' Do you
realize what that means? It means that from this moment, its
transformations depend no longer on the blind laws of gradual evolution,
but on the least of a man's actions, which brings either a reward or
a punishment. Now you see that it depends on the man's will whether,
on the one hand, he will start on the way to Moksha, the eternal bliss,
passing from one Loka to another till he reaches Brahmaloka, or, on
the other, owing to his sins, will be thrown back. You know that the
average soul, once freed from earthly reincarnations, has to ascend
from one Loka to another, always in the human shape, though this
shape will grow and perfect itself with every Loka. Some of our
sects understood these Lokas to mean certain stars. These spirits,
freed from earthly matter, are what we mean by Pitris and Devas,
whom we worship. And did not your Kabalists of the middle ages
designate these Pitris under the expression Planetary Spirits?
But, in the case of a very sinful man, he will have to begin once
more with the animal forms which he had already traversed unconsciously.
Both Darwin and Haeckel lose sight of this, so to speak, second volume
of their incomplete theory, but still neither of them advances any
argument to prove it false. Is it not so?"
"Neither of them does anything of the sort, most assuredly."
"Why, in this case," exclaimed he, suddenly changing his colloquial
tone for an aggressive one, "why am I, I who have studied the most
modern ideas of Western science, I who believe in its representatives--
why am I suspected, pray, by Miss X--- of belonging to the tribe
of the ignorant and superstitious Hindus? Why does she think that
our perfected scientific theories are superstitions, and we
ourselves a fallen inferior race?"
Sham Rao stood before us with tears in his eyes.
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