Thus the whole question which we are discussing is baffled and rendered the more complex by the doubt as to what is meant by the word “I.” It is clear, from what we have already said, that one person may use it to indicate (1) the quite local and superficial self; while another may have in mind (2) a much profounder being (the underlying self) whose depths and qualities we have by no means fathomed; while others, again, may be thinking (3) of the self of the Race or the Earth, or (4) the All-self of the universe.
I present these questions and doubts, not—as I have said—for the purpose of discrediting the possibility of Reincarnation, but by way of showing how complex and difficult the problem is, and how much some exact thought and definition is needed in dealing with it. At the same time, in pleading for exact thought I would also urge that in avoiding the whirlpools of sentimentalism we should be careful not to fall upon the rocks of a dry and barren formalism. Systems of hard and fast doctrines on these subjects—even though issued with all the authority of ancient tradition, and enunciated in a long-dead jargon—are the most unfruitful and uninspiring of things. They seem to contain no germ of vitality and are liable to paralyze the mind that feeds upon them. Besides the drawback—as I have pointed out before—that all such systems are inevitably false. Nature does not, in any department, work upon a cut-and-dried system; and while at the outset of an investigation we often seem to discern something of that kind, further study invariably discloses an astounding variety of order and method. It may be well therefore to be prepared to find a general principle of Reincarnation in operation in the world, but worked out, in actual fact, in a great variety of ways.
Certainly there comes into our minds, at a certain grade of their development, a deep persuasion of the truth, in some sense, of reincarnation—that “the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, hath had elsewhere its setting.” It blossoms, this persuasion, in a curious way, in the very depths of the mind; and in moments of inner illumination, or deep feeling, is discerned in a way that seems to leave no room for doubt. At the same time, it not only has this intuitive sanction, but it commends itself also to the intellect, because at a certain stage we perceive very clearly both how vast is the whole curve of progress which the soul has to cover from its first birth to its final liberation, and how tiny is the arc represented by a single lifetime—the two thoughts almost compelling us to believe in a succession of lives as the only explanation or solution. We are compelled towards a practical belief in Reincarnation, and yet (as above) we have to confess that our conception of what it really is, or what we mean by it, is only vague. This, however, is no more than what happens in a hundred other cases. The young bird starts building a nest for the first time, driven by some strange instinct to do so, and yet it can only have a very dim notion of the meaning and uses the nest will subserve when finished. And we found our lives on deep intuitions—of social solidarity, of personal responsibility, of free will, and so forth—and yet it is only later and by degrees that we learn what these things actually mean.
Referring, then, to the four alternative forms of the self given two or three pages back, and taking the last first, we may say definitely, I think, that as far as the self of each one of us is identified (4) with the All-self of the universe, its reincarnation is assured. Its reincarnation indeed is perpetual, inexhaustible, multitudinous beyond words, filling all space and time. Though the consciousness of this self is deeply buried, yet it is there, in each one of us. Occasionally—if even only for a moment—it rises to the surface, bringing a sense of splendor and of joy indescribable—the absolute freedom and password of all creation, the recognition of oneself everywhere and in all forms. But this phase of the self—I need hardly say—is for the most part hidden; and more common is it perhaps for the Race-self (3) to rise into our consciousness with more or less distinct assurance that we live again and are re-embodied in other members of the race to which we belong. The common life of the race carries us away and overmasters us with a strange sense of identity and community of being. Heroisms and devotions—as of men dying for their country, or bees for their hive—spring from this; and superb intoxications of joy. The whole of the life of primitive races and tribes, and the life of the animals and insects, illustrates it—in warfares, migrations, crusades, frantic enthusiasms, mad festivals—the genius of the race rushing on from point to point, inspiring its children, incarnating itself without end in successive individuals.
It is not so uncommon, I say, for us to be able to identify ourselves with this great Race-self, and to feel its thrill and pulse within our veins. And it might well be thought that, with these two forms of reincarnation (3) and (4) and the immense joy they bring, we should be content: even as all the tribes of the animals and the angels are content.
