ground disappear from under your feet. Whatever of spiritual life had already entered the human constitution, dies out again, and man is left little better than a brute. This is the true philosophy of morals, and the Yoga philosophy consists of the detailed discussion of such actions as are calculated to realize the ideal of human life.

377 If you act up to this ideal of human life, you will raise yourselves, your nation, your beloved mother country, high up in the scale of life. If not, if you trifle with your soul, if you heed not the ever-repeating upward impulses of its nature, you are doomed. Every new birth is a fresh opportunity given you by the Macrocosmic Powers to reform yourselves. If you mean to reform, you must live a reformed life. Do not believe that the blind mutterings of the formulæ of your faith, the thoughtless, though may be regular readings of your prayer-book, the formal sandhias of your mornings and evenings, without a trace of them in the remaining twenty or twenty-two hours – do not believe, I say, that these are indications of a spiritual life, when your mind is full of appetites, when you do not lose sight for one single moment of your own enjoyment in whatever you do, and when in fact you do not regulate your whole life theosophically, and work for the expansion of your minds to the above-hinted omniscience, so that the universal life, which is the true destiny of life, may become to it an ever-present fact of existence. Do you know why your dear country – is it dear to you ? – has fallen so low in the scale of nations, that country you know, the queen-mother of nations, of which your ancient divine legislator, Manu, proudly spoke as the one from whose Rishis the world might take lessons of wisdom ?

378 Do you know, or do you care to know? Are any upward impulses left in those stony hearts of yours? Where is the intellectual greatness of the once glorious Bhâratavarsha? Where are your Vayâsa and your Patanjali, your Vashishtha and your Vishwâmitra, your Sushruta and your Charaka, your Manu and your Yâjnavalkya? What have you done with those giants, and why do you show to the world a thousand and one pigmies unable to walk with these giants of old? If you do not know, then hear from me. They are lost to you, and with them your greatness, because you have so chosen, because you have preferred the downward path of a thousand follies, of a thousand sensualities, rather than follow in the footsteps of your mighty grandsires; because you would even now, after centuries of toil and trouble, fritter away your wealth, your health, your mental powers, upon sight-seeing, upon vain fopperies, upon useless paper-toys, displayed on the occasions of your children’s marriages, and upon a thousand other useless things; rather than upon the education of your boys and girls. And do not believe that this is the total bad effect of your wasted energies. You are every day becoming poorer and poorer in all directions, physically, morally and spiritually. It is by the degeneration of your religion from reality into myth, from practice into whim, from living Karma into dead ritual, that you have been brought down to so low a level of life. In the language of the Kathopanishad, you are just giving up “the good for the pleasant”. The inevitable result is, you are falling in the scale of nations. I have said on this subject too much for the occasion, and therefore I shall leave you to illustrate the actions of prâna for yourselves. The subject is very wide, and to trace all the mental, physical, social and political actions of man, step by step, to their consequences in the next birth or the next cycle, would require a volume. I have yet to explain, however briefly, a few other connected problems.

The time of rebirth is extremely difficult to determine; you must have the most perfect knowledge of solar, lunar and planetary time, and its connection with human life before you can determine it. Let me, however, tell you that all your actions divide themselves into three classes with regard to the order in time of their fructification.

Kriyamâna, those that are being done.
Sanchita, those that are being stored.
Prârabdha, those whose fructification has begun.

You do a certain action at a certain moment of time; that is when the sun, moon and planets have a certain fixed position. Now this action falls under the category of Kriyamâna, that which is being done. This action, as it is being done, is at the same time having its effect. It cannot, however, have its full effect at the time. For the same state can exist only at the same moment of time. With the passing away of that moment of time the effect becomes latent, and remains in that condition (which is therefore called sanchita) until the time comes for fructification. The sanchita becomes prârabdha in the next life. On this subject I do not propose to say much on this occasion. But I shall take up another and more important problem. Where does the soul live during intervals of rebirth, and in what state? We would expect from the considerations as to the relation of the earth and the moon entered into above, what we learn from the Chhândogya Upanishad, that the soul during intervals of rebirth lives on the moon.

