As a seed of a tree takes time to bear fruit, grow old and die, so a Karma-seed takes time to develop and die. As the periodical putting forth of leaves, flowers and fruits are the events in the life of a tree, so the experiences of a man's life represent the development of his Prārabdha Karma-seed. The time a Karma-seed takes to work itself out is measured by the duration of the sustaining power of its potentialities. One Prārabdha Karma may embrace two or three or more births if it is very powerful, or may end in the middle of one birth, if it be not so powerful. An extraordinarily powerful Karma may extend for a long, long time, covering many, many births, suicide for instance. The thought which leads to suicide makes the deepest impression on the mind, far deeper, in fact, than even the thought which commits murder. Why? Because we love our own life more than anybody else's or than anything else on earth. It, therefore, requires an extraordinarily powerful thought to overpower that innate, intense love of our life and incite us to destroy it. The thought back of this self-murder, therefore, makes the deepest impression on, our mind and thus becomes the most powerful Karma-seed of all Karma-seeds. This being so, it asserts itself to form the Prārabdha, every time it is worked out, to the exclusion of all other Karma-seeds, for a long series of births, in every one of which that soul commits suicide, sometimes, as it is often found, without any apparent reason. It is divine mercy alone that saves a suicide from committing suicide in every birth ever afterwards. Hence suicide is the greatest sin, greater than even murder. To the average Western mind this Karma philosophy strikes as intolerably pessimistic on account of the inexorableness of its laws. There is, however, no help for it. These laws rule us all whether we believe in it or not. They are no man-created laws, they are laws which operate throughout Nature, as much within a white man as within a brown, yellow or black man, of all stations of life, of all grades of consciousness. Yet it need not strike anybody, who has found the easy and rosy path out of the woods of Karma, as pessimistic at all. But he or she must ever keep to that path and never stray out of it from sheer wilfulness, or else there certainly is no escape out of the labyrinth of Karma. SECTION XVIII. REINCARNATION. Reincarnation, as I have said, is the physical form in which groups of accumulated causes (Karma) of reaction manifest themselves in Nature. Reincarnation means rebirth. Rebirth means, to be born again in flesh after death. In order, therefore, to know what is rebirth, we must know what is death. To know what is death, we must know what is life. Let us see what life really is. Human life is conscious mentality encased in flesh. To be briefer, human life may be summed up in one word—consciousness. Life of lower animals is negative consciousness, while human life is positive consciousness.