BP 
 563 
 B53 
 1903 
 
 AND Evolution 
 OF THE Soul 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 1 
 6 
 
 ANNIE BESANT
 
 Chicago. 
 
 HR«.1.\T.JA('K«0N 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 'X. 
 
 '^i^iiii.v;JAJ.;ha(;r{; 
 
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 ^
 
 THE BIRTH AND EVOLUTION 
 OE THE SOUL.
 
 THE BIRTH AND 
 EVOLUTION OF 
 THE SOUL 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE BESANT 
 
 TWO LECTURES 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON: 
 THE050PMICAL PUBLISHINU 50CIB1Y. 
 
 City Agents : 
 
 PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES & CO., LTD., 
 
 3, Amen Corner, LONDON, H.C. 
 
 «903.
 
 r 
 .1 
 
 %\)t W\iX\) ^ CBb0httion of tl)^ ^oul 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THESE two lectures might better perhaps be 
 described as one lecture in two parts, for I am 
 really going to try and give you in the two 
 a connected tracing of the progress of the soul. 
 There is so much confusion in thought as to the 
 origin of the individual, as to what the individual 
 really means, as to how he is developed, and what 
 is to be his ultimate destiny, that I thought I could 
 take no better subject for a Lodge, which ought to 
 be a Lodge of students, than to trace out somewhat 
 in detail this most important matter in the light of 
 Theosophy. Important, because on it turns your 
 whole view of the purpose of the Universe ; and if 
 the growth of the Soul were better understood than 
 it is, we should not hear the continual questions 
 asked as to why there should be a Universe at all, 
 and why there should be manifestation ; why, if 
 everything comes out of One and goes back to One 
 
 2054971
 
 again, why this intermediate condition of multi- 
 pHcity should occur. The whole of these questions 
 really turn on misunderstanding, or on lack of 
 accurate knowledge, and it is to the clearing up of 
 that misunderstanding that I am going to address 
 myself to-night and this night week. 
 
 In order to make the origin of the individual 
 clear, I must ask you to come back with me to the 
 time when the human race was evolving, but when 
 as yet the individual had not come into existence. 
 Come back to what you know, in Theosophical litera- 
 ture, as the first Race of man. You may remember 
 that — according to the teachings which you find in 
 The Secret Doctrine and in the great Scriptures of the 
 world — you may remember that the first Race had 
 its bodies built up, as it were, round a form that is 
 said to have been derived from the Moon. The 
 Pitris, or ancestors, who afforded the first matrix for 
 humanity, who give the first ethereal form through 
 and by the help of which the physical in man was 
 to evolve — those are spoken of as the Lunar Pitris 
 because of their connection with the Moon. Into 
 that connection I have not time to go in detail, but 
 the traces of it are around you on every side at the 
 present time. You must be perfectly well aware 
 that the effect of the Moon upon the Earth is 
 marked and constant ; and, above all, you may
 
 notice that it is the measure in time of all great 
 physiological periods. The fact that you still find 
 that to be the case after so many millions of years 
 should make it at least not surprising to you when 
 you read in ancient books that there is a causal 
 relation between the Moon and the Earth, and 
 between the ancestors of humanity and forms of 
 living beings who existed on the lunar globe in ages 
 gone by. 
 
 Now, these Lunar Pitris that came and projected 
 their astral forms, as it is said, in order that the first 
 Race of man might develop, came to the Earth, this 
 Earth on which we are now, which is the central 
 globe in the ring of globes, and they came to it — so 
 far as we need trouble about it to-night — for the 
 Fourth Round ; of course not for the first time, but 
 I am ignoring the first three Rounds. When they 
 arrived at this globe for the Fourth Round they 
 threw out these shadows — ethereal bodies, as they 
 are called. The reason — and I may as well mention 
 it in passing — why an ethereal body, or body of 
 astral matter, should in point of time come before 
 the physical body that we know, is that you cannot 
 have any vital energies at work, you cannot have 
 any electrical or magnetic currents, or any of those 
 currents which have to do with the various pheno- 
 mena of life and of chemical action, without the
 
 presence of ether. So that it is not possible to draw 
 together physical molecules for the making of a 
 dense body unless you have what we may call a 
 matrix of ether through which these forces are able 
 to act, and so to draw together, and hold together 
 after they are drawn, the physical molecules. In 
 fact, every physical molecule has its envelope of 
 ether, and is permeated therewith, and it is by 
 means of this ethereal envelope of the molecule that 
 these life-forces are able to draw and hold the 
 physical body together. 
 
 During the first and second Races of man this 
 physical body was built up by the action of what are 
 called Nature-Spirits, who made this outer clothing 
 of man, the tabernacle of flesh, as it is sometimes 
 entitled. Out of the first Race evolved the second, 
 and out of the second evolved the third. No break, 
 nothing that would be called a new creation, but 
 definite and sequential evolution. The materials 
 used in these bodies had been worked up in previous 
 ages through mineral and vegetable and animal, and 
 so had taken on, as far as their atoms were con- 
 cerned, an internal differentiation, which is of enor- 
 mous importance when they enter into the body of 
 the higher animals and of man. 
 
 Man, again, is nearly the first being that appears 
 on this globe at the stage of evolution that we are
 
 9 
 
 considering. Pass, then, from the first and second 
 Races to the third. When the third Race was 
 evolving, slowly and gradually through almost in- 
 calculable periods of time, the animal development 
 took place ; that is, the development of the physical 
 and astral bodies went on during the first and second 
 Races, and in the third that of the body of sensation, 
 as you know it in yourselves and in the lower 
 animals, the body which receives and translates into 
 feeling all impressions from without. Your outside 
 body receives contacts from the external universe, 
 and certain parts of it are modified to answer to 
 those contacts; these modified parts we call the 
 sense-organs. But you are aware that the sense- 
 organ in the body, while it answers b)' way of vibra- 
 tion to any vibration of its own particular class that 
 comes to it from without, is not that which feels or 
 perceives. This vibration has to be transmitted 
 inwards in a very real sense, and not only inwards 
 to the sense-centres, as they are called, in the brain, 
 but inwards from this again by way of the astral 
 body — and this action shows itself always by the 
 passing of electrical and magnetic currents — into 
 this third body that I am now speaking of, the body 
 of sensation. You may have a break between the 
 outer impact and what we call feeling, between the 
 outer vibrations of the ether on the retina of the eye
 
 10 
 
 and what we call sight. The power of sight, the 
 power of tasting, of smelling, of hearing, of feeling, 
 all these powers reside in this body of sensation, and 
 that is, of course, why it has that particular name. 
 Now, the lower animals have this body as well as 
 we. You find it in the animals with which you are 
 familiar around you. They feel, and not only do 
 they feel, but they show emotions, passions and 
 appetites. You will see the passion of anger in 
 some animals ; you will see sex passion, you will find 
 hunger, thirst — all these things are present in the 
 lower animals, and we may group them all together, 
 in order that a single phrase may describe these 
 activities as the "body of sensation" or, as it is 
 often called, the " body of desire." 
 
 As you are a Lodge of students, I may venture to 
 use a Sanskrit word, the word Kama. This body 
 is spoken of as the Kama body, Kama Rupa, which 
 is only the Sanskrit for " desire body ; " and I use 
 the name because I want in a moment to quote a 
 phrase in which that word Kama occurs. In the 
 animal it is developed. Now, it is part of the truth 
 of evolution that every stage of an evolving organism 
 contains within itself in germ the next stage by 
 which evolution is to proceed. Take what stage of 
 evolution you like in the outer world, and you will 
 always find that at any stage there is a germ which,
 
 If it proceeds, will develop into a new individual. 
 This is characteristic of all forms of living things, 
 and by the improvement from the germ evolution 
 proceeds. You may take vegetable, you may take 
 animal, you may take man, take what you like : 
 always you will find that, if an individual is to be 
 produced, a germ will be present which is to form 
 part-helper of his growth. Pat-t helper only; and 
 this is always present in what is called the passive 
 side of Nature. 
 
 You remember that if you go right back almost to 
 the beginning of things you find what are called the 
 " pairs of opposites," and the first appearance of 
 these in the Second Logos is often spoken of as 
 being Spirit- Matter, in order to give the two great 
 poles of existence between which all organization 
 takes place. Two characteristics mark those two 
 poles. One of them is active, and the other is 
 passive; one of them is positive, the other is nega- 
 tive; one of them is that which gives impulse, the 
 other is that which gives form ; and these two are 
 present everywhere, inseparable in Nature. Right 
 through Nature, not only in physical Nature, but 
 through all realms of Nature, you will find this 
 diversity ; and without the union of these two 
 together you will find nowhere fresh growth, pro- 
 gress in evolution. There must always be the
 
 stimulating force, and there must be the form that 
 develops. You may call them, if you like, male and 
 female, as in physical Nature; you may call them, 
 if you like. Father and Mother ; but keep the idea 
 plainly in mind, because on this the understanding 
 of the origin of the individual soul depends. 
 