I have already told you that the higher prâna and higher manas take in the aroma of the mâyâvic experiences of the lower prâna and lower manas. I have now to tell you that in death the four higher principles (spirit, soul, higher manas and higher prâna) are separated from the three lower ones, the two mâyâvic principles and the third gross body. The four higher principles go away with the aroma (vâsana) of the lower ones, and it is this vâsana that becomes the cause of bondage. Now, then, let me for a 379 moment remind you of the state of the soul when she came from the moon to the earth. While the soul was laying in a store of mâyâvic lunar experiences, the moon was cooling down gradually to its present dead level. The mâyâvic prâna and manas, the lower lunar principles, were thus also daily dying out, because the range of experiences was daily curtailing on account of the total though gradual loss of the gaseous and liquid conditions of lunar matter. The impressions, images and tendencies given birth to by these environments in the higher prâna and manas, were thus losing all opportunity of fructification, although they of course did not and could not cease to exist. The appetites which the mind had acquired during its lunar life lost their objects when the moon had died. Hence did the human monads tend towards the child-planet, which had and was to have all the necessaries for the satisfaction of their appetites. The appetites were, however, in a latent state as long as the souls remained on the moon. They came to the earth when, at the proper time, these appetites tended towards fructification and satisfaction. On the earth however, while the lunar appetites found their proper objects, they began to become stronger also. The chains were not, as indeed they could not be under the circumstances, loosened. There is one thing more to be understood in this connection. While the mâyâvic tendencies of the lower principles were lying latent, the subjective mind revelled in the possession of whatever degree of sankalpa and vikalpa had been actively evoked, and applying these to its already acquired experiences, was seeing into their past and future, and thus tending towards the state of jnâna (gnosis). So when it came to earth it had greater power of what is called spiritual knowledge, than when afterwards the latent appetites of prâna had come into full play. These are subjects, however, to be fully studied elsewhere. I have introduced this much here in order to make a little more clear what has to be said about the soul living on the moon after the death of the body. Now this is what happens in the course of a human life. All the retrogressive and progressive karmas that we do at any given moment of time, coincide with certain aspects – tatwic conditions – of the solar system. This aspect of the solar system depends upon the positions of the sun, moon and planets. A certain tendency towards, or appetite for, the phenomena of vidyâ or avidyâ is the natural result of each karma. This appetite or tendency, this mental or physical phenomenon, is stored in the manas or prâna by the law of vâsana, and will only re-emerge when the same astral conditions return. These stored-up impressions are competent to cause various enjoyments (bhoga), while at the same time they govern the length of your life according to the strength of the impressions you have created.

Thus at the time of death the soul is equipped with certain latent, mental and physiological tendencies to action, whose time for fructification has not come. Besides, the upward march has called into activity the power of sankalpa and vikalpa to a certain degree, and as mâyâvic objectivity ceases for the time with death, the soul awakes in lunar subjectivity, because, from what we have seen above, the conditions of life on the moon are exactly similar to what the result of earth-life is in death. In the state of lunar subjectivity the soul remains until the time comes for rebirth. Then it has passed into a state something like our dreamless sleep.

When the proper astral conditions of the solar system come back again, the life-tendencies awaken first, because the mind can only awaken through prâna, and that too when prâna has developed so far as to establish the sensuous foci in the organism. The mind therefore lies quite latent until the use of the senses is acquired. I might tell you here that the mental awakening of which I am speaking refers only to the play of the power of sankalpa and vikalpa, or briefly, causation. When the phenomena of the new brain mind are presented to these powers they are sooner assimilated, and hence speedier progress is made. Of this, however, I shall speak later 380 a little more in detail. I shall now give you what the Chhândogya Upanishad tells us about the journey of the human monad to the moon and back again. From what I have already told you, the Upanishad will be more easily understood. We learn from this that the human monad reaches the moon through the following stages: –

Dhûma, vapour. This is the terrestrial gaseous state of life – matter, beyond which our lunisolar life passes entirely from earth.
Râtri and Aparapaksha, night and the coolest part of night. This is the negative condition of physical life, which is beyond the possibility of passing back into the positive state.
Dakshinayâna, the Southern six months, that is, the negative condition of the solar year.
Pitriloka; this is that condition of life when the life-monads are just on the point of descending into earth-life, when in fact the lines of future, generic, specific and individual manifestations are just on the point of showing themselves.
Âkâsha; this is the state of the latency of all life-manifestations, the negative sushumna which intervenes between lunar and terrestrial life.
Beyond this is the lunar state of life (soma).

During the first of these six states the tatwic states of earthly matter (solid, liquid, igneous) have become latent. Thence it passes into râtri; that is, the diurnal life-power become latent, and then the annual power. It thus passes entirely out of terrestrial life-conditions. The remaining states of existence do not require further explanation. After living in the lunar state of subjectivity, it descends along the same path. The conditions are, however, changed. Generally speaking, the returning life passes (with the mind, it may be repeated, still absolutely latent) from âkâsha into the gaseous state (vâyava). Thence it passes into the igneous vapour state (dhûma); thence it condenses into the liquid state, and thus becoming a cloud (abhra) it rains (megha). From this state it passes into vegetation. Vegetable life then passes into animal life, and thus into human life. These are the general conditions of evolution. It is through all these minor stages of life-manifestation that life must always reach the highest point. There can be no sudden jump in nature. The evolution must always be graded, although the period of living through these states must necessarily be shorter in the case of the higher manifestations. Thus those that are bound to the human state will only take passing-time to remain in these states, because to them the passage has become easy by repetition. Pass, however, they must, through all these elementary states. The wave of life which from its luni-solar state passes on to its terrestrial journey, is pregnant with all the forms of life equally, to which it has to give manifestation. If some of these potential forms, which go to make up the starting life-wave, have by past evolution learnt to progress higher than others, they will do so; while others remain and die out in some elementary state. Thus while some of these pass into human forms, others simply move on to the lower animal stage of existence, and others do not even pass out of the vegetable kingdom. This fact of different aspects of the same life-waves stopping at different ends of the journey and proceeding no more of itself goes far to establish the theory of the reincarnation of life-forms. No other explanation could possibly be given.

The descent of life-forms from the moon is thus described in the Chhândogya Upanishad, in the chapter known as “Panchagnividyâ” or,

The Science of the Five Fires.

The King Pravâhana Jaivali thus teaches the Brahman Gautama: –

1. That world, Gautama, is (the first) fire; of this fire the sun himself is the fuel; the rays are the smoke; the day is the flame; the moon the burning coals; the asterisms are the sparks (that fly off from the coals). 381 Into this fire the Gods throw the oblation of (shraddhâ) potential energies; this oblation becomes essential life energy (somo râjâ).

