Western European stream·Ancient Wisdom·CHAPTER VIIl

CHAPTER VIIl

Reincarnation {Continued),

The ascending stages of consciousness through which the Thinker passes as he reincarnates during his long cycle of lives in the three lower worlds are clearly marked out, and the obvious necessity for many lives in which to experience them, if he is to evolve at all, may carry to the more thoughtful minds the clearest conviction of the truth of reincar- nation.

The first of the stages is that in which all the ex- periences are sensational, the only contribution made by the mind consisting of the recognition that con- tact with some objects is followed by a sensation of pleasure, while contact with others is followed by a sensation of pain. These objects form mental pic- tures, and the pictures soon begin to act as a stimu- lus to seek the objects associated with pleasure, when those objects are not present, the germs of memory and of mental initiative thus making their appearance. This first rough division of the exter- nal world is followed by the more complex idea of the bearing of quantity on pleasure and pain, already referred to.

At this stage of evolution memory is very short-

THE NECESSITY FOR MANY LIVES. 209

lived, or, in other words, mental images are very transitory. The idea of forecasting the future from the past, even to the most rudimentary extent, has not dawned on the infant Thinker, and his actions are guided from outside, by the impacts that reach him from the external world, or at furthest by the promptings of his appetites and passions, craving gratification. He will throw away anything for an immediate satisfaction, however necessary the thing may be for his future well-being; the need of the moment overpowers every other consideration. Of human souls in this embryonic condition, numerous examples can be found in books of travel, and the necessity for many lives will be impressed on the mind of any one who studies the mental condition of the least evolved savages, and compares it with the mental condition of even average humanity among ourselves.

Needless to say that the moral capacity is no more evolved than the mental ; the idea of good and evil has hot yet been conceived. Nor is it possible to convey to the quite undeveloped mind even an ele- mentary notion of either good or bad. Good and pleasant are to it interchangeable terms, as in the well-known case of the Australian savage mentioned by Charles Darwin. Pressed by hunger, the man speared the nearest living creature that could serve as food, and this happened to be his wife ; a Euro- pean remonstrated with him on the wickedness of his deed, but failed to make any impression; for

from the reproach that to eat his wife was very bad

2IO THE ANCIENT WISDOM.

he only deduced the inference that the stranger thought she had proved nasty or indigestible, and he put him right by smiling peacefully as he patted himself after his meal, and declaring in a satisfied way, ** She is very good." Measure in thought the moral distance between that man and S. Francis. of Assisi, and it will be seen that there must either be evolution of souls as there is evolution of bodies, or else in the realm of the soul there must be constant miracle, dislocated creations.

There are two paths along either of which man may gradually emerge from this embryonic mental condition. He may be directly ruled and controlled by men far more evolved than himself, or he may be left slowly to grow unaided. The latter case would imply the passage of uncounted millennia, for, without example and without discipline, left to the changing impacts of external objects, and to friction with other men as undeveloped as himself, the inner energies could be but very slowly aroused. As a matter of fact, man has evolved by the road of direct precept and example and of enforced discipline. We have already seen that when the bulk of average humanity received the spark which brought the Thinker into being, there were some of the greater Sons of Mind who incarnated as Teachers, and that there was also a long succession of lesser Sons of Mind, at various stages of evolution, who came into incarnation as the crest- wave of the advancing tide of humanity. These ruled the less evolved, under the beneficent sway of the great Teachers, and the

SENSATION AS RULER. 211

compelled obedience to elementary rules of right living — ^very elementary at first, in truth — much hastened the development of mental and moral facul- ties in the embryonic souls. Apart from all other records the gigantic remains of civilizations that have long since disappeared — evidencing great engi- neering skill, and intellectual conceptions far beyond anything possible by the mass of the then infant hu- manity — suffice to prove that there were present on earth men with minds that were capable of greatly planning and greatly executing.

Let us continue the early stage of the evolution of consciousness. Sensation was wholly lord of the mind, and the earliest mental efforts were stimulated by desire. This led the man, slowly and clumsily, to forecast, to plan. He began to recognize a defi- nite association of certain mental images, and, when one appeared, to expect the appearance of the other that had invariably followed in its wake. He began to draw inferences, and even to initiate action on the faith of these inferences — a great advance. And he began also to hesitate now and again to follow the vehement promptings of desire, when he found, over and over again, that the gratification demanded was associated in hi3 mind with the subsequent hap- pening of suflEering. This action was much quick- ened by the pressure upon him of verbally expressed laws; he was forbidden to seize certain gratifica- tions, and was told that suflEering would follow dis- obedience. When he had seized the delight-giving object and found the suffering follow upon the pleas-

212THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
nre, the fulfilled declaration made a far stronger im- pression on his mind than would have been made by the unexpected^and therefore to him fortuitous — happening of the same thing unforetold. Thus con- flict continually arose between memory and desire, and the mind grew more active by the conflict, and was stirred into livelici functioning. The conflict, in fact, marked the transition to the second great stage. Here began to show itself the germ of will. De- sire and will guide a man's actions, and will has even been defined as the desire which emerges triumphant from the contest of desires. But this is a crude and superficial view, explaining nothing. Desire is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by the attraction of external objects. Will is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by the condusions drawn by the rea- son from past experiences, or by the direct intuition of the Thinker himself. Otherwise put: desire is guided from without, will from within. At the be- ginning of man's evolution, desire has complete sov- ereignty, and hurries him hither and thither; in the middle of his evolution, desire and will are in con- tinual conflict, and victory lies sometimes with the one, sometimes with the other; at the end of bis evolution desire has died, and will rules with unop- posed, unchallenged sway. Until the Thinker is sufficiently developed to see directly, will is guided by him through the reason; and as the reason can draw its conclusions only from its stock of mental CONFLICT THE RULE. 213 images— its experience — and that stock is limited, the will constantly commands mistaken actions. The suffering which flows from these mistaken ac- tions increases the stock of mental images, and thus gives the reason an increased store from which to draw its conclusions. Thus progress is made and wisdom is bom. Desire often mixes itself up with will, so that what appears to be determined from within is really largely prompted by the cravings of the lower na- ture for objects which afford it 'gratification. In- stead of an open conflict between the two, the lower subtly insinuates itself into the current of the higher and turns its course aside. Defeated in the open field, the desires of the personality thus conspire against their conqueror, and often win by guile what they failed to win by force. During the whole of this second great stage, in which the faculties of the lower mind are in full course of evolution, conflict is the normal condition, conflict between the rule of sensatLons and the rule of reason. The problem to be solved in humanity is the put- ting an end to conflict while preserving the freedom of the will ; to determine the will inevitably to the best, while yet leaving that best as a matter of choice. The best is to be chosen, but by a self-ini- tiated volition, that shall come with all the certainty of a foreordained necessity. The certainty of a com- pelling law is to be obtained from countless wills, each one left free to determine its own course. The solution of that problem is simple when it is known, THE ANCIENT WISDOM. though the contradiction looks irreconcilable when first presented. Let man be left frea to choose his own actions, b\it let every action bring about an in- evitable result ; let him run loose amid all objects of desire and seize whatever he will, but let him have all the results of his choice, be they delightful or grievous. Presently he will freely leject the ob- jects whose possession ultimately causes him pain; he will no longer desire them when he has experi- enced to the full that their possession ends in sorrow. Let him struggle to hold the pleasure and avoid the pain, he will none the less be ground be- tween the stones of law, and the lesson will be re- peated any number of times found necessary; rein- carnation offers as many lives as are needed by the most sluggish learner. Slowly desire for an object that brings sufEering in its train will die, and whea the thing offers itself in all its attractive glamour it will be rejected, not by compulsion but by free choice. It is no longer desirable, it has lost its power. Thus with thing after thing; choice more and more runs in harmony with law. " There are many roads of error; the road of truth is one;" when all the paths of error have been trodden, when all have been found to end in suffering, the choice to walk in the way of truth is unswerving, because based on knowledge. The lower kingdoms work harmoniously, compelled bylaw; man's king- dom is a chaos of conflicting wills, fighting against, rebelling against law; presently there evolves from it a nobler unity, a harmonious choice of voluntary KNOWING GOOD AND EViL. 2tS obedience, an obedience that, being voluntary, based on knowledge and on memory of the results of dis- obedience, is stable and can be drawn aside by no temptation. Ignorant, inexperienced, man would always have been in danger of falling; as a God, knowing good and evil by experience, his choice of the good is raised forever beyond possibility of change. Will in the domain of morality is generally entitled conscience, and it is subject to the same difficulties in this domain as in its other activities. So long as actions are in question which have been done over and over again, of which the consequences are famil- iar either to the reason or to the Thinker himself, the conscience speaks quickly and firmly. But when un- familiar problems arise, as to the working out of which experience is silent, conscience cannot speak with certainty ; it has but a hesitating answer from the reason, which can draw only a doubtful inference, and the Thinker cannot speak if his experience does not include the circumstances that have now arisen. Hence conscience often decides wrongly; that is, the will, failing clear direction from either the rea- son or the intuition, guides action amiss. Nor can we leave out of consideration the influences which play upon the mind from without, from the thought- forms of others, of friends, of the family, of the community, of the nation.* These all surround and penetrate the mind with their own atmosphere, distorting the appearance of everything, and throw* ♦Chapter II., on "The Astral Plane." 2l6 THE ANCtEMT WlSllOM- Ing all things out of proportion. Thus iiifluRii(;i,d the reason often does not even judge calmly from its own experience, but draws false conclusions oa it studies its materials through a distorting medium. The evolution of moral faculties is very largely •stimulated by the affections, animal and selfish as these are during tho infancy of the Thinker. The laws of morality are laid down by the enlightened reason, discerning the laws by which Nature moves, and bringing human conduct into ccnsonance ivith the divine Will. B-Jt the impulse to obey these laws, when no outisr force compels, has its root in love, in that hidden divinity in man which seeks to pour itself out to give itself to others. Morality begins in the infant Thinker when he is first moved by love to wife, to child, to friend, to do some action that serves the loved one without any thought of gain to himself thereby. It is the first conquest over the lower nature, the complete subjugation of which is the achievement of mora, perfection, Henoe the im- portance of never kiliiag' out or striving to weaken, the affections, as i>. done h many of the lower kinds of occultism. However impure and gross the affec- tions may be, they offer possibilities of moral evo- lution from whicl. the cold-hearted and self-isolated have shut themselves out. It is an easier task to purify than to create love, and this is why "the sinners" tiave been said by great Teachers to be nearer the kingdom o£ heaven than the Pharisees and scribes. The third great stage of consciousness sees ihe ABSTRACt IDEAS. 2lf development of the higher intellectual powers; the mind no longer dwells entirely on mental images ob- tained from sensations, no longer reasons on purely concrete objects, nor is concerned with the attributes which differentiate one from another. The Thinker, having learned clearly to discriminate between ob* jects by dwelling upon their unlikenesses, now be- gins to group them together by some attribute which appears in a number of objects otherwise dis- similar and makes a link between them. He draws 6ut, abstracts, his common attribute, and sets all objects that possess it apart from the rest which are without it; and in this way he evolves the power of recognizing identity amid diversity, a step toward the much later recognition of the One underlying the many. He thus classifies all that is around him, developing the synthetic faculty, and learning to construct as well as to analyze. Presently he takes another step, and conceives of the common property as an idea, apart from all the objects in which it ap- pears, and thus constructs a higher kind of mental image than the image of a concrete object — the image of an idea that has no phenomenal exis- tence in the worlds of form, but which exists on the higher levels of the mental plane, and affords material on which the Thinker himself can work. The lower mind reaches the abstract idea by rea- son, and in thus doing accomplishes its loftiest flight, touching the threshold of the formless world, and dimly seeing that which lies beyond. The Thinker sees these ideas, and lives among them 2i8 THE ANCJENT wisdom. habitually, and when the power of abstract reasoning is developed and exer'^ised th Thinker is becoming effective in hi" own world, and i; beginning his life of active functioning ii hi . own sphere. Such men care littl for the life of th senses, care little for external observation, or for ment .1 application to images of externd objects; their powers are in- drawn, and n longer rush outwards in the search for satisfaction. Ther dwell calmly within them- selves, engrossed with th problems of philosophy, with th deeper .spects o- life an thought, seeking" to understand auscs rather than troubling them- selves with eff ^ts, and approaching nearer and nearer to th r ognition oi the One that underlies all '.he diversitie e".t«ma Nature. In the fourth stag o. consciousness that One is seen, and with tht, transcending of th barriers set up by the intellect the consci usness spreads out to embrace the world, seeing all things ii: itself and as parts of itself, and seeing itsei as i.ray of the Logos, and therefore as on with Him Where is then the Thinker? H has becom Consciousness, and, while the spiritual Soul can at will use any of his lower vehicl-BS, he is no longer limited to their use, nor needs them for this full and conscious life. Then is compulsory reincarnation over and the man has de- stroyed death ; he has verily achieved immortality. Then has he become " a pillar in the temple of my God and shall go out no more." To complete this part of our study, we need to understand the successive quickenings of the vehicles QUICKENING THE VEHICLES. 219 of consciousness, the bringing them one by one into activity as the harmonious instruments of the human Soul. We have seen that from the very beginning of his separate life the Thinker has possessed coatings of mental, astral, -theric, and dense physical matter. These form the media by which his life vibrates out- wards, the bridge of consciousness, as we may call it, along which all impulses from the Thinker may reach the dense physical body, all impacts from the outer world may reach him. But this general use of the successive bodies as parts of connected whole is a very different thing from the quickening of each in turn to serve as a distinct vehicle of conscious- ness, independently of those below it, and it is this quickening of the vehicles that we have now to con- sider. The lowest vehicle, the dense physical body, is the first one to be brought into harmonious working order; the brain and the nervous system have to be elaborated and to be rendered delicately responsive to every thrill which is within their gamut of vibra- tory power. In the arly stages, while the physi- cal dense body is composed of the grosser kinds of matter, this gamut is extremely limited, and the physical organ of mind can respond only to the slowest vibrations sent down. It answers far more promptly, as is natural, to the impacts from the ex- ternal world caused by objects similar in materials^ to itself. Its quickening as a vehicle of conscious- ness consists in its being made responsive to the

220THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
vibrations that are initiated within, and the rapidity of this quickening depends on the co-operation of the lower nature with the higher, its loyal subordi- nation of itself in the service of its inner ruler. When, after many, many life-periods, it dawns upon the lower nature that it exists for the sake of the soul, that ali its value depends on the help it can bring to the soul, that it can win immortality only by merging itself in the soul, then its evolution pro- ceeds with giant strides. Before this, the evolution has been unconscious ; at first, the gratification of the lower nature was the object of life, and, while this was a necessary preliminary for calling out the ener- gies of the Thinker, it did nothing directly to render the body a vehicle of consciousness; the direct work- ing upon it begins when the life of the man establishes its centre in the mental body, and when thought commences to dominate sensation. The exercise of the mental powers works on the brain and the ner- vous system, and the coarser materials are gradually expelled to make room for the finer, which can vi- brate in unison with the thought- vibrations sent to them. The brain becomes finer in constitution, and increases by ever more complicated convolutions the amount of surface available for ^he coating of nervous matter adapted to respond to thought -vibration 5. The nervous system becomes more delicately bal- anced, more sensitive, more alive to every thrill of mental activity. And when the recognition of its function as an instrument of the Soul, spoken of above, has come, then active co-operation in per- PERSONALITY AS SERVANT. 221 forming this function sets in. The personality be- gins deliberately to discipline itself, and to set the permanent interests of the immortal individual above its own transient gratifications. It pelds up the time that might be spent in the pursuit of lower pleasures to the evolution of mental powers; day by day time is set apart for serious study; the brain is gladly surrendered to receive impacts from within instead of from without, is trained to answer to con- secutive thinking, and is taught to refrain from throwing up its own useless disjointed images, made by past impressions. It is taught to remain at rest when it is not wanted by its master; to answer, not to initiate vibrations.* Further, some discretion and discrimination will be used as to the food-stuffs which supply physical materials to the brain. The use of the coarser kinds will be discontinued, such as animal flesh and blood and alcohol, and pure food will build up a pure body. Gradually the lower vibrations will find no materials capable of respond- ing to them, and the physical body thus becomes more and more entirely a vehicle of consciousness, delicately responsive to all the thrills of thought and keenly sensitive to the vibrations sent outwards by the Thinker. The etheric double so closely follows the constitution of the dense body that it is not neces- * One of the signs that it is being accomplished is the cessa* tion of the confused jumble of fragmentary images which are set up during sleep by the independent activity of the physioal brains. When the brain is coming under control this kini o( dr^^m is very seldom ezperience4i ::\2?. THE ANCIENT WISDOM. saiy to study separately its purification and quicken- ing; it does not normally serve as a separate vehicle of consciousness, but works synchronously with its dense partner, and when separated from it either by accident or by death, it responds very feebly to the vibrations initiated within. Its function in truth is not to serve as a vehicle of mental consciousness, but as a vehicle of Prana, of specialized life-force, and its dislocation from the denser particles to which it conveys the life-currents is therefore disturbing and mischievous. The astral body is the second vehicle of conscious- ness to be vivified, and we have already seen the changes through which it passes as it becomes or- ganized for its work. * When it is thoroughly organ- ized, the consciousness which has hitherto worked within it, imprisoned by it, when in sleep it has left the physical body and is drifting about in the astral world, begins not only to receive the impressions through it of astral objects that form the so-called dream-consciousness, but also to perceive astral ob- jects by its senses — that is, it begins to relate the impressions received to the objects which give rise to those impressions. These perceptions are at first confused, just as are the perceptions at first made by the mind through a new physical babj'-body, and they have to be corrected by experience in the one case as in the other. The Thinker has gradually to discover the new powers which he can use through this subtler vehicle, and by which he can control the •See Chapter 11., on "Tlje Astrsl Plane." THE M2NTAI. VEHICLE. 223 astral elements and defend himself against astral dangers. He is not left alone to face this new world imaidedy but is taught and helped and — until he can guard himself — ^protected by those who are more ex- perienced than himself in the ways of the astral world. Gradually the new vehicle of consciousness comes completely under his control, and life on the astral plane is as natural and as familiar as life on the physical The third vehicle of consciousness, the mental body, is rarely, if ever, vivified for independent ac- tion without the direct instruction of a teacher, and its functioning belongs to the life of the disciple at the present stage of human evolution. * As we have already seen, it is rearranged for separate function- ing f on the mental plane, and here again experience and training are needed ere it comes fully under its owner's control. A fact — common to all these three vehicles of consciousness, but more apt to mislead perhaps in the subtler than in the denser, because it is generally forgotten in their case, while it is so ob- vious that it is remembered in the denser — is that they are subject to evolution, and that with their higher evolution their powers to receive and to re- spond to vibrations increase. How many more shades of a color are seen by a trained eye than by an untrained. How many overtones are heard by a trained ear, where the untrained hears only the sin- gle fundamental note. As the physical senses grow *See Chapter XI., on "Man's Ascent." tSee Chapter IV., on "The Mental Plane."

324THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
more keen, the world becomes fuller and fuller, and where the peasant 13 conscious only of his furrow and his plough, the cultured mind is conscious of hedgerow flower and quivering aspen, of rapturous melody down-droppiug from the skylark and the whirring of tiny wings through -he adjoining wood, of the scudding of rabbits under the curled fronds of the bracken, and the squirrels playing with each other through the branches of the beeches, of all the gracious movements of wild thingr,, of all the fra- grant odors of field and woodland, of all the chang- ing glories of the cloud-flecked sky, and of all the chasing lights and shadows on the hills. Both the peasant and the cultured have eyes, both have brains, but of what differing powers of observation, of what differing powers to receive impressions. Thus also in other worlds. As the astral and mental bodies begin to function as separate vehicles of conscious- ness, they are in, as it were, the peasant stage of re- ceptivity, and only fragments of the astral and mental worlds, with theii' strange and elusive phe- nomena, make their way into consciousness; but they evolve rapidly, embracing more and more, and conveying to consciousness a more and more accurate reflection of its environment. Here, as everywhere else, we have to remember that our knowledge is not the limit of Nature's powers, and that in the astral and mental worlds, as in the physical, we are still children, picking up a few shells cast up by the waves, while the treasures hJd in Ste cceon are stiK nnexnlored THE CAUSAL VEHICLE, 225 The quickening of the causal body as a vehicle of consciousness follows in due course the quickening of the mental body, and opens up to man a yet more marvellous state )f consciousness, stretching back- wards into an illimitable past, onwards into the reaches of the future. Then the Thinker not only possesses the memory of his own past and can trace his growth through the long succession of his incar- nate and excarnate lives, but he can also roAm at will through the storied past of the earth, and learn the weighty lessons of world-experience, studying the hidden laws which guide evolution and the deep secrets of life hidden in the bosom of Nature. In that lofty vehicle of consciousness he can reach the veiled Isis, and lift a comer of her down-dropped veil ; for there he can face her eyes without being blinded by her lightning glances, and he can see in the radiance that flows from her the causes of the world's sorrow and its ending, with heart pitiful and compassionate, but no longer wrung with helpless pain. Strength and calm and wisdom come to those who are using the causal body as a vehicle of con- sciousness, and who behold with opened eyes the glory of the Good Law. When the buddhic body is quickened as a vehicle of consciousness the man enters into the bliss of non-separateness, and knows in full and vivid reali- zation his unity with all that is. As the predominant element of consciousness in "rhe causal body is know- ledge, and ultimately wisdom, so the predominant element of consciousness in the buddhic body is bliss IS THE ANCIENT WISDOM. iiud love. The serenity of wisdom chiefly marks one, while tenderest compassion streams forth inex- haustibly from the other; when to these is added the godlike and unruffled strength that marks the func- tioning; of Atma, then humanity is crowned with divinity, and the God-man is manifest in all the plenitude of his power, of his wisdom, of his love. The handing down to the lower vehicles of such part of the consciousness belonging; to the higher as they are able to receive does not immediately follow on the successive quickening of the vehicles. In this matter individuals differ very widely, according to their circumstances and their work, for this quick- ening of the vehicles above the physical rarely occur* till probationary discipleship * i„ reached, and then the duties to be discharged depend on the needs of the time. The disciple, and even the aspirant for discipleship, is taught to hold all his powers entirely for the service of the world, and the sharing of the lower consciousness in the knowledge of the higher is for the most part determined by the needs of the work in which the disciple is engaged. It is neces- sary that the disciple should have the full use of his vehicles of consciousness on the higher planes, as much of his work can be accomplished only in them ; but the conveying of a knowledge of that work to the physical vehicle, which is no way concerned in it, is a matter of no importance and the conveyance or no n -conveyance is generally determined by the effect that the one course or the other would have •See Chapter XI., ou "Man's Ascent." SHARING KNOWLEDGE. 22/ on the efficiency of his work on the physical plane. The strain on the physical body when the higher con- sciousness compels it to vibrate responsively is very great, at the present stage of evolution, and unless the external circumstances are very favorable this strain is apt to cause nervous disturbance, hyper- sensitiveness with its attendant evils. Hence most of those who are in full possession of the quickened higher vehicles of consciousness, and whose most important work is done out of the body, remain apart from the busy haunts of men, if they desire to throw down into the physical consciousness the knowledge they use on the higher planes, thus pre- serving the sensitive physical vehicle from the rough usage and clamor of ordinary life. The main preparations to be made for receiving in the physical vehicle the vibrations of the higher con- sciousness are: its purification from grosser mate- rials by pure food and pure life ; the entire subjuga- tion of the passions, and the cultivation of an even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the turmoil and vicissitudes of external life; the habit of quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the mind away from the objects of the senses, and from the mental images arising from them, and fixing it on higher things ; the cessation of hurry, especially of that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps the brain continually at work and flying from one subject to another; the genuine love for the things of the higher world, that makes them more attractive than the objects of the lower, so that the

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mind rests contentedly in their companionship as tr that of a well-loved friend. In fact, the preparations are much the same as those necessary for the con- scions separation of " soul" from "body," and those ware elsewhere stated by me as follows: The student "Must begin by practising extreme temperance in all things^ cultivating an equable and serene state of mind : his life must be clean and his thoughts pure, his body held in strict subjec- tion to the soul, and hismicd trained to occupy itself witb Qobla and lofty themes ; he must habitually practise compassion, sympathy, helpfulness to others, with indifference to troubles and pleasures affecting himself, and be must cultivate courage, steadfastness, and devotion. In fact, he must live the religioa and ethics that other people for the most part only talk. Hav- ing by persevering practice learned to control his mind to soma extent, so that he is able to keep it Used on one line of thought for some little time, he must begin its more rigid training by a daily practice of concentration on some difficult or abstrorct subject, or on some lofty object of devotion ; this concentration means the firm fixing of the mind on one single point. wiLbont wandering, and without yielding to any dlstractiotis caused by external objects, by the activity of the senses, or by that rf the mind itself. It must be braced up to an unswerving stead- iness and fixity, until gradually it will learn so to withdraw its attention from the outer world and from the body that th» senses will remain quiet and still, while the mind is intensely alive with all its energies drawn inwards to be launched at a single point of thought, the highest to which it can attain. When it is able to hold itself thus with comparative ease it !■ ready for a further step, and by a strong but calm effort of the will it can throw itself beyond the highest thought it can readl while -working in the physical brain, and in that effort wiO rise to and unite itself with the higher consciousness and find itself free of the body. When this is done there is no sense of sleep or dream nor any loss of consciousness; the man find* lUEINCARNATlON OR CREATION. j29 Oimself outside his body, but as though he had merely slipped off a weighty encumbrance, not as though he had lost any part of himself ; he is not really 'disembodied. ' but has risen out of his gross body * in a body of light, ' which obeys his slightest thought and serves as a beautiful and perfect instrument for carrying out his will. In this he is free of the subtle worlds, but will need to train his faculties long and carefully for relia- ble work under the new conditions. " Freedom from the body may be obtained in other ways : by the rapt intensity of devotion or by special methods that may be imparted by a great teacher to his disciple. Whatever the way, the end is the same — the setting free of the soul in full consciousness, able to examine its new surroundings in regions beyond the treading of the man of flesh. At will it can return to the body and re-enter it, and under these circumstances it can impress on the brain-mind, and thus retain while in the body, the memory of the experiences it has undergone. *** Those who have grasped the main ideas sketched in the foregoing pages will feel that these ideas are in themselves the strongest proof that reincarnation is a fact in nature. It is necessary, in order that the vast evolution implied in the phrase, " the evolution of the soul," may be accomplished. The only alter- native — ^putting aside for the moment the material- istic idea that the soul is only the aggregate of the vibrations of a particular kind of physical matter — is that each soul is a new creation, made when a babe is bom, and stamped with virtuous or with vicious tendencies, endowed with ability or with stupidity, by the arbitrary whim of the creative power. As the Mahommedan would say, his fate is hung round his ♦"Conditions of Life after Death," Nineteenth Century November, 1896.

230THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
neck at birth, for a man's fate depends on his char- acter and his surroundings, and a newly created sou.t flung into the world must be doomed to happiness or misery according to the circumstances environing' him and the character stamped upon hira. Predes- tination in its most offensive form is the alternative of reincarnation. Instead of looking on men as slowly evolving, so that the brutal savage of to-day will in time evolve the noblest qualities of saint and hero, and thus seeing in the world a wisely planned and wisely directed process of growth, we shall be obliged to see in it a chaos of most unjustly treated sentient beings, awarded happiness or misery, knowledge or ignorance, virtue or vice, wealth or poverty, genius or idiocy, by an arbitrary external will, ungiiided by either justice or mercy — a veritable pandemonium, irrational and unmeaning. And this chaos is supposed to be the higher part of a cosmos, in the lower regions of which are manifested all the orderly and beautiful workings of a law that ever evolves higher and more complex forms from the lower and the simpler, that obviously " makes for righteousness," for harmony, and for beauty. If it be admitted that the soul of the savage is des- tined to live and to evolve, and that he is not doomed for eternity to his present infant state, but that his evolution will take place after death and in other worlds, then the principle of soul-evolution is con- ceded, and the question of the place of evolution alone remains. Were all souls on earth at the same stage of evolution, much might be said for the con MANY WORLDS IK TURN. 2^1 tention that further worlds are needed for the evolu- tion of souls beyond the infant stage. But we have around us souls that are far advanced, and that were bom with noble mental and moral qualities. By parity of reasoning, we must suppose them to have been evolved in other worlds ere their one birth in this, and we cannot but wonder why an earth that oflfers varied conditions, fit for little-developed and also for advanced souls, should be paid only one flying visit by souls at every stage of development, all the rest of their evolution being carried on in worlds similar to this, equally able to afford all the conditions needed to evolve the souls at different stages of evolution, as we find them to be when they are bom here. The Ancient Wisdom teaches, in- deed, that the soul progresses through many worlds, but it also teaches that he is bom in each of these worlds over and over again, until he has completed the evolution possible in that world. The worlds themselves, according to its teaching, form an evolu- tionary chain, and each plays its own part as a field for certain stages of evolution. Our own world offers a field suitable for the evolution of the min- eral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, and therefore collective -or individual reincarnation goes on upon it in all these kingdoms. Truly, further evolution lies before us in other worlds, but in the divine order they are not open to us until we have ^earned and mastered the lessons our own world has to teach. There are many lines of thought that lead us to THE ANCIENT WISDOM. the same goal of reincarnation, as we study the world around us. The immense differences that separate man from man have been already noticed as implying an evolutionary past behind each soul; and attention has been drawn to these as different tiating the individual reincarnation of men— all of whom belong to a single species — from the reincar- nation of monadic group-souls in the lower king- doms. The comparatively small differences that separate the physical bodies of men, all being ex- ternally recognizable as men, should be contrasted with the immense differences that separate the low- est savage and the noblest hiiman type in mental and moral capacities. Savages are often splendid in physical development and with large cranial con- tents, but how different their minds from that of a philosopher or of a saint ! If high mental and m.oral qualities are regarded as the accumiilated results of civiliaed living, then we are confronted by the fact that the ablest men of the present are overtopped by the intellectual giants of the past, and that none of our own day reaches the moral attitude of some historical saints. Further, we have to consider that genius has neithei parent nor child; that it appears suddenly and not as the apex of a gradually improving family, and is itself generally sterile, or, I' a child be bom to it, it is a child of the body, not o.' the mind. Still more significantly, a musical genius is for the most part bom in a musical family, because that form of gen- ius needs for its manifestation a nervous organiza- INFANT PRODIGIES. 233 tion of a peculiar kind, and nervous organization falls under the law of heredity. But how often in such a family its object seems over when it has pro- vided a body for a genius, and it then flickers out and vanishes in a few generations into the obscurity of average humanity. Where are the descendants of Bach, of Beethoven, of Mozart, of Mendelssohn, equal to their sires? Truly genius does not descend from father to son, like the family physical types of the Stuart and the Bourbon. On what ground, save that of reincarnation, can the " infant prodigy" be accounted for? Take as an instance the case of the child who became Dr, Young, the discoverer of the undulatory theory of light, a man whose greatness is scarcely yet suffi' ciently widely recognized. As a child of two he could read "with considerable fluency/' and before he was four he had read through the Bible twice ; at seven he began arithmetic, and mastered Walking' ham's Tutor* s Assistant before he had reached the middle of it imder his tutor, and a few year« later we find him mastering, while at school, Latin, f jreek, Hebrew, mathematics, book-keeping, French, Ital* ian, turning and telescope-making, and delighting in Oriental literature. At fcmrteen he wa« to b& placed under private tuition with a b^ a ye^f Aii4 a half yonnger, bnt, ^^ tutor first engiifftd f^iVwfi ^> arrive, Yoimg tasigjit the other bojr** tHr Willfem Rowan Hanuttoa tsbowtd fCfwerev&fi m^iff^ pr^t^i^ caonsu He heg^am to Hearts Wehrew vh^m h^ ^m THE ANCIENT WISDOM. barely three, and " at the age of seven he was pro- nounced by one of the Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, to have shown, a greater knowledge of the language than many candidates for a fellowship. At the age of thirteen he had acquired considerable knowledge of at least thirteen languages. Among these, bf;sides the classical and the modem European languages, were included Persian, Arabic, Sanscrit, Hindustani, and even Malay. ... He wrote, at the age of fourteen, a complimentary letter to the Per- sian Ambassador, who happened to visit Dublin; and the latter said he had not thought there was a man in Britain who could have written such a docu- ment in the Persian language." A relative of his says: " I remember him a little boy of six, when he would answer a difficult mathematical question, and run off gaily to his little cart. At twelve he engaged Colbum, the American 'calculating boy,' who was then being exhibited as a curiosity in Dublin, and he had not always the worst of the encounter." When he was eighteen. Dr. Brinkley (Royal Astron- omer of Ireland) said of hini in 1823: "This young man, I do net say -will be, but is, the first mathe- matician of his age." "At college his career was perhaps unexampled. Among a number of com- petitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in every subject, and at every examination." * Let the thoughtful student compare these boys with a semi-idiot, or even with an average lad, note how, starting with these advantages, they become ' North Biilish Re-vie-ui. September, 1S66. LIKENBSS AND UNLIK£N£SS. 235 leaders of thought, and then ask himself whethc: such souls have no past behind them. Family likenesses are generally explained as beinr due to the "law of heredity," but difiEerences in men- tal and in moral character are continually found within a family circle, and these are left unexplained. Reincarnation explains the likenesses by the fact that a soul in taking birth is directed to a family which provides by its physical heredity a body suit- able to express his characteristics; and it explains the unlikenesses by attaching the mental and moral character to the individual himself, while showing that ties set up in the past have led him to take birth in connection with some other individual of that family.* A "matter of significance in connection with twins is that during infancy they will often be indistinguishable from each other, even to the keen eye of mother and of nurse ; whereas, later in life, when Manas has been working on his physical en- casement, he will have so modified it that the physi- cal likeness lessens, and the differences of character stamp themselves on the mobile features. " f Phy- sical likeness with mental and moral unlikeness seems to imply the meeting of two different lines of causation. The striking dissimilarity found to exist between people of about equal intellectual power in assimi- lating particular kinds of knowledge is another "pointer" to reincarnation. A truth is recognize ' ♦See Chapter IX., on "Karma." \ Retncarnation, by Annie Besant, p. 64.

236THE ANCIENT WISDOU.
at once by one, while the other fails to grasp it even after long and careful observation. Yet the very opposite may be the case when another truth is pre- sented to them, and it may be seen by the second and missed by the first. " Two students are at- tracted to Theosophy and begin to study it; at a year's end one is familiar with itr. main conceptions and can apply them, while the other is struggling in , a maze. To the one each principle seemed familiar on presentation: to the other new, unintelligible, strange. The believer in reincarnation understands that the teaching is old to the one and new to the other; one learns quickly because he remembers, he is but recovering past knowledge ; the other learns slowly because his experience has not included these truths of nature, and he is acquiring them totlfully for the first time,"* So also ordinary intuition is "merely recognition of a fact familiar in a past life, though met with for the first time in the preseni," j- another sign o£ the road along which the individual has travelled in the past. The main difEculty with many people in the re- ception of the doctrine of reincarnation is their own absence of memory of their past. Yet they are every day familiar with the fact that they have for- gotten very much even of their lives in their present bodies, and that the early years of childhood are blurred and those of infancy a blank. They must also know that events of the past which have entirely slipped out of their normal consciousness are yet * Ibid. p. C7. \Ibid. p. 67. MEMORY OF PAST LIVES. 237 hidden away in dark caves of memory, and can be brought out again vividly in some forms of disease or under the influence of mesmerism. A dying man has been known to speak a language heard only in infancy, and unknown to him during a long life ; in delirium, events long forgotten have presented themselves vividly to the consciousness. Nothing is really forgotten ; but much is hidden out of sight of the limited vision of our waking consciousness, the most limited form of our consciousness, although the only consciousness recognized by the vast ma- jority. Just as the memory of some of the present life is indrawn beyond the reach of this waking con- sciousness, and makes itself known again only wjhen the brain is hypersensitive and thus able to respond to vibrations that usually beat against it unheeded, so is the memory of the past lives stored up out of reach of the physical consciousness. It is all with the Thinker, who alone persists from life to life; he has the whole book of memory within his reach, for he is the only " I" that has passed through all the experiences recorded therein. Moreover, he can impress his own memories of the past on his physical vehicle, as soon as it has been sufficiently purified to answer to his swift and subtle vibrations, and then the man of flesh can share his knowledge of the storied past. The difficulty of memory does not lie in forgetfulness, for the lower vehicle, the physical body, has never passed through the previ- ous lives of its owner; it lies in the absorption of the present body in its present environment, in tt« Jji' THE ANCIENT WISDOM. ,oarse irresponsiveness to the delicate thrills in whicit alone the soul can speak. Those who wouli^ re- member the past must not have their interests cen tred in the present, and they must purify and re- fine the body till it is able to receive impressions from the subtler spheres. Memory of their own past lives, however, is possessed by a considerable number of people who have achieved the necessary sensitiveness of the physical organism, and to these, of course, reincar- nation is no longer a theory, but has become a matter of personal knowledge. They have learned how much richer life becomes when memories of past lives pour into it, when the friends of this brief day are found to be the friends of the long-ago, and old remembrances strengthen the ties of the fleeting present. Life gains security and dignity when it is seen with a long vista behind it, and when the loves of old reappear in the loves of to-day. Death fades into its proper place as a mere incident in life, a change from one scene to another, like a journey that separates bodies but cannot siinder friend from friend. The links of the present are found to be part of a golden chain that stretches backwards, and the future can be faced with a glad security in the thought that these links will endure through days to come, and form part of that unbroken chain. Now and then we find children who have brought over a memory of their immediate past, for the most part when they have died in childhood and are reborn almost immediatel)-. In the West such cases MEMORY AND FACULTY. 2$^ are rarer than in the East, because in the West the first words of such a child would be met with dis- belief, and he would quickly lose faith in his own memories. In the East, where belief in reincarna- tion is almost universal, the child's remembrances are listened to, and where the opportunity serves they have been verified. There is another important point with respect to memory that will repay consideration. The memory of past events remains, as we have seen, with the Thinker only, but the results of those events em- bodied in faculties are at the service of the lower man. If the whole of these past events were thrown down into the physical brain, a vast mass of experi- ences in no classified order, without arrangement, the man could not be guided by the outcome of the past, nor utilize it for present help. Compelled to make a choice between two lines of action, he would have to pick, out of the unarranged facts of his past, events similar in character, trace out their results, and after long and weary study arrive at some con- clusion — a conclusion very likely to be vitiated by the overlooking of some important factor, and reached long after the need for decision had passed. All the events, trivial and important, of some hun- dreds of lives would form a rather unwieldy and chaotic mass for reference in an emergency that de- manded a swift decision. The far more effective plan of Nature leaves to the Thinker the memory of the events, provides a long period of excarnate existence for the mental body, during which all the THE ANCIENT WISDOM. events are tabulated and compared and their results are classified; then these results are embodied as faculties, and these faculties form the next mental body of the Thinker. In this way, the enlarged and improved faculties are available for immediate use, and, the results of the past being in them, a decision can be come to in accordance with those results and without any delay. The clear quick insight and prompt judgment are nothing else than the outcome of past experiences, moulded into an effective form for use; they are surely more useful instruments than would be a mass of uuaasimilated experiences, out of which the relevant ones would have to be selected and compared, and from which inferences would have to be drawn, on each separate occasion on which a choice arises. Prom all these lines of thought, however, the mind turns back to rest on the fundamental neces- sity for reincarnation if life is to be made intelligi- ble, and if injustice and cruelty are not to mock the helplessness of man. With reincarnation man is a digniiied, immortal being, evolving towards a di- vinely glorious end ; without it, he is a tossing straw on the stream of chance circumstances, irresponsible for his character, for his actions, for his destiny. With it, he may look forward with fearless hope, however low in the scale of evolution he may be to- day, for he is on the ladder to divinity, and the climbing to its summit is only a question of time; without it, he has no reasonable ground of assurance as to progress in the future, nor indeed any reason- LAW OR CHANCE. 24 1 able ground of assurance in a future at all. Why should a creature without a past look forward to a future? He may be a mere bubble on the ocean of time. Flung into the world from nonentity, with qualities, good or evil, attached to him without reason or desert, why should he strive to make the best of them? Will not his future, if he have one, be as isolated, as uncaused, as unrelated as his pres- ent? In dropping reincarnation from its beliefs, the modem world has deprived God of His justice and has bereft man of his security; he may be "lucky" or "unlucky," but the strength and dignity conferred by reliance on a changeless law are rent away from him, and he is left tossing helplesslj' on an unnavigable ocean of life. . v..-*;, CHAPTER rX. Karma. Having traced the evolution of the sottl by the way of reincarnation, we are now in a position to study the great law of causation under which re- births are carried on, the law which is named Karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word, literally meaning " action ;" as all actions are effects flowing from preceding causes, and as each effect becomes a cause of future effects, this idea of cause and effect is an essential part of the idea of action, and the word action, or karma, is therefore used for causation, or for the unbroken linked series of causes and efFects that make up all human activity. Hence the phrase is sometimes used of an event, "This is my karma," i.e., "This event is the effect of a cause set going by me in the past. " No one life is isolated ; it is the child of all the lives before it, the parent of all the lives that follow it, in the total aggregate of the lives that make up the continuing existence of the indi- vidual. There is no such thing as " chance" or as "accident;" every event is linked to a preceding cause, to a following effect; all thoughts, deeds, circumstances are causally related to the past and will causally influence the future; as our ignorance ' J^XVr AND LIBERTY. 243 shrouds from our vision alike the past and the future, events often appear to us to come suddenly from the void, to be "accidental," but this appear- ance is illusory and is due entirely to our lack of knowledge. Just as the savage, ignorant of the laws of the physical universe, regards physical events as uncaused, and the results of unknown physical laws as "miracles;" so do many, ignorant of moral and mental laws, regard moral and mental events as uncaused, and the results of unknown moral and mental laws as good and bad " luck. " When at first this idea of inviolable, immutable law in a realm hitherto vaguely ascribed to chance dawns upon the mind, it is apt to result in a sense of helplessness, almost of moral and mental paralysis. Man seems to be held in the grip of an iron destiny, and the resigned " kismet" of the Moslem appears to be the only philosophical utterance. Just so might the savage feel when the idea of physical law first dawns on his startled intelligence, and he learns that every movement of his body, every movement in external nature, is carried on under inimutable laws. Gradually he learns that natural laws only lay down conditions under which all workings must be carried on, but do not prescribe the workings; so that man remains ever free at the centre, while limited in his external activities by the conditions of the plane on which those activities are carried on. He learns further that while the conditions master him, constantly frustrating his strenuous efforts, so long as he is ignorant of them, or, knowing them.

244THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
fights against them, he masters them and they be- come his servants and helpers when he understands them, knows their directions, and calculates their forces. In truth science is possible only on the physical plane because its laws are inviolable, immutable. Were there no such things as natural laws, there could be no sciences. An investigator makes a number of experiments, and from the results of these he learns how Nature works; knowingthis, he can calculate how to bring about a certain desired result, and if he fail in achieving that result he knows that he has omitted some necessary condition — either his knowledge is imperfect, or he has made a miscalculation. He reviews his knowledge, re-, vises his methods, recasts his calculations, with a serene and complete certainty that if he ask his question rightly Nature will answer him with un- varying precision. Hydrogen and oxygen will not give him water to-day and prussic acid to-morrow; fire will not bum him to-day and freeze him to-; morrow. If water be a fluid to-day and a solid to- morrow, it is because the conditions surrounding it' have been altered, and the reinstatement of the original conditions will bring about the original re-, suit. Every new piece of information about the- laws of Nature is not a fresh restriction but a freshi power, for all these energies of Nature become forces which he can use in proportion as he under- stands them. Hence the saying that "knowledge is power," for exactly in proportion to his knowledge; MASTER BY KNOWLEDGE. ^4^ can he utilize these forces; by selecting those with which he will work, by balancing one against an- other, by neutralizing opposing energies that would interfere with his object, he can calculate before- hand the result, and bring about what he prede- termines. Understanding and manipulating causes, he can predict ejffects, and thus the very rigidity of nature which seemed at first to paralyze human action can be used to produce an infinite variety of restilts. Perfect rigidity in each separate force makes possible perfect flexibility in their combina- tions. For the forces being of every kind, moving in every direction, and each being calculable, a selection can be made and the selected forces so combined as to yield any desired result. The object to be gained being determined, it can be infallibly obtained by a careful balancing of forces in the com- bination put together as a cause. But, be it remem- bered, knowledge is requisite thus to guide events, to bring about desired results. The ignorant man stumbles helplessly along, striking himself against the immutable laws and seeing his efforts fail, while the man of knowledge walks steadily forward, fore- seeing, causing, preventing, adjusting, and bringing about that at which he aims, not because he is lucky but because he understands. The one is the toy, the slave of Nature, whirled along by her forces; the other is her master, using her energies to carry him onwards in the direction chosen by his will. That which is; true of the physical realm of law is 24^ THE ANCIENT WISDOM. true also of the moral and mental worlds, equally realms of law. Here also the ignorant is a slave, the sage is a monarch; here also the inviolability, the immutability, that were regarded as paralyzing, are found to be the necessary conditions of sure progress and of clear-sighted direction of the future, Man can become the master of his destiny only be- cause that destiny lies in c. realm of law, where knowledge can build up the science of the soul and place in the hands of man the power of controlling his future — of choosing alike his future character and his future circumstances. The knowledge of karma, that threatened to paralyze, becomes an in- spiring, a supporting, an uplifting force. Karma is, then, the law of causation, the law of cause and effect. It was put pointedly by the Christian Initiate, S. Paul: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."* Man is continually sending out forces on all the planes on which he functions; these forces — themselves in quantity and quality the effects of his past activities — are causes which he sets going in each world he inhabits; they bring about certain definite effects DOth on himself and on others, and as these causes radiate forth from him- self as centre over the whole field of his activity, he is responsible for the results they bring about. As a magnet has its "magnetic field," an area within which all its forces play, larger or smaller accordingr to its strength, so has every man a field of influence • Galaiians, vi. 7. FORCfiS IN THREE WORLDS. 247 within which play the forces he emits, and these forces work in curves that return to their forth- sender, that re-enter the centre whence they emerged. As the subject is a very complicated one, we will subdivide it, and then study the subdivisions one by one. Three classes of energies are sent forth by man in his ordinary life, belonging respectively to the three worlds that he inhabits: mental energies on the mental plane, giving rise to the causes we call thoughts; desire energies on the astral plane, giving rise to those we call desires; physical energies aroused by these, and working on the physical plane, giving rise to the causes we call actions. We have to study each of these in its workings, and to understand the class of effects to which each gives rise, if we wish to trace intelligently the part that each plays in the perplexed and complicated com- binations we set up, called in their totality "our karma.'' When a man, advancing more swiftly than his fellows, gains the ability to function on higher planes, he then becomes the centre of higher forces, but for the present we may leave these out of ac- count and confine ourselves to ordinary humanity, treading the cycle of reincarnation in the three worlds. In studjring these three classes of energies we shall have to distinguish between their effect on the man who generates them and their effect on others who come within the field of his influence; for a lack THE ANCIENT WISDOM. of understanding on this point often leaves the student in a slough of hopeless bewilderment. Then we must remember that every force works on its own plane and reacts on the planes below it in proportion to its intensity; 'he plane on which it is generated gives it its special characteristics, and in its reaction on lower planes it sets up vibrations in their finer or coarser materials according to its own original nature. The motive which generates the activity determines the plane to which the force belongs. Next, it will be necessary tiJ distinguish between the ripe karma, ready to show itself as inevitable events in the present life ; the karma of character, showing itself in tendencies that are the outcome of accumulated experiences, and that are capable of being modified in the present life by the same power (the Ego) that created them in the past; the karma that is now making, and will give rise to future events and future character.* Futher, we have to realize that while a man makes his own individual karma he also connects himself thereby with others, thus becoming a member of various groups — family, national, racial — and as a member he shares in the collective karma of each of these groups. It will he seen that the study of karma is one o£ * These divisions are familiar to the student as Pr&rabdha (commenced, to be worked out in the life) : Sanchita (accumu- iBted], a part of which h se«n in the tendencies ; Kriyan&na, in course of makiug. MAN S£LF-CR£AtEt). 24^ much complexity; however, by grasping the main principles of its working as set out above, a coherent idea of its general bearing may be obtained without much difficulty, and its details can be studied at leisure as opportunity offers. Above all, let it never be forgotten, whether details are understood or not, that each man makes his own karma, creat- ing alike his own capacities and his own limitations; and that working at any time with these self -created capacities, and within these self -created limitations, he is still himself, the living soul, and can strengthen or weaken his capacities, enlarge or contract his limitations. The chains that bind him are of his own forging, and he can file them away or rivet them more strongly ; the house he lives in is of his own build- ing, and he can improve it, let it deteriorate, or rebuild it, as he will. We are ever working in plastic clay and can shape it to our fancy, but the clay hardens and becomes as iron, retaining the shape we gave it. A proverb from the Hitopadesha runs, as translated by Sir Edwin Arnold : " Look ! the clay dries into iron, but the potter moulds the clay ; Destiny to-day is master — Man was master yesterday." Thus we are all masters of our to-morrows, how- ever much we are hampered to-day by the results of our yesterdays. Let us now take in order the divisions already set out under which karma may be studied. Three cJAi^es of causes^ with their effects on their ThE ANCIENT WISDOM. creator and on those he influences. The first of these classes is composed of our thoughts. Thought is the most potent factor in the creation of human karma, for in thought the energies of the Self are working in mental matter, the matter which, in its finer kinds, forms the individual vehicle, and even in its coarser kinds responds swiftly to every vibra- tion of self -consciousness. The vibrations which we call thought, the immediate activity of the Thinker, give rise to forms of mind-stuff, or mental images, which shape and mould his mental body, as we have already seen ; every thought modifies this mental body, and the mental faculties in each suc- cessive life are made by the thinkings of the previ- ous lives. A man can have no thought- power, no mental ability, that he has not himself created by patiently repeated thinkings; on the other hand, no mental image that he has thus created is lost, but re- mains as material for faculty, and the aggregate of any group of mental images is built into a faculty which grows stronger with every additional think- ing, or creation of a me ntal image, of the same kind. Knowing this law, the man can gradually make for himself the mental character he desires to possess, and he can do it as definitely and as certainly as a bricklayer can build a wall. Death does not stop his work, but by setting him free from the encum- brance of the body facilitates the process of working up his mental images into the definite organ we call a faculty, and he brings this back with him to his next birth on the physical plane, part of the brain £F?ECtS ON OtHERS. 25! of the new body being moulded so as to serve as the organ of this faculty, in a way to be explained pres- ently. All these faculties together form the mental body for his opening life on earth, and his brain and nervous system are shaped to give this mental body expression on the physical plane. Thus the mental images created in one life appear as mental char- acteristics and tendencies in another, and for this reason it is written in one of the Upanishads: " Man is a creature of reflection ; that which he reflects on in this life he becomes the same hereafter. " * Such is the law, and it places the building of our mental character entirely in our own hands; if we build well, ours the advantage and the credit ; if we build badly, ours the loss and the blame. Mental char- acter, then, is a case of individual karma in its action on the individual who generates it. This same man that we are considering, however, affects others by his thoughts. For these mental images that form his own mental body set up vibra- tions, thus reproducing themselves in secondary forms. These generally, being mingled with desire, take up some astral matter, and I have therefore elsewhere f called these secondary thought-forms astro-mental images. Such forms leave their creator and lead a quasi-independent life — still keeping up a magnetic tie with their progenitor. They come into contact with and affect others, in this way setting up karmic imks between these * Chhdndogyoj^anishad, IV.. xiv. i. \Karma^ p. 25. (Theosophical Manual, No. IV.)

252THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
others and himself; thus they largely influence hia future environment. In such fashion are made the ties which draw people together for good or evil in later lives; which surround us with relatives, friends, and enemies; which bring across our path helpers and hinderers, people who benefit and who injure us, people who love us without our winning in this life, and who hate us though in this life we have done nothing to deserve their hatred. Study- ing these results, we grasp a great principle — that while our thoughts produce our mental and moral character in their action on ourselves, they help to ' determine our human associates in the future by their effects on others. The second great class of energies is composed of our desires — our outgoings after objects that attract us in the external world ; as a mental element always enters into these in man, we may extend the terra "mental images" to include them, although they ex- press themselves chiefly in astral matter. These in their action on their progenitor mould and form his body of desire, or astral body, shape his fate when he passes into Kamaloka after death, and determine the nature of his astral body in his next rebirth. When the desires are bestial, drunken, cruel, un- clean, they are the fruitful causes of congenital dis- eases, of weak and diseased brains, giving rise to epilepsy, catalepsy, and nervous diseases of all kinds, of physical malformations and deformities, and, in extreme cases, of monstrosities. Bestial ap- petites of an abnormal kind or intensity may set up EFFECTS OF DESIRES. 253 links in the astral world which for a time chain the Egos, clothed in astral bodies shaped by these ap- petites, to the astral bodies of animals to which these appetites properly belong, thus delaying their rein- carnation ; where this fate is escaped, the bestially shaped astral body will sometimes impress its char- acteristics on the forming physical body of the babe during antenatal life, and produce the semihuman horrors that are occasionally bom. Desires, — because they are outgoing energies that attach themselves to objects, — always attract the man towards an environment in which they may be gratified. Desires for earthly things, linking the soul to the outer world, draw him towards the place where the objects of desire are most readily obtain- able, and therefore it is said that a man is bom according to his desires.* They are one of the causes that determine the place of rebirth. The astro-mental images caused by desires aflfect others as do those generated by thoughts. They, therefore, also link us with other souls, and often by the strongest ties of love and hatred, for at the pres- ent stage of human evolution an ordinary man's de- sires are generally sf-^onger and more sustained than his thoughts. They thus play a great part in determining his human surroundings in future lives, and may bring into those lives persons and influences of whose connection with himself he is totally un- conscious. Suppose a man by sending out a thought of bitter hatred and revenge has helped to form in •Seo BrihadAranyakopanishad^ JV., iv. 5-7, and contes^t* THE ANXIENT WISDOM. another the impulse which results in a murder; the creator of that thought is United by his karma to the committer of the crime, although they have never met on the physical plane, and the wrong he has done to him, by helping to impel him to a crime, will come back as an injury in the infliction of which the whilom criminal will play his part. Many a "bolt from the blue" that is felt as utterly unde- served is the effect of such a cause, and the soul thereby leams and registers a lesson while the lower consciousness is writhing under a sense of injustice. Nothing can strike a man that he has not deserved, but his absence of memory does not cause a failure in the working of the law. We thus learn that our desires in their action on ourselves produce our de- sire-nature, and through it largely affect our physical bodies in our next birth ; that they play a great part in determining the place of rebirth; and by theii effect on others they help to draw around us our hu- man associates in future lives. The third great class of energies, appearing on the physical plane as actions, generate much karma by their effects on others, but only slightly affect directly the Inner Man. They are effects of his past thinkings and desires, and the karma they represent is for the most part exhausted in their hap- pening. Indirectly they affect him in proportion as he is moved by them to fresh thoughts and desires or emotions, but the generating force lies in these and not in the actions themselves. Again, if actions are often repeated, they set up a habit of the body EFFECTS OF ACTIONS. 255 which acts as a limitation to the expression of the Ego in the outer world; this, however, perishes with the body, thus limiting the karma of the action to a single life so far as its effect on the soul is con- cerned. But it is far otherwise when we come to study the effects of actions on others, the happiness or unhappiness caused by these, and the influence exercised by these as examples. They link us to others by this influence and are thus a third factor in determining our future human associates, while they are the chief factor in determining what may be called our non-human environment. Broadly speaking, the favorable or unfavorable nature of the physical surroundings into which we are bom depends on the effect of our previous actions in spreading happiness or unhappiness among other people. The physical results on others of actions on the physical plane work out karmically in repay- ing to the actor physical good or bad surroundings in a future life. If he has made people physically happy by sacrificing wealth or time or trouble, this action karmically brings him favorable physical circumstances conducive to physical happiness. If he has caused people widespread physical misery, ! he will reap karmically from his action wretched physical circumstances conducive to physical suffer- ing. And this is so, whatever may have been bis motive in either case — a fact which leads us to con- sider the law that: Every farce works on its own plane. If a man sows happiness for others on the physical plane, he

