CHAPTER XIV

THE RETURN JOURNEY

WE have seen that there is some reason for be- . lieving that, simultaneously with the birth or coming to consciousness of what we have called the divine soul, there occurs within us the formation of a 'spiritual' or very subtly material body. This body, if only composed of atoms, may easily be so fine and subtle as to pass practically unchanged through ordinary gross matter-the walls, for instance, and other obstacles that surround us. (At this moment there is an astronomical theory current that the stellar universe consists of two vast star-systems which are passing in nearly opposite directions right through each other.) If composed of electrons its subtlety and pervasive powers must be much greater. Moreover, its fineness and subtlety would make it difficult of destruction. The ordinary agents of death-physical violence, water, fire, and so forth —would, as already pointed out, hardly reach it; and it is easy to suppose that it might continue onwards and perdure in stability and activity for thousands of years. Even the Atom of matter, which is now regarded as a complex system of electrons, is supposed to have an immensely ex

tended lifetime-nearly two thousand years in the case of Radium, and much longer in the case of all other substances; and if two thousand years or thereabouts is the minimum lifetime of an atom, it is not difficult to suppose that the lifetime of a subtle body composed as above described may be equally or much more extended.

During its lifetime, the radio-active atom, slowly disintegrating, pours out a prodigious amount of energy; and in the process apparently is transformed and takes on other characters and qualities. Radium for instance, or rather some products of its disintegration, are thought to take on the characters of Helium and of Lead. And similarly we have every reason to believe that the subtle body of Man is continually pouring out energy on all sides, radiating like a sun-pouring out mental states, sensible forms, influences of all kinds, even images of itself, and so continually entering into a wider life and touch with others, and undergoing a slow transformation of its outer form. At the same time-and leading to the same results-it is continually storing up in its recesses impressions and memories for the seed of future expression and development.

It may be imagined that the gross terrestrial body-though splendidly necessary for the localizing of the Self, and the establishment of the sense of identity, and for the electric accumulation of stores of emotion and passion, and so forthacts on the whole in such a way as to greatly

hamper and limit the activities of the inner body; and we can imagine that (as at death and under other special conditions) the liberation from the gross body is naturally accompanied by an enormous extension of faculty. The soul in its new and subtler form passes out into an immensely wider sphere of action and perception-so much so, indeed, as to make direct converse between the two worlds (the new world it is in, and the old one it has left) difficult to establish and very difficult permanently to maintain. The author of Interwoven says (p. 221) that the first body and the second body differ greatly in their chemical particles, "and so the same degree of sight and hearing is not possible. . . . We have just as much trouble to see the outsides of things as mortals have to see the insides."

Nor can we place a necessary limit to the birth of finer bodies. There may be a succession of such things. The electron brings us very near to a mental state; for whereas an Atom-conceived as similar to the speck of dust which one can roll between one's fingers, only much more minute-seems to have no relation to mentality, a tiny electric charge, capable of conveying a shock, comes very close! And at that stage the truth becomes apparent that the inner intelligent being in all things is the core, and the body is only the surface of contact-the surface, in fact, along which one intelligence ad ministers shocks to another! With liberation from the gross body that surface may grow

enormously extended, and it may become possible to touch or see, or to render oneself visible or tangible, to others far beyond all ordinary possibilities of contact or perception.

The succession of finer bodies may exist in any gradation, from what we call gross matter to the subtlest ether of emotion. At any rate we can see that at every stage there will be a finer body which is more of the nature of thought, and an outer and coarser which is less so. As the gifted author of The Science of Peace, Bhagavan Das, says:— "At each stage the Jiva-core (i.e. the core of the living individual) consists of matter of the inner plane, while its outer upâdhi (or sheath) consists of matter of the outer plane; and when a person says, I think, I act, it means that the matter of the inner core, which is the I, for the time being, is actually, positively, modified by, or is itself modifying in a certain manner, the outer real world." The inner film of matter (or mind), as he says, "is posing and masquerading, for the time being, as the truly immaterial self."

This central Self we can never wholly reach, but the movement of each divine soul is toward it; and the assurance and salvation of each soul is in the growing sense of union with it. The personal self can only 'survive' by ever fading and changing toward the universal. Our inner identity is fixed, but our outward identity we can only preserve by, as it were, forever losing it.

After life's fitful fever-after the insurgence and resurgence of passions; after the heart-breaking struggles which are forced upon some for the sake of a mere material footing upon the earth; after the deadly sufferings which others must undergo in order to gain scantiest allowance and expression of their inner and spiritual selves; after the mortal conflict and irreconcilableness of material and mental needs; the battles with opponents, the betrayal of friends, the fading and souring of pleasures, and the dissipation of ideals -the consent of mankind goes to affirm and confirm the conclusion that sleep is well, sleep is desirable. As after a hard day's labor, when the sinews are torn and the mind is racked, Nature's soft nurse commends a period of rest and healing -so it would seem fitting that a similar period should follow, for the human soul, on the toil and the dislocation of life.

It seems indeed probable—and a long tradition confirms the idea-that the human soul at death does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of memories and qualities, into some intermediate region, astral rather than celestial (if we may use words which we do not understand), some Purgatory or Hades, rather than Paradise or Olympus; and for a long period does remain there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering from the shocks and outrages of mortal experience, knitting up and smoothing out the broken and tangled threads, trying hard to understand the pattern. It seems probable that there is a