There is a strong association between impure conduct and misfortune. Indeed this theme runs through most of the Old Testament; Israel's frequent apostasies, starting from the period in the wilderness under the leadership of Moses and proceeding to the Maccabean era and beyond, are blamed for national misfortune, whereas times of enlightened rulership under the three totally beneficent kings - David, Hezekiah and Josiah - are accompanied by revival and resurgence. In castigating the nation for its gross idolatry, Hosea writes: "Israel sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind; there are no heads on the standing corn, it yields no grain; and if it yielded any, strangers would swallow it up" (Hosea 8: 7-8). St Paul continues this theme: "Make no mistake about this: God is not to be fooled; a man reaps what he sows. If he sows seed in the field of his lower nature, he will reap from it a harvest of corruption, but if he sows in the field of the spirit, the spirit will bring him a harvest of eternal life" (Galatians 6:7-9).
As it often appears that the unjust do not seem to come to grave misfortune before they die, a view appears later in the Old Testament, and especially in the Apocrypha (in the Books of Wisdom and II Maccabees) that this life is the precursor of a larger life beyond death in which a final assessment of past actions will be made and an appropriate sentence passed. This assessment may be not so much one of eternal punishment or reward as one of a gradual ascent to spiritual awareness in an intermediate, purgatorial state that may involve the true self experiencing many different modes of existence. The idea of an intermediate state after death and the propriety of prayers for the dead is stated in II Maccabees 12:38-45. In this passage it is described how certain Jews who were killed in a battle in which Israel was victorious, were found to have carried amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, objects forbidden to the Jews by the Law. Their deaths in battle were attributed to their idolatry. The people praised the work of the Lord and, turning to prayer, asked that the sin of the fallen might be blotted out. As the writer notes, had they not been expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been both foolish and superfluous to pray for them.
In the religion of ancient Greece and in the traditions of Hinduism and Buddism, it is believed that the essence of the person, the true self, pre-exists the mortal being with which it is associated. Likewise it proceeds with its journey, that ends in its absorption into the Absolute, after the body dies. Some accept that this journey entails rebirth in a series of human bodies, an hypothesis called "reincarnation". Others believe that the process of life beyond death occurs in other dimensions rather than our limited planet, and the term "rebirth" would seem more apposite than reincarnation. It is, of course, possible that rebirth into other modes of reality and reincarnation are alternative parts of the soul's journey to full development in the world beyond physical death. Despite much interesting psychical research into the matter of survival, we can give no certain proof of life beyond death, let alone details of the process. In the end, it is the intimations that come to the person directly that are most likely to guide him into the hazy area of psychical knowledge in which he can discern trends in the afterlife.
Personally I am not altogether sorry that there is as yet no scientifically acceptable proof of survival. I do not think we deserve it in our present state of spiritual awareness. In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the wealthy one was told, as he languished in hell, that his five brothers would not accept the reality of the afterlife and the suffering that accrued from an ill-spent life on earth even if someone from the dead visited them. Only those who listened and obeyed the Law and the prophets could have this knowledge. While one must have the most serious reservations about the harsh, irrevocable judgement portrayed in this parable, which denies the mercy of God to a chastened and potentially repentant sinner, on the question about an understanding of conditions beyond the grave the parable is soundly based. Profound spiritual knowledge can be given only to those who have led spiritual lives. One cannot gain the deepest knowledge second-hand from books, because the teaching does not penetrate until it resonates with the depths of one's own being. Only then is it understood and accepted. "Deep calls to deep in the roar of thy cataracts, and all thy waves, all thy breakers pass over me" (Psalm 42:7).
The acceptance of life's continuation beyond the death of its physical vehicle is crucial to our deeper understanding of suffering and its effect in building the person's soul structure. As St Paul puts it: "If it is for this life only that Christ has given us hope, we are of all men the most to be pitied" (I Corinthians 15:19); indeed the whole of I Corinthians 15 is a remarkable dissertation on the importance and meaning of survival in terms of the resurrection of the body. One thing is apparent: even those who live to a ripe old age and have spiritual understanding know how little they have achieved on the level of inner sanctification at the time of their death. We fail in love day after day, and the higher the degree of our spiritual understanding the more tragically aware are we of our lack of love to those less fortunate than we are. Without survival of death, there could be no growth of the person into something of the measure of a fully-grown son of God.
