FEW words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the fourth of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these manuals are not written for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of [Page vi] the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.

To study the workings of Karma on the line suggested by the Master, we must gain a clear conception of the three lower planes, or regions, of the universe, and of the Principles [See, for these MANUAL 1] related to them. The names given to them indicate the state of the consciousness working on them. In this a diagram may help us, showing the planes with the Principles related to them, and the vehicles in which a conscious entity may visit them. In practical Occultism the student learns to visit these planes, and by his own investigations to transform theory into knowledge. The lowest vehicle, the Gross Body, serves the consciousness for its work on the physical plane, and in this the consciousness is limited within the capacities of the brain. The term Subtle Body covers a variety of astral bodies, respectively suitable to the varying conditions of the very complicated region indicated by the name psychic plane. On the [Page 5] devachanic plane there are two well-defined levels, the Form Level and the Formless Level; on the lower, consciousness uses an artificial body, the Mãyãvi Rûpa, but the term Mind Body seems suitable as indicating that the matter of which it is composed belongs to the plane of Manas. On the formless level the Causal Body must be used. Of the Buddhic plane it is needless to speak.

Now the matter on these planes is not the same, and speaking generally, the matter of each plane is denser than that of the one above it. This is according to the analogy of Nature, for evolution in its downward course is from rare to dense, from subtle to gross. Further, vast hierarchies inhabit these planes, ranging from the lofty Intelligences of the spiritual region to the lowest sub-conscious Elementals of the physical world. On every plane Spirit and Matter are conjoined in every particle — every particle having Matter as its body, Spirit as its life — and all independent aggregations of particles, all separated forms of every kind, of every type, are ensouled by these living beings, varying in their grades according to the grade of the form. No form exists which is not thus ensouled, but the informing entity may be the loftiest Intelligence, the lowest Elemental, or any of the countless hosts that range between. The entities [Page 6]

A thought-form, then, is a mental image, created — or moulded — by the mind out of the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, in which, as above said, it works. This form, composed of the rapidly vibrating atoms of the matter of that region, set up vibrations all around it; these vibrations will give rise to sensations of sound and colour in any entities adapted to translate them thus, and as the thought-form passes-outward — or sinks downward, whichever expression may be preferred to express the transition — into the denser matter of the lower psychic regions, these vibrations thrill out as a singing-colour in every direction, and call to the thought-form whence they proceed the Elementals belonging to that colour.

All Elementals, like all things else in the universe belong to one or other of the seven primary Rays, the seven primeval Sons of Light. The white light breaks forth from the Third LOGOS, the manifested Divine Mind, in the seven Rays, the “Seven Spirits, that are before the Throne”, and each of these Rays has its seven sub-rays, and so onwards in sequential sub-divisions. Hence, amid the endless differentiations that make up a universe, there are Elementals [Page 11] belonging to the various, sub-divisions, and they are communicated with in a colour-language, grounded on the colour to which they belong. This is why the real knowledge of sounds and colours and numbers — number underlying both sound and colour — has ever been so carefully guarded, for the will speaks to the Elementals by these, and knowledge gives power to control.

Master K. H. speaks very plainly on this colour language. He says:

Having thus realized the relation between man and the elemental kingdom, and he moulding energies of the mind — verily, creative energies, in that they call into being these living forms that have been described — we are in a position to at least partially understand something of the generation and working-out of Karma during a single life-period. A “ life-period”, [Page 20] I say, rather than a “life”, because a life means too little if it be used in the ordinary sense of a single incarnation, and it means too much if it be used for the whole life, made up of many stages in the physical body, and of many stages without it. By life-period I mean a little cycle of human existence, with its physical, astral and devachanic experiences, including its return to the threshold of the physical — the four distinct stages through which the Soul passes, in order to complete its cycle. These stages are retrodden over and over again during the journey of the Eternal Pilgrim through our present humanity, and however much the experiences in each such period may vary, both as to quantity and quality, the period will include these four stages for the average human being, and none others.

It is important to realize that the residence outside the physical body is far more prolonged than the residence in it; and the workings of karmic law will be but poorly understood unless the activity of the Soul in the non-physical condition be studied. Let us recall the words of a Master, pointing out that the life out of the body is the real one.

During earth-life, the activity of the Soul is most directly manifested in the creation of the thought-forms already described. But in order to follow out with any approach to exactitude the workings of Karma, we must now analyse further the term “thought-form”, and add some considerations necessarily omitted in the general conception first presented. The Soul, working as mind, creates a Mental Image the primary “thought-form” [See Chapter: The Generation of Thought Forms]; let us take the term Mental Image to mean exclusively this immediate creation of the mind, and henceforth restrict this term to this initial stage of what is generally and broadly spoken of as a thought-form. This Mental Image remains attached to its creator, part of the content of his consciousness: it is a living, vibrating form of subtle matter, the Word thought but not yet [Page 22] spoken, conceived but not yet made flesh. Let the reader concentrate his mind for a few moments on this Mental Image, and obtain a distinct notion of it, isolated from all else, apart from all the results it is going to produce on other planes than its own, It forms, as just said, part of the content of the consciousness of its creator, part of his inalienable property; it cannot be separated from him; he carries it with him during his earthly life, carries it with him through the gateway of death, carries it with him in the regions beyond death; and if, during his upward travelling through those regions, he himself passes into air too rarefied for it to endure, he leaves behind the denser matter built into it, carrying on the mental matrix, the essential form; on his return to the grosser region the matter of that plane is again built into the mental matrix, and the appropriate denser form is reproduced. This Mental Image may remain sleeping, as it were, for long periods, but it may be re-awakened and revivified; every fresh impulse — from its creator, from its progeny (dealt with below), from entities of the same type as its progeny — increases its life-energy, and modifies its form.

