Theosophy - The after-death Consciousness
and Processes - by Geoffrey Farthing
AFTER-DEATH
CONSCIOUSNESS AND PROCESSES
by GEOFFREY FARTHING
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|
CONTENTS
|
Preface |
Synopsis |
Introduction |
Key
to titles |
Table
A |
Chapter
I |
Constitution of Man |
Chapter
II |
Dying and Immediately Afterwards |
Chapter
III |
The "Death Struggle" and "Gestation" Period |
Chapter
IV |
The Second Death and Devachan |
Chapter
V |
Karma and Reincarnation |
Chapter
VI |
Exceptions, Suicides and Accidents |
Chapter
VII |
Psychic and Spiritualistic Phenomena |
Chapter
VIII |
Immortality and Other Matters |
Appendix
A |
Mahatma Letter 16 |
Appendix
B |
Mahatma Letter 20c |
Glossary |
"They
forget, or never knew, that he
who holds the keys to the
secrets of Death is possessed of the keys of Life." (ML
359:365)
A
COMPENDIUM OF ALL THE INFORMATION ON THE SUBJECT IN THE
ORIGINAL LITERATURE OF H.P. BLAVATSKY, HER MASTERS AND
OTHERS
PREFACE
It
will doubtless come as a surprise to
most people that a book of this size can
be written on the subject of
the after-death states and processes.
We are deeply imbued with the idea that
nothing on it can be known; any ideas
we may have are most likely to be based
on our religious belief. What follows,
however, purports to be an authoritative
account by those who do know. The book
tells us something
about these knowers, and not only what
they know, but how they come to know it.
It is all strange territory
for the great majority. Perhaps to
start with it should be regarded as a story,
but as we read, the story unfolds
in such a way as to become credible.
We begin to master a set of strange ideas,
a strange terminology, a mass
of detail which eventually aggregates
into a wonderfully comprehensive concept
of such significant meaning for
us that we wonder how we ever managed
happily without it. It then certainly ceases
to have the character of a story.
This
book is presented to two classes of
reader; 1) the interested 'lay' reader
who has begun seriously to enquire as to
what goes on after death and 2) the
student of Theosophy.
Theosophy is the immense and comprehensive
system of thought introduced at the end
of the nineteenth century.
It is a compendium of aspects of the
Ancient Wisdom scattered widely throughout
world literature in numerous philosophical
and religious writings. To these it
adds explanations
and some material never made public
before. Students of Theosophy will be familiar
with the esoteric constitution
of man and the main after-death stages.
For the lay man, what is written here must
come as a revelation. There
is much information, of an 'authoritative'
nature, , whereas previously virtually
nothing has been made public.
It is to accommodate this lay reader
that the Introductory Information has been
given. This is necessary for the
understanding of what follows. It is
rudimentary and
incomplete but it is hoped enough is
given to make the earlier extracts in the
numbered Sections intelligible. The
later material will then become virtually
self explanatory. The book comprises
a mass of information, with much duplication,
but at each iteration something is added,
some more information,
further explanation, a different point
of view, all helping to paint a richer
picture.
The
book is a compilation making available in one volume
all the information given in the 'theosophical' classics.
It tells of the universal process of the cyclic coming
and going of everything in existence. The birth, death
and re-birth of men are included in this process. The
story also tells something of the universal law which
governs the process and what happens in the period between
lives. All references to the subject have been quoted
verbatim, and the references to the source books given.
A
problem arose in the compilation as to the order in which
the extracts should be arranged. They could have been
in date order, or by the books from which they were taken,
or in the order of the after-death processes, from dying
to re-birth. This last was chosen. The material is arranged
in Sections, each Section dealing with a phase of what
happens after death. The account mainly relates to the
normal case of someone dying peacefully at the end of
a normal life-span. There are, however, exceptions to
the normal rule. Information about these exceptional
cases is given. Much information of a general character
not specially related to any one of these phases is included.
The Table of Contents gives a descriptive title to each
Section.
Very
little 'connective tissue' has been inserted between
extracts, and then only when it was felt to be necessary.
The
great mass of this information on death and the hereafter
was given out, amongst much else, in the voluminous classical
literature on Theosophy made available to the general
public at the end of the nineteenth century. The subject
of death, survival, rebirth, both as states and as processes,
together with descriptions of the nature of consciousness
and its contents, at the different stages, and under
widely differing circumstances, is particularly dealt
with; the size of this book is evidence of the amount
of information we were given.
Although
the subject matter has been arranged
generally in the order of the post-mortem
happenings, there are many extracts
with no clear demarcation lines; some
single extracts contain some material properly
belonging in other Sections.
In these cases it was felt desirable
to preserve the extracts intact rather
than split them up, even though
some are lengthy, because they contain
a sequence of thought and ideas better
unbroken. The extracts within
the Sections are in random order. The
whole work can be regarded as a jigsaw
puzzle with the extracts as pieces.
The Introductory Information provides
a thumbnail sketch, without detail or colours,
of the whole picture, constituting
a guide to the would-be solver. As
the story unfolds, and the picture assumes
shape, each piece of additional
information will be found to fit naturally
into place. Where this might seem not to
be the case to begin with,
continued reading will remove many
difficulties, and
eventually the whole picture, the full
panorama, surprising in its extent and
magnificence, will be complete. Continued
viewing of the great scene
brings an ever-increasing awareness
of its significance. Each of us is inextricably,
and interminably, not only
involved in but also one with the vast
cosmic process of EVER BECOMING.
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENT OF CHAPTERS
Chapter I : The Constitution of Man
As described.
Chapter II : Dying and Immediately Afterwards
At the time when the Letters and books based
on them were published, the subject of
near-death experiences had
not attracted attention.
These experiences, now much in the public
eye, were not specifically touched on
in the literature. However, there
is reference to the review
of the past life and to our being at a
high level of consciousness momentarily,
on passing. This might be the explanation
of the experience
of meeting or communing with the "Shining One", as variously
described.
The thoughts passing through the mind during the last moments of
the dying process are of the utmost importance and should not be disturbed.
They are significant factors in determining the whole tenor of the
next life. In the normal case the brain still functions right to the
end of the dying stage. It is during these last moments that the review
of the past life takes place. When this is complete and the brain
is at last dead, the defunct then goes unconscious.
Chapter III : The "Death Struggle" and "Gestation" Period
Soon after death the higher group of principles (Egoic Triad) prepares
to separate from the lower four constituting the personality. This
preparation includes what is described as a 'struggle'. It is the
period when the past life is evaluated in terms of its spiritual content.
The 'struggle' is between the really spiritual elements of the dead
man's last life experience and the lower, purely personal, maybe selfish
and carnal, ones. The next stage of the death process can only be
entered if there is a sufficiency of spiritual content to be assimilated
by the Egoic entity. What happens if there is not is fully described.
After the death struggle, a period of "gestation" is entered.
It is during this time that the spiritual
aroma of the past life is 'ingested'
into the Egoic entity. Without
this aroma the Ego would
have no personal identity at the next stage.
During the "death struggle" and the "gestation"
period, the deceased is normally unconscious. At the end of the "gestation" period, there is a second review of the
life just passed. At the end of the gestation
all that is left of the late
personality are the
psychic reliquiae, its worldly experiences,
its desires, passions, ambitions, memories
of achievements, disasters,
and so on. The Spiritual
aroma or residue of the deceased's experiences,
its noble thoughts, unselfish sacrifices,
higher aspirations, etc.,
will have been assimilated
by the Ego.
What happens to these two classes of residue, the base and the noble,
is described in the Chapters. The personal bodily and psychic remains
do not last long; they disintegrate relatively quickly, leaving their
conditioned essences as a carried-forward balance, so to speak, to
the next personality.
Chapter IV : The Second Death and Devachan
When the separation of the lower from the higher results of the ex-personality's
living is finished, a second 'death' occurs, and the Ego proceeds
to the next stage. What is left of the late personality then deprived
of its source of real life and consciousness, i.e. the Ego, becomes
literally a mere 'shell'. The fate of that shell and its state of
consciousness in the world of shades is described in detail.
After the second death when Ego is freed from the encumbrance of
the impure remains of its last personality, consciousness slowly returns
to it. As this happens it awakes slowly to find itself in a state
or condition of unadulterated bliss: it is in surroundings where,
and with those with whom, it would most have wanted to be. It is in
the state known as Devachan, a blissful but purely subjective state:
one quite private to the Devachanee. It is as a dream which no-one
else can share.
Devachan is not a place, it is a state. It is the most enduring one
for most of us after death. It lasts for centuries, but eventually
it does come to an end. There is a gradual decline into 'old age'
and then 'death' or unconsciousness , prior to starting the processes
of re-birth into a new body. The new baby is born into circumstances
entirely determined by law, Karma, as will be the nature of the new
personality and the circumstances, at least of the early part, of
its next life.
Chapter
V : Karma and Reincarnation
The factors which determine the nature of the new personality are
all the result of the life of the old one. There is a mechanism, a
kind of psychic or non-physical one, whereby the sum of personal characteristics
of the old personality are transmitted to the new one. This is a somewhat
similar process to the one whereby the physical body is endowed with
hereditary characteristics from its parents, but the old personality
assumes the role of both parents as far as the character qualities
of the new being are concerned. In this way we all get our due deserts,
neither more nor less. This is the law of Karma in action as regards
our human condition from a purely individual point of view. There
is a tremendous complexity in the workings of this law with regard
to any one life because of the interaction of the Karma of the mass
of individuals, by families, groups and nations which must be taken
into account.
Chapter
VI : Exceptions, Suicides and Accidents
All that has so far been described of the after- death processes
relates to the normal case only. There are exceptions; and all of
these come under the heading of premature deaths. These are deaths
by disease, at various ages, suicides, accidents and murders. All
these are special cases and the after-death processes are affected
accordingly.
The law of Karma has a moral content. It is this which determines
the effect of motive in our actions, even to the taking of our own
life. There is a difference between a soldier who kills but under
orders, and a murderer. The fate of the suicide, responsible for his
own death, is different from that of the 'accident' whose death may
be so sudden that he does not know what happened, and who certainly
had no intention to die. All these variations from the normal are
examined.
Chapter VII : Psychic and Spiritualistic Phenomena
It will be apparent that the inner principles of man are in the same
realms of being (subjective to us) whence originate psychic and spiritualistic
phenomena, usually by way of communication but sometimes by materialization,
apparitions and other 'psycho-psychic' phenomena. In this Chapter
we learn the nature of the various kinds of entity that can communicate
through mediums. The mechanism of materialization is also described.
Chapter
VIII : Immortality and Other Matters
Personalities come and go; so does everything else in a manifest
Universe. This must even apply to the Ego, that persisting divine
element of man's being, which must have, in our terms, an almost infinite
span of life. There comes a time, however, when it has fulfilled its
purpose in the grand scheme. What then? Does anything endure for ever?
If it does, is it of any interest to us either individually or personally?
Some answers even to these questions are vouchsafed us.
There are areas of being of which the post mortem states as described
are only an aspect. Worlds as well as men have their inner principles;
they too have their life cycles, their periods of rest and activity,
and their birth and death. After a period of activity, referred to
sometimes as one of causes, there is a corresponding period of inactivity,
of rest, which is one of effects. These effects are then assimilated
and resolved, but in that state no new cause can be originated. Likewise
with man: a devachanee in his world of effects cannot, for instance,
affect what goes on in our world of causative activity. The balancing
effects of all causes must be worked out on the plane on which they
were generated. There is no punishment as such after death; the retributive
effects of our sins on earth are visited on us there, not in the after
life.
-oOo-
From here on the extraordinary story of what happens when we die
is told in the multitude of extracts from the source books, giving
us an impressive outline of the ancient but ageless wisdom of which
the knowledge of the after-death states is but a part.
INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION
"From the moment when the foetal
embryo is formed until the old man, gasping
his last, drops into the grave,
neither the beginning
nor the end is understood by scholastic
science; all before us is a blank, all after
us chaos. For it there is no evidence
as to the
relations between spirit, soul and body,
either before or after death. The mere life-principle
itself presents an
unsolvable enigma, upon
the study of which materialism has vainly
exhausted its intellectual powers. In the
presence of a corpse the skeptical
physiologist stands
dumb when asked by his pupil whence came
the former tenant of that empty box, and
whither it has gone. The pupil must
either, like his
master, rest satisfied with the explanation
that protoplasm made the man, and force vitalized
and will now consume his
body, or he must
go outside the walls of his college and
the books of its library to find an explanation
of the mystery."
(ISIS I, 336)
-oOo-
The main source of information we have as to what happens after death
is The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett and the voluminous writings
of H.P. Blavatsky, a pupil of one of the Mahatmas.
The Mahatma Letters are a series of letters
written between 1880 and 1885 to A.P.
Sinnett, a journalist and author.
The letters are
now kept in the British Library. Who were
these Mahatmas? They are reported to
be members of a Brotherhood of Initiates
into the Mysteries.
In these Mysteries were taught some of
the secrets of the
grand cosmic process and man's part in
it, and they were a vehicle for conveying,
from age to age, a knowledge of the inner
workings of Nature.
To become heir to this knowledge requires
an intellect of the highest calibre,
the greatest purity of life, an unblemished
character, an ardent desire to be of
effective service to humanity,
and an indomitable will. Very
few attain these qualifications but tradition
has it that there has been a continuous
line of such men from time
immemorial. Their knowledge
and strength of character give them access
to power in an exceptional degree. This
is not only over the inherent
powers of Nature but in
the inner psychological realms, where they
can operate in full self-consciousness.
It is in this way that they
can know of the processes we
all go through
in those inner realms of being after death.
They get this knowledge directly, by
a direct spiritual perception (of
a different order altogether
from clairvoyance) and not through any
intermediary such as a spiritualistic
medium.
Their account of what happens when we die had not been made public,
in plain language nor in such detail, before it was given to Sinnett
in those letters. The letters were not published until 1924, but Sinnett
had earlier written an account of the post mortem states from the
information given in the letters, in his book Esoteric Buddhism.
The common belief is that as no man has ever
returned from the other side of death
to tell us what it is like, we
therefore cannot know.
The spiritualists have given us accounts
from "spirits",
assumed to know since they are 'there', but as we shall see, not only
are their accounts contradictory and inconsistent between themselves,
but also the reliability of the 'spiritual' informants is questionable
for very good reasons. The Mahatmas, living, highly trained men in
full possession of all their faculties - and those developed to a
quite extraordinary degree - are the 'authority' for what is written
here. The "spirits" on the other hand are entities of quite
another much lower order altogether and
cannot have, or
have become acquainted with any knowledge
they did not
possess before they died.
To understand the after-death processes we must have knowledge of
the complex nature of man. He is not to be regarded merely as a physical
being, alive on earth, maybe having a soul, or even both a soul and
spirit. The teaching is that he is essentially a spiritual entity,
who during life operates at various levels of being: the spiritual,
mental, emotional and physical. He is said to be constituted of seven
aspects or principles, grouped to correspond with those levels. By
means of these principles he has 'being' at each level and, depending
on his evolutionary development, he is able to operate more or less
consciously on those levels.
No doubt the idea of Mahatmas in the sense used here and of this
sevenfold constitution of man will be strange to most readers. The
idea of the evolutionary unfoldment of faculties will perhaps appear
less strange, but in the teaching that idea is extended to include
a long term psychological and spiritual development far beyond what
could normally be envisaged. This is supplementary to the commonly
accepted view of evolution which is all at physical level by way of
the survival of the fittest.
The Mahatmas are men who have 'evolved' in this way. Their ability
consciously to operate on the various levels of being by the development
of their inner principles is a result of evolutionary process. In
this way we all, in time, may become Mahatmas, but we cannot do this
in one lifetime. The teaching tells of this progressive development
through a long series of lives, each of which is a link in a causative
chain joined both to its predecessors and successors by way of its
inner, non-physical principles, i.e. its soul and spiritual aspects.
During our stay on earth we pass from infancy, adolescence, maturity,
old age, to eventual death. The questions now are: what is reborn;
what can constitute another life; what connects it to past and future
lives?
The teaching is that the processes of Nature, indeed of the whole
Universe, are cyclical, like the round of the seasons: a coming and
going which applies to everything including every man and all that
comprises him, physically or internally. Behind this coming and going,
however, it is postulated that there is always a self-existent something
- THAT which always IS. When we are thinking of an active Universe,
THAT is regarded as the One Life. This One Life is as a flame at which
innumerable candles can be lit. The essential, spiritual inner nature
of every thing and being, including men, is as one of these candle
flames. This is the indispensable spiritual essence of everything
- identical with the One Life. It becomes temporarily a separate life
in a sea of other lives during, say, the life of our globe earth.
This one 'Life' needs vehicles in which to operate, to become effective,
at the various levels of being. In man it is these vehicles which
are referred to as his principles. The three uppermost of these, the
most spiritual, form a threefold entity, a triad, the spiritual Ego
of the man, known also as the INDIVIDUALITY.
The principles are conventionally as follows: Spirit; the Vehicle
of Spirit; and Mind; this last seen as having two aspects, higher
and lower. The higher is associated with the two spiritual principles
above it. This triad is virtually an immortal, divine entity. It is
this which manifests periodically in successive PERSONALITIES. Each
personality is composed of the four lower principles. These are: the
Physical Body; a Vehicle for 'life' energies, the life force; the
Life Force itself, vitality; and an emotional, passional desire Vehicle.
This vehicle is closely associated with the lower aspect of Mind.
For convenient reference these principles are numbered one to seven,
the physical body being number one and Spirit, the highest, number
seven.
As said, Mind (in Sanskrit: Manas), the fifth principle, is regarded
as dual, having two aspects, although it is always one single principle.
The upper or higher aspect is always closely associated with the 6th
principle (in Sanskrit: Buddhi), forming a dual combination (Buddhi-Manas).
The lower aspect associates with the fourth principle (in Sanskrit:
Kama), forming a duad, Kama-Manas. This mento-emotional complex, the
middle duad, so called, is the man's soul or psyche and we shall see
that it is mortal, whereas the spiritual Ego is virtually immortal.
For clarity man's principles are set out in Table A at the end of
this section.
There is a 'bridge' between the upper and lower aspects
of Manas, forming a connection, at mind level, between
the temporary or mortal
soul and the persisting Individuality or Ego. Lastly the
three lower principles, referred to sometimes as the
lower triad, are the Physical
Body, the Life Force (Prana) and its vehicle (Linga Sarira).
The middle duad and the lower triad constitute the man's
Personality, as opposed
to his Individuality. The distinction between these two
is important and must be kept in mind otherwise confusions
can arise. For example,
it is never (or nearly so) the personality which reincarnates.
In considering reincarnation which is inseparable from the after-death
processes, there is a link between one personality and the next. This
link is two-fold: on the one hand there is the persisting spiritual
Ego, and on the other, some 'tendencies' (formed during previous lives)
of a psycho-mental nature, but they can also have an effect on the
physical body of the next personality. These tendencies, referred
to as skandhas, are, so to speak, a residue of previous personal lives,
distilled out in the after-death processes. They determine the character
of the next personality, both psychically and, to some extent, physically.
This classification and numbering of man's principles is used consistently
throughout the original classical theosophical literature. Other classifications,
with resulting confusions, were introduced later. The account of the
after-death states and processes given here can only be understood
in terms of this original nomenclature and numeration.
The 'processes' of the after-life as they relate to man reflect the
greater cosmic ones pertaining not only to worlds, but also analogously
to galaxies of universes themselves. All the processes are within
the operation of universal Law which operates throughout and at all
levels of being. This overall Law (Karma) ensures the origination
or coming into manifest being, of everything in its proper season.
It also ensures its survival, by way of intelligent regulation, and
its eventual demise after it has fulfilled its programme of development.
This latter as applying to worlds, for example, is effected by innumerable
streams of life in an infinity of forms. In this programme on our
earth mankind plays a central, key role.
The account given here of what happens after death is complicated.
Without some framework, an overall pattern of successive happenings,
it would be difficult to fit the numerous items of information into
the whole picture. It is hoped that taken together the Sections will
give such an outline, so as to give shape to the whole panorama. There
is a degree of overlap between the Sections. Some of the Mahatma Letters
are long, covering more than one aspect of the subject. Occasionally
the longer letters have been split up and their contents allocated
to appropriate Sections. Two of these letters have been reproduced
entire in the Appendix so that the relationship of a paragraph to
the others can be seen.
INTRODUCTORY
INFORMATION
"From
the moment when the foetal embryo is
formed until the old man, gasping his
last, drops into the grave, neither
the beginning nor the end is understood
by scholastic science; all before us
is a blank, all after us chaos.
For it there is no evidence as to the
relations between spirit, soul and body,
either before or after death.
The mere life-principle itself presents
an unsolvable enigma, upon the study
of which materialism has vainly
exhausted its intellectual powers. In
the presence of a corpse the skeptical
physiologist stands dumb when
asked by his pupil whence came the former
tenant of that empty box, and whither
it has gone. The pupil must either,
like his master, rest satisfied with
the explanation that protoplasm made
the man, and force vitalized and
will now consume his body, or he must
go outside the walls of his college and
the books of its library to
find an explanation of the mystery."
(ISIS
I, 336)
-oOo-
The main source of information we
have as to what happens after death is The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett and the voluminous writings of H.P. Blavatsky,
a pupil of one of the Mahatmas.
The Mahatma Letters are a series of
letters written between 1880 and 1885 to
A.P. Sinnett, a journalist and author.
The letters are now kept in the British
Library. Who were these Mahatmas? They
are reported to be members of a Brotherhood
of Initiates into the Mysteries. In these
Mysteries were taught some of the secrets
of the grand cosmic process and man's part
in it, and they were a vehicle for conveying,
from age to age, a knowledge of the inner
workings of Nature. To become heir to this
knowledge requires an intellect of the
highest calibre, the greatest purity of
life, an unblemished character, an ardent
desire to be of effective service to humanity,
and an indomitable will. Very few attain
these qualifications but tradition has
it that there has been a continuous line
of such men from time immemorial. Their
knowledge and strength of character give
them access to power in an exceptional
degree. This is not only over the inherent
powers of Nature but in the inner psychological
realms, where they can operate in full
self-consciousness. It is in this way that
they can know of the processes we all go
through in those inner realms of being
after death. They get this knowledge directly,
by a direct spiritual perception (of a
different order altogether from clairvoyance)
and not through any intermediary such as
a spiritualistic medium.
Their account of what happens when
we die had not been made public, in plain
language nor in such detail, before it
was given to Sinnett in those letters.
The letters were not published until 1924,
but Sinnett had earlier written an account
of the post mortem states from the information
given in the letters, in his book Esoteric Buddhism.
The common belief is that as no man
has ever returned from the other side of
death to tell us what it is like, we therefore
cannot know. The spiritualists have given
us accounts from "spirits", assumed to know since they are 'there',
but as we shall see, not only are their
accounts contradictory and inconsistent
between themselves, but also the reliability
of the 'spiritual' informants is questionable
for very good reasons. The Mahatmas, living,
highly trained men in full possession of
all their faculties - and those developed
to a quite extraordinary degree - are the
'authority' for what is written here. The "spirits" on the other hand are entities of quite
another much lower order altogether and
cannot have, or have become acquainted
with any knowledge they did not possess
before they died.
To understand the after-death processes
we must have knowledge of the complex nature
of man. He is not to be regarded merely
as a physical being, alive on earth, maybe
having a soul, or even both a soul and
spirit. The teaching is that he is essentially
a spiritual entity, who during life operates
at various levels of being: the spiritual,
mental, emotional and physical. He is said
to be constituted of seven aspects or principles,
grouped to correspond with those levels.
By means of these principles he has 'being'
at each level and, depending on his evolutionary
development, he is able to operate more
or less consciously on those levels.
No doubt the idea of Mahatmas in the
sense used here and of this sevenfold constitution
of man will be strange to most readers.
The idea of the evolutionary unfoldment
of faculties will perhaps appear less strange,
but in the teaching that idea is extended
to include a long term psychological and
spiritual development far beyond what could
normally be envisaged. This is supplementary
to the commonly accepted view of evolution
which is all at physical level by way of the survival of the fittest.
The Mahatmas are men who have 'evolved'
in this way. Their ability consciously
to operate on the various levels of being
by the development of their inner principles
is a result of evolutionary process. In
this way we all, in time, may become Mahatmas,
but we cannot do this in one lifetime.
The teaching tells of this progressive
development through a long series of lives,
each of which is a link in a causative
chain joined both to its predecessors and
successors by way of its inner, non-physical
principles, i.e. its soul and spiritual
aspects.
During our stay on earth we pass from
infancy, adolescence, maturity, old age,
to eventual death. The questions now are:
what is reborn; what can constitute another
life; what connects it to past and future
lives?
The teaching is that the processes
of Nature, indeed of the whole Universe,
are cyclical, like the round of the seasons:
a coming and going which applies to everything
including every man and all that comprises
him, physically or internally. Behind this
coming and going, however, it is postulated
that there is always a self-existent something
- THAT which always IS. When we are thinking of an active Universe,
THAT is regarded as the One Life. This
One Life is as a flame at which innumerable
candles can be lit. The essential, spiritual
inner nature of every thing and being,
including men, is as one of these candle
flames. This is the indispensable spiritual
essence of everything - identical with
the One Life. It becomes temporarily a
separate life in a sea of other lives during,
say, the life of our globe earth.
This one 'Life' needs vehicles in
which to operate, to become effective,
at the various levels of being. In man
it is these vehicles which are referred
to as his principles. The three uppermost
of these, the most spiritual, form a threefold
entity, a triad, the spiritual Ego of the
man, known also as the INDIVIDUALITY.
The principles are conventionally
as follows: Spirit; the Vehicle of Spirit;
and Mind; this last seen as having two
aspects, higher and lower. The higher is
associated with the two spiritual principles
above it. This triad is virtually an immortal,
divine entity. It is this which manifests
periodically in successive PERSONALITIES.
Each personality is composed of the four
lower principles. These are: the Physical
Body; a Vehicle for 'life' energies, the
life force; the Life Force itself, vitality;
and an emotional, passional desire Vehicle.
This vehicle is closely associated with
the lower aspect of Mind. For convenient
reference these principles are numbered
one to seven, the physical body being number
one and Spirit, the highest, number seven.
As said, Mind (in Sanskrit: Manas),
the fifth principle, is regarded as dual,
having two aspects, although it is always
one single principle. The upper or higher
aspect is always closely associated with
the 6th principle (in Sanskrit: Buddhi),
forming a dual combination (Buddhi-Manas).
The lower aspect associates with the fourth
principle (in Sanskrit: Kama), forming
a duad, Kama-Manas. This mento-emotional
complex, the middle duad, so called, is
the man's soul or psyche and we shall see that it is mortal,
whereas the spiritual Ego is virtually
immortal.
For clarity man's principles are set
out in Table A at the end of this section.
There is a 'bridge' between the upper
and lower aspects of Manas, forming a connection,
at mind level, between the temporary or
mortal soul and the persisting Individuality
or Ego. Lastly the three lower principles,
referred to sometimes as the lower triad,
are the Physical Body, the Life Force (Prana)
and its vehicle (Linga Sarira). The middle
duad and the lower triad constitute the
man's Personality, as opposed to his Individuality. The distinction
between these two is important and must
be kept in mind otherwise confusions can
arise. For example, it is never (or nearly
so) the personality which reincarnates.
In considering reincarnation which
is inseparable from the after-death processes,
there is a link between one personality
and the next. This link is two-fold: on
the one hand there is the persisting spiritual
Ego, and on the other, some 'tendencies'
(formed during previous lives) of a psycho-mental
nature, but they can also have an effect
on the physical body of the next personality.
These tendencies, referred to as skandhas, are, so to speak, a residue of previous
personal lives, distilled out in the after-death
processes. They determine the character
of the next personality, both psychically
and, to some extent, physically.
This classification and numbering
of man's principles is used consistently
throughout the original classical theosophical
literature. Other classifications, with
resulting confusions, were introduced later.
The account of the after-death states and
processes given here can only be understood
in terms of this original nomenclature
and numeration.
The 'processes' of the after-life
as they relate to man reflect the greater
cosmic ones pertaining not only to worlds,
but also analogously to galaxies of universes
themselves. All the processes are within
the operation of universal Law which operates
throughout and at all levels of being.
This overall Law (Karma) ensures the origination
or coming into manifest being, of everything
in its proper season. It also ensures its
survival, by way of intelligent regulation,
and its eventual demise after it has fulfilled
its programme of development. This latter
as applying to worlds, for example, is
effected by innumerable streams of life
in an infinity of forms. In this programme
on our earth mankind plays a central, key
role.
The account given here of what happens
after death is complicated. Without some
framework, an overall pattern of successive
happenings, it would be difficult to fit
the numerous items of information into
the whole picture. It is hoped that taken
together the Sections will give such an
outline, so as to give shape to the whole
panorama. There is a degree of overlap
between the Sections. Some of the Mahatma
Letters are long, covering more than one
aspect of the subject. Occasionally the
longer letters have been split up and their
contents allocated to appropriate Sections.
Two of these letters have been reproduced
entire in the Appendix so that the relationship
of a paragraph to the others can be seen.
KEY to the Book-title Abbreviations :-
KEY =
The Key to Theosophy
CW =
The Collected Writings of H.P. Blavatsky
(de Zirkov)
SD =
The Secret Doctrine
ISIS =
Isis Unveiled
ML =
The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett
EST =
Esoteric School of Theosophy - Instructions
EWS =
Esoteric Writings of Subba Rao
Note:
The page numbers of The
Secret Doctrine and The Key to Theosophy are those of the original editions.
The page numbers of The Mahatma Letters are 3rd Edition
followed by 2nd Edition.
TABLE
A
MAN’S
PRINCIPLES
|
Name
|
|
Groupings
|
English
|
Sanskrit
|
No.
|
Spirit
|
Atma
|
7
|
Ego or
Individuality
|
Ego or
Upper Triad
|
Spirit or
Monad
|
Vehicle
of Spirit
|
Buddhi
|
6
|
Mind
Upper
|
Manas
|
5
|
Human Soul
|
Lower
|
|
Personality
|
Middle Duad
|
Psyche or
Animal Soul
|
Vehicle
of Emotions etc.
|
Kama
|
4
|
Life
Force
|
Prana
|
3
|
Lower Triad
|
Vehicle
of
Life Force
|
Linga Sarira
|
2
|
Physical
Body
|
Sthula Sarira
|
1
|
SECTION I
THE
CONSTITUTION OF MAN
Key
90 Theo: Believing in seven planes of Kosmic being and
states of Consciousness, with regard to the Universe
or the Macrocosm, we stop at the fourth plane, finding
it impossible to go with any degree of certainty beyond.
But with respect to the Microcosm, or man, we speculate
freely on his seven states and principles.
Enq:
How do you explain these?
Theo:
We find, first of all, two distinct beings
in man; the spiritual and the physical,
the man who thinks, and the
man who records as much of these thoughts
as he is able to assimilate. Therefore
we divide him into two distinct
natures; the upper or the spiritual being,
composed of three "principles" or aspects; and the lower of the physical quaternary, composed of four - in all seven.
Key
91 THEOSOPHICAL DIVISION
THEOSOPHICAL
DIVISION
Sanskrit
Terms
|
Esoteric Meaning
|
Explanatory
|
LOWER
QUATERNARY – (Principles a to d)
|
(a)
Rupa, or Sthula-sarira
|
(a) Physical body
|
(a) Is the vehicle of all the other “principles” during life.
|
(b)
Prana
|
(b) Life, or Vital Principle
|
(b) Necessary only to a, c, d, and the functions of the lower Manas, which embrace all those limited to the (physical) brain.
|
(c)
Linga-sarira
|
(c) Astral Body
|
(c) The Double, the phantom body.
|
(d)
Kama-rupa
|
(d) The seat of animal desires and passions
|
(d) This is the centre of the animal man, where lies the
lines of demarcation which separates the mortal
man from the immortal entity.
|
UPPER
IMPERISHABLE TRIAD – (Principles e to g)
|
(e) Manas – a
dual principle in its functions
|
(e) Mind, intelligence: which is the higher human mind, whose
light or radiation links the MONAD, for the lifetime
to the mortal man.
|
(e) The future state and the Karmic destiny of man depend
on whether Manas gravitates more downward to
Kama rupa, the seat of the animal passions, or
upwards to Buddhi, the Spiritual Ego. In the latter case, the higher consciousness
of the individual Spiritual aspirations of mind (Manas), assimilating Buddhi, are absorbed by it and form
the Ego, which goes into Devachanic bliss.
|
(f)
Buddhi
|
(f) The Spiritual Soul
|
(f) The vehicle of pure universal spirit.
|
(g)
Atma
|
(g) Spirit
|
(g) One with the Absolute, as its radiation.
|
Key
98 Theo: Here you have our doctrine, which shows man
a Septenary during life; a quintile [counting Manas as two] just after death, in Kama-Loka;
and a threefold Ego, Spirit Soul, and consciousness in
Devachan ... [Then follows a colourful description in
Plutarch's words of the post mortem processes until the
Ego reaches Devachan.]
Key
100 Theo: Do not imagine that because man is called septenary,
then quintuple and triad, he is a compound of seven, five
or three entities; ... The "principles", as already said, save the body, the life,
and the astral eidolon, all of which disperse at death, are simply aspects and states of consciousness. There is but one real man, enduring through the cycle of life and immortal in
essence, if not in form, and this is Manas, the Mind-man or embodied Consciousness ... Are you acquainted with all the states of matter, you who hitherto knew but three? And how do you know whether
that which we refer to as ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS or Deity
for ever invisible and unknowable be not that which,
though it eludes for ever our human finite conception, is still universal Spirit-matter or matter-Spirit in its absolute finitude?. It is then one of the lowest, and in its manvantaric manifestations fractioned - aspects of this Spirit-matter, which is the conscious Ego that creates its own paradise, a fool's paradise, it may
be, still a state of bliss.
Enq:
But what is Devachan?
Theo:
The "land of gods" literally; a condition, a state of mental
bliss. Philosophically a mental condition
analogous to, but far more vivid and
real than, the most vivid dream. It is
the state after death of most mortals.
Key
118 Theo: Just the same, we could easily make
of the body the vehicle of the "vital Double"; of the latter the vehicle of Life or Prana: of Kama-rupa or (animal) soul, the vehicle of the higher and the lower mind, and make of this six principles, crowning the whole
with the one immortal spirit. In Occultism every qualificative
change in the state of our consciousness gives to man
a new aspect, and if it prevails and becomes part of
the living and acting Ego, it must be (and is) given
a special name, to distinguish the man in that particular
state from the man he is when he places himself in another
state.
Enq:
It is just that which it is so difficult to understand.
Theo:
It seems to me very easy, on the contrary, once that
you have seized the main idea, i.e., that man acts on
this or another plane of consciousness, in strict accordance
with his mental and spiritual condition. But such is
the materialism of the age that the more we explain the
less people seem capable of understanding what we say.
Divide the terrestrial being called man into three chief
aspects, if you like, and unless you make of him a pure
animal you cannot do less. Take his objective body; the thinking principle in him - which is only a little
higher than the instinctual element in the animal - or the vital conscious soul; and
that which places him so immeasurably beyond and higher
than the animal - i.e., his reasoning soul or "spirit". Well, if we take these three groups or
representative entities, and subdivide
them according to the occult teaching,
what do we get?
First
of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute,
and therefore, indivisible ALL), or Atma.
As this can neither be located
nor limited in philosophy, being simply
that which is in Eternity, and which cannot
be absent from even the
tiniest geometrical or mathematical point
of the universe of matter or substance,
it ought not to be called, in
truth, a "human" principle at all. Rather, and at best, it
is in Metaphysics that point in space
which the human Monad and its vehicle
man occupy for the period of every life.
