Table Talk
by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din
Chapter 3: Transmigration of Souls
Here I think, perhaps I should say something on the theory of “Transmigration of Souls” which plays a great part in Hindu theology and is also appealing to the fancy of Europe not a little. You may not accept the theory, but you cannot cavil at the logic of it; more especially as it has received its genesis from the same causes which, in Muslin theology, brought Hell into existence. If life on the earth is a life of preparation in which we have to attain certain qualifications essential for our entry into regions Divine “Brahma loka” in the words of Krishna; if certain conditions, exclusively belonging to the earth, are necessary for such preparation, will it not be necessary, so would argue a Hindu divine, for us to return to earthly life again, if we have left it without acquiring the necessary perfection? We had to attain certain experiences not available in the next world; we left this world without doing so, and consequently we do need to come back to it again. The logic is not bad and the reasoning is quite plausible; but they do not coincide with what I find in the course of evolution observable in the universe.
From ethereal specks and electronic collocations up to the human form, all manifestations and specializations of nature are constantly on the move to progress. They do not retrogress, nor do they retrace a single step that has once been taken on the path of progress. Things pass from region to region, and are translated from one state of being to another — sometimes perfect in condition, sometimes imperfect — in the course of progress; but they are never permitted to return to the state of being they have left, to make up a deficiency.
If a thing has passed a stage of growth (or state of being) before it has been able to reach that perfection which it ought to have attained while in that stage of being then new means, such as may be necessary for the rectification of the defect, are straightway forthcoming in the new region (stage of growth or state of being) to which it has been translated. For example: a seed may leave a tree in defective condition. It need not go back into the trunk of the tree it came from, to make up its deficiencies; you have only to plant it in a land with better climate, and to manure it properly, and this same defective seed will sprout into a healthy tree, far more fruitful perhaps than the mother tree; and what is true in the vegetable kingdom is true also in other kingdoms. A child before its birth has to receive a certain amount of growth in the embryonic state, but if he is born with some physical defects he need not, and does not, go back into the mother’s womb for the fault to be remedied. Surgical aid provides the cure — and though such methods of rectification are, without doubt, ultranatural and involve pain, yet they are the only means for amendment. And if a child, born with some physical infirmity, has never been permitted to retrace his footsteps to the womb for the purpose of having that infirmity removed, why should a person who has finished his course of earthly life — whatever the condition in which he passed from it may have been — ever come to this place again?
If, therefore, this rule be universal in Nature, then that which has failed to attain to the requisite standard of perfection in one state of being is passed into the state of being next highest, there to have its deficiencies supplied and its deformities corrected; and if such system be the more expedient and the more conducive to rapidity of real progress; then I fail to find any reason, cogent or otherwise, for subscribing to the theory of the transmigration of the soul.
Moreover, this same phenomenon that I have described, is observable in every stage through which matter has to pass before assuming human shape. The food we assimilate every day will eventually take the form of genital sperma [sperm], which will presently convert itself into the human shape of a child. The food has to pass through many stages before it reaches that stage. Things not properly cooked are sometimes taken in; they cause pains in the stomach, but the trouble is removed by treatment. The food is not sent back from the stomach to the kitchen to be cooked again.
We take medicine to help the digestion, and enable the food to pass through the regions of the blood. Sometimes when, whether from some defect of the stomach or through the function of a diseased liver we produce poor blood, we seek a remedy in medicine, but no drop of that poor blood is allowed to return to the liver or stomach for the purpose of rectification; and the reason is simply this — that the means and circumstances necessary for blood formation exist in the stomach and liver only — not in the heart and the arteries of the blood. Though poor blood may germinate unhealthy seed, yet new means are ever at hand by which it may be restored to its proper conditions. The sperma never returns, never transmigrates, to the blood-regions, to make good defects in its growth.
If, therefore, what we have thus observed in the invariable processes of Nature can be considered to give us a reasonable basis for our belief in the matters of which I have been speaking, I am constrained to reject the theory of the transmigration of the soul, and accept the theory of Hell as propounded in the Quran.
Theory of Karma:
Closely allied to the “Transmigration of the Soul” is the doctrine of Karma (actions). The two are one and the same theory, representing different aspects of the same doctrine; the one is substantive, the other adjective. The doctrine of Karma takes for its genesis the diversity of circumstances in which people find themselves at their birth, from causes beyond their control.
