New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century Part 11

CHAPTER XVIII

INDIAN TRANSMIGRATION AND THE CHRISTIAN HERE AND HEREAFTER

"The dew is on the lotus. Rise, good sun!

And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.

The sunrise comes!

The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.

If any teach Nirvana is to cease, Say unto such they lie.

If any teach Nirvana is to live, Say unto such they err."

(Buddha's teaching in Arnold's _Light of Asia_.)

[Sidenote: Over against Transmigration, Christian immortality is continuity of the individual's memory.]

To appreciate the impact of the Christian idea of the Here and Hereafter upon the Hindu idea of Transmigration and Absorption, the two ideas must be more fully examined. Stated briefly, the Christian idea is that after this life on earth comes an Eternity, whose character has been determined by the life on earth. The crisis of death terminates our bodily activities and renders impossible any further action, either virtuous or sinful, and ushers the soul, its ledger closed, its earthy limitations cast off, into some more immediate presence of G.o.d. If in communion with G.o.d, through its faith in Jesus Christ, the soul is in a state of blessedness; if still alien from G.o.d, the soul is in a state of utter misery, for its spiritual perception and its recollection of itself are now clear. That, at all events, seems a fair statement of the belief of many Protestants, so far as their belief is definite at all.

But over against transmigration, what are the essential and distinctive features of that Christian belief? Its essentially distinctive feature, both in the case of the blessed and of the miserable, is a _continuity_ of the consciousness in the life that now is with that which is to come.

The soul in bliss or misery is able to a.s.sociate its existing state with its past. Even on earth, as the modern preacher tells us, heaven and h.e.l.l are already begun. Over against the Hindu idea of transmigration, accordingly, we define the Christian idea of immortality as the continuity of our consciousness, or the immortality of the individual consciousness.

[Sidenote: Transmigration is essentially dissolution of the individual's memory.]

Per contra, the distinguishing feature of the Hindu doctrine of transmigration or rebirth is the interruption of consciousness, the dissolution of memory, at the close of the present existence. In the next existence there is no memory of the present.

"The draught of Lethe" does "await The slipping through from state to state."

The present life is a member of a series of lives; there are said to be 8,400,000 of them, each member of which is as unconscious of the preceding as you are of being I. As a seed develops into plant and flower and seed again, so the soul in each new member of the series develops a conscious life, lapses from consciousness, and hands on a germinal soul for a new beginning again. As the seed transmits the type, and also some variation from the type, so is the germinal soul transmitted through unconsciousness, enn.o.bled or degraded by each conscious existence it has lived. At each stage the germinal soul represents the totality, the net outcome of its existences, as in each generation of a plant the seed may be said to do. So far, the doctrine of transmigration is a doctrine of the evolution of a soul, a declaration that in a sense we are all that we have been, that virtue and vice will have their reward, that in a sense "men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves." It does not leave hard cases of heathen or of reprobates to the discernment and mercy of G.o.d; it offers them, instead, other chances in subsequent lives. A not unattractive doctrine it is, even although the attractive a.n.a.logy of the evolution of a plant breaks down. For in the scientific doctrine of evolution, individuals have no immortality _at all_; it is only the species that lives and moves on. But in Hinduism, as in Christianity, we are thinking of the continuity of the _individual_ souls.

[Sidenote: The end of transmigration is absorption into Deity.]

[Sidenote: The saint Ramkrishna's obliviousness of self.]

To proceed with the statement of the doctrine of transmigration. The climax of the transmigrations is Nirvana or extinction of the individual soul, according to the Buddhist, and union with or absorption into Deity, according to the Hindu.[111] Buddhism has gone from the land of its birth, as Christianity and even Judaism from Palestine, and I pa.s.s from the Buddhist doctrine. The Hindu climax, of absorption into Deity, is reached when by self-mastery personal desire is gone, and by profound contemplation upon Deity a pure-bred soul has lost the consciousness of separation from Deity. The distinction between _I_ and the great _Thou_ has vanished; the One is present in the mind not as an objective thought, but by a transformation of the consciousness itself. The words of Hindus themselves in the _Advanced Text-book of Hindu Religion_ are: The human soul (the Jivatmic seed) "grows into self-conscious Deity."