Now that point
is as imaginary as man himself, and in
reality is an illusion, a maya; but then for ourselves, as for other personal Egos, we
are a reality during that fit of illusion called life,
and we have to take ourselves into account, in our own
fancy at any rate, if no one else does ... Occultism
calls this seventh principle the synthesis of the sixth, and gives it for vehicle
the Spiritual Soul, Buddhi ... In conjunction, these two [Atma and Buddhi] are one,
impersonal and without any attributes (on this plane,
of course), and make two spiritual principles. If we
pass on to the Human Soul, Manas or mens, every one will agree that the intelligence of man is dual to say the least: e.g. the high-minded man can hardly become low-minded; the very
intellectual and spiritual-minded man is separated by
an abyss from the obtuse, dull, and material, if not
animal-minded man.
Enq:
But why should not man be represented by two principles
or two aspects, rather?
Theo:
Every man has these two principles in him, one more active
than the other, and in rare cases one of these is entirely
stunted in its growth, so to say, or paralysed by the
strength and predominance of the other aspect, in whatever direction. These, then, are what we call the
two principles or aspects of Manas, the higher Manas, or the thinking conscious Ego gravitating
towards the spiritual Soul (Buddhi); and the latter,
or its instinctual principle, attracted to Kama, the seat of animal desires and passions in man. Thus we
have four principles justified; the last three being
(1) the "Double", which we have agreed to call Protean, or
Plastic Soul; the vehicle of (2) the
life principle; and (3) the physical body ...
Enq:
But what is it that reincarnates, in your belief?
Theo:
The Spiritual thinking Ego, the permanent principle in
man, or that which is the seat of Manas. It is not Atma, or even Atma-Buddhi, regarded as the dual Monad, which is the individual, or divine man, but Manas; for Atman is the Universal ALL, and becomes
the HIGHER-SELF of man only in conjunction with Buddhi, its vehicle, which links IT to the individuality (or divine
man). For it is the Buddhi-Manas which is called the Causal body (the United 5th and 6th Principles), and which is Consciousness that connects it with every personality it inhabits on earth.
Therefore, Soul being a generic term, there are in men
three aspects of Soul - the terrestrial, or animal; the Human Soul; and
the Spiritual Soul; these, strictly speaking, are one
Soul in its three aspects. Now of the first aspect nothing
remains after death; of the second (nous or Manas) only its divine essence if left unsoiled survives, while the third in addition to being immortal
becomes consciously divine, by the assimilation of the higher Manas.
Key
134 Enq: But what is the difference between the two?
[Individuality and Personality] I confess that I am still
in the dark. Indeed it is just that difference, then,
that you cannot impress too much on our minds.
Key
135 Theo: To understand the idea well, you have to first
study the dual sets of principles: the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego; and the material, or those principles which make up the ever-changing bodies
or the series of personalities of that Ego. Let us fix
permanent names to these, and say that:
I. Atma,
the "Higher Self," is neither your spirit nor mine, but like
sunlight shines on all. It is the universally
diffused "divine principle," and is inseparable from its one and absolute Meta-Spirit, as the sunbeam is inseparable from sunlight.
II. Buddhi (the
spiritual soul) is only its vehicle. Neither each separately,
nor the two collectively, are of any more use to the
body of man than sunlight and its beams are for a mass
of granite buried in the earth, unless the divine Duad is assimilated by, and reflected in, some consciousness. Neither Atma nor Buddhi are ever reached by Karma, because
the former is the highest aspect of Karma, its working agent of ITSELF in one aspect, and the other is unconscious on this plane. This consciousness or mind is,
III. Manas,
the derivation or product in a reflected form of Ahamkara, "the conception of I," or EGO-SHIP. It is, therefore, when inseparably
united to the first two, called the SPIRITUAL
EGO, and Taijasa (the radiant). This is the real Individuality, or the divine
man. It is this Ego which - having originally incarnated
in the senseless human form animated by, but unconscious (since it had no
consciousness) of, the presence in itself of the dual
monad - made of that human-like form a real man. It is that Ego, that "Causal Body", which overshadows every personality Karma
forces it to incarnate into: and this
Ego which is held responsible
for all the sins committed through, and
in, every new body or personality - the
evanescent masks which hide
the true Individual through the long
series of rebirths.
Key
135 Footnote: MAHAT or the "Universal Mind" is the source of Manas. The latter is Mahat i.e., mind,
in man. Manas is ... "embodied Spirit" ... It is Manas, therefore, which is the
real incarnating and permanent Spiritual Ego, the INDIVIDUALITY, and our various and
numberless personalities only its external
masks. [This note makes reference also
to "Manasa-putras, third Race, our Round", not directly relevant to the after-death
story at this stage.]
Key
175 Theo: To avoid henceforth such misapprehensions [concerning
Higher Self, Ego, etc.], I propose to translate literally
from the Occult Eastern terms their equivalents in English,
and offer these for future use.
THE
HIGHER SELF is Atma, the inseparable ray of the Universal
and ONE SELF. It is the God above, more than within, us. Happy the man who succeeds in saturating
his inner Ego with it!
THE
SPIRITUAL divine EGO is the Spiritual soul or Buddhi, in close union with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no EGO at all,
but only the Atmic Vehicle.
THE
INNER or HIGHER EGO is Manas, the "Fifth" Principle, so called, independently of Buddhi.
The Mind-Principle is only the Spiritual
Ego when merged into one with Buddhi - no materialist being supposed to have in him such an Ego, however great his intellectual capacities. It is
the permanent Individuality or the "Reincarnating Ego."
THE
LOWER or PERSONAL EGO is the physical man in conjunction
with his lower Self, i.e. animal instincts, passions, desires,
etc. It is called the "false personality", and consists of the lower Manas combined with Kama-rupa, and operating through
the Physical body and its phantom or "double".
The
remaining Principle "Prana", or "Life", is, strictly speaking, the radiating force or Energy of
Atma - as the Universal Life and the ONE SELF - ITS lower
or rather (in its effects) more physical, because manifesting,
aspect. Prana or Life permeates the whole being of the
objective Universe; and is called a "principle" only because it is an indispensable factor
and the deus ex machina of the living man.
Key
183 Enq: But you wanted to tell me something of the essential
nature of Manas, and of the relation in which the Skandhas
of physical man stand to it?
Theo:
It is this nature, mysterious, Protean,
beyond any grasp, and almost shadowy in
its correlations with the other
principles, that is most difficult to
realize, and still more so to explain.
Manas is a principle, and yet it
is an Entity and individuality or Ego.
He is a "God", and yet he is doomed to an endless cycle
of incarnations, and for each of which
he has to suffer. All this seems
as contradictory as it is puzzling; nevertheless,
there are hundreds of people, even in Europe,
who realize all
this perfectly, for they comprehend the
Ego not only in its integrity but in its
many aspects. Finally, if
I would make myself comprehensible, I
must begin at the beginning and give you
the genealogy of this Ego in a
few lines.
Enq:
Say on.
Theo:
Try to imagine a "Spirit", a celestial Being, whether we call it by
one name or another, divine in its essential
nature, yet not pure enough to
be one with the ALL, and having, in order to achieve this, to so purify
its nature as to finally gain that goal. It can do so
only by passing individually and personally, i.e., spiritually and physically, through every experience and
feeling that exists in the manifold or differentiated
Universe. It has, therefore, after having gained such
experience in the lower kingdoms, and having ascended
higher and still higher with every rung on the ladder
of being, to pass through every experience on the human
planes. In its very essence it is THOUGHT, and is, therefore,
called in its plurality Manasa-putras, "the Sons of the (Universal) mind". This individualized "Thought" is what we Theosophists call the real human EGO, the thinking Entity imprisoned in a case of flesh
and bones. This is surely a Spiritual Entity, not Matter, and such Entities are the incarnating EGOS that inform
the bundle of animal matter called mankind, and whose
names are Manasa or "Minds". But once imprisoned, or incarnate, their
essence becomes dual: that is to say,
the rays of the eternal divine Mind, considered as individual entities,
assume a twofold attribute which is (a) their essential inherent characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher Manas), and (b) the human quality of thinking, or animal cogitation,
rationalized owing to the superiority of the human brain,
the Kama-tending or lower Manas. One gravitates towards Buddhi, the
other, tending downwards, to the seat of passions and
animal desires. The latter have no room in Devachan,
nor can they associate with the divine triad which ascends
as ONE into mental bliss. Yet it is the Ego, the Manasic
Entity, which is held responsible for all the sins of
the lower attributes, just as a parent is answerable
for the transgressions of his child so long as the latter
remains irresponsible.
Enq:
Is this "child" the personality?
Theo:
It is. When, therefore, it is stated that the personality
dies with the body it does not state all. The body, which
was only the objective symbol of Mr A. or Mrs B. fades
away with all its material Skandhas, which are the visible
expressions thereof. But all that which constituted during
life the spiritual bundle of experiences, the noblest aspiration, undying affections,
and unselfish nature of Mr A or Mrs B., clings for the time of the Devachanic
period to the EGO, which is identified with the spiritual
portion of that terrestrial Entity, now passed away out
of sight. The ACTOR is so imbued with the role just played by him that he dreams of it during the whole
Devachanic night, which vision continues till the hour strikes for him to return to the
stage of life to enact another part.
CW
I, 331 In the grain of sand, and each atom of the human
material body, the spirit is latent, not active; hence, being but a correlation
of the highest light, something concrete
as compared with the purely
abstract, the atom is vitalized and energized
by spirit, without being endowed with
distinct consciousness. A
grain of sand, as every minutest atom,
is certainly "imbued with that vital principle called spirit". So is every atom of the human body, whether
physical or astral, and thus every atom
of both, following the law
of evolution, whether of objective or
semi-concrete astral matter, will have
to remain eternal throughout the endless
cycles, indestructible in their primary,
elementary constituents
...
Our
opponents repeat the words Trinity, Body, Soul, Spirit,
as they might say the cat, the house and the Irishman
inhabiting it - three perfectly dissimilar things. They
do not see that, dissimilar as the three parts of the
human trinity may seem, they are in truth but correlations
of the one eternal essence - which is no essence; but
unfortunately the English language is barren of adequate
expression, and, though they do not see it, the house,
the physical Irishman, and the cat are, in their last
analysis, one.
CW
IV, 53 ... the Linga-Sarira "... is the subtile, ethereal element of the ego of an organism [whether human or animal
or vegetable]; inseparably united to
... the latter; it never leaves it but
at death". And if so, how could the "astral body" of man, if we call it Linga-Sarira, leave him during his lifetime and appear
as his double, as we know, is repeatedly
the case with mediums and other
peculiarly endowed persons? The answer
is simple; that which appears, or the "double", is called Mayavi-Rupa (illusionary form) when acting blindly; and - Kama-Rupa, "will" or "desire-form" when compelled into an objective shape by
the conscious will and desire of its
possessor. The Jivatma (vital principle) and Linga-Sarira (Sex-body) are inner principles; while the Mayavi-Rupa is the outside soul so to say: one which envelops the physical body, as
in a filmy ethereal casing. It is a perfect counterpart
of the man and even of the clothing which he happens
to wear. And this principle is liable to become condensed
into opacity, compelled to it, either by the law of intermagnetic
action, or by the potentiality of Yoga-ballu or "adept-power".
Thus,
the "Linga-Sarira" is "dissolved with the external body at the death of the latter". It dissolves slowly and gradually, its adhesion to the
body becoming weaker, as the particles disintegrate.
During the process of decay, it may, on sultry nights,
be sometimes seen over the grave. Owing to the dry and
electric atmosphere it manifests itself and stands as
a bluish flame, often as a luminous pillar, of "odyle", bearing a more or less vague resemblance
to the outward form of the body laid
under the sod. Popular superstition,
ignorant of the nature of these post-mortem gaseous emanations, mistakes them for the
presence of the "suffering" soul, the personal spirit of the deceased, hovering over his body's tomb. Yet, when
the work of destruction has been completed, and nature
has broken entirely the cohesion of corporeal particles,
the Linga-Sarira is dispersed with the body of which it was but an emanation.
CW
IV, 184 It is sufficient to .. ponder over the septenary
constitution of man into which the triple
human entity is divided by the occultists,
to perceive that the "astral" monad is not the "Spiritual" monad and vice versa. .. we say again that "Reincarnation", i.e., the appearance of the same individual, or rather, of the astral monad [or the personality as claimed by the modern Reincarnationists],
twice on the same planet, is not a rule
in nature" and that "it is an exception". Let us try once more to explain our meaning. The reviewer
speaks of the "spiritual Individuality" or the Immortal Monad as it is called, i.e., the seventh and sixth Principles .. In Isis we refer to the personality or the finite astral monad, a compound of imponderable elements composed
of the fifth and fourth principles. The former as an
emanation of the ONE absolute is indestructible; the
latter as an elementary compound is finite and doomed
sooner or later to destruction with the exception of
the more spiritualized portions of the fifth principle
(the Manas or mind) which are assimilated by the sixth
principle when it follows the seventh
to its "gestation" state" to be reborn or not reborn, as the case
may be, in the Arupa Loka (the Formless World). The seven principles, forming, so
to say, a triad and a quaternary, or, as some have it a "Compound Trinity", subdivided into a triad and two duads,
may be better understood in the following
groups of Principles:
GROUP
I
|
SPIRIT
|
7. Atma – “Pure
Spirit”.
6. Buddhi – “Spiritual
Soul or Intelligence”.
|
Spiritual Monad or “Individuality” – and its vehicle. Eternal and indestructible.
|
GROUP
II
|
SOUL
|
5. Manas – “Mind
or Animal Soul”.
4. Kama-Rupa – “Desire” or “Passion” Form.
|
Astral Monad - or the personal Ego and its vehicle.
Survives Group III and is destroyed after a time, unless reincarnated, as said, under exceptional circumstances.
|
GROUP
III
|
BODY
|
3. Linga-sarira – “Astral
or Vital Body”.
2. Jiva – “Life
Principle”.
1. Sthula-sarira – “Body”.
|
Compound Physical, or the “Earthly Ego”. The three die together invariably.
|
CW
V, 49 What are these principles or "Entities" [which constitute a whole man]?
1st
Principle: the physical body which decomposes and disappears.
2nd
Principle: LIFE or rather the vital ray which animates
us and which is borrowed from the inexhaustible reservoir
of the Universal Life.
3rd
Principle: the astral body, the double or doppelgaenger, the shadow of, or emanation from the physical body, which
disappears when the latter ceases to exist. Every living
being has one, even the beasts; and it is called illusory
because it has no material consistence, properly speaking,
and cannot last ...
4th
Principle: the will which directs Principles 1 and 2.
5th
Principle: the human or animal intelligence, or the instinct of the brute.
6th
Principle: the spiritual or divine soul, and the
7th
Principle: the SPIRIT. The last is what the Christians
call Logos, and we - our personal God. We know no other; because the absolute and the One - that is the All - Parabrahm, is an impersonal principle beyond all human
speculation."
CW
XI, 451 ... if indeed the physical brain is of only a
limited area, the field for the containment of rapid
flashes of unlimited and infinite thought, neither will
nor thought can be said to be generated within it, even according to materialistic Science, the impassable
chasm between matter and mind having been confessed both
by Tyndall and many others. The fact is that the human
brain is simply the canal between two planes - the psycho-spiritual
and the material - through which every abstract and metaphysical
idea filters from the Manasic down to the lower human
consciousness. Therefore, the ideas about the infinite
and the absolute are not, nor can they be, within our brain capacities. They can be faithfully
mirrored only by our Spiritual consciousness,
thence to be more or less
faintly projected onto the tables of
our perceptions on this plane. Thus while
the records of even important
events are often obliterated from our
memory, not the most trifling action
of our lives can disappear from
the "Soul's" memory, because it is no MEMORY for it, but an ever present
reality on the plane which lies outside our conceptions
of space and time. "Man is the measure of all things," said Aristotle; and surely he did not mean
by man, the form of flesh, bones and
muscles!
CW
XII, 14 As Shakespeare says of the genius of great
men - what we perceive of his substance "is not here" -
"For
what you see is but the smallest part
And
least proportion of humanity:
I
tell you, madam, were the whole frame here,
It
is of such a spacious lofty pitch
Your
roof were not sufficient to contain
it."
This
is precisely what the Esoteric philosophy
teaches. The flame of genius is lit by
no anthropomorphic hand, save
that of one's own Spirit. It is the very
nature of the Spiritual Entity itself,
of our Ego, which keeps on weaving
new life-woofs into the web of reincarnation
on the loom of time, from the beginnings
to the ends of the great
Life-Cycle. This it is that asserts itself
stronger than in the average man, through
its personality; so that
what we call "the manifestations of genius" in a person, are only the more or less successful
efforts of that EGO to assert itself
on the outward plane of
its objective form - the man of clay
- in the matter-of-fact, daily life of
the latter. The EGOS of a Newton, an
Aeschylus,
or a Shakespeare are, of the same essence
and substance as the Egos of a yokel,
an ignoramus, a fool, or even
an idiot; and the self-assertion of their
informing genii depends on the physiological and material construction of
the physical man. No Ego differs from another Ego, in
its primordial or original essence and nature. That which
makes one mortal a great man and another a vulgar, silly
person is, as said, the quality and makeup of the physical
shell or casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of brain
and body to transmit and give expression to the light
of the real, Inner man; and this aptness or inaptness is, in its turn, the
result of Karma. Or, to use another simile, physical
man is the musical instrument, and the Ego, the performing
artist. The potentiality of perfect melody of sound,
is in the former - the instrument - and no skill of the
latter can awaken a faultless harmony out of a broken
or badly made instrument. This harmony depends on the
fidelity of transmission, by word or act, to the objective
plane, of the unspoken divine thought in the very depths
of man's subjective or inner nature. Physical man may
- to follow our simile - be a priceless Stradivarius,
or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or again a mediocrity
between the two, in the hands of the Paganini who ensouls
him.
CW
XII, 526 .. neither Atman, which is no individual "principle" but a radiation from and one with the Unmanifested Logos; nor the body, which
is the material rind or shell of the
Spiritual Man, can be in strict
truth, referred to as "principles". Moreover the chief "principle" of all, one not even mentioned heretofore, is the "Luminous Egg" (Hiranyagarbha) or the invisible magnetic
sphere in which every man is enveloped.
[Footnote: So are the animals,
the plants and even the minerals. Reichenbach
never understood what he learned through
his sensitives and clairvoyants.
It is the odic, or rather the auric or magnetic fluid which emanates
from man, but it is also something more. It is the direct
emanation: (a) from the Atmic Ray in its triple aspect
of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer (Regenerator); and
(b) from Buddhi-Manas. The seventh aspect of this individual aura is the faculty
of assuming the form of its body and
becoming the "Radiant", the Luminous Augoeides. It is this, strictly speaking,
which at times becomes the form called Mayavi-Rupa. Therefore
as explained in the second face of the diagram (the astral
man), the Spiritual Man consists of only five principles,
as taught by the Vedantins, who substitute tacitly for
the physical this sixth, or Auric Body, and merge the
dual Manas (the dual mind or consciousness) into one.
Thus they speak of five kosas (sheaths or principles),
and call Atman the sixth yet no "principle".
CW
XII, 526 It is this Body which at death assimilates the
essence of Buddhi and Manas and becomes the vehicle of
these spiritual principles, which are not objective, and then with the full radiation of Atman
upon it, ascends as Manas-Taijasa into
the Devachanic state. Therefore,
it is called by many names. It is the
Sutratman, the silver "thread" which "incarnates" from the beginning of Manvantara to the
end, stringing upon itself the pearls
of human existence - in other words,
the spiritual aroma of every personality
it follows through the pilgrimage of life.
CW
XII, 704 THE LINGA-SARIRA. The Linga-Sarira, as often
said before, is the vehicle of Prana, and supports life
in the Body. It is the reservoir or sponge of life, gathering
it up from all the natural kingdoms around, and it is
the intermediary between the kingdoms of Pranic and physical
life. Life cannot pass immediately and directly from
the subjective to the objective, for nature passes gradually
from sphere to sphere, overleaping none. The Linga-Sarira
serves as the intermediary between Prana and Sthula-Sarira,
drawing life from the ocean of Jiva, and pumping it in
the physical Body as Prana. For life is, in reality,
Divinity, Parabrahman, the Universal Deity. But in order
that it may manifest on the physical plane it must be
assimilated to the matter of that plane; this cannot
be done directly, as the purely physical is too gross,
and thus it needs a vehicle - the Linga-Sarira.
The
Linga-Sarira is in a sense the permanent
seed for the Sthula-Sarira of man, and
Weissmann, in his theory of
the hereditary germ, is not far from
the truth. But it would be an error to
say that there is one permanent
seed oversouled by a single Ego in a
series of incarnations. The Linga-Sarira
of one incarnation fades out, as the
Sthula-Sarira to which it belongs rots
out; the Auric Egg furnishes the basis
of the new Linga-Sarira and the
Tanhic Elementals form it within the
Auric Envelope, the continuity being thus
preserved; it lies dormant
in the foetal state, during the Devachan
of the entity to whom it belongs, and enters,
in due course, a woman's
womb. It is first in the womb, and then
comes the germ that fructifies it, from
the male parent. It is the subjective
image of the man that is to be, the model
of the physical body in which the child
is to be formed and developed.
It is then clothed with matter, as were
the Lunar Pitris, and is therefore often called the Chhaya. Up to the age of seven, it forms and moulds the Body;
after that age, the Body forms the Linga-Sarira. The
Mind and the Linga-Sarira mutually act and react on each
other and so is prepared a mould for the next incarnation.
It is the perfect picture of the man, good or bad, according
to his own nature. It cannot therefore be said that there
is one permanent Linga-Sariric seed in the incarnations
of the Ego; it is a perpetual succession of destruction
and reformation, the Manas by the Auric Egg affording
the permanent seed; "it is Heaven and Earth kissing each other".
During
incarnation the germ, or life essence, of the Linga Sarira,
is, as said, in the Spleen; the Chhaya lies curled up
therein. And now let the student escape from much confusion
by distinguishing between the various Astral Bodies and
the true Astral. The Astral, par excellence, the
Second Principle in Man, corresponding to the Second Principle
in Cosmos, is the progeny of the Chhaya of the Lunar Pitris
and the Auric Essence that absorbed it. This is the moulder
of the infant's Body, the model spoken of above. This has
for its physical organ the Spleen, and during incarnation
has its seat there. It affords the basis for all Astral
Bodies, for the Linga-Sarira proper, and the Mayavi-Rupas
used as vehicles for different Principles. Let us then
now call it the Chhaya, in view of its origin. When an
Astral Body is to be formed, the Chhaya evolves a shadowy,
curling or gyrating essence like smoke, which gradually
takes form as it emerges. In order that this essence
may become visible, the Chhaya draws on the surrounding
atmosphere, attracting to itself certain minute particles
floating therein, and so the Linga-Sarira, or other Astral
vehicle is formed outside the physical Body. This process
has often been observed at spiritualistic séances, at
which materialization has occurred. An Esotericist has
seen the Chhaya emerging from Eglinton's left side, and
forming in the way here described.
This
ethereal Body, built outside the Sthula-Sarira, is the
Linga-Sarira, properly so termed; it could not form in vacuo; it is built up temporarily, with the Chhaya as its foundation,
and disperses when the Chhayic foundation is withdrawn
into the Body. This Linga-Sarira is united to the physical
Body by an umbilical cord, a material cord, and cannot
therefore travel very far from it. It may be hurt by
a sharp instrument, and would not face a sword or bayonet,
although it can easily pass through a table or other
piece of furniture. When swords are struck at Shades,
it is the sword itself, not its Linga- Sarira, or Astral
that cuts. Sharp instruments alone can penetrate such
Astrals; thus, under water, a blow with a blunt object
would not affect you so much as a cut would.
CW
XII, 707 KAMA AND KAMA-RUPA. Although the student can
no longer look on Prana as one of the Seven Principles,
since it is the Universal Life, he must not forget that
it vivifies all, as Pranic energy. Every Principle is
a differentiation of Jiva, and the life-motion in each is Prana, "the Breath of Life". It is Nephesh: and Jiva becomes Prana only
when the child is born. Thus Kama depends
on Prana, without which there
would be no Kama. Prana wakes the Kamic
germs to life, and it makes all desires
vital and living.
Prana
is not, it must be remembered, the production
of the countless "lives" that make up the human Body, nor of the congeries of the
cells and atoms of the Body. It is the parent of the "lives", not their product. As an example, a sponge
may be immersed in an ocean; the water
in the sponge's interior may be
compared to Prana; the water outside
is Jiva. Prana is the motor-principle
in life. The Body leaves Prana, Prana
does not leave it. Take out the sponge
from the water,
and it becomes dry - thus symbolizing
death.
(708)
The Kama during life does not form a Body which can be
separated from the physical Body. It is intermolecular,
answering molecule for molecule to the physical Body,
and inseparable from it molecularly. Thus it is a form
yet not a form; a form within the physical Body, but
incapable of being projected outward as a form. This
is the Inner, or Astral Man, in whom are located the
centres of sensation, the psychic senses, and on whose
intermolecular rapport with the physical Body, all sensation and purposive action
depend. At death, every cell and molecule gives out this
essence, and from it, with the dregs of the Auric Envelope,
is formed the separate Kama-Rupa; but this can never
come during life. The Blood is a good symbol of Kama-Rupa,
for while within the Body, filling every portion but
confined in vessels, it takes the shape of the Body and
has a form, though in itself formless. If the term Kama-Rupa
be used to indicate this intermolecular structure which
is the Psychic Man, then the post mortem separate form must be called the Kama-Rupa-Astral, or Astral
of the Kama-Rupa.
During
life the Lower Manas acts through this
Kama-Rupa, and so comes into contact with
the Sthula-Sarira; this is
why the Lower Manas is said to be "enthroned in Kama-Rupa". After death it ensouls the Kama-Rupa for
a time, until the Higher Triad, having
reabsorbed the Lower Manas,
or such portion of it as it can reabsorb,
passes into Devachan. The normal period
during which any part of
the consciousness remains in Kama-Loka, i.e., is connected with the Kama-Rupa, is one hundred and fifty
years. The Kama-Rupa eventually breaks up, and leaving
in Kama-Loka the Tanhic Elementals, its remaining portions
go into animals, of which the red-blooded come from man.
Cold-blooded animals are from the matter of the past.
We
have already seen that, in the Body,
Kama is specially connected with the Blood,
Liver, Stomach, Navel and Generative
Organs, leaving out now its organs in
the Head, which are connected with its
psychic rather than with its animal
aspect. Connected so strongly with the
organs that support and propagate life,
the acme of Kama is the sexual instinct.
Idiots show such desires, and also appetites
connected
with food, etc., but nothing higher.
Therefore, to get rid of Kama, you must
crush out all your material instincts
- "crush out matter". But at the same time you must remember
that Kama, while having as part of it
bad passions and emotions, animal
instincts, yet helps you to evolve, by
giving also the desire and impulse necessary
for rising. For in Kama-Prana
are the physical elements which impel
to growth both physically and psychically,
and without these energetic
and turbulent elements progress could
not be made. The Sun has a physical as
well as a mental effect on man,
and this effect of the Sun on humanity
is connected with Kama-Prana, with these
most physical Kamic elements,
for from the Sun flows the Vital Principle
which, falling on these, impels to growth.
Hence the student must learn
to dominate and purify Kama, until only
its energy is left as a motor power,
and that energy directed wholly
by the Manasic Will.
CW
XII, 709 LOWER MANAS, OR KAMA-MANAS. The Lower Manas
is, in many respects, most difficult to understand. There
are enormous mysteries connected with it. We shall here
consider it as a Principle, taking later the workings
of Consciousness in the Quaternary, and in each member
of it.
The
important point to grasp is its relationship to the Higher
Manas.
Manas
is, as it were, a globe of pure, Divine Light, a Ray
from the World Soul, a unit from a higher sphere, in
which is no differentiation. Descending to a plane of
differentiation it emanates a Ray which is itself, which
it can only manifest through the personality already
differentiated. This Ray is the Lower Manas, while the
globe of Divine Light, a Kumara on its own plane, is
the Higher Ego, or Higher Manas, Manas Proper. But it
must never be forgotten that the Lower Manas is the same
in its essence as the Higher.
This
Higher Ego, at incarnation, shoots out the Ray, the Lower
Ego. At every incarnation a new Ray is emitted, and yet
in essence it is the same Ray, for the essence is always
one, the same in you and in me and in everybody. Thus
the Higher Ego incarnates in a thousand bodies. The Flame
is eternal. From the Flame of the Higher Ego the Lower
is lighted, and from this a lower vehicle, and so on.
For this Ray can manifest on this Earth, sending out
its Mayavi-Rupa. The Higher Ego is the Sun, we may say,
and the personal Manases are its Rays; the mission of
the Higher Ego is to shoot out a Ray to be a soul in
a child. Only thus can the Higher Ego manifest, for thus
it manifests through its attributes. Only thus also can
it gather experience; and the meaning of the passage
in the Upanishads, where it says that the Gods feed upon men, is that the
Higher Ego obtains its Earth experience through the Lower.
(710)
These relationships may be better conceived by a study
of the following diagram:
MANVANTARIC
ASPECT OF PARABRAHMAN AND MULAPRAKRITI
Diagram
on p 710 of H.P.B.’s Collected Writings Vol XII
When
the ray is thus shot forth, it clothes
itself in the highest degree of the Astral
Light, and is then ready
for incarnation; it has been spoken
of at this stage as the Chhaya, or shadow,
of the Higher Mind, as indeed
it is. This clothing of itself in a
lower form of Matter is necessary for action
in the Body; for as an emanation
of the Higher manas and of the same
nature, it cannot, in that nature, make
any impression on this plane nor
receive any. An archangel, having no
experience, would be senseless on this
plane, and could neither give nor
receive impressions. Hence the Lower
Manas clothes itself with the essence of
the Astral Light, and this Astral
Envelope shuts it out from its Parent,
except through the Antaskarana. The Antaskarana
is therefore that portion
of the Lower Manas which is one with
the Higher, the essence, that which retains
its purity; on it are impressed
all good and noble aspirations, and
in it are the upward energies of the Lower Manas, the energies and
tendencies which become its Devachanic
experiences. The whole fate of an incarnation
depends on whether this
pure essence, Antaskarana, can restrain
the Kama-Manas or not. It is the only salvation.
Break this and you
become an animal.
But
while the inner essence of the higher Ego is unsoilable,
that part of it which may be spoken of as its outer garment,
the portion of the Ray which takes up Astral Matter,
may be soiled. This portion of it forms the downward
energies of the Lower Manas, and these go towards Kama,
and this portion may, during life, so crystallize itself
and become one with Kama, that it will remain assimilated
with Matter.
(711)
Thus the Lower Manas, taken as a whole, is, in each Earth-Life,
what it makes itself. It is possible for it to act differently
on different occasions, although surrounded each time
by similar conditions, for it has Reason and self-conscious
knowledge of Right and Wrong, of Good and Evil, given
to it. It is, in fact, endowed with all the attributes
of the Divine Soul, and one of these attributes is Will.
In this the Ray is the Higher Manas. The part of the Essence is the Essence,
but while it is out of itself, so to say, it can get
soiled and polluted, as above explained. So also it can
emanate itself, as said above, and can pass its essence
into several vehicles, e.g., the Mayavi-Rupa, the Kama-Rupa, etc., and even into Elementals,
which it is able to ensoul, as the Rosicrucians taught.
CW
XIV, 386 THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES. The "Mystery of Buddha" is that of several other Adepts - perhaps
of many. The whole trouble is to understand
correctly that other mystery:
that of the real fact, so abstruse and
transcendental at first sight, about
the "Seven Principles" in man, the reflections in man of the seven
powers in Nature, physically, and of
the seven Hierarchies of Being, intellectually
and spiritually. Whether a man - material,
ethereal,
and spiritual - is for the clearer comprehension
of his (broadly-speaking) triple nature,
divided into groups
according to one or another system, the
foundation and the apex of that division
will be always the same. There
being only three Upadhis (bases) in man,
any number of Kosas (sheaths) and their
aspects may be built on these
without destroying the harmony of the
whole. Thus, while the Esoteric System
accepts the septenary division, the
Vedantic classification
gives five Kosas, and the Taraka Raja
Yoga simplifies them into four - the
three Upadhis synthesized by the
highest principle, Atman.
That
which has just been stated will, of course,
suggest the question: "How can a spiritual (or semi-spiritual) personality
lead a triple or even a dual life, shifting
respective 'Higher
Selves' ad libitum, and be still the one eternal Monad in the
infinity of a Manvantara? The answer
to this is easy for the true Occultist,
while for the uninitiated profane it
must appear absurd.
The "Seven Principles" are, of course, the manifestation of one indivisible Spirit,
but only at the end of the Manvantara, and when they
come to be re-united on the plane of the One Reality,
does the unity appear; during the "Pilgrim's" journey the reflections of that indivisible One Flame, the
aspects of the one eternal Spirit, have each the power
of action on one of the manifested planes of existence
- the gradual differentiations from the one unmanifested
plane - on that plane namely to which it properly belongs.
Our earth affording every mayavic condition, it follows
that the purified Egotistical Principle, the astral and
personal Self of an Adept, though forming in reality
one integral whole with its Highest Self (Atman and Buddhi),
may, nevertheless, for purposes of universal mercy and
benevolence, so separate itself from its divine Monad
as to lead on this plane of illusion and temporary being
a distinct independent conscious life of its own, under
a borrowed illusive shape, thus serving at one and the
same time a double purpose: the exhaustion of its own
individual Karma, and the saving of millions of human
beings less favoured that itself from the effects of
mental blindness. If asked: "When the change described as the passage of a Buddha or a
Jivanmukta into Nirvana takes place, where does the original
consciousness which animated the body continue to reside
- in the Nirvani or in the subsequent reincarnations
of the latter's 'remains' (the Nirmanakaya)?" the answer is that imprisoned consciousness may be a "certain knowledge from observation and experience," as Gibbon puts it, but disembodied consciousness is not an effect, but a cause. it is a part
of the whole, or rather a Ray on the graduated scale
of its manifested activity, of the one all-pervading,
limitless Flame, the reflections of which alone can differentiate;
and, as such, consciousness is ubiquitous, and can be
neither localized nor centred on or in any particular
subject, nor can it be limited. Its effects alone pertain
to the regions of matter, for thought is an energy that
affects matter in various ways, but consciousness per se, as understood and explained by Occult philosophy, is the
highest quality of the sentient spiritual principle in
us, the Divine Soul (or Buddhi) and our Higher Ego, and
does not belong to the plane of materiality. After the
death of the physical man, if he be an Initiate, it becomes
transformed from a human quality into the independent
principle itself; the conscious Ego become Consciousness per se without any Ego, in the sense that the latter can no longer
be limited or conditioned by the senses, or even by space
or time. Therefore it is capable, without separating
itself from or abandoning its possessor, Buddhi, of reflecting
itself at the same time in its astral man that was, without
being under any necessity for localizing itself. This
is shown at a far lower state in our dreams. For if consciousness
can display activity during our visions, and while the
body and its material brain are fast asleep - and if
even during those visions it is all but ubiquitous -
how much greater must be its power when entirely free
from, and having no more connection with, our physical
brain.
ML
75:75 Besides which every kingdom (and we have seven
- while you have but three) is sub-divided into seven degrees or classes. Man (physically) is a compound of all
the kingdoms, and spiritually - his individuality is
no worse for being shut up within the casing of an ant
than it is for being inside a king. [This is not to say
that any man has ever been an ant - it is the spiritual
Monadic essence passing up through the kingdom that is
referred to.] It is not the outward or physical shape that dishonours and pollutes the five
principles but mental perversity. Then it is but at his
fourth round when arrived at the full possession of his
Kama-energy and is completely matured, that man becomes fully responsible, as at the sixth he may become a Buddha and at the seventh
before the Pralaya - a "Dhyan Chohan".
