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their lives. In other words, that particular wave of life-evolution must run on to its shore.
But it is a sin and cruelty to revive their memory and intensify their suffering by giving
them a chance of living an artificial life; a chance to overload their Karma, by tempting
them into opened doors, viz., mediums and sensitives, for they will have to pay roundly
for every such pleasure. I will explain. The suicides, who, foolishly hoping to escape life,
found themselves still alive, -- have suffering enough in store for them from that very
life. Their punishment is in the intensity of the latter. Having lost by the rash act their
seventh and sixth principles, though not for ever, as they can regain both -- instead of
accepting their punishment, and taking their chances of redemption, they are often made
to regret life and tempted to regain a hold upon it by sinful means. In the Kama-Loka, the
land of intense desires, they can gratify their earthly yearnings but through a living proxy;
and by so doing, at the expiration of the natural term, they generally lose their monad for
ever. As to the victims of accident -- these fare still worse. Unless they were so good and
pure, as to be drawn immediately within the Akasic Samadhi, i.e. to fall into a state of
quiet slumber, a sleep full of rosy dreams, during which, they have no recollection of the
accident, but move and live among their familiar friends and scenes, until their natural
life-term is finished, when they find themselves born in the Deva-Chan -- a gloomy fate
is theirs. Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual they wander about -- (not shells, for their
connection with their two higher principles is not quite broken) -- until their death-hour
comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes,
they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford, to gratify them vicariously.
They are the Pisachas, the Incubi, and Succubi of mediaeval times. The demons of thirst,
gluttony, lust and avarice, -- elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty;
provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not
only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their
hellish impulses, at last, at the fixed close of their natural period of life -- they are carried
out of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure exquisite suffering and end
with entire destruction.
But if the victim of accident or violence, be neither very good, nor very bad -- an average
person -- then this may happen to him. A medium who attracts him, will create for him
the most undesirable of things: a new combination of Skandhas and a new and evil
Karma. But let me give you a clearer idea of what I mean by Karma in this case.
In connection with this, let me tell you before, that since you seem so interested with the
subject, you can do nothing better than to study the two doctrines -- of Karma and
Nirvana -- as profoundly as you can. Unless you are thoroughly well acquainted with the
two tenets -- the double key to the metaphysics of Abidharma -- you will always find
yourself at sea in trying to comprehend the rest. We have several sorts of Karma and
Nirvana in their various applications -- to the Universe, the world, Devas, Buddhas,
Bodhisatwas, men and animals -- the second including its seven kingdoms. Karma and
Nirvana are but two of the seven great MYSTERIES of Buddhist metaphysics; and but
four of the seven are known to the best orientalists, and that very imperfectly.
If you ask a learned Buddhist priest what is Karma? -- he will tell you that Karma is what
a Christian might call Providence (in a certain sense only) and a Mahomedan -- Kismet,
fate or destiny (again in one sense). That it is that cardinal tenet which teaches that, as
soon as any conscious or sentient being, whether man, deva, or animal dies, a new being
is produced and he or it reappears in another birth, on the same or another planet, under
conditions of his or its own antecedent making. Or, in other words that Karma is the
guiding power, and Trishna (in Pali Tanha) the thirst or desire to sentiently live -- the
proximate force or energy, the resultant of human (or animal) action, which, out of the
old Skandhas (8) produce the new group that form the new being and control the nature
of the birth itself. Or to make it still clearer, the new being, is rewarded and punished for
the meritorious acts and misdeeds of the old one; Karma representing an Entry Book, in
which all the acts of man, good, bad, or indifferent, are carefully recorded to his debit and
credit -- by himself, so to say, or rather by these very actions of his. There, where
Christian poetical fiction created, and sees a "Recording" Guardian Angel, stern and
realistic Buddhist logic, perceiving the necessity that every cause should have its effect --
shows its real presence. The opponents of Buddhism have laid great stress upon the
alleged injustice that the doer should escape and an innocent victim be made to suffer, -- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]