REINCARNATION BY WILLIAM JUDGE

(This is a report of a lecture delivered at Irving Hall, San Francisco, California, September 28, 1891, and printed in The New Californian, Vol. I, November 1891, pp. 177-83. The latter was published by Louise A. Off, a T.S. member in Los Angeles, California.)

Reincarnation is change. Whether in the domain of mind, of natural objects, or of human progress in civilization, the great law governing all is change. Everything is changing; the old into the new, the past into the present. This procession of change is evolution, and reincarnation and evolution are the same thing.

The doctrine of reincarnation is that each man is a living, immortal soul; that, as Walt Whitman, the poet, in Song of Myself (§49) says, he has “died ten thousand times before;” that being immortal he must have been always immortal; that he has lived before; and that he comes to earth again and again in new bodies, for the purpose of experience and development.

As an old Hindu poet, Vyasa quoting Kṛishṇa:

-      “I and thou, oh Arjuna, have had many births; we have been in many bodies, and we will be in many more.”  (Bhagavad-Gita, 4:5)

Now, although the doctrine of reincarnation applies to every atom in the universe, we will only consider it in respect to man himself. If man is the crowning glory, the aim and end of all evolutionary effort, as a conscious reasoning being his evolution must needs involve a changing series of lives.

First of all, he should know himself, because once that he knows that, he knows all. Reincarnation, then, as applied to man, means that we are not here for the first time; that we have previously inhabited bodies on this earth. This, according to the Theosophic theory, is the only way in which spirits return to the earth.

We do not hold, like some, that after a man dies, after his body is put away in the ground, he returns once more, without a body, to converse with his friends left behind. We say that he comes back and occupies another body; that he reincarnates.

This is not a new nor a strange doctrine. It is as old as any records of civilization. The ancient Egyptians believed it and taught it. The Jews believed it. The Chaldeans no doubt believed it, for their philosophy is similar to that of the Egyptians and the Hindus. The latter have always believed it, and today accept it almost to a man. They declare that either man is immortal or he is not. If he is immortal he must have always been so; if he is not, then this world of ours is a chaos of injustice and unmerited suffering.

Is one life adequate for any of the purposes which it would seem ought to be in view, in the perfecting of man in his nature, his character, and his powers?

I think that the answer will be that it is not enough if we desire to gain knowledge. The departments of knowledge are innumerable; they cannot be counted. In each the pursuit of knowledge is divided and again subdivided. Whether in history, the physical sciences, or the study of nature’s resources, of civilization, or, further yet, the study of the mind, the departments are so infinite that one faints with the idea of supposing it possible to acquire all that knowledge in a single lifetime. Now what is a lifetime?

As it is reckoned according to the Christian scheme, it is 70 years. The insurance standard is much shorter; it is not 60 years. Now, a person spends a great deal of time in childhood, when they learn nothing; before they understand how to use their own senses that they may acquire knowledge.

They will, it is true, acquire mere impressions, but these are indefinite and crude, so that the period of childhood has to be subtracted from this 60 years. One-third of the remainder is spent in sleep, and the greater part of the waking portion is wasted, so far as development is concerned, in the struggle for existence, for of our own civilization you will find that the major part are bound down to the wall in order to gain a scanty livelihood.

How much time is there left in which to do anything whatever, except to gain a thimbleful to eat and a place to sleep?

I take it that the object in view in having man upon earth is that he may develop his character up to the highest standard, and in order to do so he not only has to acquire knowledge in all its branches but he has also in addition to that to gain experience, for one can acquire knowledge in his room and yet have no experience. It is well-known that we must have experience with each other, personal contact in all the relations of life, in order to develop our character.

There is a story told in India, of the great sage Sankaracharya, bearing upon this point. He was a man who was celebrated all his life long as one possessed of the highest learning. He had studied and experienced almost everything, but one day the Goddess of Love came to him and said:

-      “Sankaracharya, what is the nature of love?”