 Now, let me remind you of the line of evolution, 
 which is the line of form, which comes from the 
 Moon originally, and evolves downwards to Kama. 
 This, I say, is found in the animal just as it is in 
 man, and you need to keep that in mind. In that 
 Kama or desire — which builds a body with the 
 power of sensation, the power of not only answer- 
 ing to outside impact, but of translating it into 
 feeling — lies the root of self-consciousness. Con- 
 sciousness in germ is simply the power to respond 
 to a vibration that comes from outside ; and when 
 to that power of response there is added feeling, then 
 you get what we may call the " germ of mind " — 
 not mind, but its germ, the negative side of mind in 
 which and by means of which mind may evolve. 
 
 If for a moment you will look at the lower animals 
 you will see a startling difference between the wild 
 and the domesticated. You will find in the domesti- 
 cated animal very much more of what you would 
 call mind than you find in the wild animal ; and for 
 a very simple reason that you will see as we go on.
 
 13 
 
 If you take the wild animal that has never come 
 across man at all, you will find in it plenty of 
 response to the impacts of the external world ; but 
 3^ou will find in it comparatively little reasoning, 
 little judgment, little linking together of inner sensa- 
 tion and outer object, unless the object be present, 
 or unless some craving of the organism gives an 
 impulse to action. Food, for instance, being within 
 the sight of an animal, even if it is not very hungry, 
 will cause movement towards the food, or the 
 craving of the organism for sustenance will make it 
 seek for food. But you do not get in the wild 
 animal much of what you may call " ideal action," 
 action without an impulse which comes from bodily 
 necessities, or from the presence of an external 
 object ; that is, you have not there present much of 
 what we know as mind, of which the lowest and 
 earliest manifestations are the connection between 
 an outer object and an inner sensation and the 
 power of recalling that connection and acting upon 
 it without the object being present — the qualities 
 which technically arc called perception and recol- 
 lection. 
 
 At this stage, then, of this single line that I have 
 brought down thus we have got as far as the 
 development of Kama, in which is the germ of mind, 
 the stage in which, if there is to be a higher
 
 evolution, some impulse from without must be given. 
 The passive side of Nature, brooded over by the 
 Divine Spirit, could not by itself get any further than 
 this stage — the development of a germ ; and when 
 you have the body of desire present, that contains 
 in it this germ of mind ; think of it now, if you 
 like, as the female or mother side of Nature. 
 
 Now, for a moment leaving this altogether, take 
 an analogy from lower Nature. Let me ask any of 
 you who happen to be botanists — and probably all 
 of you know enough of botany to follow the illus- 
 tration — to take what is called the ovule of a plant, 
 that which develops into a seed ; left to itself that 
 ovule which is in the female organ will never be any- 
 thing more than an ovule : it will simply wither up 
 and perish. But it contains within it all the nourish- 
 ment by means of which a new plant will grow ; it 
 has stored up, as it were, a stock of food, if any new 
 life, an individual, should there begin. But an indi- 
 vidual cannot begin there simply by the action of 
 the ovule itself; it needs a stimulus which comes 
 from the contents of the male organ of the plant, 
 the pollen, and if that pollen throws out a minute 
 cell which enters the ovule and comes into contact 
 with the germ cell within the ovule, then there will 
 be an interaction between these two microscopic 
 cells, and by the union of the two a new impulse
 
 15 
 
 will be given, and an individual will result v/hich 
 will develop for a time within this ovule which has 
 now become the seed, and after a time will show 
 marks characteristic of its parents ; but it will sepa- 
 rate itself from the parents and carry on life on its 
 own account, having its own root, its own stem, and 
 its own leaves. The starting-point of that is the 
 junction of the two microscopic cells, differing in 
 their nature — the one positive, impulse-giving, fer- 
 tilizing ; the other receptive, passive, nutrient — 
 showing the characteristics of the two sides of 
 Nature. Now we have here got the passive, nutrient 
 side developed along this line which I characterized 
 as lunar — coming from the moon. It is the side of 
 form, and it may perhaps interest you to notice that 
 it is the side that receives from outside, the passive 
 side again, and that all these emotions and every- 
 thing else in it are set up in answer to this impulse 
 from without, thus showing its characteristic as the 
 receptive or female side. 
 
 Now, in past Universes a process of development 
 has gone on similar to that which is going on in the 
 present world to-day; in those past Universes minds 
 were developed as we develop minds now, and their 
 process of development will be clearer when you 
 follow the process of development amongst ourselves. 
 The minds that developed in those preceding Uni-
 
 i6 
 
 verses, that passed into Nirvana, that passed out of 
 Nirvana again at the beginning of the present age, 
 have many names both in The Secret Doctrine and in 
 other books. Let us take the name of " Sons of 
 Mind," because it describes their most sahent 
 characteristic. They are sometimes spoken of under 
 the name of Kumaras, which means " youths," 
 sometimes they are called Solar Pitris ; but I prefer 
 to take the name most often used in The Secret 
 Doctrine, v^-here, of course, you get it in the Sanskrit 
 form, Manasa Putra ; we will take it in Enghsh as 
 " Sons of the Mind." They have developed Intelli- 
 gence. Now, what is Intelligence ? Intelligence is 
 the result of vital activity working in a particular 
 form of matter, and developing connecting links 
 between the external Universe and itself. It is a 
 thing of slow growth ; it is made by experience ; it 
 is evolved, it does not come into existence suddenly. 
 Intelligence is the outcome of these repeated con- 
 tacts, and of the working of life on the contacts ; 
 so that you never can get Intelhgence apart from 
 organism. You have something which may be called 
 the Supreme Life, but it is a mistake to speak of It 
 then as Intelligence; It is higher and deeper and 
 subHmer than anything we know as Intelligence, 
 and Its processes are far beyond and above every, 
 thing that we call thought. Thought always consists
 
 17 
 
 in this linking together of the external and the 
 internal, of making ideal links between the two, and 
 hence images — ideas, as we call them ; and Intelli- 
 gence is only developed by the Supreme Life 
 manifesting Itself as Nshat we, for want of a better 
 word, are obliged to call Spirit in the English 
 
 A 
 
 tongue — Atma is the familiar name in our o\\'n 
 philosophy — by thus manifesting Itself in the 
 subtlest form, and then gradually working through 
 matter and thereby evolving what we call Intelli- 
 gence—that is, all these connecting links that go to 
 build mental faculties. 
 
 This process, then, had gone on in a past age so 
 far as these great Sons of Mind are concerned ; 
 these mighty Spiritual Intelligences had accom- 
 plished what we are aiming at now. They are the 
 successful men of past ages, who have developed 
 into perfect men, perfect Intelligences, and now are, 
 so to speak, co-operating in the building of a new 
 race, co-operating in the production of a new 
 humanity. But up to the point at which we are 
 they had taken no part in this evolution that had 
 been going on — the physical side, the evolution of 
 form. Now, from These is to come a second line, 
 from the Sons of Mind, Lords of Light, They are 
 called sometimes Pillars of Light, and so on ; These, 
 coming down to the Earth when the Tabernacles
 
 i8 
 
 were ready to receive Them, came to give the neces- 
 sary impulse in order that at this point of junction 
 a new individual might arise, and afforded the active, 
 impelling, positive energy. 
 
 You remember at the beginning of the second 
 volume of The Secret Doctrine, those Stanzas called the 
 Stanzas of Dzyan, which deal with the Evolution of 
 Man. They have been said lately by Mr. Coleman 
 to be purely modern productions ; but they were 
 never found out in modern writings until Madame 
 Blavatsky found them. But leave that to return to 
 this. You will find it said that when these Sons of 
 Mind came down, " from their own Rupa they filled 
 the Kama." That is why I was obliged to trouble 
 you with this word, because I wanted to quote that 
 particular Stanza : " From their own Rupa they 
 filled the Kama." Coming down to animal-man 
 they threw part of Their own nature into him, 
 filling the Kama wherein the germ of sensation and 
 feeling had been evolved, and They contributed to 
 that the spark of intelligence. And so again in one 
 of those same Stanzas it is said : " Some projected 
 a spajrk." The more careful readers amongst you 
 may remember it is said : " Some entered. . . . 
 Those who entered became Arhats." Those are the 
 great Teachers of Humanity in the earlier days of 
 our Race — the fourth and the fifth Races, and the
 
 19 
 
 third and a half. The Great Teachers — Those who 
 took this infant Humanity under their care, and 
 trained it, Those who absohitely entered into 
 these bodies that were prepared, with Their highly 
 developed Intelligencies — were the mighty Adepts 
 of the past ; They formed what were called the 
 nurseries of Adepts for the present age ; the Great 
 Teachers who came in order that this infant 
 Humanity might be guarded and protected and 
 helped in its earlier stages. With Them, so far as 
 ordinary Humanity is concerned, we need not deal ; 
 They entered in and took these bodies as Their 
 vehicles. But They also, some of Them, projected 
 the spark which fell into the kamic receptacle: Their 
 essence filled it. Now the individual begins where 
 that union takes place. Before that there is no Ego 
 in man ; before that there is no soul in man in the 
 full sense of the term, although the word Animal 
 Soul is occasionally used for the feelings, emotions, 
 and so on. The lower Soul this is often called, or 
 the Animal Soul ; but the true Ego, that which is 
 capable of achieving immortality, is not there. 
 Remember how that phrase is used sometimes ; it 
 has not necessarily immortality in itself, although it 
 has in it the power of achieving immortality, by 
 virtue of its connection with these immortal Sons 
 of Mind, Who have already achieved. Man may
 
