THE RIDDLE OF LIFE/PART 7

 

CHAPTER VII

 

THE RIDDLE OF LOVE AND HATE

 

To the great majority of us life presents a series of tangles and puzzles—tangles we cannot unravel, puzzles we cannot solve. Why are people born differing so widely in mental and in moral capacity? Why has one infant a brain denoting great intellectual and moral power, while another has a brain which marks him out as one who will be an idiot or a criminal? Why has one child good and loving parents and favourable circumstances, while another has profligate parents who detest him, and is reared amid the foulest surroundings? Why is one 'lucky' and another 'unlucky'? Why does one die old and another die young? Why is one person prevented by 'accidents' from catching a steamer or a train that is wrecked, while scores or hundreds of others perish unaided? Why do we like one person the moment we see him, while we as promptly dislike another? Questions like these are continually arising, and are as continually left unanswered, and yet answers are within reach; for all these seeming incongruities and injustices, these apparently fortuitous events, are merely the results of the working out of a few simple and fundamental natural laws. An understanding of these underlying laws makes life intelligible, thereby restoring our confidence in the divine order and endowing us with strength and courage to meet the vicissitudes of fortune. Troubles which strike us like 'bolts from the blue" are hard to bear, but troubles which arise from causes we can understand, and can therefore control, can be faced with patience and resignation.

 

The first principle that must be firmly grasped ere we can begin to apply it to the solving of life's problems is that of reincarnation. Man is essentially a spirit, a living and self-conscious individual, consisting of this self-conscious life in a body of very subtle matter; life cannot work without a body of some kind; that is, without a form of matter, however fine and subtle the matter may be, which gives it separate existence in this universe; bodies are often therefore spoken of as vehicles, that which carries the life, making it individual. This spirit, when he comes into the physical world by the gateway of birth, puts on a physical body as a man puts on an overcoat and hat to go out into the world beyond his own home; but the physical body is no more the man than the overcoat and hat are the body which wears them. As a man throws away worn-out garments and puts on new ones, so does the spirit cast off a worn-out body and take to himself another (Bhagavad-Gitd). When the physical body is outworn the man passes through the gateway of death, dropping the physical vesture and entering the 'unseen' world. After a long period of rest and refreshment, during which the experiences of the past life on earth are assimilated, and thus increase the powers of the man, he returns again to the physical world through the gateway of birth and takes on a new physical body, adapted for the expression of his increased capacities. When spirits which were to become human came into the world millennia ago, they were but embryos, like seeds, knowing neither good nor evil, with infinite possibilities of development—as being the offspring of God—but without any actual powers save that of thrilling feebly in response to external stimuli. All the powers latent within them had to be roused into active manifestation by experiences undergone in the physical world. By pleasure and pain, by joy and suffering, by success and failure, by fruition and disappointment, by successive choices well and badly made, the spirit learns his lessons of laws that cannot be broken, and manifests slowly one by one his capacities for mental and moral life. After each brief plunge into the ocean of physical life—that period generally spoken of as 'a life'—he returns to the invisible world laden with the experiences he has gathered, as a diver rises from the sea with the pearls he has riven from the oyster-bed. In that invisible world he transmutes into moral and mental powers all the moral and mental materials he has gathered in the earth-life just closed, changing aspirations into capacity to achieve, changing the results of efforts that failed into forces for future success, changing the lessons of mistakes into prudence and foresight, changing past sufferings into endurances, changing errors into repulsions from wrong doings, and the sum of experience into wisdom. As Edward Carpenter well wrote: 'All the pains that I suffered in one body became powers that wielded in the next.'

 

When all that was gathered has been assimilated—the length of the heavenly life depending on the amount of mental and moral material that had been collected—the man returns to earth; he is guided, under conditions to be explained in a moment, to the race, the nation, the family, which is to provide him with his next physical body, and that body is moulded in accordance with his requirements, so as to serve as a fit instrument for his powers, as a limitation which expresses his deficiencies. In the new physical body, and in the life in the invisible world that follows its off-throwing at the death which destroys it, he re-treads on a higher level a similar cycle, and so again and again for hundreds of lives, until all his possibilities as a human being have become active powers, and he has learned every lesson that this human life can teach. Thus the spirit unfolds from infancy to youth, from youth to maturity, becoming an individualised life of immortal strength and of boundless utility for divine service. The struggling and unfolding spirits of one humanity become the guardians of the next humanity, the spiritual intelligences that guide the evolution of worlds posterior to their own in time. We are protected, helped and taught by spiritual intelligences who were men in worlds older than our own, as well as by the most highly evolved men of our own humanity; we shall repay the debt by protecting, helping and teaching human races in worlds that are now in the early stages of their growth, preparing to become, untold ages hence, the homes of future men. If we find around us many who are ignorant, stupid and even brutal, limited in both mental and moral powers, it is because they are younger men than we are, younger brothers, and hence their errors should be met with love and helpfulness instead of with bitterness and hatred. As they are, so were we in the past; as we are, so shall they be in the future; and both they and we shall go onward and onward through the everlasting ages.

