To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

Reincarnation / 35
A number of Buddhist texts refer to svabhāva, ‘‘selfbecoming’’:
that what is inherent in the invisible essence of
an entity will ‘‘self-become,’’ that is, will unfold that essence
in accordance with its own distinctive pattern. In Genesis,
God (’elohīm) commanded the earth to bring forth grass
and herbs and the fruit tree, ‘‘whose seed is in itself,’’ each
after its kind (1:11‒12). Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians
(15:38‒41) also speaks of God (theos) giving to every
seed its own body: ‘‘there is one glory of the sun,’’ another
glory of the moon, and another of the stars, ‘‘for one star
di¤ereth from another star in glory.’’
The basic idea of svabhāva ties in with the Vedantic concept
of sūtrātman: sūtra, ‘‘thread, cord,’’ and ātman, ‘‘self.’’
This ‘‘thread-self ’’ or radiant essence not only links every
portion of our multifaceted being, from the divine to the
physical, but also links us with the totality of our past.
How many lives must we have lived? We don’t know; but if
we believe at all in the immortality of spirit, we have a sense
of an infinity of experience both behind as well as ahead of
us. Every human being therefore has a rich reserve of unexpended
force within (for good and ill) that at some time in
this life or in lives to come will seek outlet; the entirety of
our karma could not find expression within the brief interval
of seventy or eighty years, or of twenty.
At every moment we are the totality of our past and the
promise of the future that is to be. Such a perspective gives
a feeling of continuity, an assurance that all that we have
been remains in essence, incised on the memory tablets of
eternity, on the seed-logos of our being, waiting for the
precise karmic circumstances to find active expression.