 20 
 
 become immortal " if he will." That was a phrase 
 used, you may remember, in one of the letters from 
 Master K. H. to Mr. Sinnett, published in The Occult 
 World ; part of the work of the Society was there 
 said to be to teach man that he may become 
 immortal if he will, not that he necessarily is im- 
 mortal, but that he may achieve immortality. 
 Immortal in the essence of the Soul ? Yes ; but 
 not in its developed self-conscious intelligence. For 
 intelligence has to be worked out and built up by 
 slow degrees ; intelligence has to be evolved by this 
 spark, working through the matter into which it has 
 come, and unless it works successfully, acquires 
 experience slowly, and gradually builds it up into 
 faculty in the course of that pilgrimage of the Soul 
 that lies in front of our thought, immortality will 
 not be achieved. For it is necessary, in order that 
 immortality may be achieved, that this which is 
 to acquire experience and build up accumulated 
 experiences shall regain unity. That which is 
 compounded does not last ; that which is com- 
 pounded will be at some time disintegrated : only 
 the unit persists. The individual begins at this 
 point, and he is a compound. He will weave into 
 his own existence all these endless experiences, and 
 will become, so to speak, more and more compound, 
 a more and more complex combination. But this
 
 21 
 
 has in itself the seed of destruction ; everything that 
 thus goes on combining has in it the conditions of 
 disintegration, and the compound disintegrates. 
 How then can this compound achieve immortahty ? 
 By a process of unification that will form the last 
 stages of its pilgrimage ; by that Yoga, or union, 
 which will make it again the One. Having achieved 
 individuality by many, many incarnations, through 
 which this individuality will be built up, it then 
 unifies all these experiences, and by a subtle alchemy 
 extracts as it were a unit experience out of the 
 multiplicity, and in a way beyond words — beyond 
 words because it is beyond brain-experience and 
 thought, but which is not beyond the " sensing " oi 
 some who have at least begun the process — this 
 individual evolves into a unity higher than its own 
 combined nature ; and while it may be said to lose 
 individuality as we know it, it gains something 
 which is far greater. Without losing the essence of 
 individuality, it re-becomes a unit consciousness, and 
 by that becomes incapable of disintegration and 
 achieves its final immortality. But here is the 
 beginning point — and on that I want to lay a good 
 deal of stress — that it begins then, that before that 
 the Ego which is now in each of you was not in 
 existence as Ego, any more than the plant which 
 will develop from a germ, if the germ be fertilised, is
 
 22 
 
 in existence before that fertilisation takes place. 
 True, that which will form it exists, because there 
 is no increase either of energy or of matter ; but the 
 combination which makes the new individual does 
 not exist until the junction has taken place, and the 
 Ego does not exist before this union has taken place. 
 It is there that originates the individual. You will 
 forgive me for repeating that so often. But this is 
 the point where the mistake comes in, and where 
 there is so much confusion in thought ; and it is 
 because of that that I am laying stress upon it, in 
 order that you may have clearly in your minds this 
 fact ; that individuals begin in each Manvantara 
 or Age, that the purpose of each Universe is the 
 evolution of individuals, that the Universe comes 
 into existence in order that individuals may be 
 born, that it is maintained in existence in order 
 that individuals may be evolved, that when it passes 
 out of manifestation its harvest is the perfected in- 
 dividuals who regain unity and outlast the Universe, 
 passing into what is called Nirvana, to re-emerge 
 for a new Universe as Sons of Mind, if in the 
 former Universe they have been completely success- 
 ful. There are other intermediate stages, points 
 where failure may come in, and where evolution may 
 have to be taken up again as it were midway, points 
 of failure in one Universe that do not throw back the
 
 2j 
 
 fallen, as Master K. H. pointed out, to the beginning 
 of things again, but are such as to allow them to 
 take up their evolution at the point where it ceased. 
 The failures of one age become, so to speak, the 
 pioneers of another. But leaving those complica- 
 tions out of consideration, the harvest of every 
 Universe is these triumphant individuals, who have 
 evolved unity out of diversity, and thus have 
 achieved their immortality. 
 
 Realizing that, then, let us take our individual 
 and see what kind of an entity this is at its origin. 
 And I think I will throw in here a very, very brief 
 digression, which will make it a more living thing to 
 you. Take one of the lower animals. Now we will 
 come to the domesticated. I mentioned that with 
 regard to the wild animal there is the germ of mind, 
 but very little that you can really call mind. Suppose 
 you take an animal and domesticate it, and suppose 
 you domesticate it for generations, you will have 
 handed on in the three bodies of that animal — the 
 physical, the astral, and the kamic — you will have 
 handed on a very definite heredity ; and if these 
 individuals are domesticated time after time you will 
 find greater and greater intelligence, as it may be 
 called, evolving. 
 
 Now, supposing that you take a puppy, and 
 supposing that from that puppy's birth you keep it
 
 •24 
 
 continually with yourselves, and you do not permit 
 it to associate with the lower creatures, but you keep 
 it with yourselves. Some lonely person, for instance, 
 takes a pupp}', and it is always with him or her; what 
 is the result ? The result is that in that puppy, as it 
 grows up, there is developed a startling amount of 
 some quality that you are forced to call Intelligence. 
 You will develop in it a limited reason ; you will 
 develop in it a limited memory ; you will develop in 
 it a limited judgment. Now, these are qualities of 
 the mind, not qualities of Kama. How is it that in 
 this lower animal these qualities are developed ? 
 They are developed artificially by the playing upon 
 it of the human intelligence. To that animal the 
 mind in you to some extent plays the part which the 
 Son of Mind plays to Humanity ; and thrown out 
 from the comparatively developed Intelligence in 
 man, these rays, these energetic ra3's of mental 
 influence, vitalize the germ in the Kama of the 
 animal and so produce artificially, as it were, an 
 nfant mind. 
 
 Now I say that, in order that you may realise 
 more clearly perhaps than otherwise you would, the 
 first slow stages of the growth of mind. Let me 
 say that this process is not good for the animal, and 
 it is not good for the human being who does it. 
 Neither the one nor the other is the better for the
 
 25 
 
 process, in fact ver)^ often both are exceedingly the 
 worse, and it is not a wholesome practice — this over- 
 stimulation of the domesticated animal and this 
 artificial forcing of a mental life for which the animal 
 body is not yet fitted, for which the animal nervous 
 system has not yet developed the proper natural 
 basis, and in which it is really forced, in a kind of 
 artificial hot-house, to the detriment of the creature, 
 and probably to its retardation in a later stage of its 
 existence. 
 
 But it is well to remember that there is no such 
 thing as a break in nature ; every evolution is 
 sequential, and it is therefore possible to force 
 evolution in this way, although it be unwise.* 
 
 Coming back from my little digression, let me 
 take up again my infant Soul, to whom I will give 
 the name of the baby Ego, and he is very much, as 
 regards his mental capacities, what the new-born 
 
 * It is with much inner pleasure that I find that a statement 
 current in Theosophical circles, and repeated by me above, is in- 
 correct in fact. It seems, with regard to some animals at least — as 
 the dog and the cat — that the development caused " by the playing 
 upon it of the human intelligence" is well caused, and lifts the 
 animal forward, so that the germinating individuality does not 
 return to animal incarnation, but awaits elsewhere the period at 
 which its further development shall become possible. The 
 "forcing" is therefore helpful and beneficial, not harmful, and we 
 may rid ourselves of the incongruous idea that, in a universe built 
 on and permeated by Love, the out-welling of compassion and love 
 to our younger relatives is injurious to them. There are a good 
 many Theosophists, I think, who will share my pleasure in getting 
 rid of a view against which one's instinct secretly rebelled.
 
 ^6 
 
 baby is as regards his power of manifesting these 
 faculties. Of course, the new-born baby has mental 
 faculties which very soon force the brain to prepare 
 itself for their manifestation, so that there is not a 
 real analogy between the two. The want of know- 
 ledge, so to speak, in the new-born baby is simply 
 due to the clumsiness of the instrument ; the brain 
 is new, and it takes some little time for the links to 
 be set up between the instrument and the player. 
 But the player is there, when you are dealing with 
 our race at the present time, and therefore we have 
 not really the condition in which the Ego itself is in 
 the state of babyhood. 
 