If some are born in affluence, poverty and indigence attend the birth of others; some are born into the world with bodily defects, while others are blest [blessed] with every bodily perfection; and this disparity, producing arbitrarily, as it does, comfort and discomfort, happiness and misery, does seem, if we are in no degree to be held responsible for it, a strange blot on the impartiality of Divine Providence.
The theory of Karma, in Hindu theology however, thus explains this seeming incongruity in the Divine dispensation. All that we receive at our birth in the form of happiness or misery, and all the differences in social status that come into our being at birth, are, the Karmaist says, the outcome of our deeds in the life before the present. We take birth after birth to complete our course on this earth, and what we sow in the one, we must reap in the next.
No one would question the logic of the view that human society works on the Law of Actions. That actions must bear their fruit is the basic principle of every other religion, except Paulinism. Differences in social position, in many cases, undoubtedly arise from our own actions. We are the creators of our own comfort and misery. But if inferiority in the social scale in which every person finds himself at his birth in relation to another, must be ascribed to something wrong in one’s bygone life, evil must needs [must necessarily], according to this doctrine, become essential for the very working of human society. Difference of occupation and variety of employment are the motive power of the social machinery. We must serve each other in a wide variety of differing capacities, if adequate contribution is to be made to the common comfort; for differentiation means progress, and progress is born of diversity. If, however, difference of this kind is to be attributed to some past wrong, then comfort and progress must demand the existence of evil; men of one generation must commit sin so that, in the next, they may be reborn in the lower for the purpose of contributing to the happiness of the upper social stratum.
Superiority in A means inferiority in B, and the happiness of one person demands sacrifice from the other. And if sacrifice is essential for the proper working of society, evil and wrong which are supposed to be the cause of it under the aforesaid theory, become also essential for human progress. But a doctrine which makes evil a necessary item in the Divine Providence, is a gross insult to a Muslim’s conception of God; and if, in this life, difference between man and man does in fact arise from past acts, how are we to explain that fundamental difference which must have existed at the very inception of our species? The process of procreation demands difference of sex. You may ascribe your present difference from another man to some cause in your previous life, but where were the actions which caused difference of sex in the first pair, whence our species had its being? Difference in sonship and fatherhood is another difference which must exist even at the beginning of life. How are we to explain these differences when there was no previous life and consequently no previous action?
Happiness a Beneficence and not a Fruit of Action:
If all our present means of happiness are given to us as a reward for past actions, how are we to explain the happiness which comes to us providentially? Much of our happiness is derived from the varied manifestations of Nature, the sun, the moon, the earth and all that it provides; and the proportion of happiness that we acquire through our actions depends too, upon the working out, by us, of sources of Nature which were in existence long before man came on the earth. How can all this be the reward of our past actions? We cannot live without the pre-existence of millions of things in the universe; they all add to our happiness; and they all come as a beneficence of God, and not in reward of actions. Divine Providence, as exhibited in Nature, makes Divine Blessing, which is the main source of our happiness, a pre-existing thing; while the theory of Karma makes our actions to pre-exist the Divine Blessing, which is absurd on the face of it. If all our happiness has to arise from our actions, our happiness would be next to nothing. What comes out of our actions in the shape of happiness sinks into insignificance when compared with what we get as Divine Blessings. The Quran lays special stress on this point, as well as on the difference of sex, which, it says, is to be found in everything coming out of the earth, when dealing with the theory of the transmigration of the soul, in the following words:
وَ اٰیَۃٌ لَّہُمُ الۡاَرۡضُ الۡمَیۡتَۃُ ۚۖ اَحۡیَیۡنٰہَا وَ اَخۡرَجۡنَا مِنۡہَا حَبًّا فَمِنۡہُ یَاۡکُلُوۡنَ ﴿۳۳﴾ وَ جَعَلۡنَا فِیۡہَا جَنّٰتٍ مِّنۡ نَّخِیۡلٍ وَّ اَعۡنَابٍ وَّ فَجَّرۡنَا فِیۡہَا مِنَ الۡعُیُوۡنِ ﴿ۙ۳۴﴾ لِیَاۡکُلُوۡا مِنۡ ثَمَرِہٖ ۙ وَ مَا عَمِلَتۡہُ اَیۡدِیۡہِمۡ ؕ اَفَلَا یَشۡکُرُوۡنَ ﴿۳۵﴾ سُبۡحٰنَ الَّذِیۡ خَلَقَ الۡاَزۡوَاجَ کُلَّہَا مِمَّا تُنۡۢبِتُ الۡاَرۡضُ وَ مِنۡ اَنۡفُسِہِمۡ وَ مِمَّا لَا یَعۡلَمُوۡنَ ﴿۳۶﴾
“And a sign to them is the dead earth: We give life to it and bring forth from it grain, so they eat of it. And we make therein gardens of palms and grapevines, and We make springs to flow forth in it, that they may eat of the fruit thereof, and their hands did not make it; will they not be grateful? Glory be to Him Who created pairs of all things, of what the earth grows, and of their kind and of what they do not know.” [The Holy Quran, 36:33–36]
The Theory Weakens Sense of Responsibility:
If our actions receive their birth and mould from our beliefs, we should not entertain any tenet or doctrine which tends to ruin our sense of responsibility, and to create in us moral or mental imbecility.