ML
77:77 The whole individuality is centred in the three
middle or 3rd, 4th and 5th principles. During earthly
life it is all in the fourth, the centre of energy, volition
- will ... The former (the personality) hardly survives
- the latter, to run successfully its sevenfold downward
and upward course has to assimilate to itself the eternal
life-power residing but in the seventh and then blend
the three (fourth, fifth and seventh) into one - the
sixth. Those who succeed in doing so become Buddhas,
Dhyan Chohans, etc. The chief object of our struggles
and initiations is to achieve this union while yet on this earth. Those
who will be successful have nothing to fear of during
the fifth, sixth and seventh Rounds.
SECTION
II
DYING
AND IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS
CW
I, 294 Plutarch taught that at death Proserpine separated
the body and the soul entirely, after which the latter
became a free and independent demon (daimon). Afterward, the good underwent a second dissolution: Demeter
divided the psyche from the nous or pneuma. The former was dissolved after a time into ethereal particles
- hence the inevitable dissolution and subsequent annihilation
of the man who at death is purely psychical; the latter,
the nous ascended to its higher Divine power and became gradually
a pure, Divine spirit. Kapila, in common with all Eastern
philosophers, despised the purely psychical nature. It
is this agglomeration of the grosser particles of the
soul, the mesmeric exhalations of human nature imbued
with all its terrestrial desires and propensities, its
vices, imperfections and weakness, forming the astral
body - which can become objective under certain circumstances
- which the Buddhists call skandhas (the groups) ... Therefore, we may correctly say, that so
long as the disembodied man is throwing off a single
particle of these skandhas, a portion of him is being reincarnated
in the bodies of plants and animals.
And if he, the disembodied astral
man, be so material that "Demeter" cannot find even one spark of the pneuma to carry up to the "divine power", then the individual, so to speak, is dissolved,
piece by piece, into the crucible of
evolution, or, as the Hindus
allegorically illustrate it, he passes
thousands of years in the bodies of impure
animals.
CW
VI, 347 MAN is composed of two bodies, the internal and the external; the inner one being moreover, double i.e., having, in its turn, a semi-physical outer shell which
serves as the astral being only during the life-time of man;
while the latter is still in seeming
health, the dissolution of the former,
or rather of its outer shell, may have
already begun.
For during its captivity in the living
body the "double" - or that covering of the astral form that alone survives
- is too closely bound by its jailor (man), too much
encumbered with the physical particles derived from the
prison of flesh within which it is confined, not to imperiously
require, before the astral form proper is set entirely
free, to be thrown off from the latter. Thus, this preliminary
process of purification may be justly called "the dissolution of the inner man", and it begins much earlier than the agony or even the final
disease of the physical man. Let us admit so much and
then ask: why should we require, in such a case, in order
to account for the insight some persons have of the hour
of their death, - to explain the phenomenon by "revelation" from without, supernaturalism, or the still more unsatisfactory
hypothesis of a purely physiological
character as given by Hunter
and Wakley, and that explain to us moreover
nothing at all? During and after the
dissolution of the "double", the darkness of our human ignorance beginning
to be dispelled, there are many things
we can see.
Footnote:
That such dissolution has to precede that of the physical body, is proved to us by
several things. One of these is the well ascertained fact (to those, of course, who believe in such facts) that the
astral doubles of living men - of sorcerers for instance - fear steel, and may be wounded
by sword or fire; their wounds, moreover,
reacting upon and leaving
marks and scars upon the physical shells
- whereas the astral bodies of even the "Elementary apparitions" - cannot be hurt. - Ed.
Among
these, things hidden in futurity, the
nearest events of which overshadowing the
purified "soul", have become to her as the present. The "former-self" is making room for the actual-self, the latter to be transformed in its
turn, after the final dissolution of both
the "double" and the physical body into the "Eternal Ego". Thus the actual-self" may pass its knowledge to the physical brain of man; and
thus also we may see and hear the precise hour of our
death striking on the clock of eternity. It is made visible
to us through the decaying nature of our dying "double", the latter surviving us during a very short period, if
at all, and through the newly acquired powers of the
purified "soul" (the higher tetraktis or quaternary) as yet in its integral whole, and which is
already possessing itself of those faculties that are
in store for it, on a higher plane.
Footnote:
When the "double" of the living man has been disintegrated before the death
of man, it is annihilated for ever. When, however, death
comes suddenly, it may survive the body that held it
captive, but then, the process of dissolution going on
outside of the dead body, the "soul" suffers, and in its impatience tries often to throw off the particles
that encumber its freedom and chain it to the earth,
upon the living... - Ed.
Through
our "soul" it is then that we see, clearer and still
clearer, as we approach the end; and
it is through the throbs of dissolution
that horizons of vaster, profounder knowledge
are drawn
on, bursting upon our mental vision,
and becoming with every hour plainer
to our inner eye. Otherwise, how account
for those bright flashes of memory, for
the prophetic
insight that comes as often to the enfeebled
grandsire, as to the youth who is passing
away? The Nearer some
approach death, the brighter becomes
their long lost memory and the more correct
the pre-visions. The unfoldment
of the inner faculties increases as life-blood
become more stagnant.
Truly
is life on earth like a day passed in a deep valley surrounded
on all sides by high mountains and with a cloudy, stormy
sky above our heads. The tall hills conceal from us every
horizon, and the dark clouds hide the sun. It is only
at the close of the stormy day, that the sunshine, breaking
through the clefts of the rocks affords us its glorious
light to enable us to catch occasional glimpses of things
around, behind and before us.
CW
X, 260 Q. How does sleep differ from death?
A. There
is an analogy certainly, but a very great
difference between the two. In sleep there
is a connection, weak
though it may be, between the lower and
higher mind of man, and the latter is more
or less reflected into the
former, however much its rays may be
distorted. But once the body is dead, the
body of illusion, Mayavi Rupa, becomes Kama Rupa, or the animal soul, and is left to its
down devices. Therefore, there is as much difference
between the spook and man as there is between a gross
material, animal but sober mortal, and a man incapably
drunk and unable to distinguish the most prominent surroundings;
between a person shut up in a perfectly dark room and
one in a room lighted, however imperfectly, by some light
or other.
The
lower principles are like wild beasts,
and the higher Manas is the rational man
who tames or subdues them more
or less successfully. But once the animal
gets free from the master who held it in
subjection; no sooner has it
ceased to hear his voice and see him
than it starts off again to the jungle
and its ancient den. It takes, however,
some time for an animal to return to
its original and
natural state, but these lower principles
or "spook" return instantly, and no sooner has the
higher Triad entered the Devachanic state
than the lower Duad rebecomes that
which it was from the beginning, a principle
endued with purely animal instinct, made
happier still by the great
change.
CW
XI, 447 [Material corroborating the Masters' statement, " - the brain thinks and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds -
his whole life again"]
Dr.
Ferre has communicated quite recently
to the Biological Society of Paris a very
curious note on the mental state
of the dying, which marvellously corroborates
the above lines. For, it is to the special
phenomenon of life-reminiscences,
and that sudden re-emerging on the blank
walls of memory, from all its long neglected
and forgotten "nooks and corners", of "picture after picture" that Dr. Ferre draws the special attention
of biologists.
(448)
We need notice but two among the numerous instances given
by this Scientist in his Rapport, to show how scientifically correct are the teachings we
receive from our Eastern Masters.
The
first instance is that of a moribund consumptive whose
disease was developed in consequence of a spinal affection.
Already consciousness had left the man, when, recalled
to life by two successive injections of a gramme of ether,
the patient slightly lifted his head and began talking
rapidly in Flemish, a language no one around him, nor
yet himself, understood. Offered a pencil and a piece
of white cardboard, he wrote with great rapidity several
lines in that language - very correctly, as was ascertained
later on - fell back, and died. When translated - the
writing was found to refer to a very prosaic affair.
He had suddenly recollected, he wrote, that he owed a
certain man a sum of fifteen francs since 1868 - hence
more than twenty years - and desired it to be paid.
But
why write his last wish in Flemish? The defunct was a
native of Antwerp, but had left his country in childhood,
without ever knowing the language, and having passed
all his life in Paris, could speak and write only in
French. Evidently his returning consciousness, that last
flash of memory that displayed before him, as in a retrospective
panorama, all his life, even to the trifling fact of
his having borrowed twenty years back a few francs from
a friend, did not emanate from his physical brain alone, but rather from his spiritual memory, that
of the Higher Ego (Manas or the re-incarnating individuality). The fact of
his speaking and writing Flemish, a language that he
had heard at a time of life when he could not yet speak
himself, is an additional proof. The EGO is almost omniscient in its immortal nature. For indeed matter is nothing more than "the last degree and as the shadow of existence." as Ravaisson, member of the French Institute,
tells us.
(449)
But to our second case.
Another
patient, dying of pulmonary consumption
and likewise re-animated by an injection
of ether, turned his head
towards his wife and rapidly said to
her: "You cannot find that pin now; all the floor has been renewed
since then." This was in reference to the loss of a scarf
pin eighteen years before, a fact so
trifling that it had almost been
forgotten, but which had not failed to
be revived in the last thought of the
dying man, who having expressed
what he saw in words, suddenly stopped
and breathed his last. Thus any one of
the thousand little daily events,
and accidents of a long life would seem
capable of being recalled to the flickering
consciousness, at the supreme
moment of dissolution. A long life, perhaps,
lived over again in the space of one
short second!
A
third case may be noticed, which corroborates still more
strongly that assertion of Occultism which traces all
such remembrances to the thought-power of the individual, instead of to that of the personal (lower) Ego. A young
girl, who had been a sleepwalker up to her twenty-second
year, performed during her hours of somnambulic sleep
the most varied functions of domestic life, of which
she had no remembrance upon awakening.
Among
other psychic impulses that manifested
themselves only during her sleep, was a
secretive tendency quite alien
to her waking state. During the latter
she was open and frank to a degree, and
very careless of her personal
property; but in the somnambulic state
she would take articles belonging to herself
or within her reach and
hide them away with ingenious cunning.
This habit being known to her friends and
relatives, and two nurses, having
been in attendance to watch her actions
during her night rambles for years, nothing
disappeared but what could
be easily restored to its usual place.
But on one sultry night, the nurse falling
asleep, the young girl got up
and went to her father's study. The
latter, a notary of fame, had been working
till a late hour that night.
It was during a momentary absence from
his room that the somnambule entered, and
deliberately possessed herself
of a will left open upon the desk,
as also of a sum of several thousand pounds in bonds and notes. These
she proceeded to hide in the hollow of
two dummy pillars set up in the library
to match the solid ones, and stealing
from the room before
her father's return, she regained her
chamber and bed without awakening the nurse
who was still asleep in the
armchair.
(450)
The result was, that, as the nurse stoutly
denied that her young mistress had left
the room, suspicion was diverted
from the real culprit and the money could
not be recovered. The loss of the will
involved a lawsuit which almost
beggared her father and entirely ruined
his reputation, and the family were reduced
to great straits. About nine
years later the young girl who, during
the previous seven years had not been somnambulic,
fell into consumption
of which she ultimately died. Upon her
death-bed, the veil which had hung before
her physical memory was raised;
her divine insight awakened; the pictures
of her life came streaming back before
her inner eye; and among others
she saw the scene of her somnambulic
robbery. Suddenly arousing herself from
the lethargy in which she had lain
for several hours, her face showed signs
of some terrible emotion working within,
and she cried out "Ah! what have I done? ... It was I who took the will and
the money ... Go search the dummy pillars in the library,
I have ..." She never finished her sentence for her
very emotion killed her. But the search
was made and the will and money found
within the oaken pillars as she had said.
What makes
the case more strange is, that these
pillars were so high, that even by standing
upon a chair and with plenty
of time at her disposal instead of only
a few moments, the somnambulist could
not have reached up and dropped
the objects into the hollow columns.
It is to be noted, however, that ecstatics
and convulsionists Vide the Convulsionnaires de St. Medard et de Morzine) seem to possess an abnormal facility for climbing blank
walls and leaping even to the tops of trees.
(451)
Taking the facts as stated, would they not induce one
to believe that the somnambulic personage possesses an
intelligence and memory of its own apart from the physical
memory of the waking lower Self; and that it is the former
which remembers in articulo mortis, the body and physical senses in the latter case ceasing
to function, and the intelligence gradually making its
final escape through the avenue of psychic, and last
of all of spiritual consciousness?
CW
XI, 452 ... since man is a bundle of obscure, and to
himself unconscious perceptions, of indefinite feelings
and misunderstood emotions, of ever-forgotten memories
and knowledge that becomes on the surface of his plane
- ignorance. Yet, while physical memory in a healthy
living man is often obscured, one fact
crowding out another weaker one, at
the moment of the great change that man
calls death - that which we call "memory" seems to return to us in all its vigour
and freshness.
May
not this be due, as just said, simply to the fact that,
for a few seconds at least, our two memories (or rather
the two states, the highest and the lowest state, of
consciousness) blend together, thus forming one, and
that the dying finds himself on a plane wherein there
is neither past nor future, but all is one present? Memory,
as we all know, is strongest with regard to its early
associations, then when the future man is only a child,
and more of a soul than of a body; and if memory is a
part of our Soul, then, as Thackeray has somewhere said,
it must be of necessity eternal. Scientists deny this;
we, Theosophists, affirm that it is so. They have for
what they hold but negative proofs; we have, to support
us, innumerable facts of the kind just instanced, in
the three cases described by us. The links of the chain
of cause and effect with relation to mind are, and must
ever remain a terra incognita to the materialist. For if they have already acquired a
deep conviction that as Pope says:
"Lulled
in the countless chambers of the brain
Our
thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain ..."
and
that they are still unable to discover these chains,
how can they hope to unravel the mysteries of the higher,
Spiritual, Mind!
CW
XII, 663 Auric Consciousness. [Astral Prakritic].
The
consciousness is on this plane at the moment of death,
or in exceptional visions. Here is the consciousness
of the drowning man when he remembers all the past incidents
of his life in a flash. The memory of this consciousness
must be stored in the heart, "the seat of Buddhi". Then it will remain there, but impressions
from this Atmic plane cannot be made
on the physical brain.
[Note
in connection with near death experiences the 6th State
of Objective Prakritic Consciousness - CW XII, 662]
Buddhic,
or Spiritual-Emotional Consciousness. The plane of Buddhi or of the Auric Envelope.
From this plane consciousness goes
to the "Father in Heaven", Atman, reflecting all that is in the Auric
Envelope. The Manasic and Buddhic states
cover the planes from the
Noetic to the Divine, but it is impossible
at this stage to define them intelligibly.
Isis
I, 179 That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed
to show a drowning man every long-forgotten scene of
his mortal life - as the landscape is revealed to the
traveller by intermittent flashes of lightning - is simply
the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul gets into
the silent galleries where his history is depicted in
imperishable colours.
Isis
I, 476 Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have demonstrated
that the forms of plants could be resuscitated
from their ashes. ... Ashes of burned
plants contained in vials,
when heated, exhibited again their various
forms. "A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the
vial, took a defined form, and presented
to the eye the flower or
plant the ashes consisted of ... And,
if the astral form of even a plant when
its body is dead still lingers in
the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying
that the soul of man, the inner ego, is after the death of the grosser form
at once dissolved, and is no more? "At death", says the philosopher, "the one body exudes from the other, by osmose
and through the brain; it is held near
its old garment by double
attraction, physical and spiritual, until
the latter decomposes; and if the proper
conditions are given the
soul can reinhabit it and resume the
suspended life. It does it in sleep;
it does it more thoroughly in trance;
most surprisingly at the command and
with the assistance
of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus declared
that a person endowed with such resuscitating
powers is 'full of God'.
All the subordinate spirits of the upper
spheres are at his command, for he is
no longer a mortal, but himself
a god.
Isis
I, 480 The kabalists say that a man is not dead
when his body is entombed. Death is never
sudden; for, according
to Hermes, nothing goes in nature by
violent transitions. Everything is gradual,
and as it required a long and
gradual development to produce the living
human being, so time is required to completely
withdraw vitality from
the carcass. "Death can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning.
Birth proves the preexistence of the being, as death
proves immortality," says the same French Kabalist.
Isis
I, 482 Thus, the question at issue is not whether a dead body can be resuscitated - for, to assert that would be
to assume the possibility of a miracle, which is absurd
- but, to assure ourselves whether the medical authorities
pretend to determine the precise moment of death. The
kabalists say that death occurs at the instant when both
the astral body, or life-principle, and the spirit part
forever with the corporeal body. The scientific physician
who denies both astral body and spirit, and admits the
existence of nothing more than the life-principle, judges
death to occur when life is apparently extinct. When
the beating of the heart and the action of the lungs
cease, and rigor mortis is manifested, and especially when decomposition
begins, they pronounce the patient dead.
But the annals of medicine
teem with examples of "suspended animation" as the result of asphyxia by drowning, the
inhalation of gases and other causes;
life being restored in the case
of drowning persons even after they had
been apparently dead for twelve hours.
In
cases of somnambulic trance, none of
the ordinary signs of death are lacking;
breathing and the pulse are extinct;
animal-heat has disappeared; the muscles
are rigid, the eye glazed, and the body
is colourless. In the celebrated
case of Colonel Townshend, he threw
himself into this state in the presence
of three medical men; who, after
a time, were persuaded that he was
really dead, and were about leaving the
room, when he slowly revived. He describes
his peculiar gift by saying that he "could die or expire when he pleased, and
yet, by an effort, or somehow, he could come to life again".
There
occurred in Moscow, a few years since, a remarkable instance
of apparent death. The wife of a wealthy merchant lay
in the cataleptic state seventeen days, during which
the authorities made several attempts to bury her; but,
as decomposition had not set in, the family averted the
ceremony, and at the end of that time she was restored
to life.
The
above instances show that the most learned
men in the medical profession are unable
to be certain when a person
is dead. What they call "suspended animation", is that state from which the patient spontaneously
recovers, through an effort of his own
spirit, which may be provoked
by any one of many causes. In these cases,
the astral body has not parted from the
physical body; its external
functions are simply suspended; the subject
is in a state of torpor, and the restoration
is nothing but a recovery
from it.
But,
in the case of what physiologists would
call "real death", but which is not actually so, the astral
body has withdrawn; perhaps local decomposition
has set in. How shall the
man be brought to life again? The answer
is, the interior body must be forced back
into the exterior one, and vitality
reawakened in the latter. The clock has
run down, it must be wound. If death is
absolute; if the organs have
not only ceased to act, but have lost
the susceptibility of renewed action, then
the whole universe would have
to be thrown into chaos to resuscitate
the corpse - a miracle would be demanded.
But, as we said before, the
man is not dead when he is cold, stiff,
pulseless, breathless, and even showing
signs of decomposition; he is not dead
when buried, nor afterward, until a certain
point is reached. That point is, when the vital organs have become so decomposed, that if
reanimated, they could not perform their customary functions; when the mainspring and cogs of the machine, so to speak,
are so eaten away by rust, that they would snap upon
the turning of the key. Until that point is reached,
the astral body may be caused, without miracle to reenter
its former tabernacle, either by an effort of its own
will, or under the resistless impulse of the will of
one who knows the potencies of nature and how to direct
them. The spark is not extinguished, but only latent
- latent as the fire in the flint, or the heat in the
cold iron.
Isis
I, 484 When a man falls into the last sleep, he is plunged
at first into a sort of dream, before gaining consciousness
in the other side of life. He sees, then, either in a
beautiful vision, or in a terrible nightmare, the paradise
or hell, in which he believed during his mortal existence.
This is why it often happens that the affrighted soul
breaks violently back into the terrestrial life it has
just left, and why some who were really dead, i.e., who, if left alone and quiet, would have peaceably passed
away forever in a state of unconscious lethargy, when
entombed too soon, reawake to life in the grave.
Isis
I, 485 Levi says that resuscitating is not impossible
while the vital organism remains undestroyed,
and the astral spirit is yet within reach. "Nature," he says, "accomplishes nothing by sudden jerks, and
eternal death is always preceded by a
state which partakes somewhat of
the nature of lethargy. It is torpor
which a great shock or the magnetism
of a powerful will can overcome."
Isis
II, 367 In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other
faiths founded on philosophy, man was not merely, as
with the Christians, a union of soul and body; he was
a trinity when spirit was added to it. Besides, that
doctrine made him consist of kha - body; khaba - astral form, or shadow; ka - animal soul or life-principle; ba - the higher soul; and akh - terrestrial intelligence. They had also a sixth principle
named Sah - or mummy; but the functions of this one
commenced only after the death of the
body. After due purification,
during which the soul, separated from
its body, continued to revisit the latter
in its mummified condition, this
astral soul "became a god", for it was finally absorbed into "the Soul of the world". It became transformed into one of the creative deities, "the god of Phtah", the Demiurgos, a generic name for the creators
of the world, rendered in the Bible as the Elohim. In the Ritual the good or purified soul, "in conjunction with its higher or uncreated spirit, is more or less the victim of the dark influence
of the dragon Apophis. If it has attained the final knowledge
of the heavenly and the infernal mysteries - the gnosis, i.e., complete reunion with the spirit, it will triumph over
its enemies; if not the soul could not escape its second death. It is 'the lake that burneth with fire
and brimstone' (elements), into which
those that are cast undergo a 'second
death'" Apocalypse. This death is the gradual dissolution of
the astral form into its primal elements,
alluded to several times already
in the course of this work. But this
awful fate can be avoided by the knowledge
of the "Mysterious Name" - the "Word", say the kabalists.
And
what then was the penalty attached to
the neglect of it? When a man leads a naturally
pure, virtuous life,
there is none whatever; except a delay
in the world of spirits, until he finds
himself sufficiently purified
to receive it from his Spiritual "Lord", one of the mighty Host. But if otherwise, the "soul", as a half animal principle, becomes paralyzed,
and grows unconscious of its subjective
half - the Lord - and in
proportion to the sensuous development
of the brain and nerves, sooner or later,
it finally loses sight of its
divine mission on earth. Like the Vourdalak, or Vampire, of the Servian tale, the brain
feeds and lives and grows in strength
and power at the expense of its
spiritual parent. Then the already half-unconscious
soul, now fully intoxicated by the fumes
of earthly life, becomes
senseless, beyond hope of redemption.
It is powerless to discern the splendour
of its higher spirit, to hear
the warning voice of its "guardian Angel", and its "God". It aims but at the development and fuller
comprehension of natural, earthly life;
and thus, can discover but
the mysteries of physical nature. Its
grief and fear, hope and joy, are all
closely blended with its terrestrial
existence. It ignores all that cannot
be demonstrated by either its organs
of action or sensation. It begins
by becoming virtually dead; it dies at
last completely. It is annihilated. Such a catastrophe may often happen long years before the
final separation of the life-principle from the body. When death arrives, its iron and
clammy grasp finds work with life as usual; but there is no more a soul to liberate. The whole
essence of the latter has been already absorbed by the
vital system of the physical man. Grim death frees but
a spiritual corpse; at best an idiot. Unable either to
soar higher or awaken from lethargy, it is soon dissolved
in the elements of the terrestrial atmosphere.
Seers,
righteous men, who had attained to the
highest science of the inner man and knowledge
of truth, have, like Marcus
Antoninus, received instructions "from the gods" in sleep and otherwise. Helped by the purer spirits, those
that dwell in "regions of eternal bliss", they have watched the process and warned
mankind repeatedly. Skepticism may sneer; faith, based on knowledge and spiritual science, believes and affirms.
ML
124:127 ... remember, both, that we create ourselves our devachan as our avitchi while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and
even moments of our intellectual, sentient lives. That
feeling which is the strongest in us at that supreme
hour; when, as in a dream, the events of a long life,
to their minutest details, are marshalled in the greatest
order in a few seconds in our vision, [Footnote: That
vision takes place when a person is already proclaimed
dead. The brain is the last organ that dies.] - that
feeling will become the fashioner of our bliss or woe,
the life principle of our future existence. In the latter we
have no substantial being, but only a
present and momentary existence, -
whose duration has no bearing upon, as
no effect, or relation to its being -
which as every other effect of
a transitory cause will be as fleeting,
and in its turn will vanish and cease
to be ... Thus, when a man dies,
his 'Soul' (fifth prin.) becomes unconscious
and loses all remembrance of things internal
as well as external.
Whether his stay in Kama Loka has to
last but a few moments, hours, days,
weeks, months or years; whether he died
a natural or a violent death; whether
it occurred in
his young or old age, and, whether the
Ego was good, bad, or indifferent, -
his consciousness leaves him as
suddenly as the flame leaves the wick,
when blown out. When life has retired
from the last particle in the brain
matter, his perceptive faculties become
extinct forever, his spiritual powers
of cogitation and volition - (all
those faculties in short, which are neither inherent
in, nor acquirable by organic matter)
- for the time being. His Mayavi-rupa may be often thrown into objectivity, as in the cases of
apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected
with the knowledge of (whether latent or potential),
or owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear
to someone, shooting through the dying brain, the apparition
will be simply - automatical; it will not be due to any
sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, and
no more than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously
near a mirror, is due to the desire of the latter.
SECTION III
THE "DEATH
STRUGGLE" AND "GESTATION" PERIOD
CW
V, 42 ... four principles or constituent elements can
never be found together in the gestation state which preceded the Devachan (the paradise of the Buddhist Occultists). They are separated
at the entrance into gestation. The seventh and the sixth, that is to say the immortal spirit and its vehicle, the immortal or spiritual soul, enter therein alone (an exceptional case) or, which nearly always takes place,
the soul carries in the case of very good people (and
even the indifferent and sometimes the very wicked),
the essence, so to speak, of the fifth principle which
has been withdrawn from the personal EGO (the material soul). It is the latter only, in the case of the irredeemably wicked and when the spiritual and impersonal soul has nothing to
withdraw from its individuality (terrestrial personality)
because the latter had nothing to offer but the purely
material and sensual - that becomes annihilated. Only the individuality, which possesses the most spiritual
feelings, can survive by uniting with the immortal principle.
The "Kama-rupa", the vehicle, and the manas, the soul in which the personal and animal intelligence inheres, after having been denuded of their
essence, as described, remain alone in Kama-loka, the intermediate sphere between our earth and the Devachan (the Kama-loka being the hades of the Greeks, the region of the shades)
to be extinguished and to disappear from
it after a while. This unfortunate
duad forms the cast-off "tatters" of the "spiritual ego" and of the personal EGO, superior principles
which, purified of all terrestrial uncleanliness,
united henceforth with
the divine monad in eternity, pass into
regions where the mire of the purely
terrestrial ego cannot follow, to glean therein their reward - the effects
of the causes generated - and from which they do not
emerge until the next incarnation. If we maintain that
the shell, the reflexion of the person who was, survives in the land
of shades for a certain time proportionate to its constitution
and then disappears, we offer nothing but the logical
and philosophical. Is that annihilation? Are we annihilationists without knowing it because we keep insisting that the human
shadow disappears from the wall when the person to whom
it belongs leaves the room? And even in the case of the
most depraved, when dissociated from its divine and immortal
double principle, and unable to give anything to the spiritual EGO, the material soul is annihilated without leaving anything
behind of its personal individuality, is that annihilation
for the spiritual EGO? Is it the reincarnationist-Spiritists who protest?
Is it these believers who teach that Mr X becomes after his death Mr T ..., and
Mrs A - Mrs B, etc., who refuse to believe in the losing
of all recollection by the spiritual soul of one of its thousands of personalities, annihilated because there
was nothing in it spiritual enough to survive? Let us
clearly understand each other once and for all. It is
not the divine soul, the immortal individuality, that
perishes, but only the animal soul with its consciousness of a personality too gross, too terrestrial,
for the former to assimilate. Millions of people who
have never heard of reincarnation and even those who
believe in it, live and die in absolute ignorance of
who they were in their former incarnations - and they
are not a bit the worse for that. Those whose spirit
is open to the great truths, those who understand absolute justice and reject every doctrine based on favoritism or
personal grace will fully understand what we mean. For
the immortal soul this is nothing but justice. That cast-off
existence is for it but a page torn out of the great
book of life before the pages are numbered, and the SOUL
suffers no more from it than a saint in ecstasy would
suffer because he had lost all recollection of one wretched
day among the 20,000 days that he has passed on earth.
On the contrary, had he retained that recollection, it
would have been enough to prevent him from ever feeling
happy. Only one drop of gall is enough to make the water
bitter in the largest vessel. And after all, the doctrine
teaches us that these cases of total annihilation of
a personality are extremely rare.
CW
VI, 129 ... the average stay of shells in Kamaloka before the final disintegration is sometimes of very long
duration. 25 to 30 years would not be too long, with
a medium to preserve its vitality.
CW
VI, 195 [To a passage from Isis Unveiled, I, 310, on the subject of Larvae, or the lower principles
of all disembodied beings, H.P.B. adds the following
explanation, after having stated that they are to be
divided into three general groups:]
These
are, properly, the disembodied Souls
of the depraved; these Souls having at
some time prior to death separated
themselves from their divine Spirits,
and so lost their chance of immortality.
Eliphas Levi and some other Kabalists
make little if any, distinction between
Elementary Spirits who have been men, and
those beings which people the
elements, and are the blind forces of
nature. Once divorced from their bodies,
these Souls (also called "astral bodies"), especially those of purely materialistic
persons, are irresistibly attracted to
the earth, where they live
a temporary and finite life amid elements
congenial to their gross natures. From
having never, during their
natural lives, cultivated their spirituality,
but subordinated it to the material and
gross, they are now unfitted for
the lofty career of the pure, disembodied
being, for whom the atmosphere of earth
is stifling and mephitic.
Its attractions are not only away from
earth, but it cannot, even if it would,
owing to its Devachanic condition,
have aught to do with earth and its denizens consciously. Exceptions to this rule will be pointed out later on. After
a more or less prolonged period of time these material
souls will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a
column of mist, be dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding
elements.
These
are the "shells" which remain the longest period in the Kama
Loka; all saturated with terrestrial
effluvia, their Kama Rupa (body of desire)
thick with sensuality and made impenetrable
to the spiritualizing
influence of their higher principles,
endures much longer and fades out with
difficulty. We are taught that these
remain for centuries sometimes, before
the final disintegration into their respective
elements.
The
second group includes all those, who, having had their
common share of spirituality, have yet been more or less
attached to things earthly and terrestrial life, having
their aspirations and affections more centered on earth
than in heaven; the stay in Kama Loka of the reliquiae of this class or group of men, who belonged to the average
human being, is of a far shorter duration, yet long in
itself and proportionate to the intensity of their desire
for life.
Remains,
as a third class, the disembodied souls of those whose
bodies have perished by violence, and these are men in
all save the physical body, till their life-span is complete.
Among
Elementaries are also reckoned by Kabalists
what we have called psychic embryos, the "privation" of the form of the child that is to be.
CW
IX, 163 [To the Editors of Lucifer] As you invite questions, I take the liberty of submitting
one to your consideration. Is it not to be expected (basing
one's reasoning on Theosophical teaching) that the meeting
and intercourse in Kama-loka of persons truly attached
to each other must be fraught with disappointment, nay
frequently even with deep grief? Let me illustrate my
meaning by an example:
A
mother departs this life twenty years
before her son, who, deeply attached to
her, longs to meet her again,
and only finds her "shell" from which all those spiritual qualities have fled which
to him were the essential part of the being he loved.
Even the "shell" itself, by its resemblance to the former
body, only adds to his grief by keeping
early memories more vividly alive,
and showing him the vast difference between
the entity he knew on earth and the remnant
he finds.
Or
take a second case:
The
son meets his mother in Kama-loka after a short separation,
only to find her entity in a state of disintegration,
as her pure spirit has already begun to leave her astral
body and to ascend towards Devachan. He has to witness
this process of gradual dissolution, and day by day he
feels his mother's spirit slip away whilst his more material
nature prevents him from joining in her rapid progress....
[Editor's
Reply.] Our Correspondent seems to have been misled as
to the state of consciousness which entities experience
in Kama-loka. He seems to have formed his conceptions
on the visions of living psychics and the revelations of living mediums. But all conclusions drawn from such data are vitiated
by the fact, that a living organism intervenes between the observer and the Kama-loka
state per se. There can be no conscious meeting in Kama-loka, hence no grief. There is no astral
disintegration pari passu with the separation of the shell from the spirit.
According
to the Eastern teaching the state of
the deceased in Kama-loka is not what we,
living men, would recognize
as "conscious". It is rather that of a person stunned and dazed by a violent
blow, who has momentarily "lost his senses". Hence in Kama-loka there is as a rule (apart
from vicarious life and consciousness
awakened through contact with
mediums) no recognition of friends or relatives, and therefore such a case as stated
here is impossible.
We
meet those we loved only in Devachan, that subjective
world of perfect bliss, the state which succeeds the
Kama-loka, after the separation of the principles. In
Devachan all our personal, unfulfilled spiritual desires and aspirations will be realized; for we shall not
be living in the hard world of matter but in those subjective
realms wherein a desire finds its instant realization;
because man himself is there a god and a creator.
In
dealing with the dicta of psychics and mediums, it must
always be remembered that they translate, automatically
and unconsciously, their experiences on any plane of
consciousness, into the language and experience of our
normal physical plane. And this confusion can only be
avoided by the special study-training of occultism, which
teaches how to trace and guide the passage of impressions
from one plane to another and fix them on the memory.
Kama-loka
may be compared to the dressing-room of an actor, in
which he divests himself of the costume of the last part
he played before rebecoming himself properly - the immortal Ego of the Pilgrim cycling in his Round of Incarnations. The
Eternal Ego being stripped in Kama-loka of its lower
terrestrial principles, with their passions and desires,
it enters into the state of Devachan. And therefore it
is said that only the purely spiritual, the non-material
emotions, affections and aspirations accompany the Ego
into that state of Bliss. But the process of stripping
off the lower, the fourth and part of the fifth, principles
is an unconscious one in all normal human beings. It
is only in very exceptional cases that there is a slight
return to consciousness in Kama-loka: and this is the
case of very materialistic unspiritual personalities,
who, devoid of the conditions requisite, cannot enter
the state of absolute Rest and Bliss.
CW
X, 262 Q. Can there be any connection between a dreamer and an entity
in "Kama Loka"?
A. The
dreamer of an entity in Kama Loka would probably bring upon himself a nightmare,
or would run the risk of becoming "possessed" by the "Spook" so attracted, if he happened to be a medium,
or one who had made himself so passive
during his waking hours that
even his higher Self is now unable to
protect him. This why the mediumistic
state of passivity is so dangerous,
and in time renders the Higher Self entirely
helpless to aid or even warn the sleeping
or entranced person.
Passivity paralyzes the connection between
the lower and higher principles. It is
very rare to find instances
of mediums who, while remaining passive at will, for the purpose of communicating with some higher Intelligence,
some exterraneous spirit not disembodied, will yet preserve sufficiently their
personal will so as not to break off all connection with
the higher Self.
ML
124:127 The real full remembrance of our lives will come
but at the end of the minor cycle - not before. In Kama
Loka those who retain their remembrance, will not enjoy
it at the supreme hour of recollection. - Those who know they are dead in their physical bodies can only be either
adepts or sorcerers; and these two are the exceptions
to the general rule. Both having been "co-workers with nature", the former for good, the latter for bad, in her works of creation and in that of destruction. They
are the only ones who may be called immortal in the kabalistic and the esoteric sense of course. Complete
or true immortality, - which means an unlimited sentient existence, can have no breaks and stoppages, no arrest of Self-consciousness. And even the shells of those good men whose page will not be found missing in
the great Book of Lives at the threshold of the Great
Nirvana, even they will regain their remembrance and
an appearance of Self-consciousness, only after the sixth
and seventh principles with the essence of the 5th (the
latter having to furnish the material for even that partial
recollection of personality which is necessary for the
object in Deva Chan) - have gone to their gestation period, not before. Even in the case of suicides and those
who have perished by violent death, even
in their case, consciousness requires
a certain time to establish its new centre
of gravity,
and evolve, as Sir W. Hamilton would
have it - its "perception proper" henceforth to remain distinct from "sensation proper".
