as a new-born babe. The fact
of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good
over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma [of
Evil] steps aside for the time being to follow him in his
future earth re-incarnation, he brings along with him but the
Karma of his good deeds, words and thoughts into this
Devachan. "Bad" is a relative term for us--as you were told
more than once before--and the Law of Retribution is the only
law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped
down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality go to
the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary
and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded;
receive the effects of the causes produced by them._

Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the
ties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent in
eternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When a
mother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationship
seems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to
re-possess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to
manhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and the
clinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friends
and comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the old
recollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the
prime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son
protects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would the
relation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only the
one tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the different
strands of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many lives
they may hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standing
as Brothers of the Lodge closely knit together, may look back over
past lives and see themselves in earth-life related in the many ways
possible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every strand of
love and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorer
for the many-stranded tie? "Finally", I say; but the word is only of
this cycle, for what lies beyond, of wider life and less separateness,
no mind of man may know. To me it seems that this very variety of
experiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is a
rather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in on