Bulletpoints of reincarnation

+ Doctrine of reincarnation as the most reasonable solution to the mystery of life. + Laws of reincarnation and karma are the only solutions to the eternal problem of human unfitness. + Reincarnation is nothing more nor less than the law of evolution applied to the unfolding consciousness of the individual. + The doctrine of reincarnation carries with it an almost metaphysical power of conviction. When a normal,healthy mind is given an adequate understanding of the meaning of this law here is an instantaneous psychic sympathy. It is as though the mind suddenly remembers something it has known over vast periods of time. In the words of Plato, "learning is remembering."

+ Words are the vehicles of ideas, and unless they are understood properly misunderstanding is inevitable. The English language is immature for the reason that Western civilization itself has not yet achieved maturity. The language has a rich commercial and industrial vocabulary, but is woefully lacking in exact philosophical terms. Possibly the most perfect of philosophical languages is Sanskrit.

+ It is the Sanskrit word samsara that has been translated as reincarnation, a word symbol for a complete idea; the progressive re-embodiments of the ego, self, or sattva, depending on the philosophic system. All living things, animate and inanimate, must pass through innumerable re-embodiments until all imperfections have been removed by experience.

+ Platonists explicitly state that, in reincarnating, the spiritual entity of an exceedingly depraved person might overshadow an animal, but never actually enters into an animal body.

+ lmmortality simply means the deathlessness of the spirit.

+ The divine part of man is commonly called the spirit; the permanent being; that which is the cause of body and operates through body, but is capable of an existence independent of body. In some systems this spiritual permanence is called the "self" as distinguished from its body and appetites which are termed the "not-self."

+ The self, sattva, or spirit, is regarded as impersonal. It emanates personalities into the phenomenal world, but never for an instant should be confused with these personalities. The personality is seldom reborn.

+ Ego means I or selfness, and supposedly is applied only to creatures capable of the conscious knowledge of I. The sattva or entity of the subhuman kingdom is properly termed a monad, which to reincarnation’s means the collective entity of a species or type, an unindividualized self.

+ Personality is the term applied to the complex of mind, emotion, sense, and form. Personalities are those objective parts of man's composite nature which are discernible or sensible to others, and come to be regarded as realities by the uninformed. Personality is the most impermanent part of man, and is subject to modification and change during life, and utter dissolution at death.

+ A bodhisattva or enlightened self is one in whom the imperfections of the material existence have ceased or died out. Through realization and meditation the bodhisattva has reached the point of liberation. He may choose to go forward and enter nirvana, which is the end of personalized existence, or he may choose to remain for a time as a teacher and guide for others less perfect than himself. The bodhisattva therefore must make what is termed "The Great Choice"; the choice of existence or nonexistence.

+ A Buddha is a perfected soul or sattva in which all karma is finished; that is, the three fires of personal existence - thought, emotion, and action have burned out.

+ Buddhahood is the last life on this earth; therefore a Buddha does not die. He passes into nirvana. His causal nature is disseminated through time and space, and he ceases forever to exist as a being.

+ The cycle of necessity is the wheel of birth and death. It is the cycle of consecutive re-embodiment covering that time from the beginning of individualized existence to the final absorption in nirvana, or the completion of material existence. Buddha is frequently represented in the posture of turning a wheel with eight spokes. This is the wheel of existences to which men cling because of their ignorance, and from which they are released only through illumination.

+ Memory of past lives is preserved in the permanent self and may be contacted when the lower personality is lifted up by discipline into communion or participation with the self. For the uninitiated there is no advantage in remembering past personalities.

+ Karma means compensation, and is the application of the law of cause and effect to the moral lives of personalized creatures. The law of karma motivates rebirth. Reincarnation is made necessary by the accumulation of good and evil actions brought forward from previous existences. Rebirth must continue as long as karma remains. Christ is made to say: "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." This is a statement of the law of compensation. But a theological system teaching the forgiveness of sin can never adhere very closely to the law of compensation. Buddha's statement of the same law permits no intercession or escape: "Effect follows cause as the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the oxen." Rebirth takes the place of faith and atonement, giving to each incarnating entity fresh lives in which to master and transmute personal imperfections.

+ As karma is compensation, so dharma is conduct, the actions from which karmic consequences are derived. A man's dharma is the life which he has earned in the past plus his own philosophical conduct toward his own imperfections. Thus dharma bestows the element of progress so that there is not only punishment, but growth during each incarnation. The ultimate dharma is to voluntarily embrace the Law, become an arhat, and seek nirvana.

+ The informed Hindu does not believe that he will be reborn in any creature less than human.

+ Reincarnation was a major tenet of Brahmanism centuries before the rise of Buddhist culture. Tradition has it that the teaching originally belonged to the caste of the warriors, among whom it was guarded as an esoteric secret.

+ Brahmanism degenerated from a natural aristocracy to a more or less despotic caste system. The Brahman was no longer a Brahman because of the superiority of his actions, but rather by the accident of his birth. Wherever there has been a people to exploit, sacerdotalism has never been far away. A form of vicarious atonement crept into the primitive statement, destroying its fundamental integrity. Life became a succession of offerings and purification.

+ The only form of spiritual democracy that can exist in space is the privilege of each individual to perfect himself.

+ It is neither the will of God nor the fault of the parents that has formed the characters of those children, but each child is responsible for its own tendencies, capacities, powers and character.

+ The rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B. C. resulted in a wide dissemination of the doctrines of reincarnation and karma, the principal tenets of the faith. Simple agnosticism of Gautama was slowly transformed into an elaborate polytheism.

+ Reincarnation was the solution to the apparent inequalities of life. Without the Iaw of rebirth existence was purposeless, meaningless, and absurd. Karma, likewise, explained the purpose of rebirth. We are born to live out the good and evil of previous lives. Reincarnation makes possible the absolute fulfillment of the law of cause and effect. There is no escaping the result of action. Man must be ready to accept the responsibility for what he does and must so conduct himself at all times that retribution is outwitted by his own virtue.

