Theosophy - Clairvoyant research and the Life after Death by Geoffrey Hodson
CLAIRVOYANT
RESEARCH
AND
THE LIFE AFTER DEATH ΔΔ
By
Geoffrey Hodson
OUR subject this evening
can scarcely fail to be of the greatest interest and importance to every one
of us; for who is there among us who has not been called upon to experience
the pain of bereavement, who has not felt a desire to know where the loved ones
have gone, to know something of the conditions of the life after death into
which they have entered and upon which we must all embark when our time comes,
as one day inevitably it must? It is at such junctures in human life that the
teachings of Theosophy possess especial power to console and to illumine. Theosophy
has power to console because it affirms most positively that there is a life
beyond the grave, that the body alone dies, whilst the immortal son of God,
the real ego, lives on eternally. Theosophy reaffirms the great teaching in
the Bible which gives the solution to the problem of life after death in the
words: "God created man to be immortal; in the image of His own eternity
created He him." There, if we can receive it, is the real answer to the
question as to whether life continues after death.
Theosophy has power to illumine,
also, because it shows how man may know for himself, while still on this earth,
the facts of the life beyond the grave. It teaches that there resides in man
a faculty by means of which the veil hiding the invisible world from our sight
may be rent asunder, and the facts and phenomena of that world, the conditions
of life in it, be seen, investigated, and understood. This extended vision,
which is a sixth sense, latent in the majority, awakened in the few, will be
used quite normally and naturally by later races. When developed and used of
set purpose in these days, this faculty enables its possessor to do what later
races of mankind will do: to explore at firsthand and in full waking consciousness
the worlds of the life after death, to meet their inhabitants face to face,
and to study with scientific accuracy the conditions under which they live.
This is an arresting and, if
true, important statement, one which demands deep consideration. It is not my
subject this evening; I cannot, therefore, give to it the time which it deserves.
I must ask you to accept the existence of this faculty as a hypothesis, susceptible
of test and proof in due course, for almost all theosophical teachings concerning
the invisible worlds are gained by the use of such extended vision as an instrument
of research.
If you will grant that
there is such a faculty -not the negative psychism of the entranced medium,
but the positive, trained power under the control of the will, just as is physical
vision- if you will grant that, then assume with me that we are in the chamber
of death, watching with the seeing eye the transition from this world to the
next of someone dying from old age or disease: What shall we see?
As the hour of dissolution
approaches, we shall see the life-forces of the body being withdrawn from the
extremities and centred in the heart, there to be visible as a glowing focus
of light. After this, sensation in the lower limbs is greatly diminished. Then,
as death draws nearer, the life-forces are withdrawn still further and focussed
in the middle of the head, in the third ventricle of the brain, which
is the centre of egoic consciousness during physical life.
The dying person
may or may not still be physically conscious. If unconscious, in a coma preceding
death, he will be visible to clairvoyant sight, out of the body and in his superphysical
vehicle. This vehicle is built up of much finer matter than our ether, and in
outline resembles almost exactly the physical body; it is, in fact, its counterpart.
It differs in appearance from the physical in that the matter of which it is
built is self-luminous, so that it glows as if lighted from within, and it is
surrounded by an atmosphere, visible as light in constantly changing colours.
These colours of
the aura, as it is called, correspond to states of consciousness and are seen
to vary with every change of feeling and thought. There is, indeed, a veritable
science to which I may refer in passing; the science of the correlation of states
of consciousness with the colours of the aura. A rush, of sympathy for someone
in pain or trouble, for example, suffuses the aura with green; intellectual
effort suffuses it with yellow. This room shows just now a great deal of the
yellow of intellectual activity. That particular colour is just above and behind
the head, and it probably gave rise to the nimbus of the Saint, although everyone
displays it during thought processes. Blue denotes devotional activity; lilac,
spirituality; rose deepening to crimson, love. Red is the colour of anger and
irritability; brown, of selfishness; and so on. As stated, these colours are
visible to clairvoyant sight, so that by looking at people's auras it is possible
to tell the kind of thoughts and feelings to which they habitually give expression,
to discover their temperament and character. Naturally, such a power is not
used save by permission and for research purposes.
Thus, the aura will
be visible around the dying person, who, physically unconscious, is now outside
his physical body, floating just above it, and joined to it by a stream of flowing
forces which shine with a delicate silvery light. This current flows between
the head of the physical body and the head of the superphysical, connecting
them, and so long as it continues to flow there is always the possibility of
physical awakening; once it is broken, as at the moment of death, there is no
longer any possibility of return. All apparent cases of resuscitation are in
reality only awakenings into bodies that were not dead.
