Here, I am going to transcribe
what Master Kuthumi said in the Mahatma
Letters about the skandhas.
WHAT ARE THE SKANDHAS?
The master replied:
« The skandhas are the elements of limited existence. »
(ML 25, p.200)
HOW ARE THE SKANDHAS GENERATED?
The master explained:
« A good thought is
perpetuated as an active beneficent power; an evil one as a maleficent demon.
And so man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his
own, crowded with the offsprings of his fancies, desires, impulses, and
passions, a current which reacts upon any sensitive or and nervous organisation
which comes in contact with it in proportion to its dynamic intensity.
The Buddhist calls this his
"Skandha," the Hindu gives it the name of "Karma"; the
Adept evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously. »
(ML to Hume, p.497-498)
WILL THE SKANDHAS DISINTEGRATE AFTER DEATH?
The master answered:
« When the Ego ascends to the Devachan, all that which pertains to the materio-psychological attributes and
sensations of the five lower skandhas; all that which will be thrown off as a
refuse by the newly born Ego in the Devachan, as unworthy of, and not
sufficiently related to the purely
spiritual perceptions, emotions and feelings of the sixth, strengthened, and so
to say, cemented
by a portion of the fifth, that portion which is necessary in the devachan for
the retention of a divine, spiritualized notion of the "I" in the Monad — which would
otherwise, have no consciousness in relation to object and subject at all.
All this "becomes extinct for ever":
namely at the moment of physical death, to return once more, marshalling before
the eye of the new Ego, at the threshold of Devachan and to be rejected by It.
It will return for the third
time fully at
the end of the minor cycle, after the completion of the seven Rounds when the sum total of collective
existences is weighed — "merit" — in one cup, "demerit" in
the other cup of the scales. But in that individual, in the Ego — "good,
bad, or indifferent" in the isolated personality,
— consciousness leaves as suddenly as "the flame leaves the wick."
Blow out your candle, good friend. The flame has left that candle "for
ever"; but are the particles that moved, their motion producing the objective flame
annihilated or dispersed for all that?
Never
Relight the candle and the same
particles drawn by mutual affinity will return to the wick. Place a long row of
candles on your table. Light one and blow it out; then light the other and do
the same; a third and fourth, and so on. The same matter, the same gaseous
particles — representing in our case the Karma
of the personality — will be called forth by the conditions given them by your
match, to produce a new luminosity; but can we say that candle No. 1 has not had
its flame extinct for ever?
Not even in the case of the
"failures of nature," of the immediate
reincarnation of children and congenital idiots, etc. »
(ML 23B, p.171-172)
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE HUMANS WHO DIE EARLY?
On this matter, the master specified:
« People who are good
sleep in the akashic dream, ignorant of their change. Individuals who are very
bad, those who sleep have nightmares, and those who stay awake seek to
influence the humans on earth to commit horrific crimes for which they delight
and indulge.
Those who are neither very good
nor very bad, most of them sleep, while a minority remains awake, and among
them, there is a small minority may fall victims to mediums and derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts
them. Small as their number may be, their fate is to be the most deplored. »
(ML 21, p.136)
And in another letter, master Kuthumi detailed more about this situation:
« But if the victim of
accident or violence be neither very good, nor very bad — an average person —
then this may happen to him: A medium who attracts him, will create for him the
most undesirable of things: a new combination of Skandhas and a new and evil Karma. But let me give you
a clearer idea of what I mean by Karma
in this case.
In connexion with this, let me
tell you before, that since you seem so interested with the subject, you can do
nothing better than to study the two doctrines — of Karma and Nirvana
— as profoundly as you can. Unless you are thoroughly well acquainted with the
two tenets — the double key to the metaphysics of Abidharma — you will always
find yourself at sea in trying to comprehend the rest.
We have several sorts of Karma
and Nirvana in their various applications — to the Universe, the world, Devas,
Buddhas, Bodhisatwas, men and animals — the second including its seven
kingdoms. Karma and Nirvana are but two of the seven great Mysteries of Buddhist metaphysics; and but four of the
seven are known to the best Orientalists, and that very imperfectly.
If you ask a learned Buddhist
priest:
What is Karma?
He will tell you that Karma is
what a Christian might call Providence (in a certain sense only) and a
Mahomedan — Kismet,
fate or destiny (again in one sense). That it is that cardinal tenet which
teaches that, as soon as any conscious or sentient being, whether man, deva, or
animal dies, a new being is produced and he or it reappears in another birth, on
the same or another planet, under conditions of his or its own antecedent
making.
Or, in other words that Karma is the guiding
power, and Trishna
(in Pali Tanha)
the thirst or desire to sentiently live — the proximate force or energy, the
resultant of human (or animal) action, which, out of the old Skandhas produce the new
group that form the new being and control the nature of the birth itself.