256THE AWCIENT WISDOM.
will reap conditions favorable to happiness for him- self on that plane, and his motive in sowing it does not affect the result. A man might sow wheat with the object of speculating with it to ruin his neigh- bor, but his bad motiv-e would not make the wheat- grains grow up as dandelions. Motive is a mental or astral force, according as it arises from will or desire, and it reacts on moral and mental character or on the desire-natnre severally. The causing of physical happiness by an action is a physical force and works on the physical plane. " By his actions man affects his neighbors on the physical plane; he spreads happiness around him or he causes distress, increasing or diminishing the sum of human welfare. This increase or diminution of happiness may be due to very different motives— good, bad, or mixed. A man may do an act that gives widespread en jo jrraent from sheer benevolence, from a longing to give happiness to his fellow-creatures. Let us say that from such a motive he presents a park to a town for the free use of its inhabitants ; another may do a similar act from mere ostentation, from desire to attract attention from those who can bestow social honors {say, he might give it as purchase- money for a title) ; a third may give a park from mixed mo- tives, partly unselfish, partly selfish. The motives will severally affect these three men's characters in their future incarnations, for improvement, for degradation, for small results. But the effect of the action in causing happiness to large numbers of people does not depend on the motive of the giver; KARMA IS JUST. 257 the people enjoy the park equally, no matter what may have prompted its gift, and this enjoyment, due to the action of the giver, establishes for him a karmic claim on Nature, a debt due to him that will be scrupulously paid. He will receive a physically comfortable or luxurious environment, as he has given widespread physical enjoyment, and his sacri- fice of physical wealth will bring him his due reward, the karmic fruit of his action. This is his right. But the use he makes of his position, the happiness he derives from his wealth and his surroundings, will depend chiefly on his character, and here again the just reward accrues to him, each seed bearing its appropriate harvest. " * Truly, the ways of karma are equal. It does not withhold from the bad man the result which justly follows from an action which spreads happiness, and it also deals out to him the deteriorated character earned by his bad motive, so that in the midst of wealth he will remain discon- tented and unhappy. Nor can the good man escape physical suffering if he causes physical misery by mistaken actions done from a good motive; the misery he caused will bring him misery in his physical surroundings, but his good motive, improv- ing his character, will give him a source of perennial happiness within himself, and he will be patient an^ contented amid his troubles. Many a puzzle ma> be answered by applying these principles to the facts we see around us. These respective effects of motive and of the re- * Kartna, pp. 50, $1. 2So THE ANCIENT WISDOM. suits (or fruits) of actions are due to the fact that each force has the characteristics of the plane on which it was generated, and the higher the plane the more potent and the more persistent the force. Hence motive is far more important than action, and a mistaken action done with a good motive is productive of more good to the doer than a well- chosen action done with a bad motive. The motive, reacting on the character, gives rise to a long series of effects, for the future actions guided by that char- acter will a!l be influenced by its improvement or its deterioration; whereas the action, bringing on its doer physical happiness or unhappiness, accord- ing to its results on others, has in it no generating force, but is exhausted in its results. If bewildered as to the path of right action by a conflict of appar- ent duties, the knower of karma diligently tries to choose the best path, using his reason and his judg- ment to the utmost ; he is scrupulously careful about his motive, eliminating selfish considerations and purifying his heart; then he acts fearlessly, and if his action turn out to be a blunder he willingly ac- cepts the suffering which results from his mistake as a lesson which will be useful in the future. Meanwhile, his high motive has ennobled his char- acter for all time to come. This general principle that the force belongs to the plane on which it is generated is one of far- reaching import. If it be liberated with the motive of gaining physical objects, it works on the physical plane and attaches the actor to that plane. If it THREE KINDS OF KARMA. 259 aim at devachanic objects, it works on the deva- chanic plane and attaches the actor thereto. If it have no motive save the divine service, it is set free on the spiritual plane, and therefore cannot attach the individual, since the individual is asking* for nothing. The three kinds of karma. Ripe karma is that which is ready for reaping and which is therefore inevitable. Out of all the karma of the past there is a certain amount which can be exhausted within the limits of a single life ; there are some kinds of karma that are so incongruous that they could not be worked out in a single physical body, but would require very different types of body for their expres- sion ; there are liabilities contracted towards other souls, and all these souls will not be in incarnation at the same time; there is karma that must be worked out in some particular nation or particular social position, while the same man has other karma that needs an entirely different environment. Part only, therefore, of his total karma can be worked out in a given life, and this part is selected by the great Lords of Karma — of whom something will presently be said — and the soul is guided to incarnate in a family, a nation, a place, a body, suitable for the exhaustion of that aggregate of causes which can be worked out together. This aggregate of causes fixes the length of that particular life ; gives to the body its characteristics, its powers, and its limitations; brings into contact with the man the souls incarnated within that life-period to whom he has contracted ^ a60 THE ANCIENT WISDOM. obligations, surroundingf him with relatives, friends, and enemies; marks out the social conditions into which he is born, with their accompanying advan- tages and disadvantages ; selects the mental energies he can show forth by moulding the organization of . the brain and nervous system with which he has to work; puts together the causes that result in troubles and joys in his outer career and that can be brought into a single life. All this is the "ripe kar- ma," and this can be sketched out in a horoscope cast by a competent astrologer. In all this the man has no power of choice ; all is fixed by the choices he has made in the past, and he must discharge to the uttermost farthing the liabilities he has contracted. The physical, astral, and mental bodies which the soul takes on for a new life-period are, as we have seen, the direct result of his past, and they form a most important part of this ripe karma. They limit the soul on every side, and his past rises up in judg- ment against him, marking out the limitations which he has made for himself. Cheerfully to accept these, and diligently to work st their improvement, is the part of the wise man, for he cannot escape from them. There is another kind of ripe karma that is of very serious importance — that of inevitable actions. Every action is the final expression of a series of thoughts; to bonow an illustration from chemistry, we obtain a saturated solution of thought by adding thought after thought of the same kind, until another thought — or even an impulse, a vibration, from witli- DETERMINED ACTIONS. 26l Ont-^will produce the solidification of the whole, the action which expresses the thoughts. If we persis- tently reiterate thoughts of the same kind, say of re- venge, we at last reach the point of saturation, and any impulse will solidify these into action and a crime results. Or we may have persistently rerfcer- ated thoughts of help to another to the point of saturation, and when the stimulus of opportunity touches us they crystallize out as an act of heroism. A man may bring over with him some ripe karma of this kind, and the first vibration that touches sucih a mass of thoughts ready to solidify into action will hurry him without his renewed volition, unconscious- ly, into the commission of the act. He cannot stop to think ; he is in the condition in which the first vibration of the mind causes action: poised on the very point of balancing, the slightest impulse sends him over. Under these circumstances a man will marvel at his own commission of some crime, or at his own performance of some sublime act of self- devotion. He says: "I did it without thinking," unknowing that he had thought so often that he had made that action inevitable. When a man has willed to do an act many times, he at last fixes his will irre- vocably, and it is only a question of opportunity when he will act. So long as he can think, his free- dom of choice remains, for he can set the new thought against the old and gradually wear it out by the reiteration of opposing thoughts; but when the next thrill of the soul in response to a stimulus means action, the power of choice is exhausted.

262THE ANCIENT WISDOlL
Herein lies the solution of the old problem of ne- cessity and free will ; man by the exercise of free will gradually creates necessities for himself, and between th two extremes lie all the combinations of free will and necessity which make the struggles within our- selves of which we are conscious. We are continu- ally making habits by the repetitions of purposive actions guided by the will; then the habit becomes a limitation, and we perform the action automati- cally. Perhaps we are ther_ driven to the conclusion that the h:.bit is a bad one, and we begin laboriously to immake it by thoughts of the opposite kind, and, after many an inevitable lapse into it, the new thought -current turns the stream, and we regain our fi:ll freedom, often again gradually to make another fetter. So old thought-forms persist and limit our thinking capacity, showing as individual and as national prejudices. The majority do not know that they are thus limited, and go on serenely in their chains, ignorant of their bondage; those who learn the truth about their own nature become free. The constitution of our brain and nervous system is one of the most marked necessities in life ; these we have made inevitable by our past thinkings, and they now limit us and we often chafe against them. They can be improved slowly and gradually ; the limits can be expanded, but they cannot be sud- denly transcended. Another form of this ripe karma is where some past evil-thinking has made a crust of evil habits around a man which imprisons liim and makes an SUDbfiK CONVEkSIOK^. ^6^ evil life ; the actions are the inevitable outcome of his pasty as just explained, and they have been held over, even through several lives, in consequence of those lives not offering opportunities for their mani- festation. Meanwhile the soul has been growing and has been developing noble qualities. In one life this crust of past evil is thrown out by oppor- tunity, and because of this the soul cannot show his later developments; like a chicken, ready to be hatched, he is hidden within the imprisoning shell, and only the shell is visible to the external eye. After a time that karma is exhausted, and some apparently fortuitous event — a word from a great Teacher, a book, a lecture — ^breaks the shell and the soul comes forth free. These are the rare, sudden, but permanent "conversions," the "miracles of di- vine grace," of which we hear; all perfectly intelli- gible to the knower of karma, and falling within the realm of law. The accumulated karma that shows itself as charac- ter is, tmlike the ripe, always subject to modifica- tions. It may be said to consist of tendencies, strong or weak, according to the thought-force that has gone to their making, and these can be further strengthened or weakened by fresh streams of thought-force sent to work with or against them. If we find in ourselves tendencies of which we disap- prove, we can set ourselves to work to eliminate them ; often we fail to withstand a temptation, over- borne by the strong outrushing stream of desire, but the longer we can hold out against it, even