2. The cloudy region, Gautama, is (the second) fire. Of this fire water-vapour^[1] is the fuel; the cloud is the smoke; the lightning is the flame; the thunder the burning coals; the peals of thunder the sparks. Into this fire the Gods throw the oblation of essential lunar life-energy (some râjâ); from that oblation is born rain.

3. The earth, Gautama, is (the third) fire. Of this fire the year (samvatsara) is the fuel; the âkâsha is the smoke; the night, negative life-condition, is the flame; the quarters are the burning coals; the intermediate quarters the sparks. Into this fire the Gods throw the libation of rain, and that libation is born as food.

4. The male, O Gautama, is (the fourth) fire. Of this fire the creative power (vâk) is the fuel; the procreative instinct (prâna) is the smoke; the tongue is the flame; the eyes the burning coals; the ears the sparks. Into this fire the Gods throw the oblation of food; and of that oblation is born the seed (the germ cells).

5. The female, O Gautama, is the (fifth) fire; of this fire . . . is the fuel; that which attracts is the smoke; the . . . is the flame; the . . . are the burning coals; the . . . are the sparks. Into this fire the Gods throw the oblation of the germ-cells, and this oblation is born as the foetus.

It is the universal cosmic Prâna which works on all these five planes as the creative power. The above description of the five fires is based on the analogy of an ordinary burning fire. We have in it fuel, smoke, flame, big coals, and smaller burning pieces that break and fly off in every direction – what in the above translation I have rendered by the word sparks. If anything is thrown into the fire, it changes its form and certain other properties, the substance remaining the same.

The only function of these five fires that we have to do with is change of form, and I shall now explain how this takes place, while at the same time explaining the rationale of the very important analogies which the text has discovered between the creative and ordinary fires.

The first fire, says the text, burns in the other world. This other world, as the context shows, is the moon. Of this fire, sun-matter – solar prâna – is the fuel, it burns of its own force. The smoke of this fire is said to be the solar rays (rashmi). Now you know that the carbon of burning fuel divides itself into two portions; one becoming incandescent bursts into flame, while the other is driven away unburnt as smoke on account of the fuel being more or less wet. It is something similar to this that takes place in the solar fire, when acting upon any substance for creative purposes. A portion of the solar ray enters the body of the substance, and calls it into active positive solar life; while another portion of the solar rays has no effect at the inception. These non-effective rays are reflected off, and thus are said in the text to be the smoke of the solar fire. That this does happen is now a well recognised fact of modern science. I quote from Ganot’s Physics: –

“The researches of Bunsen and Roscoe show that whenever chemical action is induced by light, an absorption of light takes place, preferably of the more refrangible parts of the spectrum. Thus when chlorine and hydrogen unite under the action of light to form hydrochloric acid, light is absorbed and the quantity of chemically active rays consumed is directly proportional to the amount of chemical action.

382 “There is a curious difference in the action of different spectral rays. Moser placed an engraving on an iodized silver plate, and exposed it to the light until an action had commenced, and then placed it under a violet glass in the sunlight. After a few minutes a picture was seen with great distinctness, while when placed under a red or yellow glass, it required a very long time and was very indistinct. When however the iodized silver plate was first exposed in a camera obscura to blue light for two minutes, and was then brought under a red or yellow glass, an image quickly appeared, but not when placed under a green glass. It appears as if there are vibrations of a certain velocity which would commence an action, and that there are others which are devoid of the property of commencing but can continue and complete an action when once set up. Becquerel, who discovered these properties in luminous rays, called the former exciting rays, and the latter continuing or phosphorogenic rays.”

This shows that a certain quantity of light is absorbed for the purpose of exciting action, and thus bursting into the flame of essential life, while there is another portion of solar prâna which does not perform the function of exciting, and thus flies away like smoke in an ordinary fire. This beginning of life marks the positive phase of solar life, and is therefore called day in the text.

I shall now tell you why the moon (chandramas) and the asterisms (nakshatras) have been called coals and sparks (angârâ and visphulingâ) respectively, you will at once see that the moon spoken of in the text cannot be the asteroid, because the lunar mansions are spoken of in the same place as the smaller coals (visphulingâ) which break off the larger ones. What is here meant is the negative condition of life-matter. Thus in an ordinary fire the wood is in a negative condition to the fire which consumes it. So is our individual life-matter, while in the lunar state, negative to the solar exciting rays. It is in a state of excitability, but not of active excitement. A little reflection will show you that the form of manifested life depends upon lunar receptivity. All the lines of life which determine the future form are latent in the negative lunar state. Thus it is the seed which determines the form of a tree, the mâyâvic solar exciting rays being the same in every case. The potential tendencies of life moving along the most important determinative lines become when manifested the coals, as it were, of the ordinary fuel; and the sparks, the smaller coals, are the individual tendencies of the life-body, which underlie the generic and specific tendencies. Hence are the lunar mansions called in the Upanishad sparks, it being well-known that the moon in different asterisms becomes the mother of different life-qualities.

I may here mention that Professor Max Müller, in the above text, translates the word agni by “altar”; the proper word for which is vedi, the place where a fire burns. This translation does no violence to the ultimate meaning of the text; but it does a good deal of violence to the form in which the meaning is expressed, as also to the immediate conception of the Upanishad-allegorist. For, the text goes on to say: “its (of this fire) fuel is the sun”, and it is evident that the pronoun “it” refers to a burning fire, rather than to an altar.

