I am going to try to answer some of the questions which we all ask; but truly, in receiving some of these questions, I have asked myself a question: Is each one of these questions a fishing expedition, or are they asked in all sincerity of heart? We have practical jokers in the world, you know, and I am reminded of a certain great man of science, who one day saw a little boy fishing through a grating in the pavement, and he said: "What are you fishing for, my little man?" "Wooglies!" "Wooglies, what are wooglies?" "Don't know, haven't caught any yet!"
Well, I sometimes wonder if the people who ask these questions are fishing for wooglies, or are they asking questions from their hearts?
Now, in attempting to answer such questions as all of us ask, this does not mean, of course, that no question would occur to one man if it did not occur to all other men. I can think of questions, I am sure, that I have a notion have occurred to no one else excepting me. Among these queries that I have received there are questions regarding the nature, and the origin, and the destiny of man and of the universe: who we are, and whence we come, and whither we are traveling. I have received also questions of less wide import, questions to which I have alluded on other occasions, such as — "How may I make a fortune quickly?" "How shall I marry happily?" "Shall I be president of the United States?" "Shall I inherit a fortune?"
Questions like these I pay no attention to, and I have received very few of them. Should the mind of anyone hanker after answers to queries of this type, I advise him to go where he will receive answers to them — to the palmists perhaps, and the fortunetellers perhaps, and the so-called astrologers perhaps — but questions dealing with the great riddles of life are the questions which a theosophical lecturer likes to answer, and it is just these that are the questions that all men ask.
Preceding my lecture of last Sunday I received a number of questions that were sent in to me — some of them very interesting questions; and some of these latter were, furthermore, questions that have puzzled the minds of men who have not been taught the ancient wisdom-religion by initiated teachers: and these questions are they which revolve around the subjects:
It is with reference to this last query, friends, that I have received another question — a question about a question; I am going to try to answer this first. Here it is, and it is a thoughtful mind who asked it.
"I have been much interested in what you have said about the dark and bright nebulae. But you appear to have made different remarks about each at different times, recently and in past lectures. You seem to speak of the dark nebulae as being both in and out of the Milky Way; you seem to say that they precede the bright nebulae in evolutionary time, and also that they are later in evolutionary development than the bright nebulae. Are these statements contradictions or have I misunderstood things? Also you have said that the nebulae are universes in the making, and you also have spoken of nebulae as being only planets in the making: how about this? Further, you speak of some nebulae as being clusters of suns so far distant from us that their combined light blends into a blur, somewhat as the thousands of lights of a great city seem to be a blur of light; and you have also spoken of nebulae as being 'glowing mother-stuff,' that is to say clouds of glowing stuff which have not yet become concreted into suns. How about this?"
One question? Many in one. First, I have indeed on different occasions spoken of the dark nebulae as being both within and without the Milky Way; but as I was dealing, on these separate occasions, with very recondite facts of cosmic origins, I tried to give a hint of the theosophical teachings without overloading the minds of the audience with too much detail.
As a matter of fact, there are two kinds of dark nebulae. Both can be found within the Milky Way, although it is true that the scientists of today, to whom the dark nebulae are a very recent discovery, know of only the dark nebulae as such, without having as yet been able to distinguish between the two kinds.
These dark nebulae, one class of them especially, are also found outside the Milky Way, not merely in other universes, in other Milky Ways, in other star systems, but scattered like seeds-of-things-to-be through the boundless spaces of cosmic space.
It is also true that I have spoken of dark nebulae as preceding the bright nebulae in evolutionary time, and also that dark nebulae are later in evolutionary development. I had in mind the two classes of the dark nebulae that I have just spoken of: one extremely ethereal, being the very first stage of material concretion of cosmic substance — and these dark nebulae are diaphanous, you can see through them; you can see the stars beyond them — and as regards this class of the dark nebulae, I really do not know whether any scientist has as yet discovered their actual existence, although in most recent months their existence is more than suspected.
The other class of dark nebulae are more or less heavily concreted matter, existing in a state of atomic dissociation, and are, instead of being the beginnings of universes or of worlds, the material debris of universes that have been — the graveyard dust of the cosmic spaces, so to speak.