Listen also to the words of Swami Vivekananda, in the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, about his master, Ramkrishna Paramhansa's growing into self-conscious Deity: "Every now and then strange fits of G.o.d-consciousness came upon him.... He then spoke of himself as being able to do and know everything.... He would speak of himself as the same soul that had been born before as Rama, as Krishna, as Jesus, or as Buddha, born again as Ramkrishna.... He would say he was ... an incarnation of G.o.d Himself." Again Swami Vivekananda tells us: "From time to time Ramkrishna would entirely lose his own ident.i.ty, so much so as to appropriate to himself the offerings brought for the G.o.ddess" (to the temple in which he officiated). "Sometimes forgetting to adorn the image, he would adorn _himself_ with the flowers."[112] Transmigration is not necessarily bound up with the pantheistic view of the world, but in _Hinduism_, transmigration is only a ladder towards the realisation of the One.

[Sidenote: Contrasts--"Born again" and a spiritual aristocracy of long spiritual descent.]

[Sidenote: Heaven and h.e.l.l not necessary ideas in Transmigration.]

Radical differences from Christian thought emerge. In the Hindu conception, the acme is reached only by a spiritual aristocracy of long spiritual descent; for the common mult.i.tude there is no gospel of being born again in Christ, no guiding hand like that of Our Lord towards the Father's presence. The upward path, according to the Hindu idea, is the path of philosophical knowledge and of meditation, not the power of union with Jesus Christ to make us sons of G.o.d. Most striking difference perhaps of all--in the Hindu philosophical system there is no place for even the conceptions of heaven and h.e.l.l except as temporary halting-places between two incarnations of the soul, which practical necessity requires. For the soul, this world is the plane of existence; union with omnipresent Deity is the climax of existence that the Hindu devotee seeks to attain; yet not in a Hereafter, but as he sits on the ground no longer conscious of his self. "The beatific vision of Hinduism," says a recent pro-Hindu writer, "is to be relegated to no distant future."[113] Heaven and h.e.l.l are mocked at as absurdities by the new sect of the [=A]ryas in the United Provinces and the Punjab, who retain the doctrine of transmigration.[114]

[Sidenote: Several heavens and h.e.l.ls in popular Hinduism.]

Hindus are divided as to the existence of these temporary halting-places between the successive incarnations of the soul. The _Text-book of Hindu Religion_, already referred to, speaks unhesitatingly about their place in the Hindu system. The [=A]ryas, on the other hand, hold that the instant a soul leaves its body it enters another body just born. The soul is never naked--to employ a common figure. Of course in popular Hinduism it is not surprising to find not merely the ideas of Heaven and h.e.l.l, but even that each chief Deity has his own heaven and that there are various h.e.l.ls. In the Tantras or ritual books of modern Hinduism, there is frequent mention of such heavens and h.e.l.ls, and when the idea of rebirths is also met with, the rebirths are regarded as stages towards the reward or punishment of the _individual conscious_ souls. It is the popular idea of heaven that has given rise to the common euphemism for _to die_, namely, to become a deva or inhabitant of heaven.

[Sidenote: Transmigration, a.s.sociated with pessimism and pantheism, is likewise yielding.]

We have observed the pessimistic mood of India yielding before the improved conditions of life, and the brahmanical pantheism before the thought of G.o.d the Father. Bound up as the idea of transmigration has been with the pessimism and pantheism of India, we are prepared to find that it too is yielding. Of that we now ask what evidence there is in the ordinary speech and writings of educated India, apart from controversy or professedly Hindu writings, in which the accepted Indian orthodoxy would probably appear.

[Sidenote: Educated Hindus speak of the dead as if their former consciousness continued.]

From the ordinary speeches and writings of educated Hindus regarding the dead, no one would infer that their doctrinal standpoint was other than that of the ordinary religious Briton, namely, that the dead friend has returned to G.o.d or has been called away by G.o.d, or the like. A native judge in Bengal, one of the most distinguished leaders of the Hindu Revival, writes as follows: The beat.i.tude which the new Radha-Krishnaites aspire to "is not the Nirvana of the Vedantists, the quiescence of Rationalism. Nirvana and quiescence are merely negatives.