ML
144:147 Q. You say: "And even the shells of those good men whose
pages will not be found missing in
the great book of lives:- even they
will regain their remembrance and an
appearance of self
consciousness only after the sixth
and seventh principles with the essence
of the fifth have gone to their gestation
period.
ML
168:171 A. Verily so. Until the struggle between the
higher and middle duad begins - (with the exception of suicides who are not dead but have
only killed their physical triad, and whose Elemental
parasites, therefore, are not naturally separated from
the Ego as in real death), until that struggle, I say, has not begun and ended, no
shell can realize its position. When the sixth and seventh
principles are gone, carrying off with them the finer,
spiritual portions of that which once was the personal consciousness of the fifth, then only does the shell gradually
develop a hazy consciousness of its own from what remains
in the shadow of the personality.
ML
169:173 But what is then "the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the
shell?" you ask. As I said in your note - no better than a reflected
or borrowed light. "Memory" is one thing, and "perceptive faculties" quite another. A madman may remember very
clearly some portions of his past life;
yet he is unable to perceive anything
in its true light for the higher portion
of his Manas and his Buddhi are paralysed in him, have left him. Could
an animal - a dog, for instance - speak,
he would prove you that his
memory in direct relation to his canine
personality, is as fresh as yours; nevertheless
his memory and instinct
cannot be called "perceptive faculties". A dog remembers that his master thrashed
him when the latter gets hold of his
stick - at all other times he has no
remembrance of it.
ML
144:147 Q. A little later on:- "Whether the personal Ego was good, bad or
indifferent, his consciousness leaves
him as suddenly as the flame leaves
the wick - his perceptive faculties become extinct for ever". (Well? can a physical brain once dead retain its perceptive faculties: that which will perceive
in the shell is something that perceives with a borrowed or reflected
light. See notes.)
Then
what is the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness
of the shell? This touches on a matter I have often thought
about - wishing for further explanation - the extent
of personal identity in elementaries.
ML
168:171 A. All that which pertains to the materio-psychological
attributes and sensations of the five lower skandhas;
all that which will be thrown off as a refuse by the
newly born Ego in the Deva Chan, as unworthy of, and
not sufficiently related to the purely spiritual perceptions, emotions and feelings of the sixth,
strengthened, and so to say, cemented, by a portion of the fifth, that portion which is necessary
in the devachan for the retention of a divine spiritualized notion of the "I" in the Monad - which would otherwise have no consciousness
in relation to object and subject at
all - all this "becomes extinct for ever": namely at the moment of physical death,
to return once more, marshalling before
the eye of the new Ego at the
threshold of Deva Chan and to be rejected
by it. It will return for the third time fully at the end of the minor cycle, after completion of the seven
Rounds when the sum total of collective existences is weighed - "merit" in one cup, "demerit" in the other cup of the scales. But in that individual,
in the Ego - "good, bad, or indifferent" in the isolated personality, - consciousness leaves as suddenly as "the flame leaves the wick". Blow out your candle, good friend. The
flame has left that candle "for ever"; but are the particles that moved, their
motion producing the objective flame annihilated or dispersed for all that? Never. Relight the candle and the same particles drawn by mutual
affinity will return to the wick. Place a long row of
candles on your table. Light one and blow it out; then
light the other and do the same; a third and a fourth,
and so on. The same matter, the same gaseous particles
- representing in our case the Karma of the personality - will be called forth
by the condition given them by your match,
to produce a new luminosity;
but can we say that candle No.1 has not
had its flame extinct for ever? Not even
in the case of the "failures of nature", of the immediate reincarnation of children and congenital idiots, etc., that
so provoked the wrath of C.C.M., can we call them the identical ex-personalities; though the whole of the same life-principle and identically
the same MANAS (fifth principle) re-enters a new body and may be truly called a "reincarnation of the personality" - whereas, in the rebirth of the Egos from devachans and avitchis into Karmic life it is only the spiritual
attributes of the Monad and its Buddhi
that are reborn. All we can
say of the reincarnated "failures" is, that they are the reincarnated Manas, the fifth principle of Mr Smith or Miss Grey, but not certainly
that these are the reincarnations of Mr S and Miss G.
ML
184:186 Every just disembodied four-fold entity - whether it died a natural or violent death, from
suicide or accident, mentally sane or insane, young or
old, good, bad, or indifferent - loses at the instant
of death all recollection, it is mentally annihilated; it sleeps its akasic sleep in the Kama-loka. This state
lasts from a few hours (rarely less), days, weeks, months
- sometimes several years. All this according to the
entity, to its mental status at the moment of death,
to the character of its death, etc. That remembrance
will return slowly and gradually toward the end of the
gestation (to the entity or Ego), still more slowly but
far more imperfectly and incompletely to the shell, and fully to the Ego at the moment of its entrance into the Devachan.
And now the latter being a state determined and brought
by its past life, the Ego does not fall headlong but
sinks into it gradually and by easy stages. With the
first dawn of that state appears that life (or rather is once more lived over by the Ego) from its first day of consciousness to its last.
From the most important down to the most trifling event,
all are marshalled before the spiritual eye of the Ego;
only, unlike the events of real life, those of them remain
only that are chosen by the new liver (pardon the word) clinging to certain scenes and actors,
these remain permanently - while all others fade away to disappear for ever, or to
return to their creator - the shell. Now try to understand this highly important because so
highly just and retributive law, in its effects. Out
of the resurrected Past nothing remains but what the Ego has felt spiritually -that was evolved by and through and lived over by his spiritual
faculties - be they love or hatred. All that I am now trying to describe is in truth - indescribable.
As no two men, not even two photographs of the same person,
nor yet two leaves resemble line for line each other,
so no two states in Deva-Chan are alike. Unless he be
an adept, who can realize such a state in his periodical Deva-chan - how can one be expected to form a correct picture
of the same?
SECTION
IV
THE
SECOND DEATH AND DEVACHAN
Key
132 Enq: ... Where, then, is that vaunted omniscience
during his Devachanic life, as you call it?
Theo:
During that time it is latent and potential, because,
first of all, the Spiritual Ego (the compound of Buddhi-Manas)
is not the Higher SELF, which being one with the Universal Soul
or Mind is alone omniscient; and, secondly, because Devachan
is the idealized continuation of the terrestrial life
just left behind, a period of retributive adjustment,
and a reward for unmerited wrongs and sufferings undergone
in that special Life. It is omniscient only potentially in Devachan, and de facto exclusively in Nirvana, when the Ego is merged in the Universal
Mind-Soul. Yet it rebecomes quasi omniscient during those hours on earth when certain abnormal
conditions and physiological changes in the body make
the Ego free from the trammels of matter.
Key
148 He who has placed himself beyond the veil of maya
- and such are the highest Adepts and Initiates - can
have no Devachan. As to the ordinary mortal, his bliss
in it is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the past
incarnations, and even oblivion of the fact that such
things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanee lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations surrounded
by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in the companionship
of everyone it loved on earth. It has reached the fulfillment
of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it lives throughout
long centuries an existence of unalloyed happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in earth
life.
Key
149 Theo: To believe that a pure spirit can feel happy
while doomed to witness the sins, mistakes, treachery,
and, above all, the sufferings of those from whom it
is severed by death and whom it loves best, without being
able to help them, would be a maddening thought.
Key
150 ... We are with those whom we have lost in material
form, and far, far nearer to them now, than when they
were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the Devachanee, as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love
is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has it
roots in eternity. Spiritual holy love is immortal, and
Karma brings sooner or later all those who loved each
other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once
more in the same family group. Again we say that love
beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it, has
a magic and divine potency which reacts on the living.
A mother's Ego filled with love for the imaginary children it sees near
itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth - that love will always be felt by the
children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams,
and often in various events -in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong
shield, and is not limited by space or
time. As with this Devachanic "mother", so with the rest of human relationships
and attachments, save the purely selfish
or material. Analogy will suggest
to you the rest.
Enq:
In no case, then, do you admit the possibility of the
communication of the living with the disembodied spirit?
Theo:
Yes, there is a case, and even two exceptions to the
rule. The first exception is during the few days that
follow immediately the death of a person and before the Ego passes into the Devachanic state. Whether any living mortal,
save a few exceptional cases (when the intensity of the
desire in the dying person to return for some purpose
forced the higher consciousness to remain awake, and therefore it was really the individuality, the "Spirit" that communicated) has derived much benefit
from the return of the spirit into the objective plane is another question. The spirit is
dazed after death and falls very soon
into what we call "pre-devachanic unconsciousness". The second exception is found in the Nirmanakayas.
Enq:
What about them? And what does the name mean for you?
Theo:
It is the name given to those who, though they have won
the right to Nirvana and cyclic rest - (not Devachan, as the latter is an illusion of our consciousness,
a happy dream, and as those who are fit for Nirvana must
have lost entirely every desire or possibility of the
world's illusions) - have out of pity for mankind and
those they left on earth renounced the Nirvanic state.
Such an adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him,
believing it a selfish act to rest in bliss while mankind
groans under the burden of misery produced by ignorance,
renounces Nirvana, and determines to remain invisible in spirit on this earth. They have no material body, as they have
left it behind; but otherwise they remain with all their
principles even in astral life in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few
elect ones, only surely not with ordinary mediums.
Key
156 Enq: ... Do we possess more knowledge in Devachan
than we do in Earth life?
Theo:
In one sense, we can acquire more knowledge; that is,
we can develop further any faculty which we loved and
strove after during life, provided it is concerned with
abstract and ideal things, such as music, painting, poetry,
etc., since Devachan is merely an idealized and subjective
continuation of earth-life.
Enq:
But if in Devachan the Spirit is free from matter, why
should it not possess all knowledge?
Theo:
Because, as I told you, the Ego is, so to say, wedded
to the memory of its last incarnation. Thus, if you think
over what I have said, and string all the facts together,
you will realize that the Devachanic state is not one
of omniscience, but a transcendental continuation of
the personal life just terminated. It is the rest of
the soul from the toils of life.
If
they [the scientific materialists] say that self-consciousness
ceases with the body, then in their case they simply
utter an unconscious prophecy, for once they are firmly
convinced of what they assert, no conscious after-life
is possible for them. For there are exceptions to every rule.
Enq:
...This is but an aberration of the blind man, who denies
the existence of the sun because he does not see it.
But after death his spiritual eyes will certainly compel
him to see. Is that what you mean?
Theo:
He will not be compelled, nor will he see anything. Having
persistently denied during life the continuance of existence
after death, he will be unable to see it, because his
spiritual capacity having been stunted in life, it cannot
develop after death, and he will remain blind. By insisting
that he must see it, you evidently mean one thing and I another. You
speak of the spirit from the spirit, or the flame from
the flame - of Atma, in sort - and you confuse it with
the human soul - Manas ... The whole gist of your question
is to know whether, in the case of a downright materialist,
the complete loss of self-consciousness and self-perception
after death is possible? ... I answer, it is possible.
Because, believing firmly in our Esoteric Doctrine, which
refers to the post-mortem period, or the interval between two lives or births, as
merely a transitory state, I say, whether that interval
between two acts of the illusionary drama of life lasts
one year or a million, that post-mortem state may, without any breach of the fundamental law, prove
to be just the same state as that of a man who is in
a dead faint.
Key
158 [We must] understand what we mean by Buddhi and the
duality of Manas to gain a clear perception why the materialist
may fail to have a self-conscious survival after death.
Since Manas, in its lower aspect, is the seat of the
terrestrial mind, it can, therefore, give only that perception
of the Universe which is based on the evidence of that
mind; it cannot give spiritual vision ...
Key
160 Theo: ... both immortality and consciousness after
death become, for the terrestrial personality of man,
simply conditioned attributes, as they depend entirely
on conditions and beliefs created by the human soul itself
during the life of its body. Karma acts incessantly:
we reap in our after-life only the fruit of that which we have ourselves sown in this.
CW
IV, 444 [About Devachan] .... To realize the conditions
of spiritual existence of any sort it
is necessary to get above the plane of
merely physical perceptions. One
cannot see the things of the spirit with
the eyes of the flesh, and one cannot
successfully appreciate subjective
phenomena by help only of those intellectual
reflections which appertain to the physical
senses. "How can a conscious existence without activity or pursuit be one of satisfaction or enjoyment?" It would only emphasize the mistaken idea which this question
embodies if one were to ask instead, "how can a conscious existence without athletic sports and
hunting be one of enjoyment?" The cravings of man's animal or even bodily
human nature are not permanent in their
character. The demands of
the mind are different from those of
the body. In physical life an ever-recurring
desire for change impresses our
imagination with the idea that there
can be no continuity of contentment,
without variety of occupation and amusement.
To realize completely the way in which
a single vein
of spiritual consciousness may continue
for considerable periods of time to engage
the attention - not only the
contented, but the delighted attention
- of a spiritual entity, is probably
possible only for persons who already
in life have developed certain inner
faculties, dormant
in mankind at large. But meanwhile our
present correspondent may perhaps derive
some satisfaction from the fact -
as explained in recent essays on the
subject - that one sort of variety is
developed in Devachan in a very high
degree; viz., the variety which naturally grows out
of the simple themes set in vibration
during life. Immense growths, for example,
of knowledge itself are possible in Devachan,
for the
spiritual entity which has begun the "pursuit" of such knowledge during life. Nothing can
happen to a spirit in Devachan, the keynote
of which has not been struck
during life; the condition of a subjective
existence are such that the importation
of quite external impulses
and alien thoughts is impossible. But
the seed of thought once sown, the current
of thoughts once set going (the
metaphor may freely be varied to suit
any taste), and then its developments
in Devachan may be infinite, for
the sixth sense there and the sixth principle
are our instructors; and in such society
there can be no isolation,
as physical humanity understands the
term. The spiritual ego in fact, under
the tuition of his own sixth principle,
need be in no fear of being dull, and
would be as likely
to sigh for a doll's house or a box of
ninepins as for the harps and palm leaves
of the mediaeval Heaven.
CW
V, 70 [Answering some objections] We constantly
hear of the "dreamers in Devachan", of the "subjective isolation" of this state. And then we are forthwith reproached for
regarding it as "less real" than our present condition! Take the case
of the association of friends there.
What we want to know is whether there
is any REAL intercourse of personalities
- of 5th principles
- there ... Of course for the disembodied
consciousness
in Devachan the bodily presence which
to us here is the outward and visible sign
of intercourse can have no reality.
It was surely unnecessary to insist much
upon the fact. "Two sympathetic souls," we are told, "both disembodied, will each work out its own Devachanic sensations,
making the other a sharer in its subjective bliss. This
will be as real to them, naturally, as though both were
yet on this earth." So far so good; the truth and reality of
the intercourse seem to be quite unmistakably
affirmed, though of course
the mode of the intercourse is not such as we can
at present recognize from experience.
But in the next passage our doubt revives. "Nevertheless, each is dissociated from the
other as regards personal or corporeal
association."
Footnote:
If we understand the spirit of the objection
at all, it rests simply upon a mistake.
The conjunction placed
between the words "personal" and "corporeal" is sufficient to show that the term personal stands here for "external" or "bodily". Why should it then be taken in the sense of the mental
representation of a personality? The "or" makes the two adjectives identical. - Ed.
As
regards corporeal, granted, but what
as regards personal, since it is just the personal, 5th principle,
consciousness that survives in Devachan?
Here are two disembodied personal consciousnesses
in Devachan. Are they really and truly
affected the one by the other so as to
constitute a veritable
intercourse,
or is it merely that the one personality imagines the presence of the other, as taking that
image to be reality, whereas it does
not correspond with any fact of which
the other personality could take cognizance?
I deny that
I am "postulating an incongruity" in objecting that such an "intercourse" is not real,
is a "mere dream", for I can conceive a real intercourse - conscious on both sides and truly acting and
reacting - which does not apply "only to the mutual relationship of physical existence".
(71)
It is asked "... what actual companionship could there ever be other than the purely
idealistic one as above described, between two subjective entities which are not even as material as that ethereal
body-shadow - the Mayavi-rupa?" Now actual companionship implies the mutual
action and reaction of consciousness
- which need not be by any bodily mediation
whatever. You must really and truly affect me, and I must know that you are in this sense (the most real
of all) present with me, and vice versa. Anything short of that, any subjective consciousness of
mine, whereby some representation of you arises in me
if not correspondent to, and caused by, some act or thought
of yours, is a mere dream, and I am 'cheated by nature' if I am made to believe what is not the fact. What we want to know, and cannot quite make out from these
teachings, is whether Devachan is a state corresponding
to our waking life here, or to our sleep with dreams?
The former we call real and true, the latter fictitious.
(72)
The whole doubt arises out of the following
statement: "The person whose happiness of the higher sort on earth had
been entirely centred in the exercise of the affections" [that is the case with few of us - enough that the affections
are an essential element of our higher happiness] "will miss none in Devachan of those whom
he or she loved. But at once it will
be asked, if some of these are not
themselves fit for Devachan, how then?
The answer is, that does not matter.
For the person who loved them they will be there". And then it is truly pointed out that there is nothing
absolutely real in what is objective to us here - all
is relative. "As real as the realities of this world to us, and even more
so, will be the realities of Devachan to those who go
into that state." But it will not be denied that there is
a real intercourse between personalities
here, albeit by very imperfect
and not essentially real means. Your body, and the voice I hear, as well as my body and
those organs of sense by which I hear, are mere phenomena,
at least as unreal to a spiritual consciousness, as spirits
are unperceived and therefore unreal to us. But you and
I are not unreal. There is real intercourse between us. Through our present defective
means, it is true that you are very imperfectly, very partially, with me - I only get a symbol of your presence. Still it is a perfectly honest symbol as far as
it goes, and you are really speaking to me when I hear
you. I do not merely seem to myself to hear you, who
may be absent or non-existent all the while. But if in
Devachan I can realistically imagine the presence - the
living, communicating presence - of some one who is not
there; what security have I that I am truly in communication
with any one who is there? Am I truly in such communication in any case? Or is each personality
perfectly secluded and isolated, merely feigning and
dreaming the companions around it, you of me, and I of
you, even though we are both really in the same state,
and might just as well be really in each other's company?
But again, how, for any one who had attained the conception
of Devachan in earth life - you and I for instance -
would such dreams be possible? Why, we should know perfectly well all the time that we
were merely dreaming, and then the dream would lose all
its apparent reality - and we should in fact be awake. I should know that the friend I have left
on earth is there still, and that what
of him seems to be with me is a
mere subjective image of my own. I should
know that because I have learned the
doctrine of Devachan, and because "the continuity of our speculative ideas is one of the characteristics
of Devachan,"...
(73)
There seems to be one way out of this, and I should like
to know if that is the true idea. It may be that for
the Devachanee, that which is only future and potential
for us here, is actual and present. Say that you are
in Devachan, I upon earth. I of course as a person upon earth should have only that objective consciousness.
But my higher personality, though not yet translated
into terms of my objective consciousness, may all this
while have a subjective consciousness of its own, that
into which I shall come, and with which I shall identify
myself in Devachan. And you in Devachan might be en rapport with this higher subjective consciousness of mine. You would
thus know all that is best in me, all that in me which
is in most affinity with your own Devachanic consciousness.
Yet it would still be only so much of my 5th principle
as is capable of elevation into the Devachanic state.
CW
V, 74 The "misunderstanding" arises from a natural misconception of the sense in which
certain terms are made use of rather than from any "inconsistent language" used. The alternative of moving for ever
in a vicious circle faces the European
student of Occult philosophy, who
begins his study before having made himself
familiar with the technical mode of thought
and peculiarity of
expression of its teachers. His first
necessity is, to know the esoteric views
of the ultimate nature of Spirit,
of Matter, Force and Space; the fundamental
and axiomatic theories as to the Reality
and Unreality, Form and the
Formless rupa and a-rupa, dream and waking.
Footnote:
The Vedanta philosophy teaches as much as Occult philosophy
that our monad during its life on earth as a triad (7th, 6th, and 5th principles), has, besides the condition
of pure intelligence, three conditions; namely, waking,
dreaming, and sushupti - a state of dreamless sleep - from the standpoint of terrestrial conceptions;
of real, actual soul-life - from the occult standpoint.
While man is either dreamlessly, profoundly asleep or in a trance state, the triad (Spirit, Soul and Mind) enters into perfect union with the
Paramatma, the Supreme Universal Soul. - Ed.
Especially
should he master - at least approximately
- the distinction between the "objective' and the "subjective" in the living man's sensuous perceptions and the same as
they appear to the psychic perceptions of a disembodied
entity (Devachanee). It will not strengthen his case
to put forth the objection that "the mode of the intercourse is not such as we can at present
recognize from experience"; in other words, that until one becomes a "Devachanee" one cannot enter into sympathy with his
feelings or perceptions. For, the disembodied
individuality being identical in
nature with the higher triad of the living man, when liberated as the result of self-evolution effected by the full development of conscious
and trained will, the adept can through this triad learn
all that concerns the Devachanee; live for the time being
his mental life, feel as he feels and sharing thoroughly
in his supersensuous perceptions, bring back with him
on earth the memory of the same, unwarped by mayavic deceptions, hence - not to be gain-said. This, of course,
assuming the existence of such lusus naturae as an "adept", which may, perhaps, be conceded by the objectors for the
sake of argument. And the further concession must be
asked that no comparison shall be made to the adept's
detriment between the perceptive powers of his triad,
when so freed from the body, and those of the half liberated
monad of the entranced somnambule or medium which is
having its dazed glimpse into the "celestial arcana". Still less, is it allowable to gauge them
by the reveries of an embodied mind,
however cultured and metaphysical,
which has no data to build upon, save
the deductions and inductions which spring
from its own normal activity.
CW
V, 77 [About the Devachanic "dream"] the Occultist replies that there are dreams
and dreams. That there is a difference
between a dream produced by
outward physiological causes, and the
one which reacts and becomes in its turn
the producer of super-sensuous
perceptions and feelings. That he divides
dreams into the phenomenal and the noumenal,
and distinguishes between
the two; and that, moreover, the physiologist
is entirely unfit to comprehend the ultimate
constitution of a disembodied Ego - hence the nature of its "dreams". This, he does for several reasons, of which
one may be particularly noticed: the
physiologist rejects a priori WILL, the chief and indispensable factor
of the inner man. He refuses to recognize
it apart from particular acts
of volition, and declares that he knows
only the latter, viewed by him simply
as a reaction or desire of determination
of energy outward, after ... "the complex interworking and combination of ideas in the
hemispheral ganglia". Hence the physiologist would have to reject
at once the possibility of consciousness
- minus memory; and the Devachanee having no organs,
no sensory ganglia, no "educated" nor even "idiotic centres", nor nerve cells, cannot naturally have
that, what the physiologists would regard
and define, as memory. Unfettered from
the personal sensations of the manas, the devachanic consciousness would certainly have to become
universal or absolute consciousness, with no past as with no future,
the two merging into one eternal PRESENT
- but for the trammels of the
personal Ego. But even the latter, once
severed from its bodily organs, can have
no such memory as defined
by Professor Huxley, who fathers it upon
the "sensigenous molecules" of the brain - those molecules, which, begotten
by sensation, remain behind when it has
passed away, and that constitute,
we are told, the physical foundation
of memory; hence also the foundation
of all dreams. What can these molecules
have to do with the ethereal atoms that
act in the spiritual
consciousness of the monad, during its
bliss wholly based and depending upon
the degree of its connection with
only the essence of that personal Ego!
(78)
What may then be the nature of the Devachanic
dream - we are asked - and how does the
occultist define the
dream of the still embodied man? To Western
science a dream is a series of thoughts,
of connected acts or rather "states" which are only imagined to be real. The uninitiated metaphysician, on the other hand, describes
it in his exoteric way, as the passage of sense from
darkness into light - the awakening of spiritual consciousness.
But the occultist, who knows that the spiritual sense
pertaining to the immutable can never sleep or even be dormant per se, and is always in the "Light" of reality, says that during the state of
sleep, Manas (the seat of the physical and personal intelligence) becomes
able - its containing vehicle Kama, the WILL, being allowed the full freedom of its conscious
action owing to volition being rendered passive, and unconscious
by the temporary inactivity of the sensory
centres - to perceive that
reality in the subjective world which
was hidden from it in waking hours. That
reality does not become less
real, because upon awakening the "sensigenous molecules", and "uneducated centres" throw and toss in the mayavic light of actual life the recollection and even the remembrance
of it into confusion. But the participation of the manas in the Devachanic bliss, does not add to, but on the contrary
takes away from,, the reality that would fall to the
lot of the monad were it altogether free from its presence.
Its bliss is an outcome of Sakkayaditthi, the delusion or "heresy of individuality", which heresy, together with the attavadic [a Buddhist term meaning, false belief in
a permanent separate 'self'] chain of
causes, is necessary for the monad's
future birth. It is all this that leads
the occultist to regard the association
or "intercourse" between two disembodied entities in the
Devachan -however more real than life it may be - as an illusion, and from his
standpoint still "a dream", and so to speak of it; while that which his critics would
fain call - however regretfully -dreams - "the interludes which fancy makes" - is in the knowledge of the former simply
glimpses of the Reality.
(79)
Let us take an instance: a son loses a much beloved father.
In his dreams he may see and converse with him, and for
the time it lasts feel as happy and unconscious of his
death as though the father had never left this earth.
This upon awakening, he will regard with sorrow as a
mere dream that could not last. Is he right to so regard
it? The occultist says that he is wrong. He is simply
ignorant of the fact that his spirit being of the same
essence and nature as that of his father, - as all spirits
are -and the inherent property of mutual attraction and
assimilation being in their special case strengthened
by the paternal and filial love of their personal Egos - that they have, in fact, never separated from each other, death itself being powerless to sever psychic
association there, where pure spiritual
love links the two. The "dream" was in this instance the reality; the latter a maya, a false appearance due to avidya (false notions). Thus it becomes more correct
and proper to call the son's ignorance
during his waking hours a "dream" and "a delusion", than to so characterize the real intercourse. For what has happened? A Spiritualist
would say: "the spirit of the father descended upon earth to hold communion with his son's
spirit, during the quiet hours of sleep". The Occultist replies: "Not so; neither the father's spirit descended, nor has the son's triad ascended
(strictly and correctly speaking)". The centre of Devachanic activity cannot
be localized: it is again avidya. Monads during that time even when connected with their
five finite Kosas (sheaths or principles) know neither space nor time, but
are diffused throughout the former, are omnipresent and
ubiquitous. Manas in its higher aspect is dravya - an eternal "substance" as well as the Buddhi, the spiritual soul - when this aspect is developed; and
united with the Soul Manas becomes spiritual self-consciousness, which is a Vikara (a production) of its original "producer" Buddhi.
(80)
Footnote: It is only when Ego becomes Ego-ism deluded into a notion of independent existence as the producer
in its turn of the five Tanmatras that Manas is considered Maha-bhutic and finite in the sense of being connected with Ahancara, the personal "I-creating" faculty. Hence Manas is both eternal and non-eternal: eternal in its atomic nature
(paramanu rupa); finite (or karya-rupa) when linked as a duad - with kama (Volition), a lower production. - Ed.
Unless
made utterly unfit, by its having become hopelessly mixed
with, and linked to, its lower Tanmatras, to become one with Buddhi, it is inseparable from it. Thus
the higher human triad, drawn by its affinity to those
triads it loved most, with Manas in its highest aspect of self-consciousness - (which is
entirely disconnected with, and has no need as a channel
of the internal organ of physical sense called antahkarana - helping, it is ever associated with and enjoys the presence
of all those it loves - in death, as much as it did in
life. The intercourse is real and genuine.
The
critic doubts whether such an intercourse
can be called a "veritable one". He wants to know whether the two disembodied entities are "really and truly affected the one by the other"; or, "is it merely that the one personality imagines the presence of the other", such intercourse corresponding with no fact "of which the other personality [either embodied or disembodied]
could take cognizance"; and while doubting, he denies that he is "'postulating an incongruity' in objecting
that such an 'intercourse' is not real, is a 'mere dream'", for he says, he "can conceive a real intercourse - conscious on both sides and truly acting and
reacting - which does not apply 'only to the mutual relationship of
physical existence'". If he really can, then where is the difficulty complained of? The real meaning
attached by the occultist to such words as dream, reality
and unreality, having been explained, what further trouble
is there to comprehend this specific tenet? The critic
may also be asked, how he can conceive of a real conscious
intercourse on both sides, unless he understands the
peculiar, and - to him as yet unknown - intellectual
reaction and inter-relation between the two. [This sympathetic
reaction is no fanciful hypothesis but a scientific fact
known and taught at initiations, though unknown to modern
science and but hazily perceived by some metaphysicians
- spiritualists].
(81)
Footnote: It is demonstrated to Occultists by the fact
that two adepts separated by hundreds of miles, leaving
their bodies at their respective habitations and their astral bodies (the lower manas and volition, kama) to watch over them, can still meet at some distant place
and hold converse and even perceive and sense each other
for hours as though they were both personally and bodily together, whereas, even their lower mayavi-rupas are absent. - Ed.
Or
is it that, alternatively, he anthropomorphises
Spirit - in the spiritualistic mistaken
sense? Our critic has
just told us that "the mode of the intercourse is not such as we [he]
can at present recognize from experience". What kind of intercourse is it then that
he can conceive of?
CW
V, 81 It is incorrect to use the term "personal soul" in connection with the monad, "The personal or animal soul" is, as already said, the 5th principle,
and cannot be in Devachan, the highest
state permitted to it on earth
being samadhi. It is only its essence that has followed the monad into Devachan, to serve it there
as its ground-tone, or as the background against which
its future dream-life and developments will move; its
entity, or the reliquiae is the "shell", the dross that remains behind as an elementary
to fade away and in time disappear. That
which is in Devachan
is no more the persona - the mask, than the smell of a rose is
the flower itself. The rose decays and
becomes a pinch of dust: its aroma
will never die, and may be recalled and
resurrected ages thence. Correctly expressed,
the sentence would have
to read: "... the living image before the Spiritual Soul, which being now saturated with the essence of the
personality, has thus ceased to be Arupa (formless or rather devoid of all substance)
for its Devachanic duration, and craves
for their presence, etc". The gestation period is over, it has won
the day, been reborn as a new out of
the old ego, and before it is
ushered again into a new personality, it will reap the effects of the causes sown in its precedent
birth in one of the Devachanic or Avitchian states, as
the case may be, though the latter are found wide apart. Avasyam eva bhoktavyam kritam karma subhasubham. [The fruit of the tree of action, whether good or bad, must
unavoidably be eaten.] The Devachanic condition in all its aspects is no doubt similar to a dreamy state when considered from the standpoint of our present objective
consciousness when we are in our waking condition. Nevertheless, it is as real to the Devachanee
himself as our waking state is to us.
Therefore, when it is asked "Whether Devachan is a state corresponding to our waking life
here or to our sleep with dreams", - the answer given is that it is not similar
to either of these conditions; but it
is similar to the dreamy condition of a man who has no waking state at all, if such a being
can be supposed to exist. A monad in Devachan has but one state of consciousness, and the contrast between a waking state and a dreamy state
is never presented to it so long as it is in that condition.
Another objection urged is, that if a Devachanee were
to think of an object or person as if the object or person
were present before him when they are not so (when judged
from the common ideas of objective perception) then the Devachanee
is "cheated by nature". If such is really the case, he is indeed always "cheated by nature"; and the suggestion contained in the foregoing letter as
to the possible mode of communication between a Devachanee
and one living on earth will not save him from delusion.
Leaving aside for a moment the nature of a Devachanee's
communication with another monad either in or out of
Devachan, let the nature of his ideas be examined so
far as they are connected with objects; and then the
truth of the above mentioned statement will be easily
perceived. Suppose, for instance, Galileo in Devachan,
subjectively engaged in his favourite intellectual pursuit.
It is natural to suppose that his telescope often comes
within the range of his Devachanic consciousness, and
that the Devachanee subjectively directs it toward some
planet. It is quite clear that according to the general
ideas of objectivity, Galileo has no telescope before
him, and it cannot be contended that his train of ideas
in any way actually affects the telescope which he left
behind him in this world. If the objector's reasoning is correct, Galileo is "being cheated by nature", and the suggestion above referred to will
in no way help him in this case.
(83)
Thus, the inference that it is neither
correct nor philosophical to speak of a
Devachanee as being "cheated by nature" becomes once more unavoidable. Such words
as cheating, delusion, reality are always
relative. It is only by contrast that
a particular state of consciousness can
be called real or illusionary; and these
words cease to have any significance
whatever, when the said state of consciousness
cannot be compared with any other state.
Supposing one is justified
in looking upon Devachanic experience
as delusion from his present standpoint
as a human being living on this
earth, what then? We fail to see how
any one means to make use of this inference.
Of course from the foregoing
remarks the reader is not to suppose
that a Devachanee's consciousness can never
affect or influence the state
of consciousness of another monad either
in or out of Devachan. Whether such is
the case or not, the reality
or the unreality of Devachanic experience,
so far as a Devachanee is concerned, does
not depend upon any such
communicative influence.
(84)
In some cases it is evident that the state of consciousness
of one monad whether in Devachan or yet on earth, may
blend with, as it were, and influence the ideation of
another monad also in Devachan. Such will be the case
where there is strong, affectionate sympathy between
the two egos arising from participation in the same higher
feelings or emotions, or from similar
intellectual pursuits or spiritual
aspiration. Just as the thoughts of a
mesmerizer standing at a distance are
communicated to his subject by the
emanation of a current of magnetic energy
attracted readily towards the subject,
the train of ideas of a Devachanee
are communicated by a current of magnetic
or electric force attracted towards another
Devachanee by reason
of the strong sympathy existing between
the two monads, especially when the said
ideas relate to things which
are subjectively associated with the
Devachanee in question. It is not to
be inferred, however, that in other cases
when there is no such action or reaction,
a Devachanee
becomes conscious of the fact that his
subjective experience is a mere delusion,
for it is not so. It was already
shown that the question of reality or
unreality does not depend upon any such
communication or transmission of intellectual energy.
We
are asked, "if some of these (the Devachanee loved) are not themselves
fit for Devachan, how then?" We answer: "Even in the case of a man still living on earth, or even
of one suffering in Avitchi, the ideation of a monad
in Devachan may still affect his monad if there is strong
sympathy between the two as indicated above. Yet the
Devachanee will remain ignorant of the mental suffering
of the other".
Footnote:
The reader is reminded in this connection that neither
Devachan nor Avitchi is a locality, but a state which affects directly the being in it and all others only
by reaction. - Ed.
(85)
If this generous provision of nature
that never punishes the innocent outside
this our world of delusion, be still
called "a cheating of nature", and objected to, on the ground that it is not an "honest symbol" of the other personality's presence, then
the most reasonable course would be to
leave the occult doctrines and Devachan
alone. The noble truths, the grandest
goal in soul-life,
will remain for ever a closed book to
such minds. Devachan instead of appearing
what it is - a blissful rest, a
heavenly oasis during the laborious journey
of the Monad toward a higher evolution,
will indeed present itself
as the culmination, the very essence
of death itself. One has to sense intuitionally
its logical necessity;
to perceive in it, untaught and unguided,
the outcome and perpetuation of that
strictest justice absolutely
consonant with the harmony of the universal
law, if one would not lose time over
its deep significance. We do
not mean it in any unkind spirit, yet
with such an opposition to the very exposition
(since no one is pressed for its
acceptance) of our doctrine by some Western
minds, we feel bound to remind our opponents
that they have the
freedom of choice. [Here follows a passage
comparing Devachan and Avitchi to the
(then) current conventional ideas on
Heaven and Hell.]