Another piece of objectionable translation is the rendering of the word nakshatrâni by “stars”, as if the stars were sparks of the sun-fire, or of the moon, and not suns themselves. There appears to be no reason why the learned Orientalist saw fit to make a meaningless hash of the text, by leaving out the ordinary meaning of the word nakshatra, and giving it the rather uncommon meaning of a star.

Into this fire (and not, as Professor Max Müller mistranslates it, “on that altar”) the Gods throw the oblation of shraddhâ. Professor Max Müller renders it as the “shraddha libation” and adds parenthetically the words “consisting of water”, as if shraddhâ meant water. If you read 383 further on, you will find that this oblation of shraddhâ comes out of the fire as râjâ soma, and that this soma in the second fire retransforms into water. Now, if the first oblation shraddhâ was water already, why did the Gods perform the useless task of changing it into soma, if the soma was again to be changed into water. Nothing superior to ordinary common sense is required to see this anomaly; and Professor Max Müller might have been kind enough – might he not? – with his unbounded pity for the early gropings into darkness of the human races, to give them credit for ordinary common sense!

In the IXth Khanda of this Vth Prapâthaka, the learned professor tells us: – “1. For this reason is water in the fifth oblation called Man.” The original is:

“Iti tu panchamyam âhutan âpah purusha vâchaso bhavanti.”

It is the word âpah in this text which has misled the learned translator, and many another too, perhaps. The word âpah has water for one of its meanings, but the whole context of the Upanishad shows that this is not the meaning here. The word here means “work”, “action”, “karma.” This too is one of the ordinary meanings of the word âpas, which is thus connected with the Latin opus, work.

Now I have already told you that phenomenal human life is a bundle of actions, and that in the lunar state these actions live in a state of potentiality. The word âpas thus denotes here “the potential bundle of actions”, which in their essential state are man or any other organism. Here, however, we are only speaking of man, and hence the use of the word purusha, man, and of others having special reference to mankind.

Professor Max Müller translates purusha vâchaso bhavanti, by the words “is called man”. “Water in the fifth oblation,” he says, “is called man.” What can be more nonsensical? The fact is that in this text the sage Pravâhana Jaivali intends to contrast the lunar state of âpas with the terrestrial state of vâchas. The word vâchas here means logos in the essential state, and âpas as I have already told you means human life in the potential state. The meaning is that the works of man which were in the world potential, now become essential in the shape of a human being. All images when potential are logoi within, and when manifested logoi without. These collective potential works are called in the Science of the Five Fires shraddhâ. It is not very clear how the word shraddhâ can be made to mean “water.” The radical idea of the word is the “bearing or nourishing of truth,” or rather the true state of being of any substance. That state which carries with it, or keeps up, the true idea of any substance is its shraddhâ. Applied to the human mind it means “faith,” because faith carries with it and keeps up what is conceived by any mind to be the true idea of any substance. Applied to human life, shraddhâ is that state which determines the future lines of human development. It is in fact potential human life, such as it is in the moon. It cannot mean anything else, and certainly never “water.” Another fact which seems to have contributed somewhat to mislead the learned mythologist is the well-known legend which tells us that the moon is made of waters. Even the great astrologer Varâhamihira gravely asserts that the moon is made of waters. Now if this assertion were to be taken in its literal sense, it would be a piece of unmitigated nonsense. But the words which ordinarily mean water, were in connection with the moon never understood to mean the well-known fluid, except by the modern expositors of ancient classics. The meaning is, as it was always understood to be by the ancients, that the moon bears the same relation to earth life, as the âpas tatwa or fluid state of matter bears to the prithivî tatwa, or the earthy (i.e., solid) state. The solid state comes out of the fluid, or in the words of the Sanskrit philosophers, the prithivî comes out of âpas. Hence it means to say that on the moon, earth-life remains in a state of latency.

384 Well then, this oblation of shraddha, this potential human life, when subjected on the moon to the life-exciting rays of the solar fire, changes its form, and becomes râjâ soma. Professor Max Müller translates these words as “Soma the King,” and in a footnote adds the astounding statement that: “The sacrifices themselves rise through their oblations to heaven, and attain as their reward a soma-like nature.” Thus while the Upanishad speaks of the human Monad descending from the moon into earth-life, the learned professor speaks of the sacrifice rising to heaven. And he takes no account of the fact which is patent on the face of the text, that the “soma-like nature” as he puts it, cannot be the reward of the sacrificer, inasmuch as it is only an intermediate stage of descent. The shraddhâ might be talked of as the reward, this being the state in which the human Monad lives in heaven as long as the time for descent has not arrived. To say that the first or second stage of descent is the reward of the sacrificers is something quite indescribable. No truer translation and no better explanation are really possible !

I will now tell you what the meaning of the word soma here is, and what of the word râjâ. The word soma means life in the lunar state, heat on creation, that is coming back to earth. The epithet râjâ means manifested or manifesting, from the root râj to shine, to show. Somo râjâ means human life, when it has been called back into active life by the solar fire. A king himself is called râjâ because the power of government manifests itself in him alone in an entire political society. For the same reason lunar life when manifesting is qualified as râjâ. The meaning of the allegory is that by being subjected to the solar fire, human life in the lunar state begins to manifest, and that when the latent tendencies of earth-life thus begin to rise, the descent naturally begins from heaven earthwards. The conditions of lunar life are such that this rising life cannot live there.

