The Gaelic Manuscripts
by Betty White
with Stewart Edward White

 

Chapter 6
Immortality – Reincarnation

1. Questions defined

These discourses on the evolution and continuity of memory hinted repeatedly of reincarnation. The theory is appealing and logical. Those who profess skill as occultists claim ability to prove it by an actual review of past lives, both their own and others.

Nevertheless many people feel that there is a catch in it, viewed as an invariable mechanism. Gaelic himself had in passing told us that, "as a general thing we do not return". We much desired his further comments, but for a long time he contented himself with merely this casual statement. Finally, as our puzzlement grew over the conflicting statements on this subject to be found in cult and literature, he consented to a discussion.

Is reincarnation a fact?

If it is not, then what significance can we attach to the very detailed and apparently honest recollections occultists appear to trace?

2. What is reincarnation?

"It is a very chancy subject", said Gaelic, "The best we can hope is to approach it at different angles; and so perhaps obtain a glimpse of principles rather than methods.

"It is always well to define what you are talking about", he pointed out. "What is reincarnation? Have you ever defined it? Reincarnation in what? The consciousness with an awareness-mechanism, which makes it a consciousness, must always be incarnated in something. It is embodied, always; and embodied for one purpose: expression, progress, awareness".

This might seem self-evident, and a quibble, but Gaelic merely wished to emphasize that reincarnation, as a general principle, is not only true, but inevitable. "But", he immediately acknowledged, "what you mean by reincarnation is undoubtedly in what your present senses can recognize". And also, he implied, the question is whether such is a methodical procedure; at least until we have finished with all the earth can teach us. He seemed to find this idea a trifle amusing.

"How can you postulate", he demanded, "that it is either necessary or important whether, in embodiment, the consciousness should happen, in its need, to occupy precisely the one pin point, in an almost infinite range of vibration, that it has happened to occupy before? It does so happen from time to time by what you would be justified to call a fortuity of circumstance – provided you admit fortuity at all – but as for there being a regulation or rule or common sequence, from our point of view, that seems rather an unimportant speculation. Whether you happen to manifest, in your particular need of the moment, on a rather minute globe which you call the earth; or on various other globes whose embodiment happens to be visible within the narrow limits that obtain reaction from your eyes or your other limited senses; or whether you are embodied in other spheres of substance which happen to lie outside those limits; it is all the same thing. Within the very limits of your own extremes of your sense responses to vibration, are gaps wherein there is no sense recognition at all. Are you bold enough to maintain that within those gaps a vibration is not? Or that if those vibrations exist, they represent nothing to anybody anywhere?

"It is a singular arrogance to appropriate the word ‘carnate’ for your extremely straightened field of visibility and to throw into a ‘discarnate’ discard all that you happen not to see or taste or touch or hear or smell or apprehend. You are completely discarnate yourselves to a great many things – like ants, unless you step on them.

However, he acknowledged, even that was not quite our question; whether we are reborn, on earth, as persons, with our same qualities of awareness and limitation.

"That may happen", he admitted, "not as a ‘punishment’ – or a sending back to relearn a particular lesson – but because the precise conditions necessary for your development are comprised within those limits of vibration of which we spoke".

But even coming back to earth does not necessarily mean a return to the same conditions. By that he did not mean the obvious variety of environments, or social or race positions; but the whole earth-sphere. That, too, is progressing in evolution. A man who had lived in cave-man times – or even in the last century, for that matter – entered conditions "as different as though one set took place on another planet, or even in what you would call an invisible sphere". Only by a great wrench of literalness could these two lives be called common earth experiences. "Only in certain base elements were they the same".

3. When is reincarnation?

"Consciousness", continued Gaelic, "must go through a steadily expanding continuous embodiment in that to which his awareness-mechanism responds. Continuous, from the earliest birth of individuality. It is not a series of lives, as you call them; it is one life, continuously embodying itself; and shifting in the conditions in which it exists, solely as its own development of all sorts causes those conditions to change. Its range of sense-vibration is continually expanding. It is at first very much narrower than your own at the present time. The band of sense-vibration of the very lowest creatures is almost incredibly narrow as compared to your own. The band of sense-vibrations of yourselves as cave people was, compared with your present response, also narrow. Those people actually were not cognizant in any way of many of the higher vibrations that now come to you. A great deal of what you call the visible universe was to them invisible. And that is not too fanciful either!

"If you reincarnate, as you call it, in the future upon your earth, and have not stood still in development, it will be as a being whose sense-range toward what you call physical matter is greatly extended.