+ The Venerable One answered them smilingly: "Listen, I will explain to you the wonderful and indissoluble sequences of Karma. They follow you when you advance; even when you pause, they pause; the bonds of Karma, like true servants, ever attend on all creatures. They dive into the forest, roam over the regions, climb the lofty mountain, attack and find their way into Indra's abode, and even enter the nether world which is inaccessible to man. Karma is like the stream of time. Never can its course be stopped in its constant pursuit of man. Long is the vine of Karma; new, and yet always covered with old fruit; a wonderful companion of all creatures, and yet immovable, however you may pull it, grasp it, part it, uproot it, twist it, rub it, or skillfully break it into atoms, it is never destroyed. That the beauteous moon bears the dark spot of blame on her disc; that the cruel black snake carries the gem which catches the 'netted beam,' is all due to the action of Karma, which in manifold form shows the variegated experiences of all creatures." From this statement and the context it is obvious that Buddha did not interpret his high attainment as a means of evading or nullifying the mistakes of previous lives. In fact, original Buddhism offers no escape mechanism of any kind.

+ If reincarnation and karma are universal laws, they cannot have exceptions, nor can they be compromised by human beings seeking to escape from the responsibilities of personal integrity.

+ If there be any justice in the universe, if there be anything in space worthy of the faith of man, it is immutable law far from the bribery of offerings and sacrifices, and equally far from the mummery of prayer.

+ To my knowledge, most people who believe in reincarnation and karma accept the possibility of these laws being placated by some bribe. Some hope to breathe themselves into an immediate nirvana. Others confuse law with the forgiveness of sin. Still others seek by the constant repetition of sacred words and names to escape their just deserts. But if the law of rebirth be in any way a law, if karma be a fact in the universe, then its immutability and its eternal constancy is the refuge of the wise man. The philosopher desires to escape nothing; he is not searching for short cuts. He is prepared to pay his bills and is satisfied to live under the conditions he has earned. This does not mean that he will not strive after better things, but he expects no better state for himself until he has grown wiser through his own works.

+ Another missionary going to a cruel and savage land was asked what he would do if the natives should desire to kill him. He replied: "lt is no matter. They may destroy me, but they cannot destroy the Law." So he went forth and converted the people.

+ According to the doctrines of Buddhism, one who has achieved to the highest state of Buddhahood is able to remember his previous existences.

+ More than a hundred thousand years ago there dwelt in India a learned and righteous Brahman named Sumedha. This wise and holy man meditating on the mystery of rebirth dedicated his future lives to the quest of that wisdom which should lead to liberation from the cycle of necessity. Sumedha reasoned thus: "Why should I not now cast off all remaining evil in myself and enter into nirvana? But let me not do so all for myself alone; rather let me also some day achieve omniscience and convey a multitude of beings in the ship of doctrine over the ocean of rebirth safely to the farther shore."

+ In order that he might accomplish the liberation of all creatures from bondage to the law of rebirth, he who was to become the Buddha willed to be reborn in each of the orders of Iife. Not only did he take on the human form, but he incarnated as a deva, as an animal, even as a tree. It is said therefore: "There exists not a particle of earth where the Buddha has not sacrificed his life for the sake of creatures."

+ The Great One is represented only as serving or teaching his fellow creatures.

+ The master gathered them about him and explained that there was no escape from the laws of life and death except the ultimate nirvana. The virtuous man and the evil man both must come down at last to the grave. Wisdom does not bestow immortality upon the body.

+ Buddhism does not believe in the superman. There is no place in its philosophy for the eternal progress of the individual. The goal of human effort is not immortality, but absorption.

+ There is no immortal self. The very word "I" is an illusion.

+ The Western school accepts reincarnation as a means of unfolding the individual, while the Eastern accepts reincarnation as a means of eliminating the individual.

+ Man was left entirely to his own devices, his destiny in his own hands, to make or break himself, with no god to receive his prayers, no devas to make his tasks easier - only law, only cause and effect, only the command for right action.

+ The East is old. Asia has lived through so many beliefs. It is tired with the very dream of existence. To one who has lived long, long life means little.

+ The Buddhist arhat; in his saffron-colored robe wants none of the things we dream after. He desires neither wealth, nor power, nor honor. He desires only nirvana which to him is indeed the end of waiting.

+ Prior to the ninth century the Tibetans were cannibals, and their religion was a form of Shamanism called Bon.

+ According to Schlagintweit in his Buddhism in Tibet: "Confession of sin influences for a happy metempsychosis. The mention of the name of Buddha in the form of a petition insures the forgiveness of all sins committed in previous existences." This approximately sums up the situation and speaks not only for Tibet, but to a great degree for China and Japan. How the forgiveness of sin got into Buddhism can be explained only by the psychology of the human mind. Man suspects that if he is not forgiven much he has small chance for salvation.

+ In his article, Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism, Mead quotes the following: "The superior Lamas and incarnate bodhisattvas generally keep diaries recording the events of everyday life. They recount their doings every week, month, year, and cycle of their lives to find out if their existence has not been one of steady spiritual progress .... They argue that if one fails to enumerate his doings of yesterday or the past month, when all his faculties are in order, how would it be possible for him to keep intact the Purva Janmanu-smriti (recollection of the events of one's former existences) when the faculties are deranged by death."

+ The sattva can achieve nirvana only while in the human form.

+ In the Buddhist philosophy nothing can actually be lost. All living things must ultimately achieve nirvana.

+ The condition of being either a god, a ghost, a beast, or a demigod is merely part of the illusion of existence. The only reality is Buddhahood. The axis of the wheel of illusion is composed of three creatures representing stupidity, anger, and lust. These are the illusional emotions which bind the sattva to existence, and until these three "fires" die out there can be no emancipation.

+ At the end of his Republic Plato describes how every soul fixes or chooses his own personality and fate at rebirth.

+ I had used life after life to practice patience and to look upon my life humbly as though it was some saintly being called upon to suffer humility. Even then my mind was free from any such arbitrary conceptions of phenomena as my own self, other selves, living beings, and a universal self.