 Now this entity which has thus been formed at 
 this junction of the two lines, and which I call the 
 baby Ego, is absolutely ignorant. It has no mind, 
 it has no thought, it has nothing more than the 
 sensations it gets from Kama at present, except the 
 power of evolving which it has received from the 
 stimulating spark of the Son of Mind. Sensations 
 are there ; it has to make the link which we call 
 perception. How will that link be made ? The 
 sensation will be caused by way of the body through 
 which it has come into contact with some external 
 object. Let us say that the body, by the mouth, 
 comes upon an external object which gives rise to a 
 pleasant sensation of taste — something which is
 
 27 
 
 sweet. The animal of course has developed this 
 already, and in the body it will be a habit that when 
 it sees this thing, or feels hunger, it will go towards 
 it. The baby Ego will experience the sensation 
 which is pleasurable, but it will only be a momentary 
 sensation and at first apparently nothing more — a 
 little impact on this germ of mind ; over and over 
 again such an impact will take place. At last there 
 is set up in this baby Ego by this repetition a con- 
 necting link between the external object that gives 
 rise to a pleasant sensation and the pleasant sen- 
 sation, and it will thus make its first thought. This 
 connecting link between the external and the in- 
 ternal, between the contact which comes from an 
 outside object and the pleasure which that contact 
 gives, will be what is called a " percept," and you 
 have in perception the first activity of the mind ; 
 when this perception has been repeated over and 
 over and over and over again, it will be remembered, 
 and conscious memory begins. 
 
 Built up in this baby by these repeated contacts, 
 and repeated pleasurable sensations, and repeated 
 connections between the object and the sensation, 
 at last memory will develop, which is the ideal 
 contact ; the idea is built out of a number of these 
 sensations. And that faculty of memory will be a 
 faculty of the baby Ego which will be evolved by
 
 28 
 
 these constant experiences ; and it will take a long 
 time evolving — perhaps a whole life, or part of a life. 
 I cannot measure it off; but I want you to realise 
 that it is a thing which will take a considerable 
 time, that the memory will be a thing which will 
 need much experience at this early stage, before it 
 will really become recognisable and workable. 
 
 There are human beings even at the present time 
 in which this faculty of the Soul is so little developed 
 that it will not last over even twelve hours, and in 
 which their view of the world is quite different in 
 the morning and in the evening. Some of the 
 lowest aborigines in Australia in whom the spark 
 has burned very low, in whom it has not developed 
 and grown, are on record as having so little memory 
 that they cannot remember through the course of a 
 whole day, and blankets given away in the evening 
 will be clung to because the night has begun and the 
 night is cold. But when the next morning comes 
 round and the immediate use for the blanket is over, 
 and while they do not want the blanket they do want 
 food — the food is an immediate want, but the blanket 
 won't be wanted till evening — some of them have not 
 sufficiently developed what we should call the idea 
 of invariable sequence in their minds to remember 
 that night will come back again after the day is 
 over, and that the blanket which they do not want
 
 29 
 
 while the sun is out they will want when the sun has 
 set. The sunset of yesterday is, so to speak, a past 
 incarnation to them, and they do not carry on the 
 memory through the night ; therefore, they will 
 part with their blanket for a mere trifle in the 
 morning, although they will not part with it in the 
 evening — a most striking illustration of the baby 
 sense, if I may so call it, of the Ego which is 
 incarnated in these aborigines. They are dying off 
 very fast, and no English government will be able to 
 keep them alive, because their work is done. A 
 race dies when it is of no more use to the Soul ; it 
 becomes sterile when its purpose in the evolution of 
 the Soul is over. For as the Universe only exists 
 for the sake of the Soul, so all these stages in the 
 Universe exist for the Soul, and when there are no 
 more Souls so little developed that such a race is of 
 any use to them, it becomes sterile and gradually 
 disappears. I do not mean when it is helped to 
 disappear by the superior races, though that is often 
 the case ; but even if they do not help it to dis- 
 appear rapidly, it will inevitably disappear slowly 
 on its own account, by the barrenness which falls 
 upon it. It is of no more use, therefore it does not 
 continue. 
 
 That illustration may give you some idea of what 
 the spark is like in its early stages, as you find it in
 
 30 
 
 these sparks that have burned low and not developed. 
 Memory will be very, very slowly developed, but when 
 it is developed, even in a limited way, you will at 
 once see that an element is present conducing to 
 more rapid growth, because the moment that this 
 baby remembers past experiences it is then begin- 
 ning to accumulate a little store which will impel it 
 to action without impulse from without. It will 
 have an impulse beginning from within which will 
 lead it to seek experiences. Farther, not until it has 
 memory can it distinguish, in their absence, between 
 pleasurable and painful experiences, good and evil, 
 as it will call them, and so begin to develop in itself 
 a power of comparison and selection, i.e., of judg- 
 ment, which will serve as a guide for action. Let 
 me take the case of taste, which I chose before. It 
 was pleasurable. Of course, some tastes will be 
 unpleasant, and those will be marked off as painful, 
 to be avoided. So that the Ego will get, as it 
 begins to remember, two classes of things in the 
 outer world; one labelled in its own mind — if I may 
 call it mind at this stage : " pleasure ; to be sought, 
 to be followed " ; and the other labelled : " painful ; 
 to be avoided, to be run away from, to be escaped." 
 And at this stage the Universe, so to speak, will 
 divide itself into two for this baby Ego, things to be 
 run after and things to be run away from. It will
 
 31 
 
 not have gone any further than that. Going out 
 into an unknown world where it comes into contact 
 with objects, the first great division will be things 
 that it wants, and things that it does not want ; and 
 the wanting or the not wanting will depend on 
 whether it meets something which it desires to 
 repeat because it gives it pleasure, or something 
 which it desires to avoid repeating because it gives 
 it pain. This is the beginning of experience. 
 
 In this way it will begin, as it accumulates these 
 experiences of pleasure and of pain, to learn some- 
 thing more ; it will begin to learn that this world 
 that it has come into is a very definite kind of thing, 
 and that it has got to accommodate itself to it ; it 
 will find some things in it that do not give way, and 
 that if it runs up against those things certain un- 
 pleasant results always follow. Memory of course 
 is wanted for this, to notice that always the 
 same thing comes from the same object under the 
 same circumstances ; and when sufficient of these 
 sensations have been accumulated to give rise to the 
 definite idea that doing a particular thing will cause 
 pain, there is the first glimpse of law, of something 
 external to itself which it cannot overcome, which 
 throws it back, as it were, and gives what it feels as 
 pain, something repellent when it comes against it. 
 So the idea begins to arise that not only are some
 
 32 
 
 things to be followed and others to be avoided, but 
 that these things which are to be followed, and 
 which are pleasure-giving, are things which are 
 " good " — which only means at first harmonious — 
 that others are inharmonious and unpleasant, and 
 therefore "evil"; that there is a law of pleasure and 
 of pain to which it must adapt itself if it wants to 
 live in comfort, that nothing that it can do will 
 break this law, and that, therefore, it will be wise to 
 accommodate itself to the law. This observation of 
 sequence will be made by our baby Ego and will 
 give rise to the idea of Law, and of the need to 
 adapt itself to these laws if it is to live at all com- 
 fortably. And then a little more will come as the 
 experience goes on ; that sometimes a thing begins 
 by giving pleasure and goes on by giving pain — a 
 most confusing experience. Let us cling to our 
 taste. The body of our baby Ego eats and pleasure 
 is felt ; because of this it makes the body go on 
 eating till it eats too much. It then finds that by 
 repeating this gratification pain has come where 
 there was pleasure. It makes its body ill; and it 
 gets a new view of the outside Universe — that the 
 gratification of this which began by being pleasur- 
 able works out into pain, and that the pleasure 
 which began in flavour may end in most uncomfort- 
 able aches ; and not only so, but, persisted in, may
 
 33 
 
 cause perennial aches which later on it will know as 
 disease. This very much emphasises its idea of law, 
 and it begins to accumulate now a sequential ex- 
 perience of different pleasures and pains, and to 
 realise that it bears a certain relationship to these 
 outside contacts ; it learns that it is not the outside 
 object in itself which is pleasure-giving or pain- 
 giving, but some relation that arises between itself 
 and the outside object — a great advance — and that 
 these outside objects are neither pleasure-giving nor 
 pain-giving in themselves, but only in relation to itself, 
 the same thing sometimes giving the one and some- 
 times giving the other. So that the idea of pleasure 
 and pain, in this further experience of our baby Ego, 
 will go on into the relationships that itself sets up 
 with the outer world, and that change the character 
 of the outside impact from pleasurable to painful. 
 And then the law will begin to take on, as it were, a 
 compelling power, and it will realise that it can 
 adapt itself to this strange external apparent change, 
 and that by adapting itself it can persist in pleasure 
 or persist in pain, and that the pleasure and pain 
 will depend on its attitude to the outer world. And 
 so this next lesson of experience will be learned. 
 And there I must leave my baby Ego for to-night, 
 having reached as far as the recognition of an outer 
 world, the receiving of pleasure and of pain, the
 
 34 
 
 recognition of relations, therefrom evolution of 
 memory, evolution of judgment — which recognizes 
 the relationship as having in itself this difference of 
 pleasure and pain — so that we have the beginnings 
 of perception, memory, judgment — three things that 
 are wanting for what we call reason of an elementary 
 kind. Reason only exists in the baby Ego as a 
 mere germ ; and we will leave him as he passes 
 through death, carrying with him these germinal 
 mental faculties which he has evolved. We cannot 
 say how much progress would be made in one of 
 these early lives ; probably many lives would be 
 needed to arrive at the stage just described. In 
 order to make our study complete in outline, let us 
 take him at the end of his first life, to see the 
 principle underlying post-mortem evolution. Let us 
 see him having begun his pilgrimage and passing for 
 the first time through the gate of death. On the 
 other side of that we will leave him to take him up 
 again next week.
 
