Part 9

REINCARNATION.

The objections to the acceptance of a belief in the law of reincarnation are based upon the imperfect teaching, and the consequent inadequate understanding of the laws controlling such experiences.

Some of the reasons for disbelief are utterly illogical. For instance, one view is this: "I never want to come back to this earth after I once leave it." The fact is, that there could be no return to today's recognized conditions of life. If one were to return to this planet and become reembodied, he would find himself in some other country, and under such entirely changed conditions that he would be totally unconscious of being on the same world where he had formerly lived. Then, again, the law of vibration is so immanent in material things, the changes are so constantly undermining conditions and setting up quite others that if one were to return in one hundred or even in fifty years, it could not be the same, and that person could not be in any way subject to the same conditions, or to the same experiences.

Furthermore, it is nature's wise and provident law that there is hardly ever any memory of any previous life here. Still, after the soul has passed through many lives and has accumulated great knowledge, a vast consciousness which can not be laid aside, there come to individual souls faint gleams of memories of past experiences which, if heeded or understood, might become helpful and instructive, if not altogether consoling.

There has never been a time when the needs of humanity have so reached the great spiritual overlords of this planet as at present. Or, that those needs have been so responded to by the return to earth of wise, and godlike spirits as now. Many of these have sought to approach humanity through personal reembodiment in the flesh. It would be well for the world if, instead of cramming the brains of children with effete ideas and superstitions, the messages of these wise ones could be listened to and heeded.

A thorough understanding of the laws of reembodiment, so far as we can know them, entirely refutes the belief and the feeling of the injustice of the Creator towards any human being. The law of evolution carries the soul along from one expression of life to another giving to each individual the opportunity to accumulate such knowledge, and to grow such character as shall finally bring it to a state of perfection. The discrepancies in human life are largely external. The millionaire, envied by less fortunate beings, may be far below the poor, struggling laborer in point of real unfoldment of soul. And again, people so favored in this material experience of life may be forced by the very nature of existence to return into humble conditions to learn the real lessons of life here.

We are not the arbiters of our own destiny, and the sooner we conceive the idea of non-resistence to fate, realize that our lives are guided by unerring law, and simply set ourselves to trying to understand the meanings of our experiences, and to trying to wring from each one all that it is intended to teach us, seeking to learn from it all that we possibly can in order that we may not be forced to be taught the lessons over again, the better for our growth and happiness.

This earth, our birth place, our kindergarten school, and the university from which we must each graduate, having once received us, can never let go its hold upon one of its children until this final result is attained. Over and over again, the lives of all who belong to this planet pass into the invisible realms of Nature to rest from the sordid and wearisome experiences of material life, and again return to seek out further growth and understanding, until the final culmination is reached. The soul is hurried on through its experiences of departing and returning, until earth has no further lesson, no further service to perform. Then, indeed, it may graduate and ascend to its place among the gods.

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Newly-embodied souls might be considered as raw material flung out upon the sea of life to be ground and polished by experience, and grown into a semblance of perfection befitting the "children of God."

PROCESSES OF REINCARNATION.

Spirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through the vibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind. The individual ego gathers up from each incarnation--if it is true to itself--some knowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain. Its experiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest to highest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever known. This is the justice of the great Creator. The king today has been in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a moment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might remember and know how 'tis himself. Men and women of thought, of great character have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from the destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results of labor and effort.

When the practised soul familiarizes itself with the newly-born, fleshly tabernacle it is to inhabit and use for a long or a short time, it broods over the unconscious being, and at the first indication of intelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life, and what thus comes in is there to stay. The growth of the child, the development of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of the brain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its use upon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, the environment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons.

The soul, the ego, thus placed, is bound and shackled by its human heredity. This is inevitable, it has no choice as to its lineaments or figure. It in a sense bears the "sins of the world"; it can in no way separate itself, really, from the whole human family.

