Journalist
Alfred Sinnett, who had communication with Master Kuthumi, in his book Esoteric Buddhism, wrote the following:
« The present race of humanity, the present fifth race of the fourth round
period, began to evolve about one million of years ago. Now it is not yet
finished; but supposing that a million years had constituted the complete life
of the race, how would it have been divided up for each individual monad?
In a race
there must be rather more than 100, and there can hardly be 120 incarnations
for an individual monad. But say even there have been already 120 incarnations
for monads in the present race already. And say that the average life of each
incarnation was a century, even then we should only have 12’000 years out of
the million spent in physical existence against 988’000 years spent in the
subjective sphere, or there would be an average of more than 8'000 years between
each incarnation. Certainly these intervening periods are of very variable
length, but they can hardly ever contract to anything less than 1'500 years —leaving
out of account of course the case of adepts who have placed themselves quite
outside the operation of the ordinary law— and 1’500 years if not an impossibly
short, would be a very brief interval between two rebirths.
These
calculations must be qualified by one of two considerations, however. The cases
of children dying in infancy are quite unlike those of persons who attain full
maturity, and for obvious reasons, that the explanations now already given will
suggest, A child, dying before it has lived long enough to begin to be responsible
for its actions, has generated no fresh Karma. The spiritual monad leaves that
child's body in just the same state in which it entered it after its last death
in Devachan. It has had no opportunity of playing on its new instrument, which
has been broken before even it was tuned. A re-incarnation of the monad,
therefore, may take place immediately on the line of its old attraction. But
the monad so reincarnated is not to be spiritually identified in any way with
the dead child.
So, in the
same way, with a monad getting into the body of a born idiot. The instrument
cannot be tuned, so it cannot play on that any more than on the child's body in
the first few years of childhood. But both these cases are manifest exceptions
that do not alter the broad rule above laid down for all persons attaining
maturity, and living their earth lives for good or evil. »
(p.119-121)
I have the
impression that to write this, Alfred Sinnett based on the letter that his
friend Allan Hume received from Master Kuthumi on July 9, 1882; and here is the
part that deals with this subject:
« Let us take but one million of years —suspected and now accepted by your
science— to represent man's entire term upon our earth in this Round; and
allowing an average of a century for each life, we find that whereas he has
passed in all his lives upon our planet (in this Round) but 77’700 years he has
been in the subjective spheres 922’300 years. Not much encouragement for the
extreme modern reincarnationists who remember their several previous
existences!
Should you indulge in any
calculations do not forget that we have computed above only full average lives
of consciousness and responsibility. Nothing has been said as to failures of
Nature in abortions, congenital idiots, death of children in their first
septenary cycle, nor of the exceptions of which I cannot speak. No less have
you to remember that average human life varies greatly according to the Round.
Though I am obliged to withhold
information about many points yet if you should work out any of the problems by
yourself it will be my duty to tell you so. Try to solve the problem of the 777
incarnations. »
(ML
14, p.83)
I suspect
that Sinnett relied on this letter because he repeats various numbers and words
in this letter, and the letters he received from Master Kuthumi no longer
address this issue; unless it was a letter that we don't know about, but I see
that unlikely because Sinnett kept the letters he received from Master Kuthumi
in a box, and a copy of this letter to Hume was also found in that box.
And I note five
things:
1) First
that Sinnett made a mistake, because the calculation that Master Kuthumi
mentioned gives an average of 1'200 years rounding off.
One million
total years minus 77'700 years of physical life (which are 777 incarnations at
100 years on average each) gives us 922'300 years of subtle life (the vast
majority of it is spent in Devachan).
1'000'000 -
(777 x 100) = 1'000'000 - 77'700 = 922'300
And if we
divide those 922'300 years of subtle life between the 777 incarnations, that
gives us an average of 1’187 years in Devachan between each physical
incarnation.
While
instead Alfred Sinnett instead of using 777 incarnations he used 120
incarnations:
1'000'000 -
(120 x 100) = 1'000'000 - 12'000 = 988'000
988'000 ÷ 120 = 8’233.33
Therefore it
is logical that the result that he obtained was very different.
Later in a
letter that Blavatsky wrote to Sinnett and he received in London in October
1884 (that is, a year after Sinnett had already published his book), she said:
«
My dear Mr. Sinnett,
For fear that you should
"trace back" to me a new treachery, permit me to say that I have
never said to Hubbe Schleiden and Frank Gebhard that the existence of our seven
objective
planets was an allegory. What I said was, that the objectivity and actuality of
the septenary chain had nothing to do with the correct understanding of the seven rounds.
That outside of the initiates
no one knew the mot final
of this mystery. That you could not understand it thoroughly, nor explain it,
because Mahatma Kuthumi told you hundred times that you could not be told the whole doctrine; that you
knew Hume had made him questions and cross-examined Him until his hair became
gray. That there were hundred apparent
inconsistencies just because you had not the key to the *777* and could not be
given it. In short that you gave the truth, but by far not the whole truth especially about
rounds and rings which was only at best allegorical.
Yours
H.P.B. »
(CM
135, p.464)
And this
Blavatsky pointed out again on another occasion:
« Not one of the exact numbers will ever be given out, as they pertain to
the Mysteries of Initiations and to the Secrets of the occult influence of
Numbers. »
(CW
XIII, p.306)
But although
the exact numbers are still hidden, I don't know why Mr. Sinnett simply did not
follow the reasoning that Master Kuthumi had put in the letter to Hume, and
instead put other numbers.
