< Pons Asinorum. (continued from page 1-204) >
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Perpetuated Individuality
Sir, — If I may judge from the number of letters I get on the subject, the question of immortality or perpetuated individuality is one that interests and exercises many. I cannot find the time necessary to reply to all my correspondents, nor am I able to answer several of the queries put to me. Since, however, the same questions are asked over and over again, I venture to ask you to print for me the following letter which I wrote a short time ago in reply to a correspondent who inquired of me as to the perpetuation of conscious individuality after physical death.
In doing this I have no other object in view than to say, once and for all, in such a way as one can deal with these matters in a letter, what lies on the surface of a great question. I am conscious enough of the crudities that the letter contains. It is needless to say that it was not written for publication. But I believe that profound thought on these abstruse points would defeat my object, which is simply to say, in plain and intelligible language, what may be a partial answer to questions that rise in many minds.
Madam, —Your favour of the 8th has been forwarded to me by the Editor of The Spiritualist, and I trust you will excuse me if I return what you may consider a brief reply to the very important questions which it opens out. In the midst of a pressing and increasing mass of work I have hardly time to systematise my ideas, and I shrink from putting forward crude notions on a very important matter.
One or two things are clear. Of immortality, other than perpetuated existence, we can know nothing. I venture to think in this connection that the title of my friend Mr. Epes Sargent’s excellent little book, The Proof Palpable of Immortality, is a misnomer. Exactness, however, is not required in the title of a popular work.
Moreover, the phenomena of modern Spiritualism, however strong a presumption they set up, seem to me to fall short of positive demonstration of our own perpetuated existence. Those who have gone deepest seem to feel most uncertain as to the nature and character of many of the operating intelligences whose existence is adduced as evidence for our own immortality.
Again, individuality is most probably greatly concerned with the outward manifestation in the human form, and would accordingly be (to a great extent) merged, impaired, or changed at physical death.
The higher individuality, or self hood—the selecting power of which you speak—is something (as you well point out) which is inherent in the interior principle, and is the conscious Ego which through endless cycles of progress is developed upwards to perfection.
I cannot conceive this principle as other than immortal, though I can perfectly well fancy myself passing through numberless changes of being in each of which (save in the innermost) I am utterly unlike what I was in a previous state.
So far as I can put in words what is in my mind I should say that your statement is accurate. But probably there is a laxness in the use of terms all through this argument. The word immortality should be carefully defined in its use. Individuality, personality, self hood, and the like should be equally, clearly, and specially limited in use. And when all is done we shall find, I think, that our present powers do not enable us to grasp the full meaning of or the niceties of distinction between the terms we use.
Not venturing here and now to attempt precise definition, I say, roughly, that it seems to me: —
1. That we have grounds, more or less sure, for the belief that human existence does not end with physical death. (In some cases certainly not.)
2. That we have grounds for belief that the future of the human spirit is one of development in progress where progress has been begun in the earth-life; and of purgatorial cleansing away of the dross of sin and corruption where the opportunities of earth-life have been wasted.
3. That personality has been fairly proven to be perpetuated over a very long course of years by the fact that departed spirits have returned and have given trustworthy evidence of their perpetuated personality.
4. That, having in view the infinitude of eternity, we have no sure ground for saying that this individuality is indefinitely perpetuated.
5. But, rather, that there is within what we now understand as individuality a germ of spiritual life, which is destined, probably, to be gradually eliminated from all exterior manifestations, and is the death-surviving, immortal principle in the soul of man—that by virtue of the possession of which he is a “son of God.”
6. That this inherent principle we never can estimate in our present state of knowledge: but that we seem to come nearest when we say that it is “life essence,” implanted by the Great Creator for development and final perfection through cycles of varying purgation.
This, I take it, is the selecting principle of yourself and G. T. C. M.
If this seems to you vague, I pray you to consider the low state of progression in which we now are, and that these are mysteries enveloped in the clouds and darkness that enshroud the throne of the Eternal. Vagueness and tentative handling seem best suited to such abstruse subjects. * * *
The “Double". Who are the Producers thereof?
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Editor's notes
Sources
London Spiritualist, v. 8, No. 191, April 21, 1876, p. 190