Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00715)

March 30 2004

Re: ISIS UNVEILED and REINCARNATION

Dear Friends:

Some readers of ISIS UNVEILED are still of the opinion that H P B failed
to introduce reincarnation in that book. .

In this article she shows how much it (and Karma) were a part of the
book.

She also covers the ancient Egyptian and the Neo-Platonic list of the
"principles" that form every human being.  

She clearly distinguishes between the "principles" that are IMMORTAL and
those which are mortal -- and perish after physical death in Kama-loca
as a non-reincarnating "personality." 

Best wishes,

Dallas

=================================


THEORIES ABOUT REINCARNATION AND SPIRITS

Article by H. P. Blavatsky


OVER and over again the abstruse and mooted question of Rebirth or
Reincarnation has crept out during the first ten years of the
Theosophical Society's existence. It has been alleged on prima facie
evidence, that a notable discrepancy was found between statements made
in ISIS UNVEILED, Vol. I, 351-2, and later teachings from the same pen
and under the inspiration of the same master. (1) 

In Isis, it was held, reincarnation is denied. An occasional return,
only of "depraved spirits" is allowed. "Exclusive of that rare and
doubtful possibility, Isis allows only three cases--abortion, very early
death, and idiocy--in which reincarnation on this earth occurs."
("C.C.M." in LIGHT, 1882.) 

The charge was answered then and there as every one who will turn to the
THEOSOPHIST of August, 1882, can see for himself. Nevertheless, the
answer either failed to satisfy some readers or passed unnoticed. 

Leaving aside the strangeness of the assertion that reincarnation--i.e.,
the serial and periodical rebirth of every individual monad from pralaya
to pralaya (2) is denied in the face of the fact that the doctrine is
part and parcel and one of the fundamental features of Hinduism and
Buddhism, the charge amounted virtually to this: the writer of the
present, a professed admirer and student of Hindu philosophy, and as
professed a follower of Buddhism years before Isis was written, by
rejecting reincarnation must necessarily reject KARMA likewise! 

For the latter[KARMA] is the very cornerstone of Esoteric philosophy and
Eastern religions; it is the grand and one pillar on which hangs the
whole philosophy of rebirths, and once the latter is denied, the whole
doctrine of Karma falls into meaningless verbiage. 

Nevertheless, the opponents without stopping to think of the evident
"discrepancy" between charge and fact, accused a Buddhist by profession
of faith of denying reincarnation hence also by implication--Karma. 

Adverse to wrangling with one who was a friend, and undesirous at the
time to enter upon a defence of details and internal evidence--a loss of
time indeed--the writer answered merely with a few sentences. 

But it now becomes necessary to well define the doctrine. Other critics
have taken the same line, and by misunderstanding the passages to that
effect in Isis they have reached the same rather extraordinary
conclusions. 

To put an end to such useless controversies, it is proposed to explain
the doctrine more clearly. 
Although, in view of the later more minute renderings of the esoteric
doctrines, it is quite immaterial what may have been written in ISIS--an
encyclopedia of occult subjects in which each of these is hardly
sketched--let it be known at once, that the writer maintains the
correctness of every word given out upon the subject in my earlier
volumes. 

What was said in the THEOSOPHIST of August, 1882, may now be repeated
here. The passage quoted from it may be, and is, most likely
"incomplete, chaotic, vague, perhaps clumsy, as are many more passages
in that work, the first literary production of a foreigner who even now
can hardly boast of her knowledge of the English language." Nevertheless
it is quite correct so far as that collateral feature of reincarnation
is therein concerned.
 
I will now give extracts from ISIS and proceed to explain every passage
criticized, wherein it was said that "a few fragments of this mysterious
doctrine of reincarnation as distinct from metempsychosis"--would be
then presented. Sentences now explained are in italics.
 
