Past Lives and the Psychic Being MOST people are not at all conscious of what is happening in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch. There are a few, very few indeed, who are conscious – conscious of what is beyond the three, viz, their psychic being. For it is only that element which endures, persists through successive lives. Certain people have known or learnt some rudiments of the matter – who believe in rebirth, but conceive it in the most childish manner. Their idea is as if the person changed his body like a robe. There are persons even who have written books describing seriously

The Problem of Evil GOD has created the world, the material world as it is? Yes and No, more "No" than "Yes". For he has not created it directly. There have been many creators, rather formateurs, form-makers, in between the world and God, who joined in the work of creation. Who are they? They have been given various names. Creation generally follows a principle of gradation. It is done step by step, world rising out of world successively. Each world is a particular state of being, a particular mode of consciousness. Each state is inhabited by entities, individualities, personalities and each one has created a world around him or assisted in the creation of certain types

The Homogeneous Being A THING is homogeneous when all its parts are similar, are like itself; in other words, when the whole being is under the same influence, moved by the same consciousness, the same impulsion, the same will. Normally a man is formed of many kinds of fragments, all disparate, each becoming active in its turn at different moments. A part may become active so different from the previous one that a man seems altogether a new person. Each element in us has its own nature and activity, demands its own fulfilment, acts almost as an independent personality. We are composed indeed of multiple personalities. Thus, for example, you are now in a very good st

True Charity CHARITY is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and calamities. And if something is done to alleviate them, it is as it should be, activities in that direction deserve full encouragement. But this does not go far enough, does not touch the root of the matter. It is the human way of dealing with things and must naturally be very limited in its scope and efficacy. There is a higher, a diviner way – the way of the Spi

The World Serpent THE universe is often conceived as a serpent coiling round and eating itself, the head turning about and swallowing the tail. The image is that of a sphere or globe enclosing the whole existence and that of something without end or beginning, infinite. It also gives the idea of a perpetual lengthening out, that is, constant creation, but at the same time of a turn back: the unrolling of the universe is not in a straight line, but .circular. The universe is however a complex entity. It is not made ()f only one plane, but consists of many planes superimposed upon each other. Thus at the bottom as the basis is the physical – matter – and at the top as the

And this Agile Reason REASON is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible contor­tions with equal ease and skill. It does not seek the truth, although it may pretend to do so; for it cannot find the truth. The law of uncertainty or indeterminacy seems also to be the last word of modern Science. What Reason does and can do is to justify, find arguments for whatever position it is put in or called upon to support. Its business is to supply "proofs": it can do so as the spider brings out of itself the whole warp and woof of the cobweb. There is no truth, that is to say, no con­clusion which it cannot demonstrate an

An Aspect of Emergent Evolution THE theory of Emergent Evolution should be considered no longer as a theory, but as a statement of fact. The fact, at its barest, stripped of all assumptions and even generalisations, is the fact observed and implicit in all evolution, which can be denied only by the perverse and purblind. It is this, that at each crucial step Nature undergoes a sudden and total change, brings forth a new element which was not there before and which could not be foreseen or foretold by any process of deduction from the actual factors in play. At the very outset of the evolutionary march, when material Nature meant only a mass or masses of in

Images of Gods and Goddesses Are the usual images of gods and goddesses true to reality? WELL when a little child draws a picture of an object, is there any likeness? It is about the same or even worse here. For the child is simple and sincere, while the image-maker is full of prejudices and preconceived ideas, stuffed with things he has heard or read. And he is tied to his constructions. But at times, here and there, very rarely indeed, artists appear with an inner vision, with a great aspiration and a great purity of soul; they do things that are acceptable. But they are exceptions, the contrary is the rule. I have seen some of these forms in the vita

Bad Thought-Formation A BAD thought is a bad act. You may not know it, but an evil thought is truly an evil act. If you think ill of a man and wish him ill, you are responsible for the mishaps that may befall him to the same degree as when you do him an ill turn. Unfortunately, an evil thought is not a recognised crime and nobody intervenes when you think ill. Not only so, there are a good many people who consider it a play to excite wicked thoughts in others. They do so (innocently, they think) sometimes through sheer stupidity, more often through vanity, through an air of self-importance for having said something interesting. When you have a bad thought, you make a

Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who have gone before us" and so on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline seems to have been always to realise once again what has already been realised by others, to rediscover what has already been discovered, to re-establish ancient truths. Others have gone before on the Path, we have only to follow. The teaching, the realis