It evolves, as we shall see, according to definite laws, and the aggregation of these Mental Images [Page 23] makes the character; the outer mirrors the inner, and as cells aggregate into the tissues of the body and are often much modified in the process, so do these Mental Images aggregate into the characteristics of the mind, and often undergo much modification. The study of the working out of Karma will throw much light on these changes. Many materials may enter into the making of these Mental Images by the creative powers of the Soul; it may be stimulated into activity by desire (Kãma), and may shape the image according to the prompting of passion or of appetite; it may be Self-motived to a noble Ideal, and mould the Image accordingly; it may be led by purely intellectual concepts, and form the Image thereafter. But lofty or base, intellectual or passional, serviceable or mischievous, divine or bestial, it is always in man a Mental Image, the product of the creative Soul, and on its existence individual Karma depends. Without this Mental Image there can be no individual Karma linking life-period to life-period: the mãnasic quality must be present to afford the permanent element in which individual Karma can inhere. The non-presence of Manas in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms has as its corollary the non-generation of individual Karma, stretching through death to rebirth. [Page 24]

Let us now consider the primary thought-form in relation to the secondary thought-form, the thought-form pure and simple in relation to the ensouled thought-form, the Mental Image in relation to the Astro-mental Image, or the thought-form in the lower astral plane. How is this produced and what is it ? To use the symbol employed above, it is produced by the Word-thought becoming the Word-outspoken; the Soul breathes out the thought, and the sound makes form in astral matter; as the Ideas in the Universal Mind become the manifested universe when they are outbreathed, so do these Mental Images in the human mind, when outbreathed, become the manifested universe of their creator. He peoples his current in space with a world of his own. The vibrations of the Mental Image set up similar vibrations in the denser astral matter, and these cause the secondary thought-form, what I have called the Astro-mental Image; the Mental Image itself remains, as has been already said, in the consciousness of its creator, but its vibrations passing outside that consciousness reproduce its form in the denser matter of the lower astral plane. This is the form that affords the casing for a portion of elemental energy, specializing it for the time that the form persists, since the mãnasic element in the [Page 25] form gives a touch of individuality to that which ensouls it. [How marvellous and how illuminating are the correspondences in Nature!] This is the active entity, spoken of in the Master's description, and it is this Astro-mental Image that ranges over the astral plane, keeping up with its progenitor [See Chapter: “The Generation of Thought Forms”, and also diagram page 6] the magnetic tie spoken of, re-acting on its parent, the Mental Image, and acting also on others. The life-period of an Astro-mental Image may be long or short, according to circumstances, and its perishing does not affect the persistence of its parent; any fresh impulse given to the latter will cause it to generate afresh its astral counterpart as each repetition of a word produces a new form.

The vibrations of the Mental Image do not only pass downwards to the lower astral plane, but they pass upwards also into the spiritual plane above it. [These words downwards and upwards are very misleading; the planes of course interpenetrate each other] And as the vibrations cause a denser form on the lower plane, so do they generate a far subtler form — dare I call it form ? it is no form to us — on the higher, in the ãkãsha, the world-stuff emanated from the LOGOS Itself. The ãkãsha is the store-house of all forms, the treasure-house [Page 26] whereinto are poured — from the infinite wealth of the Universal Mind — the rich stores of all the Ideas that are to be bodied forth in a given Cosmos; thereinto also enter the vibrations from the Cosmos — from all the thoughts of all Intelligences, from all the desires of all kãmic entities, from all the actions performed on every plane by all forms. All these make their respective impressions, the to us formless, but to lofty spiritual Intelligences the formed, images of all happenings, and these Âkãshic Images — as we will henceforth call them — abide for evermore, and are the true Karmic Records, the Book of the Lipika, [The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Pages 157-159] that may be read by any who possess the “opened eye of Dangma”, [Ibid, stanza 1, of the Book of Dzyan, and see Conclusion] It is the reflection of these Âkãshic Images that may be thrown upon the screen of astral matter by the action of the trained attention — as a picture may be thrown on a screen from a slide in a magic-lantern — so that a scene from the past may be reproduced in all its living reality, correct in every detail of its far-off happening; for in the Âkãshic Records it exists, imprinted there once for all, and a fleeting living picture of any page of these Records can be made at pleasure, dramatized on the astral [Page 27] plane, and lived in by the trained Seer. If this imperfect description be followed by the reader, he will be able to form for himself some faint idea of Karma in its aspect as Cause. In the Âkãsha will be pictured the Mental Image created by a Soul, inseparable from it; then the Astro-mental Image produced by it, the active ensouled creature, ranging the astral plane and producing innumerable effects, all accurately pictured in connection with it, and, therefore, traceable to it and through it to its parent, each such thread — spun as it were out of its own substance by the Astro-mental Image, as a spider spins its web — being recognizable by its own shade of colour; and however many such threads may be woven into an effect, each thread is distinguishable and is traceable to its original forth-giver, the Soul that generated the Mental Image. Thus, for our clumsy earth-bound intelligences, in miserably inadequate language, we may figure forth the way in which individual responsibility is seen at a glance by the great Lords of Karma, the administrators of karmic Law; the full responsibility of the Soul for the Mental Image it creates, and the partial responsibility for its far-reaching effects, greater or less as each effect has other karmic threads entering into its causation. Thus also may we understand why [Page 28] motive plays a part so predominant in the working out of Karma, and why actions are so relatively subordinate in their generative energy; why Karma works out on each plane according to its constituents, and yet links the planes together by the continuity of its thread.

