t after reflecting on the
following pages.

The Sages of ancient India, then, teach three distinct phases in the
return-to-birth process: Resurrection, Transmigration or
Metempsychosis and Reincarnation properly so-called.

RESURRECTION.

The human body is a species of polyp colony, a kind of coral island
like those that emerge above the waves of the Pacific, by reason of
the collective efforts of lower organisms.

The most numerous of the compounds of the human aggregate are known to
physiology as microbes, bacteria, and bacilli; but amongst them our
microscopes discover only comparative monsters, "those that are to the
ordinary infinitesimal organisms as the elephant is to the invisible
infusorium."[84]

Each cell is a complete being; its soul is a vital ray of the general
life of our planet; its body consists of molecules that are attracted
and then repelled, whilst the cellular soul remains immutable in the
ceaseless fluctuations of its corporeal elements.

The molecules, too, are animated by a vital soul, connected with the
cellular soul, which, in turn, is subordinate to a higher[85] unit of
the collective life of the human body.

The most infinitesimal of these beings--often called
"lives"--penetrate the body freely; they circulate in the aura[86] and
in each plexus of the organism; there they are subjected to the
incessant impact of the moral, menial, and spiritual forces, and
become impregnated with a spirit of good or of evil, as the case may
be. They enter the cells and leave them with intense rapidity, for
their cycles of activity as well as of passivity are being incessantly
repeated.

We are all the time emanating millions of "lives," which are at once
drawn into the different kingdoms of Nature to which they carry the
energies they have gathered in us; they impress on their new organisms
the tendencies we have given them, and in this way become ferments of
regeneration or of decay; they aid or retard, pollute or purify, and
it is for this reason that it is not a matter of indifference whether
one lives in town or country, with men or animals, the temperate or
the intemperate, the wicked or the good. The animal gains from
association with human beings, man loses from association with
animals; the disciples of the great schools of initiation, at a
certain stage of their discipline, are carefully isolated from any
inferior contact.

It is these subtle forces that are at play in the physical
a