om the internal regions, the soul
passes into the "life" of a beast, and that if it were human
previously, it afterwards goes into another human body, the note
continues:

"We must not understand by this that the soul of a man becomes the
soul of a brute, but that by way of punishment it is bound to the soul
of a brute, or carried in it, just as daemons used to reside in our
souls. Hence all the energies of the rational soul are absolutely
impeded, and its intellectual eye beholds nothing but the dark and
tumultuous phantasms of a brutal life."[193]

This passage contains the explanation of what might be called the
metempsychosis of certain human souls at the present time; we once
heard a great Teacher fully reveal this mystery to a chosen group of
Hindus, but it must for some time to come remain a mystery to the
western world. All that can be said on the matter is that it has
nothing to do with the incarnation of a human soul in the body of an
animal, but rather with a certain temporary karmic bond, in the life
Hereafter, between a human soul and an animal one, a bond intended to
teach many a hard lesson to the one who has brought upon himself so
unpleasant an experience.

Metempsychosis included many other facts in human evolution, facts
that were plainly taught to the disciples in the "inner circles" of
the ancient Schools and passed out to the confused medley of public
teaching.

The astral body, for instance, of a man of an exceedingly passionate
nature, when the soul leaves the physical body, sometimes assumes
forms resembling those of the animals which represent these passions
on the physical plane, and so the disincarnate soul of an assassin has
been said to pass into the body of a wild beast.

Metempsychosis, properly so-called, that is to say, the passing of a
human soul into the body of a brute, did however exist during the
infancy of the human race, when highly developed animal souls were
becoming fit to enter the human kingdom. The bodies of these
newly-born human souls were coarse and rudimentary in their nature,
showing scarcely any difference in form and organic function from the
bodies of the higher animals of that period, for these instruments
were very similar to one another. The improvements subsequently
effected by human bodies did not then exist; the difference, or
distinction, which has now widened into a gulf, was scarcely
perceptible, and in the early incarnations of these rudimentary hum