Elementary Theosophy

by a Student

Chapter 4: Body, Soul and Spirit

Why, then, if entry into the body means so much loss to the soul, even if only temporary, does it come there at all? The answer given by theosophy is that it may gain higher life, and that it may give higher life. It is divine, but it has to recognize that while in the flesh; and there is always a fuller divinity possible to the very highest man.

Theosophy sees life everywhere; nowhere anything dead. It may at once be asked: is not a human body dead when the soul has left it for another world? If we had eyes that could see, we should find that the body was as much alive as ever, but with a different kind of life. The little busy souls of the millions of cells -- which, while the man was present, served him -- left the body with him, or very soon after. Their place is taken by throngs of lower lives, germs, in their way just as busy. Part of each cell goes to form their minute living bodies; the rest separates into molecules of water, various gases, and salts. But the molecules too are alive. They behave like a drill corps when the sergeant dismisses it. The men no longer make a corps, and each goes his own way. One will perhaps join a party going swimming; another may go to a music class. When the bath and the class are over, the men again separate and group together in new combinations. At the end of the day they may seem just the same as at the beginning. But as a matter of fact they are not. Each has profited a little by the drill, the music, and the swim.

So with the living particles of nature's vast life, the particles that we call molecules of water, air, salt, iron, and so on. They pass from one combination to another, sometimes forming part of a plant, sometimes of an animal, sometimes of a human body, the ocean, or a stone. Age after age they are awakening to fuller consciousness, learning, even though if we watch them for ages we might not notice any change.

What are they learning? The power to combine into higher groups. Science knows that from the birth of our planet until now, life has been rising. The orders and species have been progressing to higher forms. This was because the molecules were learning how to combine. At last they could combine and recombine so as to make the body of man; and then man, the soul, came and dwelt among them. It was at last a fit tabernacle.

So, however completely at death the molecules scatter, they can now always be brought together again to make a human form. What nature has been teaching them is the power to combine into higher and more perfectly harmonious forms, forms of which all the parts work together to a higher end.

And that very same thing she is teaching man. Man, according to theosophy, reincarnates again and again on earth, living life after life, not one only. We are grouped again and again in all kinds of ways. Among primitive peoples there are small groups, the family and the tribe. Tribes make nations; nations disappear, and others come up onto the stage of history. A nation is like a body; the various groups, made of men who follow various occupations, who are joined for various ends, or who live together in towns and cities, are the organs of the body. Each man is a separate cell. Men leave one nation at death and perhaps enter another, making part of all sorts of families and groups as they go along.

What we are slowly learning is the power to hold together, the power to work for each other and for the whole of which we are a part, whether a guild, a family, a city, or a nation; the power of divine comradeship of individuals and groups and nations to make one vast harmonious organization, the body of humanity. Then a further avenue of progress, leading to heights we cannot conceive of, will be open before us.

Behind us are the animals, moving manward, getting the human touch age after age, to be the humanity that shall follow us when we have learned our lesson and gone on -- perhaps to another planet, the child of this one, says theosophy. Behind them, the plants, some of them -- like the sensitive plant, for instance -- already showing the tendency upward to the animal.

So we can see that we are in the body for several purposes.

• First, that in it and through it we may touch nature, and learn the wise use of her forces.
• Second, that we may teach, and help nature in her teaching. Among the cells, the little lives, of our bodies, we are like a master in his class. In controlling our impulses, in resisting deeds that make for moral and physical disease, in living in every way the highest and purest life we can, we are training the lower lives that clothe us on the one hand; and training ourselves on the other. In training his students, the master trains himself. And whilst they learn from him, he learns much from them.
• Thirdly, we are here that we may learn brotherhood, the higher comradeship, that quality which, spreading all over the earth, will one day open a new door to us, leading to a height of happiness and power that has always been the ideal before the eyes of humanity's helpers and teachers.

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