Reincarnation Part 24

[Footnote 219: Islam is now awaiting the coming of the Mahdi, its last prophet; prophecy says that he will be the reincarnation of Mohammed (_Borderland_, April, 1907).]

[Footnote 220: This is the reason Afghans still undertake pilgrimages to Mecca.]

[Footnote 221: Chap. 22, verses 5, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 41. Quoted by Lady Caithness in _Old Truths in a New Light._]

[Footnote 222: Chap. 23, verses 17, 26, 27, etc.]

[Footnote 223: By religion is here understood the devotional aspect and the scientific side of the teaching of Truth, _i.e._, the science of the divine Soul.]

[Footnote 224: _Nirmanakayas_ are beings who have become perfect, and who, instead of entering the Nirvana their efforts have won, renounce peace and bliss in order to help forward their human brothers in their evolution.]

[Footnote 225:

O! genus attonitum gelidae formidine mortis, Quid Styga, quid tenebras, quid nomina vana timetis, Materiam vatum, falsique piacula mundi?

Corpora sive rogus flamma, seu tabe vetustas Abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis Morte carent animae: semperque priore relicta Sede, novis domibus habitant vivuntque receptae . . . . . . . . .

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit ...

[Footnote 226: _S. John's Gospel_, chap. 9, verse 2.]

[Footnote 227: The following pa.s.sages are taken from three of C.

Savy's works: _Comment. du Sermon sur la Montagne_ (1818); _Pensees et Meditations_ (1829); _Dieu et l'Homme en cette Vie et Audela_ (1838).]

[Footnote 228: _De l'Humanite_, vol. 1., p. 233.]

[Footnote 229: _Theorie de l'Unite Universelle_, vol. 2, p. 304-348.]

[Footnote 230: _Vie Future au Point de Vue Socialiste_, and _Confession d'un Cure de Village._]

[Footnote 231: _Destinees de l'ame._]

[Footnote 232: Alluding to the complete renewing of the material molecules of the body, every seven years.]

[Footnote 233: Whose consciousness, however (along with memory), is at the summit of the hierarchy which is its origin.]

[Footnote 234: Molecules and atoms have a particular consciousness of their own which does not cease to function when, on the departure of the individual soul, the body, as such, ceases to function.]

[Footnote 235: If sufficiently developed, however, he can be made conscious of this in a higher vehicle.]

[Footnote 236: When man has barely entered the human stage--in primitive man.]

[Footnote 237: Consciousness begins in the physical body, its simplest instrument.]

[Footnote 238: There are other vehicles above the causal body.]

[Footnote 239: All the powers of the Universe are in the divine germ, as the tree is in its seed.]

[Footnote 240: Because it no longer has a dense physical body. There are exceptions to this rule, but there is no necessity to mention them here.]

[Footnote 241: The Christian Heaven, the _Devachan_ of Theosophy.]

[Footnote 242: This character has already appeared on the astral plane, though not in so striking a fas.h.i.+on.]

[Footnote 243: Unity exists on the plane of the Ego, and the latter sends his thought into the forms made out of his vehicles; this will be understood only by the few, but an explanation cannot be given at this point, without writing a volume on the whole of theosophy.]

[Footnote 244: We are still dealing with the ordinary man.]

[Footnote 245: When liberation is attained. This can be effected rapidly by those who _will_ to attain it.]

[Footnote 246: Only four of the seven atomic _spirillae_ are active in this our fourth planetary Round (one for each Round). They can be rapidly vitalised by the will.]

[Footnote 247: When the soul is "centred" in it.]

[Footnote 248: The vibrations, whether registered as they pa.s.s or not registered, continue their course through the substance of the Universe.]

[Footnote 249: Science even now recognises four of these dimensions.]

[Footnote 250: This is said in order to satisfy such as are of a metaphysical turn of mind, and frequently p.r.o.ne to criticism.]

[Footnote 251: When the inner senses are developed.]

[Footnote 252: A question will doubtless at once rise to the minds of many readers; how can the same atoms produce, at once and almost eternally, millions of different facts? We will reply briefly. Science has been able to conceive of an explanation of a fact apparently quite as absurd--the phenomenon of the b.a.l.l.s of Russian platinum mentioned by Zollner (_Transcendental Physics_, ch. 9) which pa.s.s through hermetically sealed gla.s.s tubes, and that of the German copper coins dropping through the bottom of a sealed box on to a slate--by accepting a fourth dimension of s.p.a.ce. Who would affirm that the dimensions of s.p.a.ce are limited to four? Or that the science of the immediate future will not be brought face to face with facts, and find, in a fifth or sixth dimension of s.p.a.ce, a possible explanation of the phenomenon here mentioned, one which initiated seers can test whenever they please, because it is a real fact?

Still, as these seers say, the coa.r.s.est atoms generally register only one image, others register fresh images, so that in many cases there is quite a superposition of images which must be carefully examined to avoid errors.]

[Footnote 253: A psychometrist is a person endowed with a very fine nervous system, capable of repeating the delicate vibrations which act upon the inmost atoms of a body. In this way, by placing himself in presence of an object that has been in contact with some individual, he can clearly describe the latter's physical, moral, and mental characteristics. Hitherto, Buchanan and Professor Denton have been the most remarkable psychometrists; the experiments related in their works have been made before witnesses and permit of no doubt whatever as to the reality of this strange faculty.]

[Footnote 254: Instances of this are numerous in Professor Denton's _The Soul of Things._]

[Footnote 255: This memory is preserved in the first "life-wave."]

[Footnote 256: This is _instinct_, _i.e._, a semi-conscious memory, located in the "life-wave" of the second Logos.]

[Footnote 257: The divine Essence incarnated in the matter of the lower planes of the Universe.]

[Footnote 258: When the "essence," after the destruction of the form to which it gives life, no more returns to the parent-block from which it came, it has become individualised, ready to enter into the _human kingdom._]

[Footnote 259: The memory of the third life-wave, of the first Logos.]

[Footnote 260: Everything, for instance, that concerns the planes of the planetary system, on which it has finished its evolution.]

[Footnote 261: The pa.s.sing of consciousness from the causal body to the nascent buddhic body.]

[Footnote 262: The buddhic plane (the one immediately above the mental) is one in which the forms are so subtle that they no longer _limit_ the Life (_the Soul of the World_) animating them. This Life comes directly into contact with the Life which causes all forms to live; it then sees Unity: it sees itself everywhere and in everything, the joys and sorrows of forms other than its own are its joys and sorrows, for it is universal Life.]

[Footnote 263: This body is composed of physical matter, and therefore belongs to the physical plane. It has been given a special name, not only because it is made of ether, but because it can be separated from the physical body.]

[Footnote 264: The whole of the bodies: mental, astral, and physical.]