 35 
 
 PART 11. 
 
 YOU will remember that last week we left what 
 I called the baby Ego having passed through 
 the gateway of death. Now I spoke of his 
 passing for the first time through the gateway of 
 death, because I wanted to take up for a few 
 moments the post-niortein states in order that we 
 might have as it were before us for the rest of the 
 study of the pilgrimage this complete cycle : the life 
 upon earth, the life in the transition state beyond 
 death, the life in the Devachanic state — the life of 
 the Soul properly so-called, the intellectual and 
 intelligent life. Those three stages, being the three 
 divisions of the pilgrimage completing a single 
 period, are repeated over and over and over again, 
 succeeding each other in this definite way, all bearing 
 to each other a definite relation, so that unless we 
 understand each of the three we shall not be able 
 to follow with any intelligence the pilgrimage of the 
 Soul or the growth of the Ego.
 
 36 
 
 When, however, this germinal Ego that I spoke 
 of last week passes for the first time through the 
 gateway of death, it has exceedingly little material 
 for these stages that lie on the other side of that 
 gateway. The first stage is that which may be 
 called — translating the term — the Land of Desire. 
 You will remember that desire is Kama, and Loka is 
 place ; so that this land or place of desire is called, 
 in Theosophical books, Kama Loka ; that is, a place 
 inhabited by Souls still clad in the desire or sensation 
 body that we studied last week. The Ego in this 
 body dwells there for a time — but not only the Ego 
 of man. It is the place where these bodies of sen- 
 sation and desire survive the physical and the astral 
 bodies ; so that you have there these desire or 
 sensation bodies of the lower animals as well as 
 those which are inhabited by the Human Soul. 
 
 Now, when our baby Ego is at this very early 
 stage of his life there will be in him a great deal of 
 the lower element of Kama or desire, and scarcely 
 anything at all of the higher element of Mind. His 
 stay then in this Kama Loka will be for a con- 
 siderable period, and all that he will do there is 
 to experience pleasant or painful results according 
 as the life which has been led on the physical 
 plane — which has been led upon earth — has been in 
 accordance with law or discordant with law. The
 
 37 
 
 life there is exceedingly limited, and is simply a 
 result from the life upon earth. Nothing new is 
 introduced into it ; it is a life in which there is a 
 great deal of repetition, in which an experience is 
 repeated over and over and over again. And this 
 automatic action, as we may call it, is one of the 
 great characteristics of this Kamic body, or body 
 of sensation. You know how easily habits are set 
 up — habits of the physical bod}^ especially habits 
 which are connected with the passions and with the 
 emotions. The great root of these habits lies in the 
 body of sensation with its peculiarly strong auto- 
 matic tendencies. Those are impressed on the outer 
 bod)', although, of course, the habit of repetition in 
 the physical body will also come in to some extent. 
 
 When the Soul has passed out of this transitional 
 state it leaves behind it this body of desire, just as 
 in leaving the earth it left the physical body. The 
 bodies belong to certain definite stages in the Universe, 
 and the Soul cannot carry on any body with which 
 it has been clothed further than the stage in the 
 Universe to which that body belongs. It cannot 
 carry the physical body away from the physical 
 plane ; it cannot carry the astral body out of the 
 lower astral world ; it cannot carry this body of 
 sensation out of the transitional state, known as 
 the land of sensation or desire. And when it
 
 38 
 
 has worn it out sufficiently to allow it to escape — 
 when it has exhausted, so to speak, this body of 
 desire, which has been nourished in the sensational 
 life of earth — then it passes on into a higher con- 
 dition, into a higher sphere, where the whole of its 
 work is the work of the mind, all higher aspirations, 
 all thoughts which are devoid of passion and of 
 appetite, everything which is intellectual as distin- 
 guished from what is passional, all the higher 
 emotions which have in them this element of mind 
 as well as the lower element of passion — these, 
 puriiied from passion, will be carried on into this 
 higher world. And the length of the stay of the 
 Soul in that world depends on the amount which 
 during its earth-life it has accumulated of mental 
 experiences, and of experiences of the higher emo- 
 tions, of the artistic faculties, and so on — everything, 
 in fact, which has to do with the mind. Under- 
 standing that, you will see at once that when the 
 Soul first passes through the gateway of death there 
 will be scarcely an3'thing for it to carry on into this 
 higher condition, hardly any experiences which it 
 can use for the development, as it were, of mental 
 faculty. Still, the very few experiences that it has 
 acquired during its first life in the body, which are 
 not kamic, will be carried on. What will be its 
 work, then, in this higher world ? It will be to
 
 39 
 
 extract from these separated mental experiences 
 their essence, and to transmute that essence by 
 working upon it with this energy of the Soul, trans- 
 mute that essence into mental faculty, or mental 
 ability. The work that the Soul accomplishes when 
 it is out of the body, when it can no longer gather 
 fresh experiences, when it has lost the three bodies 
 through which experiences can alone be collected, 
 the work of the Soul is then to take up the mental 
 images remaining from these experiences, and, work- 
 ing on them, to take out of them their essence. Just 
 in the same way that a chemist might take a number 
 of chemical elements, might throw them into a 
 crucible, and then, purifying them from dross, might 
 extract the elements themselves and combine them 
 in the crucible ; so does this chemist, as it were — 
 the Soul — by the alchemy of its own mental ability, 
 the thought power which it has developed, working 
 on these accumulated and separated experiences, 
 throwing them into the crucible of the mind, extract 
 from them their essence, and then taking that 
 essence it assimilates it, makes it part of itself, works 
 it into its own nature, or — to use the phrase that I 
 used two or three times last week — weaves these 
 separated experiences into itself, and so begins to 
 make a real garment of the Soul, which is the 
 character of the Soul, and which will reappear as
 
 40 
 
 character when it comes back to earth. Everything 
 that the Soul brings with it of mental faculty, every- 
 thing that is born, as we say, with the child, the 
 powers of the mind which the child shows — the 
 whole of these are brought back by the Soul as the 
 result of its workings on past experiences while it is 
 living in the world of the Soul, the world that we 
 call Devachan in our Theosophical literature, which 
 simply means the land of bliss. As I say, then, 
 in these early experiences there will be very little 
 for the Soul to work upon in this blissful land ; but 
 when it comes back, even after this first period is 
 completed, and comes to be born for the second time 
 upon earth, it will have what it did not have at the 
 beginnmg — a little germ of mental faculty. That is 
 the small result in faculty which it has brought back 
 by working on the few experiences that it accumu- 
 lated during its previous life. It will start, then, at 
 a certain advantage in this second period of its 
 pilgrimage ; it will start with certain tools, as it 
 were, read}^ made to its hand, which it has fashioned 
 for itself during this interlude in the world of the 
 Soul ; it will come back with a nascent memory, with 
 a nascent power of comparison, very, very small cer- 
 tainly, but still, so to speak, better than none ; and it 
 will work through that on the new experiences that 
 come to it by way of sensation from the outer world.
 
 41 
 
 Through this life, then, again it will pass, having 
 this advantage now, that it has a little mental faculty 
 to go upon which it can increase. As it goes on 
 experiences increase, its power to receive the experi- 
 ences being greater, and this mental element mixing 
 itself up with the emotional and the passional nature. 
 So that we now speak of the mind, or, as we call it, 
 Manas — the word from which our own word man is 
 derived, and which really means the thinker, the 
 great characteristic of the man being that he thinks. 
 This Manas, then, now coming back, small as its 
 powers are, will modify and change the whole of the 
 kamic nature, the passional nature; and all that this 
 Ego now experiences will have in it the two ele- 
 ments — the element of passion which belongs to its 
 passional nature, and the element which comes from 
 this mind which is developing, which tends gradually 
 more and more to observe, and to compare, and to 
 make record of its experiences, and to store them up 
 in order that it may direct its action by them. At 
 first all the actions will grow from outer attraction ; 
 presently against the outer attraction there will be 
 working the images of past experiences. So that, to take 
 up the illustration that I used last week of taste, when 
 there is a strong attraction from without of a taste 
 which it knows will be pleasurable, excess will be 
 guarded against by the mental image which has been
 
 42 
 
 preserved of the pains that in previous experiences 
 w^ere the result of over-gratification of taste. So 
 that now you will have this double element. And 
 remember that the element of the mind is increasing, 
 while the other element is more or less stationary. 
 As the Soul passes from life to life, and in each life 
 accumulates experiences, in each transitional stage 
 after death suffers from the animal appetites which 
 hold it prisoner from going on into the happier 
 world, and then in that happier world works upon 
 the experiences and changes them into faculties, it 
 will always have an accumulating stock of faculty, 
 an accumulating store of memories, while the outer 
 attractions will remain comparatively the same, and 
 action will be more and more directed by reason and 
 less and less directed by appetite. 
 
