What happens when we die?
The question has been asked many times in the
great religions and the writings of serious thinkers. Most of them
affirm
that life continues beyond the grave, and that the quality of the
future
life is related to the quality of the life that preceded death. They
speak
in terms of faith and hope; yet few of them suggest that there is
knowledge
to be had.
And what happens before birth?
Information on the subject is hardly to be found
- except in those religions where reincarnation is accepted. Written
records
provide ample evidence of the antiquity and universality of this
doctrine.
What does the doctrine of reincarnation mean?
Humanity is a stage in the process at which
latent
possibilities are brought into activity. Having attained to
self-consciousness,
Man can now take responsibility for his own evolution. Each of us has
an
immeasurably long past, during which, by trial and error, life after
life,
we have been slowly and often painfully learning to co-operate in the
process
of nature.
How little can be achieved in a lifetime! How unequal is the
equipment
with which each of us is endowed at birth! Yet law is at work:
endowment
and opportunity are of one's own making, every past act being the seed
of the present harvest, whether of weeds or of good grain.
There are lives past and lives to come. No matter how short and
apparently
worthless, no life is wasted. For the doctrine of reincarnation cannot
be understood apart from that of karma, the law by which, in
things
visible and invisible, effects and their causes are inseparably linked.
There is no cause that, sooner or later, does not show itself in an
effect;
there is no event or circumstance that is not the effect of a past
cause.
Here, as in all departments of science, knowledge is power; so in human
life karma makes us master of our destiny. In each today we choose our
tomorrow.
And the end?
Can there indeed be an end to the process of
unfoldment, the realisation of life's infinite possibilities? We may
think
of degrees of perfection, of stages along the road towards fulfilment.
But beyond that, must not the concept of a final goal give way to that
of a limitless horizon! Enough for us to know the direction and so to
harmonise
our lives with the grand universal scheme.
Theosophy, the ageless Wisdom, presents a picture of the
vast evolutionary process of which we are a part.
The teachers who handed down this picture were adepts in the
science
of life having developed within themselves the powers that enabled them
to explore nature and discover her mysteries. Some of their knowledge
has
been made available in modern theosophical literature. Members of The
Theosophical
Society find the opportunity and encouragement to study this literature
in a spirit of freedom.
The Society has no creed. Its motto is,