+ A learned Sheik of the Mevlevee Order from the Koran declares that the spirit of man has no knowledge in this life of its condition or existence in any previous one, nor can it foresee its future career, though it may often have vague impressions of past

+ The Cherokee recognized no essential difference between the spirits of human beings and those of animals. All the kingdoms of nature shared a common immortality. Although the animal belonged to a Iower order of intelligence than man, and its body might properly be used for food, the spiritual principle which animated the brute form was indestructible. It was necessary to kill animals that men might live, but these four-footed younger brothers had their place in the afterlife. The hunter did not actually kill the animal, he only deprived it of a body for a short time. The Indian never hunted for sport, and when he killed the body of a deer or other wild creature, he offered prayers to its spirit, and honored its memory with sacred rites and ceremonies.

+ Belief in rebirth is more prevalent among certain classes of Indians than among particular tribes. It is most likely to be found among the shamans, priests, prophets, medicine men and seers.

+ The Winnebago were led to the belief in the plurality of lives by the pressure of adversity and affliction. They were in much the same position as the white man of today. The only escape from war, crime, sorrow, and misery was through the strengthening of the internal spiritual self. Man must have a philosophy of living that explains the obvious tragedy of the world and at the same time proves that the human being can live well and attain security by a high standard of personal conduct. All mature civilizations are confronted with this problem of universal ethics.

+ The Indian believes that when he dies his spirit goes to its new life just as at birth he came into this life.

+ In matters of spiritual conviction the lndian held his mystical beliefs close to himself and had no instinct to convert others; to him each man must find his own Spirit-Path, and having found his way must live it gloriously and courageously to the end.

+ God never allows the souls of men to be destroyed, and if
they sin he sends them back into the world to be purified by metempsychosis.

+ Jesus is believed to have been educated by the Essenes. The ruins of a monastery of this order still stand at Engedi near the Dead Sea. They also had a retreat on the shore of Lake Maoris in Egypt. The entire sect believed in reincarnation and studied the arcane traditions of the Egyptians. Josephus mentions the integrity of the Essenes with the highest praise, stating that they never engaged in any trade of buying or selling but selected occupations which brought them into slight contact with the commerce of their time. They were shepherds, but they kept their flocks only for wool. They were carpenters, and also acted as tutors and instructors. They were learned and pious people in a day of ignorance and false beliefs, and were devoted wholly to the service of the invisible Father whose will and teaching were their law of life. It was these men who wore their hair long, after the order of the Nazirs, and also affected a single white garment woven circularly without a seam, and over this a scarlet cloak.

+ If Jesus had been brought up in this brotherhood he had been educated to believe that enlightenment was an inner experience and that the promised Messiah would come not in the sky but in the heart of the faithful.

+ Teaching of reincarnation was diametrically opposed to such Christian institutions as vicarious atonement, forgiveness of sin, heaven and hell, and baptism. If man could work out his salvation without benefit of clergy the Church would be relegated to limbo.

+ We die many times, and often do we rise from the dead.

+ In this doctrine, so evidently based on reason, everything is linked and held together... for all that was needed in order to bring to pass these various results, was for God to call back into existence certain souls He knew to be naturally suited for His purpose.

+ Nothing in the universe is lost, everything changes and is transformed; the soul transmigrates, and drawing round itself atom to atom, it reconstructs for itself a new body.

+ It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in Nature is resurrection.

+ The absurdity and offensiveness of this doctrine (referring to Christendom) lie only in the Old Testament's presupposition that man is the product of an unknown will which has created him out of nothing.

+ For, according to metempsychosis, those inborn moral qualities which we find in one man and not in another, are not a gift of grace from some unknown deity, but the fruit of man's own actions in another life in some other world.

+ We must infer our destiny from the apparent. We are driven by instinct but have innumerable experiences which are of no visible value, and we may resolve through many lives before we shall assimilate or exhaust them.

+ The human life wave is made up of sixty billion spirits or entities. Of this number, about two billion incarnate at one time, making up the population of the earth.

+ The spirit, ego, or self of the human being has been evolving through various forms and conditions for nearly a thousand million years. This vast period of time was used in the perfecting of the physical body as a medium for the expression of the entity in the physical world.

+ The entire process through which the human being is passing in the mystery of growth may appropriately be termed the cycle of necessity. All growth is motivated by karma; that is, action and reaction. It is karma which makes reincarnation necessary in order that compensation may justly be administered. Man is eternally suffering, and misfortune is a constant goad impelling him forward toward a more perfect state. Karma is the law, and reincarnation is the means by which that Iaw is administered.

+ It is difficult for the average person to realize the full significance of an existence that is lived on planes other than that which may be described in physical terms and that extends from the beginning to the end of time. But regardless of his actions; regardless of his virtues or vices; regardless even of his efforts to destroy himself, man is an immortal, eternal being manifesting through an infinite sequence of bodies, each a little nobler than the one before. We are here today doing the things we are doing today because of this sequence of lives. The things that we are doing today will become the elements of later existences, bodies without end.

+ Yet there is no fatalism in this doctrine. Each state and condition that comes to it is the result of personal action. We make and unmake ourselves. There is no strange and distant god smiling upon some and frowning upon others. We are not the blind instruments of some fatal necessity. We are not marked by Adam's sin. Each of us bears witness to his own character; to the thoughts and actions of lives long past. Each of us is the architect of his own tomorrow. The future is in our own hands.

+ It requires a little courage to acknowledge personal responsibility; to accept a belief that teaches that there is no escape from action or the consequences of action. It takes a high measure of resolve to be willing to face the world and acknowledge that all the misfortunes which occur are the results of our own mistakes. That is why the laws of reincarnation and karma have always belonged to the wise and strong, and by their very nature are not suitable to lesser intellects.

+ As we look about us upon that strange aggregation of creatures that makes up society, we realize that no doctrine based upon the theory of a single life can solve the problems of this multitude. For the majority, there is little vision; the future stretches out into a mysterious and unknown expanse. Yet each of us in his innermost heart of hearts is aware of some great force that moves him relentlessly through the years toward the unknown.

+ Man is a creature of many sorrows; suffering is the common lot. Each in his own life knows the varied ills which arise in the chemistry of human relationships. Only the wise man can be happy; for the rest there are years of uncertainty.

+ The church says that it is the will of God. Science says that it is the law of nature. But philosophy maintains that all of these strange conditions are the growing pains of an immortal soul.

+ Reincarnation and karma also light the dark mystery of ethics and morality. These laws give reason to right action, revealing that every action is intimately related to the progress of the individual. We no longer do right because of scriptural admonition, but because we have learned the meaning of right and wrong as they react upon us through the law of karma. We grow through every thought and action.