 Now, understanding that you will be fairly able, 
 I think, to trace, so to speak, the stages of this 
 pilgrimage of the Soul : you see the elements that 
 enter into the pilgrimage ; you see the tools with 
 which the Soul will have to work improvements if it 
 uses its experiences well in the successive incarna- 
 tions ; and you will also understand that on the 
 accumulation of these experiences, and the working 
 upon those experiences in the blissful land, will 
 depend the more rapid or the slower growth of the 
 faculties of the Soul — that is, whether it will grow
 
 43 
 
 rapidly, or will grow slowly or moderately, whether 
 the pilgrimage shall be comparatively swift or very 
 much delayed. You will see also how the Soul may 
 often be thrown back, how a very strong attraction 
 from without may overbear, say, a comparatively 
 small store of accumulated experiences ; and then 
 the Soul will make a mistake, will go against the 
 law, and will suffer. 
 
 How should we regard such an experience when 
 we are studying this pilgrimage of the Soul ? Is it 
 a matter for very great regret ? Is it a matter for 
 extreme grief and sorrow ? 
 
 Think it out for yourselves, and you will see the 
 way in which this wider view of life will regard any 
 mistake, any blunder, any fall, any sin. Sin is dis- 
 harmony with law\ So long as the law is not 
 understood desire will constantly be drawing the 
 Soul outward without regard to this law of which it 
 knows nothing, and striking on the law it will feel 
 pain. Suppose, then, that it has not accumulated a 
 sufficient store of these painful experiences to make 
 it realize the presence of the law ; or suppose that, 
 having accumulated sufficient experience to recognise 
 the presence of the law, it has not accumulated suffi- 
 cient to overbear the strong drawing of attraction to 
 the external object ; then the very experience of 
 wrong-doing is a necessary stage in its education.
 
 44 
 
 For the pain that results from the wrong-doing will 
 add to the store of experience that the Soul is 
 gradually accumulating, and will make it stronger 
 against the temptation in the future by this new 
 suffering which it has found must inevitably result 
 from coming into conflict with the law. So that 
 instead of being heart-broken over a failure, those 
 who see from life to life and look on the pilgrimage 
 of the Soul as a great whole, and not simply in the 
 fragments that ordinary persons see in looking at it, 
 they can see with calmness these blunders that the 
 Soul makes, knowing that they are the result of 
 insufficient experience, and that the very fall will 
 supply an added experience which will help the Soul 
 to stand when it comes into a similar position in the 
 future. And there is no more reason for extreme 
 sorrow over these blunders of the growing Soul than, 
 to use a simile that I have often used before, there 
 is reason for the mother to break her heart because 
 the child may stumble when it is learning to walk. 
 If the child is hurt she may feel sorrow for the 
 child's pain, but she certainly will not go into a state 
 of frantic despair about it. She will know that these 
 tumbles are a necessary part of the education of the 
 child in gaining equilibrium, and will know that 
 every tumble it has will make the tumbles of the 
 future less likely to occur.
 
 45 
 
 Now, that is not a callous way of looking at things; 
 it is a wise way ; and as knowledge grows wisdom 
 gives balance to contemplate calmly many things 
 that otherwise would be distressing and disturbing 
 in the very highest degree. Calmness, which is a 
 characteristic of wisdom, comes from this wider 
 vision which is able to understand causes as well as 
 see effects, and which understands how that which 
 to-day seems sad will work out for good in days to 
 come. 
 
 One other distinction that we want to realise as 
 to the principles at work in this pilgrimage of the 
 Soul is that the kamic element with which the Ego 
 is encircled, constantly giving rise to desire, is that 
 which is always making links which bring it back to 
 birth. Every desire that you have for something 
 down here survives death, remains behind you in the 
 transition state until you return for re-incarnation, 
 and draws you back to re-birth as soon as you have 
 exhausted in the blissful land the accumulated ex- 
 periences of the mind whieh you work upon in that 
 region of the Universe. So to speak, when the body 
 drops from it the Ego, having accumulated sufficient 
 materials for its work, has the tendency to leave the 
 Earth and assimilate what it has gained through 
 these agencies which exist in the desire body. It 
 leaves earth behind, being drawn by the stronger
 
 46 
 
 mental forces onward, where it has to work in the 
 region of ideas. When its store is exhausted, then 
 the desire Hnks re-assert their power, and the Ego 
 having finished, having got through all the mental 
 experiences in the blissful land, feels again these 
 links of desire reasserting their power, and it is 
 drawn back by them to re-incarnation, and attached 
 by those links of desire to all the objects of desire 
 with which they are connected. 
 
 Now, the especial reason why I mention this is 
 that I hear so many people when they are dealing 
 with re-incarnation say, " I don't want to come 
 back." It is of no use having a theory that you do 
 not want to come back, if 3'ou are making these 
 desire links to things on the physical and on the 
 kamic planes. So long as you want anything which 
 the world can give you your Ego does want to come 
 back, and must come back whether you think you 
 want it or not. The fact that it desires something 
 here shows this fundamental craving for return, and 
 the mere feeling of weariness, which is the outcome 
 of a tired brain and of a consciousness working in 
 that tired brain, has absolutely nothing to do with 
 the inevitable destiny of the Ego. The brain which 
 is tired certainly will not come back ; it will go to 
 pieces on the earth to which it belongs, and the 
 tiredness which makes people say, " I don't want
 
 47 
 
 to come back," is the tiredness of this outside body, 
 the desire to escape from the painful things that 
 have made an impression upon it, and so on. The 
 real desire is shown by the attachment to the things 
 of earth, by the wish for one thing or another, the 
 wish for ease, the wish for pleasure, the wish for 
 social consideration, the wish for the praise of men, 
 the wish for everything with which men's and 
 women's lives are filled well-nigh to the brim at the 
 present time. For persons who are full of desire in 
 this way to say, " I don't want to come back," is 
 simply to show a lack of understanding. They 
 must come back until there is nothing here which 
 has the slightest attraction for them. When nothing 
 here attracts them, when praise and blame are 
 exactly the same to them, when they do not mind 
 whether in the outside world they are rich or poor, 
 when they do not mind whether they are what 
 people call happy or unhappy, when the whole out- 
 side life is an absolute matter of indifference, when 
 nothing can shake their peace or bring the slightest 
 ruffle of any kind over the emotional nature, then 
 that Soul is ready to go on ; but so long as any of 
 these things have the slightest influence, so long 
 these links are being made and must draw the Soul 
 back to fresh experiences of earth. 
 
 Manas itself does not make these links ; it makes
 
 48 
 
 them through Kama, and it makes them where the 
 desire even for intellectual things comes in, but not 
 by pure abstract thinking, which is its own special 
 work — that is to say, it is Manas pure and simple 
 which makes links bringing us back to re-birth, it is 
 Kama- Manas, which is the form of Manas working 
 amongst the great masses of people to-day. Manas 
 itself, which comes out now and again in absolutely 
 abstract thinking, does not make links which draw 
 to re-birth. But inasmuch as almost all intellectual 
 effort here is very largely carried on with the kamic 
 element, and has worked through the brain, which is 
 the vehicle of Kama-Manas, most intellectual effort 
 will have in it the desire element, and so will bring 
 the Soul back for fresh experiences upon the earth. 
 
 As to the way in which it works : it works by 
 what we may call the creative power of thought. 
 The whole world is the outcome of the Divine 
 Thought. Everything which we know as pheno- 
 menal is the mere outside appearance which has in 
 it the inner and living reality of thought. All outside 
 appearance is but the form which the thought takes 
 for expression on these lower planes; and the whole 
 Universe is nothing more than a Divine Thought in 
 manifestation. That Divine, that God-like element 
 is in man, and it works through Manas and is the 
 creative elem.ent. The more of that there is in the
 
 49 
 
 activity of a person the more is he a creative energy 
 in the world. 
 
 Every thought makes to itself a form. Every 
 time that you think a form is made in your mental 
 atmosphere. A passing thought will only have a 
 very transitory form ; a thought which is constantly 
 repeated will have a form which by these repetitions 
 becomes stronger and stronger and more and more 
 permanent, so that according to the fixity and the 
 motives of your thoughts will be the life of the 
 thought-forms that you are continually generating 
 around you. 
 