The dying person
may return temporarily to his body, and on opening his eyes may see some of
the phenomena of the next world, make references to people not physically present.
When the actual moment of death arrives, the "silver cord" is seen
to break, and the man himself to rise as though released from some gravitational
pull. Although not absolutely certain, I am inclined to think that the exact
moment of death for each one of us is fixed, but whether this is so or not,
the moment comes, the cord breaks, the man is free of his body and can awaken
in it no more. The signs of death appear in it. Its work is done.
In nearly all cases,
man is as unconscious of dying as of falling asleep. He passes, as it were,
upon a sigh from this world to the next. He is generally engaged in a process
of review in which the events of the life just closed pass before his mind's
eye in clear perspective; causes and effects are correlated, successes and their
results, failures and their outworkings. This process of review is very important,
for from it is distilled a certain wisdom, the fruitage of the life just closed.
It is for this reason that we should be mentally, emotionally, and physically
quiet in the chamber of death, lest by an excess of grief we disturb the loved
one in this important process. He is now living in his subtler body, the body
of feeling, and is therefore highly sensitive to the forces of thought and emotion.
Our thoughts should rightly be turned in love towards him, and in blessing and
aspiration for his progress inwards to the inner worlds, but calmly and with
self-control. In Theosophy we are taught to dwell not so much upon our own great
loss as upon their transcendent gain; and transcendent gain it is to be freed
from the physical body and its limitations.
The review
ended, there generally follows a period of complete unconsciousness which may
last from thirty-six to forty-eight hours, varying with the individual. Then
the awakening into the new life occurs, and the man, frequently still unaware
of what has happened, looks about him. In nearly all cases some friend or relative
is awaiting him; or if he has none such to welcome him into the new life, then
some member of the great band of helpers whose work it is to welcome newcomers
comes forward to receive him. Such helpers are members of a great and highly
trained band of servers deputed to this particular work of assisting new arrivals.
These welcome newcomers explain the new life, and help them to settle down to
it as comfortably as possible. Few if any in these days enter that world without
some hand being stretched forth to welcome and assist them in the first stages
of the new life. What will be the nature of this new life?
At this point
I must say something which will perhaps be difficult to believe, but since I
know it to be true and of great importance in our study I must put it before
you. It is that the world to which our friends have gone and to which we shall
all go when our time comes is no strange land, for we go there every night whilst
our physical bodies sleep. Sleep has aptly and truly been called the twin brother
of death. We may go further and call them the same thing; for whilst the physical
body sleeps we are awake in the body which we shall use after death. Our dreams
are in part the confused memories of our life in that world which we bring back
on awakening. The difference between sleep and death lies in the fact that in
sleep the "silver cord" which links us to the body is not broken.
In death, the cord is broken, and as we have then no link with the physical
body we are unable to return to it. It is, however, no strange land to which
we awaken at bodily death, for we already know it well, and in many cases have
our place there, and our work.
The next general
principle which I wish to put before you is that the conditions in which a person
finds himself after death depend almost entirely upon his temperament and upon
the nature of the life he has led on the physical plane. We each see the world
around us through the windows of our temperament. The sunny natured, friendly
individual awakens after death to a sunny, friendly world; whilst the gloomy,
self-centred individual may awaken to a dull, gloomy, and somewhat lonely world
-not because that world is lonely, but because the self-centred individual does
not inspire and is unable to give friendship. Happily, the pain of the boredom
and isolation which such people have unconsciously created for themselves, spurs
them into changing their attitude towards life.
To move now
from general to particular statements, clairvoyant investigation reveals in
new arrivals a tendency to pursue in the new life sublimated forms of those
occupations which most appealed to them on earth. Thus, the scientific investigator
whose ideal on earth was the pursuit of truth finds that he can follow truth
there as here. He finds, too, that his investigations are far more fruitful
there than here, because he has left the world of densest matter, is conscious
in much finer substance and nearer to the world of causes; and it is in the
higher consciousness and in the world of causes that truth and understanding
abide. He finds that many of the factors in the structure of matter and in evolution
which were previously hidden from him are now objectively revealed. The laws
and forces under which atoms combine in certain ways to form the molecules of
the different elements, the development of cell from protoplasm, from single
cell to man, the great mystery for the biologist, is understood more clearly
there, for the operation of the Divine Mind and Its embodiments may be everywhere
observed. The flowing forces of which this physical world is an illusionary
product are visible as such in the next world. The great engineers of the Logos,
the beings who direct the flowing of these forces, operating and administering
the processes and laws of Nature, the angelic hosts, can be seen at work, and
from them much may be learnt. The scientific investigator thus finds himself
in a world in which his work is far more fruitful than on earth. Indeed, in
the after death world one finds groups of scientists, gathered together by affinity
of temperament, absorbed in their accustomed pursuit of knowledge, equipped
with laboratories, observatories, and research stations, and not only investigating
but teaching as well. For there is a continuation of education there, educationists;
like scientists and all other specialized workers, tending to follow their own
bent, giving their time to unravelling the problems met with in their work,
and to the carrying of that work to a higher state of perfection than was possible
on earth. Very often, ideas thus discovered in the inner world are picked up
by minds incarnate here on earth, for there is considerable interplay and interchange
of thought between the dwellers in the two worlds.