How much of our present suffering is due to the misdeeds we committed in the past? Is suffering the direct result of sin, whether personal or communal? And if there is a direct relationship between past sin and present pain, can the past extend into a previous mode of existence before the present life? In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the concept of "karma" is very important. In itself this word simply means "action", but when used metaphysically it alludes to the moral law of cause and effect. In this respect the law of karma is unquestionable. St Paul's statement, quoted at the beginning of this chapter about a man reaping what he sows, is an excellent illustration of this law. Jesus likewise says: "For as you judge others, so you will yourselves be judged, and whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt back to you" (Matthew 7:12).
That a great deal of our suffering is the direct result of bad actions in the years behind us is obvious to anyone with medical knowledge. Cigarette smoking is now known to be an important factor in the causation of a number of very unpleasant, lethal disorders, ranging from destructive lung disease and blockage of the arteries to the heart to a variety of malignant tumours. The gluttonous eating habits of those who live in privileged societies bring their harvest of circulatory, digestive and joint disorders later on in life, whereas the malnutrition of those who inhabit the underdeveloped countries of the world leads to the premature death of large numbers of people. And our present permissive attitude to personal morality is not without due retribution in its toll of venereal disease, drug abuse, and emotional breakdown. There is a relationship between states of psychological disturbance and bodily ill-health, although the pattern tends to vary according to the individual; no categorical correlation between mental states and physical illness is entirely accurate because the personal response to outer circumstances varies so widely. In the same way unassuaged guilt for wrongful action in the past will eventually demolish the physical and mental health of the sinner until he confesses his past misdeeds to God and seeks absolution. But many people are so insensitive to the feelings of others and so obtuse morally that they do not realise how their selfishness is cutting them off from full communion with their fellows and separating them from the power of the Holy Spirit, who gives us life and brings us to the full fruition of our personality. The moral law is contravened at our peril; for a long time we may seem to escape unnoticed, but in due course the finger of Nemesis points directly at us, and then suffering begins.
Jesus told the story, in Luke 12:17 21, of a rich man whose land yielded heavy crops. He had so much produce that he did not know what to do with it. In the end he decided to build large storehouses in which to contain all his goods. Then he said to himself: "Man, you have plenty of good things laid by, enough for many years: take life easy, eat, drink and enjoy yourself." But God said to him: "You fool, this very night you must surrender your life; you have made your money - who will get it now?" This is the way of the man who amasses wealth for himself and remains a pauper in the sight of God. This parable does not necessarily imply the physical death of the rich man, so much as the death of his past life and a descent into suffering that may be caused by ill-health, mental breakdown or a wider national disaster that brings to nothing all his private schemes of self-aggrandisement.
That much suffering is a direct retribution for selfish actions in the past cannot be denied. And even if we personally have lived cleanly and with charity to others, we cannot escape the collective guilt that is part of the social class to which we belong or the society in which we flourish. The rich have, at least since biblical times, ground the faces of the poor in the dust, just as until very recently those who were born fair-skinned have had an enormous social and economic advantage over their dark-skinned brothers. The present escalating unrest and violence in the world, which may well presage the total annihilation of the human race unless there is a radical change in our attitude to life and the values by which we work together, is the result of centuries of social and economic injustice. On the other hand, the great religious insights of the past have all too often been used simply to sustain a self perpetuating establishment rather than being the way of mankind's advancement towards a full realisation of the divine image in which it has been fashioned. In our world no one who has lived to an adult age can be considered totally innocent; we all bear the sins of the past (including that of distant ages before our own birth), and only when we enter into the world's travail can we begin to heal the many wounds of the past. In this we proclaim the leadership of Christ, by whom the process of redemption was started. But we too have to play our part; suffering is both our contribution and our way towards proficiency in healing other people.
