resistance, that such highly evolved mental compounds as are bound up with the complex human consciousness cannot be disintegrated instantaneously, but require due allowance of time for their degeneration and ultimate dissolution and transmigration.?
1 Examination of The Laws of Manu, the authority of which is unquestioned by orthodox Hindus, seems to confirm the esoteric interpretation, following the translation by Sir William Jones as revised by G. C. Haughton (in /ustilutes of Hindu Law or the Ordinances of Menu, London, 1825), and that by G. Biihler (in The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv, Oxford, 1886).
Manu at first sets forth the fundamental laws that ‘Action, which springs from the mind, from speech, and from the body, produces either good or evil results ; by action are caused the [various] conditions of man, the highest, the middling, and the lowest’ ; and that ‘{A man] obtains [the results of] a good or evil mental [act] in his mind, [that of] a verbal [act] in his speech, [that of] a bodily [act] in his body’. (Biihler’s trans., xii. 3, 8.)
Manu then proceeds to expound how man is not a simple but a complex being:
‘That substance, which gives a power of motion to the body, the wise call kshétrajna [i.e. ‘the knower of the field’—Biihler’s trans.], or j7vatman, the vital spirit ; and that body, which thence derives active functions, they name bhitatman, or composed of elements :
‘Another internal spirit, called mahat, or the great soul, attends the birth of all creatures embodied, and thence in all mortal forms is conveyed a perception either pleasing or painful.
‘These two, the vital spirit and reasonable soul, are closely united with five elements, but connected with the supreme spirit, or divine essence, which pervades all beings high and low.’ (Jones’s trans., xii, 12-14.)
From what follows, Manu apparently implies that it is this ‘vital spirit’, or animal soul, which alone is capable of transmigrating into sub-human forms, and not ‘the reasonable soul’, or super-animal principle :
‘When the vital soul has gathered the fruit of sins, which arise from a love of sensual [i.e. animal or brutish] pleasure, but must produce misery, and, when its taint has thus been removed, it approaches again those two most effulgent essences, the intellectual soul and the divine spirit:
‘They two, closely conjoined, examine without remission the virtues and vices of that sensitive [or animal] soul, according to its union with which it acquires pleasure or pain in the present and future worlds.
If the vital spirit had practised virtue for the most part, and vice in a small degree, it enjoys delight in celestial abodes, clothed with a body formed of pure elementary [i. e. ethereal] particles ;
‘But, if it had generally been addicted to vice, and seldom attended to virtue, then shall it be deserted by those pure elements, and, haung a coarser body of sensible nerves, it feels the pains to which Yama shall doom it:
‘Having endured those torments according to the sentence of Yama, and its taint being almost removed, it again reaches those five pure elements in the order of their natural distribution.’ (Jones’s trans., xii, 18-22.)
48 Introduction
Accordingly, the esotericists hold it to be unscientific to believe that a human life-flux or consciousness-principle could re-incarnate in the body of a sub-human creature within forty- nine days after its extraction from the human form, as the exotericist believes who accepts literally such a rebirth doctrine
After further exposition of the science of rebirth in its esoteric or rational aspect, Manu arrives at the following summary:
‘Thus, by indulging the sensual {i.e. animal or brutish] appetites, and by neglecting the performance of duties, the basest of men, ignorant of sacred expiations, assume [in their vital spirit form, but not in their reasonable soul form] the basest forms.
‘What particular bodies the vital spirit enters in this world, and in consequence of what sins here committed, now hear at large and in order,’ (Jones’s trans., xii, 52-3.)
Manu evidently exerts himself apart from the main subject of his treatise, as the whole of The Laws suggests, to invest with legal and divine sanction the dogma that the person of a Brahmin is peculiarly sacred and inviolable, and so gives prominence to the sin of slaying a Brahmin by mentioning it first; then to the sin of a priest drinking spirituous liquor, and then to the sin of stealing the gold of a priest. In all such instances, as in all which follow them, the im- plication is, as we have above observed, that the ‘vital spirit’, or animal soul, separated from the two higher elements of man’s complex constitution, which are ‘the reasonable soul’ and ‘the divine essence’, suffers the penalty of migrating in sub-human creatures :
‘The slayer of a Brahmen (i.e. the vital spirit, or the irrational animal soul, of a Brahmen-slayer] must enter, according to the circumstances of the crime, the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandala, or a Puccasa’ ; and so on for other crimes (Jones’s trans., xii. 55-7).