Reincarnation i.e., the appearance of the same individual, or rather of
his astral monad, twice on the same planet is not a rule in nature, it
is an exception, like the teratological phenomenon of a two-headed
infant. It is preceded by a violation of the laws of harmony of nature,
and happens only when the latter seeking to restore its disturbed
equilibrium, violently throws back into earth-life the astral monad
which had been tossed out of the circle of necessity by crime or
accident. 

Thus in cases of abortion, of infants dying before a certain age, and of
congenital and incurable idiocy, nature's original design to produce a
perfect human being, has been interrupted. Therefore, while the gross
matter of each of these several entities is suffered to disperse itself
at death, through the vast realm of being, the immortal spirit and
astral monad of the individual--the latter having been set apart to
animate a frame and the former to shed its divine light on the corporeal
organization--must try a second time to carry out the purpose of the
creative intelligence. (Isis I, 351.) 

Here the "astral monad" or body of the deceased personality--say of John
or Thomas--is meant. It is that which, in the teachings of the Esoteric
philosophy of Hinduism, is known under its name of bhoot; in the Greek
philosophy is called the simulacrum or umbra, and in all other
philosophies worthy of the name is said, as taught in the former, to
disappear after a certain period more or less prolonged in
Kama-loka--the Limbus of the Roman Catholics, or Hades of the Greeks.(3)
It is "a violation of the laws of harmony of nature," though it be so
decreed by those of Karma--every time that the astral monad, or the
simulacrum of the personality--of John or Thomas--instead of running
down to the end of its natural period of time in a body--finds itself 

(a) violently thrown out of it by whether early death or accident; or 

(b) is compelled in consequence of its unfinished task to re-appear
(i.e., the same astral body wedded to the same immortal monad) on earth
again, in order to complete the unfinished task. 

Thus "it must try a second time to carry out the purpose of creative
intelligence" or law. 
If reason has been so far developed as to become active and
discriminative there is no4 (immediate) reincarnation on the earth, for
the three parts of the triune man have been united together, and he is
capable of running the race. But when the new being has not passed
beyond the condition of Monad, or when, as in the idiot, the trinity has
not been completed on earth and therefore cannot be so after death, the
immortal spark which illuminates it has to re-enter on the earthly plane
as it was frustrated in its first attempt. Otherwise, the mortal or
astral, and the immortal or divine souls, could not progress in unison
and pass onward to the sphere above5 (Devachan). Spirit follows a line
parallel with that of matter; and the spiritual evolution goes hand in
hand with the physical. 

The Occult Doctrine teaches that: 

(1) There is no immediate reincarnation on Earth for the Monad, as
falsely taught by the Reincarnationist Spiritists; nor is there any
second incarnation at all for the "personal" or false Ego--the
perisprit--save the exceptional cases mentioned. But that 

(a) there are rebirths, or periodical reincarnations for the immortal
Ego--("Ego" during the cycle of re-births, and non-Ego, in Nirvana or
Moksha when it becomes impersonal and absolute); for that Ego is the
root of every new incarnation, the string on which are threaded, one
after the other, the false personalities or illusive bodies called men,
in which the Monad-Ego incarnates itself during the cycle of births; and


(b) that such reincarnations take place not before 1,500, 2,000 and even
3,000 years of Devachanic life. 


(2) That Manas--the seat of Jiv, that spark which runs the round of the
cycle of birth and rebirths with the Monad from the beginning to the end
of a Manvantara--is the real Ego. That 

(a) the Jiv follows the divine monad that gives it spiritual life and
immortality into Devachan--that therefore, it can neither be reborn
before its appointed period, nor reappear on Earth visibly or invisibly
in the interim; and 

(b) that, unless the fruition, the spiritual aroma of the Manas, or all
these highest aspirations and spiritual qualities and attributes that
constitute the higher SELF of man become united to its monad, the latter
becomes as Non existent; since it is in esse "impersonal" and per se
Ego-less, so to say, and gets its spiritual colouring or flavour of
Ego-tism only from each Manas during incarnation and after it is
disembodied, and separated from all its lower principles. 