He was obliged to reply, “I don’t know,” and in order to acquire experience as to its true nature he again, as the story goes, reincarnated in order that he might answer the question of the Goddess. So that even he, with all his wisdom from other experiences, had once more to reincarnate to gain actual experience in this.

In view then, of the amount of experience necessary to round out and develop human character, how much can be accomplished in one short life? Each one of us has a different trade or business. Take the man with a small store. He has nothing to do with large affairs; his whole life has been spent in making prices for the goods he sells.

What chance has he to gain anything but that one small experience in this life?

So on, in every direction. There is no chance to gain the needed experience, in order that a soul or character may be developed up to the highest possible standard. Further than this, character has to be formed, and the short time we have, even if the period of sleep be added, is not enough to form character. Besides, men and women from birth to death have almost the same essential character.

The boy who was a trader in school, who swapped a knife for some marbles and the marbles for something else until he finally acquired money, is today a trader. Another boy who gave everything away is still the same; his essential character has not altered. It is rarely that man’s essential characteristics change from birth to death.

Nothing changes in one short life except in response to the quantity of experience gained and the amount of this is too small to even materially modify much less to form character.

When, then, will we have the opportunity to improve or evolve, if there is only one life and one death?

Never

God designed that man should have a character, and that it should be developed on all sides, so that he may acquire a knowledge of all truth. This cannot be done in one short life. It is desired, I suppose, by nature and by God that mankind, as a whole, should be elevated up to the highest, in purity, wisdom, compassion and a host of other Godlike characteristics. This is impossible in one short life, with half of this slept away. Our life,

in addition, raises within us ideas with respect to the fact that there is more to be known; a consciousness that greater and grander truths exist than any we have yet encountered as the natural deduction from all that we have known.

This consciousness of but a partial development of our faculties fills us with unrest. The knowledge that life leaves unused certain faculties which might fill us with gratification or sorrow, or at any rate with increased experience and wisdom, haunts us.

Failure and disappointment are everywhere; rich and poor alike feel them grinding in their hearts. Those who move in high social circles are not happy because their schemes do not succeed; others are miserable merely for the reason that they know not what else to do, and they are unsatisfied with their idleness.

On the other hand are those who are discontented with their lot and the injustice surrounding them. Now this short life has raised these feelings and we must ask the question:

What is the way out?

Is there any solution to these and similar problems?

The answer is, there is in Reincarnation, and in this only.

Now, there are three hypotheses by which men have sought to surmount these difficulties.

1) The first is that all of them are removed by mere death, by the simple fact of dying, or passing away from the world. Mere death is to be accepted as the end of all only upon the materialistic basis. If man is immortal, simple death is no solution.

2) From religion basis, we have to imagine a wonderful change after death. But there is nothing in our whole experience to warrant such a conclusion, from the Christian or Spiritualistic standpoint. Furthermore, if it were true that mere dying and being translated to some other place or state will answer all these questions, then all souls would have to be alike.

It really has sometimes seemed to me that the idea of going to heaven where I should sing songs that I did not like, and see a number of people who did not like me when I was alive, and who could not sing a note properly under any circumstances, would not be at all desirable. This change after death is too sudden, too contrary to all nature’s methods.

3) The second hypothesis aims at removing the difficulties by a spiritual discipline after death. Now, this will not answer because numerous faculties are not at all developed during life. It premises just as sudden a change of character as the first plan. In order to develop faculties that we find ourselves in partial possession of here, we must undergo the experience which evolves those faculties.

The last hypothesis, however, is reincarnation, and that, as I have said, will overcome all difficulties. Reincarnation shows the meaning of Universal Brotherhood; that all of us being spiritual beings, according to the grand plan of nature in all worlds and in all kingdoms up to the highest possible limit, are unable to escape from each other until we are essentially changed.