In this connexion, it is interesting to observe a few of the correspondences between cause and effect which other of The Laws suggest. Thus, if a man steal precious things he ‘shall be born zm the tribe of goldsmiths (considered to be of very low caste], or among birds called hémacaras, or gold-makers. Ifaman steal grain in the husk, he shall be born a rat; if a yellow mixed metal, a gander [which is of like mixed colour] ; if water, a plava, or diver. ... If he steal flesh- meat, a vulture; ... if oil, a d/a¢za, or oil-drinking beetle; . .. if exquisite per- fumes, a musk-rat’. (Jones’s trans., xii. 61-5.)
Understanding Manu in the sense which this note aims to set forth, the esotericists disallow such popular and literal interpretation of Manu’s Laws as the Brahmins in their own Brahmin interests promulgate—according to the esotericists—among the common people concerning the doctrines of rebirth and karma,
The student should observe that the italicized non-Sanskrit words in the passages quoted in this note from the translation by Sir William Jones mark his interpolations from commentaries on Manu, especially from the Gloss of Culluca, and that the bracketed words indicate our own interpolations. Because the italicized interpolations tend to bring out the more obscure meanings of the passages cited, preference has been given to the Jones translation, although that by Biihler, which is more literal and therefore more technical, is, in all essentials, substantially the same.
Symbolism of Rebirth Doctrine = 49
as the Bardo Thodol, when viewed exoterically, or literally, presents.
The Bardo rebirth symbols themselves ought now to be considered from the standpoint of the esoteric interpretation ; and to elucidate them innumerable parallels could be chosen from widely separated sources, but because of its recognized authority no parallel seems more appropriate than that con- tained in the tenth book of Plato’s Republic, describing certain of the Greek Heroes in the Szdpa Bardo choosing their bodies for the next incarnations:
The Bardo legend as recorded in the Republic concerns Er the son of Armenius,a Pamphylian by birth, who, as Plato tells us, ‘was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and carried home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them what he had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgement on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened to their backs.’
Having thus described the otherworld Judgement—which closely resembles the Judgement described in our text—Plato goes on to describe the souls of the Greek Heroes in their Sidpa Bardo preparing for reincarnation: ‘Most curious, he said, was the spectacle—sad and laughable and strange; for the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their own experience of a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating to be born of a woman
50 Introduction
because they had been his murderers; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men. The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man, remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgement about the arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because, like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the middle came the lot of Atalanta; she, seeing the great fame of an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation : and after her there followed the soul of Epeius the son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Mow the recollection of former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in jinding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it he said that he would have done the same had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass into animals, but I must also mention that there were animals tame and wild which changed into one another and into corre- sponding human natures—the good into the gentle and the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations,’
If read superficially, this Platonic account of the rebirth process may be understood literally—even as the Bardo Thidol may be; and it is not impossible to imagine that Plato, as an initiate into the Greek Mysteries, who, like Herodotus, never refers to their esoteric teachings openly, but only in figurative and very often intentionally misleading phraseology, intended that it should be understood so by the uninitiated. Neverthe- less, when the passage is examined closely, the exoteric doctrine of transmigration of the human into the sub-human, or vice versa, is evidently not the meaning underlying it.
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The reference to the choice made by Odysseus, as italicized by us, gives the clue to the real meaning intended. Odysseus’ choice was last ; each of the heroes preceding him in choosing their lot had neglected the lot of ‘the life of a private man who had no cares’, and Odysseus chooses this lot as the best ~ of all.
If we consider the sort of life chosen by each of the Greeks who preceded Odysseus, we find it to be definitely symbolical of the character of the chooser :
Thus, Orpheus, the founder of the Orphic Mysteries, a divine teacher sent to instruct mankind by the god of song and music, Apollo, and held by the Greeks to have been the greatest of harp-players and the most enlightened of poets and singers, very appropriately chooses ‘the life of a swan’, for since immemorial time the swan has symbolized—as it still does—song and music; and Plato’s figurative language, correctly interpreted, implies that Orpheus was to reincarnate as a great poet and musician, as was but natural. To assume— as the exotericist may—that such a being as Orpheus could be born as a swan in reality thus appears to the esotericist to be untenable.
Likewise, Thamyras, an ancient Thracian bard, renowned
as a harp-player and singer, symbolically chooses the life of
the sweet-singing nightingale.
Ajax, the Homeric hero, who, next to Achilles, was the bravest of the Greeks, most fittingly chooses the life of a lion ; for the king of beasts is, and has been for unknown ages, the symbol denoting bravery or fearlessness, which almost all nations and races of men have recognized.