2) It is
false that post-mortem periods can hardly ever contract to anything less than
1'500 years, since as I
demonstrated to you above Master Kuthumi specified that the average is 1’200
years.
3) It is
false that the Adepts are completely outside the action of ordinary law, the
difference is that they have a greater control and therefore can make certain
modifications to a certain degree, but they cannot free themselves or play with
cosmic laws as if they were their toys.
And this Master
Kuthumi specified to Hume in the first letter he sent to him and which Alfred
Sinnett also copied:
« We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or
that crisis in spite of the general drift of the world's cosmic relations. The
cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness
succeed each other, as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be
accomplished according to the established order of things. And we [the Masters], borne along on the mighty [evolutionary] tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents.
If we had the powers of the imaginary
Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were but toys to play with,
then indeed might we have created conditions that would have turned this earth
into an Arcadia for lofty souls. But having to deal with an immutable Law,
being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do what we could and rest
thankful. »
(ML,
p.499-500)
4) In the
second part of the explanation Alfred Sinnett gave, he was also wrong when he
says that the reason that after a young child dies, his soul returns quickly to
reincarnate, it must be because that child has not generated new karma.
But in
reality that is because that child had generated very few psychic impulses to
be able to ascend to Devachan (since he had been on Earth for a very short time).
And this was specified by William Judge who on this matter wrote:
« I do not think infants —and
those are mere babes— have any Devachan, but that they pass on at once to
another human birth as soon as the body of the baby is dead. They have accumulated
no force for Devachan; they have but in them the impulse for birth, and that
having been thwarted by death, it is continued by an immediate search for
another body, to be continued until a body is found with sufficient vitality in
it to allow the soul to go on with its pilgrimage among men. »
(Echoes
of the Orient II, p.359)
And Master
Kuthumi also specified that apart from karma, the other important factors that
also intervene in the duration of Devachan are psychic impulses and the desire
for more experiences on Earth:
« The stay in Devachan is proportioned to the unfinished psychic impulses
originating in Earth-life: those persons whose attractions were
preponderatingly material will sooner be drawn back into rebirth by the force
of Tanha (which is desire for earthly
experiences). »
(CM
25, p.200)
And the same
applies to the congenital idiot because although he has already become an adult
and consequently his impulse to be born has been extinguished, he still does
not generate psychic impulses that allow him to stay for a long period of time
in the Devachan, due to that he is unaware of earthly life.
5) And
contrary to what Sinnett says, the spiritual monad remains the same, what
changes is the lower quaternary.
_ _ _
All this shows me that Alfred Sinnett did not study in
depth the teaching that he received from Master Kuthumi and that is why he made
many mistakes.
Later Mr.
Sinnett received more information and that is why in the new editions of his
book, he added the following annotations on this subject:
« Later information and study
—the comparison, that is to say, of the various branches of the doctrine, and
the collocation of other statements with those in the foregoing chapter— show
the difficulty of applying figures to the Esoteric Doctrines in a very striking
light. Figures may be quite trustworthy as representing broad averages, and yet
very misleading when applied to special cases.
Devachanic
periods vary for different people within such very wide limits that any rule
laid down in the matter must be subject to a bewildering cloud of exceptions.
To begin with, the average mentioned above has no doubt been computed with reference
to fully matured adults.
Between the
quite young child who has no Devachanic period at all and the adult who
accomplishes an average period we have to take note of persons dying in youth,
who have accumulated Karma, and who must therefore pass through the usual
stages of spiritual development, but for whom the brief lives they have spent
have not produced causes which take very long to work themselves out. Such
persons would return to incarnation after a sojourn in the world of effects of
corresponding brevity.
Again there
are such things as artificial incarnations accomplished by the direct
intervention of the Mahatmas when a chela who may not yet have acquired
anything resembling the power of controlling the matter himself, is brought
back into incarnation almost immediately after his previous physical death,
without having been suffered to float into the current of natural causes at
all.
Of course in
such cases it may be said that the claims the person concerned has established
on the Mahatmas are themselves natural causes of a kind, the intervention of
the Mahatmas, who are quite beyond the liability of acting capriciously in such
a matter, being so much fruit of effort in the preceding life, so much Karma.
But still either way such cases would be equally withdrawn from the operation
of the general average rule
Clearly it
is impossible when the complicated facts of an entirely unfamiliar science are
being presented to untrained minds for the first time, to put them forward with
all their appropriate qualifications, compensations and abnormal developments
visible from the beginning. We must be content to take the broad rules first
and deal with the exceptions afterwards, and especially is this the case with
occult study, in connection with which the traditional methods of teaching,
generally followed, aim at impressing every fresh idea on the memory, by
provoking the perplexity it at last relieves. »
_ _ _
Broadly speaking, Alfred Sinnett additional
annotations were correct, although he still considers karma as the primary
parameter in the duration of Devachan, when there are also other parameters
that must also be considered, as I showed you above. And while Mr. Sinnett
improved his understanding of this matter, he did not correct the mistakes he
made in his first edition, which is inconvenient. Perhaps he did not want to correct his book out of
pride or simply because he still did not understand these aspects.
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