+ We learn not for one life, but for eternity. Each art and science that we master becomes part of the immortal self flowing through the ages.

+ Plato believed and taught that all learning was remembering, and the very word education originally meant to draw forth that which already was known. We all come into the world with abilities, talents, and peculiar aptitudes. We are destined to certain labors by the karma which we have brought with us out of the lives gone before.

+ How noble then are the doctrines of reincarnation and karma. How filled with Iearning is this mysterious cycle of necessity. We come into this world not to be happy, primarily, but to learn. Life after life we pass through complicated experiences until in the fullness of living we Iearn to grow happily. Happiness is the by-product of our harmonious adjustment to the universal plan.

+ Where do we exist between lives? What is the subjective state? Is the entity in heaven or in hell?

+ The philosopher replies that whether living or dead, man is always himself. For a time he manifests objectively, taking into himself the experiences of the outer world; and then for another space of time he is subjective, assimilating into soul power the experiences of his physical existence.

+ According to the doctrine of rebirth we may add nothing new to ourselves in the intervals between lives. During this time we examine, order, and classify the experiences we have gained. We make them part of an immortal self that, enriched with experiences, proceeds into another body.

+ It is the purpose of the universe that all men should inevitably outgrow physical things. Man should realize that the inner life alone is real and permanent and all else belongs to the sphere of illusion. One of the duties of rebirth is to sever man's will from the objects of his physical attention. As we come of age, we leave the world behind, finding nothing in the material state to be of value except the experience of self -mastery.

+ All the animate and inanimate bodies in nature are ensouled by the same divine force. This spiritual power manifests through the various kingdoms according to the intrinsic nature and the degree of evolution which each has attained. The difference between man and the animal is intellectual rather than spiritual or physical.

+ The higher brutes, especially the dog, the elephant, and the ape, have attained considerable mental development. The elephant's memory is prodigious; the dog's loyalty is traditional; and the ape's ingenuity enables it to solve problems which baffle twelve­year-old children.

+ Man emanates only one physical body at a time; the animal entity emanates numerous physical bodies at one time.

+ Separate animal is not complete, for while its lower bodies are individual, its entity and mind are collective. The result is that in the animal evolution all animals develop and gain experience through the evolution of any one of their kind, whereas man must grow individually. When an animal dies the collective entity immediately sends out other embodiments, but there can be no such thing as the reincarnation of any specific animal.

+ Unlike man, however, their organism cannot be impressed with mental or moral virtues which will affect subsequent bodies. There can be no karma in the animal kingdom. The animal is not a self-responsible creature, and because it has no individual will it is incapable of sin or error. The cruelty, gentleness, or intelligence of animals is due to their type, their instincts, and the environment in which they are placed, and not to any moral urge.

+ There is a well-known tradition that rats will leave an ill-fated ship. Being incapable of moral determination, the animal depends entirely upon impulses impressed upon its brain by the collective entity. Being without will power, it cannot resist any of these impulses. Therefore all animals of a certain type have approximately identical habits and characteristics.

+ Nervous impulses of the animal organism pass not to the brain directly, but to the collective entity. Therefore it is the entity and not the animal which feels pain. The collective entity belongs to a much higher order than the animal and is subject therefore to rebirth and karma. The pain which an animal apparently suffers is in reality a physical reflex such as frequently is observed under anesthesia. The individual animal is not subject to suffering as we know it, despite appearances to the contrary. This law which protects the animal, although not appearing to do so, does not prevent the human being from creating karma for himself by mistreating animals.

+ The plant is capable of creating form and of growth, but within its own organism is incapable of intrinsic motion, emotion, or thought. The group entity of the plant world is exceedingly complex, and the time element far more complicated than is the case of animals. The oldest living things on earth are members of the plant kingdom.

+ The plant kingdom is the most adaptable to environment. Plant growth is most easily stimulated by artificial means. The lines between types are less formal than in the animal world.

+ Group consciousness of the plant kingdom is formless though possessing being, capable of being everywhere at the same time. The plant collective entity has a mental and emotional nature, and like that of the animal is capable of suffering, karma, and rebirth. For that reason certain forms of plants, like certain types of animals, become extinct. The dying out of a species or type indicates that its collective entity is itself passing out of incarnation. Trees, especially those that bear fruit, are the highest plant form. At the end of the present day of manifestation the kingdom will move forward into an animal state, but there is no crossing from kingdom to kingdom except at the end of world cycles or periods.

+ Having disintegrated, its experience elements become part of the collective being. A good example of the power of the collective plant entity is a wheat field or a grass lawn. All grass is one grass, and as the little leaves die new ones take their place. The principle is constantly emanating forms and gaining its evolutionary progress through the building of these structures.

+ Diamond is the highest in the order of precious stones, and gold the highest of the metals. Grapes, sacred in antiquity as the highest of the fruits.

+ Earth's core of azoic rock is the absolute and fundamental part of the mineral kingdom, and the true abode of the collective mineral entity. All physical life is sustained by the mineral kingdom, which is not only the substance of the planet but supplies the chemicals necessary to the continuance of organic existence.

+ Having been incorporated in higher organisms, and then by the dissolution of these organisms reduced again to its free state, the mineral kingdom completes a minor cycle of incarnation. This little cycle is the only method by which the mineral kingdom is capable of evolution.

+ The entity behind all mineral existence is working through bodies incapable of growth, motion, emotion, or intelligence. That is, the forms are too elementary and imperfect for these higher qualities to manifest through them. Therefore the mineral has but one form of manifestation and that is existence.

+ The higher kingdoms taking hold of the mineral particles vibrate them at a rate more rapid than their normal vibration.

+ In addition to present action, each race and nation brings out of the past a tradition; a heritage of good and evil for which that race or nation must make amends. The policies of a people determine absolutely the destiny of that people.

+ When a member of a certain tribe or clan begins to think differently from those about him he is either cast out of the tribe or departs from it voluntarily, seeking some place where he will find others in agreement with his beliefs. Thus it is that such as outgrow their environment depart from it, either mentally or physically, and therefore are no longer subject to its karma or its laws. Individual growth liberates man from all social orders, step by step. But for the majority the rule of the herd prevails.