Also, I have spoken of the nebulae as being universes in the making, and likewise as being planets in the making. I suppose that because a speaker should use the word eggs, he ought not to be held to mean hens' eggs only. There are eggs of many kinds, seeds of living beings of many kinds, which may be classed under the general term of egg; and so it is with the nebulae. There are nebulae which are universes in the making, which are Milky Ways in the making, and which are solar systems in the making; and there are others which are much smaller, and which are scattered through the spaces of space, and which, when the time comes, rush forth from their bed in space, and become comets, drawn, attracted, to one or another sun, around which they circle in elliptic or hyperbolic orbits, or in perhaps parabolic orbits, for a time; and finally settle into becoming satellites or planets around the sun to which they have been attracted.
All these nebulae, large and small — the ethereal dark nebulae and all the bright nebulae — are the rebirths of worlds that existed in the aeonic past: they are reimbodiments of former universes, or worlds, or, more accurately, the beginning of the reimbodiments of universes or worlds that have existed in the past, and therefore are worlds to be in the future.
Our own planet Terra was at one time a comet, and before that it was one of these smaller diaphanous nebulae sleeping its long preparatory sleep in the womb of Space before entering upon the cycle of it new life-beginning. Then when the time came, when the karmic time came, it rushed from its layic bed, carrying its laya-center in its own heart, attracted by some distant sun, and, furthermore, drawn by the links of past destiny — drawn magnetically, so to speak, but indeed drawn by spiritual and psychological links of the past — to become a planet around the center towards which it has rushed.
Then, as regards that part of the question referring to some of the nebulae as being clusters of suns and others as being masses of mother-stuff: is not this theosophical statement precisely what the modern scientist also will tell you? That is, that some of these nebulae are resolvable, under high telescopic power, into clusters of suns; whereas others cannot be so resolved into individual suns, but are what the astronomical men call masses, vast in extent, of "glowing gas." But our theosophical philosophy tells us they are not gas whatever the appearances, spectroscopic or otherwise, may seem to indicate. Gas is so material in comparison with this nebulous stuff that, to use an analogy, it bears the same relation to our earthly gas as that earthly gas known to us on earth bears to lead.
This is a most fascinating theme. We have modern scientists today dreaming dreams of truth and seeing visions of the real. Scientists in all countries are awakening. The great Danish scientist, Nils Bohr, and Einstein and Planck of Berlin, and Jeans and Eddington of Britain, today have thought thoughts, and are thinking thoughts, which with every epoch of five years are approaching more and more closely to the teachings of the ancient wisdom-religion of all past time, not only in generals but frequently indeed in particulars; and when Dr. Jeans speaks of the "singular points" existent in the nebulae of space, from which, according to him, there pours down into our own physical universe matter from what he calls another dimension, he speaks as would one of the ancient mystical scientists of archaic days, for he voices, however feebly, an archaic theosophical teaching.
Dr. Jeans speaks of the stuff flowing from these his singular points as being the "creation of matter," a term which theosophists would not use, for with us there is no creation in the old sense, but only change of state and condition in an unending series of evolutionary developments. His singular points, his channels or canals, his points through which matter pours down, not from another dimension as he says, but from another world as the theosophist says, are what the theosophist calls laya-centers or critical centers, or points where ether becomes matter or universal matter resolves itself back into ether. Nor does the theosophist use the word dimension as Jeans does, but instead uses the phrase "another and more ethereal world or plane."
Dr. Jeans in these ideas is giving utterance in this twentieth century to the age-old teaching of theosophy; and, as I have just said, we theosophists call these singular points of Dr. Jeans laya-centers, dissolving centers where matter dissolves itself into spirit, and equivalently where from the super-ethereal realms substance condenses into the physical matter of our universe.
Thus are the worlds born through and by these singular points, these centers of energy, these energic centers, as we may call them. Through them pour, as through channels, the energies, the life-forces, the characteristic individuality of a stream of self-imbodying life, of cosmic life, or world life: and with that cosmic life comes all its freightage of things such as the rocks to be, the vegetation to be, the animals to be, the humans to be. These are indeed wonderful thoughts, strangely and marvelously accurate conceptions; and when we realize that they form the material of the most advanced scientific thought of today, we realize how greatly modern science is becoming religious and is thinking thoughts of deep mystical philosophy.
Well, has anybody caught a wooglie? I wonder. At any rate, as the little boy said, when you do catch a wooglie, you will know what it is. But, friends, if any questioner is fishing for "wooglies" I am trying to give him a wooglie that he will understand, not something that any theosophical speaker has invented, but the ancient teachings of wisdom which have come down to modern men from immemorial time, which have been voiced and taught and formulated and cast like thought-seeds into the minds of men by the great seers and sages of all the past ages.
