is in agreement with all the physical laws, so it is based upon
psychical, moral and ethical laws. As on the objective plane the law
of action and reaction governs the objective phenomena, so on the
subjective plane of consciousness, if the mental action or thought be
good, the reaction will be good, and the reaction will be evil if the
mental action be evil, because every action produces a similar
reaction, A good reaction is one which makes us happy and brings
pleasant sensations or peace of mind, while an evil reaction brings
suffering, unpleasant sensations, and makes one miserable. Thus
Reincarnation makes us free agents for action, as well as for reaping
the results or reactions of those actions. In fact, we mould our own
nature, according to our desires, tendencies and works.
The theory of Resurrection, as commonly understood, does not explain
why one man is born with a sinful nature and another with a virtuous
one. It contents itself with saying as Luther said: "Man is a beast of
burden who only moves as his rider orders; sometimes God rides him and
sometimes Satan." But why God should allow Satan to ride His own
creature nobody can tell. At any rate, man must suffer eternally for
the crimes which he is forced by Satan to commit. Moreover this theory
pre-supposes predestination and that the individual soul is
fore-doomed to go either to heaven or to hell. St. Augustine first
started this doctrine of Predestination and Grace to explain why one
is born sinful and another sinless. According to this theory, God, the
merciful, favors somebody with His grace at the time of his birth and
then he comes into this world ready to be saved, but the mass of
humanity is born sinful and destined for eternal damnation. Very few
indeed receive the gift of grace and are predestined to be
saved. Moreover, this doctrine tells us that God creates man out of
nothing, forbids him something, but at the same time He does not give
him the power to obey His commands. Ultimately God punishes him with
eternal torture on account of his weakness. The body and soul will not
be separated. He will not be set free from his body, because, if it
be so, there will be the end of his suffering, which God does not
like. All these sufferings and punishments are predestined before his
birth. Thus, St. Augustine's dogma of Predestination and Grace
instead of explaining the difficulty satisfactorily brings horror and
dread to human minds, while the doctrine of Reincarnation teaches
gradual progress from lower to higher, through ages until the
individual reaches perfection. It holds that each individual will
become perfect like Jesus or Buddha or like the Father in heaven and
manifest divinity either in this life or in some other. One span of
life is too short for developing one's powers to perfection. If you
should try to train an idiot to become a great artist or a
philosopher, would you ever succeed in your attempt to make him so
during his lifetime? No.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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