+ The policies and inclinations of a people determine the end to which that people shall ultimately come. If the nation desires conquests it shall ultimately be conquered. If it desires wealth beyond a reasonable degree it shall ultimately be impoverished. It is a historically proved fact that those who live by the sword perish by the sword. All empires established upon injustice finally collapse from within. It is a law of nature that only the right can survive.

+ As of nations and races, so of communities. Each city and town has its own atmosphere; something about it that draws some and repels others.

+ As communities develop according to their natures, so organizations and institutions have their karma. Corrupt enterprises ultimately fail.

+ An avatar, however, should not be regarded as a reincarnating entity. It is not drawn back into life because of personal insufficiency, or that any law of evolution may be fulfilled. Rather the incarnation is a gesture of divine grace; the deity, assuming human limitations and proportions, becomes the teacher, the priest, the prince, or the general in order to forward the estate of its chosen people.

+ Therefore we may say that in essence and principle the belief in avatars denies the laws of reincarnation and karma by establishing a factor of grace or escape. By means of the avatar the people are elevated to an estate that they have not earned. In the case of Christ, the purpose of the divine incarnation has been misunderstood and eventually resulted in the teaching of the forgiveness of sin, a belief which violates all the principles of universal integrity.

+ The avatar is, in reality, the legitimate product of the laws of reincarnation and karma. By consecration to the truths of life certain entities have achieved a greater unfoldment than the rest.

+ The final and noblest end to which men aspire is a state of rational usefulness.

+ Personal affection is the most difficult of all human emotions to rationalize. (Should it? Should anything be rationalized? > Sure, you gotta start somewhere. This as good as any.)

+ The entity or ego from which the personality of man is emanated is asexual, capable of emanating either male or female personalities at will, but is limited by the qualities of neither.

+ Each entity in the course of evolution will incarnate in an equal number of bodies of each sex, thus achieving a manifestation of all the powers which are resident in the entity itself. (but what if progresses sooner?)

+ Man is not wandering around in space looking for the rest of himself. He is evolving the various aspects of his nature from within himself. He finds in the relationship of marriage a symbolical completeness and an opportunity to further unfold his own latent completeness.

+ Reincarnation and karma, as the instruments by which evolution achieves its ends, protect the integrity factor so that growth is possible only through normalcy and honesty.

+ Preparing himself to receive the power of mind that through thought he might solve other mysteries. At a remote time long gone by, man was physically androgynous. As mind began to develop, the process of evolution decreed that in each human being one of the sexual poles be submerged and its energies devoted to mental activity. To compensate for this submergence the institution of marriage was established, an association necessary to the perpetuation of future bodies, to convey the sense of normalcy or completeness. The submerged nature is compensated for by another person, in whom the opposite polarity is physically dominant.

+ Reincarnation is the periodic manifestation on the physical plane of an invisible spiritual entity. To make this manifestation possible the entity sends out from itself body principles which become the rudiments of bodies, and about which the corporeal structure is built. When the body has been completed the invisible subjective entity manifests through the body, using it as a medium of action and experience. When the stress and strain of physical existence has broken down the fabric of the body the entity withdraws its principles, and the body dies.

+ We shall call this body person number one. At death the consciousness absorbs into itself the attitudes, opinions, ideas, convictions, and conclusions of person number one. The disintegration of the body taking place according to the proper laws of nature, person number one then ceases to exist.

+ Person number two contains in its very fabric the experiences of person number one, but as these experiences have become impersonalized and assimilated by the entity they come forward as character, personality, temperament, and to a degree, body structure.

+ Occasional abnormalcies which occur in nature, are related to karma, pointing out some extraordinary factor in the destiny.

+ Oriental regards it unfortunate to have any memory of a previous life for the reason that it indicates that some part of the superphysical nature is out of adjustment and an early death frequently follows.

+ The philosopher approaches the subject of reincarnation because of the fundamental rationality and integrity of the teaching. The true thinker is more interested in the integrity factor of a belief than he is in an effort to demonstrate that belief through some physical phenomena.

+ An entity which has created several personalities for a specific achievement should leave the stamp of this achievement on subsequent bodies.

+ No truly great contribution has been made to the history of knowledge by any individual who did not believe in something nobler than himself.

+ Human mind, contemplating the mystery of its own origin, rejects as untenable the concept of complete dissolution.

+ The after-death state is merely the process of gradually disintegrating the personality. The personality is composed of four parts: The physical body, the etheric body, the emotional body, and the mental body. Each of these bodies is an organism created for the purpose of manifesting the thoughts, feelings, energies, and form principles of the entity. The mere disintegration of the physical body at death does not result in the immediate dissolution of the personality which, though invisible to the physical perceptions, still continues to exist on the emotional and mental levels. Not until the mental body is finally disintegrated does the personality cease to exist.

+ When Mr. Smith dies he merely drops off his physical body. The fact that he has no physical body prevents his functioning on the material plane, but in no way affects the function of his mind or his emotions.

+ At death his center of awareness is withdrawn from the physical body, which dies, removing with it the entire mechanism of external contact. From that time on Mr. Smith lives within himself rather than in any place. The center of awareness is placed in his emotional nature, with the result that his own nature becomes to him a world, rich or poor, noble or ignoble, according to his emotional estate during his physical existence. By a mysterious fourth dimensional process the entity functioning on the emotional plane after death is living within his own feelings, and though he appears to see a world about him he is seeing only himself. Dream symbols are merely the objectification of his emotions, desires, and passions.

+ Gradually this emotional scene changes. The personality feels that it is going to some distant place. But the change or journey is entirely within the self. The higher emotions now find their place. This condition, therefore, is heaven - not a place, but merely an emotional mood through which the personality is passing. At last feeling dies out; the pictures fade away because the symbols themselves have been solved. The personality then shifts its focus to the mental nature, and the emotional body dies out almost imperceptibly.

+ The personality now functions in a sphere of mental pictures: that is, it lives within its own field of thought. These mental pictures, like dreams and nightmares, also assume strange and fantastic patterns. The personality is involved in these patterns, and through the imposition of karma must live out its own thinking.