Similarly, the artist,
he for whom beauty is the goal, finds that in that world his quest can be carried
far nearer to its consummation than was possible in the world of dense physical
matter. If he be painter or sculptor, no longer in the dull pigments of earth
need he reproduce his visions, but instantly and automatically the responsive
matter of the next world assumes forms appropriate to his thought. And not only
is his vision objectified before him, but he finds, to his great joy, that he
can refine and remould it until relative perfection is attained. And because
groups are drawn together in that world by affinity of temperament rather than
by racial or family relationship, he finds himself nearer to his own kind, a
member, probably, of one of the many groups of similar workers dedicated to
the pursuit of beauty, to the discovery through the beautiful of their highest
selves.
For the musician,
too, the way is open to a wider, deeper understanding of his art. Music has,
on the inner planes, aspects of which we normally know little down here. The
musician finds, for example, that music there is not so much heard as seen.
If physical music is observed clairvoyantly it is seen to produce forms in the
glowing, self-luminous matter of the inner worlds, this living, responsive matter
being thrown into changing, iridescent forms by the sound and the intent of
the music. In the inner planes, too, the real Song of Creation can be heard,
that ever-uttered Word of God which is the theme of the great symphony of creation.
This exquisite responsiveness
of the matter of the inner worlds to every change of thought and feeling is
one of the first discoveries the student makes when his inner eyes are
opened. He finds, as do those who enter those worlds at death, that thought
is a mighty power, potent to affect the lives of others as well as to help him
on his way, if he uses it aright.
The reformer, the
servant, the healer, the physician, each finds, if he can enter into it, a new
world of service opening up before him. If the true spirit of the healer is
in him, the physician will find coming to him for help - men and women with
twisted minds and tortured feelings, people who have died with uneasy consciences,
with duties left undone, with vices unconquered, obliquities of vision, complexes
and other psychical disturbances. Such conditions are far more sources of difficulty
there than here, for that is the world of emotion. People thus disturbed are
greatly in need the services of a physician. There is, in fact, a great host
of workers dedicated to this task of re-attuning and reharmonizing those in
need.
The business man,
for the first few days after his passing, tends to gravitate by force of habit
to his old business premises; but he soon finds that he cannot affect his colleagues.
They do not respond to his presence or his thoughts. They do not even know that
he is with them.
Happily, however,
the wider interests and greater freedom of the new life, the responsive and
buoyant body he is using, his realization that the greater causes of business
here do not obtain in his new sphere, and that consequently there is not much
to be busy about in that direction, soon draw him away from his physical preoccupations.
The life after death can indeed be the beginning of a most wonderful freedom;
for the grinding business necessities which, doubtless for our own good, keep
us busy here and tend to chain our thoughts and feelings to material things,
no longer exist.
Food, for example,
though one of the great causes of business and personal effort on this plane,
ceases to have any significance there, for all the nourishment our subtle bodies
need is absorbed automatically from the atmosphere. The air there, as here,
is charged with the life-force of God, outpoured through the sun, and contains
all that is needed for bodily sustenance in that world. The whole process of
its absorption and assimilation is as unconscious as is breathing on the physical
plane. Food, consequently, is no problem there, and its provision is not a source
of business activity.
Clothing there is
made by thought. Since the matter of the next world responds instantly
to thought, to think of oneself as clothed is to be clothed. Whilst one finds
people in various attire, of the fashion of their own day or race, the most
general raiment would seem to be a convenient, loose garment, the colour and
decoration of which can be changed instantly at will.
Transportation?
Again we move thought-impelled. To think of oneself in a place is to move to
that place, swiftly or slowly, at will, by a delightful, floating motion as
of flying. Dreams of the body as light and easily elevated, as gliding gently
or swiftly through the air, are frequently memories of the normal mode of progression
in the world of the life after death.