CW
V, 86 The bliss of a Devachanee is complete, and nature
secures it even at the risk of being accused of cheating by the pessimists of this world unable to distinguish between Vastu - the one reality and Vishaya - the "mayas" of our senses. It is fetching rather too
far the presumption that our objective and subjective shall be the true standards for the realities and unrealities
of the rest of the universe; that our criterion of truth and honesty is to stand
as the only universal land-mark of the
same. Had we to proceed upon such principles,
we would have to accuse nature of cheating
incessantly
not only her human but also her animal
offspring. Who, of our objectors, when
treating of facts of natural history
and the phenomena of vision and colour,
would ever hazard the remark that because
ants are utterly unable to see
and distinguish colours as human beings
do (the red, for instance, having no
existence for them), therefore,
are they also "cheated by nature"? Neither personality nor objectivity as known to us, have any being in the composition of a monad;
and could, by any miracle, any living human creature
come within the range of the Devachanic vision, it would
be as little perceived by the Devachanee as the elementals
that throng the air around us are perceived with our
natural eyes.
(87)
One more error of the critic. He seems to be labouring
under the impression that if one has some conception
of Devachanic state of subjective consciousness while
in this life, he will know that such experience is illusory
when he is actually there; and then Devachanic beatitudes
will have lost all their reality so far as he is concerned.
There is no reason to apprehend any such catastrophe.
It is not very difficult to perceive the fallacy that
underlies this argument. Suppose, for instance, A, now
living at Lahore, knows that his friend B is at Calcutta.
He dreams that they are both at Bombay engaged in various
transactions. Does he know at the time he is dreaming that the whole dream is illusory? How can the consciousness
that his friend is really at Calcutta, which is only
realized when he is in his waking condition, help him
in ascertaining the delusive nature of his dream when he is actually dreaming? Even after experiencing dreams several times during his
life and knowing that dreams are generally illusionary,
A will not know that he is dreaming when he is actually
in that condition.
Similarly,
a man may experience the devachanic condition while yet
alive, and call it delusion, if he pleases, when he comes
back to his ordinary state of objective consciousness
and compares it to the said condition. Nevertheless,
he will not know that it is a dream either when he experiences
it a second time (for the time being) while still living,
or when he dies and goes to Devachan.
(88)
The above is sufficient to cover the
case were even the state under discussion
indeed "a dream" in the sense our opponents hold it in. But it is neither
a "dream" nor in any way "cheating". It may be so from the standpoint of Johnson's
dictionary; from that of fact independent of all human definition, and the standpoint
of him who knows something of the laws that govern the
worlds invisible, the intercourse between the monads
is real, mutual, and as actual in the world of subjectivity, as it is in this our world
of deceptive reality. It is the old story of Zoellner's
man from the two-dimensional region disputing the reality
of the phenomena taking place in the three-dimensional
world.
CW
V, 89 [H.P.B. examines the background to Westerners'
difficulties in understanding Eastern
esoteric teachings, then concludes]:
His difficulty is to reconcile "isolation", as he understands it, with "intercourse" as we understand it. Though the monad is
not like a seed dropped from a tree,
but in its nature is ubiquitous,
all-pervading, omnipresent; though in
the subjective state time, space and
locality are not factors in its
experiences; though, in short, all mundane
conditions are reversed; and the now
thinkable becomes the then
unthinkable and vice-versa - yet the London friend goes on to reason as though all
this were not so.
(90)
Now, Buddhistically speaking, there are
states and states and degrees upon degrees
in Devachan, in all of which,
notwithstanding the (to us) objective
isolation of the principal hero, he is
surrounded by a host of actors
in conjunction with whom he had during
his last earth-life created and worked
out the causes of those effects that
are produced first on the field of Devachanic or Avitchian subjectivity, then used to strengthen the
Karma to follow on the objective (?)
plane of the subsequent rebirth.
Earth-life, is so to say, the Prologue of the drama (or we should, perhaps, call
it mystery), that is enacted in the rupa and arupa lokas. Now were we to say that nature, with
every due regard to personality and the
laws of objectivity as understood
in exotericism, "constitutes a veritable intercourse" between the devachanic heroes and actors;
and, instead of dissociating the monads not only as regards "personal or corporeal" but even astral "association" -establishes "actual companionship" between them, as on the earth-plane, we
might, perhaps, avoid the strange accusation
of "nature cheating" in Devachan. On the other hand, after thus
pandering to emotional objections, we
could hardly help placing our
European Chelas in a far more inextricable
dilemma. They would be made to face a
problem of personal post-mortem ubiquity, throwing that of the Western deity
far into the background of illogical
absurdity. Suppose for one moment
a Devachanic father, twice wedded, and
loving both his wives as he does his
children, while the step-mother
loves neither his progeny nor their mother, the coolest indifference if not
actual aversion reigning between the
two. "Actual companionship", and "real personal intercourse" (the latter applied even to their astral
bodies) implies here bliss for the father
and irritation for the two
wives and children, all equally worthy
of Devachanic bliss. Now imagine again
the real mother attracting by
her intense love the children within
her devachanic state, and thus depriving
the father of his legitimate share of bliss. It has been said
before, that the devachanic mind is capable
only of the highest spiritual
ideation; that neither objects of the
grosser senses nor anything provocative
of displeasure could even be
apprehended by it - for otherwise, Devachan
would be merging into Avitchi, and the feeling of unalloyed bliss destroyed
for ever. How can nature reconcile in
the above case the problem
without either sacrificing her duty to
our terrestrial sense of objectivity and reality, or, without compromising her status before our criterion of truth and honest dealing? On
one hand, the children would have to
double and treble themselves ad infinitum - as they too may have disembodied, devachanic
objects of spiritual attachment clamouring
elsewhere for their presence
- which process of ubiquity would hardly
be consistent with our notions of personal,
actual presence, at one
and the same time and at several different
places; or, there would always be somebody,
somewhere "cheated by nature". To place the monads promiscuously together, like one happy family
- would be fatal to truth and fact: each
man, however insignificant
he may have been on earth, is yet mentally
and morally sui generis in his own distinct conceptions of bliss
and desires, and has, therefore, a right
to, and an absolute necessity
for, a specific, personal, "isolated" devachan ...
(91)
According even to exoteric Buddhistic philosophy disincarnate
beings are divided into three classes of - (1) Kamawachara,
or those who are still under the dominion of the passions
in Kamaloka; (2) Rupawachara, or those who
have progressed to a higher stage, but still retain vestiges
of their old form in Rupa loka; and (3) Arupawachara,
or those who are become formless entities in the Arupa
lokas of the highest Devachan. All depends on the degree
of the monad's spirituality and aspirations. The astral
body of the 4th principle - called Kama, because
inseparable from Kama loka, - is always within the
attraction of terrestrial magnetism; and the monad has
to work itself free of the still finer yet equally potent
attractions of its Manas before it ever reaches
in its series of Devachanic states, the upper-Arupa regions.
Therefore, there are various degrees of Devachanees. In
those of the Arupa lokas the entities are as subjective and
truly "not even as material as that ethereal body-shadow
- the Mayavi-rupa". And yet even there, we affirm there
is still "actual companionship". But only very few reach
there skipping the lower degrees. There are those Devachanees,
men of the highest moral
calibre and goodness when on earth, who,
owing to their sympathy for old intellectual researches
and especially for unfinished mental work, are for
centuries in the Rupa lokas in a strict Devachanic isolation
- literally so, since men and loved relatives have all
vanished out of sight before this intense and purely spiritual
passion for intellectual pursuit. For an example of the
study-bound (pardon the new word for the sake of its expressiveness)
condition, take the mental state of the dying Berzelius,
whose last thought was one of despair that his work should
be interrupted by death. This is Tanha (Hindu Trishna)
or an unsatisfied yearning which must exhaust itself before
the entity can move on to the purely a-rupa condition.
A provision is made for every case, and in each case it
is created by the dying man's last, uppermost desire. The
scholar who had mainly lived under the influence of manas,
and for the pleasure of developing his highest physical
intelligence kept absorbed in the mysteries of the material
universe, will still be magnetically held by his mental
attractions to scholars and their work, influencing and
being influenced by them subjectively - (though
in a manner quite different from that known in séance-rooms
and by mediums), until the energy exhausts itself and Buddhi becomes
the only regnant influence. The same rule applies to all
the activities, whether of passion or sentiment, which
entangle the travelling monad (the Individuality) in the
relationships of any given birth. The discarnate must consecutively
mount each rung of the ladder of being upward from the
earthly subjective to the absolutely subjective.
And when this limited Nirvanic state of Devachan is attained,
the entity enjoys it and its vivid though
spiritual realities until that phase
of Karma is satisfied and the physical
attraction to the next earth-life asserts
itself. In Devachan, therefore, the entity
is affected
by and reciprocally affects the psychic
state of any other entity whose relationship
is so close with it as
to survive as was above remarked, the
purgatorial evolution of the lower post-mortem
spheres. Their intercourse will
be sensed spiritually, and still, so
far as any relationship until now postulated
by Western thinkers goes, each will
be "dissociated from the other". If the questioner can
formulate to himself the condition of the monad as pure
spirit, the most subjective entity
conceivable, without form, colour, or
weight, even so great as an atom; an
entity whose recollections of the
last personality (or earth-birth) are
derived from the late union of the Manas with the
lower five principles - he may then find himself able to
answer his own interrogatory. According to Esoteric
Doctrine this evolution is not viewed
as the extinguishment
of individual consciousness but its infinite
expansion. The entity is not obliterated,
but united with the universal
entity , and its consciousness becomes
able not merely to recall the scenes
of one of its earth-evolved Personalities,
but of each of the entire series around
the Kalpa, and
then those of every other Personality.
In short from being finite it becomes
infinite consciousness. But this
comes only at the end of all the births
at the great day of the absolute Resurrection.
Yet, as the monad moves
on from birth to birth and passes its
lower and Devachanic spheres after each
fresh earthly existence, the mutual
ties created in each birth must weaken
and at last grow inert, before it can
be reborn. The record of those relationships
imperishably endures in the Akasa, and they can always
be reviewed when, in any birth, the being evolves his latent
spiritual powers to the "fourth stage of Dhyana": but their
hold upon the being gradually relaxes. This is accomplished
in each internatal Devachan; and when the
personal links - magnetic or psychic,
as one may prefer to call them -binding
the Devachanee to other entities
of the next previous life, whether relatives,
friends or family, are worn out, he is
free to move on in his
cyclic path. Were this obliteration of
personal ties not a fact, each being
would be travelling around the
Kalpa entangled in the meshes of his
past relationships with myriad fathers,
mothers, sisters, brothers, wives,
etc., etc., of his numberless births:
a jumble, indeed! It was the ignorant
delusion of the geocentric hypothesis
which begot all the exoteric theologies,
with their absurd
dogmas. So, likewise, it is the ignorant
theory of monogenesis, or but one earth
life for each being, which makes it
so hard for European metaphysicians to
read the riddle of our existence and
comprehend the difference between
the monad's individuality, and its physical appearance
in a series of earth-lives as so many
different, totally distinct personalities.
Europe knows much about
atomic weights and chemical symbols,
but has little idea of Devachan.
CW
X, 47 [... the Devachanic state ... is purely a state
of bliss, in which man receives compensation for the
undeserved misery of his past life.]
Quite
correct; but it is not the injustice or mistakes of Karma which are the causes of such "undeserved misery", but other causes, independent of the past
Karma of either the producer or the innocent
victim of their effects,
new actions generated by the wickedness of men and circumstances; and
which arouse Karmic law to fresh activity, i.e., the punishment of those who caused these new Nidanas (or causal connections), and the reward of him who suffered
from them undeservedly.
CW
X, 262 Q. Can a dreamer be "en rapport" with an entity in Devachan?
A. The
only possible means of communicating
with Devachanees is during sleep by a dream
or vision, or in trance state.
No Devachanee can descend into our plane;
it is for us - or rather our inner Self - to ascend to his.
CW
X, 269 ... the question raised was whether or not all
stayed 1500 years in Devachan.
Well,
Judge, you must know well that under the philosophy we
don't all stay there so long. It varies with the character
of each. A thoroughly material thinker will emerge sooner
than one who is a spiritual philosopher and good. Besides,
recollect that all workers for the Lodge, no matter of
what degree, are helped out of Devachan if they themselves
permit it. Your own idea which you have stated, that
1500 years had not elapsed since you went into Devachan,
is correct, and what I tell is what Master himself tells
me. So there you are.
ML
97:99 The Deva-Chan, or land of "Sukhavati", is allegorically described by our Lord Buddha himself. What he said may be
found in the Shan-Mun-yi-Tung. Says Tathagata:-
"Many
thousand myriads of systems of worlds
beyond this (ours) there is a region of
Bliss called Sukhavati ... This region is encircled with seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven rows of waving trees; this holy abode of Arhats is governed
by the Tathagatas (Dhyan Chohans) and is possessed by
the Bodhisatwas. It hath seven precious lakes, in the midst of which flow crystalline waters
having 'seven and one' properties, or distinctive qualities (the 7 principles
emanating from the ONE). This, O, Sariputra is the 'Deva
Chan'. Its divine Udambara flower casts a root in the shadow of every earth, and blossoms for all those who reach it. Those born in
the blessed region are truly felicitous, there are no
more griefs or sorrows in that cycle for them ... Myriads of Spirits (Lha) resort there for rest
and then return to their own regions. Again, O, Sariputra, in that land of joy
many who are born in it are Avaivartyas
..."
ML
98:100 Certainly the new Ego once that it is reborn [in Deva Chan], retains
for a certain time - proportionate to
its Earth-life, a "complete recollection of his life on earth". (See your preceding query). But it can never return on earth, from the Deva Chan, nor
has the latter - even omitting all "anthropomorphic ideas of God" - any resemblance to the paradise or heaven
of any religion, and it is H.P.B.'s literary
fancy that suggested to her
the wonderful comparison.
ML
98:l00 "Who goes to Deva Chan?" The personal Ego of course, but beatified,
purified, holy. Every Ego - the combination
of the sixth and seventh
principles - which after the period of
unconscious gestation is reborn into
the Deva-Chan, is of necessity as innocent
and pure as a new-born babe. The fact
of his being reborn
at all, shows the preponderance of good
over evil in his old personality. And
while the Karma (of evil) steps
aside for the time being to follow him
in his future earth-reincarnations, he
brings along with him but the
Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts,
into this Deva-Chan. Bad is a relative
term for us - as you were
told more than once before, - and the
Law of Retribution is the only law that
never errs. Hence all those who
have not slipped down into the mire of
unredeemable sin and bestiality - go
to the Deva Chan. They will have
to pay for their sins, voluntary and
involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they
are rewarded; receive the effects of the causes produced by them.
Of
course it is a state, one, so to say, of intense selfishness during which an Ego reaps the reward of his unselfishness on earth. He is completely engrossed in the bliss of all
his personal earthly affections, preferences and thoughts,
and gathers in the fruits of his meritorious actions.
No pain, no grief nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes
to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness; for it is a state of perpetual "Maya".
Since
the conscious perception of one's personality on earth is but an evanescent dream that sense will be equally
that of a dream in the Deva-Chan - only a hundred fold
intensified. So much so indeed, that the happy Ego is
unable to see through the veil the evils, sorrows and
woes to which those it loved on earth may be subjected
to. It lives in a sweet dream with its loved ones - whether
gone before, or yet remaining on earth; it has them near
itself, as happy, as blissful and as innocent as the
disembodied dreamer himself; and yet, apart from rare
visions the denizens of our gross planet feel it not.
It is in this, during such a condition of complete Maya that the Souls or astral Egos of pure, loving sensitives,
labouring under the same illusion, think their loved
ones come down to them on earth, while it is their own
Spirits that are raised towards those in the Deva-Chan.
ML
100:102 Yes, there are great varieties in the Deva-Chan
states, and it is all as you say. As many varieties of
bliss, as on earth there are shades of perception and
of capability to appreciate such reward. It is an ideated
paradise, in each case of the Ego's own making, and by
him filled with the scenery, crowded with the incidents,
and thronged with the people he would expect to find
in such a sphere of compensative bliss. It is that variety
which guides the temporary personal Ego into the current which will lead him to be reborn in a lower
or higher condition in the next world of causes. Everything
is so harmoniously adjusted in nature - especially in
the subjective world, that no mistake can ever be committed
by the Tathagatas - or Dhyan Chohans - who guide the
impulses.
ML
100:102 Q. On the face of the idea, a purely spiritual
state would only be enjoyable to the entities highly
spiritualized in this life. But there are myriads of
very good people (morally) who are not spiritualized
at all. How can they be fitted to pass, with their recollections
of this life from a material to a spiritual condition
of existence?
A.
It is "a spiritual condition" only as contrasted with our own grossly "material condition", and, as already stated - it is such degrees
of spirituality that constitute and determine
the great "varieties" of conditions within the limits of Deva-Chan.
A mother from a savage tribe is not less
happy than a mother from a
regal palace, with her lost child in
her arms; and although as actual Egos,
children prematurely dying before the
perfection of their septenary Entity
do not find their
way to Deva-Chan, yet all the same the
mother's loving fancy finds her children
there, without one missing that
her heart yearns for. Say - it is but
a dream, but after all what is objective
life itself but a panorama of vivid
unrealities? The pleasures realized by
a Red Indian in his "happy hunting grounds' in that Land of Dreams
is not less intense than the ecstasy
felt by a connoisseur who passes aeons in the rapt delight of
listening to divine Symphonies by imaginary
angelic choirs and orchestras.
As it is no fault of the former, if born
a "savage" with an instinct to kill - though it caused
the death of many an innocent animal
- why, if with it all, he was
a loving father, son, husband, why should
he not also enjoy his share of reward? The case would be quite
different if the same cruel acts had
been done by an educated and civilized
person, from a mere love of sport. The
savage in being
reborn would simply take a low place
in the scale, by reason of his imperfect
moral development; while the Karma of the other would be tainted with moral
delinquency ...
Every
one but that ego which, attracted by
its gross magnetism, falls into the current
that will draw it into the "planet of Death" - the mental as well as physical satellite
of our earth - is fitted to pass into a relative "spiritual" condition adjusted to his previous condition
in life and mode of thought. To my knowledge
and recollection H.P.B.
explained to Mr. Hume that man's sixth
principle, as something purely spiritual
could not exist, or have conscious being in the Deva-Chan, unless it assimilated some of the
more abstract and pure of the mental attributes of the
fifth principle or animal Soul: its manas (mind) and memory.
ML
102:104 Q. And how is a spiritual existence in which
everything has merged into the sixth principle, compatible
with that consciousness of individual and personal material
life which must be attributed to the Ego in Deva-Chan
if he retains his earthly consciousness as stated in
the Theosophist Note?
A.
The question is now sufficiently explained, I believe:
the sixth and seventh principles apart from the rest
constitute the eternal imperishable but also unconscious "Monad". To awaken in it to life the latent consciousness,
especially that of personal individuality, requires the monad plus the
highest attributes of the fifth - the "animal soul"; and it is that which makes the ethereal Ego that lives and enjoys bliss in the Deva-Chan. Spirit, or
the unalloyed emanations of the ONE - the latter forming
with the seventh and sixth principles the highest triad
- neither of the two emanations are capable of assimilating
but that which is good, pure and holy; hence no sensual,
material or unholy recollection can follow the purified
memory of the Ego to the region of Bliss. The Karma for these recollections
of evil deeds and thought will reach the Ego when it
changes its personality in the following world of causes. The Monad, or the "Spiritual Individuality", remains untainted in all cases. "No sorrow or Pain for those born there (in
the Rupa-Loka of Deva-Chan); for this is the Pureland. All the regions
in Space possess such lands (Sakwala), but this land of Bliss is the most pure." In the Djnana Prasthana Shaster, it is said: "by personal purity and earnest meditation, we overleap the
limits of the World of Desire, and enter in the World
of Forms".
ML
103:105 "Bardo" is the period between death and rebirth
- and may last from a few years to a
kalpa. It is divided into three sub-periods
(1) when the Ego delivered of its mortal coil enters into Kama-Loka (the abode of Elementaries [or shells];
(2) when it enters into its "Gestation State"; (3) when it is reborn in the Rupa-Loka of Deva-Chan. Sub-period (1) may last from a few minutes
to a number of years - the phrase "a few years" becoming puzzling and utterly worthless without a more complete
explanation; Sub-period (2) is "very long"; as you say, longer sometimes than you may
even imagine, yet proportionate to the Ego's spiritual stamina; Sub-period (3) lasts in proportion to
the good Karma, after which the monad is again reincarnated. The Agama Sutra saying:- "in all these Rupa-Lokas, the Devas (Spirits) are equally subjected
to birth, decay, old age, and death," means only that an Ego is borne thither then begins fading
out and finally "dies", i.e., falls into that unconscious condition which preceded
rebirth; and ends the Sloka with these words: "As the devas emerge from these heavens, they enter the lower
world again:" i.e., they leave a world of bliss to be
reborn into a world of causes.
ML
103:106 Most emphatically the "the Deva-Chan is not solely the heritage of adepts", and most decidedly there is a "heaven" - if you must use this astro-geographical Christian term
- for "an immense number of those who have gone before". But "the life of Earth" can be watched by none of these, for reasons
of the Law of Bliss plus Maya, already given.
ML
103:106 Q. And for how long? Does this state of spiritual
beatitude endure for years? for decades? for centuries?
A.
For years, decades, centuries and millenniums oftentimes
multiplied by something more. It all depends upon the
duration of Karma. Fill with oil Den's [Sinnett's son]
little cup, and a city Reservoir of water (sic), and
lighting both see which burns the longer. The Ego is the wick and Karma the oil; the difference in the quantity
of the latter (in the cup and the reservoir) suggesting
to you the great difference in the duration of various Karmas. Every effect must be proportionate to the
cause. And, as man's terms of incarnate
existence bear but a small proportion
to his periods of inter-natal existence
in the manvantaric
cycle, so the good thoughts, words and
deeds of any one of these "lives" on a globe are causative of effects, the
working out of which requires far more
time than the evolution of the
causes occupied. Therefore, when you
read in the Jats and other fabulous stories of the Buddhist Scriptures that this or the other
good action was rewarded by Kalpas of several figures
of bliss, do not smile at the absurd exaggeration, but
bear in mind what I have said. From a small seed, you
know, sprung a tree whose life endures now for 22 centuries;
I mean the Anuradha-pura Bo tree. Nor must you laugh, if ever you come across Pindha-Dhana or any other Buddhist Sutra and read: "Between the Kama-Loka and the Rupa-Loka there is a locality, the dwelling of 'Mara' (Death). This
Mara filled with passion and lust, destroys all virtuous
principles, as a stone grinds corn. His palace is 7000
yojanas square, and is surrounded by a seven-fold wall", for you will feel now more prepared to
understand the allegory.
ML
123:127 Most of those, whom you may call, if you like, candidates for Deva-Chan - die and are reborn in the Kama-Loka "without remembrance"; though (and just because) they do get some of it back in
Deva-Chan. Nor can we call it a full, but only partial
remembrance. You would hardly call "remembrance" a dream of yours; some particular scene
or scenes, within whose narrow limits
you would find enclosed a few persons
- those whom you loved best, with an
undying love, that
holy feeling that alone survives, and
- not the slightest recollection of any
other events or scenes? Love and Hatred are the only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of Ye-damma, or the phenomenal world. Imagine yourself then, in Deva-Chan
with those you may have loved with such immortal love;
with the familiar, shadowy scenes connected with them
for a background and - a perfect blank for everything
else relating to your interior, social, political, literary
and social life. And then, in the face of that spiritual,
purely cogitative existence, of that unalloyed felicity
which, in proportion with the intensity of the feelings
that created it, last from a few to several thousand
years, - call it the "personal remembrance of A.P.Sinnett" - if you can. Dreadfully monotonous! - you
may think. - Not in the least - I answer.
Have you experienced monotony
during - say - that moment which you
considered then and now so consider it - as the moment of the highest bliss you
have every felt? - Of course not. - Well no more will
you experience it there, in that passage through Eternity
in which a million of years is no longer than a second.
There, where there is no consciousness of an external
world there can be no discernment to mark differences,
hence, - no perception of contrasts of monotony or variety;
nothing in short, outside that immortal feeling of love
and sympathetic attraction whose seeds are planted in
the fifth, whose plants blossom luxuriantly in and around
the fourth, but whose roots have to penetrate deep into
the sixth principle if it would survive the lower groups.
ML
131:134 ... unless he [any man] has a strong desire to
live, he need not trouble himself about Deva-Chan. Unless a man loves well or hates as well, he will be neither in Deva-Chan
nor in Avitchi. "Nature spews the luke-warm out of her mouth" means only that she annihilates their personal Egos (not the shells nor yet the sixth principle) in the
Kama Loka and the Deva-Chan. This does not prevent them
from being immediately reborn - and, if their lives were
not very very bad, - there is no reason why the eternal Monad should not
find the page of the life intact in the Book of Life.
ML
143:147 Q. When you wrote "Have you experienced monotony during that moment which you
considered then and now so consider it, - as the moment
of the highest bliss you have ever felt?" - did you refer to any specific moment and
any specific event in my life, or were
you merely referring to an
X quantity - the happiest moment whatever
it might have been?
ML
166:170 A. No, good friend; I am not as indiscreet as
all that, I left you simply to your own reminiscences.
Every mortal creature, even the less favoured by Fortune,
has such moments of relative happiness at some time of
his life. Why shouldn't you? Yes, it was an X quantity
I referred to.
ML
143:147 Q. You say:- Remember we create ourselves, our
Deva Chan, and our Avitchi and mostly during the latter
days and even moments of our sentient lives.
ML
167:170 A. It is a widely spread belief among all
the Hindus that a person's future pre-natal
state and birth
are moulded by the last desire he may
have at the time of death. But this
last desire, they say, necessarily
hinges on to the shape which the person
may have given to his desires, passions,
etc., during his past life.
It is for this very reason, viz. -
that our last desire may not be unfavourable
to our future progress - that
we have to watch our actions and control
our passions and desires throughout
our whole earthly career."
ML
143:147 Q. But do the thoughts on which the mind may
be engaged at the last moment necessarily hinge on to the predominant character of its past life?
Otherwise it would seem as if the character of a person's
Deva Chan or Avitchi might be capriciously and unjustly
determined by the chance which brought some special thought
uppermost at the last?
ML
167:170 A. It cannot be otherwise. The experience of dying men - by drowning
and other accidents - brought back to life, has corroborated
our doctrine in almost every case. Such thoughts are involuntary and we have no more control over them than we would over
the eye's retina to prevent it perceiving that colour
which affects it most. At the last moment, the whole
life is reflected in our memory and emerges from all
the forgotten nooks and corners picture after picture,
one event after the other. The dying brain dislodges
memory with a strong supreme impulse, and memory restores
faithfully every impression entrusted to it during the
period of the brain's activity. That impression and thought
which was strongest naturally becomes the most vivid
and survives so to say all the rest which now vanish
and disappear for ever, to reappear but in Devachan.
(Footnote: Good gracious! had I forgotten in my hurry
to add the last five words, would not I have caught it as a charge of flat contradiction!) No man dies insane or unconscious - as some
physiologists assert. Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium tremens will have his instant of perfect lucidity at the moment
of death, though unable to say so to those present. The
man may often appear dead. Yet from the last pulsation,
from and between the last throbbing of his heart and
the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves
the body - the brain thinks and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his whole life over
again. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a death-bed
and find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death.
Especially have you to keep quiet just after Death has
laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers,
I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of thought,
and hinder the busy work of the Past casting its reflection
upon the Veil of the Future.
ML
184:187 Therefore, there is no contradiction in
saying, that the ego once reborn in the
Devachan, "retains for a certain time proportionate
to its earth life a complete recollection of his (Spiritual) life on earth". Here again the omission of the word "Spiritual" alone, produced a misunderstanding!
All
those that do not slip down into the 8th sphere - go to the Devachan. Where's the point made or the contradiction?
The
Devachan State, I repeat, can be as little described or
explained, by giving a however minute
and graphic description of the state
of one ego taken at random, as all the
human lives collectively could be described
by the "Life of Napoleon" or that of any other man. There are millions
of various states of happiness and misery, emotional states having their source in the physical as well as the spiritual faculties and senses, and only the latter surviving. An
honest labourer will feel differently from an honest millionaire. Miss Nightingale's state will differ considerably from that of a young bride who
dies before the consummation of what she regards as happiness.
The two former love their families; the philanthropist
- humanity; the girl centres the whole world in her future
husband; the melomanic knows of no higher state of bliss and happiness than music - the most divine
and spiritual of arts. The devachan merges from its highest into its lowest
degree - by insensible gradations; while from the last
step of devachan, the Ego will often find itself in Avitcha's faintest state,
which, towards the end of the spiritual selection of
events may become a bona fide "Avitcha". Remember every feeling is relative. There
is neither good nor evil, happiness nor misery per se. The transcendent, evanescent bliss of an adulterer, who by his act murders the happiness of a husband, is no
less spiritually born for its criminal nature. If a remorse of conscience
(the latter proceeding always from the Sixth Principle) has only once been felt during the period of bliss and
really spiritual love, born in the sixth and fifth, however,
polluted by the desires of the fourth, or Kamarupa - then this remorse must survive and will accompany incessantly the scenes of pure love. I need not enter into details, since a physiological expert,
as I take you to be, need hardly have his imagination
and intuitions prompted by a psychological observer of
my sort. Search in the depths of your conscience and
memory and try to see what are the scenes that are likely
to take their firm hold upon you; when once more in their
presence you find yourself living them over again; and that, ensnared, you will have forgotten all the
rest - this latter among other things, since in the course
of events it will come far later on in the panorama of
your resurrected life. I have no right to look into your past life. Whenever I may have caught glimpses of it, I have
invariably turned my eyes away, for I have to deal with
the present A.P. Sinnett - (also and by far more "a new invention" than the ex A.P.S.) - not with the ancient
man.
Yes; Love and Hatred are
the only immortal feelings; but the gradations
of tones along the seven by seven scales
of the whole key-board
of life, are numberless. And, since it
is those two feelings - (or, to be correct,
shall I risk being misunderstood
again and say those two poles of man's "Soul" which is a unity?) - that mould the future
state of man, whether for devachan or Avitcha then the variety of such states must also be inexhaustible.
ML
188:191 Why should it be supposed that devachan is a monotonous condition only because one moment of earthly
sensation is infinitely perpetuated - stretched, so to
say, throughout aeons? It is not, it cannot be so. This would be contrary to all analogies
and antagonistic to the law of effects
under which results are proportioned
to antecedent energies. To make it clear
you must keep in mind that there are
two fields of causal manifestation,
to wit, the objective and the subjective.
So the grosser energies, those which
operate in the heavier or denser
conditions of matter manifest objectively
in physical life, their outcome being
the new personality of each
birth included within the grand cycle
of the evolving individuality. The moral
and spiritual activities find
their sphere of effects in "devachan". For example, the vices, physical attractions, etc. - say,
of a philosopher may result in the birth of a new philosopher,
a king or a merchant, a rich Epicurean, or any other
personality whose make-up was inevitable from the preponderating
proclivities of the being in the next preceding birth.
Bacon, for inst.: whom a poet called - "The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind" - might reappear in his next incarnation
as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary
intellectual capacities. But the moral
and spiritual qualities of the previous
Bacon would also
have to find a field in which their energies
could expand themselves. Devachan is
such a field. Hence - all the
great plans of moral reform, of intellectual
and spiritual research into abstract
principles of nature, all the
divine aspirations, would in devachan
come to fruition, and the abstract entity
previously known as the great
Chancellor would occupy itself in this
inner world of its own preparation, living,
if not quite what one would
call a conscious existence, at least a dream of such realistic
vividness that none of the life-realities
could ever match it.
And this "dream" lasts - until Karma is satisfied in that
direction, the ripple of force reaches
the edge of its cyclic basin,
and the being moves into the next area
of causes. This, it may find in the same
world as before, or another,
according to his or her stage of progression
through the necessary rings and rounds
of human development.
Then
- how can you think that "but one moment of earthly sensation only is selected for perpetuation"? Very true, that "moment" lasts from the first to the last; but then it lasts but
as the key-note of the whole harmony, a definite tone
of appreciable pitch, around which cluster and develop
in progressive variations of melody and as endless variations
on a theme, all the aspirations, desires, hopes, dreams,
which, in connection with that particular "moment" had ever crossed the "dreamer's" brain during his lifetime, without having ever found their
realization on earth, and which he now finds fully realized
in all their vividness in devachan, without ever suspecting
that all that blissful reality is but the progeny begotten
by his own fancy, the effects of the mental causes produced
by himself. That particular one moment which will be most intense and uppermost
in the thoughts of his dying brain at
the time of dissolution will of
course regulate all the other "moments"; still the latter - minor and less vivid
though they be - will be there also,
having their appointed plan in
his phantasmagoric marshalling of past
dreams, and must give variety to the
whole. No man on earth, but has some
decided predilection if not a domineering
passion; no person, however humble and
poor - and often because of
that - but indulges in dreams and desires
unsatisfied though these be. Is this
monotony? Would you call such
variations ad infinitum on the one theme, and that theme modelling
itself, on, and taking colour and its
definite shape from, that group
of desires which was the most intense
during life "a blank destitution of all knowledge in the devachanic mind" - seeming "in a measure ignoble"? Then, verily, either you have failed, as
you say, to take in my meaning, or it
is I who am to blame. I must have
sorely failed to convey the right meaning,
and have to confess my inability to describe
the -indescribable. The latter is a difficult task, good friend. Unless the
intuitive perceptions of a trained chela come to the
rescue, no amount of description - however graphic -
will help. Indeed, - no adequate words to express the
difference between a state of mind on earth, and one
outside of its sphere of action; no English terms in
existence, equivalent to ours; nothing -but unavoidable (as due to early Western
education) preconceptions, hence - lines
of thought in a wrong direction in the
learner's mind to help us in this inoculation
of entirely
new thoughts! You are right. Not only "ordinary people" - your readers - but even such idealists
and highly intellectual units as Mr C.C.M.
will fail, I am afraid, to seize the
true idea, will never fathom it to its very depths. Perhaps, you may some day,
realize better than you do now, one of the chief reasons
for our unwillingness to impart our Knowledge to European candidates.
ML
190:193 "A man in the way to learn something of the
mysteries of nature seems in a higher
state of existence to begin with on
earth than that which nature apparently
provides for
him as a reward for his best deeds."
Perhaps "apparently" -
not so in reality. When the modus operandus of nature is correctly understood. Then
that other misconception: "The more merit, the longer period of devachan.
But then in Devachan ... all sense of
the lapse of time is lost;
a minute is as a thousand years ... a quoi bon then, etc."
This
remark and such ways of looking at things
might as well apply to the whole of Eternity,
to Nirvana, Pralaya,
and what not. Say, at once that the whole
system of being, of existence separate
and collective, of nature objective
and subjective are but idiotic, aimless
facts, a gigantic fraud of that nature,
which meeting with little sympathy
with Western philosophy, has, moreover,
the cruel disapprobation of the best "lay-chela". A quoi bon, in such a case, this preaching of our doctrines, all this
uphill work and swimming in adversum flumen? Why should the West be so anxious then to learn anything
from the East, since it is evidently unable to digest
that which can never meet the requirements of the special
tastes of its Esthetics. Sorry outlook for us, since
even you fail to take in the whole magnitude of our
philosophy, or to even embrace at one
scope a small corner - the devachan
- of those sublime and infinite horizons
of "after life". I do not want to discourage you. I would
only draw your attention to the formidable
difficulties encountered
by us in every attempt we make to explain
our metaphysics to Western minds, even
among the most intelligent. Alas,
my friend, you seem as unable to assimilate
our mode of thinking, as to digest our
food, or enjoy our melodies!
