Karma and Rebirth

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

Page 83

CHAPTER IX THE ENDING OF KARMA AND REBIRTH Even if modern science and modern Christianity are gravely at variance, the leading scientists of the day are rediscovering the truths of the Wisdom which is older than any religion. Sir James Jeans, in The Mysterious Universe, has written : "The universe can best be pictured ... as consisting of pure thought", and that “its creation must have been an act of thought ". This is purc Vedanta and pure Buddhism, and it is the basis of Theosophy. The Essence of Mind, as the Patriarch Wei Lang described it, the Universal Mind of modern philosophy, is “ intrinsically pure”, and cach of our human minds is an outpost of that "cosmic consciousness”. What is the relation between the two ? “Thou art THAT”, says the Wisdom of India. “Look within, thou art Buddha”, says the numerically largest religion in the world. Man is enlightened but knows it not. "I and my Father are one”, said Christ, the Christos or “God within ” of every man. The difference between an enlightened and an unenlightened man is only this, said Wei Lang, that one knows it and the other docs not. But between the two states of consciousness there lies a Way, a long and weary way from the might be to the has-becomć, a way of becoming until the littlest blade of grass has entered Buddhahood, until cach living thing has rc-become what it potentially is, the All.
Potentially we are one with the Absolute. But having fallen into illusion we have the experience of a separated life which is not terminated at death. We remain in the illusion until we have exhausted it, until we have learned the full significance of our deeds, and remoulded them so that a return to the identity-consciousness is possible ; for works are a means to knowledge, and knowledge
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