When the illuminating concepts of the Wisdom Religion shed their flood of light over the world, dispersing its obscurity and revealing the absolute Justice which is working under all the apparent incongruities, inequalities and accidents of life, is it any wonder that our hearts should go out in gratitude unspeakable to the Great Ones — blessed be They! — who hold up the Torch of Truth in the murky darkness, and free us from the tension that was straining us to breaking-point, the helpless agony of witnessing wrongs that seemed irremediable, the hopelessness of Justice, the despair of Love?

We may perhaps gain in clearness if we tabulate the threefold results of the activity of the Soul that go to the making up of Karma as Cause, regarded in principle rather than in detail. Thus we have during a life-period:

The results of these will be tendencies, capacities, activities, opportunities, environment, etc., chiefly in future life-periods, worked out in accordance with definite laws.

The Soul in Man, the Ego, the Maker of Karma, must be recognized by the student as a growing entity, a living individual, who increases in wisdom and in [Page 30] mental stature as he treads the path of his aeonian evolution; and the fundamental identity of the Higher and Lower Manas must be constantly kept in mind. For convenience sake we distinguish between them, but the difference is a difference of functioning activity and not of nature: the Higher Manas is Manas working on the spiritual plane, in possession of its full consciousness of its own past; the Lower Manas is Manas working on the psychic or astral plane, veiled in astral matter, vehicled in Kãma, and with all its activities intermingled with and coloured by the desire-nature it is to a great extent blinded by the astral matter that veils it, and is in possession only of a portion of the total mãnasic consciousness, this portion consisting — for the vast majority — of a limited selection from the more striking experiences of the one incarnation then in progress. For the practical purposes of life as seen, by most people, the Lower Manas is the “I” and is what we term the Personal-Ego; the voice of conscience, vaguely and confusedly regarded as supernatural, as the voice of God, is for them the only manifestation of the Higher Manas on the psychic plane, and they quite rightly regard it as authoritative, however mistaken they may be as to its nature. But the student must realize that the Lower Manas is one with [Page 31] the Higher, as the ray is one with its sun; the Sun-Manas shines ever in the heaven of the spiritual plane, the Ray-Manas penetrates the psychic plane; but if they be regarded as two, otherwise than for convenience in distinguishing their functioning, hopeless confusion will arise.

The Ego then is a growing entity, an increasing quantity. The ray sent down is like a hand plunged into water to seize some object and then withdrawn, holding the object in its grasp. The increase in the Ego depends on the value of the objects gathered by its outstretched hand, and the importance of all its work when the ray is withdrawn is limited and conditioned by the experiences gathered while that ray has been functioning on the psychic plane. It is as though a labourer went out into a field, toiling in rain and in sunshine, in cold and in heat, returning home at night; but the labourer is also the proprietor, and all the results of his labour fill his own granaries and enrich his own store. Each Personal-Ego is the immediately effective part of the continuing or Individual-Ego, representing it in the lower world, and necessary more or less developed according to the stage at which the Ego, as a totality or an Individual, has arrived. If this be clearly understood the sense of injustice to the [Page 32] Personal-Ego in its succession to its karmic inheritance — often felt as a difficulty by the young student of Theosophy — will disappear; for it will be realized that the Ego that made the Karma reaps the Karma, the labourer that sowed the seed gathers in the harvest, though the clothes in which he worked as sower may have worn out during the interval between the sowing and the reaping; the Ego's astral garments have also fallen to pieces between seed-time and harvest, and he reaps in a new suit of clothes; but it is “he” who sowed and who reaps, and if he sowed but little seed or seed badly chosen, it is he who will find but a poor harvest when as reaper he goeth forth.

In the early stages of the Ego's growth his progress will be extremely slow, [See Birth and Evolution of the Soul ] for he will be led hither and thither by desire, following attractions on the physical plane; the Mental Images he generates will be mostly of the passional class, and hence the Astro-mental Images will be violent and short-lived rather than strong and far-reaching. According as mãnasic elements enter into the composition of the Mental Image will be the endurance of the Astro-mental. Steady, sustained thought will form clearly defined Mental Images, and correspondingly strong and enduring [Page 33] Astro-mental Images, and there will be a distinct purpose in the life, a clearly recognized Ideal to which the mind is constantly recurring and on which it continually dwells: this Mental Image will become a dominating influence in the mental life, and the energies of the Soul will be largely directed by it.