Now come we to the second fire. This is the ordinary fire, which turns atmospheric vapour into cloud, and cloud into rain. It burns in the cloudy region as a matter of course. The fuel of this fire is the water-vapour present in the atmosphere. It is a well-known dictum of the philosophy of the Upanishads that nothing can make appearance in the effect, if not in some state already present in the cause. Therefore in the atmospheric cause of rain-water, aqueousness must be present in some form. In modern terminology it must be water-vapour, and the word râjâ in the text must be translated as such. It means the gaseous state of what next transforms into water. To translate the word as air is to mislead the lay reader.

The fuel of this second fire then is the atmospheric water-vapour. It burns, and rises to a rather high degree of temperature, when the lunisolar life-monad is thrown into it. The cooler currents of the same vapour, which the monsoons send over this heated space, turn it into the cloudy state. Clouds rise out of this fire like smoke. Hence are the clouds said to be the smoke of this fire, which burns in the cloudy region. As these two variously heated water-vapours come together, they give birth to electric sparks and to sound. When the contact is rapid and violent, broad sheets of lightning and loud claps of thunder are produced. Otherwise the spark is rather dim and the sound rather feeble. Lightning therefore is the flame of the cloudy fire, and it is easy to see how the thunder and its peals might be compared to the coals of an ordinary fire.

486 Before proceeding further I might point out to you that this passage contains the Hindu theory of the nature of electricity. Electricity, according to the Upanishads, is the solar prâna, which burns in the atmosphere, and which turns water vapour into fluid. The spark is only the visual manifestation of this prâna. This electric prâna is present in every earthly object, inasmuch as all earthly objects have once existed in the atmospheric gaseous state. When these forces are present in any substance in the latent state, they can of course be awakened by certain appliances. The presence of this form of prâna in nature was therefore known to the Rishis of the Upanishads.

To return, however, to the subject in hand. The lunisolar light which is thus turned into the aqueous state contains many life-types, which have descended from the moon, and those types are now in their course of upward motion turned into the liquid state.

This rain-water is thrown into the third fire which burns in earth. This is another phase of prâna. To describe this fire let us take the earth as a whole. It is said that the fuel of the fire which burns in the earth is the year. The year is an aspect of lunisolar life in its relation to earth. How? You know that the year is the period of one revolution of the earth round the sun. During the year the sun for six months keeps in the northern, and for the remaining six months in the southern hemisphere. On account of this motion of the solar prâna, two currents are developed in the body of the earth – the northern and southern. The one is the opposite of the other. The one is called north polar or positive magnetism, the other south polar or negative magnetism by modern science. That magnetism was known to the ancient Rishis as the solar prâna moving in earth northwards and southwards, is an irresistible conclusion to the intelligent reader of The Science of the Five Fires. But these are not the only two motions of the earth-fire. It has also two other currents of this force dependent upon the daily rotation of the earth upon her own axis. These are the eastern and western currents. Thus in the body of the earth are established, on account of its annual motion, a number of currents. Had there been no year, these currents could not have existed, although the solar prâna out of which these currents arise must no doubt have existed in a stationary state. Hence annual motion is the fuel of the fire that burns in the earth. Every point of earth-matter thus contracts a tendency to move northwards and southwards, eastwards and westwards. Some forms of matter possess this tendency to a greater, others to a less extent; but all of them possess it. Besides a tendency to move towards the four quarters, every atom of earth-matter acquires the tendency to move towards the intermediate quarters as well, nay to move in every direction, including up and down. Out of all these motions arises a state which becomes the immediate 487 mother of all the seed forms of the earth. This state is called âkâsha, for it is out of âkâsha that everything comes, and it is in âkâsha that everything lives. The motions of the earth combined in various degrees and various proportions become the source of the variety of seeds. This fire keeps up all terrestrial forms, and it burns so as to be naturally receptive of lunisolar life. It is now clear why âkâsha is said to be the smoke of this fire, and why night, the emblem of the receptive negative life, the flame, and why the quarters and the intermediate quarters are termed the coals and sparks of this terrestrial fire.

When the lunisolar life-monad, which has up to this time developed only to an aqueous degree, enters this earth-fire, it is there assimilated to terrestrial life, and makes its appearance as a vegetable organism. It might be useful to remind you here of what I have already said, that the life which is entering these various forms of earth-matter is quite distinct from the original prâna, which gave birth to gross matter itself.

This vegetable organism is thrown as food into the fourth fire, which burns in a male human being, and there it changes its vegetable vesture into the human germinal vesture. This fire has vâk for its fuel. Now this vâk is not the language of man. It is the Creative Power, the Goddess of creation, the Light of the Logos (Shabdabrahma), the spouse of Brahmâ, the creative unit of the Hindu Trinity. The prâna which is compared to smoke, is the ever-rising male procreative instinct, which has the creative power for its natural basis. It ought not to be translated as breath. The word jihva, rendered by tongue, stands allegorically for the instrument of the manifestation of this power on the physical plane. It might also mean that sexual love receives its expression through the tongue, the eyes, and the ears. Hence are the two naturally called the coals and sparks of this fire. This portion of the description and the following five-fold description of the female fire, must be left untouched here. You will be able with very little effort to understand it all in the light of what has gone before. I may however tell you that the word garbha in this connection ought to be translated as fœtus, not as germ.