+ All this time Mr. Smith is still Mr. Smith. Preserving his sense of identity, Mr. Smith moves as a person through the symbol patterns of his own emotional nature. And later, still Mr. Smith, he moves through the symbol patterns of his mental nature. His sense of self-existence remains until the mental patterns die out.

+ After having worked out his lower mental complexes, and having built the experience into the permanent entity, Mr. Smith enters the abstract or higher mental state. Then for the first time, Mr. Smith becomes aware of the fact that he himself is beginning to fade out. This awareness generally comes in a manner corresponding to sleep. Mr. Smith, the highest link in the chain of personality, having completed his experiences within his own mental nature, slowly goes to sleep. From this sleep Mr. Smith never awakes. Mr. Smith now is through with the cycle of his life. The only record that remains of him is preserved in the permanent entity, but he never lives again.

+ Because the personality in its after-death state functions in its own emotional and mental body, its condition follows closely its expectation. The dead Egyptian expected to see Osiris. His expectancy became a thought pattern, and he saw Osiris. In the same way the Christian will see Christ, the Buddhist will see Buddha, and the Brahman will enter the expected palace of Indra.

+ In the sphere of subtle substance where emotional and mental impulse instantaneously produces any patterns desired, each personality meets what it expects to meet and experiences what it expects to experience.

+ The yogi in meditation is warned by his teacher to preserve his absolute fixity of purpose; otherwise he will fall into the illusions of his own desires and may not be able to extricate himself during that life.

+ Wandering afield in its own imaginings the personality loses its one-pointedness.

+ The mystery schools warned their disciples to moderate their emotional extremes and normalize their mental inconstancies. This was in order that in the after-death state the personality might not be depressed by its own emotional and mental environment.

+ The permanent entity never incarnates. It merely projects the forms from itself. In Tibetan art the permanent entity is frequently depicted as seated upon a lotus throne in a posture of contemplation. Below this throne the messengers of the meditating One, small figures mounted on racing horses, are galloping to the four corners of the world. Each of the horsemen represents an incarnation or a cycle of experience. In the midst of the racing horses the entity itself remains; impersonal, detached, in no way perturbed by the confusion of its personalities.

+ In Christian terminology the entity is appropriately referred to as the "Father in Heaven." In Eastern theology it is termed the father-mother, because it is the true parent of the personality and each man's personal god. Prayer is the effort of an enlightened personality to contact its own source; not some abstract god in space, but its own peculiar god, its own transcendental entity. The permanent self or entity is therefore the god of the wise, to be approached with reverence and with the offerings of virtue and enlightenment.

+ The law of karma is the law of cause and effect applied to the personalities emanating from permanent entities; it is the force constantly impelling personalities to higher courses of action. It works through the principle of inadequacy.

+ All perfection is relative. Ultimates are beyond the conception of personalities. The law of karma is forcing life along the path of evolution by making present inadequacy unbearable.

+ The entity projecting a personality selects an environment suitable to the spiritual achievements, mental, emotional, and physical requirements, and karmic responsibilities which are to be exemplified in the new personality. Therefore the son resembles the father not because he has inherited from his parents, but because his father's personality was the principal element in a chemistry which offered certain specialized opportunities to the incarnating personality.

+ The majority of diseases cannot be inherited, but rather a deficiency may be inherited which will cause susceptibility. Incoming personality, depending upon the parents for the substance of its physical body, must assume whatever chemical deficiencies are peculiar to this substance.

+ Childhood environment is due to the temperaments, characteristics, qualities, and abilities of the parent. As a result of the entity's selection of a location for the personality's incarnation, the entity assures itself that the personality will pass through certain experiences peculiarly necessary to the balanced development of the entity.

+ Physical deformities also are quite possible and must be considered in relation to the personality's experience necessity. Insanity, as a maladjustment between the mental nature and the other parts of the personality chain, has no permanent effect upon either the ego or the permanent entity. The only detrimental element is the loss of experience over a period of years. But this in turn is karmic, and is part of the necessary spiritual experience of the entity.

+ Accidents and deformities are frequently checks on personalities that would otherwise develop uncontrollable and undesirable traits. The accident is a direct result of karma, either of the personality itself or of the entity. As the sole purpose of the personality is to enrich the permanent entity, such peculiarities as deformity, stuttering, and other lesser abnormalities are all media for the working out of the karmic inadequacies of the entity.

+ The only way we can learn to live is by living, and through hundreds of lives we gradually dignify the art of living. In this way the entity perfects itself in the mysteries of physical existence in which the entity has no actual contact, depending entirely upon its personalities for the development of itself.

+ Accidents and war are included in the karmic fate of the personality. But suicide is never regarded as karmic. It is an action of self-will against the self. Suicide is very rare among peoples who believe in reincarnation, and when it occurs is due to a conflict of religious belief, as in Japan where hara-kiri or the honorable death is the product of indigenous Shintoism rather than imported Buddhism.

+ The average modern who resorts to suicide is impelled either by a boredom with physical life or by the fear of the consequences of action. In both cases the security which is sought beyond the grave fails utterly, and only bad karma results. The most usual karmic result of suicide is that a future personality will die under conditions where the desire for life will be the greatest. There is no escape from insufficiency except self-improvement.

+ Suicide has no permanent effect upon the evolution of the spiritual entity. It is merely an incident which is contrary to natural law, and therefore causes a powerful karmic reaction over a limited time.

+ Motive is the most powerful karmic force in the world.

+ It is advisable to cremate the body to destroy any possible psychic ties between the personality and the physical world.

+ Impulse is stronger during climacteric periods; that is, the years of a person's life which are divisible by seven without a remainder. Nearly every normal person, at least once during his lifetime, feels an inclination to commit suicide. The notion quickly passes, being repulsive to the mind and contrary to the fundamental tendencies of the individual. Life should be viewed as a rich opportunity for experience. A certain amount of adversity should be accepted as inevitable, and is no justifiable cause for protracted morbidity.

+ Religiously, suicide was regarded as a sin against the Father; that is, against the cause of self.

+ The first consideration therefore must be: Is there such a thing as free will? This philosophy denies, bestowing upon man only the power of choice. Free will would imply that an individual could be anything that he wanted to be. This obviously is impossible. He possesses only the right of choice between things which he is capable of doing. As all men have a different degree of capacity, so the power of choice differs with each individual.