 

This then is the first fundamental principle which renders life intelligible when applied to the conditions of the present; I can only work out from it in detail here the answer to one of the questions propounded above—namely, why we like one person and dislike another at sight—but all the other questions might be answered in similar fashion. For the complete answering, however, we need to grasp also the twin principle of reincarnation—that of Karma, or the law of causation.

 

This may be stated in words familiar to all: 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' Amplifying this brief axiom, we understand by it that a man forms his own character, becoming that which he thinks; that he makes the circumstances of his future life by the effects of his actions upon others. Thus: if I think nobly I shall gradually make for myself a noble character, but if I think basely, a base character will be formed. 'Man is created by thought; that which he thinks upon in one life he becomes in another', as a Hindu scripture has it. If the mind dwells continually on one train of thought, a groove is formed into which the thought-force runs automatically, and such a habit of thought survives death, and, since it belongs to the ego, is carried over to the subsequent earth-life as a thought-tendency and capacity. Habitual study of abstract problems, to take a very high instance, will result, in another earth-life, in a well-developed power for abstract thinking, while flippant, hasty thinking, flying from one subject to another, will bequeath a restless, ill-regulated mind to the following birth into this world. Selfish coveting of the possessions of others, though never carried out into active cheating in the present, makes the thief of a later earth-life, while hatred and revenge, secretly cherished, are the seeds from which the murderer springs. So again, unselfish loving yields as harvest the philanthropist and the saint, and every thought of compassion helps to build the tender and pitiful nature which belongs to one who is 'a friend to all creatures'. The knowledge of this law of changeless justice, of the exact response of nature to every demand, enables a man to build his character with all the certainty of science, and to look forward with courageous patience to the noble type he is gradually but surely evolving.

 

The effects of our actions upon others mould the external circumstances of a subsequent earth-life. If we have caused widespread happiness we are born into very favourable physical surroundings or come into them during life, while the causing of widespread misery results in an unhappy environment. We make relationships with others by coming into contact with them individually, and bonds are forged by benefits and injuries, golden links of love or iron chains of hate. This is Karma. With these complementary ideas clearly in the mind, we can answer our question very easily.

 

Links between egos, between individualised spirits, cannot antedate the first separation of those spirits from the Logos, as drops may be separated from the ocean. In the mineral and vegetable kingdoms the life that expresses itself in stones and plants has not yet evolved into continued individualised existence. The word 'group-soul' has been used to express the idea of this evolving life as it animates a number of similar physical organisms. Thus a whole order, say of plants, like grasses, umbelliferous or rosaceous plants, is animated by a single group-soul, which evolves by virtue of the simple experiences gathered through its countless physical embodiments. The experiences of each plant flow into the life that informs its whole order, and aid and hasten its evolution. As the physical embodiments become more complex, subdivisions are set up in the group-soul, and each subdivision slowly and gradually separates off, the number of embodiments belonging to each subdivisional group-soul thus formed diminishing as these subdivisions increase. In the animal kingdom this process of specialisation of the group-souls continues, and in the higher mammalia a comparatively small number of creatures is animated by a single group-soul, for nature is working toward individualisation. The experiences gathered by each are preserved in the group-soul, and from it affect each newly-born animal that it informs; these appear as what we call instincts, and are found in the newly-born creature. Such is the instinct which makes a newly-hatched chicken fly to seek protection from danger under the brooding wing of the hen, or that whicn impels the beaver to build its dam. The accumulated experiences of its race, preserved in the group-soui, inform every member of the group. When the animal kingdom reaches its highest expressions, the final subdivisions of the group-soul animate but a single creature, until finally the divine life pours out anew into this vehicle now ready for its reception, and the human ego takes birth and the evolution of the self-conscious intelligence begins.

