This is the fourth chapter of the
series of articles titled “Studies in Isis
Unveiled” published by Theosophy
journal.
Pre-Existence,
Metempsychosis, Reincarnation
The accompanying article is made up
of textual extracts from Isis Unveiled, topically and sequentially arranged.
The page references from which the statements are taken, are given at the
conclusion of the article. — Editors
Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD? Who ever
saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man's
immortality?
The Oriental philosophy has room for
no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's
own immortal self. This omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with
the Universal Soul – God! The latter can never be demonstrated but by the
former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a source
from which it must have come. Prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers –
you have proved God!
The unity of God, the immortality of
the spirit, belief in salvation only through our works, merit and demerit
[Karma]; such are the principal articles of faith of the Wisdom-religion.
Nirvana represents the dogma of the spirit's immortality. To reach the Nirvana
means absorption into the great universal soul, the latter representing a state,
not an individual being or an anthropomorphic god, as some understand the
great EXISTENCE. A spirit reaching such a state becomes a part of the
integral whole, but never loses its individuality for all that.
Henceforth; the spirit lives spiritually, without any fear of further
modifications of form; for form pertains to matter, and the state of Nirvana
implies a complete purification or a final riddance from even the most
sublimated particle of matter.
Nirvana means the certitude of
personal immortality, immortality in Spirit, not in Soul, which,
as a finite emanation, must certainly disintegrate its particles, a compound of
human sensations, passions, and yearning for some objective kind of existence.
Both the human spirit and soul are
pre-existent. But while the former exists as a distinct entity, an
individualization, the soul exists as pre-existing matter, an unscient portion
of an intelligent whole. Matter is as indestructible and eternal as the
immortal spirit itself, but only in its particles, and not as organized forms. Annihilation
means only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form
it may be; for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner
or later perish, i.e., change that shape; even our astral bodies, pure
ether, are but illusions of matter, so long as they retain their terrestrial
outline. The latter changes according to the merits or demerits of the person
during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. The purifying process of
transmigrations – the metempsychoses – esoterically relates to the purely
spiritual peregrinations of the human soul. The key to it lies in the refined
and mystical tenets of the spiritual influx of divine life.
The cause of reincarnation is
ignorance of our senses, and the idea that there is any reality in the world,
anything except abstract existence. Thus, like the revolutions of a wheel, there
is a regular succession of death and birth, the moral cause of which is the
cleaving to existing objects, while the instrumental cause is karma (the power
which controls the universe, prompting it to activity), merit and demerit.
"It is, therefore, the great desire of all beings who would be released from
the sorrows of successive birth, to seek the destruction of the moral
cause, the cleaving to existing objects, or evil desire." They, in whom
evil desire is entirely destroyed, are called Arhats. At his death, the
Arhat is never reincarnated; he invariably attains Nirvana, the world of cause,
in which all deceptive effects or delusions of our senses disappear.
The metempsychosis was a
succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens [Devachanic
interludes] to work off the exterior mind, or soul [The Personality last lived],
that principle that lives from Karma and the Skandhas (groups).
It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of the "deeds" of
man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of the body, incarnate
themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying compounds
into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being, the double of what
man was morally. It is the astral body of the kabalist and the
"incarnated deeds" which form the new sentient self, as his Ahancara
(the ego, self-consciousness) [Atma Buddhi-Manas], can never perish, for it is
immortal per se as a spirit; hence the sufferings of the newly-born self
till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire, and passion. Thus
the disembodied Ego, through this sole undying desire in him,
unconsciously furnishes the conditions of his successive self-procreations in
various forms, which depend on his mental state and Karma, the good or
bad deeds of his preceding existence, commonly called "merit and
demerit."
The doctrine of Metempsychosis
has been abundantly ridiculed by men of science and rejected by theologians,
yet if it had been properly understood in its application to the
indestructibility of matter and the immortality of spirit, it would have been
perceived that it is a sublime conception. If the Pythagorean metempsychosis
should be thoroughly explained and compared with the modern theory of evolution
it would be found to supply every "missing link" in the chain of the
latter. There was not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not hold to this
doctrine, as taught by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and later by the Pythagoreans.
(Note: The volume and page
references to Isis Unveiled, from which the foregoing chapter is compiled, are,
in the order of the excerpts, as follows:– I, vi; II, 116-17; II, 320; I,
316-17; I, 328; I, 290; I, 289; I, 346; II, 286-87; II, 320; I, 8-9; I, 12.)
(Theosophy, Los Angeles, July 1917, p.399-400)
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