CHAPTER VII

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY

I think most of my readers will agree with me that the greatest of all the promises is that of the overcoming of death, for, as the greater includes the less, the power which can do that can do anything else. We think that there are only two things that are certain in this world—death and taxes, and no doubt, under the ordinary past conditions, this is quite true. But the question is: are they really inherent in the essential nature of things, or are they not the outcome of our past limited, and often inverted modes of Thought? The teaching of the Bible is that they are the latter. On the subject of taxes the Master says: "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s" (Matth. xxii, 21), but on another occasion, he said that the children of the King were not liable to taxation (Matth. xvii, 26).

However, we may leave the "taxes" alone for the present, with the remark that their resemblance to death consists in both being, under present conditions, regarded as compulsory. Under other conditions, however, we can well imagine "taxes" disappearing in a unity of thought which would merge them in co-operation and voluntary contribution; and it appears to me quite possible for death to disappear in like manner.

In whatever way we may interpret the story of Eden, whether literally, or if, like some of the Fathers of the church such as Origen, we take it as an allegory, the result is the same—that Death is not in the essence of man’s creation, but supervened as the consequence of an inverted mode of thinking. The Creative Spirit thought one way, and Eve thought another; and since the Thought of the Creating Spirit is the origin of Life, this difference of opinion naturally resulted in death.

Then, from this starting-point, all the rest of the Bible is devoted to getting rid of this difference of opinion between us and the Spirit of Life, and showing us that the Spirit’s opinion is truer than ours, and so leading us to adopt it as our own. The whole thing turns on the obvious proposition that if you invert the cause you also invert the effect. It is the principle that division is the inversion of multiplication, so that if 2 × 2 = 4 then you cannot escape from the consequence that 4/2 = 2. The question then is, which of the two opinions is the more reasonable—that death is essentially inherent in the nature of things, or that it is not?

Probably ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will say the whole experience of mankind from the earliest ages proves that Death is the unchangeable Law of the Universe, and there have been no exceptions. I am not quite sure that I should altogether agree with them on this last point; but putting that aside, let us consider whether it really is the essential Law of Wholeness. To say that this is proved by the past experience of the race, is what logicians call a petitio principii—it is assuming the whole point at issue. It is the same argument which our grandfathers would have used against aerial navigation—no one had ever travelled in the air, and that proved that no one ever could.

My father, who was a junior officer in India when the first railway was run in England, used to tell a story of one of his senior officers, who, on being asked what he thought of the rapidity of the new mode of travelling, said he thought it was "all a damned lie," which opinion appeared to him to settle the whole question. But I hope that none of my readers will hold the same opinion regarding the overcoming of death, even though they might express it in more polite language. At any rate, it may be worthwhile to examine the theoretical possibility of the idea.

Accordingly, the outflow, undifferentiated, of Life and Energy from the Eternal Substantive of Spirit is never stopped by its own current in any of its differentiated streams. It is impossible for a current to be stopped by its own flow, whether it be a current of electricity, steam, water, or anything else. What then does stop the flow of any sort of current? It is the Resistance or inertia of the channel through which it flows; so that we come back to the formula of Ohm’s Law, C = E/R as a general proposition applicable to any conceivable sort of energy.

The neutralizing power, then, is not that of the flowing of any sort of energy, but the rigidity, or inertia, of the medium through which the energy has to make its way. Thus bringing us back to rouah and hoshech, the expansive and compressive principles of the opening verses of Genesis. It is the broad scientific generalization of the opposition between Ertia, or Energy, and Inertia, or Absence of Energy; and since, for the reasons just given, Ertia cannot go against itself, the only thing that can stop it is Inertia.

Now the components of the human body are simply various chemical elements—so much carbon, so much hydrogen, etc., as any textbook on the subject will tell you. And although, of course, every sort of substance is the abode of ceaseless atomic energy, we all recognize that merely atomic energy is not that of the powers of thought, will, and perception, which make us organized mentalities instead of a mere aggregation of the various substances exposed to view in a biological museum, as constituting the human body—you might take all these substances in their proper proportions, and shake them up together, but you would not make an intelligent man of them. We are therefore safe in saying that the physiological body represents the principle of inertia in us, while the something that thinks in us represents the principle of Ertia.

The balance of power between the Life Principle in us and the Death Principle is then, necessarily, a question of the balance between these two, the spirit and the flesh, or Ertia and inertia.