It is evident that there are two levels of suffering, the retributive and the redemptive. The first level is that undergone by the unawakened person whose frequent misdemeanours transgress the moral law of cause and effect - the principle of karma. When that person has woken up to his responsibility, he ceases to amass adverse karma as he starts to live according to the spiritual law instead of by thoughtless selfishness. But his sufferings do not cease; they may indeed become more intense as he acts in union with Christ to save the lost sheep of humanity. Then, however, his suffering assumes a redemptive character. Although the pain does not diminish, it is no longer submitted to with the blind incomprehension of an animal being goaded by a brutal overseer. The awakened person begins to see the deeper significance of his travail, so that a sense of purpose informs his suffering. This is, in fact, simply an application of a principle repeatedly stressed in these pages: as one grows in spirituality through the refining fire of suffering, so the ego is displaced from its customary seat of dominance to its proper place of service on behalf of the whole person. No wonder Jesus told His disciples who were vying with each other for the best places at the heavenly banquet: "Among you, whoever wants to be great must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the willing slave of all. For even the son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give up his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:43-45). This text, which has already been quoted, is especially apposite to the relationship between the ego, by which we show ourselves in the world, and the whole personality. In the end, as we have seen, the ego must coincide with the self; then the person and God are indeed working in unity together.
In redemptive suffering the person in travail has passed beyond outraged complaints and comforting thoughts of future recompense, even in the life beyond death, to a state of acceptance of things as they now are. His mind has been lifted beyond the pangs of the body to the suffering of mankind. He has entered the transpersonal life, and is one with his meanest brother as well as with the crucified Christ, who, as Pascal reminds us, will be in agony until the end of the world. He is crucified afresh whenever men behave with cruelty to each other. It is the way of spiritual growth to move from mere consciousness of the self to participation in the consciousness of all mankind, and finally of the whole creation. In mystical illumination this apparently impossible identification is glimpsed, albeit for only a fleeting moment. But what is revealed in telescopic compression to the mystic has to be brought down to earth and imparted to the brethren. "See that you work to the design which you were shown on the mountain" (Exodus 25:40).
This is a deeper understanding of the Atonement wrought by Christ. It is our privilege as we enter the fully spiritual path to participate, however humbly, in that great act of renunciation by which the world was led from heedless disintegration to spiritual aspiration. For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (II Corinthians 5:19). He spent himself even to death so that his little brothers might be lifted out of the chasm of darkness in which they had stumbled for so long and enter into the light of a new day. It is, to quote again from St Paul's Letter to the Colossians, our way of helping to complete in our poor human flesh the full tale of Christ's afflictions still to be endured, for the sake of his body which is the church (1:24). And that church is supra denominational - it embraces all mankind, indeed the whole cosmos. In Him our sinful nature is redeemed and, to quote Jude 24, He can keep us from falling and set us in the presence of his Father's glory, jubilant and above reproach. The fruit of this healing of our sinful nature is that we emerge as re-created people, able to do God's work and participate in the spiritualisation, or divinisation, of the world.
But how do the sufferings of little children come into this scheme of retribution and redemption? They are too young to have been contaminated by lust and sin, and they can hardly be accused of participating, however unwittingly, in the selfishness of the society into which they were born. It is in this context of children's suffering that the hypotheses of pre-existence and rebirth are particularly attractive. Many appear to die too early to have any understanding of God's love or Christ's sacrifice on behalf of His fellow men. As I have already stated, all discussions about a past or future life are purely tentative inasmuch as the definitive scientific proof still eludes us. It is our own inner psychic awareness that is the best available instrument for exploring the shadow realms beyond physical existence. There are some people who claim to remember events that occurred before they were born, and the memories of small children have on occasion been found to tally with past events of whose existence they could not possibly have learned from their parents or others in their vicinity. At present there is considerable controversy as to the significance of these undoubtedly veridical childhood reminiscences. Are they really memory traces of a past life or is the child being obsessed by the personality of someone who has died recently? At present there is no way of distinguishing Categorically between these two possibilities, but one fact has been established by psychical research: the existence of a mobile centre of consciousness that is not apparently limited by the situation of the physical body, but can travel extensively in other realms of existence and bring back information that can on occasions be confirmed. Mind and body do appear to be separate functions of a single person, certainly working together in the closest collaboration through the agency of the brain, and yet capable of absolute dissociation.
