DOCTRINE OF REBORN

It is a somewhat saddening reflection that in spite of the presumable

millions of years of human life on this planet, there is no general belief as

to whence we come and whither we go, or indeed as to why there is any

coming or going at all. The meaning and purpose of life are still beyond the

scope of physical science; they are matters of faith at best and not

infrequently of despair. The pain of the world, the transparent ruthlessness

of Nature, the amazing inequalities of human existence, the seeming grave

injustices in the lives of the majority, are, as far as our reason goes, as

great enigmas to us today in the twentieth century as they have ever been

so long as we have any trace of human history. In such a state of affairs

we cannot afford to cast aside without hearing any theory that attempts

seriously to throw light on the darkness.

The general hypothesis of pre-existence (under which the special doctrine

of reincarnation falls) does not, it is true, solve the fundamental problems

but it pushes back some of the initial difficulties. It furnishes an ampler

ground for the development of the individual than the cribbed, cabined, and

confined area of one short earth-life, and by providing a stage or series of

stages for the acts and scenes of the age-long drama of the man-soul prior

to the present existence, permits us to entertain the notion of a law of moral

causation conditioning our present relation to circumstances in a way that

does not clash with our innate sense of justice.

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom

of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold I shew you a

mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment ....
for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on

immortality .... then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,

Death is swallowed up in victory." - 1 Corinthians, XV, 50-4.

As a fact susceptible of scientific demonstration reincarnation is incapable

either of proof or disproof. Such evidence of it as exists is but

circumstantial and tending to a probability. However, if we care to accept

- what it is imprudent to ignore - the authority of the past, we find the

Scriptures and traditions of Oriental races with a great spiritual and

philosophic record emphatic in their inculcation of the doctrine. So, too, are

the Pythagorean and Platonist systems. Outside the Greek philosophical

and mystical schools the European mind has been unacquainted with the

dogma, but nothing hangs upon the ignorance of it by the peoples of a

continent whose civilisation is of quite recent growth and whose populace

was barbarian long after Egypt and the Far and Middle East had declined

from their high positions as centres of religious and philosophic wisdom.

The history of civilised Europe synchronises virtually with that of the

Christian Church, which has held (or withheld) the keys of information upon

arcane matters, and since that Church was silent upon reincarnation, no

means existed by which the idea could be propagated in the West until it

became introduced by the "Theosophical" movement towards the close of

the nineteenth century. Its acceptance was then facilitated by two causes;

first, by the translation and popularisation among us of the sacred and

philosophic literature of the East, where the doctrine is universal; and

secondly, by the recognition by Western science of an evolutionary process

at work in Nature, a process suggesting that all life advances by gradations

and through a succession of ascending morphological changes. The mind

can hardly be otherwise than gratified at observing a gradual perfecting

process involving a sequence of births and deaths, and at contemplating

life sleeping in the mineral, dreaming in the plant, waking in the animal,

attaining self-consciousness and freedom of action in man, with the added

prospect of further spiritualisation and advancement as time goes on. What

the mystical mind of the East has intuitively discerned and ever held as

true, the practical intellect of the West has at last hit upon by scientific

inductive research, the results of which suggest that all life advances to

more and more perfect consciousness, by slow patient gradation and

through countless modes and forms. That one of the most powerful

arguments in favour of preexistence and reincarnation is furnished by our

general conception of Divine Creative Power, and by the analogy between

psychological and biological evolution. If higher biological types have

appeared successively and not simultaneously with the lower species - if

God, refraining from supernatural intervention, derives the species from

each other in a natural succession, then it seems also likely that higher

psychological types within the same biological species should not be

suddenly created, but produced as the result of a natural development of

lower types. The true conception of Divine Creative Power, such as we

know it from biology, leads to the conclusion that what strikes us as genius

or sanctity must have been prepared by conscious endeavours of a free

human will, and not suddenly created by God without any connection with

the general evolution of spiritual life. Indeed, such a sudden creation of

higher types who have done nothing to deserve that higher level would be

unfair towards those who rise slowly to higher levels by conscious

endeavour and effort. Why should others surpass us immediately from the

beginning without having done anything to attain the goal of our own
aspirations? Though every striving spirit knows the wonderful action of

Divine grace within, even this experience shows us God as acting upon a

living soul, lifting that already existing soul to higher levels, and not as

suddenly introducing into human life angelic perfection without

spontaneous effort or previous experience. We know this working of our

Creator in us always as an addition to something that depends upon our

own free will, and this is at least one meaning of the Gospel saying: "To

him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance". God acts

according to His general laws, which man is able to discover and to apply.

These laws do not limit Divine omnipotence; they are only a reflection of

that omnipotence in human minds. To perceive a Divine law is simply to

give human expression (according to the capacities of human intelligence)

to a Divine reality which in God has not the shape of any human formula.

With that restriction we may treat clearly conceived formulas as laws of

existence and of life, and as there is a law of gravity which explains the fall

of a stone, and a law of movement which explains the flight of a bird - so

we gather from experience an equally universal law of the spirit, according

to which within our earthly experience higher stages of intellectual or moral

power are attained by effort, training, renunciation, and voluntary

mortification. The mere existence of a higher stage implies, therefore,

preceding efforts, and if in our actual life there has been no room for them,

we are justified in admitting that the necessary efforts were made in the

CENSORED past of each higher spirit, and, in the case of human spirits, they

could have been made only in past human incarnations, implying, as they

do, a knowledge and an experience of human conditions which could be

acquired in that way alone. The efforts of each individual spirit are

supported by Divine grace, but only those who have attained something by
themselves can expect Divine help to achieve more beyond their own

deserving. The analogy between the evolution of organisms and the

growth of a soul shows the necessity of many human incarnations for each

individual spirit, so that the greatness manifested in a brief lifetime may be

considered as having developed in the course of numerous preceding

lifetimes.

The Ancient Wisdom teaching recognised that in all the Universe

there is but One Life broken up and differentiated into innumerable forms,

and evolving through these forms from less to greater degrees of

perfection. In Masonic metaphor, Nature was seen to be the vast general

quarry and forest out of which individual lives have been hewn like so many

stones and timber, which when duly perfected are destined to be fitted

together and built into a new and higher synthesis, a majestic Temple

worthy of the Divine indwelling, and of which the Temple of Solomon was

a type. The Ancient Wisdom affirmed that all life has issued from out of the

"East" (the Great World of infinite Spirit), and has journeyed to the "West"

(the Little World of finite form and embodiment), whence, when finally

perfected by experience in restricted conditions, it is ordained to return to

the "East". Life, then, was seen to be broken up and distributed into

innumerable individualised lives or souls, and to be passing from one

bodily form to another in a perpetual progression.

Expressed in the language of

modern Freemasonry, the lineal descendant of the Ancient Wisdom, these

"stones" are designated "rough ashlars" or "perfect ashlars", accordingly as

they exist in the rough or have been squared, worked upon, and polished.

The bodily form with which the soul becomes invested upon entering this

world, was seen to be transient, variable, perishable, and of small moment

when compared with the life or soul animating it; yet it has regarded as

being of the greatest importance in another way, since it provided a fulcrum

or point of resistance for the soul's education and development.