Let us now study the making of Karma by way of the Mental Image. During a man's life he forms an innumerable assemblage of Mental Images; some are strong, clear, continually reinforced by repeated mental impulses; others are weak, vague, just formed and then as it were forsaken by the mind; at death the Soul finds itself possessed of myriads of these Mental Images, and they vary in character as well as in strength and definiteness. Some are of spiritual aspirations, longings to be of service, gropings after knowledge, vows of self-dedication to the Higher Life; some are purely intellectual, clear gems of thought, receptacles of the results of deep study; some are emotional and passional, breathing love, compassion, tenderness, devotion, anger, ambition, pride, greed; some are from bodily appetites, stimulated by uncurbed desire, and represent thoughts of gluttony, drunkenness, sensuality. Each Soul has its own consciousness, crowded with these Mental Images, [Page 34] the outcome of its mental life; not one thought, however fleeting, but is there represented; the Astro-mental Images may in many cases long have perished, may have had strength enough to endure but for a few hours, but the Mental Images remain among the possessions of the Soul, not one is lacking. All these Mental Images the Soul carries away with it, when it passes through death into the astral world.

The Kãma Loka, or Place of Desire, is divided into many strata as it were, and the Soul just after death is encumbered with its complete body of desire, or Kãma Rûpa, and all the Mental Images formed by Kãma-Manas that are of a gross and animal nature are powerful on the lowest levels of this astral world. A poorly developed Soul will dwell on these Images and act them out, thus preparing itself to repeat them again physically in its next life; a man who has dwelt on sensual thoughts and made such Mental Images will not only be drawn to earth-scenes connected with sensual gratifications, but will constantly be repeating them as actions in his mind, and so setting up in his nature stronger and stronger impulses towards the future commission of similar offences. So with other Mental Images formed from material supplied by the desire-nature, that belong to other levels in Kãma [Page 35] Loka. As the Soul rises from the lower levels to the higher, the Mental Images built from the materials of the lower levels lose these elements, thus becoming latent in consciousness, or what H. P. Blavatsky used to call “privations of matter”, capable of existing but out of material manifestation. The kãma-rûpic vesture is purified of its grosser elements as the Lower Ego is drawn upwards, or inwards, towards the devachanic region, each cast-off “shell” disintegrating in due course, until the last is doffed and the ray is completely withdrawn, free from all astral encasement. On the return of the Ego towards earth-life, these latent images will be thrown outwards and will attract to themselves the appropriate kãmic materials, which make them capable of manifestation on the astral plane, and they will become the appetites, passions and lower emotions of his desire-body for his new incarnation.

We may remark in passing that some of the Mental Images encircling the newly arrived Soul are the source of much trouble during the earlier stages of the postmortem life; superstitious beliefs presenting themselves as Mental Images torture the Soul with pictures of horrors that have no place in its real surroundings. [ See The Astral Plane, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 45, 46] [Page 36]

All the Mental Images formed from the passions and appetites are subjected to the process above described, to be remanifested by the Ego on its return to earth-life, and as the writer of the Astral Plane says:

Freed for the time from these lower elements, the Soul passes on into Devachan, where it spends a time proportionate to the wealth or poverty of its Mental Images pure enough to be carried into that region. Here it finds again every one of its loftier efforts, however brief it may have been, however fleeting, and here it works upon them, building out of these materials powers for its coming lives.

The devachanic life is one of assimilation; the experiences collected on earth have to be worked into the texture of the Soul, and it is by these that the Ego grows; its development depends on the number and variety of the Mental Images it has formed during its earth-life, and transmuted into their appropriate and more permanent types. Gathering together all the Mental Images of a special class, it extracts from them [Page 37] their essence; by meditation it creates a mental organ, and pours into it as faculty the essence it has extracted. For instance: a man has formed many Mental Images out of aspirations for knowledge and efforts to understand subtle and lofty reasonings; he casts off his body, his mental powers being of only average kind; in his Devachan he works on all these Mental Images, and evolves them into capacity, so that his Soul returns to earth with a higher mental apparatus than it before possessed, with much increased intellectual powers, able to achieve tasks for which before it was utterly inadequate. This is the transformation of the Mental Images, by which as Mental Images they cease to exist; if in later lives the Soul would seek to see again these as they were, it must seek them in the Karmic Records, where they remain for ever as ãkãshic Images. By this transformation they cease to be Mental Images created and worked on by the Soul, and become powers of the Soul, part of its very nature. If then a man desires to possess higher mental faculties than he at present enjoys, he can ensure their development by deliberately willing to acquire them, persistently keeping their acquirement in view, for desire and aspiration in one life become faculty in another, and the will to perform becomes the capacity [Page 38] to achieve. But it must be remembered that the faculty thus built is strictly limited by the materials supplied to the architect; there is no creation out of nothing, and if the Soul on earth fail to exercise its powers by sowing the seed of aspiration and desire, the Soul in Devachan will have but scanty harvest.

Mental Images which have been constantly repeated, but are not of the aspiring character, of the longing to achieve more than the feeble powers of the Soul permit, become tendencies of thought, grooves into which mental energy runs easily and readily. Hence the importance of not letting the mind drift aimlessly among insignificant objects, idly creating trivial Mental Images, and letting them dwell in the mind. These will persist and form channels for future outpourings of mental force which will thus be led to meander about on low levels running into the accustomed grooves, as the paths of least resistance.