Fatalism, in the received sense of the word, was condemned by Islam for this very reason. Atonement is another condemnable belief. If another has to bear my burden, incentive for action, on my part, is lost. Similarly, we strive our hardest to alleviate our misery, because we believe that it is possible to alleviate it; but when we find that our trouble is absolutely without remedy, our zeal is gone, for what, in such a case, is the use of trying? Our misery, under the theory of Karma, has come to us as the fruit of some past actions. It cannot be undone, and all our efforts to undo it will be in vain. I committed some wrong in a previous life, I must suffer for its consequences in the present life, and all my efforts to be free from it are simply to give the lie to that theory. If A is down with cholera which he has got on account of some past wrong, it hardly befits him to seek medical relief if he subscribes to the principle of Karma. The theory thus makes man a fatalist, and thereby impedes human progress.
Pain in this life, they say, is the penalty of past actions. If persecution and want of comfort may come within the category of pain, no progress in human society has, till now, been achieved without them. The world has seen its best benefactors in the persons of prophets, reformers and philosophers, but, unfortunately, they are the persons who have always been subjected to every kind of persecution. Similarly, all scientific discoveries, to which we owe so much of our comfort and happiness, are the fruits of pain and hardship. Should we believe that all these great teachers and inventors were wicked men and sinners of the first water in the past life, because they have been for the most part persecuted people and leading the most painful lives?
No one gets happiness without some pain, and pain is the penalty of sin. Evil, therefore, becomes essential for enjoying happiness in the life to come. Such a theory can have but few opportunities of giving birth to high character. If A receives some injury from B, it is, as a Hindu would say, to make up for some injury received by B from A in his previous existence. Thus, offense becomes a justification in the eye of a culprit, if he believes in Karma. I need not be thankful to my benefactors, because I receive from them what I gave to them in charity merely in the life past. The more I think upon the subject, keeping in view all the consequences to which such beliefs must logically lead, the more I am strengthened in my conviction that the theory in dispute is a belief most unfavourable to our moral growth.
The explanation given by our Holy Quran of the misery around us, and of the social differences which we have been discussing, appeals to me more, as it strengthens my sense of responsibility.
I am told in the Quran that I am not only the engineer of my own life, but that I am also responsible for the happiness and misery of my own descendants. Our interest in our children is, in most cases, stronger than our interest in our own selves. The welfare of the family often keeps its members away from such misdeeds as are sometimes unscrupulously committed by those who lead single lives.
If the consequences of every action I do be shared by my own children, I shall make my actions more steady and righteous. But if I alone have to reap what I sow, despair or temptation may, sometimes, lead me to extremes. Belief therefore, that children born with bodily defects, owe their misfortune to paternity, which sometimes may come to them from three or four generations back, will generally prove a more efficacious check to intemperate actions, than the belief that the children are themselves responsible for their physical deficiencies. A person may not care much for the evil consequences of his actions if they are to be confined to him; but his care to see his family happy may reform him.
Here are two explanations of our present misery, one given by the theory of Karma and the other advanced by the Quran. No one can vouch for the truth of either on the strength of personal experience. We come out of oblivion and go into the same. No man, with a sensible head on his shoulders, can refer to what he has done in the previous life, though one is constrained to give a hearing to sundry silly stories, out of courtesy to certain “bluestockings,” whose fancy has been attracted by the theory of which I have been speaking. No doubt one cannot speak with certainty on the subject; but of the two theories, that expounded by the Quran seems to me more wholesome in its effect on human character. The Hindu theory creates fatalism and weakens the sense of responsibility; and the most hideous part of it is, that it makes sin an essential for happiness and civilization.