(3) That the remaining four principles, or rather the 2½--as they are
composed of the terrestrial portion of Manas, of its Vehicle Kama-Rupa
and Lingha Sarira--the body dissolving immediately, and prana or the
life principle along with it--that these principles having belonged to
the false personality are unfit for Devachan. 

The latter [DEVACHAN] is the state of Bliss, the reward for all the
undeserved miseries of life,(6) and that which prompted man to sin,
namely his terrestrial passionate nature, can have no room in it
. 
Therefore the reincarnating* principles are left behind in Kama-loka,
firstly as a material residue, then later on as a reflection on the
mirror of Astral light. Endowed with illusive action, to the day when
having gradually faded out they disappear, what is it but the Greek
Eidolon and the simulacrum of the Greek and Latin poets and classics? 

What reward or punishment can there be in that sphere of disembodied
human entities for a fœtus or a human embryo which had not even time to
breathe on this earth, still less an opportunity to exercise the divine
faculties of its spirit? Or, for an irresponsible infant, whose
senseless monad remaining dormant within the astral and physical casket,
could as little prevent him from burning himself as any other person to
death? Or again for one idiotic from birth, the number of whose cerebral
circumvolutions is only from twenty to thirty per cent of those of sane
persons, and who therefore is irresponsible for either his disposition,
acts, or for the imperfections of his vagrant, half developed intellect.
(Isis I, 352.) 

These are, then, the "exceptions" spoken of in Isis, and the doctrine is
maintained now as it was then. Moreover, there is no "discrepancy" but
only incompleteness--hence, misconceptions arising from later teachings.
Then again, there are several important mistakes in Isis which, as the
plates of the work had been stereotyped, were not corrected in
subsequent editions. 

One of such is on page 346, and another in connection with it and as a
sequence on page 347. 
The discrepancy between the first portion of the statement and the last,
ought to have suggested the idea of an evident mistake. It is addressed
to the spiritists, reincarnationists who take the more than ambiguous
words of Apuleius as a passage that corroborates their claims for their
"spirits" and reincarnation. Let the reader judge (7) whether Apuleius
does not justify rather our assertions. We are charged with denying
reincarnation and this is what we said there and then in Isis! 

The philosophy teaches that nature never leaves her work unfinished; if
baffled at the first attempt, she tries again. When she evolves a human
embryo the intention is that a man shall be perfected--physically,
intellectually, and spiritually. His body is to grow, mature, wear out,
and die; his mind unfold, ripen, and be harmoniously balanced; his
divine spirit illuminate and blend easily with the inner man. 

No human being completes its grand cycle, or the "circle of necessity,"
until all these are accomplished. As the laggards in a race struggle and
plod in their first quarter while the victor darts past the goal, so, in
the race of immortality, some souls outspeed all the rest and reach the
end, while their myriad competitors are toiling under the load of
matter, close to the starting point. Some unfortunates fall out entirely
and lose all chance of the prize; some retrace their steps and begin
again. 

Clear enough this, one should say. Nature baffled tries again. No one
can pass out of this world (our earth) without becoming perfected
"physically, morally, and spiritually." 

How can this be done, unless there is a series of rebirths required for
the necessary perfection in each department--to evolute in the "circle
of necessity," can surely never be found in one human life? and yet this
sentence is followed without any break by the following parenthetical
statement: "This is what the Hindu dreads above all
things--transmigration and reincarnation; only on other and inferior
planets, never on this one!!!" 

The last "sentence" is a fatal mistake and one to which the writer
pleads "not guilty." It is evidently the blunder of some "reader" who
had no idea of Hindu philosophy and who was led into a subsequent
mistake on the next page, wherein the unfortunate word "planet" is put
for cycle. 

ISIS was hardly, if ever, looked into after its publication by its
writer, who had other work to do; otherwise there would have been an
apology and a page pointing to the errata and the sentence made to run:
"The Hindu dreads transmigration in other inferior forms, on this
planet." 