These seers and sages have lived. Whence came their wisdom and knowledge that the wisdom and knowledge of today are progressively proving to have existed with every new natural discovery that is made? The more we learn and know today, the more we know that those great sages and seers of the past had wide and deep knowledge of natural truth. Whence came their wisdom and what they knew? Were these sages and seers merely human biological "sports"? To call a thing a biological sport is merely describing the phenomenon in other words; it is no explanation of it at all.
The only thing we do know is that unparalleled genius suddenly flashes meteor-like over the skies of human thought, and men stand in awe and in certain cases they even worship and adore — wrongly, it is true — but so profound was the impression that these great ones made on history.
Here is another question on my list:
"Were the so-called Mystery Schools of the ancients the product of the various priesthoods working to enslave the human mind by means of supposititious mysteries in nature; or were they based on natural but almost unknown facts of being, which certain exceptional men called seers — to use your word — had explained in religio-philosophic formulations and systems of thought?"
The latter, certainly. The idea — and it had some faint basis of truth — that the priesthoods of the olden time were nothing but a body of men who lived on the fat of the land and imposed so-called religious and philosophic and scientific mysteries on the people who believed in them, was largely due to Voltaire — a very bright man, a very able man, a deep thinker but an erratic thinker, and one who lacked the spiritual, penetrating vision which sees beyond phenomenal appearances.
Wisdom lies in the ability to penetrate beneath the surface and to ascribe to true greatness a nobler visioning of Being than the mere and tawdry impulses of men of small mind and smaller heart. The idea imbodied in the latter part of this question is the truth. There is in man not merely a fountain of wisdom, but an inner eye. He can see, and seeing he can formulate what he sees into knowledge as it is called; and that knowledge he can deliver to his fellows.
How may we see? How did these great sages and seers see? Through growth, through evolution. They had evolved to the point where the inner eye was open, and hence they were awake; being awake they saw; seeing they taught. Either that, or we must have recourse to the supposition chance — a word utterly void of meaning. Which is your choice that you will make for yourself, evolution or chance?
Was Jesus a faker? Was the great Buddha a faker? Was Krishna or Sankaracharya of India a faker? Were Lao-Tse and Confucius charlatans and frauds? You must have a high opinion of yourselves if you believe that! Do you know how difficult it is to make men accept something that perhaps they do not want to accept — how difficult it is to break the molds of mind —= and do you realize that this is just precisely what these great sages and seers do?
Take a people as pragmatical and matter-of-fact as are the Chinese — set like iron in their mental molds and casts — and look what the two Chinese geniuses whom I have just mentioned did: they made a mark so deep, so profound, on the mental characteristics of their people that only today are the Chinese arousing themselves from the degenerated mental impress of ages originally left upon them in splendor by the promulgation of the teachings of those great men of 2500 or more years ago!
There is nothing in the universe so difficult to move as the minds of men: set like crystals and as hard; and I sometimes think that the hearts of men are almost as hard as their heads. But we know that spiritual force and titan intellectual power have done it, and done it many times. In every man there is the instinct of beauty and of truth and of the good and of the high and of the noble and of the pure. Let the appeal be made to these facilities and there will be an answer, and the molds of mind will burst, and then comes the inner rebirth.
It is these great sages and seers, these unparalleled geniuses, these human gods or god-men, who began, who founded, the great Mystery Schools of the ancients; and while they lived they taught in them; and it is they who have moved the world; it is they who have made the civilizations of the past whose laws and customs we inherit, and whose sense of moral right and wrong we inherit also; it is they who have told us of the truths of nature; and these Mystery Schools founded by them imbodied their teachings, kept very holy, very secret, very esoteric, very mystical.
You know what Jesus is reported to have said in substance: "To my disciples I open the door to truth; but to them outside I speak in parables." That was wise. You cannot teach a baby everything at once; and we are all babies in a sense. Knowledge grows by degrees, as everything else does; so it was only to the more evolved, the wiser ones, the more intuitive ones, who gathered around these great seers and sages, that were taught the real explanations and secrets and esoteric teachings of the Masters.
But the generality of men outside of the Mystery Schools were taught ethics, morals, the laws of duty, high thinking, noble living, accompanied always with the invitation: "Come up higher; come to us; come to me; prepare yourselves. I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." True words!