To postulate as a truth that a whole family must die and go to heaven together because the mother or father wishes to see them is unphilosophical. Members of that family may become entirely alienated, and then be compelled to be in a company not like themselves, with whom they do not wish to associate. They can escape only by reincarnation. They only come back again and again in families together who are like in character. None escape from any family until they have altered their entire nature. In a similar manner to this method in families, reincarnation also insures advance in races. No advance can be possible without it.

The existence of savages, even at the present day, in America, in Borneo and in other places of the world, where there are hordes of them, can only be explained by reincarnation, as well as the further fact that they are melting away like the clouds of mist before the noonday sun. In the Sandwich Islands, the Indians there, now so closely connected with us by commerce, are disappearing; pushed out, it is declared, by civilization.

We say not. It is very true that the missionaries going there, and the trader following, does often bring about this result in part, but it is not wholly due to that. The egos in those bodies are reaching the limit of experience under this kind of mental environment and when this limit is reached, no more bodies are produced in sufficient number to keep up the race.

The reason why some savage nations are growing is that egos are there still gaining needed experience. Their essential character remains the same. When it shall have changed their life desires, no more such bodies will be produced.

Furthermore, not to postulate reincarnation is to sanction the greatest injustice. It is to accuse the God, in whom you believe, of injustice. Because, if Reincarnation is not a law of nature, then these savages are unjustly treated in being in existence at all. What is the use of simply inhabiting such bodies as theirs?

Why are they condemned to such a life?

Reincarnation restores justice to human existence in this, and in all the circumstances surrounding life and enables man to believe that the Universe is governed by law in every particular and in each department. Reincarnation provides also for exact justice to each individual in every civilization alike.

Each person set in motion the causes in his last life which have brought about what he is now experiencing, and is, therefore, undergoing a just punishment or reward because he is the person who did the thing, and the person who should be punished or rewarded.

Now, you may say:

-      “I am not the person. It was another person, who was called so and so in a previous life.”

To say that is to misconceive the doctrine. It does not mean that it was another individual, but the very same one reincarnated in a new body as one might be clothed with a different garment. The name is nothing. It is given to you by your parents, just as much without your consent as is your body. It does not represent you.

_ _ _

Now, the objections which are raised to this theory of reincarnation are few in number. They may be reduced to four heads.

1) The first objection is, “I do not remember my former lives, and therefore it is unjust that I should suffer or enjoy for what I do not remember having done.” You do not remember half of this life.

Who among you can bring back before him now the details of his childhood?

How much do those of you remember, who lived in the country, for instance?

You can remember the house on the farm, perhaps, and the most prominent objects, but you cannot remember more than a few particulars. Only the most important features are retained. The rest fades from the mind. Now, if the argument is good that you have never lived before because you do not remember it, then you have never lived these years of your life that you don’t remember, which illustrates the absurdity of such a position.

2) The second objection, contained in the first, is “that it is unjust.” This I have already explained. The theory that a man must remember a crime which he has committed, or the good he has done, in order to be justly punished or rewarded is violated, so far as nature is concerned, every moment in the day.

You go to sleep at night, forgetting the window is open and catch a violent cold while you are asleep. You reap the consequences in a day or two after and do not question nature’s justice. You take into your stomach during the day some deleterious substance.

Will the fact that you did not know it was poisonous enable you to escape the consequences?

Is it not true that many children are lamed for life and that no one can tell how the accident occurred?

I have known of a case where a nurse dropped a child in early youth, which afterwards developed a very distressing disease, one that often ruins a whole life. The child remembered nothing of it, yet the consequences fell upon its head.

Is it unjust because it does not remember it?

If there is no reincarnation it is unjust, because this child had not in its brief life done anything to warrant this accident.

3) The next objection is that reincarnation is contrary to heredity, that is, that heredity accounts for these things, accounts for everything, some say. But the best investigators are beginning to declare the contrary.