This would have dove-tailed with the preceding sentence, and would show
a fact, as the Hindu exoteric views allow him to believe and fear the
possibility of reincarnation--human and animal in turn by jumps, from
man to beast and even a plant--and vice versa; whereas esoteric
philosophy teaches that nature never proceeding backward in her
evolutionary progress, once that man has evoluted from every kind of
lower forms--the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms--into the human
form, he can never become an animal except morally,
hence--metaphorically. 

Human incarnation is a cyclic necessity, and law; and no Hindu dreads
it--however much he may deplore the necessity. And this law and the
periodical recurrence of man's rebirth is shown on the same page (346)
and in the same unbroken paragraph, where it is closed by saying that: 

But there is a way to avoid it. Buddha taught it in his doctrine of
poverty, restriction of the senses, perfect indifference to the objects
of this earthly vale of tears, freedom from passion, and frequent
intercommunication with the Atma--soul-contemplation. 

The cause of reincarnation8 is ignorance of our senses, and the idea
that there is any reality in the world, anything except abstract
existence. From the organs of sense comes the "hallucination" we call
contact; "from contact, desire; from desire, sensation (which also is a
deception of our body); from sensation, the cleaving to existing bodies
from this cleaving, reproduction; and from reproduction, disease, decay
and death."
 
This ought to settle the question and show there must have been some
carelessly unnoticed mistake, and if this is not sufficient, there is
something else to demonstrate it, for it is further on: 

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 greatest 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.
Freedom from evil desire insures the possession of a miraculous power.
At his death the Arhat is never reincarnated; he invariably attains
nirvana--a word, by the by, falsely interpreted by the Christian scholar
and skeptical commentators. 

Nirvana is the world of cause, in which all deceptive effects or
delusions of our senses disappear. Nirvana is the highest attainable
sphere. The pitris (the pre-Adamic spirits) are considered as
reincarnated by the Buddhistic philosopher, though in a degree far
superior to that of the man of earth. Do they not die in their turn? Do
not their astral bodies suffer and rejoice, and feel the same curse of
illusionary feelings as when embodied? 

And just after this we are again made to say of Buddha and his: Doctrine
of "Merit and Demerit," or Karma: 

But this former life believed in by the Buddhists, is not a life on this
planet for, more than any other people, the Buddhistical philosopher
appreciated the great doctrine of cycles.
 
Correct "life on this planet" by "life in the same cycle," and you will
have the correct reading: for what would have appreciation of "the great
doctrine of cycles" to do with Buddha's philosophy, had the great sage
believed but in one short life on this Earth and in the same cycle. But
to return to the real theory of reincarnation as in the esoteric
teaching and its unlucky rendering in ISIS. 

Thus, what was really meant therein, was that, the principle which does
not reincarnate--save the exceptions pointed out--is the false
personality, the illusive human Entity defined and individualized during
this short life of ours, under some specific form and name; but that
which does and has to reincarnate nolens volens under the unflinching,
stern rule of Karmic law--is the real EGO. 

This confusing of the real immortal Ego in man, with the false and
ephemeral personalities it inhabits during its Manvantaric progress,
lies at the root of every such misunderstanding. Now what is the one,
and what is the other? The first group is-- 

1. The immortal Spirit--sexless, formless (arupa), an emanation from the
One universal BREATH. 

2. Its Vehicle--the divine Soul--called the "Immortal Ego," the "Divine
monad," etc., etc., which by accretions from Manas in which burns the
ever existing Jiv--the undying spark--adds to itself at the close of
each incarnation the essence of that individuality that was, the aroma
of the culled flower that is no more. 

What is the false personality? 