(191:194)
No; there are no clocks, no timepieces in Devachan, my
esteemed chela, though the whole Cosmos is a gigantic
chronometer in one sense. Nor do we mortals, - ici bas meme - take much, if any, cognizance of time during moments of happiness and bliss, and
find them ever too short, a fact that
does not in the least prevent
us from enjoying that happiness all the
same, when it does come. Have you ever
given a thought to this little
possibility that, perhaps, it is because
their cup of bliss is full to its brim,
that the "devachanee" loses "all sense of the lapse of time"; and that is something that those who land
in Avitchi do not, though as much as the devachanee, the Avitchee has no cognizance of time - i.e., of our earthly calculations
of periods of time? I may also remind you in this connection
that time is something created entirely by ourselves; that while one short second of intense agony may appear,
even on earth, as an eternity to one man, to another,
more fortunate, hours, days, and sometimes whole years
may seem to flit like one brief moment; and that finally,
of all the sentient and conscious beings on earth, man
is the only animal that takes any cognizance of time,
although it makes him neither happier nor wiser. How
then, can I explain to you that which cannot feel, since you seem unable to comprehend it? Finite similes
are unfit to express the abstract and the infinite; nor
can the objective ever mirror the subjective. To realize
the bliss in Devachan, or the woes in Avitchi, you have to assimilate them - as we do. Western critical
idealism (as shown in Mr Roden Noel's attacks) has still
to learn the difference that exists between the real being of super-sensible objects, and the shadowy subjectivity
of the ideas it has reduced them to. Time is not a predicate conception and can, therefore,
neither be proved nor analyzed, according
to the methods of superficial
philosophy. And, unless we learn to counteract
the negative results of that method of
drawing our conclusions agreeably
to the teachings of the so-called "system of pure reason", and to distinguish between the matter and the form of our
knowledge of sensible objects, we can never arrive at
correct, definite conclusions. The case in hand, as defended
by me against your (very natural) misconception is a
good proof of the shallowness and even fallacy of that "system of pure (materialistic) reason". Space and time may be - as Kant has it
- not the product but the regulators
of the sensations, but only so far,
as our sensations on earth are concerned, not those in Devachan. There we do not find the a priori ideas of those "space and time" controlling the perceptions of the denizen
of Devachan in respect to the objects of his sense; but, on the contrary, we discover that it is the devachanee himself who absolutely creates both and
annihilates them at the same time. Thus,
the "after states" so called, can never be correctly judged
by practical reason since the latter
can have active being only in the sphere
of final causes or ends, and can hardly be regarded
with Kant (with whom it means on one
page reason and on the next - will)
as the highest spiritual power in man,
having for its sphere that WILL. The
above is not dragged in - as you
may think - for the sake of an (too far
stretched, perhaps) argument, but with
an eye to a future discussion "at home", as you express it, with students and admirers
of Kant and Plato that you will have
to encounter.
(192:195)
In a plainer language, I will now tell
you the following, and, it will be no fault
of mine if you still fail to
comprehend its full meaning. As physical
existence has its cumulative intensity
from infancy to prime, and its
diminishing energy thenceforward to dotage
and death, so the dream-life of devachan
is lived correspondentially.
Hence you are right in saying that the "Soul" can never awake to its mistake and find itself "cheated by nature" - the more so, as strictly speaking, the whole of the human
life and its boasted realities, are no better than such "cheating". But you are wrong in pandering to the prejudices and preconceptions
of the Western readers (no Asiatic will ever agree with
you upon this point) when you add that "there is a sense of unreality about the whole affair which is painful
to the mind", since you are the first one to feel that, it is no doubt
due much more to "an imperfect grasp of the nature of the existence" in devachan - than to any defect in our
system. Hence - my orders to a chela
to reproduce in an Appendix to your
article extracts from this letter and
explanations calculated to disabuse the
reader, and to obliterate, as far as
possible, the painful impression this
confession of yours is sure to produce
on him. The whole paragraph is dangerous.
I do not feel myself justified in crossing
it out, since
it is evidently the expression of your
real feelings, kindly, though - pardon
me for saying so - a little clumsily
white-washed with an apparent defence
of this (to your mind) weak point of the system. But it is not so, believe me. Nature
cheats no more the devachanee than she does the living, physical man. Nature provides
for him far more real bliss and happiness there, than she does here, where all the conditions of evil and chance
are against him, and his inherent helplessness
- that of a straw
violently blown hither and thither by
every remorseless wind - has made unalloyed
happiness on this earth an
utter impossibility for the human being,
whatever his chances and condition may
be. Rather call this life an
ugly, horrid nightmare, and you will
be right. To call the devachan existence
a "dream" in any other sense but that of a convenient
term, well suited to our language all
full of misnomers - is to renounce
for ever the knowledge of the esoteric
doctrine - the sole custodian of truth.
Let me then try once more to
explain to you a few of the many states
in Devachan and -Avitchi.
As
in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in devachan
-the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of
prime, the gradual exhaustion of force, passing into
semi-unconsciousness, gradual oblivion and lethargy,
total oblivion and - not death but birth; birth into
another personality, and the resumption of action which
daily begets new congeries of causes, that must be worked
out in another term of Devachan, and still another physical
rebirth as a new personality. What the lives in devachan and upon Earth, shall be respectively in each instance is
determined by Karma. And this weary round of birth upon
birth must be ever and ever run through until the being
reaches the end of the seventh round, or - attains in
the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha
and thus gets relieved for a round or two, - having learned
how to burst through the vicious circles - and to pass
periodically into the Paranirvana.
(193:196)
But suppose it is not a question of a Bacon, a Goethe,
a Shelley, a Howard, but of some hum-drum person, some
colourless, flackless personality, who never impinged
upon the world enough to make himself felt, what then?
Simply that his devachanic state is as colourless and
feeble as was his personality. How could it be otherwise
since cause and effect are equal. But suppose a case
of a monster of wickedness, sensuality, ambition, avarice,
pride, deceit, etc., but who nevertheless has a germ
or germs of something better, flashes of a more divine
nature - where is he to go? The said spark smouldering
under a heap of dirt will counteract, nevertheless, the
attraction of the eighth sphere, whither fall but absolute nonentities, "failures of nature", to be remodelled entirely, whole divine
monad separated itself from the five
principles during their life-time,
(whether in the next preceding or several
preceding births, since such cases are
on our records), and who having
lived as soulless human beings.
Footnote:
...the word 'soul' standing for 'Spiritual
Soul', of course, which, whenever it leaves
a person "Soulless" becomes the cause of the fifth principle
(Animal Soul) sliding down into the eighth
sphere.
These
persons whose sixth principle has left them (while the
seventh having lost its vahan (or vehicle) can exist independently no longer) their fifth or animal Soul of
course goes down "the bottomless pit". This will perhaps make Eliphas Levi's hints
still more clear to you, if you read
over what he says, and my remarks
on the margin, thereon (see Theosophist, October, 1881, Article "Death") and reflect upon the words used: such as drones etc. Well, the first named entity then, cannot with all
its wickedness go to the eighth sphere - since his wickedness is of a too spiritual, refined nature. He is a monster - not a mere Soulless brute. He must not be simply annihilated but PUNISHED; for, annihilation, i.e. total oblivion, and
the fact of being snuffed out of conscious existence, constitutes per se no punishment, and as Voltaire expressed
it: "le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon". Here is no taper-glimmer to be puffed out
by a zephyr, but a strong, positive,
maleficent energy, fed and developed
by circumstances, some of which may have
really been beyond his control. There
must be for such a nature a
state corresponding to Devachan, and
this is found in Avitchi, the perfect antithesis of devachan - vulgarized by the Western nations into
Hell and Heaven, and which you have entirely
lost sight of in your "Fragment". Remember: "To be immortal in good one must identify himself with Good
(or God); to be immortal in evil -with evil (or Satan)". Misconceptions of the true value of such terms as "Spirit", "Soul", "individuality", "personality", and "Immortality" (especially) - provoke wordy wars between
a great number of idealistic debaters,
besides Messrs C.C.M. and Roden
Noel. And, to complete your Fragment
without risking to fall again under the
mangling tooth of the latter
honourable gentleman's criticism - I
found it necessary to add to devachan
- Avitchi as its complement and applying
to it the same laws as to the former.
This is done, with
your permission, in the Appendix.
(194:197)
Having explained the situation sufficiently I may now
answer your query No.1 directly. Yes, certainly there is "a change of occupation", a continual change in Devachan, just as
much - and far more - as there is in
the life of any man or woman who
happens to follow his or her whole life one sole occupation whatever it may be; with that difference,
that to the Devachanee his special occupation is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Change then there must be, for that dream-life
is but the fruition, the harvest-time of those psychic
seed-germs dropped from the tree of physical existence
in our moments of dreams and hopes, fancy-glimpses of
bliss and happiness stifled in an ungrateful social soil,
blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and ripening under
its ever fructifying sky. No failures there, no disappointments! If man had but one single moment of ideal happiness and experience
during his life - as you think - even
then, if Devachan exists,
- it could not be as you erroneously
suppose the indefinite prolongation of
that "single moment", but the infinite developments the various incidents and
events, based upon, and outflowing from, that one "single moment" or moments, as the case may be; all in short that would
suggest itself to the "dreamers" fancy. That one note, as I said, struck
from the lyre of life, would form but
the Key-note of the being's subjective
state, and work out into numberless harmonic
tones and
semi-tones of psychic phantasmagoria.
There - all unrealized hopes, aspirations,
dreams, become fully realized, and
the dreams of the objective become the realities of subjective existence. And there behind the curtain of
Maya its vapours and deceptive appearances are perceived
by the adept, who has learnt the great secret how to
penetrate thus deeply into the Arcana of being.
Doubtless
my question whether you had experienced monotony during
what you consider the happiest moment of your life has
entirely misled you. This letter thus, is the just penance
for my laziness to amplify the explanation.
ML
195:198 Deva Chan is a state, not a locality. Rupa
Loka, Arupa-Loka and Kama-Loka are the
three spheres of ascending
spirituality in which the several groups
of subjective entities find their attractions.
In the Kama-Loka (semi-physical
sphere) dwell the shells, the victims
and suicides; and this sphere is divided
into innumerable regions and sub-regions
corresponding to the mental states of
the comers at their
hour of death. This is the glorious "Summerland" of the Spiritualists, to whose horizons
is limited the vision of their best seers
- vision imperfect and defective
because untrained and non-guided by Alaya Vijnana (hidden knowledge). Who in the West knows anything of true Sahalo-Kadhatu, the mysterious Chiliocosm out of the many regions of which
but three can be given out to the outside world, the Tribuvana (three worlds) namely: Kama, Rupa, and Arupa-Lokas.
ML
196:199 Roden Noel says a few pages further on,
that, theosophists are endowing "shells" with simulated consciousness. See the difference one word
will make. If the word "assimilated" instead of "simulated" had been written the true idea would have
been conveyed that the shells' consciousness
is assimilated from the medium and living persons present,
whereas now --! But of course, it is
not our European critics, but
our Asiatic chelas' expositions that "seem absolutely Protean in their ever shifting variety". The man has to be answered and set right anyhow, whether
by yourself or Mr Massey. But alas! the latter knows
but little, and you, - you look at our conception of
devachan with more than "discomfort"! But to resume.
From
Kama Loka then in the great Chiliocosm,
- once awakened from their post-mortem
torpor, the newly translated "Souls" go all (but the shells) according to their attractions either to Devachan or Avitchi.
And these two states are again differentiating ad infinitum - their ascending degrees of spirituality deriving their
names from the locas in which they are induced. For instance;
the sensations, perceptions and ideation of a devachanee in Rupa-Loka will, of course, be of less subjective nature than
they would be in Arupa-Loka, in both of which the devachanic experiences will vary
in their presentation to the subject-entity, not only
as regards form, colour, and substance, but also in their
formative potentialities. But not even the most exalted
experience of a monad in the highest devachanic state
in Arupa-Loka (the last of the seven states) - is
comparable to that perfectly subjective
condition of pure spirituality from
which the monad emerged to "descend into matter", and to which at the completion of the grand
cycle it must return. Nor is Nirvana
itself comparable to Para Nirvana.
ML
197:199 Reviving consciousness begins after the struggle
in Kama-Loka at the door of devachan, and only after the "gestation" period.
ML
197:200 The stay in Devachan is proportional to the unfinished
psychic impulses originating in earth-life; those persons
whose attractions were preponderatingly material will
sooner be drawn back into rebirth by the force of Tanha. As our London opponent truly remarks: these subjects (metaphysical)
are only partly for understanding. A higher faculty belonging
to the higher life must see, - and it is truly impossible
to force it upon one's understanding - merely in words.
One must see with his spiritual eye, hear with his Dharmakayic
ear, feel with the sensations of his Ashta-vijnyana (spiritual "I") before he can comprehend this doctrine fully, otherwise
it may but increase one's "discomfort", and add to his knowledge very little.
ML
197:200 The "reward provided by nature for men who are benevolent in a
large, systematic way" and who have not focussed their affections
upon an individual or speciality, is
that -if pure - they pass the quicker
for that through the Kama and Rupa Lokas
into the higher
sphere of Tribuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas
and the consideration of general principles fill the
thought of its occupants. Personality is the synonym
for limitation, and the more contracted the person's
ideas, the closer will he cling to the lower spheres
of being, the longer loiter on the plane of selfish social
intercourse.
ML
397:404 It is difficult to perceive what relations you
wish to establish between the different states of subjectivity
in Deva Chan and the various states of matter. If it
be supposed that in Deva Chan the Ego passes through
all these states of matter, then the answer would be
that existence in the seventh state of matter is Nirvana and not Devachanic conditions. Humanity, although in different
states of development, yet belongs to
the three dimensional condition of matter.
And there is no reason why in Deva Chan
the Ego should
be varying its "dimensions".
Molecules
occupying a place in infinity is an inconceivable proposition.
The confusion arises out of the Western tendency of putting
an objective construction upon what is purely subjective.
The book of Khiu-te teaches us that space is infinity itself. It is formless,
immutable and absolute. Like the human mind, which is
the exhaustless generator of ideas, the Universal Mind
or Space has its ideation which is projected into objectivity
at the appointed time; but space itself is not affected
thereby. Even your Hamilton has shown that infinity can
never be conceived by any series of additions. Whenever
you talk of place in infinity, you dethrone infinity and degrade its absolute,
unconditioned character.
What
has the number of incarnations to do with the shrewdness,
cleverness, or the stupidity of an individual? A strong
craving for physical life may lead an entity through
a number of incarnations and yet these may not develop
its higher capacities. The Law of Affinity acts through
the inherent Karmic impulses of the Ego, and governs its future existence. Comprehending
Darwin's Law of Heredity for the body, it is not difficult
to perceive how the birth-seeking Ego may be attracted
at the time of rebirth to a body born in a family which
has the same propensities as those of the reincarnating
Entity.
SECTION V
KARMA
AND REINCARNATION
Key
33 Theo: .. we must argue upon what you mean
by "I" or Ego. We distinguish between the simple
fact of self-consciousness, the simple
feeling that "I am I", and the complex thought that "I am Mr Smith" or "Mrs Brown". Believing as we do in a series of births
for the same Ego, or reincarnation,
this distinction is the fundamental
pivot of the whole idea. You see "Mr Smith" really means a long series of daily experience
strung together by the thread of memory,
and forming what Mr Smith calls "himself". But none of these "experiences" are really the "I" or the Ego, nor do they give Mr Smith the
feeling that he is himself, for he
forgets the greater part of his daily
experiences, and they produce the feeling
of Egoity in him only while they last. We Theosophists,
therefore, distinguish between this
bundle of "experiences", which we call the false (because so finite and evanescent) personality, and that element in man to which the feeling
of "I am I" is due. It is this "I am I" which we call the true individuality; and we say that this Ego
or individuality plays, like an actor,
many parts on the stage of life ...
Key
34 Enq: .. surely the actor is at liberty ..
to return if he likes to the scene
of his former actions?
Theo:
We say not, simply because such a return
to earth would be incompatible with any
state of unalloyed bliss after death ... We say that man suffers
so much unmerited misery during his life,
through the fault of others with whom
he is associated, or because of his environment,
that he is surely entitled to perfect
rest and quiet, if not bliss, before
taking up again the burden of life.
Key
123 Enq: .. no single man has yet been found
to remember that he has lived, least
of all who he was, during his previous
life.
Theo:
.. Yet when you take into consideration
(a) the utter inability of the best modern
psychologists to explain to the world
the nature of mind; and (b) their complete ignorance of its
potentialities, and higher states, you
have to admit that this objection is
based on an a priori conclusion drawn from prima facie and circumstantial evidence more than anything
else.
Key
124 .. there is a great difference between the
three accepted forms of memory. Besides
memory in general you have Remembrance, Recollection and Reminiscence .. Memory is simply an innate power in thinking
beings, and even in animals, of reproducing
past impressions by an association
of ideas principally suggested by objective
things or by some action on our external
sensory organs. Memory is a faculty
depending entirely on the more or less
healthy and normal functioning of our physical brain; and remembrance and recollection are the attributes and handmaidens of that
memory. But reminiscence is an entirely different thing. Reminiscence
is defined by the modern psychologist
as something intermediate between remembrance and recollection, or "a conscious process of recalling past occurrences,
but without that full and varied reference to particular things which characterizes recollection". Locke, speaking of recollection and remembrance,
says: "When an idea again recurs without the operation of the like
object on the external sensory, it
is remembrance; if it be sought after by the mind, and
with pain and endeavour found and brought
again into view, it is recollection" .. while memory is physical and evanescent and depends on
the physiological conditions of the
brain - a fundamental proposition ..
we call reminiscence the memory of the soul. And it is this memory which gives the assurance to almost
every human being, whether he understands
it or not, of his having lived before
and having to live again. Indeed, as
Wordsworth has it:
Our
birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The
soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath
had elsewhere its setting,
And
cometh from afar.
Key
127 Enq: .. how do they [the seven principles]
account for our complete loss of any
recollection of having lived before?
Theo:
Very easily. Since those principles which
we call physical .. are disintegrated
after death with their constituent elements, memory along with its brain, this vanished memory
of a vanished personality can neither
remember nor record anything in the subsequent
reincarnation of the EGO. Reincarnation
means that this Ego will be furnished
with a new body, a new brain and a new memory. Therefore it would be as absurd
to expect this memory to remember that which it has never recorded
as it would be idle to examine under
a microscope a shirt never worn by a
murderer, and seek on it for the stains
of blood which are to be found only on
the clothes he wore.
Key
128 Theo: To get convinced of the fact of reincarnation
and past lives, one must put oneself
in rapport with one's real permanent Ego, not one's
evanescent memory."
Key
130 Theo: .. Yet the record or reflection of
all the past lives must survive, ..
and anyone who attains to the state
of Jhana can thus retrospectively trace the line
of his lives. This proves to you that
while the undying qualities of the
personality - such as love, goodness,
charity, etc. - attach themselves to
the immortal Ego, photographing on
it, so to speak, a permanent image
of the divine aspect of the man who
was, his material Skandhas (those which
generate the most marked Karmic effects)
are as evanescent as a flash of lightning,
and cannot impress the new brain of
the new personality; yet their failing
to do so impairs in no way the identity
of the reincarnating Ego.
Enq:
Do you mean to infer that that which
survives is only the Soul-memory .. while
nothing of the personality remains?
Theo:
Not quite; something of each personality
unless the latter was an absolute materialist with not even a chink in his
nature for a spiritual ray to pass through,
must survive, as it leaves its eternal
impress on the incarnating permanent
Self or Spiritual Ego.
[There
is a footnote here (131) explaining that
.. "Spiritual [here is] in contradistinction to the personal Self. This Spiritual Ego must not be confused
with the "HIGHER SELF" which is Atma, the God within us, and inseparable from
the Universal Spirit."]
The
personality with its Skandhas is ever
changing with every new birth. It is,
as said before, only the part played
by the actor (the true Ego) for one night.
This is why we preserve no memory on
the physical plane of our past lives,
though the real Ego has lived them over and knows them all.
Key
131 Theo: .. the Spiritual Ego can act only
when the personal Ego is paralysed.
The Spiritual "I" in man is omniscient and has every knowledge
innate in it; while the personal self
is the creature of its environment
and the slave of the physical memory.
Could the former manifest itself uninterruptedly,
and without impediment, there would
be no longer men on earth, but we should
all be gods.
Key
137 Enq: I have heard you say that the Ego, whatever the life of the person he incarnated
in may have been on Earth, is never
visited with post-mortem punishment.
Theo:
Never, save in very exceptional and rare
cases of which we will not speak here,
as the nature of the "punishment" in no way approaches any of your theological
conceptions of damnation.
Key
138 Enq: But if it is punished in this life
for the misdeeds committed in a previous
one, then it is this Ego that ought
to be rewarded also, whether here,
or when disincarnated.
Theo:
And so it is. If we do not admit of any
punishment outside of this earth, it
is because the only state the Spiritual
Self knows of, hereafter, is that of
unalloyed bliss.
Enq:
What do you mean?
Theo:
Simply this: crimes and sins committed on a plane of objectivity
and in a world of matter, cannot receive
punishment in a world of pure subjectivity. We believe in no hell or paradise as localities;
in no objective hell-fires and worms
that never die, nor in any Jerusalems
with streets paved with sapphires and
diamonds. What we believe in is a post-mortem state or mental condition, such as we are in during
a vivid dream. We believe in an immutable
law of absolute Love, Justice, and Mercy.
And believing in it, we say: "Whatever the sin and dire results of the
original Karmic transgression of the
now incarnated Egos, no man (or the outer
material and periodical form of the Spiritual
Entity) can be held, with any degree
of justice, responsible for the consequences
of his birth. He does not ask to be born,
nor can he choose the parents that will
give him life. In every respect he is
the victim to his environment, the child
of circumstances over which he has no
control; and if each of his transgressions
were impartially investigated, there
would be found nine out of every ten
cases when he was the one sinned against,
rather than the sinner.
Key
139 .. Whether a great or average sinner, good
or bad, guilty or innocent, once delivered
of the burden of physical life, the
tired and worn-out Manu ("thinking Ego") has won the right to a period of absolute
rest and bliss. The same unerringly
wise and just rather than merciful
Law, which inflicts upon the incarnated
Ego the Karmic punishment for every
sin committed during the preceding
life on Earth, provided for the now
disembodied Entity a long lease of
mental rest, i.e. the entire oblivion
of every sad event, aye, to the smallest
painful thought, that took place in
its last life as a personality, leaving
the soul-memory but the reminiscence
of that which was bliss, or led to
happiness.
Key
140 Enq: "Then am I to understand that the murderer,
the transgressor of law divine and
human in every shape, is allowed
to go unpunished?
Theo:
Who ever said that? Our philosophy has
a doctrine of punishment as stern as
that of the most rigid Calvinist, only
far more philosophical and consistent
with absolute justice. No deed, not even
a sinful thought, will go unpunished;
the latter more severely even than the
former, as a thought is far more potential
in creating evil results than even a
deed. We believe in an unerring law of
Retribution, called Karma, which asserts
itself in a natural concatenation of
causes and their unavoidable results.
Enq:
And how, or where, does it act?
Theo:
Every labourer is worthy of his hire,
said Wisdom in the Gospel; every action,
good or bad, is a prolific parent, ...
After allowing the Soul, escaped from
the pangs of personal life, a sufficient,
aye, a hundredfold compensation, Karma,
with its army of Skandhas, waits at the
threshold of Devachan, whence the Ego re-emerges to assume a new incarnation.
It is at this moment that the future
destiny of the now-rested Ego trembles
in the scales of just Retribution, as
it now falls once again under the sway
of active Karmic law. It is in this rebirth
which is ready for it, a rebirth selected and prepared by this
mysterious, inexorable, but in the equity
and wisdom of its decrees infallible
LAW, that the sins of the previous life
of the Ego are punished. Only it is into
no imaginary Hell, with theatrical flames
and ridiculous tailed and horned devils,
that the Ego is cast, but verily on this
earth, the plane and region of his sins,
where he will have to atone for every
bad thought and deed. As he has sown,
so will he reap. Reincarnation will gather
around him all those other Egos who have
suffered, whether directly or indirectly,
at the hands, or even through the unconscious
instrumentality, of the past personality. They will be thrown by Nemesis in the way
of the new man, concealing the old, the eternal Ego, and ...
Enq:
But where is the equity you speak of,
since these new personalities are not aware of having sinned
or been sinned against?
Theo:
Has the coat torn to shreds from the
back of a man who stole it, by another
man who was robbed of it and recognizes
his property, to be regarded as fairly
dealt with? The new personality is no
better than a fresh suit of clothes with
its specific characteristics, colour,
form and qualities; but the real man who wears it is the same culprit of
old. It is the individuality that suffers through his personality. And
it is this, and this alone, that can
account for the terrible, still only apparent injustice in the distribution of lots in
life to man.
Key
153 Enq: I begin to understand better now. It
is the Spirit, so to say, of those
Skandhas which are the most ennobling,
which, attaching themselves to the
incarnating Ego, survive, and are added
to the stock of its angelic experiences.
And it is the attributes connected
with the material Skandhas with selfish
and personal motives, which, disappearing
from the field of action between two
incarnations, re-appear at the subsequent
incarnation as Karmic results to be
atoned for; and therefore the Spirit
will not leave Devachan. Is it so?
Theo:
Very nearly so. If you add to this the
law of retribution or Karma, rewarding
the highest and most spiritual in Devachan,
never fails to reward them again on earth
by giving them a further development,
and furnishing the Ego with a body fitted
for it, then you will be quite correct.
Key
154 Enq: "What becomes of the other, the lower Skandhas
of the personality, after the death
of the body? Are they quite destroyed?
Theo:
They are and yet they are not - a fresh
metaphysical and occult mystery for you.
They are destroyed as the working stock
in hand of the personality; they remain
as Karmic effects, as germs, hanging in the atmosphere of
the terrestrial plane, ready to come
to life, as so many avenging fiends,
to attach themselves to the new personality
of the Ego when it reincarnates.
Enq:
This really passes my comprehension,
and is very difficult to understand.
Theo:
Not once that you have assimilated all
the details. For then you will see that
for logic, consistency, profound philosophy,
divine mercy and equity, this doctrine
of Reincarnation has not its equal on
earth. It is a belief in a perpetual
progress for each incarnating Ego, or
divine soul, in an evolution from the
outward into the inward, from the material
to the Spiritual, arriving at the end
of each stage at absolute unity with
the divine Principle. From strength to
strength, from beauty and perfection,
of one plane to the greater beauty and
perfection of another, with accessions
of new glory, of fresh knowledge and
power in each cycle, such is the destiny
of every Ego, which thus becomes its
own Saviour in each world and incarnation.
Key
160 Enq: But if my Ego can, after the destruction
of my body, become plunged in a state
of entire unconsciousness, then where
can be the punishment for the sins
of my past life?
Theo:
Our philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment
reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation.
After death it receives only the reward
for the unmerited sufferings endured
during its past incarnation.
[Footnote
paraphrased: Some people have taken exception
to this statement .. the essential idea
was that men often suffer from the effects
of the actions done by others, effects
which thus do not strictly belong to
their own Karma - and for those sufferings
they of course deserve compensation.]
The
whole punishment after death, even for
the materialist, consists, therefore,
in the absence of any reward, and the
utter loss of consciousness of one's
bliss and rest. Karma is the child of
the terrestrial Ego, the fruit of the
actions of the tree which is the objective
personality visible to all, as much as
the fruit of all the thoughts and even
motives of the Spiritual "I"; but Karma is also the tender mother, who
heals the wounds inflicted by her during
the preceding life, before she will begin
to torture this Ego by inflicting upon
him new ones. If it may be said that
there is not a mental or physical suffering
in the life of a mortal which is not
the direct fruit and consequence of some
sin in preceding existence; on the other
hand, since he does not preserve the
slightest recollection of it in his actual
life, and feels himself not deserving
of such punishment, and therefore thinks
he suffers for no guilt of his own, this
alone is sufficient to entitle the human
soul to the fullest consolation, rest,
and bliss in his post-mortem existence. Death comes to our spiritual
selves ever as a deliverer and friend.
For the materialist, who, notwithstanding
his materialism, was not a bad man, the
interval between the two lives will be
like the unbroken and placid sleep of
a child, either entirely dreamless, or
filled with pictures of which he will
have no definite perception; while for
the average mortal it will be a dream
as vivid as life, and full of realistic
bliss and visions.
Enq:
Then the personal man must always go
on suffering blindly the Karmic penalties which the Ego has incurred?
Theo:
Not quite so. At the solemn moment of
death every man, even when death is sudden,
sees the whole of his past life marshalled
before him, in its minutest details.
For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him
the whole chain of causes which have
been at work during his life. He sees
and now understands himself as he is,
unadorned by flattery or self-deception.
He reads his life, remaining as a spectator
looking down into the arena he is quitting;
he feels and knows the justice of all
the suffering that has overtaken him.
Enq:
Does this happen to everyone?
Theo:
Without exception. Very good and holy
men see, we are taught, not only the
life they are leaving, but even several
preceding lives in which were produced
the causes that made them what they were
in the life just closing. They recognize
the law of Karma in all its majesty and
justice.
Enq:
Is there anything corresponding to this
before rebirth?
Theo:
There is. As the man at the moment of
death has a retrospective insight into
the life he has led, so, at the moment
he is reborn on to earth, the Ego, awaking from the state of Devachan, has
a prospective vision of the life which
awaits him, and realizes all the causes
that have led to it. He realizes them
and sees futurity, because it is between
Devachan and rebirth that the Ego regains his full manasic consciousness, and rebecomes for a short
time the god he was, before, in compliance
with Karmic law, he first descended into
matter and incarnated in the first man
of flesh. The "golden thread" sees all its "pearls" and misses not one of them.
Key
163 Theo: "... In some Upanishads these recurrent rebirths are likened to
the life of a mortal which oscillates
periodically between sleep and waking.
Enq:
This, I must say, does not seem very
clear, and I will tell you why. For the
man who awakes, another day commences,
but that man is the same in soul and
body as he was the day before; whereas
at every incarnation a full change takes
place not only of the external envelope,
sex, and personality, but even of the
mental and psychic capacities ... The
man who arises from sleep remembers quite
clearly what he has done yesterday, the
day before, and even months and years
ago. But none of us has the slightest
recollection of a preceding life or of
any fact or event concerning it ... I
may forget in the morning what I have
dreamt during the night, still I know
that I have slept and have the certainty
that I lived during sleep; but what recollection
can I have of my past incarnation until
the moment of death? How do you reconcile
this?
Theo:
Some people do recollect their past incarnations
during life; but these are Buddhas and
Initiates. This is what the Yogis call
Samma-Sambuddha, or the knowledge of
the whole series of one's past incarnations.
Enq:
But we ordinary mortals who have not
reached Samma-Sambuddha, how are we to
understand this simile?
Theo:
By studying it and trying to understand
more correctly the characteristics and
the three kinds of sleep. Sleep is a
general and immutable law for man as
for beast, but there are different kinds
of sleep and still more different dreams
and visions.
Enq:
.. Let us return to the materialist who,
while not denying dreams, which he could
hardly do, yet denies immortality in
general and the survival of his own individuality.
Theo:
And the materialist, without knowing
it, is right. One who has no inner perception
of, and faith in, the immortality of
his soul, in that man the soul can never
become Buddhi-taijasi, but will remain
simply Manas, and for Manas alone there
is no immortality possible. In order
to live in the world to come a conscious
life, one has to believe first of all
in that life during the terrestrial existence.
On these two aphorisms of the Secret
Science all the philosophy about the post-mortem consciousness and the immortality of the
soul is built. The Ego receives always
according to its deserts. After the dissolution
of the body, there commences for it a
period of full awakened consciousness
or a state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly
dreamless sleep undistinguishable from
annihilation, and these are the three
kinds of sleep. If our physiologists
find the cause of dreams and visions
in an unconscious preparation for them
during the waking hours, why cannot the
same be admitted for the post-mortem dreams? I repeat it: death is sleep. After death, before the spiritual eyes
of the soul, begins a performance according
to a programme learnt and very often
unconsciously composed by ourselves:
the practical carrying out of correct beliefs or of illusions which have been
created by ourselves. The Methodist will
be Methodist, the Mussulman a Mussulman,
at least for some time - in a perfect
fool's paradise of each man's creation
and making. These are the post-mortem fruits of the tree of life. Naturally, our
belief or unbelief in the fact of conscious
immortality is unable to influence the
unconditioned reality of the fact itself,
once that it exists, but the belief or
unbelief in that immortality as the property
of independent or separate entities,
cannot fail to give colour to that fact
in its application to each of these entities.
Key
165/6 Enq: ".. The materialist, disbelieving in everything
that cannot be proven to him by his
five senses, or by scientific reasoning,
based exclusively on the data furnished
by these senses in spite of their
inadequacy, and rejecting every spiritual
manifestation,
accepts life as the only conscious
existence. Therefore according to
their beliefs so will it be unto
them. They
will lose their personal Ego, and
will plunge into a dreamless sleep
until
a new awaking. Is it so?
Theo:
Almost so. Remember the practically universal
teaching of the two kinds of conscious
existence: the terrestrial and the spiritual.
The latter must be considered real from
the very fact that it is inhabited by
the eternal, changeless and immortal
Monad; whereas the incarnating Ego dresses
itself up in new garments entirely different
from those of its previous incarnations,
and in which all except its spiritual
prototype is doomed to a change so radical
as to leave no trace behind.
Enq:
How so? Can my terrestrial "I" perish not only for a time, like the consciousness
of a materialist, but so entirely as
to leave no trace behind?
Theo:
According to the teaching, it must so
perish and in its fullness, all except
the principle which, having united itself
with the Monad, has thereby become a
purely spiritual and indestructible essence,
one with it in the Eternity. But in the
case of an out-and-out materialist, in
whose personal "I" no Buddhi has ever reflected itself, how
can the latter carry away into the Eternity
one particle of that terrestrial personality?
Your spiritual "I" is immortal; but from your present self
it can carry away into Eternity that
only which has become worthy of immortality,
namely, the aroma alone of the flower
that has been mown by death.
Enq:
Well, and the flower, the terrestrial "I"?
Theo:
The flower, as well as all past and future
flowers which have blossomed and will
have to blossom on the mother bough,
the Sutratma, all children of one root or Buddhi - will
return to dust. Your present "I", as you yourself know, is not the body now
sitting before me, nor yet is it what
I would call Manas-Sutratma, but Sutratma-Buddhi.
Key
167 Enq: But this does not explain to me, at
all, why you call life after death
immortal, infinite and real, and the
terrestrial life a simple phantom or
illusion; since even that post-mortem life has limits, however much wider they
may be than those of terrestrial life.
Theo:
No doubt. The Spiritual Ego of Man moves
in eternity like a pendulum between the
hours of birth and death. But if these
hours, marking the periods of life terrestrial
and life spiritual, are limited in their
duration, and if the very number of such
stages in Eternity between sleep and
awakening, illusion and reality, has
its beginning and its end, on the other
hand, the spiritual pilgrim is eternal.
Therefore are the hours of his post-mortem life, when, disembodied, he stands face
to face with truth and not the mirages
of his transitory earthly existences,
during the period of that pilgrimage
which we call "the cycle of rebirths" - the only reality in our conception. Such
intervals, their limitation notwithstanding,
do not prevent the Ego, while ever perfecting
itself, from following undeviatingly,
though gradually and slowly, the path
to its last transformation, when that
Ego, having reached its goal, becomes
a divine being. These intervals and stages
help towards this final result instead
of hindering it; and without such limited
intervals the divine Ego could never
reach its ultimate goal. I have given
you once already a familiar illustration
by comparing the Ego, or the individuality, to an actor, and its numerous and various
incarnations to the parts it plays. Will
you call these parts or their costumes
the individuality of the actor himself?
