IF THE SCHEME OF survival of personality is anything like I have portrayed, it is evident that the soul is the permanent factor and that the mental, emotional, and physical elements are added during the process of its incarnation. The physical body is cast off at death, and the emotional and intellectual aspects of personality, while persisting for a variable period after the death of the physical body and being sometimes the means of meaningful communication with the living, are gradually lost also. I personally do not believe they are simply discarded, as is the earthly body, but are incorporated into the soul to form a growing spiritual body. Traces of their memory remain in some people and give rise to the belief in a past existence. As I mentioned in the last chapter, there are well attested instances of very small children having arresting memories of a recent past life, memories that have been investigated and confirmed by competent psychical research workers (the name of Professor Ian Stevenson of the American Society for Psychical Research is particularly relevant in this respect, and his book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a model of painstaking, objective analysis). It is interesting that these children cease to be concerned with these past memories as they grow up, and by adolescence they are so well integrated into their present environment that they have all but forgotten them.
The soul itself is both an individual unit and an integral part of the created cosmos. In other words, while my soul is unique because of the particular experience it has undergone in this life (and who can say how many previous lives, whether on earth or elsewhere, for its pre-existence seems to me to be quite as probable as its survival and growth in a future state), it acquires its authenticity and meaning by being in corporate unity with all other souls, which are the matrix of the created universe. The fact of soul pervades all life. All sentient creatures have some aspect of soul in them (some philosophers see mind even in the inanimate world, for example Teilhard de Chardin, and I sympathise with this mystical point of view), and in man the soul acquires the autonomy which is the supreme glory of humanity. This shows itself in a freed will, a will directly under the control of the soul and working in the direction of unity with all souls and with God, who has created the soul through the agency of the cosmic Christ and the Holy Spirit. Thus the individual soul reaches its fullness of being when it has passed from individuality to unity with other souls. But this union is not a fusion or an incorporation, for each soul retains its own identity in unity.
Of course, the very concept of soul is beyond the range of the unaided reason. It requires that peculiar mystical apprehension that can accept contradictions as all being true within a wider context of synthesis. Aristotelian logic, which is the basis of scientific method, is transcended by mystical intuition (as indeed it is in the speculations of modern theoretical physics in which a single elementary particle can function alternatively as a quantum and a wave). The soul is most fully itself when it is no longer itself in isolation, but is one with the whole soul matrix of the universe. In this one can begin to glimpse the meaning of the Buddha's doctrine of "anatta", or no soul. The concept of separate identity is meaningless in mystical reality except in the context of corporate unity. The Pauline teaching about the Body of Christ is a Christian insight of parallel value-of what validity is an eye or a foot severed from the body of which it is a part? It can be dissected and analysed, but has no further intrinsic use. It may be that each individual soul is created from the undifferentiated matrix of soul throughout time, for creation is not static. It continues throughout time until all is perfect in God. On the physical level this is seen in the process of evolution, now generally accepted by scientists and also by such theologians as Teilbard de Chardin and A. N. Whitehead. It would seem that the work of the created individual soul is to attain union with God by its own free will, and not as an automatic process. The way it attains this union is by its experience in the limitation of time and space, and by its redemption, or resurrection, of the material universe. On earth (and we can speak of no other mode of finite existence in our present state of knowledge) man is the most highly evolved being, and the soul is in charge of a wonderfully potent organism. Its action, as we have already seen, is to integrate the body, reasoning mind, and emotional nature to the stature of a mature person. If it fails to act well, as is in varying degree the rule, a poorly integrated person emerges, and his life is in one way or another consummated in futility. His spiritual body is a paltry thing, and future work in a rebirth sequence is necessary before he can aspire to something of the nature of Christ. However, the natural tendency of the soul appears to be towards union with its own and this tendency lays it open to the grace of God, without which there could be no progress. But if the soul is granted free will, it is conceivable that it might choose the path of destruction, or evil, rather than that of resurrection, or good. It might indeed deliberately choose to exclude itself from the love of God. Certainly some of the parables in the Gospel stress this possibility, and the lives of atrociously evil men who have killed millions of people and reduced whole civilisations to desolation are a constant reminder of the terrible power of evil, a power that is essentially negative in that it denies all life and leads to complete annihilation. In this case, the soul might forfeit its identity and return to the matrix from which it was created.