It is that bundle of desires, aspirations, affection and hatred, in
short of action, manifested by a human being on this earth during one
incarnation and under the form of one personality.9 

Certainly it is not all this, which as a fact for us, the deluded,
material, and materially thinking lot--is Mr. So and So, or Mrs.
somebody else--that remains immortal, or is ever reborn. 
All that bundle of Egotism, that apparent and evanescent "I" disappears
after death, as the costume of the part he played disappears from the
actor's body, after he leaves the theatre and goes to bed. 

That actor re-becomes at once the same "John Smith" or Gray, he was from
his birth and is no longer the Othello or Hamlet that he had represented
for a few hours. Nothing remains now of that "bundle" to go to the next
incarnation, except the seed for future Karma that Manas may have united
to its immortal group, to form with it--the disembodied Higher Self in
"Devachan." 

As to the four lower principles, that which becomes of them is found in
most classics, from which we mean to quote at length for our defense.
The doctrine of the perisprit, the "false personality," or the remains
of the deceased under their astral form--fading out to disappear in
time, is terribly distasteful to the spiritualists, who insist upon
confusing the temporary with the immortal EGO. 

Unfortunately for them and happily for us, it is not the modern
Occultists who have invented the doctrine. They are on their defense.
And they prove what they say, i.e., that no "personality" has ever yet
been "reincarnated" "on the same planet" (our earth, this once there is
no mistake) save in the three exceptional cases above cited. 

Adding to these a fourth case, which is the deliberate, conscious act of
adeptship; and that such an astral body belongs neither to the body nor
the soul still less to the immortal spirit of man, the following is
brought forward and proofs cited. 

Before one brings out on the strength of undeniable manifestations,
theories as to what produces them and claims at once on prima facie
evidence that it is the spirits of the departed mortals that revisit us,
it behooves one to first study what antiquity has declared upon the
subject. Ghosts and apparitions, materialized and semi-material
"SPIRITS" have not originated with Allan Kardec, nor at Rochester. If
those beings whose invariable habit it is to give themselves out for
souls and the phantoms of the dead, choose to do so and succeed, it is
only because the cautious philosophy of old is now replaced by an a
priori conceit, and unproven assumptions. 

The first question is to be settled--"Have spirits any kind of substance
to clothe themselves with?" Answer: That which is now called perisprit
in France, and a "materialized Form" in England and America, was called
in days of old peri-psyche, and peri-nous, hence was well known to the
old Greeks. Have they a body whether gaseous, fluidic, etherial,
material or semi-material? No; we say this on the authority of the
occult teachings the world over. For with the Hindus atma or spirit is
Arupa, bodiless, and with the Greeks also. Even in the Roman Catholic
Church the angels of Light as those of Darkness are absolutely
incorporeal: "meri spiritus, omnes corporis expertes," and in the words
of The Secret Doctrine, primordial. Emanations of the undifferentiated
Principle, the Dhyan Chohans of the ONE (First) category or pure
Spiritual Essence, are formed of the Spirit of the one Element; the
second category, of the second Emanation of the Soul of the Elements;
the third have a "mind body" to which they are not subject, but that
they can assume and govern as a body, subject to them, pliant to their
will in form and substance. 

Parting from this (third) category, they (the spirits, angels, Devas or
Dhyan Chohans) have BODIES, the first rupa group of which is composed of
one element Ether; the second, of two--ether and fire; the third, of
three--Ether, fire and water; the fourth, of four--Ether, air, fire and
water. 

Then comes man, who, besides the four elements, has the fifth that
predominates in him--Earth: therefore he suffers. Of the Angels, as said
by St. Augustine and Peter Lombard, "their bodies are made to act, not
to suffer. It is earth and water, humor et humus, that gives an aptitude
for suffering and passivity, ad patientiam, and Ether and Fire for
action." 

The spirits or human monads, belonging to the first, or undifferentiated
essence, are thus incorporeal; but their third principle (or the human
Fifth--Manas) can in conjunction with its vehicle become Kama rupa and
Mayavi rupa--body of desire or "illusion body." 