I might say before leaving this question that our own modern theosophical teachings are in large part the esoteric, mystical, secret, teachings of these great seers and sages of past times. You can prove this statement for yourselves by impartial, honest study. Knock, friends, and it will be opened unto you. This is a promise.
Here is another question that I have received:
"Are genius and knowledge reminiscence, remembrance out of the past, as Plato said they are: or are they instilled into or put into the human mind somewhat as bricks or stones are put into a wall?"
Certainly not the latter. I cannot conceive how genius and knowledge can be stuffed into a man's mind: into a mind molded and cast into crystallized prejudice, unwilling to receive a new truth unless the brain-mind can debate it, think it out, and see all its ins and outs and whys and wherefores, quite forgetting that these lower mental processes obscure the truth and prevent the action of intuitive vision.
Knowledge is not merely an accumulation of facts. Knowledge per se is a faculty; it is not merely what you learn — what you learn after that manner is the lessons that you study and the facts comprised in them that your mental apparatus can accumulate and hold — but knowledge is what you are enabled to draw out of it through the working of the intellectual consciousness. To know, the faculty of knowing, is knowledge strictly speaking; and wisdom is something still higher.
Yes, genius and knowledge and other things that accompany them — such as love, and the sense of devotion, and aspiration, and the instinct of duty, and the recognition of the high beauty of self-sacrifice falsely so-called — these and other things are innate in the character. They do not come into you from without. They spring forth from within, and are the beauteous flowers of lovely seeds which are latent in the heart and mind of the individual. They are innately in him; they are reminiscences out of the past: the fruitage of past lives in the character so developed and evolved, enabling this character to express its own inherent faculties and powers and energies, and the workings of its own consciousness.
What is evolution? It is unfolding, bringing out what is within you. How can you be something that you are not yourself? Character is development or manifestation from what is already within; so are wisdom and knowledge and love and duty and aspiration and high living and high thinking — all these beautiful and noble things that make men truly men and that make some men greater than others. They are from within, they are from the spiritual side of our being: the deathless, the immortal part — and not merely from the human soul, the evolving entity, growing ever more perfect it is true, and as it perfects itself expressing ever better, ever in more perfect form and shape, and ever in larger degree, the streams of illumination from within, flowing into the human consciousness from the divine center which is the root of us, the heart of the heart of us, the core of the core of you and of me.
Plato was right, but he did not tell all. Knowledge and genius are reminiscence, rememorations of past lives, and are not merely fruits of what we know in this life. A child comes into life with character which develops as age proceeds, with ability, power, capacity. As these develop, all the beautiful forces accompanying them spring forth into bloom; and then when this takes place in the flowers of the human race we may truly say that a great man has come into the world.
Here is another question before me:
"Does the soul of an infant enter into its body at birth, or before birth, or after birth?"
The theosophical teaching is that the soul of an infant does not enter into its body at birth, nor before birth, nor after birth. Therefore the general answer to this question is No, in none of the three cases. It does seem to a theosophist an extraordinary thing that the idea should have gone abroad so widely in the Occidental world that a man has a soul imprisoned in his physical body, and that when the physical body dies the soul has to come out of it. The ancients used to represent the true natural or spiritual fact mystically, metaphorically, by figuring a homunculus or infant human coming from the mouth of the dying man with his last breath; but this figuration was a mystical representation which unfortunately was taken literally by later people, the Christians, who followed the ancient Pagans in time; and for many ages in occidental Europe, in European countries, it was believed that man had a soul inside his body; and the soul, again, was confused with the spirit.
No, man is a soul and also has a soul. It all depends upon what you mean by the word "soul," and upon the localities where we place man and soul and spirit. A subject of deep psychology is involved here which it would take me far too long a time this afternoon to explain, but a the explanation of which I will try to hint and of which I have given a brief explanation on a number of other occasions.
Man is a complex and compound entity. His constitution ranges from body to spirit with all intermediate degrees of ethereal substances and energies and powers. The theosophist says that these intermediate degrees are seven in number. When these seven different degrees or grades are cooperating in vital activity and thus form what we theosophists call man's seven principles, then you have a complete man, a fully living man, in other words an incarnated man.
But how about this soul? Is it in the body or out of it? Well, I don't dare say that it is out of it, but on the other hand it most emphatically is not in it. I will try to make my meaning clear. Let me ask you a question first. Where is the electricity in the wire which carries it? Is it inside the wire or in an atmosphere or aura around the wire? No physical scientist really knows yet, but a perfectly parallel question is: Where is the human soul, in the body or out of it, or around it and permeating it?
