The Root-Being,[265] however, survives the successive wrecks of fleeting personalities, remaining in the new man as a guide, as the "Voice of Conscience." He is the Watcher who strings, as on a thread, the numberless pearls (personalities) which form the inevitable cycle of human evolution, and is able, when fully developed, to summon up the distant panorama of past lives. For him, nothing is lost.
The pioneers of the race have obtained direct proof of successive incarnations, but apart from these rare and special instances, ordinary individuals frequently have reminiscences and distinct memories which are not investigated, either because they are fragmentary in their nature or are related by children. In India, where the natives believe in Reincarnation, such cases are regarded without astonishment, and efforts are made to prove their truth by serious investigation, whenever possible. And such proof is often possible. When a child dies in infancy, before he is able to use his body intelligently and of his own free will—before being able to generate karma—the higher sheaths (the astral and mental bodies) are not separated into their component parts. Return to earth quickly takes place, the memory of the past life exists in the astral body—which has not changed—and, more especially during the first few years of life, can be impressed on the new brain with tolerable ease, if this latter is at all delicately constituted. Then if reincarnation takes place in the same country and in the neighbourhood of the past incarnation, it can be proved to be true. Such instances do exist; the reason they are not mentioned here is that they would add nothing to the general proofs on which stress has been laid in this work. These proofs form part of universal Law; they cannot be separated therefrom.
FOOTNOTES:
[81] The fifth, or Aryan race, in theosophic nomenclature; the fourth was that of Atlantis; the third lived on the great southern continent, Lemuria; the two preceding ones were, so to speak, only the embryologic preparation for the following races.
[82] The "life-atoms," infinitesimal particles which by aggregation form the human body. Certain of these atoms are preserved, on the death of the body, as germs which will facilitate the reconstruction of the physical body at the next rebirth.
[83] The divine Essence which animates animals, and so, in another sense the astral bodies of men and animals, bodies whose particles transmigrate as do the physical atoms.
[84] H. P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine.
[85] These words are relative; they express differences in the evolution of souls.
[86] The atmosphere of subtle physical elements radiating round the human body and acting in a defensive rôle by preventing the penetration of unhealthy elements from the immediate surroundings.
[87] The "material sin" of Manu.