 If you refer to a letter in The Occult World, written 
 by Master K. H. to Mr. Sinnett, you will see that he 
 points out that when a thought goes out and takes 
 form it is vivified or entered into by an Elemental, 
 and the character of the Elemental will be according 
 to the character of the thought, and according to the 
 motive that has inspird the thought. If the thought 
 be a good one — for instance, directed to human 
 service with a desire to serve — then it will be helped 
 from outside by this Elemental, which is of a good 
 and a pure type, and the thought will be a force for 
 good, reacting on the person who has thought it, 
 and reacting on all those who come within the 
 sphere of his influence. So that every thought
 
 50 
 
 which is loving and helpful lives in the world of 
 thought as a useful influence. And supposing that 
 these good thoughts are directed towards people, 
 then they go to the people to whom the will directs 
 them and, so to speak, encircle them with a pro- 
 tective and aiding power. And it is a real thing 
 that every good and kind thought that you have of 
 a person, every wish for their benefit, every desire 
 for their happiness, is an actual living thing that 
 goes to that person as a living entity, and lives, as it 
 were, in connection with the person towards whom 
 you have directed it as a protective agency, warding 
 off danger and drawing good towards that person 
 to whom you have sent this angel of your thought. 
 
 So, again, with all evil thoughts, thoughts which 
 have in them the element of hate, of revenge, of 
 passion — those draw to themselves from the outer 
 world Elementals which increase this energy. So 
 that an evil thought directed against a person is an 
 absolutely mischievous agent, which may injure him 
 either in physical health, in the astral body, or in 
 any part of his body or mind. Suppose the person 
 has nothing in him which in any sense forms a link 
 with this thought of yours, then the thought will be 
 thrown back, and will return to yourself and strike 
 you to your own injury. Suppose, however, that 
 the person has, what most people have, some little
 
 51 
 
 fault in himself which may make a link with this 
 thought of yours, then the evil thought attaches 
 itself to the person and injures that person in some 
 part of his nature. Therefore is it that everything 
 which is of the nature of evil thought consciously 
 directed towards a person has been called, and 
 rightly called. Black Magic. A thought of revenge 
 or of anger which is directed towards any person 
 with a view to injure him is essentiall}^ of the nature 
 of Black Magic. And the greater the power of the 
 person who does it, and the greater the knowledge 
 of the person who does it, the greater is their crime 
 for which they have to answer to the Law. In this 
 way, then, the Soul works by these thought-forms. 
 First these thought-forms, then their Elementals, 
 working back upon the Soul that generates them, as 
 well as working in the outer world ; these go on 
 with the Soul into Devachan, so far as they are pure 
 in their nature, and make the faculty of which I 
 spoke, being, as it were, moulded into faculty ; and 
 then, coming back, the physical body is moulded by 
 way of the astral to manifest this character, which 
 has taken to itself, b}- means of these thought-forms, 
 certain definite shapes. So that it is perfectly true 
 that the outer body of a person will show something 
 of his character. That body is physically built on 
 the aggregated thought-forms which have been
 
 52 
 
 transformed by the alchemy that I spoke of into 
 definite faculties, and these, having their character- 
 istic forms, will mould the shaping of the outer body. 
 And it is perfectly true that when you are dealing 
 with the general shape of the brain you will have 
 that brain developed in certain regions, according to 
 the character of the Ego that inhabits it. The 
 mistake is to suppose that it is the tabernacle which 
 makes the tenant ; it is the tenant who builds the 
 tabernacle. So that while you have the two cor- 
 related the one to the other we must not begin at 
 the wrong end, and believe that the master-builder 
 is made by his house ; he builds himself the dwelling 
 in which, in his coming incarnation, he will have to 
 live. 
 
 One other point as regards our back-coming Ego. 
 You will notice I am not tracing him life by life. I 
 am giving you general principles which will work 
 through large numbers of lives. These stages being 
 passed through, what circumstances will our Ego 
 come back into ? That will depend upon the 
 circumstances that during his past life he caused 
 upon earth ; according to the happiness or misery 
 he caused upon earth in a past incarnation, so will 
 be the circumstances in which he will find himself 
 when he comes back to earth. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, that a man whose influence
 
 53 
 
 extends over large numbers of people spreads happi- 
 ness around him on every side. That is a distinct 
 effect that he has worked, and it will govern the 
 condition in which he will be born in his next life. 
 This happiness that he spreads amongst large num- 
 bers of his fellows is a seed which will spring up as 
 happy circumstances for his next incarnation. Sow- 
 ing happiness he will reap happiness ; sowing pain 
 he will reap pain. If he causes a great deal of 
 physical suffering in his life, he will reap much 
 physical misery in some following incarnation. If 
 he spreads around him much mental distress and 
 trouble, he will reap mental distress and trouble in 
 the circumstances that come in his way. Mind, 
 these are things he cannot alter. They are fixed 
 future events, so to speak, when he leaves the earth. 
 These are the things that can be predicted of him 
 with fair certainty, because these are seeds that are 
 left which have to grow up each after its own kind. 
 Over these he has no power ; they are there, and he 
 has got to live amongst them. 
 
 Now, you may have a man who is not a good man 
 morally, but who has yet spread a very large amount 
 of happiness amongst people, say, of a physical kind; 
 he will reap physical happiness in his next incarna- 
 tion. You may find a good man who by lack of 
 knowledge has spread a great deal of misery, and he
 
 54 
 
 will reap physical suffering in his next incarnation. 
 You have to distinguish, if you want to understand, 
 between these different agencies of the Soul. Accord- 
 ing to his desires and his will, so will be his faculties — 
 his own personal possessions, or individual posses- 
 sions rather, if I may call them so ; according to 
 what he has sown upon earth will be his harvest 
 upon earth when he returns. So that all these 
 circumstances of happiness or of misery will be the 
 result of the happiness or the misery that he has 
 spread in previous incarnations : they will come back 
 to him as environment, as circumstances. 
 
 Now I come to my next point. You must remem- 
 ber the pilgrimage of the Soul is very long, and a 
 lecture is very short, so that I am obliged to run 
 somewhat rapidly from one subject to another. The 
 next point at which I must make a moment's pause 
 is on our Ego when he has become more experienced. 
 He is no longer a baby, nor even a child, nor even a 
 youth ; he is a mature Ego and he is becoming wise. 
 With this wisdom of his he is bringing back more 
 and more faculty, he is bringing back more and more 
 memory, he will make for himself instruments which 
 will be able to express greater and greater capacity, 
 and a time will come in this pilgrimage of his in 
 which his constant efforts to impress on these lower 
 tabernacles his own ever-lengthening memory of past
 
 55 
 
 experiences will become more and more successful. 
 His will having grown very strong, will tell con- 
 siderably upon his lower nature. What we call the 
 voice of conscience will begin to make itself heard 
 with more imperative force. Now, conscience is 
 this memory of the Soul expressing itself in the 
 lower nature ; it comes with authority, and the lower 
 nature feels the authoritative sound in it : " You 
 ought to do this; you ought not to do that." And 
 sometimes the lower nature will challenge it, not 
 being able to undestand where this authority comes 
 from. The authority lies in the Soul, which is trying 
 to make the lower nature go its way ; it is using its 
 own past experience to prevent the lower nature 
 being led astray by the outside objects, by its mis- 
 taken deductions, by its very incomplete experiences. 
 And it is speaking constantly to this lower nature, 
 and constantly the lower nature does not hear. In 
 all the clatter and jangle of the body in which it is 
 living it finds it is very difficult to make its voice 
 heard coming from the higher planes. But the voice 
 of the conscience is always this voice of the Soul, 
 speaking out of its memory. And if you think that 
 out at your leisure you will see how it is that con- 
 science will sometimes speak wrongly as to choice of 
 action, but always with the sense of, "You ought to 
 do." The reason that it sometimes speaks wrongly
 
 56 
 
 as to action is because the experience is still a limited 
 experience. The reason why it is always imperative 
 is because that limited experience is the only guide 
 which Manas has, and it is the best guide even 
 though it be imperfect. A man therefore does wisely 
 always to obey his conscience. It is the best decision 
 which experience enables the Soul to make, and if 
 it be faulty, it is faulty because of the want of expe- 
 rience. If you obey it, when it blunders you will 
 gain the lacking experience ; and you will suffer 
 more if you do not obey it. By following some 
 other rule which is not the rule of your own inner 
 Self, speaking from its own experience, you will be 
 obeying an external law, which, speaking from 
 without, is not to be relied upon to develop your 
 Soul. The Soul is developed by experience, not by 
 compulsion ; and an outer law, however good it may 
 be, does not, being a compulsory power, add to the 
 inner forces of the Soul ; therefore is it of compara- 
 tively small value in evolution, far less than the voice 
 of conscience, even when the conscience is faulty. 
 