Now, our theosophical teaching is this: the spirit of man works through the human soul, and this human soul works through the vital-astral or ethereal vehicle or body or carrier: the transmitter of the energies or powers of the soul, which is psychomagnetically connected with the organs of the physical body; and this vital astral principle thus works through the physical body and is carried into all parts of our physical frame, very much as the electric current is carried not only in but also over and around the wire. The spirit enfolds and guards and produces the human soul from within its own womb of selfhood; the human soul similarly permeates and produces the vital astral vehicle; and this in its turn permeates and produces the physical body.
The soul therefore is neither in the body nor out of it nor surrounding it, but all three at the same time, and belongs to an entirely different sphere or plane or world of being from that of the gross physical vehicle. The soul does not enter the body at birth, nor before birth, nor after birth, and why? Because that supposition would immediately set up the argument that the soul and the human physical body in and around which it is — how shall I say it, with which it is to be linked in the next life — are different, and that they are different now. The physical body is built up by the incoming, incarnating ego, cell by cell, from the very beginning of the former. Consequently there is no entering of the body by something outside of it and different from it, for the soul is that which is; the body being merely the offspring or the fruitage or effect of one of its activities. This is not a medical lecture hall, but I think that I have made the idea sufficiently clear.
You know, I suppose, that the teaching of the great German biologist Weismann was regarding the human race, that from the very beginning the vital plasm, the seed of human life, has been carried down from generation to generation, from father to son; and that, secondly, the generation of men today, quite apart from the state of evolution that they have reached, contains the very life-essence, physically speaking, that existed in the first races of men on earth.
A human seed comes from the ethereal worlds and is the laya-center, — the "singular point," of Dr. Jeans, when he was speaking of the nebulae through which streamed into this physical sphere matter of the new world to be — and which in the case of the laya-center of the human seed is the vital point through which streams into and builds up from the interior worlds, the body to be, cell by cell. This seed grows into the physical body and, as it grows, incarnation of the human energies takes place concordantly, coordinately, and progressively until maturity is reached, and at that point you see the full-grown man and more or less fully incarnated human soul.
Thus, then, the soul does not "enter" the body for it is not something outside of it and not belonging to it. This last idea is quite wrong. The soul therefore does not enter the body either before birth or at birth, or after birth. As the English poet Spenser says:
"For soul is form, and doth the body make."
At the death of the physical body, the soul casts the latter aside, as a worn-out garment, and goes on to something higher: more accurately it evolves, in the theosophical sense of the word, others of its latent powers preparing it for residence in the ethereal worlds, for it is itself an ethereal vehicle or carrier of the deathless and immortal energies of the productive spirit or Monad.
"What is the soul?"
I think that I have already answered that question — at least I have tried to answer it. The soul is the part intermediate between the spirit and the body, between spiritual matter and physical matter; but if you were to ask me to be definitely accurate and to particularize, then I should have to say something else, and to begin by asking you: What do you mean by soul? Do you mean by that a generalizing term comprising all the capacities and energies and powers that man has, spiritually and intellectually and materially, and including such qualities as love and hate and aspiration and wisdom and knowledge, and the passional nature and all the other things that I have spoken of, and also the things which are mean and ignoble and whatnot? They are indeed all of them parts of man. But do they belong to the soul? If so, then I ask you which soul? The spiritual soul, or the human soul, or the merely animal soul?
You see the reason why the theosophical philosophy, the ancient wisdom, is obliged to divide the constitution of man into its component parts, for man is a complex being and therefore has separate parts. He is indeed a complex entity, and you all know it; consequently all these various energies and powers and faculties and energies do not spring from one point, from one center, from one source: they spring from different parts of the constitution of the human being. So, therefore, when this bald and too general question, What is the soul? is asked, it is obvious that of necessity I have great difficulty in answering. A true answer would require a book in itself.
However, speaking generally, we may say that the soul is the intermediate part between the spirit which is deathless and immortal on the one hand, and on the other hand the physical frame, entirely mortal. Thanks be to the immortal gods that it is so!
Thus then, answering briefly and generalizing, and calling it the intermediate part, we may say that the soul is the center of human will and human consciousness, the human ego, the personal "I"-feeling. It is an evolving entity of course.