It is this finding that makes survival of death an intellectually acceptable, as well as a morally desirable, hypothesis and also sheds some light on theories of pre-existence, rebirth and reincarnation. One of the most fertile areas of mutual enrichment by the great religious traditions of the world is in this very field of human destiny. The Eastern traditions with their acceptance of rebirth have something to add to the Catholic purgatorial scheme. Above all the Christian understanding of the Atonement wrought by Jesus on the cross of man's affliction contributes a new dimension to the growth of the personality in the life of the world to come. We need desperately to learn from the insights of each other, and that in humility, not with the arrogant desire of proving others wrong that we may be seen to have possession of the whole truth. As is so often the case, each of the world's great religious traditions witnesses to particular truths that are not stressed elsewhere, while in other matters the tradition seems peculiarly blind to difficulties or obtuse to problems that are the basis of the strivings of those from other backgrounds. Speaking personally, I find the hypothesis of rebirth intellectually acceptable and morally satisfying; on whether it follows a reincarnational sequence invariably, sometimes, occasionally, or never, I do not venture an opinion. In any case this is a mere detail of a wider, more glorious process of spiritual advancement - to participate fully in the risen life of Christ.
The Christian will have some reserve about accepting a sequence of rebirth as I have outlined. For instance the text, "And it is the lot of men to die once, and after death comes judgement, so Christ was offered once to bear the burden of men's sins, and will appear a second time, sin done away, to bring salvation to those who are watching for Him" (Hebrews 9:27 28), seems to deny the possibility of more than one death. I personally would accept this statement on its face value as describing the death that we all have to undergo in this world with the subsequent judgement (however we may conceive this) in the after-life. I do not see that it rules out the possibility of the person's further birth into new realms of consciousness. Jesus Himself tells Nicodemus that we must be born again even in this life before we can see the kingdom of God (and Holy Baptism is a sacramental demonstration of this truth). Death as we understand it is, I am convinced, not a once-for-all event.
When a little child suffers a fatal illness, or is born severely deformed in body or mind so that it can never live a normal life or attain that degree of mental proficiency that is necessary to understand spiritual truths, it is often felt that its conception was a mistake. Indeed, there is a growing tendency in "advanced" societies to thwart the birth of children known to bear a defect by inducing an abortion early in the mother's pregnancy. The moral issues involved in this procedure are themselves agonising to those of us who see life as something more than mere bodily survival but who, at the same time, acknowledge the sanctity of the inner self of even the most defective person. By considering the deeper meaning of this type of tragedy we may come to a more soundly based way of dealing with it.
The first point to be made is that nothing that happens to us is a mere chance; there are no fortuitous events in the spiritual world. What appears to be a blind stroke of misfortune is also a golden opportunity for the one who is awake to the germ of a new possibility to grow into something of a better person than he was before the crucial event. In the ministry of Jesus there are two events that evoke teaching from Him on these lines. The first, which we have already noted, comes in Luke 13:1-5 and concerns Galileans who had been sacrificed by Pilate and people who were killed when a tower fell on them. Jesus told those around him that the victims were no greater sinners than those who had been spared, but that their fate was a warning to the survivors to repent. From this we learn that there is a greater significance to any life than that which concerns the individual to whom it belongs. In the oft-quoted words of John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself" and again "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind: and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." The defective child is a constant challenge to its parents and those who attend it; they can either reject it and become increasingly embittered against life, or else the springs of love may issue from a heart that was previously hard and demanding. As the heart softens, so the person begins to live with that abundance which Jesus came to proclaim and demonstrate in His own life. We have to learn to love a living being for what he is in himself, a child of God, and not for what that child may become or what we may gain from his later development and proficiency. This is a hard lesson. Furthermore, it may be that the defective child is an advanced soul who has come into the world in the greatest humility to teach those around it some vital lessons about love.