 

From the time that a separated life animates a single body, links may be set up with other separated lives, each likewise dwelling in a single tabernacle of flesh. Egos, dwelling in physical bodies, come into touch with each other; perhaps a mere physical attraction draws together two egos dwelling respectively in male and female bodies. They live together, have common interests, and thus links are set up. If the phrase may be allowed, they contract debts to each other, and there are no bankruptcy courts in nature where such liabilities may be cancelled. Death strikes away one body, then the other, and the two have passed into the invisible world; but debts contracted on the physical plane must be discharged in the world to which they belong, and those two must meet each other again in earth-life and renew the intercourse that was broken off. The great spiritual Intelligences who administer the law of Karma guide these two into rebirth at the same period of time, so that their earthly lifetime may overlap, and in due course they meet. If the debt contracted be a debt of love and of mutual service, they will feel attracted to each other; the egos recognise each other, as two friends recognise each other, though each be wearing a new dress, and they clasp hands, not as strangers but as friends. If the debt be one of hatred and of injury, they shrink apart with a feeling of repulsion, each recognising an ancient enemy, eyeing each other across the gulf of wrongs given and received. Cases of these types must be known to every reader, although the underlying cause has not been known; and indeed these sudden likings and dislikings have often foolishly been spoken of as 'causeless', as though, in a world of law, anything could be without a cause. It by no means follows that egos thus linked together necessarily re-knit the exact relationship broken off down here by the hand of death. The husband and wife of one earth-life might be born into the same family as brother and sister, as father and son, as father and daughter, or in any other blood relationship. Or they might be born as strangers and meet for the first time in youth or in maturity, to feel for each other an overmastering attraction. In how brief a time we become closely intimate with one who was a stranger, while we live beside another for years and remain aliens in heart! Whence these strange affinities, if they are not the remembrances in the egos of the loves of their past? 'I feel as if I had known you all my life', we say to a friend of a few weeks, while others whom we have known all our lives are to us as sealed books. The egos know each other, though the bodies be strangers, and the old friends clasp hands in perfect confidence and understand each other; and this, although the physical brains have not yet learned to receive those impressions of memory that exist in the subtle bodies, but that are too fine to cause vibrations in the gross matter of the brain, and thus to awaken responsive thrills of consciousness in the physical body.

 

Sometimes, alas! the links, being of hatred and wrongdoing, draw together ancient enemies into one family, there to work out in misery the evil results of the common past. Ghastly family tragedies have their roots deep down in the past, and many of the awful facts recorded by such agencies as the Society for the Protection of Children, the torture of helpless children even by their own mothers, the malignant ferocity which inflicts pain in order to exult in the sight of agony—all this becomes intelligible when we know that the soul in that young body has in the past inflicted some horror on the one who now torments it, and is learning by terrible experience how hard are the ways of wrong.

 

The question may arise in the mind of some: 'If this be true, ought we to rescue the children?' Most surely, yes. It is our duty to relieve suffering wherever we meet it, rejoicing that the Good Law uses us as the almoners of mercy.

Another question may come: 'How can these links of evil be broken? Will not the torture inflicted forge a new bond, by which the cruel parent will hereafter be the victim, and the tortured child become the oppressor?' Aye! 'Hatred ceases not by hatred at any time', quoth the Lord Buddha, knowing the law. But He breathed the secret of release when He continued: 'Hatred ceases by love. When the ego who has paid his debt of the past by the suffering of inflicted wrong is wise enough, brave enough, great enough to say, amid the agony of body or of mind: 'I forgive!' then he cancels the debt he might have wrung from his ancient foe, and the bond forged by hate melts away forever in the fire of love.

 

The links of love grow strong in every successive earth-life in which the linked two clasp hands, and they have the added advantage of growing stronger during the life in heaven, whereinto the links of hate cannot be carried. Egos that have debts of hate between them do not touch each other in the heavenly land, but each works out such good as he may have in him without contact with his foe.

 

When the ego succeeds in impressing on the brain of his physical body his own memory of his past, then these memories draw the egos yet closer, and the tie gains a sense of security and strength such as no bond of a single life can give; very deep and strong is the happy confidence of such egos, knowing by their own experiences that love does not die.

 

Such is the explanation of affinities and repulsions, seen in the light of reincarnation and Karma.

NEXT CHAPTER 

Karma—Law of Action and Re-Action