"The birth of any entity from out of its quality is determined by many complicated things; but one of the chief determinants is that of its needs. You must not forget that there are, not only qualities, but degrees within those qualities, through which the individual and later the persons must progress. Not one degree can be skipped. But whatever the environment of development from one degree to another may be, on your earth or elsewhere, depends entirely on the individual requirement.

"The glimpsing of this truth is the basis of the idea of reincarnation. A soul is indeed once-born, or many times born. There are cases wherein a human soul is born again, or yet again, to one environment; either to learn a lesson which is best taught by that environment, or very rarely because of an unfinished service which can better be fulfilled there. As a usual thing, however, if anyone during a lifetime on earth fails to get what should be reasonably expected from that sojourn, it is an indication that he had better change his school. As a usual thing, we do not return. As an actual thing, any human soul is many times born before it reaches any advanced state of development. I don't think that's very good; there are lots of modifying considerations – outlying considerations. Don’t make that a hard and fast picture of a process. Leave it loose and flowing".

4. The purpose of reincarnation

So far Gaelic had done little toward answering categorically our two questions. He had, to be sure, established the necessity of reincarnations of some sort. He had acknowledged that a person might be passed through a number of experiences on this, our earth. He had, however, denied that this latter was an invariable, or perhaps even usual method of growth. The things that one can learn or acquire on earth may also be learned or acquired elsewhere. Take any Quality, or Intention; take tree quality, for example. It manifests or embodies itself, on earth, as what we know as a tree.

"Have you any particular reason for supposing that all the tree quality of the universe is gathered around your little globe?"

We must, said Gaelic, restate the general principles: "An entity is clothed in a specific incarnation – either earth or any other – by its present necessities of development. It is like a magnetic attraction. Once identified with that environment, it naturally proceeds to clothe itself in the body that corresponds to that environment and can function in it. Certain qualities are best developed against a pressure, though their possibility of development exists elsewhere. The sphere – to use a cant expression – of greatest pressure is in the earth phase. Functioning in it, the entity is probably more clogged, muffled, hindered in its free expression than in any other. Nevertheless these very hinderances are the more conducive to the primary germinations of certain basic desirabilities than the freer spheres. Those principles would seen to you ludicrously few, and this in spite of the apparent multiplicity that seems to offer in your complicated world – ludicrously few and simple. The complexity is merely a many sided faceted (word obscure) by means of which the light of understanding may at last reflect from one surface, even if a thousand others fail. You think that life tells you many things, and it is telling you over and over a few; presenting them tirelessly in multiform, until at last the one appropriate rendition brings illumination. The multiplicity of Nature's devices are a means of telling you the same thing over and over again, in different forms, until the apt phrase makes you understand.

"When these few and simple things are at last comprehended and incorporated,
use of that environment has ceased, the necessity is relieved, the magnetic attraction fails, and the entity is no longer drawn into its functioning. These few and simple things can be all sufficiently learned in the span of a single lifetime. It is true, as is often said, that many, many life terms would not be sufficient to learn and comprehend all the manifold wisdoms and knowledges of the earth; but those wisdoms and knowledges are but the selective media through which the basic simplifications may be reached. The least considered one may do that function as well as the most complex. It is not necessary for those finishing with the earth phase of life to have learned all that is possible to be learned on your earth. Most of those things may be better and more easily acquired in freer spheres, provided that the basic simplicities I have mentioned have been acquired.

"That, I think, disposes of one confusion that it must be necessary to undergo many incarnations to exhaust the earth’s possibilities of learning. But until those basic simplicities possible to be acquired in the earth sphere have been encompassed, the entity is again and again drawn back to what you call ‘incarnation.’

"There are no two conditions exactly alike. It is a magnetic attraction. If an entity is drawn to the earth sphere by the magnetic attraction of necessity, it will continue to be so drawn until the necessity is appeased.

"Now we will assume a spirit that is so drawn and redrawn into what you call reincarnation – a specific, not a general case, you understand. Its life after death is a period of adjustment to what it had acquired, an establishment of it, an incorporation of it into the fiber of the entity in such a way that, when finally arranged, so to speak, its further lack in that line gives rise once more to the magnetic attraction that draws it into another earth life. In that interim it has no foreknowledge of its destiny in that respect. That knowledge comes only with the establishment of the magnetic attraction that becomes like an irresistible hunger that cannot be denied.

