Karma and Rebirth

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

Page 65

REBIRTH
There are two fields of causal manifestation, the objective and subjective. So the grosser energies, those which operate in the heavier or denser conditions of matter, manifest objectively in physical life, their outcome being the new personality of each birth included within the grand cycle of the evolving individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of effects in devachan". Bacon, for instance, whom a poet called 'The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind", might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extra-ordinary intellectual capacities. But the moral and spiritual qualities of the previous Bacon would also have to find a field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is such a field.
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Hence, the writer goes on, all his plans for moral reform, of research into the abstract principles of nature, all his divine aspirations would find their fruition in Devachan," the abode of the Gods", and the entity previously known as Bacon would, in a dream-like state of consciousness, digest all previous experience" until Karma is satisfied in that direction, the ripple of force reaches the edge of the cyclic basin, and the being moves into the next area of causes i.e., the next rebirth.
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This alternation of states of consciousness, objective in the body and subjective out of it, has been poetically described as a string of black and white beads alternating, strung on the thread of life. But while it is in the subjective state the brooding soul, wrapped in the process of digesting past experience, can never descend to earthly consciousness, and those who wish to communicate with the "dead" can only do so by ascending in consciousness to the exalted realm of mind in which they dream. In time, after a period which may cover hundreds of years, the hand of Karma begins to draw the dreamer back to waking consciousness. Desire for fresh experience, choosing a body and other environment according to its needs, impels these higher vehicles of the evolving man to assume fresh worldly garments, and so the pilgrim wakes on earth to new discovery and a new-old treading of the Way.
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