Here ends the journey of a human life-monad from the lunar state of absolute latency, to a full-grown human child. If the life-type has not already learnt by past evolution to reach the human form, it remains in some lower form, whether it be animal or vegetable, and does not pass on higher. If, however, it has already reached that state, it only takes passing time to stop in these lower modifications of life. Each descent of a human life-type from the moon, must ultimately culminate in the attainment of the human forms.

These are changes which it is necessary for the human prâna to go through before it can blossom as a full-grown child, and these changes, as we have seen, begin in that world. Now also as to the mind, it is easy to understand that it must go through all the changes it has passed through in its evolutionary development. Up to the vegetable kingdom it must remain absolutely latent, and only begin to develop with the appearance of the sensuous organs. The mâyâvic brain-mind cannot come into existence without the senses, and these begin to work only after birth. Hence no one need imagine that the vegetable through which a human monad passes, must have or does have a mind. It is also plain from the above considerations that a child's mind must naturally pass through all the stages of development, which it has already passed through in its course of evolutionary development. A child can never have immediately the fully developed active mind of the last-birth man. The brain, however, developes by the mere act of physiological growth, on the lines of its past development, and the impressions of sensations, inferences, emotions, will and desires, which had reached a certain stage of development in the last birth, now take a shorter time to reach that stage. The basic powers of the 488 subjective mind, too, have the same effect. When the phenomena of the new brain-mind are presented to them, they assimilate them very soon to the extent of their past mâyâvic development, and comparatively less time being thus expended after every new birth in reaching the past stage of development, the human mind has always greater and greater time at its command to rise further towards its ideal. If, however, there has been very little development in the last birth, if the actions of the man have not been progressive, then woe be to him in this birth. His brain is but poorly developed, and his subjective mind to the same extent. It is only the retrogressive impressions that make their home easily in his brain, thus leading him to misery, and terrible waste of time consequent upon his past misdeeds.

Before, however, proceeding further, let me make some additional remarks upon progressive actions. These depend upon two things:

1. The ordinary current of evolution, which strengthens these powers by the mere fact of the same manifestations of the brain-mind appearing, developing, and working again and again. The mere running on of this current serves also to counteract the checks placed by retrogressive manifestations. The impressions which develop these powers receive qualification from individual and social environments.

2. Yoga, which means the highest possible development of the mind, by expediting the egress of the retrogressive and the ingress of the progressive manifestations.

The first of these means of development is involuntary. Man has no hand in it. By the running on of this current the retrogressive impressions are counteracted and destroyed in the end. Whenever the manifestation of the retrogressive tendencies is complete, their force ceases, and it thus becomes impossible for them to run on by their own force. The evil tendencies of the past are thus always destroyed after some time. The appetites, however, that are created anew by the working of the same avidyâ, which had given them birth previously, must have their effect in the future. Thus while the good is always strengthening and running on into infinity, the evil is always appearing and disappearing, and is bound to disappear altogether in the end. Thus you see that while the retrogressive manifestations from the past are destroying themselves and are in the end bound to disappear altogether, the present is constantly giving birth to other retrogressive potencies, independent of the past altogether. As to the progressive manifestations, while those from the past are showing themselves, those of the present are independently creating other potencies, which in this case serve to expedite progress. This shows that so far as the effect of the evolutionary current upon the mind is concerned, the good and bad Karmas of the past are showing themselves simultaneously with those of the present. Thus while you use your senses, being led thereto by any mental appetite, you may be sure that the action is the result of the past. But the senses also act by the mere fact of their existence; and generally quite independent of any mental appetite. This independent action leads us on to the acquirement of new appetites. Where the appetite precedes, the action is an effect; where however it follows the action is a cause. In the former the karma is old; in the latter new.

What I have said of the mind is also true of physiological life. Where any physiological appetite precedes physiological action, the karma is old; where however the appetite follows any physiological motion, the karma is new.

Similar is the case with yoga. Where physiological curiosity precedes any higher mental action, the action is an effect of old karma; where, however, any mental action precedes physiological curiosity (vitarka), the action is new.

This leads us naturally into the question of the freedom of the will. 489 Does any such power exist in the human constitution? I may at once say that it does; for otherwise yoga would be impossible; whereas it is not impossible, as both individual and racial experiences show.

I shall not here trace the genesis of this power into conscious manifestation. Suffice it to say here that it exists. I may, however, tell you that those actions are free in which the soul acts subjectively, and those are bound in which the soul is passive. To understand these things properly, an intelligent study of the whole system of this philosophy is required.

From what you have now heard of the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, you have long seen that this sublime doctrine is as far removed from fatalism, as light from darkness. According to this doctrine, while the environments of your present life, your sufferings and your enjoyments, are all the result of past karma, your future is still in your own hands. Individuals and nations always degenerate for their past misdeeds; but the degeneration is always being destroyed of its own force, and both individuals and nations have their future rise in their own hands. Whatever is has no doubt come from the past; but whatever will be must result from the present, which is always in your own hands. Man has always a double existence in the present. He is enjoying and suffering certain effects caused by past actions; at the same time, however, he is generating other causes for future effects. The effects and causes are not, however, identical. As to the efforts of yoga, they will no doubt be resisted for some time by the manifestations of your retrogressive potencies; they are, however, bound to triumph in the end and expedite the egress of evil. The degeneration of the Hindus began when their life became a mere idle faith that all their good and evil portion was caused by a predestining will, independent of their actions, and that a mere idle belief in that power would remove their evil and strengthen their good. Let them now return to an intelligent belief in the sublime doctrine of karma, and they will rise.

