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Questions with regard to Karma and rebirths are constantly
offered, and a great confusion seems to exist upon this subject. Those
who are born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in
the idea that a new soul is created by God for every newly-born infant,
are among the most perplexed. They ask whether in such case the number
of incarnating Monads on Earth is limited; to which they are answered
in the affirmative. It was stated that Karma-Nemesis, whose bond-maid
is Nature, adjusted everything in the most harmonious manner; and that
therefore, the fresh pouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, had ceased
as soon as Humanity had reached its full physical development. No fresh
Monads have incarnated since the middle point of the At-lanteans. Hence,
remembering that, save in the case of young children, and of individuals
whose lives were violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity
can reincarnate before a period of many centuries has elapsed, such gaps
alone must show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited.
. . . Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects
of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The LAW
of KARMA is inextricably interwoven with that of Reincarnation.
... it is only this doctrine, we say, that can explain to us the mysterious
problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense
of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around
him, and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect
and capacities; when one sees honour paid fools and profligates, on whom
fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest
neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues—far more deserving
in every way—perishing of want and for lack of sympathy; when one
sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved
suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain
around him—that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from
cursing life and men, as well as their supposed Creator.
Of all the terrible blasphemies and accusations virtually thrown on their
God by the Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than that
(almost always) false humility which makes the presumably "pious"
Christian assert, in connection with every evil and undeserved blow, that
"such is the will of God."
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every
reasonable evidence and life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law
of Retribution. This Law—whether Conscious or Unconscious—predestines
nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly for it is ETERNITY
itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot
be said to act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns
a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately
and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that
govern the Ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design.
It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects;
which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to
resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly,
rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm
that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it
is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us
to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual
liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved
its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish
him who dares to scrutinise its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils
through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on
those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to
their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his
fellow-men. KARMA is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation;
and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever present Cause,
believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or materialists—still
less as fatalists: for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is
an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal world.
Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the
law of rebirth, or of the reincarnation of the same spiritual individuality
in a long, almost interminable, series of personalities. The latter are
like the various costumes and characters played by the same actor, with
each of which that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public,
for the space of a few hours. The inner, or real man, who personates
those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the brief
space of a few acts, which represent, however, on the plane of human illusion
the whole life of Hamlet. And he knows that he was, the night before,
King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier
preceding night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant
of the fact. In actual life that ignorance is unfortunately, but too real.
Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the
fact, though, through the atrophy of the "spiritual" eye in
the physical body, that knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness
of the false personality.
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Past Lives 
