Karma and Rebirth

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

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KARMIC CYCLES 'soul' or character, as each returning consciousness attracts or is attracted to a vehicle suitable for self-expression in the life to come. The staggering complexity of such elaborate choosing, allowing for period, race, sex, family and the compound circumstances of environment', is a reason for the mind's humility before the Law, but no bar to its acceptance. If an automatic telephone exchange can be made to choose' which of a dozen lines is the least loaded' at the moment, how much more can the Namelessness in manifestation operate its own high purposes ! Karmic Cycles
Modern astronomy has reached considerable knowledge of the stellar cycles, and even modern astrology, the half-understood remains of a once esoteric and spiritual science, has much to say on planetary cycles and their effect on man. Indian philosophy has a complete record of 'Yugas', great and small, covering enormous periods of time, and of cycles, wheels within wheels, as regular as the ebb and flow of the tide. These cycles affect all planes of manifestation, the psychic and mental as well as the physical, but the law which governs these cycles cannot be understood save in the context of the wider, Karmic Law. The obvious example of the working of the Law on a mass unit of humanity is the rise and fall of races or sub-races, which may or may not be coincident with nations. Whole civilizations are known to have risen, flourished, reached a great height of culture and then decayed or, as in the case of the Khmers of IndoChina, suddenly disappeared. Modern Greece, though still, as the world now knows, a magnificent fighting nation, is not to be compared in culture with its classic forbcar ; Spain and Portugal are not what they were ; Mexico has sunk to comparative insignificance. On the other hand, many a nation now at its prime has risen suddenly, and in the round of time will as surely fall. Ethnologists are always puzzled at the causes of a tribe's collapse and disappearance, and only an understanding of the Law of Karma-Rebirth will solve the mystery. It is not
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