After death, the best, noblest, purest qualities of Manas or the human
soul ascending along with the divine Monad into Devachan whence no one
emerges from or returns, except at the time of reincarnation--what is
that then which appears under the double mask of the spiritual Ego or
soul of the departed individual? 

The Kama rupa element with the help of elementals. For we are taught
that those spiritual beings that can assume a form at will and appear,
i.e., make themselves objective and even tangible--are the angels alone
(the Dhyan Chohans) and the nirmanakaya(10) of the adepts, whose spirits
are clothed in sublime matter. 

The astral bodies--the remnants and dregs of a mortal being which has
been disembodied, when they do appear, are not the individuals they
claim to be, but only their simulachres. And such was the belief of the
whole of antiquity, from Homer to Swedenborg; from the third race down
to our own day. 

More than one devoted spiritualist has hitherto quoted Paul as
corroborating his claim that spirits do and can appear. "There is a
natural and there is a spiritual body," etc., etc., (I Cor. xv:44); but
one has only to study closer the verses preceding and following the one
quoted, to perceive that what St. Paul meant was quite different from
the sense claimed for it. Surely there is a spiritual body, but it is
not identical with the astral form contained in the "natural" man. 

The "spiritual" is formed only by our individuality unclothed and
transformed after death; for the apostle takes care to explain in Verses
51 and 52, "Immut abimur sed non omnes." Behold, I tell you a mystery:
we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed. This corruptible
must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality. But
this is no proof except for the Christians. 

Let us see what the old EGYPTIANS and the NEO-PLATONISTS--both
"theurgists" par excellence, thought on the subject: They divided man
into three principal groups subdivided into principles as we do: pure
immortal spirit; the "Spectral Soul" (a luminous phantom) and the gross
material body. 

Apart from the latter, which was considered as the terrestrial shell,
these groups were divided into six principles; 

(1) Kha "vital body"; 

(2) Khaba "astral form," or shadow; 

(3) Khou "animal soul"; 

(4) Akh "terrestrial intelligence"; 

(5) Sa "the divine soul" (or Buddhi); and 

(6) Sah or mummy, the functions of which began after death. 

Osiris was the highest uncreated spirit, for it was, in one sense, a
generic name, every man becoming after his translation Osirified, i.e.,
absorbed into Osiris-Sun or into the glorious divine state. 

It was Khou, with the lower portions of Akh or Kama rupa with the
addition of the dregs of Manas remaining all behind in the astral light
of our atmosphere--that formed the counterparts of the terrible and so
much dreaded bhoots of the Hindus (our "elementaries"). This is seen in
the rendering made of the so-called "Harris Papyrus on magic" (papyrus
magique, translated by Chabas) who calls them Kouey or Khou, and
explains that according to the hieroglyphics they were called Khou or
the "revivified dead," the "resurrected shadows." (11)
 
When it was said of a person that he "had a Khou" it meant that he was
possessed by a "Spirit." There were two kinds of Khous--the justified
ones--who after living for a short time a second life (nam onh) faded
out, disappeared; and those Khous who were condemned to wandering
without rest in darkness after dying for a second time--mut, em,
nam--and who were called the H'ou--métre ("second time dead") which did
not prevent them from clinging to a vicarious life after the manner of
Vampires. 

How dreaded they were is explained in our Appendices on Egyptian Magic
and "Chinese Spirits" (SECRET DOCTRINE). They were exorcised by Egyptian
priests as the evil spirit is exorcised by the Roman Catholic curé; or
again the Chinese houen, identical with the Khou and the "Elementary,"
as also with the lares or larvæ--a word derived from the former by
Festus, the grammarian; who explains that they were "the shadows of the
dead who gave no rest in the house they were in either to the Masters or
the servants." These creatures when evoked during theurgic, and
especially necromantic rites, were regarded, and are so regarded still,
in China--as neither the Spirit, Soul nor anything belonging to the
deceased personality they represented, but simply, as his
reflection--simulacrum. 


H P B

Dallas