The will or desire to perform a certain action, such will or desire having been frustrated, not by want of ability but by want of opportunity, or by circumstances forbidding accomplishment, will cause Mental Images which — if the action be of a high and pure nature — will be acted out in thought on the devachanic plane, and will be precipitated as actions on returning to [Page 39] earth. If the Mental Image was formed out of desire to do beneficent actions, it would give rise to the mental performance of these actions in Devachan; and this performance, the reflection of the Image itself, would leave it in the Ego as an intensified Mental Image of an action, which would be thrown out on to the physical plane as a physical act, the moment the touch of favourable opportunity precipitated this crystallization of the thought into the act. The physical act is inevitable when the Mental Image has been realized as action on the devachanic plane. The same law applies to Mental Images formed out of baser desires, though these never pass into Devachan, but are subjected to the process before described, to be reformed on the way back to earth. Repeated covetous desires, for instance, out of which Mental Images are formed, will crystallize out as acts of theft, when circumstances are propitious. The causative Karma is complete, and the physical act has become the inevitable effect, when it has reached the stage at which another repetition of the Mental Image means its passing into action. It must not be forgotten that repetition of an act tends to make the act automatic, and this law works on planes other than the physical; if then an action be constantly repeated on the psychic plane it [Page 40] will become automatic, and when opportunity offers will automatically be imitated on the physical. How often it is said after a crime, “It was done before I thought”, or “If I had thought for a moment I would never have done it”. The speaker is quite right in his plea that he was not then moved by a deliberate thought-out idea, and he is naturally ignorant as to preceding thoughts, the train of causes that led up to the inevitable result. Thus a saturated solution will solidify if but one more crystal be dropped into it; at the mere contact, the whole passes into the solid state. When the aggregation of Mental Images has reached saturation point, the addition of but one more solidifies them into an act. The act, again, is inevitable, for the freedom of choice has been exhausted in choosing over and over again to make the Mental Image, and the physical is constrained to obey the mental impulsion. The desire to do in one life reacts as compulsion to do in another, and it seems as though the desire worked as a demand upon Nature, to which she responds by affording the opportunity to perform.[See the later section on the working out of Karma]

The Mental Images stored up by the memory as the experiences through which the Soul has passed during its earth-life, the exact record of the action upon it of [Page 41] the external world, must also be worked on by the Soul. By study of these, by meditation upon them, the Soul learns to see their inter-relations, their value as translations to it of the workings of the Universal Mind in manifested Nature; in a sentence, it extracts from them by patient thought upon them all the lessons they have to teach. Lessons of pleasure and pain, of pleasure breeding pain and pain breeding pleasure, teaching the presence of inviolable laws to which it must learn to conform itself. Lessons of success and failure, of achievement and disappointment, of fears proving groundless, of hopes failing realization, of strength collapsing under trial, of fancied knowledge betraying itself as ignorance, of patient endurance wresting victory from apparent defeat, of recklessness changing into defeat apparent victory. Over all these things the Soul ponders, and by its own alchemy it changes all this mixture of experiences into the gold of wisdom, so that it may return to earth as a wiser Soul, bringing to bear on the events which meet it in the new life this result of the experiences of the old. Here again the Mental Images have been transmuted, and no longer exist as Mental Images. They can only be recovered in their old form from the Karmic Records. [Page 42]

It is from the Mental Images of experiences, and more especially from those which tell how suffering has been caused by ignorance of Law, that Conscience is born and is developed. The Soul during its successive earth-lives is constantly led by Desire to rush headlong after some attractive object; in its pursuit it dashes itself against Law, and falls, bruised and bleeding. Many such experiences teach it that gratifications sought against Law are but wombs of pain, and when in some new earth-life the desire-body would fain carry the Soul into enjoyment which is evil, the memory of past experiences asserts itself as Conscience, and cries aloud its forbiddance, and reins in the hurrying horses of the senses that would plunge heedlessly after the objects of desire. At the present stage of evolution all but the most backward Souls have passed through sufficient experiences to recognize the broad outlines of “right” and “wrong”, i.e., of harmony with the Divine Nature, and of discord, and on these main questions of ethics a wide and long experience enables the Soul to speak clearly and definitely. But on many higher and subtler questions, belonging to the present stage of evolution and not to the stages that lie behind us, experience is still so restricted and insufficient that it has not yet been worked up into [Page 43] Conscience, and the Soul may err in its decision, however well intentioned its effort to see clearly and to act rightly. Here its will to obey sets it in line with the Divine Nature on the higher planes, and its failure to see how to obey on the lower plane will be remedied for the future by the pain it feels as it blunders up-against the Law: the suffering will teach it what before it knew not, and its sorrowful experiences will be worked into Conscience, to preserve it from similar pain in the future, to give it the joy of fuller knowledge of God in Nature, of self-conscious accord with the Law of Life, of self-conscious co-operation in the work of evolution.

Thus far we see as definite principles of Karmic Law working with Mental Images as Causes, that:

When the Soul has lived out its devachanic life, and has assimilated all that it can of the material gathered during its last period on earth, it begins to be drawn again towards earth by the links of Desire that bind it to material existence. The last stage of its life-period now lies before it, the stage during which it re-clothes itself for another experience of earthly life, the stage that is closed by the Gateway of Birth.