The other event that evoked important teaching from Jesus about the deeper issues of apparently meaningless suffering was the occasion, described in the ninth chapter of John's Gospel, when He healed a man blind since birth. His disciples wondered whose sin lay at the root of the man's blindness, his parents' or his own. Jesus denied, in this particular case, either suggestion. He said the man was born blind so that God's power might be displayed in curing him. Again there is communal involvement in both the man's affliction and his cure; he becomes a symbol of God's healing power and a manifestation of God's grace to many people. It is ironic that he, when questioned exhaustively by the religious authorities, said: "All I know is this: once I was blind, now I can see," whereas they, though normally sighted, remained spiritually blind. The healed man, on the other hand, gained physical and spiritual vision. His suffering had indeed been a blessing, even to him, for it had made him a witness as well as a testimony to God's love.
The ultimate answer to suffering, whether in adults or in the young, is not so much its antecedents as its results in the life of the person and the community. In other words, it is more important for us to learn the lessons that the affliction has brought in its wake than to spend endless time pondering its possible cause, whether in this life or in a postulated previous existence. One has known far too many people imbued with the philosophy of previous lives and accruing karma who claim to know the past dispositions that have led to the present circumstances and yet who remain painfully undeveloped spiritually. Their ego dwells on the romance of the past and remains as dominant as ever. The value of accepting a past history of the soul, one that precedes its present incarnation, is that it puts suffering in a wider perspective of time, and sees life as a series of lessons, or initiations, into greater sanctity. Indeed, when one meditates on the wonderful Book of Job one sees that he was being initiated into a new way of life in which he no longer glimpsed God from afar, and tried to appease His wrath by suitable sacrifices lest misfortune should assail him and his family. Instead, he was given the privilege of knowing God directly and contemplating the mighty works of the Creator. And it is noteworthy that it was Satan, the adversary and accuser, who is the personified power of evil, that was the agent of initiation under the protective power of God.
Karma is in fact retribution only to the undeveloped person. He has to learn the same lesson time and time again until he passes life's primary examinations. Eventually he may graduate to a higher class when the ego is the servant of his soul and not its master. When he becomes a full human being, he plays his part in bearing the world's karma and he starts to redeem it in the presence of the One who bore the sins of the whole world and demonstrated the process of redemption and transfiguration. The risen Lord works ceaselessly towards the healing of the whole cosmos. It comes about that the karmic retribution of the unenlightened unfolds into the karmic opportunity of the fully awakened. The round of rebirth ceases to be simply a way of self-improvement ending in a final state of absorption into the Absolute, but becomes instead the vehicle of healing of all the world's suffering, until all creation enters transfigured into the divine presence. This to me is the essential contribution of the Atonement of Christ when one has entered into the undemanding love of Christ.
To my mind, the distinctive Christian contribution to the scheme of rebirth is the helping hand offered to all mankind by the risen Christ, who has atoned for the world's sins "by His one oblation of Himself once offered". He receives even the greatest sinner both now and after death, as soon as that person has had the humility and honesty to confront his own wretchedness and to confess it to God without flinching and without self-justification. Then Christ, like the father of the Prodigal Son runs to meet the sinner, takes him in His ever-lasting arms and embraces him in His unreserved love. The love of God removes the selfishness of remorse from the sinner, for it replaces it with such a love for the sinner's brothers, who are all mankind and indeed all created things, that he starts to lead a new life from that moment onwards and to do all he can to put right what he had previously done wrong.
In other words Christ redeems karma, the moral law of cause and effect. We have still to work out our own salvation and put our own house in order, but every experience in the future, no matter how forbidding it may seem on the surface, is now seen to be invested with new possibilities, for He is with us, and we are aware of His rod and staff comforting us, even when we traverse the valley of the shadow of death. Thus the law of cause and effect becomes the law of spiritual growth into the knowledge of the love of God.
MeditationGod's nature is always to have mercy on the sinner who is in all of us. We have only to ask His forgiveness to receive His absolution. We may emerge chastened by our sufferings, but God has given us a mind with which to reflect on the past, and a will to exert to better purpose in the future. Once we have had the courtesy to listen to what life is telling us, we are led in guided steps to the One Who gave up His life as a ransom for many. The end of suffering courageously borne is growth of the person into something of the nature of Christ, Who until then was merely a seed deeply planted in the soul and was awaiting germination to become the tree of life.