Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul Part 6

MAN VERSUS WOMAN.

Man, living entirely in his physical nature, goes on and on in the gratification of the senses until he becomes satiated, and "blase," and there is nothing satisfactory left for him upon the sensuous plane.

Then he either crystallizes into a hard, selfish being, or plunges still deeper into the slough of sensuality from which Divine Love alone can rescue him. This power is most often manifested by woman, the natural law-giver and redeemer. For ages man has projected his selfish human will into all the affairs of life, thus setting aside the higher law. In the love relations he has specially dominated woman, reversing the divine order of nature, and thus killing out all possible inspiration, and consequent happiness. Everywhere he has set up his own l.u.s.tful desires as the rule and right of life in his relationship to woman, destroying the spiritual sacrament of marriage; and by his selfishness and greed of power, he has reduced her to a condition of prost.i.tution. He outrages the helpless ones who have confided their honor, and their lives to his keeping, and the law--the vile, cursed, man-made law--upholds him in this slaughter of all that should make his heaven of trusting love. The wails of the wronged ones--specially those who suffer in the marriage relation--go up incessantly to G.o.d, and the woe of the children who, through these conditions, have inherited only animal love and instinct is enough to drown the "music of the spheres."

Parenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at some period of incarnation exercise this important function. To the uses of reproduction, the animal love with its bl.u.s.tering activities of expression, is, rightly understood, adjusted. But above and beyond this is the spiritual union which brings forth children of the mind, the fruitage of the soul, manifest in n.o.ble thoughts and brave deeds.

Every expression of love, however crude and animal, is an impulsion of the flesh-enveloped soul toward the source of all love, and however distasteful one may seem, to such as have evolved a spiritual consciousness, and the demand for soul satisfaction, it cannot be ignored.

Through the pain of satiety, of disease, or suspended activity of the love nature, the ego at last senses its need of G.o.d. It comes to know that nothing less than divine love can ever satisfy this demand of the heart. The constant tendency of the inspired human being is to extremes. The "golden mean" is the "high water mark" of real cultivation. We have on one side the suppression of the ascetic, and at the other end of the line the abandonment of the debauchee--both sinful and false because extreme, both casting a reproach upon the laws of G.o.d as outworked in, and through nature. The ascetic, seeing the harmful results to the soul attending the usual unlimited, and undisciplined expression of nature which man accords to his supposed necessities, draws the line by cutting off all surplus of physical supplies and, stifling the cries of pa.s.sion, retires into a cave or cell, and into himself, thus totally ignoring all the necessary activities attending the development of this planet and of the human race. He may thus reach a high alt.i.tude of purely spiritual perception; but it is, after all, a sublimated selfishness. His example is of no benefit to the world's workers. He is not of those who think and feel, and who are in the way of divulging esoteric knowledges to the quest of the vast army of earnest seekers after light upon these underlying laws of human life.

For the control by man of the love, and the life of woman there is a cut-and-dried sentiment and an enforced law concerning the segregated exercise of a natural function. By her acceptance, or rejection of this onesided "morale," is woman judged pure or impure, blessed or cursed, as the case may be. If this rule could be enforced equally upon both s.e.xes, if there were not two distinct sets of moral laws, one for man, and quite another for woman, there would be no such injustice.

As it is, there is but one way left open for woman. She must develop the power and will to be a law unto herself, regardless of the suspicion, and brutality of man, and with this also indifference to the foolness and the weak protest of her fellow slaves--women. These are "long, long thoughts." Ages must elapse ere the males of our kind will have evoluted up to a status where they will see that through justice to woman alone can they secure to themselves any degree of worthy, or lasting happiness, or satisfaction.

NATURAL CRUELTY OF THE UNDEVELOPED.

The most unaccountable phase of the minds of the leaders of religions has been their persistent effort to make their fellow beings wretched and miserable instead of glad and happy. We expect savagery from the Comanchee Indians and other primitive tribes and races; but from self-styled Christians the history of their cruelties is astounding.

It is pure devil worship--that is what it is--if they but knew it.

One of the beautiful plans of theologians and priests for scaring half-witted people into their individual folds has been telling them that they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins, the "sin against the Holy Ghost." The utterly "unpardonable sin" of all sins. This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened numbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modic.u.m of brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to the point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in lunatic asylums.

THE WORST SIN.

The much speculated over "sin against the Holy Ghost," the so-called "unpardonable sin" is the sin that men and women commit against _themselves_; for the most holy of all ghosts, or spirits, is that portion of G.o.d--the universal Spirit--embodied in their own separate personalities, and it is only "unpardonable" in that it sets the soul back from its possible and intended progress toward its ultimate perfection.

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 pa.s.sed through many lives and has acc.u.mulated 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 G.o.dlike 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 superst.i.tions, 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 acc.u.mulate 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.ds.

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 G.o.d."

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 G.o.dly or G.o.dlike, though natural and necessary; with family relations; and with friends, public and private. Nearly every person who pa.s.ses 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 mult.i.tude, 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 ent.i.tles 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 pa.s.sed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them.

Sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until it pa.s.ses 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 G.o.ds. 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 superst.i.tions; their intellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds and vulgarizing ideas of G.o.d 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.

The n.o.blest 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.