"Have the animals souls?"
Yes, most decidedly they have, but not human souls. Please do not misunderstand me here. I do not mean that a dog or a horse or a bull has a human soul; but I mean that a dog has a dog-soul, and a horse has a horse-soul, and a bull has its own type of intermediate, self-expressing consciousness. And so have the lovely flowers of our gardens flower-souls; and that is the reason why a lily is always a lily — I mean why the lily-stream of life will produce nothing but lilies. It has the characteristic of individuality, what in human beings is called the ego; the egoic energic power self-expressing its own inherent individuality. That is the soul.
Here is another question that I have before me.
"Have twins or triplets or quadruplets the same soul or different souls?"
I wonder if this is a 'wooglie,' or at least is a fishing for 'wooglies'? Well, take the twins. There are different kinds of twins: there are what the biologists call identical twins, being twins of the same sex so much alike that it is practically impossible to tell them apart. This kind of twins is called identical. There are other kinds which are not identical.
Answering the question, then, I may say: no, twins have not the same souls, they have different souls, but there is an exceedingly close psychological relationship existing from other lives, between or among beings born together at a single birth. The same applies not only to twins but to triplets and quadruplets, and to other cases of even larger birth-products. Each individual has a distinct and separate soul or, if you like to phrase it otherwise, each one is a distinct and separate soul.
The next question is:
"Was Jesus Christ a man or was he God?"
I have in idea that a broad-minded Christian has asked this question, and I respect him for his frankness. Not being a Christian myself, I will answer it as a theosophist, who is a follower of the teacher Christ, but not a Christian — but a theosophist is not only a follower of Christ but also of all the great Sages and Seers of the ages. Christ, inspiring the man-body called Jesus, was but one of these great sages and seers; and theosophists reverence that great and holy man as much if not more than the most devoted Christian does.
Jesus Christ was the theosophist of his time to his own people. He was a man. But he incarnated a god — not the infinite and eternal Spirit in the Christian sense, for that to the theosophists is monstrous: not what is popularly called God. To theosophists, if you will pardon me the frank statement, that idea is simply blasphemous; but Jesus, the great Syrian sage, was a man-god, or a god-man. He is an avatara, avatara being a Sanskrit word which means "a passing down": the idea being that a divinity chose a great and holy human to be its vehicle for work among men. There have been many avataras in the world, I may say in passing.
There is much more to this doctrine of avataras that I cannot go into now — I have no time to do so, nor is this public meeting the proper place — but this doctrine is nevertheless one of the most beautiful, one of the most lovely, of our theosophical doctrines; and in one sense of the word, many, but by no means all, of the other great seers and sages were men-gods likewise.
There is a high stage of evolution which ranks fully as high in spiritual grade as does the avatara, and this stage of evolution is where the human being, through long aeons of evolutionary development and ceaseless striving towards perfection and wisdom and purity, has evolved forth from out of himself his own inner god which thus takes the place of the avatara incarnation selecting some high and noble human being, and in one sense of the word this self-evolution is nobler and superior to the avatara incarnation. Such a self-evolved entity was Gautama Buddha.
In each one of you there is a god: it is that part of you which is immortal and deathless, stainless and divine. And when your inner god manifests in inner fullness consciously through the highly evolved human soul, which is the only path or method for it so to manifest, such a human being is also a god-man, but not an avatara because of the difference which I have just set forth.
I ask you to pardon my inability to explain this sublime doctrine more fully this afternoon. On some other Sunday I hope to do so, perhaps. But in every case such an incarnation, such a birth among men, is an example of a god-man or a man-god. Each one of you has the power to be such an example of human spiritual splendor. Oh, what a doctrine of hope this is! What a doctrine of high and supreme beauty! Consider the inspiration of it.
There remains in my hand one question more.
"Is virgin-birth or immaculate birth possible in nature?"
I think that this question came from this same kind friend who asked the immediately preceding question. I will answer it briefly. It is possible as a natural fact, but practically impossible as an event that may occur. However, in the far distant past virgin birth or immaculate birth was the regular mode that nature had evolved for carrying on the human race. This method was superseded in time by the present method of procreation; and the present division of the human race into the two sexes is but a transitory event or phase of human evolution. Even today man shows in his physical body his androgynous past — the remnants of organs appearing imperfectly in either sex are simply remnants of what were once fully developed organs — and, in the future, the present method of sex-procreation will be an evil dream of the past.