They admit that it does not account for but a few things of a physical nature. It does not explain the differences in character. From its earliest youth each child exhibits a character of its own. One shows entire selfishness, a grasping propensity; another the opposite or openheartedness; both being children of the same mother.

4) The last objection is a sentimental one and too often made. It has no force whatever, except that the world is largely governed by sentiment. People say:

-      “I don’t like it. I don’t want to be born again. I don’t wish to think of the idea that I won’t see my child, my husband and my friends again.”

The mere sentimental thought “I don’t like it” is no argument. Take, for instance, the case of the mother who said to me the other night on the train, “I do not like the idea, because I wish to see my son again.”

Now, which son does she wish to see?

The one born a babe, whom she loved as well as her own life, or the same son grown to be a man? Or if he chanced to become a low character, is this the vision to be remembered?

And the child, whom does he wish to remember and see, the parent in his beauty, strength and prime, or the old man, toothless, wrinkled and gray? Which of these?

None. The real man is not subject to these changes, but is ever living and ever reincarnating.

Christians will find that the Bible confirms this doctrine on almost every page. It is in Matthew in several places. Christianity without reincarnation is an unjust scheme, to say nothing of other defects. The early Christian Fathers, as well as those of the Middle Ages, and poets and writers of all sorts and conditions have believed in this doctrine.

Theosophists accept it because it sets man upon his feet; gives him a chance; allows him an opportunity to live a better life under better conditions, in new places and times.

With it, man is able to raise himself up to the standard and power of a God, which is the intention of nature, for with reincarnation he acquires experience in every kind of life, and all varieties of bodies. He is able to transmute and purify his lower nature. He is, in fact, a pilgrim winding his way up to the very highest point attainable.

(Echoes of the Orient III, p.178-184)

THE NECESSITY FOR REINCARNATION BY WILLIAM JUDGE

To most persons not already Theosophists, no doctrine appears more singular than that of Reincarnation, i.e., that each man is repeatedly born into earth-life; for the usual belief is that we are here but once, and once for all determine our future. And yet it is abundantly clear that one life, even if prolonged, is no more adequate to gain knowledge, acquire experience, solidify principle, and form character, than would one day in infancy be adequate to fit for the duties of mature manhood.

Any man can make this even clearer by estimating, on the one hand, the probable future which Nature contemplates for humanity, and, on the other, his present preparation for it.

That future includes evidently two things — an elevation of the individual to god-like excellence, and his gradual apprehension of the Universe of Truth.

His present preparation there for consists of a very imperfect knowledge of a very small department of one form of existence, and that mainly gained through the partial use of misleading senses; of a suspicion, rather than a belief, that the sphere of super-sensuous truth may exceed the sensuous as the great universe does this earth; of a partially-developed set of moral and spiritual faculties, none acute and none unhampered, but all dwarfed by non-use, poisoned by prejudice, and perverted by ignorance; the whole nature, moreover, being limited in its interests and affected in its endeavor by the ever-present needs of a physical body which, much more than the soul, is felt to be the real "I."

Is such a being, narrow, biased, carnal, sickly, fitted to enter at death on a limitless career of spiritual acquisition?

The answer is no.

Now, there are only three ways in which this obvious unfitness may be overcome – a transforming power in death, a postmortem and wholly spiritual discipline, a series of reincarnations.

There is evidently nothing in the mere separation of soul from body to confer wisdom, ennoble character, or cancel dispositions acquired through fleshliness. If any such power resided in death, all souls, upon being disembodied, would be precisely alike – a palpable absurdity. Nor could a postmortem discipline meet the requirement, and this for nine reasons:

1.   the soul's knowledge of human life would always remain insignificant

2.   of the various faculties only to be developed during incarnation, some would still be dormant at death and therefore never evolve;

3.   the unsatisfactory nature of material life would not have been fully demonstrated;

4.   there would have been no deliberate conquest of the flesh by the spirit;

5.   the meaning of Universal Brotherhood would have been very imperfectly seen;

6.   desire for a career on earth under different conditions would persistently check the disciplinary process;

7.   exact justice could hardly be secured;

8.   the discipline itself would be insufficiently varied and copious;

9.   there would be no advance in the successive races on earth.