After all that I have said, you will hardly think of asking the question, Why does a man not remember having seen the things which he saw in the previous birth? I have already told you that memory being a function of the brain-mind is generated anew in every life, and ends with the same life. This is very well shown by the fact of weak-brained and old people losing their memory. The brain being new, the impressions on the brain are absolutely new too. There has been no co-existence, no association at any time between the phenomena of the last birth, which now live by way of aroma in the higher mind, and those of the present brain-mind. The latter determine only the lines of present mental being; that is to say, they become the cause of the sooner or later development of our present powers and appetites; the former have never had anything to do with them.

But though this ordinary memory of ours is a function of the brain, the higher manas also has a faculty which is the counterpart of the brain-memory. That higher power is called reminiscence. It is this power in fact, whose working gives the receptive power we have been speaking of to the new brain. But this receptivity is all that it can give generally to the brain in the present race of man. When this power of reminiscence is strengthened to a very high degree of perfection after repeated births yet to come, the new brain will be thrown by the higher manas into that high state of energy, which from mere receptivity will have passed into active subjectivity. Then only the present consciousness of past experiences will become possible. That will be the day of resurrection, the perfect awakening of the soul. Then you will remember your past births. Patanjali makes this power a siddhi (attainment) for the Yogi, and he who follows his method can acquire this power even now.

Thus he says in the 18th aphorism of the third book of his treatise on Yoga: – 490

“Knowledge of the previous birth is obtained by bringing into consciousness (the yet unconscious) sanskâras.”

Now the understanding of the how of this high attainment, depends upon an intelligent comprehension of the philosophy of sanskâra, a small portion of which I have attempted to lay before you in the foregoing pages. The word sanskâra is a synonym of vâsana and means the habituation of the mind and prâna to the impressions of the external world. The word sanskâra has been translated in two different ways by Dr. Ballantyne and Professor M. N. Dvivedi. The former renders sanskâras as “the trains of self-reproductive thought, which consist in the present consciousness of past perceptions ”. The latter translates it by the word “impressions”. In the first place it is evident that sanskâras do not refer only to thought. They refer as well to physiological enjoyments and sufferings, etc. To say the least, therefore, the translation of Dr. Ballantyne is inadequate. M. N. Dvivedi translates the word as impression, which is again quite inadequate. The great difference between sanskâras and impressions is that the former are given birth to by the latter; they are not identical. Perceptions are impressions but they are certainly not sanskâras. The best English equivalent for the word would be habit. Sanskâras give to man an altered nature, and habit it is well-known is second nature.

There is another blunder which these gentlemen seem to have unconsciously committed. One of them translates the word sâkshatkarana as “presenting to our mind”, while the other puts it as “mental presentation”. These gentlemen seem to have forgotten for the time being that the word sâkshat, when joined to kri, gives the meaning of the suffix chivi: that is to say it means the bringing into consciousness of that which has not been there before. It is evident that the mental phenomena of the present brain-mind might very well be spoken of as objects of mental presentation. But the habituations of which this aphorism speaks are certainly not phenomena of this nature. They are not present in our brain-mind. They are strangers to our present consciousness. The rendering of these gentlemen would go to show that the mental presentations of the impressions of this life would end in “a knowledge of former class”. That this is an impossibility goes without saying. Hence I have translated the aphorism as above.

“Knowledge of the previous birth is obtained by bringing into consciousness the yet unconscious sanskâras (habits).”

The habituations, says Bhojarâja, are of two descriptions, one class causes memory. The English translators most unaccountably say that this memory is a memory of the previous experiences. If this memory be the memory of past experiences, then it must be the memory of the impressions causing “class” (jâti), “time” (âyus), and “experience” (bhoga). Now Patanjali defines memory in the words of the translation of Dvivedi, as “the not-allowing of a thing cognised to escape”. The impressions of class, time and experience must evidently not be allowed to escape, before they can make their appearance in the next birth; and the act of recollection, that is bringing the preserved impressions into consciousness, does not in nature differ from the act of impressions of class, etc., coming into present being. In fact both of them are, as the commentators say, the results of vâsana. What then was the use of making a twofold division of these habituations? Besides, if the power of bringing these past experiences into present consciousness already exists, there would be no use in the exercise of yoga, to bring about an already existing state of the mind.

In fact, the memory of the commentator of Patanjali has nothing to do with the past experiences. This faculty, along with all the other manifestations of the human mind, is given birth to by sensuous impressions. It has 491 only to do with sensuous impressions, and dies with the destruction of the brain. Hence must the memory-producing impressions be differentiated from the impressions of class, etc. These impressions do not die with the brain. These are the impressions which, as we have seen, determine our future line of existence, our sufferings and our enjoyments. It is these impressions which are not known to modern humanity, and they alone need be the objects of yoga.

