158 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
their deeds, go into the womb and others into the 'sthanu.' ”
“Sthanu” is a Sanskrit word, which means “motionless,” but
it also means a “pillar,” and has been interpreted to mean
that some men, because of their sins, go back to the
motionless plant kingdom.
Spirits incarnate only to gain experience; to conquer the
world; to overcome the lower self and attain self-mastery.
When we r ealize t his we s hall understand t hat there comes a
time when there is no further need for incarnation because
the lessons have all been learned. The teaching of the
Kathopanishad indicates that instead of remaining tied to the
wheel of birth and death, man will at some time go into the
motionless state of “Nirvana.”
In the Book of Revelation we find these words: “Him
that overcometh will I make apillar in the temple of my
Godand he shall go no more out,” referring to entire
liberation from concrete existence. Nowhere is there any
authority for the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. A
man who has evolved so far as to have an individual,
separate soul cannot turn back in his progress and enter the
vehicle of animal or plant, which are under a group-spirit.
The individual spirit is a higher evolution than the group-
spirit and the lesser cannot obtain the greater.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his beautiful poem, “The
Chambered Nautilus,” has embodied this idea of constant
progression in gradually improving vehicles, and final
liberation. The nautilus builds its spiral shell in chambered
sections, constantly leaving the smaller ones, which it has
outgrown, for the one last built:
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;