There remains, then, the last alternative, a series of reincarnations, in other words, that the enduring principle of the man, endowed during each interval between two earth-lives with the results achieved in the former of them, shall return for further experience and effort. If the nine needs unmet by a merely spiritual discipline after death are met by reincarnation, there is surely a strong presumption of its actuality.

Now,

1) Only through reincarnations can knowledge of human life be made exhaustive.

A perfected man must have experienced every type of earthly relation and duty, every phase of desire, affection, and passion, every form of temptation and every variety of conflict. No one life can possibly furnish the material for more than a minute section of such experience.

2) Reincarnations give occasion for the development of all those faculties which can only be developed during incarnation.

Apart from any questions raised by Occult doctrine, we can readily see that some of the richest soul-acquirements come only through contact with human relations and through suffering from human ills. Of these, sympathy, toleration, patience, energy, fortitude, foresight, gratitude, pity, beneficence, and altruism are examples.

3) Only through reincarnation is the unsatisfying nature of material life fully demonstrated.

One incarnation proves merely the futility of its own conditions to secure happiness. To force home the truth that all are equally so, all must be tried. In time the soul sees that a spiritual being cannot be nourished on inferior food, and that any joy short of union with the Divine must be illusionary.

4) The subordination of the Lower to the Higher nature is made possible by many earth-lives.

Not a few are needed to convince that the body is but a case, and not a constituent, of the real Ego; others, that it and its passions must be controlled by that Ego. Until the spirit has full sway over the flesh, the man is unfit for a purely spiritual existence. We have known no one to achieve such a victory during this life, and are therefore sure that other lives need to supplement it.

5) The meaning of Universal Brotherhood becomes apparent only as the veil of self and selfish interest thins.

And this it does only through that slow emancipation from conventional beliefs, personal errors, and contracted views which a series of reincarnations effects. A deep sense of human solidarity presupposes a fusion of the one in the whole – a process extending over many lives.

6) Desire for other forms of earthly experience can only be extinguished by undergoing them.

It is obvious that any one of us, if now translated to the unseen world, would feel regret that he had not tasted existence in some other situation or surroundings. He would wish to have known what it was to possess rank or wealth or beauty, or to live in a different race or climate, or to see more of the world and society. No spiritual ascent could progress while earthly longings were dragging back the soul, and so it frees itself from them by successively securing and dropping them. When the round of such knowledge has been traversed, regret for ignorance has died out.

7) Reincarnations give scope for exact justice to every man.

True awards must be given largely on the plane whereon they have been incurred, else their nature is changed, their effects are impaired, and their collateral bearings lost. Physical outrage has to be checked by the infliction of physical pain, and not merely by the arousing of internal regret. Honest lives find appropriate consequence in visible honor. But one career is too short for the precise balancing of accounts, and many are needed that every good or evil done in each may be requited on the earth where it took place.

8) Reincarnations secure variety and copiousness to the discipline we all require.

Very much of this discipline comes through the senses, through the conditions of physical life, and through psycho physiological processes – all of which would be absent from a postmortem state. Considered as training or as penal infliction for wrong done, a repeated return to earth is needful for fullness of discipline.

9) Reincarnations ensure a continuous advance in the successive races of men.

If each new-born child was a new soul-creation, there would be, except through heredity, no general human advance. But if such child is the flower of many incarnations, he expresses an achieved past as well as a possible future. The tide of life thus rises to greater heights, each wave mounting higher upon the shore. The grand evolution of richer types exacts profusion of earth-existences for its success.