 Now taking that, let us come back from that slight 
 digression to our Ego. It has become comparatively 
 mature, it is getting wiser. Getting wiser it wants 
 to escape from this constant succession of births and 
 of deaths of which it is beginning to get a little tired. 
 It has gone through it so often that it has accumu-
 
 57 
 
 lated a great deal of experience, and many things 
 in the world no longer attract it. Everything they 
 can give it, it has gathered ; why should it want to 
 repeat its experience of them ? The taste has dis- 
 appeared because the experience has been obtained ; 
 and as this Soul comes back there will be a number 
 of things in the outer world that will no longer 
 attract, and that it will turn aside from with a sense 
 of weariness and disgust. These things will first be 
 the things of the senses, which are the soonest worn 
 out, and it will go more and more towards the things 
 of the mind, more and more towards the things of 
 the intellect, accumulating a larger and larger store 
 for its Devachanic life, a greater and greater accumu- 
 lation on which it is going to work. So that the life 
 in Devachan will be longer and longer, the Soul 
 working out these greater stores which it carries 
 with it from this earthly life. Coming back then 
 again, having had these long Devachanic inter- 
 ludes, it comes back with this ever - increasing 
 distaste for the lower desires, and the links with 
 objects of the sense become feebler and feebler. Its 
 knowledge enables it to recognise the transitory and 
 illusory character of earthly things, and it breaks the 
 links of desire by knowledge ; knowing that they 
 pass, it refuses to be attached to them, and so 
 exhausts these links which inevitably draw it back
 
 58 
 
 to earth so long as they last. Instead of setting up 
 great numbers of these, it creates only thought- 
 forms of the pure intellect, and the pure reason, and 
 the pure thought, which do not tie it to these 
 transitory things of the earth. And it may break 
 these links in two ways — by knowledge in the way 
 that I described ; or also it may break them by 
 catching glimpses of higher and greater realities — 
 the spiritual realities as we say — and that mightier 
 attraction, overbearing the attraction to earth, will 
 draw the desires upwards, purifying them as they 
 ascend. So that at last all the lower element of 
 desire which is for the lower self will be got rid 
 of, and there will be present only the desire to work 
 because the work is useful, to work because the work 
 is duty, to work because others need the service, 
 and so on. 
 
 You may thus get rid of the personal element in 
 desire, which is the binding element for return, and 
 in one of two ways : either by a distinctly intellectual 
 recognition of the transitory character of the objects 
 and the exhausting of desire by knowledge, or by 
 the burning up of desire by devotion, and the 
 deliberate sacrifice of everything to the higher ideal 
 of life which is to become its compelling power. 
 
 The time will come in the growth of this Ego when 
 it will realize then that the lower earth has nothing
 
 59 
 
 which is worth having. By knowledge, by devotion, 
 or by both it has broken these hnks. What then will 
 be the nature of the life to be lived, when it is estab- 
 lishing no new links to bring it back to birth ? It may 
 be a very active life, employed constantly in working 
 amongst men ; for it is not action that binds men to 
 birth, but the desire which causes action. In desire, 
 and not in act, lies this link which draws the Ego 
 back to birth. Suppose then that during a life of 
 very great activity there is no desire ; suppose every 
 action that is performed is performed because it is 
 right to be done ; suppose that when it is performed, 
 the Ego concerns itself no more about it ; suppose it 
 has no wish for the result of that action, either good, 
 or bad, or indifferent ; suppose that when the action 
 is performed there is no link which binds the Soul to 
 it in any way, that it remains absolutely indifferent 
 to the fruit of action, as it is technically called, and 
 works, not because it wants to gain anything, but 
 because it wants to serve and because it recognises 
 that it is one with the All, and therefore must 
 discharge perfectly everything which the law de- 
 mands of it in the particular place in the world in 
 which it may be. Freedom of the Soul, then, 
 depends on whether you want to bring about a result 
 by your action, because the result is desirable, or 
 merely because you want to be in harmony with
 
 6o 
 
 law, beeause you recognise yourself as part of the 
 All, because you recognise yourself as a channel of 
 the law. If you are nothing more than that, if every- 
 thing that you do is done because it is duty, if you 
 act neither for pleasure nor pain, neither from love 
 nor hatred, neither from attraction nor repulsion, 
 neither for gain nor loss, then, there being no desire, 
 no link is made ; in the doing of the action you are 
 part of the One and the All ; and That cannot be 
 bound by these links to rebirth, so that the question 
 of outer activity does not affect in itself the freedom 
 of the Soul. I grant, of course, to the full that 
 people need the stimulus of desire in order to make 
 them act, until they have reached this higher stage 
 where action is perfectly performed for duty's sake. 
 It cannot be reached at a bound, it cannot be 
 reached by its intellectual recognition, it cannot be 
 reached even by saying that it is desirable ; it can 
 only be reached by the inner growth of the Ego, 
 which makes it really fundamentally indifferent to 
 all the things which attract the masses of mankind. 
 So long as there is attraction, that is needed for the 
 performance of duty. It is only when the lower 
 nature is entirely the instrument of the higher that a 
 man will lead a life of great activity without the 
 smallest wish to see anything which may flow from 
 his acts ; and when that point is reached, he has
 
 6i 
 
 achieved his freedom, when that is done, Karma for 
 him— save the great Karma of the Universe — ^is at 
 an end. Individual Karma for him is burnt up, 
 burnt up in these fires of knowledge and of devotion 
 which prevent him establishing any links with the 
 earth, and he therefore makes no fetters which bind 
 him to the wheel of birth and of death. The 
 burning up of Karma in this fire of devotion means 
 that you throw into the fire every action of your life, 
 and like a sacrifice it is burnt up and changed. 
 
 Let me give you one illustration only to show you 
 how this change may occur in the higher spiritual 
 life. 
 
 There may be a thing which will bring suffering. 
 The Soul which is nearing its liberation is willing to 
 accept that suffering which still it feels; it throws the 
 suffering on to the altar of devotion ; the fire of devo- 
 tion burns up the suffering, and the Soul feels joy in 
 its gift. But that suffering is not lost ; it is changed 
 in the fire, and it becomes spiritual energy, which 
 the Great Lodge can use for the helping of man — ■ 
 the voluntary acceptance of pain as a sacrifice to the 
 Masters is changed by that fire of devotion into 
 spiritual energy for the helping of the world. There 
 is the underlying truth of the doctrine of what is 
 called vicarious atonement ; not the legal thing that 
 the Churches have sometimes taught, but the
 
 62 
 
 sacrifice of a j::^reat Soul, which bears suffering and 
 offers it for the spiritual life of the world, so that it 
 shall be changed in the fire of love and come back 
 as spiritual energy to be spread over the whole of 
 the world for the raising and the helping of man. 
 
 The Soul, then, thus achieving liberation, comes 
 to the period of choice of which you hear so much. 
 Being free it has a right to choose, and it may either 
 pass onwards into higher types of life, or it may 
 elect to remain within the sphere of earth in order 
 that it may directly help in the freeing of other 
 Souls. That is, of course, the Great Renunciation 
 of which every now and then you catch glimpses in 
 the Theosophical writings ; that is the choice of the 
 liberated Soul ; it is free, but it remains within the 
 sphere of earth in order to help. It may choose 
 that, by renunciation of its right to go on. It is not 
 bound to earth, but by a voluntary renunciation it 
 remains there with some of the disadvantages, so to 
 speak, which belong to the material existence, for 
 the sake of helping others and carrying on this 
 evolution of the Race. 
 
 Where a Soul has thus accomplished its pilgrimage, 
 where stage after stage it has developed mind, where 
 stage after stage it has purified intellect, when it has 
 got rid of desire, when it has become a liberated
 
 63 
 
 Soul, when it has renounced the goin^^ onward for the 
 sake of humanity, when it has remained within this 
 sphere of earth for helping man until the cycle of 
 humanity is completed, then, entering into Nirvana, 
 there comes the state of All-consciousness, of bliss 
 which no words are able to describe. And then 
 when the time comes for a new manifestation, when 
 the beginning of a new Manvantara approaches, then 
 this Soul which had achieved its liberation comes 
 forth as a Son of Mind, in order in due time to 
 generate mind in a new humanity, to be the Teacher 
 of that humanity in its infancy, its guide in its 
 maturity, rising Manvantara after Manvantara higher 
 and higher. For the pilgrim Soul which began in 
 the germ-union that I described, which went on by 
 accumulating experiences, which then from these 
 experiences extracted their essence, which then got 
 rid of the desires which made it separate, and which 
 unified itself once more, becoming a unit conscious- 
 ness in a mysterious way which can not even be 
 sensed until at least the lower grades of the higher 
 consciousness have been experienced during earth- 
 life by rising out of the body and learning what it 
 is to be an Intelligence working without the shackles 
 of the brain — -such a Soul thus having worked 
 through its pilgrimage and regained unity, shakes off 
 the compound individuality, retaining the essence of
 
 64 
 
 it which it extracts ; being a unit it is incapable of 
 disintegration, it is for ever immortal — the Soul has 
 achieved its immortality, and through all Universes 
 to come it is one of the Workers, one of the 
 Builders, one with God in work for the worlds. 
 
 Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., The Country Press, 
 Bradford; and 3, Amen Corner, London, E.G.
 
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