+ Power of selective action is in a sense, dharma, or the right to interpret and select certain elements from the karma that is at hand. For example, it is karma that an individual is to make a trip; but it is dharma that he may choose the means of transportation and to a certain degree the places where he will go. Having gained certain knowledge from this trip, it is his dharma to be able to use this knowledge to advance his own ends. But it is his inevitable karma to suffer, if in the advancement of his own purposes he commits any fault against natural law. Dharma is action; karma is reaction. Action once performed, the reaction is inevitable. Each individual has certain control over action. Therefore philosophy is not fatalistic concerning the performance of action, but it is fatalistic in its prediction of the inevitable consequences that will follow action.

+ Each man is free to do certain things, but having done them he must abide by their consequences. There can be no exception to this rule or the whole reasonable universe collapses.

+ It is karma that brings us into life according to the ripe destiny of the entity. Having come into this world we are capable of performing certain actions. We can study hard or we can be lazy; we can be efficient or inefficient; happy or sad; honest or dishonest. Therein lies our free will. All through life karma is confronting us with unfinished business, but we have the right to react to these karmic conditions according to our own understanding. Having started a course of procedure karma sets in again, and each action starts a new chain of consequences.

+ For this reason Buddhism teaches that there can be no end to reincarnation and karma until the causes of action die out in the individual. As long as the desire to be, to do, or to possess remains, we are subject to karma. It is fate that we meet certain obstacles. But it is integrity that we face them well and use them as steppingstones to greater achievement.

+ To end karma we must work out the old and cease to create new. When this end has been accomplished the entity itself becomes identified with the personality which has accomplished this relative perfection.

+ Is it, then, fatalism to believe that an action performed demands a certain compensation? If the action is good the compensation is good; if the action is wrong the compensation is discomfiting.

+ The same is true of the birth of the personality. The individual is born where he is and what he is because of the cumulative growth of his spiritual entity. Conceivably, the entity will produce nobler and more adequate personalities as rapidly as the existing personality improves and justifies it.

+ Certainly there is no reason why life should be left to chance.

+ Without the permanent entity to direct without universal law to circumscribe and assist, and without a universal wisdom to direct it, this would be a sorry world for a poor, mortal man who tries to maintain his free will in the midst of a universe about which he knows so little.

+ Man may achieve distinction in one of two ways. The first is called precocity, and the second experience. Any person who achieves fame or outstanding success prior to his twenty-fifth year is properly described as precocious. The normal expectancy which is violated by precocity dictates that position or distinction should arrive between the fortieth and fiftieth year as the result of the normal unfoldment of aptitudes.

+ Effort to associate genius with heredity has been conspicuously unsuccessful. The prodigy is usually separate and apart from the rest of his family. Nor is the offspring of genius endowed with the parental ability. Greatness does not appear to be communicable. It may often develop as the result of a conflict between inner ability and environmental circumstances.

+ The exceptional person is usually unable to explain the reason for his own precocity. Newton's theory of gravitation was not the result of observing a falling apple, but rather of a dream, the vividness of which impelled him to action. Beethoven and Schubert have specifically stated that they heard certain of their musical compositions as though played in the air before they committed them to paper.

+ If the incarnating personality is not the direct result of heredity but is merely attracted to an appropriate environment, then the personality is not dependent upon heredity for its precocity.

+ Precocity puts definite strain upon evolving organisms. Man, intended to mature slowly, is likely to upset body chemistry if the mental development is out of tune or adjustment with the physical progress. The first twenty-one years of life are years of body building, and if these biochemic processes are interfered with by the prodigious development of some specialized talent, frequently there is trouble in later life.

+ Either life is a series of fortuitous circumstances dominated by the principle of chance, or the law of consequence bestows upon each that which is merited by previous action. Accept law or chaos, pattern or confusion, as the rule of action.

+ It has been erroneously taught that karma might be overcome by breathing through the right nostril, meditating on the kundalini, or supplicating an adept. Various schools of metaphysical philosophy have built up huge followings by assuring human beings without the courage of their convictions that karma can be dissipated with a mantra, and that the whole character and temperament can be reformed by an affirmation.

+ In most cases only the more gullible have been caught in the nets of deliberate falsehood. Occasionally however an explanation has been advanced so temptingly devised that even the better type of mind has been influenced to disregard the Law and to hold the hope that some angelic hierarchy could wash away the sins and errors of several hundred lives.

+ Average enthusiastic believer sensed no contradiction between vicarious atonement and reincarnation and karma. Understanding neither doctrine, he could accept both. A great number of compromise cults teach a little of everything and not much of anything.

+ The Law abides in space; it governs the motion of space; it forms, maintains, and dissolves the world. The Law is not regarded as something to be feared or escaped, but rather the true hope and security of the wise. As surely as the Law punishes inadequacy, so surely it rewards adequacy. The man who lives by the Law need fear no other man nor his own ultimate fate. The Law both punishes and protects. It is the ever present cause of progress.

+ Integrity of his thought and action elevates the world teacher to the chief place among men, He is firmly supported by universal law, and manifests it in every thought, word, and action.

+ The laws of nature are scarcely the subject upon which elaborate theologies can be built. The doctrine of individual integrity is fatal to organized systems of religion.

+ Therefore, early in the history of faiths, the priestcrafts began the process of making their followers theology conscious. Right and wrong were no longer right and wrong. Prayers and offerings, especially offerings became the requisites of salvation. The result of such notions was ecclesiasticism. The priest or the preacher became the intermediary capable of bestowing divine blessing or forgiving human sin. The Law vanished and the despotism of dogma took its place.

+ Reincarnation and karma are the religious teachings of the New Age. Reincarnation and karma are merely mental and spiritual honesty applied to the process of living.

+ In a universe of unknown mysteries, reincarnation and karma stand out as knowable and usable.

+ Honest man desires no escape from the consequences of his own actions. He expects no liberation apart from self-perfection.

+ They should perform only such actions as they are willing to accept as consequence. They should evade no consequences which they realize are the results of personal karma. Life is the living out of cause and effect, each cause producing an effect commensurate with itself; each effect in turn setting new causes in motion. Every experience becomes a part of knowledge.