Or to make it still clearer, the new being, is rewarded and
punished for the meritorious acts and misdeeds of the old one; Karma
representing an Entry Book, in which all the acts of man, good, bad, or
indifferent, are carefully recorded to his debit and credit — by himself, so to
say, or rather by these very actions of his.
There, where Christian poetical
fiction created, and sees a "Recording" Guardian Angel, stern and
realistic Buddhist logic, perceiving the necessity that every cause should have
its effect — shows its real presence.
The opponents of Buddhism have
laid great stress upon the alleged injustice that the doer should escape and an
innocent victim be made to suffer, — since the doer and the sufferer are
different beings.
The fact is, that while in one
sense they may be so considered, yet in another they are identical. The "old being"
is the sole parent — father and mother at once — of the "new being."
It is the former who is the creator and fashioner, of the latter, in reality;
and far more so in plain truth, than any father in flesh. And once that you
have well mastered the meaning of Skandhas
you will see what I mean.
It is the group of Skandhas, that
form and constitute the physical and mental individuality we call man (or any
being). This group consists (in the exoteric teaching) of five Skandhas,
namely: Rupa —
the material properties or attributes; Vedana
— sensations; Sanna
— abstract ideas; Sankhara
— tendencies both physical and mental; and Vinnana
— mental powers, an amplification of the fourth — meaning the mental, physical
and moral predispositions.
We add to them two more, the
nature and names of which you may learn hereafter. Suffice for the present to
let you know that they are connected with, and productive of Sakkayaditthi, the
"heresy or delusion of individuality" and of Attavada "the
doctrine of Self," both of which (in the case of the fifth principle the
soul) lead to the maya
of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers
and intercession.
Now, returning to the question of
identity between the old
and the new
"Ego." I may remind you once more, that even your Science has
accepted the old, very old fact distinctly taught by our Lord Buddha, viz. —
that a man of any given age, while sentiently the same, is yet physically not
the same as he was a few years earlier (we say seven years and are prepared to maintain and
prove it).
Buddhistically speaking, his Skandhas have changed. At
the same time they are ever and ceaselessly at work in preparing the abstract
mould, the "privation" of the future new being.
Well, then, if it is just that a
man of 40 should enjoy or suffer for the actions of the man of 20, so it is
equally just that the being of the new birth, who is essentially identical with
the previous being — since he is its outcome and creation — should feel the
consequences of that begetting Self or personality.
Your Western law which punishes
the innocent son of a guilty father by depriving him of his parent, rights and
property; your civilized Society which brands with infamy the guileless
daughter of an immoral, criminal mother; your Christian Church and Scriptures
which teach that the "Lord God visits the sins of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation".
Are not all these far more unjust and cruel than anything done by Karma?
Instead of punishing the innocent
together with the culprit, the Karma avenges
and rewards the former, which neither of your three Western
potentates above mentioned ever thought of doing.
But perhaps, to our physiological
remark the objectors may reply that it is only the body that changes, there is
only a molecular transformation, which has nothing to do with the mental
evolution, and that the Skandhas
represent not only a material but also a set of mental and moral qualities.
But is there, I ask, either a sensation, an abstract idea, a tendency of
mind, or a mental power, that one could call an absolutely non-molecular
phenomenon? Can even a sensation or the most abstract of thoughts which is something, come out of nothing, or be nothing?
Now, the causes producing the
"new being" and determining the nature of Karma are, as already said — Trishna (or "tanha") — thirst,
desire for sentient existence and upadana
— which is the realization or consummation of trishna or that desire. And both of these the
medium helps to awaken and to develop nec
plus ultra
in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim.
The rule is, that a person who
dies a natural death, will remain from "a few hours to several short
years," within the earth's attraction, i.e.,
in the Kama Loka.
But exceptions are the cases of
suicides and those who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos,
for instance, who was destined to live — say 80 or 90 years, but who either
killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of 20
— would have to pass in the Kama
Loka not "a few years," but in his case 60 or 70 years,
as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker"; since he is not,
unfortunately for him, even a "shell."
Happy, thrice happy, in
comparison, are those disembodied entities, who sleep their long slumber and
live in dream in the bosom of Space! And woe to those whose trishna will attract them
to mediums, and woe to the latter, who tempt them with such an easy upadana.
For in grasping them, and
satisfying their thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them — is in
fact the cause of — a new set of skandhas,
a new body, with far worse tendencies and passions than was the one they lost.
All the future of this new body
will be determined thus, not only by the Karma
of demerit of the previous set or group but also by that of the new set of the
future being. Were the mediums and Spiritualists but to know, as I said, that
with every new "spirit" they welcome with rapture, they entice the
latter into an upadana
which will be productive of a series of untold evils for the new Ego that will
be born under its nefarious shadow, and that with every seance — especially for
materialization — they multiply the causes for misery, causes that will make
the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth or be reborn into a worse
existence than ever — they would, perhaps, be less lavishing their hospitality.
And now, you may understand why we oppose so strongly
Spiritualism and mediumship. »
(ML 16, p.110-113)
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