Like that actor, the Ego is forced to
play during the cycle of necessity, up
to the very threshold of Paranirvana, many parts such as may be unpleasant to
it. But as the bee collects its honey
from every flower, leaving the rest as
food for the earthly worms, so does our
spiritual individuality, whether we call
it Sutratma or Ego. Collecting from every
terrestrial personality, into which Karma
forces it to incarnate, the nectar alone
of the spiritual qualities and self-consciousness,
it unites all these into one whole and
emerges from its chrysalis as the glorified
Dhyan-Chohan. So much the worse for those
terrestrial personalities from which
it could collect nothing. Such personalities
cannot assuredly outlive consciously
their terrestrial existence.
(168)
Enq: Thus, then, it seems that, for the
terrestrial personality, immortality
is still conditional. Is then, immortality
itself not unconditional?
Theo:
Not at all. But immortality cannot touch
the non-existent: for all that which exists as SAT, or emanates
from SAT, immortality and Eternity are
absolute. Matter is the opposite pole
of spirit, and yet the two are one. The
essence of all this, i.e. Spirit, Force
and Matter, or the three in one, is as
endless as it is beginningless; but the
form acquired by this triple unity during
its incarnations, its externality, is
certainly only the illusion of our personal
conceptions. Therefore do we call Nirvana
and the Universal life alone a reality,
while relegating the terrestrial life,
its terrestrial personality included,
and even its Devachanic existence, to
the phantom realm of illusion.
(169)
Enq: But why in such a case call sleep
the reality, and waking the illusion?
Theo:
It is simply a comparison made to facilitate
the grasping of the subject, and from
the standpoint of terrestrial conceptions
it is a very correct one.
Enq:
And still I cannot understand, if the
life to come is based on justice and
the merited retribution for all our terrestrial
suffering, how in the case of materialists,
many of whom are really honest and charitable
men, there should remain of their personality
nothing but the refuse of a faded flower.
Footnote: "Retribution" formerly
included the meaning of "compensation".
Theo:
No one ever said such a thing. No materialist,
however unbelieving, can die for ever
in the fullness of his spiritual individuality.
What was said is that consciousness can
disappear either fully or partially in
the case of a materialist, so that no
conscious remains of his personality
survive.
Enq:
Surely this is annihilation?
Theo:
Certainly not. One can sleep a dead
sleep and miss several stations during
a long
railway journey, without the slightest
recollection or consciousness, and
awake at another station and continue the
journey
past innumerable other halting-places
till the end of the journey or the
goal is reached. Three kinds of sleep were
mentioned to you: the dreamless, the
chaotic, and the one which is so real,
that to the sleeping man his dreams
become
full realities. If you believe in the
latter, why can't you believe in the
former? According to the after-life
a man has believed in and expected, such
is the life he will have. He who expected
no life to come will have an absolute
blank, amounting to annihilation, in
the interval between the two rebirths.
This is just the carrying out of the
programme we spoke of, a programme
created
by the materialists themselves. But
there are various kinds of materialists,
as
you say. A selfish, wicked Egoist,
one who never shed a tear for anyone but
himself, thus adding entire indifference to
the whole world to his unbelief, must,
at the threshold of death, drop his
personality for ever. This personality
having no
tendrils of sympathy for the world
around and hence nothing to hook on
to Sutratma,
it follows that with the last breath
every connection between the two is
broken. There being no Devachan for
such a materialist,
the Sutratma will reincarnate almost
immediately. But those materialists
who erred in nothing but their disbelief
will oversleep but one station. And
the
time will come when that ex-materialist
will perceive himself in the Eternity
and perhaps repent that he lost even
one day, one station, from the life
eternal."
(170)
Enq: Still, would it not be more correct
to say that death is birth into a new
life, or a return once more into eternity?
Theo:
You may if you like. Only remember that
births differ, and that there are births
of "still-born" beings, which are failures of nature. Moreover, with your Western fixed
ideas about material life, the words "living" and "being" are quite inapplicable to the pure subjective
state of post-mortem existence. It is just because, save in a
few philosophers who are not read by
the many, and who themselves are too
confused to present a distinct picture
of it, it is just because your Western
ideas of life and death have finally
become so narrow, that on the one hand
they have led to crass materialism, and
on the other to the still more material
conception of the other life, which the
spiritualists have formulated in their
Summerland. There the souls of men eat,
drink, marry, and live in a paradise
quite as sensual as that of Mohammed,
but even less philosophical. Nor are
the average conceptions of the uneducated
Christians any better, being if possible
still more material. What between truncated
angels, brass trumpets, golden harps,
and material hell-fires, the Christian
heaven seems like a fairy scene at a
Christmas pantomime.
It
is because of these narrow conceptions
that you find such difficulty in understanding.
It is just because the life of the disembodied
soul, while possessing all the vividness
of reality, as in certain dreams, is
devoid of every grossly objective form
of terrestrial life, that the Eastern
philosophers have compared it with visions
during sleep.
Key
177 Enq: .. It is there [in the Buddhist Catechism] stated that the Skandhas - memory included
- change with every new incarnation.
And yet, it is asserted that the reflection
of the past lives, which, we are told,
are entirely made up of Skandhas, "must survive". At the present moment I am not quite clear
in my mind as to what it is precisely
that survives .. Is it only that "reflection" or those Skandhas, or always that same EGO,
the Manas?
Theo:
I have just explained that the reincarnating
Principle, or that which we call the divine man, is indestructible throughout the life
cycle: indestructible as a thinking Entity, and even as an ethereal form. The "reflection" is only the spiritualized remembrance, during the Devachanic period, of the ex-personality, Mr A. or Mrs B. - with which the Ego identifies itself during that period. Since
the latter is but the continuation of
the earth-life, so to say, the very acme
and pitch, in an unbroken series, of
the few happy moments in that now past
existence, the Ego has to identify itself with the personal consciousness of that life, if anything
shall remain of it.
(178)
Enq: This means that the Ego, notwithstanding its divine nature, passes
every such period between two incarnations
in a state of mental obscuration, or
temporary insanity.
Theo:
You may regard it as you like. Believing
that, outside the ONE Reality, nothing
is better than a passing illusion - the
whole Universe included - we do not view
it as insanity, but as a very natural
sequence or development of the terrestrial
life. What is life? A bundle of the most
varied experiences, of daily changing
ideas, emotions, and opinions. In our
youth we are often enthusiastically devoted
to an ideal, to some hero or heroine
whom we try to follow and revive; a few
years later, when the freshness of our
youthful feelings has faded out and sobered
down, we are the first to laugh at our
fancies. And yet there was a day when
we had so thoroughly identified our own
personality with that of the ideal in
our mind - especially if it was that
of a living being - that the former was
entirely merged and lost in the latter.
Can it be said of a man of fifty that
he is the same being that he was at twenty?
The inner man is the same; the outward living personality
is completely transformed and changed.
Would you also call these changes in
the human mental states insanity?
Enq:
How would you name them, and especially how would you
explain the permanence of one and the
evanescence of the other?
Theo:
We have our own doctrine ready, and to
us it offers no difficulty. The clue
lies in the double consciousness of our
mind, and also, in the dual nature of
the mental "principle". There is spiritual consciousness, the Manasic
mind illumined by the light of Buddhi,
that which subjectively perceives abstractions;
and the sentient consciousness (the lower Manasic light), inseparable from our physical brain
and senses. This latter consciousness
is held in subjection by the brain and
physical senses, and, being in its turn
equally dependent on them, must of course
fade out and finally die with the disappearance
of the brain and physical senses. It
is only the former kind of consciousness,
whose root lies in eternity, which survives
and lives for ever, and may therefore
be regarded as immortal. Everything else
belongs to passing illusions.
(179)
Enq: What do you really understand by
illusion in this case?
Theo:
It is very well described in the ...
essay on "The Higher Self". Says its author: "The theory we are considering (the interchange
of ideas between the Higher Ego and the lower self) harmonizes very well
with the treatment of this world in which
we live as a phenomenal world of illusion,
the spiritual plane of nature being on
the other hand the noumenal world or
plane of reality. That region of nature
in which, so to speak, the permanent
soul is rooted is more real than that
in which its transitory blossoms appear
for a brief space to wither and fall
to pieces, while the plant recovers energy
for sending forth a fresh flower. Supposing
flowers only were perceptible to ordinary
senses, and their roots existed in a
state of Nature intangible and invisible
to us, philosophers in such a world who
divined that there were such things as
roots in another plane of existence would
be apt to say of the flowers: These are
not the real plants; they are of no relative
importance, merely illusive phenomena
of the moment.
This
is what I mean. The world in which blossom
the transitory and evanescent flowers
of personal lives is not the real permanent
world; but that one in which we find
the root of consciousness, that root
which is beyond illusion and dwells in
the eternity.
(180)
Enq: What do you mean by the root dwelling
in eternity?"
Theo:
I mean by this root the thinking entity,
the Ego which incarnates, whether we
regard it as an "Angel", "Spirit", or a Force. Of that which falls under our
sensuous perceptions only what grows
directly from or is attached to this
invisible root above, can partake of
its immortal life. Hence every noble
thought, idea and aspiration of the personality
it informs, proceeding from and fed by
this root, must become permanent. As
to physical consciousness, as it is a
quality of the sentient but lower principle
(Kama-rupa or animal instinct, illuminated
by the lower manasic reflection), or the human Soul - it must
disappear. That which displays activity,
while the body is asleep or paralysed,
is the higher consciousness, our memory
registering but feebly and inaccurately
- because automatically -such experiences,
and often failing to be even slightly
impressed by them.
Key
181 Enq: And is it this Ego of ours which is
our God?
Theo:
Not at all; "A God" is not the universal deity, but only a spark
from the one ocean of Divine Fire. Our
God within us, or "our Father in Secret" is what we call the "HIGHER SELF", Atma. Our incarnating Ego was a God in its origin,
as were all the primeval emanations of
the One Unknown Principle. But since
its "fall into Matter", having to incarnate throughout the cycle,
in succession, from first to last, it
is no longer a free and happy god, but
a poor pilgrim on his way to regain that
which he has lost .. Such is the destiny
of MAN -the true Ego, not the Automaton,
the shell that goes by that name. It is for him to
become the conqueror over matter.
Key
188 Theo: .. He [the Ego] is the "man-god" of Plato, who crucifies himself in Space (or the duration of the life cycle) for
the redemption of MATTER. This he does
by incarnating over and over again,
thus leading mankind onward to perfection,
and making thereby room for lower forms
to develop into higher. Not for one
life does he cease progressing himself
and helping all physical nature to
progress; even the occasional, very
rare event of his losing one of his
personalities, in the case of the latter
being entirely devoid of even a spark
of spirituality, helps toward his individual
progress.
(189)
Enq: But surely if the Ego is held responsible for the transgressions
of its personalities, it has to answer
also for the loss, or rather the complete
annihilation, of one of such.
Theo:
Not at all, unless it has done nothing
to avert this dire fate. But if, all
its efforts notwithstanding, its voice, that of our conscience, was unable to penetrate through the wall
of matter, then the obtuseness of the
latter, proceeding from the imperfect
nature of the material, is classed with
other failures of nature. The Ego is
sufficiently punished by the loss of
Devachan, and especially by having to
incarnate almost immediately.
Enq:
This doctrine of the possibility of losing
one's soul - or personality, do you call
it? - militates against the ideal theories
of both Christians and Spiritualists,
though Swedenborg adopts it to a certain
extent, in what he calls Spiritual death. They will never accept it.
Theo:
This can in no way alter a fact of nature,
if it be a fact, or prevent such a thing
occasionally taking place. The universe
and everything in it, moral, mental,
physical, psychic, or Spiritual, is built
on a perfect law of equilibrium and harmony.
As said before (Isis Unveiled, I, 318-9), the centripetal force could
not manifest itself without the centrifugal
in the harmonious revolutions of the
spheres; and all forms and their progress
are the products of this dual force in
nature. Now the Spirit (or Buddhi) is the centrifugal and the soul (Manas) the centripetal spiritual energy; and to
produce one result they have to be in
perfect union and harmony. Break or damage
the centripetal motion of the earthly
soul tending toward the centre which
attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging
it with a heavier weight of matter than
it can bear, or than is fit for the Devachanic
state, and the harmony of the whole will
be destroyed. Personal life, or perhaps
rather its ideal reflection, can only
be continued if sustained by the twofold
force, that is by the close union of Buddhi and Manas in every rebirth or personal life. The least
deviation from harmony damages it; and
when it is destroyed beyond redemption
the two forces separate at the moment
of death. During a brief interval the personal form (called indifferently Kama-rupa and Mayavi-rupa), the spiritual efflorescence of which,
attaching itself to the Ego, follows
it into Devachan and gives to the permanent individuality its personal colouring (pro-tem., so to speak), is carried off to remain
in Kama-loka and to be gradually annihilated. For it
is after the death of the utterly depraved,
the unspiritual and the wicked beyond
redemption, that arrives the critical
and supreme moment. If during life the
ultimate and desperate effort of the
INNER SELF (Manas), to unite something of the personality
with itself and the high glimmering ray
of the divine Buddhi, is thwarted; if
this ray is allowed to be more and more
shut out from the ever-thickening crust
of the physical brain, the Spiritual
EGO or Manas, once freed from the body,
remains severed entirely from the ethereal
relic of the personality; and the latter,
or Kama-rupa, following its earthly attractions, is drawn
into and remains in Hades, which we call the Kama-loka. These are "the withered branches" mentioned by Jesus as being cut off from
the Vine. Annihilation, however, is never instantaneous,
and may require centuries sometimes for
its accomplishment. But there the personality
remains along with the remnants of other more fortunate personal Egos, and
becomes with them a shell and an Elementary. As said in Isis, it is these two classes of "Spirits", the shells and the Elementaries, which are the leading "Stars" on the great spiritual stage of "materializations". And you may be sure of it, it is not they
who incarnate; and, therefore, so few
of these "dear departed ones" know anything of reincarnation, misleading
thereby the Spiritualists.
Key
197 Enq: You mean, then, that we have all lived
on earth before, in many past incarnations,
and shall go on so living?
Theo:
I do. The life-cycle, or rather the cycle
of conscious life, begins with the separation
of the mortal animal-man into sexes,
and will end with the close of the last
generation of men, in the seventh round
and seventh race of mankind [see Glossary].
Considering we are only in the fourth
round and fifth race, its duration is
more easily imagined than expressed.
Enq:
And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?
Theo:
Most assuredly so; because this life-cycle
or period of incarnation may be best
compared to human life. As each such
life is composed of days of activity
separated by nights of sleep or of inaction,
so, in the incarnation-cycle, an active
life is followed by a Devachanic rest.
Enq:
And it is this succession of births that
is generally defined as reincarnation?
Theo:
Just so. It is only through these births
that the perpetual progress of the countless
millions of Egos toward final perfection
and final rest (as long as was the period
of activity) can be achieved.
(198)
Enq: And what is it that regulates the
duration, or special qualities of these
incarnations?
Theo:
Karma, the universal law of retributive
justice.
Enq:
Is it an intelligent law?
Theo:
For the Materialist, who calls the law
of periodicity which regulates the marshalling
of the several bodies, and all the other
laws in nature, blind forces and mechanical
laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of
chance and no more. For us, no adjective
or qualification could describe that
which is impersonal and no entity, but
a universal operative law. If you question
me about the causative intelligence in
it, I must answer you I do not know.
But if you ask me to define its effects
and tell you what these are in our belief,
I may say that the experience of thousands
of ages has shown us that they are absolute
and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects is an unfailing
redresser of human injustice, and of
all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster
of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards
and punishes with equal impartiality.
It is, in the strictest sense, "no respecter of persons", though, on the other hand, it can neither
be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer.
This is a belief common to Hindus and
Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.
Key
199 Theo: .. And we believe neither in vicarious
atonement, nor in the possibility of
the remission of the smallest sin by
any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite", if such a thing could have any existence.
What we believe in is strict and impartial
justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal
Deity, represented by Karma, is that
it is a Power which cannot fail, and
can, therefore, have neither wrath
nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which
leaves every cause, great or small,
to work out its inevitable effects.
The saying of Jesus: "With what measure you mete it shall be measured
to you again" (Matt., vii, 2), neither by expression nor implication
points to any hope of future mercy
or salvation by proxy. This is why,
recognizing as we do in our philosophy
the justice of this statement, we cannot
recommend too strongly mercy, charity,
and forgiveness of mutual offences. Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached
in view of the implacability of Karmic
law. For man to take the law into his
own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious
presumption. Human Law may use restrictive,
not punitive measures; but a man who,
believing in Karma, still revenges
himself and refuses to forgive every
injury, thereby rendering good for
evil, is a criminal and only hurts
himself. As Karma is sure to punish
the man who wronged him, by seeking
to inflict an additional punishment
on his enemy, he, who instead of leaving
that punishment to the great Law adds
to it his own mite, only begets thereby
a cause for the future reward of his
own enemy and a future punishment for
himself. The unfailing Regulator affects
in each incarnation the quality of
its successor; and the sum of the merit
or demerit in preceding ones determines
it.
(200)
Enq: Are we then to infer a man's past
from his present?
Theo:
Only so far as to believe that his present
life is what it justly should be, to
atone for the sins of the past life.
Of course - seers and great adepts excepted
- we cannot as average mortals know what
those sins were. From our paucity of
data, it is impossible for us even to
determine what an old man's youth must
have been; neither can we, for like reasons,
draw final conclusions merely from what
we see in the life of some man, as to
what his past life may have been.
Key
201 Enq: But what is Karma?
Theo:
As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin and
fount of all other laws which exist throughout
Nature. Karma is the unerring law which
adjusts effect to cause, on the physical,
mental and spiritual planes of being.
As no cause remains without its due effect
from greatest to least, from a cosmic
disturbance down to the movement of your
hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter
back to its producer. Though itself unknowable, its action is perceivable.
Key
209 [Quoting E.D. Walker in his "Reincarnation"] Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that
we have made ourselves what we are
by former actions, and are building
our future eternity by present actions.
There is no destiny but what we ourselves
determine. There is no salvation or
condemnation except what we ourselves
bring about ... Because it offers no
shelter for culpable actions and necessitates
a sterling manliness, it is less welcome
to weak natures than the easy religious
tenets of vicarious atonement, intercession,
forgiveness and death-bed conversions
... In the domain of eternal justice
the offence and the punishment are
inseparably connected as the same event,
because there is no real distinction
between the action and its outcome
... It is Karma, or our old acts, that
draws us back into earthly life. The
spirit's abode changes according to
its Karma, and this Karma forbids any
long continuance in one condition,
because it is always changing. So long
as action is governed by material and
selfish motives just so long must the effect of that action be manifested
in physical rebirths. Only the perfectly
selfless man can elude the gravitation
of material life. Few have attained
this, but it is the goal of mankind.
CW
III, 292 DEATH by (the late) Eliphas Levi.
Death
is the necessary dissolution of imperfect
combinations. [Master K.H.'s Comments - "Of the 1, 2, 3rd, 4, 5th.
"] It
is the re-absorption of the rough outline
of individual [ Master K.H.'s Comments - " The personality of the personal Ego. ] life into the great work of universal life;
only the perfect [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" The 6th and 7th Principles." ] is immortal.
It
is a bath in oblivion. [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" Until the hour of remembrance. ] It is the fountain of youth where on one
side plunges old age, and whence on the
other issues infancy. (Fn: Rebirth of the Ego after death. The Eastern, and especially
Buddhistic doctrine of the evolution
of the new, out of the old Ego. - H.P.B.)
Death
is the transfiguration of the living;
corpses are but the dead leaves of the
Tree of Life which will still have all
its leaves in the spring. [Master K.H.'s Comments -" In the language of the Kabalist "Spring" means the beginning of that state when the
Ego reaches its omniscience. ] The resurrection [ Master K.H.'s Comments -"The Chaldean "resurrection in life eternal" borrowed by the Xtians means resurrection
in Nirvana. ] of men resembles eternally these leaves.
Perishable
forms are conditioned by immortal types.
All
who have lived upon earth, live there
still in new exemplars of their types,
but the souls which have surpassed their
type receive elsewhere a new form based
upon a more perfect type, as they mount
ever on the ladder of worlds; (Fn: From one loka to the other; from a positive world of causes
and activity, to a negative world of
effects and passivity. ) the bad exemplars are broken, and their matter
returned into the general mass. ( Fn: Into Cosmic matter, when they necessarily
lose their self-consciousness or individuality, [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" Their Monad 6th and 7th Principles. "] or are annihilated, as the Eastern Kabalists
say. - H.P.B.)
(293)
Our souls are as it were a music of which
our bodies are the instruments. The music
exists without the instruments, but it
cannot make itself heard without a material
intermediary; [ Master K.H.'s Comments -"Hence Spirit cannot communicate "] the immaterial can neither be conceived
nor grasped.
Man
in his present existence only retains
certain predispositions from his past
existences. [ Master K.H.'s Comments - " Karma." ]
Evocations
of the dead are but condensations of
memory, the imaginary coloration of the
shades. To evoke those who are no longer
there, is but to cause their types to
re-issue from the imagination of nature. (Fn: To ardently desire to see a dead person
is to evoke the image of that person, to call it forth
from the astral light or ether wherein
rest photographed the images of the Past. That is what is being partially done in
the séance rooms. The Spiritualists are unconscious NECROMANCERS.
- H.P.B.)
(295)
To be in direct communication with the
imagination of nature, one must be either
asleep, intoxicated, in an ecstasy, cataleptic,
or mad. [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" And to be in direct communication with the
intelligence of Nature one must become
an Adept. "]
The
eternal memory preserves only the imperishable;
all that passes in Time belongs of right
to oblivion.
The
preservation of corpses is a violation
of the laws of nature; it is an outrage
on the modesty of death, which hides
the works of destruction, as we should
hide those of reproduction. Preserving
corpses is to create phantoms in the
imagination of the earth; (Fn: To intensify these images in the astral
or sidereal light.) [
Master
K.H.'s Comments -" We
never bury our dead. They are burnt or left
above the
earth. "] the spectres of the nightmare, of hallucination,
and fear are but the wandering photographs
of preserved corpses. [Master K.H.'s Comments -" Their reflections in the astral
light. "] It is these preserved or imperfectly destroyed
corpses, which spread, amid the living, plague,
cholera, contagious diseases, sadness, scepticism
and disgust of life.(Fn: People begin intuitionally to realize
the great truth, and societies for burning
bodies and crematories are now
started in many places in Europe. H.P.B.) Death is exhaled by death. The cemeteries
poison the atmosphere of towns, and the miasma
of corpses blight the children even in the
bosoms
of their mothers.
Near
Jerusalem in the Valley of Gehenna a
perpetual fire was maintained for the
combustion of filth and the carcasses
of animals, and it is to this eternal
fire that Jesus alluded when he says
that the wicked shall be cast into Gehenna; signifying that dead souls will be treated
as corpses.
(295)
The Talmud says that the souls of those who have not
believed in immortality will not become
immortal. It is faith only which gives
personal immortality; (Fn: Faith and will power. Immortality is conditional, as we
have ever stated. It is the reward of
the pure and good. The wicked man, the
material sensualist, only survives. He
who appreciates but physical pleasure
will not and cannot live in the hereafter as a self-conscious
Entity. H.P.B.)
[Master
K.H.'s Comments -" In the Deva-Chan the Ego sees and feels
but that which he longed for. He who
cares not for a continuation of sentient
personal life after physical death will
not have it. He will be reborn remaining
unconscious of the transition. existence,
but a necessary hypothesis". ] science and reason can only affirm the general
immortality.
The
mortal sin is the suicide of the soul.
This suicide would occur if the man devoted
himself to evil with the full strength
of his mind, with a perfect knowledge
of good and evil, and an entire liberty
of action which seems impossible in practice,
but which is possible in theory, because
the essence of an independent personality
is an unconditioned liberty. The divinity
imposes nothing upon man, not even existence.
Man has a right to withdraw himself even
from the divine goodness, and the dogma
of eternal Hell is only the assertion
of eternal free will.
God
precipitates no one into Hell. It is
men who can go there freely, definitely
and by their own choice.
Those
who are in Hell, that is to say, amid
the gloom of evil (Fn: That is to say,
they are reborn in a "lower world" which is neither "hell" nor any theological purgatory, but a world
of nearly absolute matter and one preceding the last one in the "circle of necessity" from this "there is no redemption, for there reigns absolute spiritual darkness" (Book of Khiu-ti). - H.P.B.) and the sufferings of the necessary punishment,
without having absolutely so willed it,
are called to emerge from it. This Hell
is for them only a purgatory. The damned
completely, absolutely and without respite,
is Satan who is not a rational
(296)
N.I. Satan is the last word of the creation.
He is the end infinitely emancipated.
He willed to be like God of which he
is the opposite. God is the hypothesis
necessary to reason, Satan the hypothesis
necessary to unreason asserting itself
as free will. [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" That which I have marked with red pencil
are all seeming contradictions but they
are not" ]
To
be immortal [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" As a rule the Hermetists, when using the
word "immortality" limit its duration from the beginning to
the end of the minor cycle. The deficiencies
of their respective languages cannot
be visited upon them. One could not well
say a semi-immortality. The ancients
called it "panaeonic eternity" from the words ...... - all or nature, and
......, a period of time which had no
definite limit, except for the initiates.
See Dictionaries - an aeon is the period
of time during which a person lives,
the period during which the universe
endures, and also - eternity. It was
a "mystery word" and was purposely veiled." ] in good, one must identify oneself with God;
to be immortal in evil, with Satan. These
are the two poles of the world of souls;
between these two poles vegetate and
die without remembrance the useless portion
of mankind.
(297) H.P.B.'s
Note. - This may seem incomprehensible to the
average reader, for it is one of the
most abstruse of the tenets of Occult [ Master K.H.'s Comments -" Western." ] doctrine. Nature is dual; there is a physical
and material side, as there is a spiritual
and moral side to it; and, there is
both good and evil in it, the latter
the necessary shadow to its light.
To force oneself upon the current of
immortality, or rather to secure for
oneself an endless series of rebirths
as conscious individualities - says
the Book of Khiu-ti, Volume XXXI, [
Master
K.H.'s Comments -" Chap.
III." ] one must become a co-worker with nature,
either for good or for bad, in her work of creation and reproduction,
or in that of destruction. [Master K.H.'s Comments -" This sentence refers to the two kinds of
the initiates - the
adepts and the sorcerers."] It is but the useless drones, which she
gets rid of, violently ejecting and making
them perish by the millions [Master K.H.'s
Comments -" One of her usual
exaggerations."]as self-conscious entities. [Master K.H.'s
Comments -" Two useless words. "]Thus, while the good and the pure strive
to reach Nipang (Nirvana) or that state of absolute existence and absolute consciousness - which, in the world of finite
perceptions, is non-existence and non-consciousness) - the wicked will seek, on
the contrary, a series of lives
as
conscious, definite existences
or beings, preferring to be
ever suffering under the law
of retributive justice [
Master K.H.'s Comments -" Karma."] rather
than give up their lives as portions
of the integral, universal whole.
Being well aware that they can
never hope to reach the final rest
in pure spirit, or nirvana, they cling to life in any form, [ Master
K.H.'s Comments -" Thro' mediums who have existed every-where
in every
age."
] rather
than give up that "desire for life", or Tanha which causes a new aggregation of Skandhas or individuality to be reborn. Nature is
as good a mother to the cruel bird of
prey as she is to the harmless dove.
Mother nature will punish her child,
but since he has become her co-worker
for destruction she cannot eject him.
[
Master K.H.'s Comments -" Not
during the aeon, if they but know how to
force her. But it is a life of torture and
eternal hatred. If you believe in us how
can you disbelieve in them?"] There are thoroughly wicked and depraved
men, yet as highly intellectual and acutely spiritual for evil, as those who are spiritual for
good. [Master K.H.'s Comments -" The Brothers of the shadow."] The Egos of these may escape the law of final destruction
or annihilation for ages to come. [Master
K.H.'s Comments -" The majority have to go out of this planet
into the 8th as she calls it. But the highest
will live till the very threshold of the
final
nirvana." ] That
is what Eliphas Levi means by becoming "immortal in evil", through identification with Satan. "I would thou wert cold or hot," says the vision of the Revelation to St. John (iii, 15-16). "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
out of my mouth." The Revelation is an absolutely Kabalistic book. Heat and cold are the two "poles", i.e., good and evil, spirit and matter. Nature spues the "lukewarm" or "the useless portion of mankind" out of her mouth, i.e., annihilates them. This conception that
a considerable portion of mankind may after
all not have immortal souls, will not be
new even to European readers. Coleridge himself
likened the case to that of an oak tree bearing,
indeed, millions of acorns, but acorns of
which under nominal [Master K.H.'s Comments
-" Normal ". ] conditions not one in a thousand ever developed
into a tree, and suggested that as the majority
of the acorns fails to develop into a new
living tree, so possibly the majority of
men fail to develop into a new living entity
after this earthly death.
CW
IV, 186 Whether man was good, bad, or indifferent,
Group II [Manas and kama-rupa] has
to become either a "shell" or be once or several times more reincarnated
under "exceptional circumstances". There is a mighty difference in our Occult
doctrine between an impersonal Individuality, and an individual Personality. ... Shall we say then with the Spiritists
that ... the man we know, will be
reborn again? No; but that his divine
Monad will be clothed thousands of
times yet before the end of the Grand
Cycle, in various human forms, every
one of them a new personality. Like a mighty tree that clothes
itself every spring with a new foliage,
to see it wither and die towards
autumn, so the eternal Monad prevails
through the series of smaller cycles,
ever the same, yet ever changing
and putting on at each birth, a new
garment. The bud, that failed to
open one year, will reappear in the
next; the leaf that reached its maturity
and died a natural death - can never
be reborn on the same tree again.
CW
IV, 250 To the Editor of The Theosophist:
In
the article on "Death" by the late Eliphas Levi, printed in the
October number of The Theosophist, Vol.III, the writer says that "to be immortal in good, one must identify
oneself with God; to be immortal in
evil, with Satan. These are the two
poles of the world of soul; between these two poles vegetate and die
without remembrance the useless portion
of mankind". In your explanatory note on this passage
you quote the book of Khiu-ti, which says that "to force oneself upon the current of immortality,
or rather to secure for oneself an endless series of rebirths as conscious individualities, one must become a co-worker with nature,
either for good or for bad, in her work of creation and reproduction,
or in that of destruction. It is but
the useless drones, which she gets rid of, violently ejecting
and making them perish by the millions
as self-conscious entities. Thus, while
the good and the pure strive to reach
Nirvana ... the wicked will seek, on
the contrary, series of lives as conscious,
definite existences or beings, preferring
to be ever suffering under the law
of retributive justice rather than
give up their lives as portions of
the integral universal whole. Being
well aware that they can never hope
to reach the final rest in pure spirit,
or Nirvana, they cling to life in any form, rather
than give up that 'desire for life',
or Tanha which causes a new aggregation of Skandhas or individuality to be reborn. ... They
are thoroughly wicked or depraved men,
yet as highly intellectual and acutely spiritual for evil, as those who are spiritual for
good. The Egos of these may escape the law of final destruction
or annihilation for ages to come ...
Heat and cold are the two 'poles',
i.e. good and evil, spirit and matter. Nature spews the 'lukewarm' or 'useless portion of mankind'
out of her mouth, i.e., annihilates
them". In the very same number in which these
lines occur we have the "Fragments of Occult Truth", and we learn thence that there are seven
entities or principles constituting
a human being. When death occurs, the
first three principles (i.e. the body,
the vital energy, and astral body)
are dissipated; and with regard to
the remaining four principles "one of two things occurs". If the Spiritual Ego (sixth principle)
has been in life material in its tendencies,
then at death it continues to cling
blindly to the lower elements of its
late combination, and the true spirit
severs itself from these and passes
away elsewhere, when the Spiritual
Ego is also dissipated and ceases to
exist. Under such circumstances only
two entities (the fourth and fifth,
i.e. Kama Rupa and Physical Ego) are
left, and the shells take long periods to disintegrate.
(251)
On the other hand, if the tendencies
of the ego have been towards things
spiritual, it will cling to the spirit,
and with this pass into the adjoining World of Effects, and there evolve out of itself by the spirit's
aid a new ego, to be reborn (after
a brief period of freedom and enjoyment)
in the next higher objective world
of causes.
The "Fragments" teach
that, apart from the cases of the higher
adepts, there are two conditions: First, that in which the Spirit is obliged to
sever its connection; and, secondly that in which the Spirit is able to continue
its connection with the fourth, fifth
and sixth principles. In either case
the fourth and fifth principles are
dissipated after a longer or a shorter
period, and, in the case of the spiritual-minded,
the Spiritual Ego undergoes a series
of ascending births, while in the case
of the depraved no Spiritual Ego remains
and there is simply disintegration
of the fourth and fifth principles
after immense periods of time. The "Fragments" do not seem to admit of a third or intermediary
case which could explain the condition
of Eliphas Levi's "useless portion" of mankind after death. It appears to me
also that there could be only two cases:
(l) either the spirit continues its
connection, or (2) it severs its connection.
What, then, is meant by the "useless portion of mankind" who, you suggest, are annihilated by the
millions? Are they a combination of
less than seven principles? That cannot
be, for even the very wicked and depraved
have them all. What, then, becomes
of the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh
principles in the case of the so-called "useless portion of mankind"?
(252)
The "Fragments" again tell us that, in the case of the wicked,
the fourth and fifth principles are
simply disintegrated after long ages,
while in your above quoted note you
say that the "wicked will seek a series of lives as conscious,
definite existences or beings", and again in the note to the word "Hell" you write that it is "a world of nearly absolute matter and one preceding the last one in the 'circle
of necessity' from which 'there is
no redemption, for there reigns absolute spiritual darkness'". These two notes seem to suggest that, in
the case of the depraved, the fourth
and fifth principles are born again
in inferior worlds and have a series
of conscious existences.
The "Fragments" are
admittedly the production of the "Brothers" and what I could gather from them after
a careful perusal seems apparently
not to accord with your notes quoted
above. Evidently there is a gap somewhere,
and, as the "useless portion of mankind" have been so far noticed, a more exhaustive
explanation of them after the method
of the seven principles is needed to
make your otherwise learned note accord
with the "Fragments". I might mention again that at every step
the words "matter" and "spirit" confound the majority of your readers, and
it is highly important and necessary
that these two words be satisfactorily
explained so that the average reader
might understand wherein lies the difference
between the two; what is meant by matter
emanating from spirit, and whether
spirit does not become limited to that
extent by the emanation of matter therefrom.
Yours
faithfully and fraternally, N.D.K ----,
F.T.S.
The
apparent discrepancy between the two
statements, that our correspondent
quotes, does not involve any real contradiction
at all, nor is there a "gap" in the explanation. The confusion arises
from the unfamiliarity of ordinary
thinkers, unused to Occult ideas, with
the distinction between the personal
and individual entities in Man. Reference
has been made to this distinction in
modern Occult writing very frequently,
and in Isis itself where the explanations of a hundred
mysteries lie but half buried - they
were altogether buried in earlier works
on Occult philosophy - only waiting
for the application of intelligence
guided by a little Occult knowledge
to come out into the light of day.
When Isis was written, it was conceived by those from
whom the impulse, which directed its
preparation came, that the time was
not ripe for the explicit declaration
of a great many truths which they are
now willing to impart in plain language.