The Soul steps over the threshold of Devachan into what has been called the plane of Re-incarnation, bringing with it the result, small or great, of its devachanic work. If it be but a young Soul, it will have gained but little; progress in the early stages of Soul-Evolution is slow to an extent scarcely realized by most students, and during the babyhood of the Soul life-day succeeds life-day in wearying succession, each earth-life sowing but little seed, each Devachan ripening but little fruit. As faculties develop, growth quickens at an ever-increasing rate, and the Soul that enters Devachan with a large store of material, comes out of it with a large increase of faculty, worked out under the general laws before stated. It issues from Devachan clothed only in that body of the Soul that [Page 45] endures and grows throughout the Manvantara,, surrounded by the aura that belongs to it as an individual, more or less glorious, many-hued, luminous, definite, and extensive, according to the stage of evolution reached by the Soul. It has been wrought in the heavenly fire, and comes forth as King Soma. [A mystic name, full of meaning to the student who understands the part played by Soma in some ancient mysteries]

Passing on to the astral plane on its earthward journey, it clothes itself anew in a Body of Desire, the first result of the workings out of its past Karma. The Mental Images formed during the past “from materials supplied by the desire nature, that had become latent in consciousness, or what H. P. Blavatsky used to call 'privations of matter', capable of existing, but out of material manifestation”, are now thrown outwards by the Soul, and immediately attract to themselves from the matter of the astral plane the kãmic elements congenial to their natures, and “become the appetites, passions, and lower emotions of his [the Ego's] desire body for his new incarnation”. [Ante, page 34] When this work is accomplished — a work sometimes very brief, sometimes one that [Page 46] causes long delay — the Ego stands in the karmic vesture he has prepared for himself, ready to be “clothed upon”, to receive from the hands of the agents of the Great Lords of Karma the etheric double [Formerly called the Linga Sharîra, a name that gave rise to much confusion] built for him according to the elements he has himself provided, after which shall be shaped his physical body, the house which he must inhabit during his coming physical life. The individual and the personal Ego are thus immediately self-built, as it were — what he thought on, that he has become; his qualities, his “natural gifts”, all these appertain to him as the direct results of his thinking; the Man is in very truth self-created, responsible, in the fullest sense of the word, for all that he is.

But this man is to have a physical and etheric body that will largely condition the exercise of his faculties; he is to live in some environment, and according to it this will be his outward circumstances; he is to tread a path marked out by the causes he has set going, other than those which appear as effects in his faculties; he has to meet events joyful and sorrowful, resulting from the forces he has generated. Something more than his individual and personal nature [Page 47] seems here to be needed: how is the field to be provided for its energies? How are the conditioning instruments and the re-acting circumstances to be found and adapted?

We approach a region whereof little may be fitly said, in that it is the region of mighty Spiritual Intelligences, Whose nature is far beyond the scope of our very limited faculties, Whose existence may indeed be known and Whose workings may be traced, but towards Whom we stand much in the position occupied by one of the least intelligent lower animals towards ourselves, in that it may know that we exist but can have no conception of the scope and workings of our consciousness. These Great Ones are spoken of as the Lipika and the Four Mahãrãjahs. How little we can know of the Lipika may be seen from the following;

Of these H. P. Blavatsky, writes further, quoting the Fifth Stanza of the Book of Dzyan;

Receiving the mould — once more the “privation of matter” — from the Lipika, the Mahãrãjahs choose [Page 49] for the composition of the etheric double the elements suited to the qualities that are to be expressed through it, and this etheric double thus becomes a fitting karmic instrument for the Ego, giving it alike the basis for expression of the faculties it has evolved, and the limitations imposed upon it by its own past failures and wasted opportunities. This mould is guided by the Mahãrãjahs to the country, the race, the family, the social surroundings, which afford the most suitable field for the working out of the Karma allotted to the particular life-span in question, that which the Hindu calls the Prârabdha, or beginning, Karma; i.e., that which is to be worked out in the opening life-period. In no one life can the accumulated Karma of the past be worked out — no one instrument could be formed no surroundings could be found, suitable for the expression of all the slowly evolved faculties of the Ego, nor affording all the circumstances necessary for reaping all the harvests sown in the past, for discharging all the obligations contracted towards other Egos with whom the incarnating Soul has come into contact in the course of its long evolution. So much then of the total Karma as can be arranged for in one life-period, has a suitable etheric double provided for it, the mould of that double being [Page 50] guided to a suitable field. It is placed where the Ego may come into relations with some of such Egos, with whom it has been related in its past, as are present in, or are coming into, incarnation during its own life-period. A country is chosen where the religious, political and social conditions can be found which are suitable to some of its capacities, and afford the field for the occurrence of some of the effects it has generated. A race is selected — subject, of course, to the wider laws affecting incarnation in races, into which we cannot here enter — of which the characteristics resemble some of the faculties which are ripe for exercise, of which the type befits the incoming Soul. A family is found in which physical heredity has evolved the kind of physical materials which, built into the etheric double, will adapt themselves to its constitution; a family of which the general or special physical organization will afford play to the mental and passional natures of the Ego. Out of the manifold qualities existing in the Soul, and out of the manifold physical types existing in the world, such can be selected as are adapted to each other, a suitable casing can be built for the waiting Ego, an instrument and a field in which some of his Karma can be out-worked. Fathomless to our short plummet lines as may be the knowledge and the [Page 51] power required for such adaptations, we can yet dimly see that the adaptations can be made, and that perfect Justice can be done; the web of a man's destiny may indeed be composed of threads that to us are innumerable, and that may need to be woven into a pattern of to us inconceivable complexity; a thread may disappear — it has only passed to the under side to come to the surface again presently; a thread may suddenly appear — it has only re-emerged on the upper side after a long transit underneath; seeing but a fragment of the web, the pattern may to our short sight be indistinguishable. As was written by the sage lamblichus:

Sometimes people feel, on first recognizing the existence of Karma, that if all be the working out of Law they are but helpless slaves of Destiny. Ere considering how the Law may be utilized for the control of Destiny, let us study for a few moments a typical case, and see how Necessity and Freewill — to use the accepted terms — are both at work, and at work in harmony.

A man comes into the world with certain inborn mental faculties, let us say of an average type, with a passional nature that shows definite characteristics, some good, some bad; with an etheric double and physical body fairly well-formed and healthy, but of no specially splendid character. These are his limitations, clearly marked out for him, and he finds himself when he reaches manhood with this mental, passional, astral, physical “stock-in-hand”, and he has to do the best he can with it. There are many mental heights [Page 58] that he is definitely unable to climb, mental conceptions which his powers do not permit him to grasp; there are temptations to which his passional nature yields, though he strives against them; there are triumphs of physical strength and skill that he cannot achieve; in fact, he finds that he can no more think as a genius thinks than he can be beautiful as an Apollo, He is within a limiting ring and cannot pass out of it, long as he may for liberty. Moreover, he cannot avoid troubles of many kinds; they strike him, and he can only bear his pain; he cannot escape from it. Now these things are so. The man is limited by his past thoughts, by his wasted opportunities, by his mistaken choices, by his foolish yieldings; he is bound by his forgotten desires, enchained by his errors of an earlier day. And yet he is not bound, the Real Man. He who made the past that imprisons his present, can work within the prison-house and create a future of liberty. Nay, let him know that he himself is free, and the fetters will crumble away from his limbs, and according to the measure of his knowledge will be the illusoriness of his bonds. But for the ordinary man to whom the knowledge will come as a spark, not as a flame, the first step towards freedom will be to accept his limitations as self-made and proceed to [Page 59] enlarge them. True, he cannot think as a genius, thinks just yet, but he can think to the very best of his ability, and by-and-by he will become a genius; he can make power for the future, and he will. True, he cannot get rid of his passional follies in a moment, but he can fight against them, and when he has failed he can fight on, certain that presently he will conquer. True, he has astral and physical weaknesses and uglinesses, but as his thoughts grow strong and pure and beautiful, and his work beneficent, he is ensuring for himself more perfect forms in days to come. He is always himself, the free Soul, in the midst of his prison house, and he can hew down the walls he himself has built. He has no gaoler save himself: he can will his freedom, and in willing it he will achieve.

A trouble meets him; he is bereaved of a friend, he commits a serious fault. Be it so; he sinned as thinker in the past, he suffers as actor in the present. But his friend is not lost; he will hold him fast by love and in the future he will find him again; meanwhile there are others round him to whom he can give the services he would have showered on his beloved, and he will not again neglect the duties that are his and so sow seed for similar loss in future lives. He has committed an open wrong and suffers its penalty, but he thought it in the [Page 60] past, else could he not have wrought it now: he will patiently endure the penalty he purchased by his thought, and will so think today that his morrows shall be free from shame. Into what was darkness, has come a ray of light, and the light is singing to him:

Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices. How then shall the weaving of the chain be put an end to, since man must think and feel as long as he lives, and thoughts and feelings are ever generating Karma? The answer to this is the great lesson of the Bhagavad Gita, the lesson taught to the warrior prince. Neither to hermit nor to student was that lesson given, but to the warrior striving for victory, the prince immersed in the duties of his state.

Not in action but in desire, not in action but in attachment to its fruit, lies the binding force of action. An action is performed with desire to enjoy its fruit, a course is adopted with desire to obtain its results; the Soul is expectant and Nature must reply to it, it has demanded and Nature must award. To every cause is bound its effect, to every action its fruit, and desire is the cord that links them together, the thread that runs between. If this could be burned up the connexion would cease, and when all the bonds of the heart [Page 71] are broken the Soul is free. Karma can then no longer hold it; Karma can then no longer bind it; the wheel of cause and effect may continue to turn, but the soul has become the Liberated Life.

To perform this Karma-Yoga — Yoga of action — as it is called, man must perform every action merely as duty, doing all in harmony with the Law. Seeking to conform to the Law on any plane of being on which, he is busied, he aims at becoming a force working with the Divine Will for evolution, and yields a perfect obedience in every phase of his activity. Thus all his actions partake of the nature of sacrifice, and are offered for the turning of the Wheel of the Law, not for any fruit that they may bring; the action is performed as duty, the fruit is joyfully given for the helping of men; he has no concern with it, it belongs to the Law, and to the Law he leaves it for distribution.

