Collin The Theory of Eternal Life

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5439-0961-6
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 156 Seiten

Rodney Collin, in this text written one year after P.D. Ouspensky's death, brings together the wisdom of esoteric myths, religious texts and spiritual works into a coherent theory of the possibilities of conscious evolution. In exploring the progression of human consciousness through the cellular, molecular and electronic worlds, he reveals the deeper mystery and meaning of life and death.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Collin, Rodney

Leseproben

II
Lives Between Death and Birth
It is possible to come to the conclusion, as we have done, that the moment of death and the moment of conception are one. The very tearing apart of the constituents of the old body produces that electric tension which causes the determining genes of the next body to rush together in their new combination. It is as though the note or chord set up by the man’s being in its mortal disintegration causes the subtle constituents of the fertilized ovum to arrange themselves in a corresponding pattern, as the note of a violin produces a corresponding pattern on a sand-tray. And this occurs because the energy of death and the energy of conception are of the same intensity and subtleness — an energy so penetrating that its effects can pass through time as easily as the energy of radio waves pass through space. The reason why death and conception are united in this way is because at these two points and at these only, there enters into the existence of ordinary man this god-like time-penetrating energy. All the energies that automatically work in man between conception and death, even the most intense, are of such a nature that their effect is confined to one point of time; just as the effect of mechanical energy, a lever for example, is confined to one point of space. The higher energy of death and conception, on the other hand, instantaneously diffuses through long tracts of time; just as electro-magnetic energy, such as light or radio waves, instantaneously diffuses through vast areas of space. But the signature or record of life released at death, even though it be free of time, finds no other place in man’s existence sufficiently sensitive to receive its imprint, but conception. It is in this sense that death and conception may be regarded as one and simultaneous. Now this moment of death and conception is inevitably connected with the idea of the Judgment. We are familiar with the opening of the tombs, the last trump, the weighing of souls, the division into damned and blessed of the mediaeval picture. But all true teachings include this idea, very often in much more subtle and detailed form. In a book called The Night Side of Nature, it is said: “The instant the soul is forced from the body it sees its whole earthly career in a single sign; it knows that it is good or evil, and pronounces its own sentence.” Here the idea of self-judgment is made very clear. Put in a mechanistic way this means that judgment or determination of future state is an exact mathematical resultant of the causes set up in the past life. This is conveyed even more graphically by certain Sankhya descriptions. In Plato’s strange myth of Er the Pamphylian, who was taken up for dead in battle, and twelve days later, when already lying on the funeral pyre, came to life again, it is described how the souls of men go on a long journey, encamping at least in a meadow between the mouths of heaven and hell. Here, after witnessing the going up and casting down of souls according to their deserts, they are vouchsafed a vision of the Three Fates — those of the past, present and future. From the lap of Lachesis, Fate of the Past, are thrown down innumerable examples of lives, which the souls choose according to their nature and desire— but most after the custom of their former life. Here is introduced the idea that something could be altered at the Judgment. If a man could arrive there with full knowledge of what he has been and what he wants to be, choice would be open to him. Only most men cannot conceive a different life, they are bound to choose what is familiar; so that for them there is in fact no choice. In the Christian vision of St. Makary of Alexandria (third Century), the soul was seen for three days being helped free from the body by its guardian angel. It then ascended to God for adoration, was sent for six days to experience the delights of paradise, ascended a second time to God, was condemned to wander thirty days in hell, and only on the fortieth day came to final judgment. Again, in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the bodiless self is said to pass three and half days in swoon, to be raised to ultimate bliss or buddhahood for an hour, after which it comes gradually descending through the invisible worlds until — sometime after the eighteenth day — it reaches judgment and the very entrance of that womb from which it will next be born. All the hierarchy of Gods attends this Judgment, at which the mirror of karma or the soul’s own past is the final witness. Now the Tibetan Book of the Dead makes clear openly what all the other versions innerly suggest — namely, that Judgment is the assignment to the disembodied self of a new body in accordance with its record. Until this Judgment the soul can always hope through some final act of adoration or understanding to improve its future lot. But Judgment once made can never be reversed, and the self now endowed with its new vehicle must pass through the whole cycle of that body’s life, before it comes again to the same court and the same chance. What else can this mean but conception? Nothing can turn back the unfolding of a body once conceived, or change the nature and capacities inherent in it. Such capacities may be used well or ill, they may be cultivated or atrophy, but they cannot be exchanged for others, nor can one be rid of them. Death and conception are one. Death and Judgment are one. Judgment and conception are one. Death, Judgment and conception are one. This is the closing of the circle of life. There is, however, an idea that we have completely omit-ted from our reading of these strange texts. According to St. Makary, the soul passes forty days in heaven, hell and paradise between death and judgment. The soul of Er the Pamphylian remembered camping for seven days in the celestial meadow, then journeying for four days more before it came to the vision of the Fates and the distribution of lives. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead from eighteen to forty days, each with its own appropriate visions and experience, elapse between Judgment and re-entry into the womb. All these accounts agree in suggesting that there is a definite interval, exactly measurable by days or weeks, between Death and Judgment. During this time the self is bodiless, and in this state is able to perceive as real different parts of the cosmos unattainable to it when attached to a body. But how can death, judgment and conception be simultaneous, and yet separated by an immensely important interval? This is the greatest mystery. An interesting point now comes to mind from our diagram. Since it was a logarithmic scale which we found to fit best with the pattern of life, and since the three equal divisions of physical existence are in this way marked by 1, 10, 100, and 1000 months, the beginning of the circle or conception occurs not at zero but at 1. Somewhere, not included in the circle, is a missing month. But this circle, by our definition, represents the life of the body. The missing month is therefore passed outside the circle of the body. And moreover, on our logarithmic scale, this month is as long as all the rest of existence. It is the invisible and infinite interval between two identical points. Death and conception are one; yet between them lies a whole existence. This is only possible in another dimension. How can this be represented? There is one way: This is the figure of infinity —two connecting circles, one belonging to the physical world and one to the next, one invisible and one visible. Seen from the physical world, the visible circle looks complete in itself. It is perfect and without entrance or exit. It is the vicious circle of man’s life. At the same time its only meaning comes from its contact with the invisible circle into which the soul passes at the moment of death, and in which it lives a full, complete existence before being conceived into a new body, at the self-same moment. This too is the secret of Plato’s myth in the Politicus, in which it is explained how for a certain time the cosmos is propelled by God in a circular motion, and then, the cycle of time appointed to it being accomplished, it is released and begins to go round in the contrary direction, but this time of itself as an independent living creature.3 There could be no better description of the relation between the invisible and visible circles. About the pattern of this invisible existence we can even make deductions. We already realized that life moves slower and slower as it passes from conception to death. Human existence thus represents no one time, but a long slowing down of time from the speed of cellular life which Controls conception to the speed of mental life which dominates at death. Looking back towards conception we see everything happening faster and faster, more and more experience filling each unit of time. At the end of childhood experience is tenfold more compressed than in old age, at birth a hundredfold, and at conception a thousandfold. At conception the speed of experience has reached the ultimate limit for cellular life —that is, the fastest possible within the confines of a physical body. If the progression be continued further it will be too fast to be contained within a cellular form’, it becomes akin to the speed of molecular energy. This is the nature of experience in the invisible circle. We can by deduction continue our scale backwards into this second circle, even though we cannot see or measure it. If by analogy we divide this circle again into three periods, these periods will be...