But all these differences, such as those shown by babes from birth, by
adults as character comes forth more and more, and by nations in their
history, are due to long experience gained during many lives on earth,
are the outcome of the soul’s own evolution. A survey of one short
human life gives no ground for the production of his inner nature. It
is needful that each soul should have all possible experience, and
one life cannot give this even under the best conditions. It would be
folly for the Almighty to put us here for such a short time, only to
remove us just when we had begun to see the object of life and the
possibilities in it. The mere selfish desire of a person to escape the
trials and discipline of life is not enough to set nature’s laws aside,
so the soul must be reborn until it has ceased to set in motion the
cause of rebirth, after having developed character up to its possible
limit as indicated by all the varieties of human nature, when every
experience has been passed through, and not until all of truth that can
be known has been acquired. The vast disparity among men in respect
to capacity compels us, if we wish to ascribe justice to Nature or to
God, to admit reïncarnation and to trace the origin of the disparity
back to the past lives of the Ego. For people are as much hindered and
handicapped, abused and made the victims of seeming injustice because
of limited capacity, as they are by reason of circumstances of birth or
education. We see the uneducated rising above circumstances of family
and training, and often those born in good families have very small
capacity; but the troubles of nations and families arise from want of
capacity more than from any other cause. And if we consider savage
races only, there the seeming injustice is enormous. For many savages
have good actual brain capacity but still are savage. This is because
the Ego in that body is still savage and undeveloped, for in contrast
to the savage there are many civilized men with small actual brain
force who are not savage in nature because the indwelling Ego has had
long experience in civilization during other lives, and being a more
developed soul has power to use the brain instrument to its highest
limit.
Each man feels and knows that he has an individuality of his own, a
personal identity which bridges over not only the gaps made by sleep
but also those sometimes supervening on temporary lesions in the brain.
This identity never breaks from beginning to end of life in the normal
person, and only the persistence and eternal character of the soul will
account for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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