[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Q.Still there ought to be exceptions, and some ought to remember.A.And so there are.But who believes in their report? Such sensitives aregenerally regarded as hallucinated hysteriacs, as crack-brained enthusiasts,or humbugs, by modern materialism.Let them read, however, works on thissubject, preeminently Reincarnation, a Study of Forgotten Truth by E.D.Walker, F.T.S., and see in it the mass of proofs which the able authorbrings to bear on this vexed question.One speaks to people of soul, andsome ask "What is Soul?" "Have you ever proved its existence?" Of course itis useless to argue with those who are materialists.But even to them Iwould put the question:Can you remember what you were or did when a baby? Have you preserved thesmallest recollection of your life, thoughts, or deeds, or that you lived atall during the first eighteen months or two years of your existence? Thenwhy not deny that you have ever lived as a babe, on the same principle?When to all this we add that the reincarnating Ego, or individuality,retains during the Devachanic period merely the essence of the experience ofits past earth-life or personality, the whole physical experience involvinginto a state of in potentia, or being, so to speak, translated intospiritual formulae; when we remember further that the term between tworebirths is said to extend from ten to fifteen centuries, during which timethe physical consciousness is totally and absolutely inactive, having noorgans to act through, and therefore no existence, the reason for theabsence of all remembrance in the purely physical memory is apparent.Q.You just said that the Spiritual Ego was omniscient.Where, then, is thatvaunted omniscience during his Devachanic life, as you call it?A.During that time it is latent and potential, because, first of all, theSpiritual Ego (the compound of Buddhi-Manas) is not the Higher Self, whichbeing one with the Universal Soul or Mind is alone omniscient; and,secondly, because Devachan is the idealized continuation of the terrestriallife just left behind, a period of retributive adjustment, and a reward forunmerited wrongs and sufferings undergone in that special life.It isomniscient only potentially in Devachan, and de facto exclusively inNirvana, when the Ego is merged in the Universal Mind-Soul.Yet it rebecomesquasi omniscient during those hours on earth when certain abnormalconditions and physiological changes in the body make the Ego free from thetrammels of matter.Thus the examples cited above of somnambulists, a poorservant speaking Hebrew, and another playing the violin, give you anillustration of the case in point.This does not mean that the explanationsof these two facts offered us by medical science have no truth in them, forPage 63The Key To Theosophy - HP Blavatsky.txtone girl had, years before, heard her master, a clergyman, read Hebrew worksaloud, and the other had heard an artist playing a violin at their farm.Butneither could have done so as perfectly as they did had they not beenensouled by that which, owing to the sameness of its nature with theUniversal Mind, is omniscient.Here the higher principle acted on theSkandhas and moved them; in the other, the personality being paralyzed, theindividuality manifested itself.Pray do not confuse the two.-oOo-On Individuality and PersonalityQ.But what is the difference between the two?A.Even Col.Olcott, forced to it by the logic of Esoteric philosophy, foundhimself obliged to correct the mistakes of previous Orientalists who made nosuch distinction, and gives the reader his reasons for it.Thus he says:The successive appearances upon the earth, or "descents into generation," ofthe tanhaically coherent parts (Skandhas) of a certain being, are asuccession of personalities.In each birth the personality differs from thatof a previous or next succeeding birth.Karma, the deus ex machina, masks(or shall we say reflects?) itself now in the personality of a sage, againas an artisan, and so on throughout the string of births.But thoughpersonalities ever shift, the one line of life along which they are strung,like beads, runs unbroken; it is ever that particular line, never any other.It is therefore individual, an individual vital undulation, which began inNirvana, or the subjective side of nature, as the light or heat undulationthrough aether, began at its dynamic source; is careering through theobjective side of nature under the impulse of Karma and the creativedirection of Tanha (the unsatisfied desire for existence); and leads throughmany cyclic changes back to Nirvana.Mr.Rhys-Davids calls that which passesfrom personality to personality along the individual chain character, ordoing.Since character is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, but the sumof one's mental qualities and moral propensities, would it not help todispel what Mr [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]