+ What you believe, you must do.

+ The Oriental desires to become, even as the Occidental desire to possess.

+ In one life so little can actually be accomplished; so large a part of hopes and ideals can never be realized.

+ Future existences depend upon present integrity. Therefore reincarnation is a stimulus to right action.

+ Where physical life is merely a passing incident in a larger pattern made up of numerous lives, the attitude toward living is different, less intense, less personal, less possessive and more detached. There is also a higher idealism. Much more can be accomplished in several lives than in one. Therefore the goal of living is further removed from the present than in a philosophy which teaches a single existence.

+ The reincarnationist does not believe in haste, stress or strain. It is the quality of accomplishment and not the rapidity of it that concerns such a mind. Whereas the West is ever hurrying though it knows not where it goes, the East proceeds slowly, exploring every detail of life. It has time to linger on its way. Two Chinese scholars will sip their tea by the hour, indifferent to the haste about them. For these scholars there is time for gentle conversation, for the study of art, for the admiring of a fine painting, and for the innumerable small formalities of the Confucian code. In the same way the Buddhist abbot in his saffron-colored robe spends hours pruning his wistaria or throwing crumbs to the golden carp in the monastery pool. The temptation to achieve at the expense of other men is gone. The haste to use up what little of life remains has no place among those who understand the Law.

+ There is no desire to be great as men know greatness; no mad questing after power or position. Who lives a prince may come again in rags. Merit lies not in commanding and controlling other men, but in a kind and gentle victory over self. The uselessness of position and possessions which cannot survive the dissolution of the flesh inclines the mind to temperate courses in a world of excesses and extremes.

+ The true understanding of karma solves, as we already have shown, the whole mystery of egotism. It is not the illusional self that goes on after the dissolution of the fleshly part; therefore the whims, desires, and appetites of the personality are of little consequence. They are not even important enough to be called good or evil. Conscious immortality is no desire of the Eastern mind. Therefore during life there is no resistance to those innumerable circumstances which normally would offend the ego. When the Westerner is reminded of his insignificance he is angry and resentful. But the Easterner, knowing truly how little he is, is not offended by criticism, but acknowledging all the faults of which he is suspected realizes that only lives, many lives, can correct them all.

+ Death is not the end of anything except a personality that in a certain sense is never actually real, being merely a shadow cast in matter by an immortal being who lives all the lives of the personalities which it creates.

+ Physical relationships, of father and son, of mother and daughter, of brother and sister, and of husband and wife. To the Buddhist, all associational relationships are temporary and illusional. There is no such thing as blood relationship; there are merely personalities living through the dream of relationship in order that certain experiences may be gained.

+ The purpose of all evolution is to achieve liberation; that is, to produce a personality into which the entity flows so perfectly and completely that there ceases to be any interval between the two. To achieve this end requires the disciplining of the personality. This discipline is made possible only because previous lives have enriched the new personality with sufficient wisdom to desire this discipline. Until that time is reached the personality is incapable of achieving liberation.

+ True liberation is the withdrawal of the personality; the end of the illusion of "l-ness". It is not the product of will power, meditation, concentration, or any of these exercises which are advocated as substitutes for personal experience and action. Man cannot think himself, will himself, or hope himself into the state of true enlightenment.

+ Having discovered a part of truth, but still partaking of considerable ignorance, the mind has a tendency to go off on tangents and to concoct innumerable erroneous beliefs relating to the subject. This has been the common calamity in the West. A phase of this mistake is indifference to the misfortunes of others. The attitude becomes one of "they have earned it so let them suffer it." This is not healthy. No matter how wise we may become, or how stupid others may appear to be, it is the duty of the disciple to assist the uninformed in any way possible.

+ Another phase is an intolerance toward people of other beliefs and a sense of personal superiority. Such attitudes destroy the improvement that has been gained, and the next personality sent out by the entity will probably be deprived of the knowledge of rebirth.

+ For the student just coming into the belief in rebirth and karma, or slightly advanced in the doctrine, certain suggestions may be in order. In the first place, live normally and happily. Prove that knowledge has increased tolerance and understanding, and not limited them. Balance the temperament, advancing simultaneously along several lines of accomplishment if possible. Do not become improvident, but realize that when the time comes for you to be free from physical responsibilities the entity will free you. Do not attempt virtues beyond your understanding simply because others tell about them. Do not aim at immediate emancipation or you will be sorely disappointed. Apply your beliefs to the circumstances affecting your life, and make sure that they work when they differ from your personal preferences. Teach them to others, but never force them upon a person who does not desire the knowledge of these laws. Do not permit impersonality to chill or harden your life, or permit yourself to become indifferent to social or environmental problems. Live what you believe, but make sure that you actually believe what you live.

+ East is old in conquest, pillage, and power. It has perceived inwardly the uselessness and impermanence of temporal superiority.

+ Nirvana is the suspension of all action; the inevitable result of advanced philosophical knowledge.

+ It should not be supposed that the entity enters nirvana. The attainment of nirvana is an experience of the final personality returning to the unconditioned consciousness of the entity itself. Nor is nirvana the end of evolution; it is merely the end of evolution as we know it, but not the end of growth. The enrity will send forth no more personalities, but in the next great cycle of life the entity will create another type of extension and achieve growth by other means. Nirvana, then, is the end of the personality-forming attribute of the entity.

+ At the dawn of the next cycle of evolution the eye of the self is opened, nirvana is over. With the previous nirvana time became eternity; with the reawakening, eternity becomes time. The Lord of the Experiences Adi-Buddha spins the new wheel and sends forth the next cycle of life. The old world is gone; the old personalities are gone; the old joys and the old sorrows are gone. New rules and new laws govern the new manifestation. In the new manvantara (world cycle) a new part of Adi-Buddha achieves evolution in a new part of space. Humanity is gone: it remains only as a memory in the eternal mind. The new creation we may not name, but like man it has its beginning and its end, and only the ageless entity survives all the changes. Therefore the Hindus call this entity the golden thread upon which are strung together like beads, planets and souls, worlds and beings.

Excerpts from “Reincarnation: The Cycle of Necessity” by Manly P Hall.