But it seems that man—when the civilization-period sets in, and after that—is not content. The little individual soul, now first coming to the consciousness of its own separateness, sets up a claim for an immortality and a reincarnation of its very own—apart from the Race-self, apart even from the Divine self. It demands that its ego should continue indefinitely into the farthest fields of Time—a separate entity, perpetually re-embodied. Can such a claim—in the light of what has been said above—be possibly conceded?
Certainly not. We have seen the absurdity of supposing that the local and superficial self (1) can ever recur again or be re-embodied in that form, except as a mere matter of memory (or possibly of a repetition of the whole universal order). And as to the underlying self (2), whatever exactly it may be, there are a thousand reasons for seeing that as a wholly separate entity the same must be true of that. I may refer the reader to The Art of Creation, the whole argument of which is to show that even the mere attempt to think of itself as a separate entity involves the human soul in hopeless confusion and disintegration; and I may remind the reader that we know nothing in the whole universe which is thus separate and apart, and that the conception, whether from a physical point of view or a psychological point of view, is impossible to maintain. That being so, there remains only to consider the possibility of the underlying self or individual soul being re-embodied—not as an absolutely separate entity, but as affiliated to some greater Life which shall afford the basis of successive incarnations. The problem is narrowed down, practically to the question whether the individual may not obtain some kind of individual reincarnation through the Race-self, or possibly through the All-self of the universe.
And here I will state what I personally think and believe about this problem, leaving the reasons for the present to commend themselves. I think that in the early stages—in animal and primitive human life—the Race-self is paramount; that each individual self proceeds from it, in much the same way as a bud proceeds from the stem of a growing plant, or even as a single cell forms part of the tissue of the stem; and is absorbed into it again at death. There are no individual and death-surviving souls produced, apart from the Race-soul. In the great race or family of bunny-rabbits, for instance—though there are certainly individual differences of character—just as there are differentiations of tissue-cells in the stem of a plant—it is difficult to believe that there are individual and immortal souls. Each little self springs from the race, and is an embodiment of it, representing in various degree its characteristics; and at death—in some way which we do not yet quite understand[[130]]—returns thither, yielding its experiences to the stores of the race-experience. The same is probably true of the great mass of the higher animals, even up to the primitive and earliest Man. The Race-self in all these cases moves onward, upgathering the experiences of the individuals, wise with their united knowledge, and rich with their countless memories. And these tracts again, of experience, knowledge and memory, largely in a vague and generalized form, but sometimes in sharp, individualized and detailed form, are transmitted from the Race-self to its later individuals and offshots. Thus a kind of broken reincarnation occurs, by which streaks of memory and habit pass down time from one individual to another, and by which perhaps—in us later races—the persistent ‘intimations of immortality’ and persuasions of having lived before are accounted for.
I think that this process, of mixed and broken reincarnation, may go on for countless generations—the animal or animal-human souls so differentiated from the race-soul returning continually to the latter at death. But that a period may come when the Race-self (illustrated by the growing plant-stem) may exhibit distinct buds—the embryos, as it were, of independent souls—which will not return and be lost again in the race-soul, but will persevere for a long period and continually attain to more differentiation and internal coherence and sense of identity. In such cases any reincarnations that occur connected with these buds—though mingled with the race-life—will become much less broken than before, and more distinctly individual; till at last a phase is reached when such a soul-bud, almost detached from the race-life, may be reincarnated (or let us say ‘re-embodied’) as a separate entity, with a kind of immortality of its own.
It must be at this stage that the characteristic human soul of the Civilization-period is evolved—which coheres quite firmly round itself, which protests and revolts against death, which even largely throws off its allegiance to the race-soul, and to the laws and solidarities of the race-life, and which has an enormous and overweening sense of identity and self-importance, claiming for itself, as I have just said, a kind of separate persistence. Here ensues, as may be imagined, a terrible period of confusion and trouble—the whole period of competitive civilization. The splendid claim of identity and immortality is made; but for the time being it is spoiled by what we call ‘selfishness,’ the mirror is cracked through ignorance. The Soul has disowned her allegiance to mere instinct and the race-self, and has yet not found a firm footing beyond—is only floundering in the bogs of self-consciousness and anxiety. What kind of Re-embodiment may belong to this period we shall best perhaps see when we have considered the further course of the argument.