264THB ANCIENT WISDOM.
though we fail in the end, the nearer are we to over- coming it. Every such failure is a step towards suc- cess, for the resistance wears away part of the energy, and there is less of it available for the future. The karma which is in the course of making has been already studied. Collective karma. When a group of people is con- sidered karmically, the play of karmic forces upon each as a member of the group introduces a new factor into the karma of the individual. We know that when a number of forces play on a point, the motion of the point is not in the direction of any one of these forces, but in the direction which is the re- sult of their combination. So the karma of a group is the resultant of the interacting forces of the indi- viduals composing it, and all the individuals are car- ried along in the direction of that resultant. An Ego is drawn by his individual karma into a family, having set up in previous lives ties which closely connect him with some of the other Egos composing it ; the family has inherited property from a grand- father and is wealthy; an heir turns up, descended from the grandfather's elder brother, who had been supposed to have died childless, and the wealth passes to him and leaves the father of the family heavily indebted ; it is quite possible that our Ego had had no connection in the past with this heir, to whom in past lives the father had contracted some obligation which has resulted in this catastrophe, and yet he is threatened with suff^rinpr ty his action, "accidents.** 265 being involved in the family karma. It,, m his own individual past, there was a wrong-doing which can be exhausted by suffering caused by the family kar- ma, he is left involved in it ; if not, he is by some "unforeseen circumstances" lifted out of it, per- chance by some benevolent stranger who feels an impulse to adopt and educate him, the stranger be- ing one who in the past was his debtor. Yet more clearly does this come out in the working of such things as railway accidents, shipwrecks, floods, cyclones, etc. A train is wrecked, the catas- trophe being immediately due to the action of the drivers, the guards, the railway directors, the mak- ers or employees of that line, who, thinking them- selves wronged, send clustering thoughts of discon- tent and anger against it as a whole. Those who have in their accumulated karma — but not necessa- rily in their ripe karma — the debt of a life suddenly cut short, may be allowed to drift into this accident and pay their debt ; another, intending to go by the train, but with no such debt in his past, is " provi- dentially" saved by being late for it. Collective karma may throw a man into the troubles consequent on his nation going to war, and here again he may discharge debts of his past not necessarily within the ripe karma of his then life. In no case can a man suffer that which he has not deserved, but, if an unforeseen opportunity should arise to discharge a past obligation, it is well to pa)'' it and be rid of it for evermore. The "Lords of Karma" are the great spiritual ; ANCIENT WISDOM. Intelligences who keep the karmic Records and adjust the complicated workings of karmic law. They are described by H. P. Blavatsky in Tlie Secret Doctrine as the Lipika, the Recorders of Karma, and the Maharajas * and Their hosts, who are " the agents of Karma upon earth. " \ The Lipika are They who know the karmic record of every man, and who with omniscient wisdom select and combine portions of that record to form the plan of a single life ; They give the "idea" of the physical body which is to be the garment of the reincarnating soul, expressing his capacities and his limitations; this is taken by the Maharajas and worked into a detailed model, which is committed to one of Their inferior agents to be copied; this copy is the etherio double, the matrix of the dense body, the materials for these being drawn from the mother and subject to physi- cal heredity. The race, the country, the parents, are chosen for their capacity to provide suitable mate- rials for the physical body of the incoming Ego, and suitable surroundings for his early life. The physi- cal heredity of the family affords certain types and has evolved certain peculiarities of material combi- nations ; hereditary diseases, hereditary finenesses of nervous organization, imply definite combinations of physical matter, capable of transmission. An Ego who has evolved peculiarities in his mental and astral bodies, needing special physical peculiarities for their expression, is guided to parents whoss • The Mahadevas, or Chaturdevaa of the Hindus. \0p. cit.. pp. 153 01^157. THE GUIDANCE OF THE LORDS. 26^ physical heredity enables them to meet thes« re- quirements. Thus an Ego with high artistic facul- ties devoted to music would be guided to take his physical body in a musical family, in which the materials supplied fo^ building the etheric double and the dense body would have been made ready to adapt themselves to his needs, and the hereditary type of nervous system would furnish the delicate apparatus necessary for the expression of his facul- ties. An Ego of very evil type would be guided to a coarse and vicious family, whose bodies were built of the coarsest combinations, such as would make a body able to respond to the impulses from his mental and astral bodies. An Ego who had allowed his as- tral body and lower mind to lead him into excesses, and had yielded to drunkenness, for instance, would be led to incarnate in a family whose nervous sys- tems were weakened by excess, and would be bom from drunken parents, who would supply diseased materials for his physical envelope. The guidance of the Lords of Karma thus adjusts means to ends, and insures the doing of justice; the Ego brings with him his karmic possessions of faculties and de- sires, and he receives a physical body suited to be their vehicle. As the soul must return to earth until he has dis- charged all his liabilities, thus exhausting all his individual karma, and as in each life thoughts and desires generate fresh karma, the question may arise in the mind: "How can this constantly renewing bond be put an end to? How can the soul attain his THE ANCIENT WISDOM, liberiition?" Thus we come to the "ending of kar- ma," and have to investigate how this may be. The binding element in karma is the first thing to be clearly grasped. The outward-going energy of the soul attaches itself to some object, and the soal is drawn back by this tie to the place where that attachment may be realized by union with the object of desire ; so long as the soul attaches himself to any. object, he must be draivn to the place where that ob^ ject can be enjoyed. Good kanna binds the soul as much as does bad, for any desire, whether for objects here or in Devachan, must draw the soul to the place of its gratification. Action is prompted by desire; an act is done not! for the sake of doing the act, but for the sake of ob-' taining by the act something that is desired, of ac quiring its results, or, as it is technically called, of enjoying its fruit. Men work, not because they want to dig, or build, or weave, but because they want the fruits of digging, building, and weaving, in the shape of money or of goods, A barrister pleads, not because he wants to set forth the dry details of a case, but because he wants wealth, fame, and rank. Men around us on every side are laboring for some- thing, and the spur to their activity lies in the fruit it brings them and not in the labor. Desire for the fruit of action moves them to activity, and en- joyment of that fruit rewards their exertions. Desire is, then, the binding eieraeut in karma, and when the soul no longer desires any object in earth or in heaven, his tie to the wheel of reincarnation DESIRES ARE BONDS. 269 that turns in the three worlds is broken. Action itself has no power to hold the soul, for with the completion of the action it slips into the past. But the ever-renewed desire for fruit constantly spurs the soul into fresh activities, and thus new chains are continually being forged. Nor should we feel any regret when we see men constantly driven to action by the whip of desire, for desire overcomes sloth, laziness, inertia,* and prompts men to the activity that yields them experi- ence. Note the savage, idly dozing on the grass; he is moved to activity by hunger, the desire for food, and is driven to exert patience, skill, and endurance to gratify his desire. Thus he develops mental qualities, but when his hunger is satisfied he sinks again into a dozing animal. How entirely have mental qualities been evolved by the promptings of desire, and how useful have proved desires for fame, for posthumous renown. Until man is ap- proaching divinity he needs the urgings of desires, and the desires simply grow purer and less selfish as he climbs upwards. But none the less desires bind him to rebirth, and if he would be free he must de- stroy them. When a man begins to long for liberation, he is taught to practise " renunciation of the fruits of ac- tion;" that is, he gradually eradicates in himself the wish to possess any object ; he at first voluntarily and * The student will remember that these show the dominance on the t&masic guna, and while it is dominant men do not emerge from the lowest of the three stage** -^f their evolution. THE ANCIENT WISDOM. deliberately denies himself the object, and thus ha- bituates himself to do contentedly without it; aftor a time he no longer misses it, and he finds the desire for it is disappearing from his mind. At this stage he is very careful not to neglect any work which is duty because he has become indifferent to the results it brings to him, and he trains himself iii' discharging every duty with earnest attention,, while remaining entirely indifferent to the fruits it, brings forth. When he attains perfection in this, . and neither desires nor dislikes any object, he ceases to generate karma; ceasing to ask anything, from the earth or from Devachan, he is not drawn to either; he wants nothing that either can give him, and all links between himself and them are broken off. This is the ceasing of individud- karma, so far as the generation of new karma i concerned. But the soul has to get rid of old chains as well asi to cease from the forging of new, and these old chains must either be allowed to wear out gradually. or must be broken deliberately. For this breaking knowledge is necessary, a knowledge which can look back into the past, and see the causes there set go- ing, causes which are working out their effects in the present. Let us suppose that a person, thus look-- ing backward over his past lives, sees certain causes J which will bring about an event which is still in the I future; let us suppose further that these causes ara.'J thoughts of hatred for an injury inflicted on himself, 1 and that they will cause suffering a year hence ta> BREAKING OLD CHAINS. 2/1 the wrong-doer; such a person can introduce a new cause to intermingle with the causes working from the past, and he may counteract them with strong thoughts of love and good-will that will exhaust them, and will thus prevent their bringing about the otherwise inevitable event, which would, in its turn, have generated new karmic trouble. Thus he may neutralize forces coming out of the past by sending against them forces equal and opposite, and may in this way " bum up his karma by knowledge. " In similar fashion he may bring to an end karma generated in his present life that would normally work out in future lives. Again, he may be hampered by liabilities con- tracted to other souls in the past, wrongs he has done to them, duties he owes to them. By the use of his knowledge he can find those souls, whether in this world or in either of the other two, and seek opportunities of serving them. There may be a soul incarnated during his own life-period to whom he owes some karmic debt ; he may seek out that soul and pay his debt, thus setting himself free from a tie which, left to the course of events, would have necessitated his own reincarnation, or would have hampered him in a future life. Strange and puz- zling lines of action adopted by occultists have some- times this explanation — the man of knowledge en- ters into close relations with some person who is considered by the ignorant bystanders and critics to be quite outside the companionships that are fitting for him ; but that occultist is quietly working out a 2/2 THE ANCIENT WISDOM. karmic obligation which would otherwise hamper and retard his progress. Those who do not possess knowledge enough to review their past lives may yet exhaust many causes that they have set going in the present life ; they can carefully go over all that they can remember, and note where they have wronged any or where any has wronged them, exhausting the first cases by pouring out thoughts of love and service, and per- forming acts of service to the injured person, where possible on the physical plane also; and in the second cases sending forth thoughts of pardon and good- will. Thus they diminish their karmic liabili- ties and bring nearer the day of liberation. Unconsciously, pious people who obey the precept of all great Teachers of religion to return good for evil are exhausting karma generated in the present that would otherwise work out in the future. No one can weave with them a bond of hatred if they refuse to contribute any strands of hatred to the weaving, and persistently neutralize every force of hatred with one of love. Let a soul radiate in every direction love and compassion, and thoughts of hatred can find nothing to which they can attach themselves. " The Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. " All great Teachers knew the law and based on it Their precepts, and those who through rever- ence and devotion to Them obey Their directions profit under the law, although they know nothing of the details of its working. An ignorant man who carries out faithfully the instructions given him by VALUE OF BELIEF. 2/3 a scientist can obtain results by his working with the laws of Nature, despite his ignorance of them, and the same principle holds good in worlds beyond the physical. Many who have not time to study, and who perforce accept on the authority ot experts rules which guide their daily conduct in life, may thus unconsciously be discharging their karmic lia- bilities. In countries where reincarnation and karma are taken for granted by every peasant and laborer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of in- evitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary life. A man over- whelmed by misfortunes rails neither against God nor against his neighbors, but regards his troubles as the results of his own past mistakes and ill-do- ings. He accepts them resignedly and makes the best of them, and thus escapes much of the worry and anxiety with which those who know not the law aggravate troubles already sufficiently heavy. He realizes that his future lives depend on his own ex- ertions, and that the law which brings him pain will bring him joy just as inevitably ii he sows the seed of good. Hence a certain large patience and a phil- osophic view of life, tending directly to social stabil- ity and to general contentment. The poor and ignorant do not study profound and detailed meta- physics, but they grasp thoroughly these simple principles — that every man is reborn on earth time after time, and that each successive life is moulded by those that precede it. To them rebirth is as sure i8

274THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
and as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun; it is part of the course of nature, against which it is idle to repine or to rebel. When Theosophy has restored these ancient truths to their rightful place in western thought, they will gradually work their way among all classes of society in Christendom, spreading understanding of the nature of life and acceptance of the results of the past. Then too will vanish the restless discontent which arises chiefly from the impatient and hopeless feeling that life is unintelligible, unjust, and unmanageable, and it will be replaced by the quiet strength and patience which come from an illumined intellect and a knowledge of the law, and which characterize the reasoned and balanced activity of those who feel that they are building for eternity.

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