THEO. The Spiritual thinking Ego, the permanent principle in man, or that which is the seat of _Manas_. It is not Atma, or even Atma-Buddhi, regarded as the dual _Monad_, which is the _individual_, or _divine_ man, but Manas; for Atman is the Universal ALL, and becomes the HIGHER-SELF of man only in conjunction with _Buddhi_, its vehicle, which links IT to the individuality (or divine man). For it is the Buddhi-Manas which is called the _Causal body_, (the United 5th and 6th Principles) and which is _Consciousness_, that connects it with every personality it inhabits on earth. Therefore, Soul being a generic term, there are in men three _aspects_ of soul—the terrestrial, or animal; the Human Soul; and the Spiritual Soul; these, strictly speaking, are one Soul in its three aspects. Now of the first aspect, nothing remains after death; of the second (_nous_ or Manas) only its divine essence _if left unsoiled_ survives, while the third in addition to being immortal becomes _consciously_ divine, by the assimilation of the higher Manas. But to make it clear, we have to say a few words first of all about Re-incarnation. ENQ. You will do well, as it is against this doctrine that your enemies fight the most ferociously. THEO. You mean the Spiritualists? I know; and many are the absurd objections laboriously spun by them over the pages of _Light_. So obtuse and malicious are some of them, that they will stop at nothing. One of them found recently a contradiction, which he gravely discusses in a letter to that journal, in two statements picked out of Mr. Sinnett’s lectures. He discovers that grave contradiction in these two sentences: “Premature returns to earth-life in the cases when they occur may be due to Karmic complication ...”; and “there is no _accident_ in the supreme act of divine justice guiding evolution.” So profound a thinker would surely see a contradiction of the law of gravitation if a man stretched out his hand to stop a falling stone from crushing the head of a child! FOOTNOTES: [25] In its generic sense, the word “rational” meaning something emanating from the Eternal Wisdom. [26] _Irrational_ in the sense that as a _pure_ emanation of the Universal mind it can have no individual reason of its own on this plane of matter, but like the Moon, who borrows her light from the Sun and her life from the Earth, so _Buddhi_, receiving its light of Wisdom from Atma, gets its rational qualities from _Manas_. _Per se_, as something homogeneous, it is devoid of attributes. [27] _Vide_ “_Secret Doctrine_,” Vol. II., stanzas. [28] “_Zohar_,” Vol. II., p. 96. [29] “_Mishna_,” “Aboth,” Vol. IV., p. 29. [30] See “Secret Doctrine” for a clearer explanation. Vol. I., p. 157. VIII. ON RE-INCARNATION OR REBIRTH. WHAT IS MEMORY ACCORDING TO THEOSOPHICAL TEACHING?