The beat.i.tude [of the new Radha-Krishnaites] is a positive something.

They do not aspire to unification with the divine essence. They prefer h.e.l.l with its torments to such unification."[115] A few years ago, at a public meeting in Calcutta, the acknowledged leader of Hinduism, speaking of a Hindu gentleman whose death we were lamenting, said: "G.o.d has taken him to himself"--certainly not a Hindu statement of the pa.s.sing of a soul. Similarly, in 1882 we find one n.o.bleman in Bengal writing to another regarding his mother's death: "It is my prayer to G.o.d that she may abide in eternal happiness in heaven."[116] Generations of Hindu students I have known to find pleasure in identifying themselves with Wordsworth's views of immortality:

"Trailing clouds of glory do we come From G.o.d who is our home,"

and

"The faith that looks through death."

[Sidenote: Transmigration now no more than a conventional explanation of how misfortunes befell one.]

Somewhat dreamlike Wordsworth's views may be, but his belief is clearly not in transmigration. To the educated Hindu, who may not consciously have rejected the idea of transmigration, the doctrine is really now no more than a current and convenient explanation of any misfortune that has befallen a person. "Why has it befallen him? He must have earned it in some previous existence. It is in the debit balance of the transactions in his lives." Such are the vague ideas floating in the air. Upon any individual's acts or plans for the future, the idea of transmigration seems to have no bearing whatever beyond a numbing of the will.[117] For in theory, the Hindu's fate is just. In strict logic no doubt the same numbing effect might be alleged about the Christian doctrine of predestination. Even when misfortune has overtaken an educated Hindu, I think I am justified in saying that the more frequent thought with him is now in keeping with the new theistic belief; the misfortune is referred to the will of G.o.d. As already said, it is a commonplace of the unfortunate student who has failed, to ascribe his failure to G.o.d's will.

[Sidenote: Transmigration and Predestination more properly contrasted.]

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.tration from actual fact.]

There is room for the Christian thought of the Hereafter, because in reality, as theologians know, the doctrine of transmigration stands over against the Christian doctrine of predestination rather than over against the Christian doctrine of the Here and Hereafter. Transmigration is a doctrine of what has gone before the present life rather than of what will follow. Every educated Anglo-Indian whom I have consulted agrees that in a modern Hindu's mouth transmigration is only a theory of the incidence of actual suffering. Here is the doctrine of _karma_ (works), that is of transmigration or merited rebirth, in the actual life of India--transmigration and the pessimistic helplessness of which I have spoken? In the last great famine of 1899-1900, in a village in South-western India, a missionary found a victim of famine lying on one side of the village street, and not far off, upon the other side, two or three men of the middle cla.s.s. The missionary reproached them for their callousness. What might be answered for them is not here to the point; their answer for themselves was, "It is his _karma_." The missionary did what he could for the famine sufferer, and then when repa.s.sing the group could not forbear remarking to them, "You see you were wrong about his _karma_." "Yes, we were wrong," they replied. "It was his _karma_ to be helped by you." The same views of karma and of transmigration, as referring to the past, not the future, are apparent in a recent number of _The Inquirer_, a paper conducted in Calcutta for the benefit of Hindu students and others. I take the following from the question column: "Do Christians believe in the doctrine of reincarnation? If not, how do you account for blindness at birth?" The questioner's idea is plain, and the coincidence with the question put to Christ in St. John's Gospel, chapter ix, is striking. Hindus thus have room for an idea of the _future_ of the soul, as Christians, on their side, have for a theory of the soul's origin.

[Sidenote: The idea of the Hereafter not dynamical with Christians at present.]

The Christian idea of the Hereafter cannot, as yet, be called a strongly dynamical doctrine of Christianity in the sense that the Person of Our Lord has proved dynamical. Not that interest in the subject is lacking.

I have referred to questions put by educated Hindus in _The Inquirer_.

Out of fifty-seven questions I find eight bearing on the Christian doctrine of the Hereafter or the Hindu doctrine of Transmigration. In the _Magazine of the Hindu College_, _Benares_, out of fourteen questions I find four bearing on the same subject. The want of force in the Christian doctrine no doubt reflects its want of force for Christians themselves in this present positive age. For even Tennyson himself was vague:

"That which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home."