Shelter, the fourth
of the great sources of business and human effort on the physical plane,
is also created by thought in the next world. There, as here, people gather
together in houses and cities. Privacy is needed in the after-death life just
as it is needed on earth, but not shelter from the climate, for our adverse
climatic conditions are not reproduced there.
Thus, life in that
world is as varied and fascinating as life on this earth; indeed, more so, for
there is not only an almost endless variety of activities from which to choose,
but each activity can be pursued further and for a longer period than on earth,
where certain pressing necessities make their demands. There are, for instance,
not only centres for child-life, services for the newcomer and for those in
need, but all the normal, healthy activities of human beings seeking greater
light and joy and usefulness along the lines of knowledge, love, and beauty.
There are religious centres, too, and to enter a church on that plane is to
find that religion elevates the worshipper to far greater heights than are usually
attained on earth. This is partly because the objects of worship are visible,
being thought-created, and partly because emotion is there more pure and more
powerful. At the east end of the church there will not be symbols and stained-glass
windows so much as living images, perhaps of the Saviours of the world, of the
Saints, or of the Angelic Hosts. These are not so much phantasms created by
human thought as living representations into which their great Originals pour
some of Their love and consciousness and which They use as channels for the
outpouring of Their blessing and Their power. And since all this is visible
to the worshipper there, religious services evoke a fervour and depth
of response rarely experienced down here and provide a religious belief founded
far more upon living experience than upon blind faith.
Such are the general
conditions which we shall all indubitably find when our time comes to go there
or when we gain the power to see clairvoyantly into that world from this. One
might round out such a description of the normal conditions by adding to it
information about the abnormal. For suicides, for example, there would seem
to be at least three varieties of after-death experience. The nobly and unselfishly
motivated suicide, after the shock which generally accompanies sudden death,
settles down to the new life under the normal conditions previously described.
Often there is, in these cases, no coma, and no time in which the person can
readjust his consciousness in the ordinary way to the altered conditions of
his life, but the very purity of his consciousness will assist him to make that
readjustment, to see the facts of the new life in correct perspective directly
his eyes open to it.
Suicides of the second
class, less worthy because more selfishly motivated, sink into blank unconsciousness
immediately on leaving the physical body, and remain in that condition until
the time at which their ordinary death would have come upon them. Then, by the
operation of some law of rhythm, they awaken, and take up their position in
the new life. It is this fact of awakening when the natural term of physical
life would have ended which has led me to believe that the time of death is
fixed -by our own conduct, of course- that, apart from abnormal happenings,
such as suicide, there is a time of natural death fixed for each one of us.
The third class of
suicide is less enviable still. This comprises those men, rather gross and sensual,
who have committed suicide in the full flush of life, often driven to it by
passion or fear. In the new life they are still chained to the things of earth;
their gross desires keep them earthbound; they can see the replica in subtle
matter of the physical plane, and, unable to free themselves from that, they
live in the half-world between this world and the next. Driven by desires and
passions which they cannot fully satisfy, they seek gratification by entering
places of sensual indulgence on the physical plane, uniting their consciousness
with that of the drunkard or the sensualist indulging there. In such circumstances
the physical plane people experience intensification of their desires, so that
the relationship, even though they are ignorant of it, is as harmful for them
as for the earthbound souls obtaining gratification through them.
To the theosophist,
possessed of this knowledge, suicide is always a mistake. Suicide solves no
existing problems, and undoubtedly raises new ones, thereby complicating the
situation from which it is used as a means of escape. For, eventually, every
obligation must be met, every debt paid, every pain lived through. "God
is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." It
is far better, therefore, to endure a situation, no matter how painful it may
be, than by attempted evasion to perpetuate and intensify its difficulties.
Suicide does intensify difficulties, because it brings the additional complication
of self-murder, the karmic reaction from which may adversely affect successive
incarnations.
The person who dies
in the grip of a vice has a decidedly unpleasant time, for he is now living
in his emotional body and is consequently experiencing his particular craving
with an intensity unknown to him when the matter of his physical body greatly
reduced or damped it down. With no means of gratifying that vice of necessity
it burns itself out in him, often through weeks and months of acute suffering.
If there be a hell anywhere, then it is this condition of intense and ungratifiable
craving. Such a hell presents at least four differences from the Hell of orthodox
religion. First, it is not a place; it is a state of consciousness, as also
is Heaven. According to the condition of our consciousness, we can be in either,
wherever our bodies may be. Second, this suffering is not imposed as a punishment
after judgment by an external authority; it is self-produced, as is all suffering
and all joy. They are natural and automatic reapings from preceding sowings.