"I think that is true of all of us, until the equilibrium of what has been accomplished is balanced. We dwell in a security as of eternity until the new aspiration draws us to the next sphere of our development. In that sense, I suppose no one really knows whether he is destined for another earth incarnation or not; though those of us who have gained to conscious knowledge of the basic simplicities may be justified in our certainty that with us the earth phase is finished. Those who have passed actually through many earth incarnations are the slow of development. They are the true earth bound entities; though they do not realize that fact. They are earthbound through no sin or transgression as one might says, but merely because they are not through with earth".

Someone asked as to "these basic simplicities". Gaelic chuckled.

"I think", said he, "that is one of the ‘many-faceted resistances.’ If I should turn to the back of the book and read the answers I should be committing a crime more stupendous than is possible in your muddle-headed world. The safety element in that is this: that one who has comprehended those simplicities also understands the purport of their acquisition, and so is not tempted to turn to the back of the book".

5. Clairvoyant memories of past lives

Thus was our first question answered. The second still remained. We had all of us read much in occult literature, and had been impressed, but not wholly convinced by the confidence with which those supposedly in command of ‘occult science’ detailed their clairvoyant knowledge of past lives on earth. And correspondingly, their alleged knowledge of conditions of life and development in other ‘spheres’ of existence, This minute mapping of the topography of the invisible universe reaches its apogee in the elaborate system of Theosophy, for example.

"Some of these", explained Gaelic simply, "may attain such a state of clairvoyance that they may actually remember at least parts of past lives. But many who quite honestly think they do so are merely tuning in with the racial past and individualizing it; or are translating other, non-earthly incarnations of their own into the language of the earth they are how inhabiting. They sense a non-earth experience and clothe it in earth concepts; and therefore imagine it as an experience of their past".

6. Clairvoyant knowledge of other planes or spheres

This was an important and understandable contribution. As to the rest of it, Gaelic was in doubt whether he could convey his idea.

"It is a subject", said he, "which has never been thought ready, and which it has been despaired of even to attempt to explain. It nay be presumptuous on my part, and I may fail to convey my full idea, but if comprehension lacks at the present time, be of faith that it kinna long tarry. I refer to the apparent evidence brought to you by witnesses of clairvoyant faculty whose credibility is unquestioned, but the contents of whose reports are just beginning to awaken some doubt as to detail among people such as yourselves.

"Reality of any sort whatever reaches perception necessarily through a mechanism. That mechanism is of a twofold character; the material manifestation in which the reality clothes itself, and the awareness-mechanism impinged upon by that manifestation. This results in a necessary dilution first dependent upon the degree of perfection in which the reality is manifested; and second, the degree of response of the awareness-mechanism to the stimulus made upon it by that manifestation. To that must be added a third factor: the degree of the response of the entity possessing the awareness-mechanism to its own physical faculty.

"But wherever the perfection, or lack of perfection of the translation from pure reality, on one side, to inner perception on the other, it is invariably conditioned in kind and translated in intellectual understanding by the sort of manifestation and the sort of awareness-mechanism peculiar to the environment in which the recognition or perception takes place. This is a general and at first hearing a rather abstract, statement of principle. Let us now apply it to the case in hand.

"Your clairvoyant witness escapes from the physical as you understand it, into another state of consciousness in which we, for example, find ourselves. He there encounters a certain set of realities which enter his own perceptions through their manifestations in that state of consciousness and through the awareness-mechanism he possesses in that state. He gains, for example, and not too closely to specify, the knowledge that entities of differing development find here certain appropriate and differing correspondences, spiritual sustenance, the aliments necessary for spiritual growth, each according to its need and station in progress. The conditions, the things with which A is in touch, may be totally and entirely other than those appropriate to B. One is as unlike the other as night and day. His feeling, then, is of the actual segregation of the conditions in which A finds his appropriate environment, and those in which B must necessarily dwell for his sustenance and his progress.

"Now in the body in which he temporarily finds himself, the significance of this state of affairs is clear. But the moment he emerges from that consciousness and reenters the physical environment, the perception of that same reality ceases to pass through the one set of apparatus and transfers itself to the other. And in the physical, even the true perception of that segregation between A and B becomes a zoned segregation and you have A and B in an astral plane or a devachanic plane or any other plane whatever. It is impossible to translate it otherwise; whereas A and B, though dwelling in such differing – you see it is impossible not to use their terms – spheres, planes, whatever you like, as respects their correspondences to spiritual substances and growth, nevertheless as regards proximity, in respect to both space and one’s being with the other, may be seated cheek by jowl in the park.