[Sidenote: The new sects and the doctrine of Transmigration.]

[Sidenote: The _Text-book of Hindu Religion_.]

[Sidenote: A European's place on the ladder of transmigration.]

Of the sects of recent origin, only the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic a.s.sociation rejects the doctrine of transmigration avowedly. We have already said that the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j or Vedic Theists of the United Provinces and the Punjab hold strongly to the doctrine. It is noteworthy that _they_ should do so, the Vedas being their standards wherewith to test Modern Hinduism, for the doctrine of transmigration is scarcely hinted at in the Vedas, and in the oldest, the Rigveda, there is said to be no trace of the doctrine.[118] It appears in the later writings, the Upanishads, and is manifest throughout the Code of Manu (c. A.D. 200).

Mrs. Besant, chief figure among the Indian Theosophists, now virtually a Hindu Revival a.s.sociation, preaches the doctrine, and, in fact, lectured on it in Britain in 1904. At the same time, transmigration is no part of the Theosophist's creed. As might be expected, the _Text-book of Hindu Religion_, of the Hindu College, Benares, gives the doctrine of transmigration a prominent place, although the explicitness with which it is set forth is very surprising to one acquainted with the way the doctrine is generally ignored by the educated. I quote from the _Hindu Text-book_, published in 1903, that Westerns may realise that in dealing with transmigration we are not dealing simply with some old-world doctrine deciphered from some palm-leaf written in some ancient character. After describing--here following the ancient philosophical writings, the Upanishads--how the Jivatma or Soul comes up through the various existences of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms until it reaches the human stage, the Text-book proceeds to describe the further upward or downward process. It is declared that the downward movement (from man to animal) is now much rarer than formerly--that concession is made to modern ideas--but the _law_ of the downward process is as follows: "When a man has so degraded himself below the human level that many of his qualities can only express themselves through the form of a lower creature, he cannot, when his time for rebirth comes, pa.s.s into a human form. He is delayed, therefore, and is attached to the body of one of the lower creatures as a co-tenant with the animal, vegetable, or mineral Jiva [life], until he has worn out the bonds of these non-human qualities and is fit to take birth again in the world of men. A very strong and excessive attachment to an animal may have similar results."

Where modern ideas reach in India, one can understand such ideas as those melting away. A second pa.s.sage from the Text-book is interesting, as showing the compiler's idea of the place of a life in Europe in the chain of existences, although in this case also the statement is made only about "ancient days." "The Jivatma [soul] was prepared for entrance into each [Indian] caste through a long preliminary stage _outside_ India; then he was born into India and pa.s.sed into each caste to receive its definite lessons; then was born away from India to practise these lessons; usually returning to India to the highest of them, in the final stages of his evolution." In other words, people of the outer world, say Europeans, are rewarded for virtue by being born into the lowest Indian caste, and then, after rising to be brahmans in India, they go back to Europe to give it the benefit of their acquirements; and finally crown their career by reappearing in India as a brahman philosopher or jogi.

Surely we may laugh at this without being thought unsympathetic or narrow-minded. We recall Mrs. Besant's a.s.sertion that she had a dim recollection of an existence as a brahman pandit in India. According to the spiritual genealogy of the _Hindu Text-book_, she may hope to be born next in an Indian child, and become a jogi possessed of saving knowledge of the ident.i.ty of self with Deity.

[Sidenote: The women of the middle cla.s.s and transmigration.]

I asked a lady who had been a missionary in Calcutta for many years, how far a belief in transmigration was apparent among the women of the middle cla.s.s. She could recall only two instances in which it had come to her notice in her talks with the wives and daughters of educated India. Once a reason was given for being kind to a cat, that the speaker's grandmother might then be in it as her abode, although the observation was accompanied with a laugh. On the second occasion, when the lady was having trouble with a slow pupil, one of the women present, sympathising with the teacher, said, "Do not trouble with her; perhaps next time when she comes back she will be cleverer." The general conclusion, therefore, I repeat: Transmigration is no longer a living part of the belief of educated India; the Christian conception of the Hereafter is as yet only partially taking its place.