Personally I believe in the ultimate redemption of all creation in the love of God. I look for a final restitution in which every creature will return to God. Here I follow the theology of the greater hope glimpsed by St. Paul, (I Corinthians 15.28 and Colossians 1.20), cherished by Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, revealed to Dame Julian of Norwich, and taught by William Law in his later life. This is the meaning of immortality, and the scheme outlined, though no doubt unduly well defined in the face of the ignorance that is our common lot in this world of becoming, stresses the importance of every moment of earthly life in the growth of the soul into a knowledge of eternity. I see evil as a psychic residue derived from the selfish actions of men, and no doubt also other modalities of being (such as the angelic order), from the beginning of the process of creation. While evil has no substantive existence, it can be used by depraved beings and lead to general destruction. It would seem that the darkness is as much a part of the divine creation as the light, and that the soul's work is to transmute its energy from destructiveness to resurrection.
The resurrection of the body is the reverse side of the immortality of the soul. The two proceed together. Indeed, immortality is of little importance apart from the resurrection that accompanies it. Resurrection of the body is not to be interpreted as a crude raising up of the long deceased, disintegrated physical body at the "last day", so that the body and soul can come together again. It is to be understood as a raising up of the heaviness and dullness of the earth into a new life of spiritual vibrancy. The transfiguration of Christ is a demonstration of the quickening of the flesh of a spiritual master, and it was a prelude to the remarkable resurrection experiences that followed His death. The body that appeared had qualities of movement and dissolution quite unlike those of a normal physical body. The resurrection appearances are an unsolved problem. It may be that they merely represented mystical experiences on the part of the disciples, or they may have been genuine materialisations of the etheric body that is said to enshroud the spiritual body immediately after death. But the third possibility seems the most likely, namely a transmutation of the physical body directly into its spiritual counterpart by the enlightened soul. If this is the truth, as I personally believe it to be, it would seem that in the instance of the resurrection the physical body of Jesus contributed to His glorious spiritual body. When lesser people die there is no evidence of a similar transmutation of their bodies, but at least we can look for an intellectual and emotional resurrection. And in the fullness of time perhaps a transmuted physical body will enrich the world, and also the soul of the person. Thus resurrection in its most exalted context means the raising up of the transient physical world into a knowledge of the timeless splendour of eternity. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, but in Christ all is raised from the transience of corruption to the eternity of spiritual existence. Thus everything corrupt, unwholesome, ugly, and evil is capable of being redeemed by love. I would go further, and affirm my belief in the ultimate resurrection of all earthly, finite things so that they may return to God, the source of all creation, renewed and glorified.
This is surely the meaning of our life. We are to grow progressively into the knowledge of God's love, and we do this by giving of ourselves unreservedly to the work of the world at hand. We cannot rise until we help others to rise with us. Who would want an ascent to the realm of permanent mystical illumination while there was even one unredeemed creature in the world? This is the meaning of love, and the reason why a person of love cannot bear to contemplate the absolute destruction of any soul. Condemnation melts away before a greater affirmation of the sacredness of all life. Nothing, no matter how evil, is beyond the redeeming love of God, which may radiate from a redeemed man.
The identity of the individual would, according to this scheme of existence, be a union of the soul, which in all probability existed before his present conception in his mother's womb, and the mind-body complex that is acquired from the circumstances of his incarnation. Thus we inherit much of our personality from our ancestors, and especially our parents, while the environment in which we are reared produces far-reaching effects on that personality.
The identity of a person is indeed vast. And as he grows in the spiritual life, his soul enlarges in comprehension and unites consciously with the souls of others in close spiritual fellowship. The formation of the group-soul, an event that is now assuming great importance in the lives of aspirants to God, is the presage of that far-off, yet well-remembered, day when all creatures will return in love through the Son by whom all things were made, to the Father. At this stage the claims of a private, personal identity will become irrelevant, for we shall love our neighbour as ourself, realising at last that we are our neighbour.
At this point, rebirth will be transcended in a state of mystical unity called Nirvana by the Buddhists, and which is so splendid that it cannot be described in words.