"This is one simple example which, well considered, will illuminate much of the super-rigid formalism that attends revelations of conditions on this side. Each is a translation, into terms of a mechanism which has not its counterpart with us, of perceptions and realities which are nevertheless the same for us both. That is why we have always considered it unwise to attempt to tell you of conditions on this side, why we have told you so often that we have no language to explain. It is not that matters with us differ greatly from those with you. The same ultimate realities, from the greatest possible conceptions to the smallest possible wee bit ideas, of torches, of wheels in the street, of lights in windows – these realities come to inner perception with us as with you, but the mechanism of manifestation and the awareness mechanism are not the same.

"It is a fearsome thing to say, lest we alarm you with the feeling that you will be strange and homeless and uncomforted in knowing these things. It is not so, because still the real pussy cat will feel within you like a real cat, and you will say to it, ‘Good Tabby!’ But if we should tell you that the cat would not be furry, with claws and a pink tongue and whiskers, why we would be translating truly, but it would not be a literal statement of fact – just as the formal zones of heaven of the religionists, theosophists, occultists etc., are really but translations of the things seen by their witnesses. And since your awareness mechanism will be adapted in sort and kind to the manifestations you are capable of encountering, they will seem as natural and as homely as do those diminished realities you see in your present state.

"As I said when we began, this aspect has never been attempted before, and is still considered by many unwise and productive of confusion. I have replied to you that some may catch a glimpse – and God knows the others are confused enough already".

It is the same with the numerous divisions of the entity set down by these systems of thought.

"If you consider them", said Gaelic, "as illustrative symbols, they are valuable. Considered as fact they are misleading, like the zones or spheres. A translation into zones, or parts is given where only the differentiation of a unified whole is
intended. These illustrative symbols were the best possible at the time of the revelation. If anyone rests satisfied with any revelation, my own disquisitions included, he falls into error, for the very reason that anything incapable of creating a response through the physical awareness mechanism must be an illustrative symbol. It must be used as such, and must never be looked upon as the final fact. It is but a stepping stone, and you must keep open and eager for the wider symbol which will surely come in this attitude of mind. This new symbol will express no new truth, but will be merely a better translation of the same truth. That is why you will always find people who say, "There is nothing new in that. It has been said many times before".

7. True nature of these zones or spheres

"It is almost impossible", said Gaelic, "for you to consider these things apart from certain limitations of your own conditions".

One of these limitations is a necessity for what he called "a duly-ordered intellectual-mechanical sequence of process for the soul".

"You would have it progress from definite sphere to definite sphere, or heaven to heaven, or system to system, graduating from one to the other, as the member of an industrial system is promoted or as a scholar progresses in the schools.

"There is in this conception, of course, more than a mere color of truth. The universe – comprising in that term all that is – is an orderly universe of structure and purpose. But it is not necessarily the intellectually-mechanical order you know and see and use. It there becomes a harmonious order of needs and responses. Your human entity (or any other, for that matter; but we speak of the human now) is environmented, and therefore incarnated by a sort of specific gravity rather than a pedagogic gradation. That specific gravity is composed, as I see it, of harmonious orderliness of need and response. The precise domination, naturally, is dependent upon the greatest need and the largest capacity for response.

"This general law is possibly incomprehensible to you. My effort is to offer you a fructifying glimpse.

"The question will probably occur to you of the apparently concomitant separation of individuals by this process. The difficulty here is that your conceptions are in three-dimensional space. You conceive, for example, of yourself being attracted by, or rising by your specific gravity, to some solar system a million miles away; while your nearest and dearest may, by the same law, be born to, conceivably, another nebula.

"This would be so were your present limitations of space and time not to be also transcended when you transcend the physical as perceivable by your five senses. I cannot explain this to you, except to offer you that which has often been hinted before; that we who have developed beyond the need of your physical are not entirely conditioned by space and time as you understand them. There is a hint here of what you call the fourth dimension; though this again is a term expressed in a phraseology of your limitations. Suffice it to say, that just as yourself and the cricket upon your hearth may occupy the same room and may be as wholly aware of each other as your respective correspondences will permit, yet each be inhabiting actual worlds as far apart as are the spiritual nebulae, so entities encompassed within the warm room of mutual love are actually together as far as their correspondences will permit, even though by the necessities of their development they might be said to inhabit stars millions of years separate.

"This is not a literal picture; it is a thought of comfort".