~ * ~

These points illustrate the universal maxim that "Nature does nothing by leaps." She does not, in this case, introduce into a region of spirit and spiritual life a being who has known little else than matter and material life, with small comprehension even of that. To do so would be analogous to transferring suddenly a ploughboy into a company of metaphysicians.

The pursuit of any topic implies some preliminary acquaintance with its nature, aims, and mental requirements; and the more elevated the topic, the more copious the preparation for it.

It is inevitable that a being who has before him an eternity of progress through zones of knowledge and spiritual experience ever nearing the central Sun, should be fitted for it through long acquisition of the faculties which alone can deal with it.

Their delicacy, their vigor, their penetrativeness, their unlikeness to those called for on the material plane, show the contrast of the earth-life to the spirit-life. And they show, too, the inconceivability of a sudden transition from one to the other, of a policy unknown in any other department of Nature's workings, of a break in the law of uplifting through Evolution.

A man, before he can become a "god," must first become a perfect man; and he can become a perfect man neither in seventy years of life on earth, nor in any number of years of life from which human conditions are absent.

The production of a pure, rich, ethereal nature through a long course of spiritualizing influence during material surroundings is illustrated in agriculture by the cotton plant. When the time arrives that it can bear, the various vitalities of sun and air and ground and stalk culminate in a bud which bursts apart and liberates the ball within.

That white, fleecy, delicate mass is the outcome of years of adhesion to the soil. But the sunlight and the rain from heaven have transformed heavy particles into the light fabric of the boll.

And so man, long rooted in the clay, is bathed with influences from above, which, as they gradually pervade and elevate him, transmute every grosser element to its spiritual equivalent, purge and purify and ennoble him, and, when the evolutionary process is complete, remove the last envelope from the perfected soul and leave it free to pass forever from its union with the material.

It is abundantly true that "except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Re-birth and re-life must go on till their purposes are accomplished. If, indeed, we were mere victims of an evolutionary law, helpless atoms on whom the machinery of Nature pitilessly played, the prospect of a succession of incarnations, no one of which gave satisfaction, might drive to mad despair.

But Theosophy thrusts on us no such cheerless exposition. It shows that reincarnations are the law for man because they are the condition of his progress, which is also a law, but tells him that he may mould them and better them and lessen them.

He cannot rid himself of the machinery, but neither should he wish to. Endowed with the power to guide it for the best, prompted with the motive to use that power, he may harmonize both his aspirations and his efforts with the system that expresses the infinite wisdom of the Supreme, and through the journey from the temporal to the eternal tread the way with steady feet, braced with the consciousness that he is one of an innumerable multitude, and with the certainty that he and they alike, if they so will it, may attain finally to that sphere where birth and death are but memories of the past.

(Echoes of the Orient III, p.73-77)

WHAT DETERMINES THE SEX IN THE REINCARNATION? (William Judge answer)

When William Judge was asked:

The Ego passes through a series of incarnations, in some of which it may inform the body of a man, in others of a woman. Is sex of the vehicle chosen consciously by the spiritual Ego to perfect knowledge, or does it depend upon the Karma engendered in a preceding life? Can any principle be said to preponderate in one sex more than in another?

William Judge replied:

« If masculine quality is the predominate characteristic, the Ego probably will be next in a male body; if not, the other sex. But the whole question is answered by that doctrine of Visishṭadvaitism which says that “Good Karma is that which is pleasing to Isvara (the Ego) and bad Karma that which is displeasing to it.” »

(Echoes of the Orient II, p.249)

And later when people asked him:

Is there any statement in the writings of Madame Blavatsky or of any one else who might be supposed to know, to the effect that the Ego incarnates alternately in the different sexes, or at all in the opposite sex?

William Judge replied:

« I do not remember reading anywhere in the writings of H.P. Blavatsky. a statement to the effect referred to, nor in the written remarks on various subjects by the Adepts who sent her into the world can there be found, as far as my recollection goes, a declaration to the effect that the Ego incarnates alternately in male and female bodies.