And so we read:

Body and mind work out their full activities; with the body all bodily action is performed, with the mind all mental; but the SELF remains serene, untroubled, lending not of its eternal essence to forge the chains of time. Right action is never neglected, but is faithfully performed to the limit of the available power, renunciation of attachment to the fruit not implying any sloth or carelessness in acting:

The gathering together of Souls into groups, forming families, castes, nations, races, introduces a new element of perplexity into karmic results, and it is here that room is found for what are called “accidents”, as well as for the adjustments continually being made by the Lords of Karma. It appears that while nothing can befall a man that is not “in his Karma” as an individual, advantage may be taken of, say, a national or a seismic catastrophe to enable him to work off a piece of bad Karma which would not normally have fallen into the life-span through which he is passing; it appears — I can only speak hereon speculatively, not having definite knowledge on this point — as though sudden death could not strike off a man's body unless he owed such a death to the Law, no matter into what whirl of catastrophic disaster he may be hurled; he would be what is called “miraculously preserved” amid the death and ruin that swept away his neighbours, and emerge unharmed from tempest or fiery outbreak. But if he owed a life, and were drawn by his national or family Karma within the area of such a disturbance, then, although such sudden death had not been woven into his etheric double for that special life, no active interference might be made for his preservation; special care would be taken of him afterwards that he might not suffer unduly from his sudden; snatching out of earth-life, but he would be allowed to pay his debt on the arising of such an opportunity, brought within his reach by the wider sweep of the Law, by the collective Karma that involves him.

Similarly, benefits may accrue to him by this indirect action of the Law, as when he belongs to a nation that is enjoying the fruit of some good national Karma; and he may thus receive some debt owed to him by Nature, payment of which would not have fallen within [Page 77] his present lot had only his individual Karma been concerned.

A man's birth in a particular nation is influenced by certain general principles of evolution as well as by his immediate characteristics. The Soul in its slow development has not only to pass through the seven Root Races of a globe (I deal with the normal evolution of humanity), but also through the sub-races. This necessity imposes certain conditions, to which the individual Karma must adapt itself, and a nation belonging to the sub-race through which the Soul has to pass will offer the area within which the more special conditions needed must be found. Where long series of incarnations have been followed, it has been found that some individuals progress from sub-race to sub-race very regularly, whereas others are more erratic, taking repeated incarnations perhaps in one sub-race. Within the limits of the sub-race, the individual characteristics of the man will draw him towards one nation or another, and we may notice dominant national characteristics re-emerging on the stage of history en bloc after the normal interval of fifteen hundred years; thus crowds of Romans reincarnate as Englishmen, the enterprising, colonizing, conquering, imperial instincts reappearing as national attributes. A man in whom such national [Page 78] characteristics were strongly marked, and whose time for rebirth had come, would be drafted into the English nation by his Karma and would then share the national destiny for good or for evil, so far as that destiny affected the fate of an individual.

The family tie is naturally of a more personal character than is the national, and those who weave bonds of close affection in one life tend to be drawn together again as members of the same family. Sometimes these ties recur very persistently life after life, and the destinies of two individuals are very intimately interwoven in successive incarnations. Sometimes, in consequence of the different lengths of the Devachans necessitated by differences of intellectual and spiritual activity during the earth-lives spent together — members of a family may be scattered and may not meet again until after several incarnations. Speaking generally, the more close the tie in the higher regions of life, the greater the likelihood of rebirth in a family group. Here again the Karma of the individual is affected by the inter-linked Karmas of his family, and he may enjoy or suffer through these in a way not inherent in his own life-Karma, and so receive or pay karmic debts, out-of-date, as we may say. So far as the personality is concerned, this seems to bring with it a [Page 79] certain balancing up or compensation in Kãma-Loka and Devachan, in order that complete justice may be done even to the fleeting personality.

The working out in detail of collective Karma would carry us far beyond the limits of such an elementary work as the present and far beyond the knowledge of the writer; only these fragmentary hints can at present be offered to the student. For precise understanding a long study of individual cases would be necessary, traced through many thousands of years. Speculation on these matters is idle; it is patient observation that is needed.

There is, however, one other aspect of collective Karma on which some word may fitly be said; the relation between men's thoughts and deeds and the aspects of external nature. On this obscure subject Mme. Blavatsky has the following:

Such is an outline of the great Law of Karma and of its workings, by a knowledge of which a man may [Page 82] accelerate his evolution, by the utilization of which a man may free himself from bondage, and become, long ere his race has trodden its course, one of the Helpers and Saviours of the World. A deep and steady conviction of the truth of this Law gives to life an immovable serenity and a perfect fearlessness: nothing can touch us that we have not wrought, nothing can injure us that we have not merited. And as everything that we have sown must ripen into harvest in due season, and must be reaped, it is idle to lament over the reaping when it is painful; it may as well be done now as at any future time, since it cannot be evaded, and, once done, it cannot return to trouble us again. Painful Karma may therefore well be faced with a joyful heart, as a thing to be gladly worked through and done with; it is better to have it behind us than before us, and every debt paid leaves us with less to pay. Would that the world knew and could feel the strength that comes from this resting on the Law. Unfortunately to most in the Western world it is a mere chimera, and even among Theosophists belief in Karma is more an intellectual assent than a living and fruitful conviction in the light of which the life is lived. The strength of a belief, says Professor Bain, is measured by its influence on conduct, and [Page 83] belief in Karma ought to make the life pure, strong, serene and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us; only our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave the Soul that by Wisdom has gained Power, and uses both in Love.