Third, the suffering caused by unsatisfied desire is not eternal punishment.
Even a human father would not be so illogical and cruel as to condemn his son
to perpetual punishment for a sin committed in time. On the contrary, what begins
in time must end in time. The post-mortem suffering resulting from an unconquered
vice lasts only so long as does the energy spent in its indulgence. When that
dies out, the man is free of it, and assumes his new life. Last of the differences
between this condition and that normally associated with the orthodox idea of
Hell is that such suffering is by no means a futile experience. On the
contrary, it can be fruitful in the extreme. For by its intensity it registers
itself almost permanently upon the consciousness of the sufferer, who, thus
realizing cause and effect, learns his lesson therefrom for all time. This realization
by the inner man will affect the next life, in which he will probably be born
with an intense repugnance to that particular form of self-indulgence. It is
doubtless for this reason that the conditions immediately beyond the grave are
regarded as purgatorial.
In conclusion, a
few words may perhaps be said concerning the child after death. To those who
have experienced the most difficult to bear of all bereavements, the loss of
a child, I would say that if you could but see the happiness to which the child
has gone, your grief would be greatly assuaged. In the next world, the life
of a child is lovely, joyous, full of happiness. Children there are cared for,
as tenderly as the wisest and gentlest parents would care for them, by those
who on that plane have given themselves to such service, and who are assisted
not infrequently by members of the angelic hosts. There are centres of child-life
in the inner world. They are a combination of home, school, and college, in
beautiful surroundings, where the children are guided, trained, and loved.
Their relations and friends come to the children during sleep, sometimes assisting
in the curriculum of their new home. The children have, therefore, not lost
the companionship of those they love, and know but little of pain or loss.
The child, after
death, either completes the normal life cycle through the emotional and mental
planes back into egohood or he reincarnates quickly. If the first, he "grows
up" to a youthful maturity, very beautiful, very refined in appearance,
delicately spiritualized, with soft, luminous eyes. Then, at the second death,
as it is sometimes called, the emotional body is laid aside, and the consciousness
functions in the mental body, finding therein an even more perfect happiness
and peace. This state corresponds to the Paradise of orthodoxy. In it, the child
reaps, as do all who complete the cycle of birth and death, the fruits of all
idealistic and spiritual aspirations, and when these have worked themselves
out the mental body is laid aside and the consciousness that has made the pilgrimage
is withdrawn into the inner Selfhood, enriched and developed by all the experiences
it has undergone.
Rapid reincarnation
would, however, appear to be quite general in the case of children dying young.
Some debt to Nature, incurred by a transgression in a previous life, suicide
perhaps, has now been paid. The way is then open for a successful re-entry into
physical incarnation, the same youthful mental and emotional bodies being retained.
Parents are found -often, by the way, the same parents- and the mother is expectant
again within two or three years of her previous loss. Many mothers seem instinctively
to know that the same ego has returned to them. Many have assured me of this,
and of their interest and delight when noting how the appearance and manners
of the new child in part supported that intuition. The new incarnation then
continues its normal course.
Thus we see that,
in the loss of a child, painful though it inevitably must be, there is in reality
little for which we need to grieve. Even if our little ones do not return to
our own arms, we have not lost them; they are with us, as are all our beloved
dead, here and now, all about us, but temporarily out of our perspective. Although
we cannot see them, because of our lack of the necessary vision, they have not
finally disappeared, nor ceased to be. If we truly love them, our immortal selves
are one with theirs for all eternity, and when we sleep we have their personal
companionship. When our time comes to enter the higher worlds, we shall meet
them, and in that reunion realize the unfailing unity of all who truly love.
And may this be our
last thought: in death there is nothing to fear. Rarely is an individual conscious
of the act of leaving his body. He slips away as in sleep, tranquilly, peacefully,
without pain. Death is but release into a more beautiful life. Birth is not
a beginning. Death is not an end. Both are but oft-recurring incidents in the
long series of lives by means of which we climb upwards to full spiritual knowledge
of ourselves, to adeptship. Let us press forward to that goal, recognizing death
as but a bodily incident upon the way. In so doing, death will indeed be "swallowed
up in victory."
For us men there
is no death, for we are immortal Sons of God. Death exists only in the eye that
beholds it. Death touches only the physical body, freedom from which releases
us in large measure from the blinding power of matter. For this body, and this
physical matter of our world, conceal from us the spiritual realities within
them, just as the veil of day hides the ever-shining stars.
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