When the nature of these habits is known, the nature of the former birth is known. And how is the nature of these habits to be known? By trying to discover, and thus coming to know, the causes which, according to the known lines of mental and physiological causation, could have caused them. By thus making our habits the constant subject of our study we develop in ourselves the state of samprajnâta samâdhi with these habits as their object. This arises when the brain is accustomed by constant repetition to the retention and recollection of these phenomena. The tatwic currents which induce these impressions into our brain must always be kept up by constant exercise, at a certain degree of kinetic level, below which they will never respond to volition or association in the ordinary state of mind. The development of literary memory in a child is in this connection a phenomenon worthy of study. Unless a thing is made the object of constant study, it can never be remembered.

Now in order that we may connect any present mental phenomenon with the same phenomenon as it was presented to us in the last birth, we must have in our present consciousness the last birth as connected with the particular phenomenon, and the present mental phenomenon placed together. A knowledge of the last birth is only possible as the cause of the present one. Hence if we make the subject of our study the sanskâras (habits) which have caused our present life, we shall by-and-bye become habituated to the notion of consequential connection between the two. The next step will be the discovery of the nature of the last link in the chain of births, and when the brain is habituated to this high state of mental energy, then and then alone, will a full reminiscence of the past life have become possible.

Reminiscence, as I have already told you, is a faculty of the higher mind, a modification of sankalpa and vikalpa consequent upon its connection with the limitations of the brain-mind. This power differs from memory in this very important respect, that while memory depends for its existence upon the brain and dies with it, reminiscence never dies, having for its substratum the higher manas. It is always bound to rise to a higher and higher pitch of perfection with every new birth, or by the exercise of yoga. The facts which are preserved in reminiscence can only be transferred to brain memory when made the special object of study. Our memory can never keep within the range of possible recollection any fact which we have not made the special subject of study. How then can there be any memory of the past life when we have not made it the special object of contemplation, which Patanjali wishes us to make it? The natural tendency of our brain-mind is to forget things; the sensuous impressions tend always to pass off. It is a matter of daily observation that we forget after some time facts which we once remembered and were familiar with; and when once forgotten these facts become to our present consciousness as it were quite new.

But it might be said: Why does not the notion of personal identity live on through death? The answer to this question is: Because the person is not the same in this birth, as it was in the last. If you remember, I drew a distinction some few pages back, between personality and individuality. The mâyâvic, that is the lower, prâna and manas, as I have said, constitute with the gross body, the personality; while the four higher principles which separate in death constitute the individuality of man. The notion of 492 personal identity means the notion of the sameness of the personality. When the personality, as we have seen, actually changes there can be no notion of personal identity. It would be absurd to say that because there is no notion of personality, the present human being could not have lived before on this earth. The notion of personal identity is given birth to in the mind by the sameness of the manifestations of the heart and brain. In death our heart and brain are both destroyed; there can remain, therefore, no notion of sameness. The phenomena of the last mental or physiological life, now act upon our brain subjectively from within, while the phenomena of our present life act subjectively from without, thus giving birth by vâsana to the appetites. How can forces moving in two opposite directions generate with reference to themselves the notion of identity? Our present notion of personal identity has reference only to the phenomena of our present brain, because we pass almost the whole of our life in the manifestations of our brain. If we begin to live a higher life, then is awakened into our mind the notion of what might be called individual identity. This, as I have told you, means resurrection, and in this state we know the nature of past individual experience. In this state we have passed entirely out of objectivity into absolute subjectivity.

And now I must bring these remarks to a close. I have told you that human life, physiological or mental, is nothing more than a bundle of actions; that thoughts and physical actions are both motions of ethereal matter on different planes; that all the kinetic states of life-matter are both antecedents and consequents, and that, therefore, human life is eternal. I have also told you that human life, as it is at present, is the result of evolution, and that the same evolving forces which worked in the past, being yet existent, man is bound to rise in the scale of life. Present human life is not the most perfect that can be. I have also told you that a higher life is possible on this planet of ours, both for the human species and the individual; and that, therefore, there must be reincarnation on this earth. The powers divine that are upraising humanity, are neither so foolish, nor so cruel and unjust, as to doom imperfect man either to eternal damnation, or even at one jump bless him with eternal bliss. I have also told you that human life, and in fact all life, as it exists on this planet, must live through alternate phases of life and death; and that earth-life when it becomes negative and potential corresponds in its conditions of existence with life as it must be on the moon. I have also told you that in nature there can be no sudden changes of state, and that, therefore, human life, in order to pass from its lunar state to earth-life, must pass through mineral and vegetable states, before it can manifest its animal capabilities. I have also, in illustration of this principle, explained the process of descent as given in the Chhândogya Upanishad. I have also shown that although the awakening of human physiological life begins in the moon, the awakening of the human mind and, therefore, of self-consciousness, begins with birth, when the fully-developed senses begin to work. I have also refuted the one or two puerile objections that are sometimes raised to the doctrine of karma and reincarnation; and I have, above all, told you how the past actions of our life manifest themselves in this life, and how our future is still in our own hands. I shall feel happy, indeed, if this essay does something towards increasing a sense of responsibility in my readers, encouraging their endeavours to reach that soul-knowledge which is the basis of the Brotherhood of Humanity.

Footnotes

↑ The word in the original is vâyu, it means the gaseous (vâyava) state, of what is transformed by the second fire into rain water; hence it means in modern scientific language water-vapour.

[1] The word in the original is vâyu, it means the gaseous (vâyava) state, of what is transformed by the second fire into rain water; hence it means in modern scientific language water-vapour.

[1]