When the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from any cause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can no longer respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is called death--physical dissolution. But this change is simply the unclothing of the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to return again to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to its previous stock of knowledge. The individual soul in each incarnation forms for itself ties more or less real and lasting--with the mother, the fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters upon its earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may, or may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; with family relations; and with friends, public and private. Nearly every person who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side with trains of friends to whom he is attached, and whom he will not forget, and he will stay on and on in his heaven till every claim upon his love, or service is fully satisfied. No more severing of ties; no more broken hearts, or disappointed hopes. No injustice, full fruition in heaven.

This adjustment measured by earthly reckoning may take long reaches of time, but finally, the soul, stirred by the eternal law of progress, of unfoldment, repeats its former experience, drinks of the cup of forgetfulness, and returns again to learn in the great university of unfolding life on this planet. A vast multitude, it is coming and going, unceasingly moving on. No two alike; each in its place pressing forward to the station which the totality of its experiences through many lives entitles it. There is but one law, but one method that abides. It is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it; all who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have already passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them.

Sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until it passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience. Whatever character anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally. It is the reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth. Great souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtue of their many incarnations. Through the great variety of experiences gained, they have come to know. They have earned the right to be what they are. There are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance and hypocracy masquerading as the real thing, but they do not last. Pretenders are soon unmasked and taken at their true value.

Sometimes the spirit is strong enough to ignore its present surroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its material heredity. It depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit whether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to the pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and lose the opportunity for further growth.

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.

Nearly all so-called civilized people set to work to cram the minds of their children, at the first indication of any degree of intelligence, with a religious bias such as they themselves have inherited or have been taught. Then the intellect must be shaped, forced and driven into accepted moulds, and the human being is considered ready to be turned out into the world to fight the battle which everyone, in one way or another, must fight all along the way of human life--to begin to test the value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has been furnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage from birth to the final exit from this state of being. It has taken uncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity we see on earth today. Here Nature calls a halt, saying: "As the handmaid, the co-worker with your Creator, I have brought you along to the point where you look and seem almost as gods. There is in each of you a divine ego--a thought of your Creator--a sure guide to perfection. To reach this goal must be now your constant endeavor. There is a spiritual body, the outgrowth of the physical."

Thousands of children, too young to choose for themselves, are being fettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; their intellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds and vulgarizing ideas of God and his universe. There are numbers of Spiritualists and "liberal" men and women who expose the tender minds of their children to these same influences for society's sake, knowing though they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to free the mind of such serious bias, and re-educate it aright.

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The noblest teaching is that which puts us en rapport with our own inner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions. No truth, however manifested, can adjust itself to our soul's needs, save as it finds in us a response through that preparation which comes from a certain degree of previous knowledge.

EGOTISM.

Egotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rights and the possibilities of their real selves, their ego. Without it human beings would not stand up on their hind legs, they would crawl. It is at the same time a necessity and a danger. It has never been settled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates the awful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism induces insanity. "Keep us sane" is the wisest of all prayers, the greatest demand one can make upon his consciousness.

People pass into the spirit world in the full bloom of their egotism; hordes of them return to tell their friends things they know absolutely nothing about, and the folks on this side believe all they say, and so fool ignorance is passed along and stays in the minds of those who listen to the "messages" of egotism and ignorance. There are "dead loads" of people who think this is all there is of Spiritualism. While it is blessed that friends can return, and comfort the mourning ones by their assurances of remembrance and love, this should never be the final result sought for. Those who have lived but a limited time in the spirit world--the world of causes, of law--cannot teach people here the knowledge that can satisfy their souls. But there are educated souls, who have once lived honored and useful lives here, who are only too glad to respond to the needs of inquiring humanity, teaching them the ways of wisdom, and lifting them out of ignorance and darkness into the light.

RESPONSIVENESS.

Surely we are trying to solve the biggest problems before the class. The people who are our profoundest teachers, through whom come our largest experiences and knowledge are often most unconscious of their influence on other minds; and this is lawful, for the moment a human soul begins to wriggle either from anxiety or egotism, the divine "chemical affinities" are disturbed.