Now this brings us to the distinction which the old writers drew between the "Vital Soul" of any living thing and the Spirit. Their conception of the "Vital Soul" was very much the same as I have set forth in the chapter on "The Soul of the Subject." It is the individual’s particular share of the Cosmic Soul or Anima Mundi, whether it be an individual tree, or an individual person. And the ordinary maximum length of time, during which the Vital Soul will be able to overcome the inertia of its physical vehicle, depends upon the particular class to which the individual belongs. What the ordinary maximum is in regard to any species is a matter of experience, and it is in this way that we have fixed the usual limit of human life at three-score years and ten.

The importance of recognizing the place of this higher intermediary in the ascending scale of living principle is that for all practical purposes the animal world does not rise higher than this in the scale. It is true that in particular instances we find the first dawning of the mental faculty in an animal, but it is only very faint; so this does not affect the broad general principle. The point to be noted is that up to this stage human beings are built on the same lines as animals, and what distinguishes us is the addition in ourselves of a higher factor—that of the reasoning mind exercising the power of conscious Thought.

Now it is here that we shall begin to profit by some knowledge about the invisible part of ourselves. The actual molecules of our body, as I have just said, are only so much dead matter. This inert material is pulled about in various directions by strings which we call muscles, according to the movements we wish our bodies to make, and these muscles are set in motion by the vibrations of the nerves. But what is it that occasions these vibrations of the nerves? Here we begin to pass beyond the limits of official Science, though not beyond the limits of recognizable Law.

We have to recognize the existence of an etheric body acting as an intermediary between intention, desire, or (in the case of human beings) thought of the soul and the physical vibrations of the nerves. This is why, in an earlier chapter, I have drawn attention to our power of sending out etheric vibrations beyond the limits of the physical body, as in the case of De Rocha’s experiments. Such experiments show that there is in us something not composed of dense matter, which is able to convey vibrations to dense matter; and it is this something which we speak of as the etheric body.

But if we wish to trace the links by which our thought operates upon the physical body, we find ourselves compelled to postulate yet another intermediary, what I have spoken of as the "Vital Soul"—a vehicle which does not consciously think, but in which what we may call race-consciousness becomes centred in the individual. This race-consciousness is none other than the ever-present "will-to-live" which is the basis of physical evolution—that automatically acting principle—which causes plants to turn towards the sun, animals to seek their proper food, and both animals and men to try instantly to escape from immediate danger. It is what we call instinct which does not reason. I may give a laughable experience of my own to illustrate the fact that conscious reason is not the method of this faculty.

Once, when on leave from India, I was walking along a street in London in the heat of a summer’s day and suddenly noticed just at my feet a long dark thing apparently wriggling across the white glare of the pavement. "Snake!" I exclaimed, and jumped aside for all I was worth, and the next moment was laughing at myself for not recollecting that cobras were not common objects in the London streets. But it looked just like one, and of course turned out to be nothing but a piece of rag. Well, instinct did its duty even if it did make a fool of me; but there is certainly no conscious reasoning in the matter, only the automatic action of inherent Law—"Self-preservation is the first law of Nature."

This Vital Soul, then, is the seat of all those instincts which go towards the preservation of the individual’s physical body, and towards the propagation of the race.

And it is on this account that our theosophical friends call it the "Desire Body" or, to use the Indian term "Kama rupa." It acts with conscious intention, but not with conscious reasoning. It is thus distinguished on the one hand from the etheric body, which is a mere vehicle for finer vibrations than can take place in the denser matter of the physical body, but which has no intention. And on the other from the mind which acts by conscious reasoning, and it thus forms an intermediary between the two.

The importance of recognizing the place of this higher intermediary in the ascending scale of living principle is that for all practical purposes the animal world does not rise higher than this in the scale. It is true that in particular instances we find the first dawning of the mental faculty in an animal, but it is only very faint; so this does not affect the broad general principle. The point to be noted is that up to this stage human beings are built on the same lines as animals, and what distinguishes us is the addition in ourselves of a higher factor—that of the reasoning mind exercising the power of conscious Thought.

Now it is the direction of this thought that influences the three lower factors. The sequence, going upwards, is as follows: movement is communicated to the physical body by the etheric body. And movement is communicated to the etheric body by the Vital Soul; then, in proportion as the purely instinctive action of the Vital Soul is controlled by the conscious thought, so its action upon the two lowest parts…