Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: Albemarle Street London

Page 13

INTRODUCTION When to these are added, by way of commentary, the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, who was herself trained in Tibetan monasteries, there is available a triple' authority' which, taken as a whole, provides the basis for an all-embracing Law which guides and governs the evolution of mankind.
Yet the ultimate authority for any doctrine is not in the written nor in the spoken word, but rather in its own sweet reasonableness, and in the fact that it is ratified by the intuition and seems to work out' in the day's experience. Neither God nor man may prove to another that a principle is true. As the Buddha said to the Kalamas : “Do not go by hearsay, nor by what is handed down by others, nor by what people say, nor by what is stated on the authority of your traditional teachings ... But Kalamas, when you know of yourselves : These teachings are good ; these teachings, when followed out and put into practice conduce to the ending of suffering, to peace of mind, to Nirvana '--then accept them."
In accordance with this view of authority, no authority is claimed for the views of the writers quoted in this essay, and therefore no exact references have been given. Where, however, another's words express my meaning better or more cogently than my own, I have adopted them for the reader's benefit. For the rest, there is no authority for any man save the still small voice' within.
It is an axiom, approved by all experience, that the more spiritual a doctrine the more is it immediately applicable in daily life, and in presenting Karma and Rebirth against their spiritual background they will be found to be of more immediate application than when regarded as a mere mechanical debit and credit account in the ledgers of some extra-cosmic God. I therefore write in no sense as a scholar, nor as one presenting an interesting belief of the Orient. Rather I write as one who believes the doctrine to be true, and believes that any reconstruction of Westeris civilization is doomed to failure unless it is based on conscious co-operation with this ultimate and all