So the readers of that book were supplied
rather with hints, sketches, and adumbrations
of the philosophy to which it related,
than with methodical expositions. Thus
in reference to the present idea, the
difference between personal and individual
identity is suggested, if not fully
set forth at page 315, Vol.I. There
it is stated as the view of certain
philosophers, with whom, it is easy
to see, the writer concurs: "Man and Soul had to conquer their immortality
by ascending towards the Unity with
which, if successful, they were finally
linked ... The individualization of
man after death depended on the spirit,
not on his soul and body. Although
the word 'personality', in the sense
in which it is usually understood,
is an absurdity, if applied literally
to our immortal essence, still the
latter is a distinct entity, immortal
and eternal per se". And a little later on: "A person may have won his immortal life,
and remain the same inner-self he was on earth, throughout eternity; but
this does not imply necessarily that
he must either remain the Mr Smith
or Mr Brown he was on earth ..." [p.316].
(253)
A full consideration of these ideas
will solve the embarrassment in which
our correspondent is placed. Eliphas
Levi is talking about personalities
- the "Fragments" about individualities. Now, as regards the
personalities, the "useless portions of mankind" to which Eliphas Levi refers, is the great
bulk thereof. The permanent preservation of a personal identity beyond
death is a very rare achievement, accomplished
only by those who wrest her secrets
from Nature, and control their own
super-material development. In his
favourite symbolical way Eliphas Levi
indicates the people who contrive to
do this as those who are immortal in
good by identification with God, or
immortal in evil by identification
with Satan. That is to say, the preservation
of personal identity beyond death (or
rather, let us say, far beyond death,
reserving for the moment an explanation
of the distinction) is accomplished
only by adepts and sorcerers - the
one class having acquired the supreme
secret knowledge by holy methods, and
with benevolent motives; the other
having acquired it by unholy methods,
and for base motives. But that which
constitutes the inner self, the purer
portions of the earthly personal soul
united with the spiritual principles
and constituting the essential individuality,
is ensured a perpetuation of life in new births, whether the person, whose
earthly surroundings are its present
habitat, becomes endued with the higher
knowledge, or remains a plain ordinary
man all his life.
CW
IV, 255 Now, most people will be but too apt to
feel that unsatisfactory as the circumstances
may be, which constitute their present
personalities, these are after all themselves -"a poor thing, Sir, but mine own" - and that the inner spiritual monads, of
which they are but very dimly conscious
by the time they are united with
entirely different sets of circumstances
in new births, will be other people
altogether in whose fate they cannot
take any interest. In truth when
the time comes they will find the
fate of those people profoundly interesting,
as much so as they find their own
fates now. But passing over this
branch of the subject, there is still
some consolation for weak brethren
who find the notion of quitting their
present personality at the end of
their present lives too gloomy to
be borne. Eliphas Levi's exposition
of the doctrines is a very brief
one - as regards the passage quoted
- and it passes over a great deal
which, from the point of view we
are now engaged with, is of very
great importance. In talking about
immortality the great Occultist is
thinking of the vast stretches of
time over which the personality of
the adept and the sorcerer may be
made to extend. When he speaks of annihilation after this life, he
ignores a certain interval, which
may perhaps be not worth considering
in reference to the enormous whole
of existence, but which none the
less is very well worth the attention
of people who cling to the little
fragment of their life experience
which embodies the personality of
which we have been talking.
(256)
It has been explained, in more than
one paper published in this magazine
during the last few months, that the
passage of the spiritual monad into
a rebirth does not immediately follow
its release from the fleshly body last
inhabited here. In the Kama-loka, or atmosphere of this earth, the separation
of the two groups of ethereal principles
takes place, and in the vast majority
of cases in which the late personality
- the fifth principle - yields up something
which is susceptible of perpetuation
and of union with the sixth, the spiritual
monad, thus retaining consciousness
of its late personality for the time
being, passes into the state described
as Devachan, where it leads, for very long periods indeed
as compared with those of life on this
earth, an existence of the most unalloyed
satisfaction and conscious enjoyment.
Of course, this state is not one of
activity nor of exciting contrasts
between pain and pleasure, pursuit
and achievement, like the state of
physical life, but it is one in which
the personality of which we are speaking
is perpetuated, as far as that is compatible
with the nonperpetuation of that which
has been painful in its experience.
It is from this state that the spiritual
monad is reborn into the next active
life, and from the date of that rebirth
the old personality is done with. But
for any imagination, which finds the
conception of rebirth and new personality
uncomfortable, the doctrine of Devachan - and these "doctrines", be it remembered, are statements of scientific
fact which Adepts have ascertained
to be as real as the stars though as
far out of reach for most of us - the
doctrine of Devachan, we say, will furnish people who cannot
give up their earth-life memories all
at once - with a soft place to fall
upon.
CW
IV, 570 [N.D.K. further enquires]: What Karma propels the higher Ego into the
next birth, when a highly depraved
personality is dropped out?
(571)
.. In each birth the personality differs from that of the previous or next
succeeding birth. Karma, the deus ex machina, masks (or shall we say reflects?) itself
now in the personality of a sage, again
as an artisan, and so on throughout
the string of births. But though personalities
ever shift, the one line of life along
which they are strung like beads, runs
unbroken ..
The
time will come, no doubt, but many
steps higher on the ladder, when the
Ego will regain its consciousness of
all its past states of existence.
If
the enquirer will realize the real
meaning of these two quotations, he
will have the key to a correct understanding
of the question as to what Karma propels the higher Ego into the next birth, when even that of a
highly depraved personality is dropped
out, together with the personal soul
that is responsible for it. It will
be clear from these passages that the
individuality or the spiritual monad
is a thread upon which are strung various
personalities. Each personality leaves
its own - the higher spiritual - impressions
upon the divine Ego, the consciousness of which returns at a
certain stage of its progress, even
that of the highly depraved soul that
had to perish in the end. The reason
for it becomes self-evident, if one
reflects that however criminal and
lost to every glimmer of a higher feeling,
no human soul is yet born utterly depraved,
and that there was a time during the
youth of the sinful human personality
when it had worked out some kind or
other of Karma; and that it is this that survives and forms
the basis of the Karma to come. To make it clearer, let us suppose
that A. lives to that age when a person
becomes an adult and begins to bloom
fully into life. No man, however, vicious
his natural tendency, becomes so at
once. He has had therefore time to
evolve a Karma, however faint and insignificant. Let us
further imagine that at the age of
eighteen or twenty A. begins to give
way to vice and thus gradually loses
the remotest connection with his higher
principle. At thirty or say forty,
he dies. Now, the personality of A.
between fifteen and twenty is as little
the personality of A. from twenty to
thirty, as though it were quite another
man. Even the physiologists divide
the physical personality into stages
of seven, and show man changing atoms
to the last, every seven years. The
same with the inner man. The fifth
principle of the sensual, highly depraved
man, may well and will perish, while
the Karma of his youth, though not strong and complete
enough to secure for him a bliss in Devachan and union with his higher principle - is
yet sufficiently outlined to allow
the monad a grasp on it for the next
rebirth. On the other hand we are taught
that it so happens sometimes that the
Karma of a personality is not fully
worked out in the birth that follows.
Life is made up of accidents, and the
personality that becomes, may be hindered
by circumstances from receiving the
full due its Karma is entitled to, whether for good or for
bad. But the Law of Retribution will
never allow itself to be cheated by
blind chance. There is then a provision
to be made, and the accounts that could
not be settled in one birth will be
squared in the succeeding one. The
portion of the sum total which could
not be summed up on one column is carried
forward to the following. For verily
the many lives of an individual monad
were well compared ... to the pages
of an account book - THE BOOK OF LIFE
or - Lives.
(572)
Out of these impressions, then, which
constitute the Karma of the youth, is evolved the new personality.
Our botanical friends may know that
the croton plant evolves out of itself
another plant, when the one already
evolved dies out or withers away. Nature
must always progress, and each fresh
attempt is more successful than the
previous one. This fresh evolution
is due to the latent potentiality of
life it has within itself. In the same
manner, although one particular personality
may be so depraved as to be entirely
dissociated from the spiritual monad
and go into the eighth sphere, where annihilation is its lot, yet
the impressions of the previous personalities
upon the higher Ego have in them potentiality enough to evolve
a new physical Ego, like the croton
plant. The connection between a man's
spiritual monad and the succession
of physical Egos with which it is temporarily
associated, has been somewhere in these
columns, compared to the retrospective
glance of a man on some past period
of his earthly existence. While reviewing
in his memory his work day by day -
those days on which he did nothing
of any importance and passed idly away,
having left no impression on his mind,
must be, and are to him, like a perfect
blank. No consciousness that he had
passed such days remains there. In
the same manner, the Ego when at the end of its long pilgrimage will
regain consciousness of those personalities
only which have made a sufficiently
strong spiritual, hence indelible,
mark on the monad, while the memory
of the conscious acts of the particular
depraved personality which goes to
the eighth sphere will be entirely
obliterated.
CW
V, 44 "Reincarnation on a planet of a superior world." - That sentence contains two errors. The
Monad is going to incarnate on the
planet superior to ours, in our chain of worlds, but only when its incarnations
on our globe are completed - and not "on a planet of a superior world", and before it reaches that superior planet,
E - ours being D - which it has already
visited three times and which it
must visit four times more before
reaching the end of its great cycle
- each monad must incarnate in every
one of the seven great human races
as well as in their ramifications
into collateral races.
Footnote:
According to our doctrine, the Universe
is filled with septenary chains of
worlds, each chain being composed of
seven globes, ours being the 4th of
its chain and being found exactly in
the middle. It is after passing through
all the races as well as all the sub-races and having reached the planetary Pralaya (dissolution) that we shall go to a planet
of a superior world. There is ample
time for that.
CW
V, 45 The difference between the souls mentioned
above [i.e. those of children who
die young and congenital idiots]
and those of people in general is
that the former incarnate immediately, because neither the infants nor the idiots,
being irresponsible for their actions,
are able to receive either reward
or punishment. Failures of nature
- they begin a new life immediately;
while reincarnations in general take
place after rather long periods passed
in the intermediate and invisible
spheres. So that if a Spiritist-Theosophist
tells an Occultist-Theosophist that
he is a reincarnation of Louis XV,
or that Mrs X is a reincarnation
of Joan of Arc, the Occultist would
answer that according to his doctrine
it is impossible. It is quite possible
that he might be a reincarnation
of Sesostris or of Semiramis, but
the time period that has passed since
the death of Louis XV and even of
Joan of Arc is too short according
to our calculations, which are mathematically
correct. Should we be thoroughly ostracized if we were to say that the soul of idiots
and extremely young children (dying
before the age of personal consciousness)
are the exact parallels to those
who are annihilated? Can the personalities
of the infants and the idiots leave
a greater trace on the monadic memory
with which they have not been able
to become united, than those of the
souls of marked animal tendencies
who have also, though not more than
the former, failed to become assimilated
therein? In both cases the final
result is the same. The sixth element
or the spiritual EGO which has not
had either the time or the possibility
to unite with the lower principles
in the cases of the idiot and the
infant, has had the time but not
the possibility to accomplish that
union in the case of the totally depraved person. Now it is not that the "spiritual EGO is dissipated and ceases to exist" ... It would be absurd to say that something
which is immortal in its essence
can be dissipated or cease to be. The spiritual EGO is dissociated from the lower elements and, following its
divine monad - the seventh element,
disappears in the case of the utterly
vicious man and ceases to exist for him, for the personal and physical man as well
as for the astral man. As for the
latter, once being depraved, whether
it belong to an idiot or to a Newton,
if it has failed to grasp, or has
lost the Ariadne's thread which must
lead it through the labyrinth of
matter into the regions of eternal
light - it must disappear.
Thus
this personal astral man (or the fourth and fifth principles)
whether it disappears into an immediate
reincarnation, or is annihilated, drops from the number of the individual
existences which are to the monad equivalent
to days passed by an individual - a
series of recollections, some fresh
and eternal in our memory, others forgotten
and dead, never to revive.
CW
VII, 178 "Reincarnation, i.e., the appearance of the same individual, or rather of his astral monad, twice on the
same planet is not a rule in nature; it is an exception,
like the teratological phenomenon
of a two-headed infant. It is preceded
by a violation of the laws of harmony of nature, and happens only when the latter, seeking to restore its disturbed equilibrium, violently throws back
into earth-life the astral monad
which had been tossed out of the
circle of necessity by crime or accident. Thus, in cases of abortion, of infants
dying before a certain age, and of
congenital and incurable idiocy,
nature's original design to produce
a perfect human being, has been interrupted.
Therefore, while the gross matter
of each of these several entities
is suffered to disperse itself at
death, through the vast realm of
being, the immortal spirit and astral monad of the
individual - the latter having been
set apart to animate a frame and the former to shed
its divine light on the corporeal
organization - must try a second time to carry out the purpose
of the creative intelligence." (Isis, Vol. I, p.351)
Here
the "astral monad" or body of the deceased personality - say
of John or Thomas - is meant. It is
that which, in the teachings of the
Esoteric philosophy of Hinduism, is
known under its name of bhoot; in the Greek philosophy is called the simalcrum or umbra, and in all other philosophies worthy of
the name is said, as taught in the
former, to disappear after a certain
period more or less prolonged in Kama-loka - the Limbus of the Roman Catholics, or Hades of the Greeks. It is "a violation of the laws of harmony of nature", though it be so decreed by those of Karma - every time that the astral monad, or the simalcrum of the personality - of John or Thomas -instead
of running down to the end of its natural
period of time in a body - finds itself
(a) violently thrown out of it by either
early death or accident or (b) is compelled
in consequence of its unfinished task
to reappear (i.e., the same astral body wedded to the
same immortal monad) on earth again, in order to complete the
unfinished task. Thus it "must try a second time to carry out the purpose
of the creative intelligence" or law.
(179) "If
reason had been so far developed as
to become active and discriminative
there is no immediate reincarnation on this earth, for the three parts of the
triune man have been united together,
and he is capable of running the race.
But when the new being has not passed
beyond the condition of Monad, or when,
as in the idiot, the trinity has not
been completed [on earth and therefore
cannot be so after death], the immortal
spark which illuminates it, has to
re-enter on the earthly plane as it
was frustrated in its first attempt.
Otherwise, the mortal or astral, and
immortal or divine, souls, could not progress in unison and pass onward
to the sphere above [Devachan]. Spirit follows a line parallel with that
of matter; and the spiritual evolution
goes hand in hand with the physical." (Isis, Vol. I, pp 351-2)
The
Occult Doctrine teaches that :-
(1)
There is no immediate reincarnation on Earth for the Monad, as
falsely taught by the Reincarnationist
Spiritists; nor is there any second
incarnation at all for the "personal" or false Ego - the perisprit - save the exceptional cases mentioned.
But that (a) there are re-births, or
periodical reincarnations for the immortal
Ego - ("Ego" during the cycle of re-births, and non-Ego, in Nirvana or Maksha when it becomes impersonal and absolute; for that Ego is the root of every new incarnation,
the string on which are threaded, one
after the other, the false personalities
or illusive bodies called men, in which
the Monad-Ego incarnates itself during
the cycle of births; and (b) that such
reincarnations take place not before
1,500, 2,000, and even 3,000 years
of Devachanic life.
(2)
That Manas - the seat of Jiv, that spark which runs the round of the
cycle of births and rebirths with the
Monad, from the beginning to the end
of a Manvantara - is the real Ego. That (a) the Jiv follows the divine monad that gives it spiritual
life and immortality into Devachan
- that therefore, it can neither be
reborn before its appointed period,
nor reappear on Earth visibly or invisibly in the interim; and (b) that, unless the fruition, the
spiritual aroma of the Manas - or all
these highest aspirations and spiritual
qualities and attributes that constitute
the higher SELF of man become united
to its monad, the latter becomes as Non-existent; since it is in esse "impersonal" and per se Ego-less, so to say and gets its spiritual
colouring or flavour of Ego-tism only
from each Manas during incarnation and after it is disembodied,
and separated from all its lower principles.
(180)
(3) That the remaining four principles,
or rather the -2.1/2 - as they are
composed of the terrestrial portion
of Manas, of its Vehicle Kama-Rupa and Linga Sarira - the body dissolving immediately, and prana or the life principle along with it - that
these principles having belonged to
the false personality are unfit for Devachan. The
latter is the state of Bliss, the reward
for all the undeserved miseries of
life, and that which prompted man to
sin, namely his terrestrial passionate
nature can have no room in it.
Footnote:
The reader must bear in mind that the
esoteric teaching maintains that save
in cases of wickedness when man's nature
attains the acme of Evil, and human
terrestrial sin reaches Satanic universal character, so to say, as some Sorcerers do - there is no punishment for the majority
of mankind after death. The law of
retribution as Karma, waits man at the threshold of his new incarnation.
Man is at best a wretched tool of evil,
unceasingly forming new causes and
circumstances. He is not always (if
ever) responsible. Hence a period of
rest and bliss in Devachan, with an
utter temporary oblivion of all the
miseries and sorrows of life. Avitchi is a spiritual state of the greatest misery and is only
in store for those who have devoted consciously their lives to doing injury to others and
have thus reached its highest spirituality
of EVIL.
Therefore
the non-reincarnating principles are
left behind in Kama-Loka, firstly as a material residue, then later
on as a reflection on the mirror of
Astral light. Endowed with illusive action, to the day when having gradually
faded out they disappear, what is it
but the Greek Eidolon and the simalcrum of the Greek and Latin poets and classics?
(181) "What
reward or punishment can there be in
that sphere of disembodied human entities
for a foetus or a human embryo which had not even time
to breathe on this earth, still less
an opportunity to exercise the divine
faculties of the spirit? Or, for an
irresponsible infant, whose senseless
monad remaining dormant within the
astral and physical casket, could as
little prevent him from burning himself
as another person to death? Or for
one idiotic from birth, the number
of whose cerebral circumvolutions is
only from twenty to thirty percent
of those of sane persons; and who therefore
is irresponsible for either his disposition,
acts, or the imperfections of his vagrant,
half-developed intellect?" (Isis, Vol. I, p 352)
These
are then, the "exceptions" spoken of in Isis, and the doctrine is maintained now as it
was then. Moreover, there is no "discrepancy" but only incompleteness - hence, misconceptions arising from later
teachings.
CW
VII, 185 .. the principle which does not reincarnate - save the exceptions pointed out - is the false personality, the illusive human Entity defined
and individualized during this short
life of ours, under some specific
form and name; but that which does and has to reincarnate nolens volens under the unflinching, stern rule of Karmic
law - is the real EGO. This confusing
of the real immortal Ego in man,
with the false and ephemeral personalities it inhabits during its Manvantaric progress,
lies at the root of every such misunderstanding.
Now what is the one and what is the
other? The first group is - 1. The
immortal Spirit - sexless, formless
(arupa), an emanation from the One
universal BREATH.
2.
Its Vehicle - the divine Soul - called the "Immortal Ego", the "Divine monad", etc., etc., which by accretions from Manas in which burns the ever-existing Jiv - the undying spark - adds to itself at
the close of each incarnation the essence
of that individuality that was, the aroma of the culled flower that is
no more.
What
is the false personality? It is that bundle of desire,
aspiration, affection and hatred, in
short of action, manifested by a human being on this earth
during one incarnation and under the
form of one personality. Certainly
it is not all this, which as a fact for us, the deluded, material,
and materially thinking lot - is Mr
So and So, or Mrs somebody else -that
remains immortal. or is ever reborn.
(186)
All that bundle of Egotism, that apparent and evanescent "I", disappears after death, as the costume
of the part he played disappears from
the actor's body, after he leaves the
theatre and goes to bed. That actor
re-becomes at once the same "John Smith" or Gray, he was from his birth and is no
longer the Othello or Hamlet that he
had represented for a few hours. Nothing
remains now of that "bundle" to go to the next incarnation, except the seed for future Karma that Manas may have united to its immortal group, to
form with it - the disembodied Higher Self in "Devachan". As to the four lower principles, that which
becomes of them is found in most classics,
from which we mean to quote at length
for our defence. The doctrine of the perisprit, the "false personality", or the remains of the deceased under their
astral form - fading out to disappear
in time, is terribly distasteful to
the spiritualists, who insist upon
confusing the temporary with the immortal
EGO.
CW
X, 176 KARMA, TANHA and SKANDHAS, are the almighty
trinity in one, and the cause of
our re-birth. The illustration of
painting our own present likeness
at death, and that likeness becoming
the future personality is very poetical
and graphic, but we claim it as an
occult teaching. What H.R.H. means
to infer, as we understand it, is
this. At the solemn moment of death
no man can fail to see himself under
his true colours, and no self-deception
is of any use to him any longer.
Thence the following thing happens.
As at the instant of drowning man
sees marshalled past his mind's eye
the whole of his life, with all its
events, effects and causes, to the
minutest details, so at the moment
of death, he sees himself in all
his moral nakedness, unadorned by
either human flattery or self-adulation,
and, as he is; hence, as he, or rather, as his astral double combined
with his Kama principle - shall be. For the vices, defects and especially the
passions of the preceding life become,
through certain laws of affinity
and transference, the germs of the
future potentialities in the animal soul (Kama rupa), hence of its dependent, the astral double
(linga sarira) - at a subsequent birth. It is the personality alone which changes; the real reincarnating
principle, the EGO, remains always
the same; and it is its KARMA that
guides the idiosyncracies and prominent
moral traits of the old "personality" that was (and that the EGO knew not how
to control), to re-appear in the new man that will be. These traits and passions
pursue and fasten on the yet plastic
third and fourth principles of the
child, and - unless the EGO struggles
and conquers - they will develop
with tenfold intensity and lead the
adult man to his destruction. For
it is they who are the tools and
weapons of the Karmic LAW OF RETRIBUTION.
Thus, the Prince says very truly
that our good and bad actions "are the only tools with which we paint our
likenesses at death", for the new man is invariably the son and progeny of
the old man that was.
SD
I, 39 (b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of being.
Each is the effect of its antecedent
cause, and a cause, in its turn,
to its successor; the sum total of
the Nidanas being based on the four
truths, a doctrine especially characteristic
of the Hinayana System. They belong
to the theory of the stream of catenated
law which produces merit and demerit,
and finally brings Karma into full
sway. It is based upon the great
truth that reincarnation is to be
dreaded, as existence in this world
only entails upon man suffering,
misery and pain; death itself being
unable to deliver man from it, since
death is merely the door through
which he passes to another life on
earth after a little rest on its
threshold - Devachan.
SD
I, 40 As we rise in the scale of development we
perceive that during the states through
which we have passed we mistook shadows
for realities, and the upward progress
of the Ego is a series of progressive
awakenings, each advance bringing
with it the idea that now, at last,
we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the
absolute Consciousness, and blended
our own with it, shall we be free
from the delusions produced by Maya.
SD
I, 54 The idea that things can cease to exist
and still BE, is a fundamental one
in Eastern psychology. Under this
apparent contradiction in terms,
there rests a fact of Nature to realize
which in the mind, rather than to
argue about words, is the important
thing. A familiar instance of a similar
paradox is afforded by chemical combination.
The question whether Hydrogen and
Oxygen cease to exist, when they
combine to form water, is still a
moot one, some arguing that since
they are found again when the water
is decomposed they must be there
all the while; others contending
that as they actually turn into something
totally different they must cease
to exist as themselves for the time
being; but neither side is able to
form the faintest conception of the
real condition of a thing, which
has become something else and yet
has not ceased to be itself. Existence
as water may be said to be, for Oxygen
and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being
which is "more real being" than their existence as gases; and it may
faintly symbolize the condition of
the Universe when it goes to sleep,
or ceases to be, during the "Nights of Brahma" - to awaken or reappear again, when the
dawn of the new Manvantara recalls
it to what we call existence.
SD
I, 175 Now the evolution of the external form or body round the astral is produced by the terrestrial forces, just
as in the case of the lower kingdoms;
but the evolution of the internal
or real MAN is purely spiritual.
It is now no more a passage of the
impersonal Monad through many and
various forms of matter - endowed
at best with instinct and consciousness
on quite a different plane- as in
the case of external evolution, but
a journey of the "pilgrim-soul" through various states of not only matter but Self-consciousness and self-perception,
or of perception from apperception.
SD
I, 227 The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of the "transformations" that every defunct undergoes, while divesting
himself, one by one, of all those
principles - materialized for the
sake of clearness into ethereal entities
or bodies. We must, moreover, remind
those who try to prove that the ancient
Egyptians knew nothing of and did
not teach Reincarnation, that the "Soul" (the Ego or Self) of the defunct is said to be living in
Eternity: it is immortal, "coeval with, and disappearing with the Solar
boat", i.e., for the cycle of necessity. This "Soul" emerges from the Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life) and joins the living on Earth by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical
existences of the Ego.
The shadow,
the astral form, is annihilated, "devoured by the Uraeus", the Manas will be annihilated,; the two twins (the
4th and 5th principles) will be scattered;
but the Soul-bird, "the divine Swallow - and the Uraeus of Flame" (Manas and Atma-Buddhi) will live in the
eternity, for they are their mother's
husbands.
Like
alone produces like. The Earth gives
Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his
five inner principles, the psychic
Shadow, of which those gods are often
the animating principle. SPIRIT (Atman)
is one - and indiscrete. It is not
in the Tiaou.
For
what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the Book of the Dead contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night Sun, the inferior
hemisphere, or the infernal region
of the Egyptians, placed by them on
the concealed side of the moon. The human being, in their esotericism,
came out from the moon (a triple mystery
- astronomical, physiological, and
psychical at once); he crossed the
whole cycle of existence and then returned
to his birthplace before issuing from
it again.
SD
I, 237 (b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance
on the waters of an ocean above which
one and the same moon is shining,
so our evanescent personalities -
the illusive envelopes of the immortal
MONAD-EGO - twinkle and dance on
the waves of Maya. They last and
appear, as the thousands of sparks
produced by the moonbeams, only so
long as the Queen of the Night radiates
her lustre on the running waters
of life, the period of a Manvantara;
and then they disappear, the beams
- symbols of our eternal Spiritual
Egos - alone surviving, re-merged
in, and being, as they were before,
one with the Mother-Source.
SD
III, 587 SKANDHAS. Skandhas are the germs of life
on all the seven planes of Being,
and make up the totality of the subjective
and objective man. Every vibration
we have made is a Skandha. The Skandhas
are closely united to the pictures
in the Astral Light, which is the
medium of impressions, and the Skandhas,
or vibrations, connected with subjective
or objective Man, are the links which
attract the Reincarnating Ego, the
germs left behind when it went into
Devachan which have to be picked
up again and exhausted by a new personality.
The exoteric Skandhas have to do
with the physical atoms and vibrations,
or objective man; the Esoteric with
the internal and subjective man.
A
mental change, or a glimpse of spiritual
truth, may make a man suddenly change
to the truth even at his death, thus
creating good Skandhas for the next
life. The last acts or thoughts of
a man have an enormous effect upon
his future life, but he would still
have to suffer for his misdeeds, and
this is the basis of the idea of a
death-bed repentance. But the Karmic
effects of the past life must follow,
for the man in his next birth must
pick up the Skandhas or vibratory impressions
that he left in the Astral Light, since
nothing comes from nothing in Occultism,
and there must be a link between the
lives. New Skandhas are born from their
old parents.
It
is wrong to speak of Tanhas in the
plural; there is only one Tanha, the desire to live. This develops into a multitude or one might
say a congeries of ideas. The Skandhas
are Karmic and non-Karmic. Skandhas
may produce Elementals by unconscious
Kriyashakti. Every Elemental that is
thrown out by man must return to him
sooner or later, since it is his own
vibration. They thus become his Frankenstein.
Elementals are simply effects producing
effects. They are disembodied thoughts,
good and bad. They remain crystallized
in the Astral Light and are attracted
by affinity and galvanized back into
life again, when their originator returns
to earth-life. You can paralyze them
by re verse effects. Elementals are
caught like a disease and hence are
dangerous to ourselves and to others.
This is why it is dangerous to influence
others. The Elementals which live after
your death are those which you implant
in others: the rest remain latent till
you are reincarnated, when they come
to life in you. "Thus," H.P.B. said, "if you are badly taught by me or incited
thereby to do something wrong, you
would go on after my death and sin
through me, but I should have to bear
the Karma.
SD
III, 590 At reincarnation the Higher Ego shoots out
a Ray, the Lower Ego. Its energies
are upward and downward. The upward
tendencies become its Devachanic
experiences; the lower are Kamic.
The Higher Manas stands to Buddhi
as the Lower Manas to the Higher.
As
to the question of responsibility,
it may be understood by an example.
If you take the form of Jack the Ripper,
you must suffer for its misdeeds, for
the law will punish the murderer and
hold him responsible. You are the sacrificial
victim. In the same way the Higher
Ego is the Christos, the sacrificial
victim for the Lower Manas. The Ego
takes the responsibility of every body
it informs.
You
borrow some money to lend it to another;
the other runs away, but it is you
who are responsible. The mission of
the Higher Ego is to shoot out a Ray
to be a Soul in a child.
Thus
the Ego incarnates in a thousand bodies,
taking upon itself the sins and responsibilities
of each body. At every incarnation
a new Ray is emitted, and yet it is
the same Ray in essence, the same in
you and me and every one. The dross
of the incarnation disintegrates, the
good goes into Devachan.
The
Flame is eternal. From the Flame of
the Higher Ego, the Lower is lighted,
and from this a lower vehicle, and
so on.
And
yet the Lower Manas is such as it makes
itself. It is possible for it to act
differently in like conditions, for
it has reason and self-conscious knowledge
of right and wrong, and good and evil,
given to it. It is in fact endowed
with all the attributes of the Divine
Soul. In this the Ray is the Higher
Manas, the speck of responsibility
on earth.
The
part of the essence is the essence,
but while it is out of itself, so to
say, it can get soiled and polluted.
The Ray can be manifested on this earth
because it can send forth its Mayavi
Rupa. But the Higher cannot, so it
has to send forth a Ray. We may look
upon the Higher Ego as the Sun, and
the personal Manases as its Rays. If
we take away the surrounding air and
light the Ray may be said to return
to the Sun, so with the Lower Manas
and Lower Quaternary.
The
Higher Ego can only manifest through
its attributes.
ML
107:110 But let me give you a clearer idea of what
I mean by Karma in this case. In connection with this, let
me tell you before, that since you
seem so interested with the subject,
you can do nothing better than to
study the two doctrines - of Karma and Nirvana - as profoundly as you can.
Unless you are thoroughly well acquainted
with the two tenets - the double
key to the metaphysics of Abidharma
- you will always find yourself at
sea in trying to comprehend the rest.
We have several sorts of Karma and
Nirvana in their various applications
- to the Universe, the world, Devas,
Buddhas, Bodhisatwas, men and animals
- the second including its seven
kingdoms. Karma and Nirvana are but
two of the seven great MYSTERIES
of Buddhist metaphysics; and but
four of the seven are known to the
best orientalists, and that very
imperfectly.
If
you ask a learned Buddhist priest what
is Karma? - he will tell you that Karma
is what a Christian might call Providence
(in a certain sense only) and a Mahomedan
- Kismet, fate or destiny (again in one sense). That
it is that cardinal tenet which teaches
that, as soon as any conscious or sentient
being, whether man, deva, or animal
dies, a new being is produced and he
or it reappears in another birth, on
the same or another planet, under conditions
of his or its own antecedent making.
Or, in other words that Karma is the guiding power, and Trishna (in Pali Tanha) the thirst or desire to sentiently live
-the proximate force or energy, the
resultant of human (or animal) action,
which, out of the old Skandhas produce the new group that form the new
being and control the nature of the
birth itself. Or to make it still clearer,
the new being, is rewarded and punished for the
meritorious acts and misdeeds of the old one; Karma representing an Entry Book, in
which all the acts of man, good, bad,
or indifferent, are carefully recorded
to his debit and credit - by himself,
so to say, or rather by these very
actions of his. There, where Christian
poetical fiction created, and sees
a "Recording" Guardian Angel, stern and realistic Buddhist
logic, perceiving the necessity that
every cause should have its effect
- shows its real presence. The opponents
of Buddhism have laid great stress
upon the alleged injustice that the
doer should escape and an innocent
victim be made to suffer, - since the
doer and the sufferer are different
beings. The fact is, that while in
one sense they may be so considered,
yet in another they are identical. The "old being" is the sole parent - father and mother at
once - of the "new being". It is the former who is the creator and
fashioner, of the latter, in reality;
and far more so in plain truth, than
any father in flesh. And once that
you have well mastered the meaning
of Skandhas you will see what I mean.
(108:111)
It is the group of Skandhas, that form
and constitute the physical and mental
individuality we call man (or any being).
This group consists (in the exoteric
teaching) of five Skandhas, namely: Rupa - the material properties or attributes; Vedana - sensations; Sanna - abstract ideas; Sankhara - tendencies both physical and mental; and Vinnana - mental powers, and amplification of the
fourth - meaning the mental, physical
and moral predispositions. We add to
them two more, the nature and names
of which you may learn hereafter. Suffice
for the present to let you know that
they are connected with, and productive
of Sakkayaditthi, the "heresy or delusion of individuality" and of Attavada "the doctrine of Self", both of which (in the case of the fifth
principle the soul) lead to the maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of
vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers
and intercession.
Now,
returning to the question of identity
between the old and the new "Ego", I may remind you once more, that even your
Science has accepted the old, very
old fact distinctly taught by our Lord,
viz. - that a man of any given age,
while sentiently the same, is yet physically
not the same as he was a few years
earlier (we say seven years and are prepared to maintain and prove
it):buddhistically speaking his Skandhas have changed. At the same time they are
ever and ceaselessly at work in preparing
the abstract mould, the "privation" of the future new being. Well then, if it is just that a man
of 40 should enjoy or suffer for the
actions of the man of 20, so it is
equally just that the being of the
new birth, who is essentially identical
with the previous being - since he
is its outcome and creation - should
feel the consequences of that begetting
Self or personality. Your Western law
which punishes the innocent son of
a guilty father by depriving him of
his parent, rights and property; your
civilized Society which brands with
infamy the guiltless daughter of an
immoral, criminal mother; your Christian
Church and Scriptures which teach that
the "Lord God visits the sins of the fathers upon
the children unto the third and fourth
generation", are not all these far more unjust and cruel
than anything done by Karma? Instead
of punishing the innocent together
with the culprit, the Karma avenges and rewards the former, which neither of your three western potentates
above mentioned ever thought of doing.
But perhaps, to our physiological remark
the objectors may reply that it is
only the body that changes, there is
only a molecular transformation, which
has nothing to do with the mental evolution;
and that the Skandhas represent not only a material but also a
set of mental and moral qualities.
But is there, I ask, either a sensation,
an abstract idea, a tendency of mind,
or a mental power, that one could call
an absolutely non-molecular phenomenon?
Can even a sensation or the most abstractive
thoughts which is something, come out of nothing, or be nothing?
ML
197:200 The social status of a being is, of course,
a result of Karma; the law being
that "like attracts like". The renascent being is drawn into the gestative
current with which the preponderating
attractions coming over from the
last birth make him assimilate. Thus
one who died a ryot may be reborn
a king, and the dead sovereign may
next see the light in a coolie's
tent. This law of attraction asserts
itself in a thousand "accidents of birth" - than which there could be no more flagrant
misnomer. When you realize, at least,
the following - that the skandhas are the elements of limited existence then
will you have realized also one of
the conditions of Devachan which
has now such a profoundly unsatisfactory
outlook for you. Nor are your inferences
(as regards the well-being and enjoyment
of the upper classes being due to
a better Karma) quite correct in
their general application. They have
a eudaemonistic ring about them which
is hardly reconcilable with Karmic
Law, since, those "well-being and enjoyment" are oftener the causes of a new and overloaded
Karma than the production or effects
of the latter. Even as a "broad rule" poverty and humble condition in life are
less a cause of sorrow than wealth
and high birth, but of that -later
on.
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