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the fifth and sixth principles. But the existence of terrestrial attachments creates the necessity of punarjanmam, the latter signifying the evolution of a new set of objective and subjective experiences, constituting a new combination of surrounding circumstances or, in other words, a new world. The period between death and the next subsequent birth is occupied with the preparation required for the evolution of these new experiences. During the period of incubation, as you call it, the spirit will never of its own accord appear in this world, nor can it so appear.
There is a great law in this universe which consists in the reduction of subjective experience to objective phenomena and the evolution of the former from the latter. This is otherwise called "cyclic necessity." Man is subjected to this law if he does not check and counterbalance the usual destiny or fate, and he can only escape its control by subduing all his terrestrial attachments completely. The new combination of circumstances under which he will then be placed may be better or worse than the terrestrial conditions under which he lived. But in his progress to a new world, you may be sure he will never turn around to have a look at his spiritualistic friends.*[1]
In the third of the above three cases there is, by our supposition, no recognition of spiritual consciousness or of spirit. So they are non-existing so far as he is concerned. The case is similar to that of an organ or faculty which remains unused for a long time. It then practically ceases to exist.
These entities, as it were, remain his or in his possession, when they are stamped with the stamp of recognition. When such is not the case, the whole of his individuality is centered in his fifth principle. And after death this fifth principle is the only representative of the individual in question.
By itself it cannot evolve for itself a new set of objective experiences, or to say the same thing in other words, it has no
- ↑ * As M. A. (Oxon) will, see the Spiritualists have still less chance of having their claims recognised by Brahmanical than by Buddhist occultists.—Ed.