There may be found the doctrine that by this time in our evolution the egos now in human bodies have been through every sort of experience and both sexes, but that does not support the inference that such incarnation as to sex is alternated regularly — nor does it refute. It simply has nothing exactly to do with the question.

The question, it seems, is interesting to many, but I must confess an entire lack of interest in it. If my next birth shall be in the body-female, it is a matter of indifference. It is of record that an Ego did very well in the body called Helena P. Blavatsky; and contrariwise, another did well in the body-male called Sankaracharya. It is said that one Maji — a woman — in India is a great Yogi also. So, as I am perfectly indifferent, my remarks may be concluded to be uncolored by the partisanship of sex, so clear to some and so often productive of clouds over vision.

Well, then, I do not adhere to the alternating theory. It is too cut-and-dried at the very first impression. Further it appears to violate, with the appearance of a personal director behind it, the natural conclusions to be drawn from human life and character — our only guide in such matters.

If we assume an anthropomorphic God, who made it a law that every ego should now have male and next female form for living in, no matter how the laws of tendency of attraction and repulsion work in other directions, there might be some probability of sustaining the position that regular alternation of sex is the rule. But the universe is governed by law, not by caprice. Let us, then, look a moment at one or two points.

Karma — from other lives — determines where, how, and when we shall be born. But in the matter under debate, one of the ramifications of the law of Karma which must have most to do with this is tendency. In other words, the tendency set up in a prior life will determine the tendency toward a particular family next birth.

And we must look also at the question of male and female character essentially, and not as a mere question of appearance or function. If we discover what is the essential distinguishing characteristic of the female character as opposed for comparison to the male, then we can perhaps arrive at a probable conclusion — though, as I above remarked, a very uninteresting and useless one in any event.

Now to my limited vision the female character is per se concrete; that is, its tendency in thought, speech, and act is toward the concrete; while the male character seems to me to be per se the opposite.

The Kabbalists and the ancients of all lands may not stand as authority for my readers, but they support this view. And the existence of exceptions in both sexes does not contradict the opinion, but rather goes to sustain it, forasmuch as we so easily recognize a woman who has a man’s character or a man who has a woman’s.

The difference was not invented by tyrannical men, but seems actually to exist in the race. For no matter where you go, or how civilized or barbarous, modern or ancient, your examples are, they ever show the same differences and characteristics.

And whether you admit or deny the particular description by concreteness and abstractness, it still remains true that the essential female character — whatever be the distinguishing mark — is totally different from the essentially male one.

Now, then, if Ego (A) has evolved with infinite pain and many lives the female character, is it likely that that tendency will exhaust itself at once? Or if it has been set up by one life, is it likely to exhaust at death so as to permit the next incarnation to be in the opposite sex?

I think not. It might be that the Ego could, as man in prior life, incarnate next as woman, but that would mean that he had set up a tendency to whatever is the essential character of the female — in my opinion, concreteness of thought in the depths of his nature — or for other of many reasons. It is not wise to set down such fixed and iron rules. Nature does not thus work.

She is always about to break some rule we have foolishly thought to be of eternal duration. So I conclude on this that the Ego will go on as woman or man just so long as its deeper nature is of the same cut, fashion, and tendency as the particular sex in general in which it incarnates.

For my poor judgment, the regular alternation theory is wholly without foundation. But, after all, it is a question none of us can decide. The Christian Apostles decided female incarnation to be lower in scale than male when they said women are saved only by marriage, but even some Christian Theosophists may reject the Apostles on this. »

(Echoes of the Orient I, p.298-299)

OBSERVATION

It is interesting to note that although William Judge did not know the answer, his reflection is in accordance with the answer that Master Kuthumi later gave, since when Mr. Sinnett asked him the same question, Kuthumi answered him.

« Generally a chance work, yet guided by individual Karma, — moral aptitudes, characteristics and deeds of the previous birth. »

(ML 17, p.117)