Theosophy - The Devachanic Plane or The Heaven World: its characteristics
and inhabitants by C.W.Leadbeater
Theosophical
manual. No. 6
THE
DEVACHANIC PLANE [Mental
plane] ΔΔ
OR
THE
HEAVEN WORLD
ITS
CHARACTERISTICS AND INHABITANTS
by C. W. LEADBEATER
SECOND
EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED
THE
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
- LONDON AND BENARES
1902
PREFACE
Few
words are needed in sending this little book out into the world.
It is the sixth of a series of Manuals designed to
meet the public demand
for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained
that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and
too
expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope, that the present
series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy
is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those
who
in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings,
there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply
into its philosophy, its science and its religion, facing its abstruser
problems with the students zeal and -the neophyte's ardour. But
these
Manuals are not written only for the eager student, whom no initial
difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women
of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great
truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written
by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race,
they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.
AUTHOR'S
NOTE
Since
further enquiry has shown that the word " Devachan" is etymologically
inaccurate and misleading, the author would prefer to omit it altogether,
and to issue this manual under the simpler and more descriptive title
of "The Mental Plane." The publishers inform him, however, that this
alteration of title would cause difficulties in the matter of copyright,
and produce confusion in various ways, so he defers to their wishes.
CONTENTS
|
Page |
Introduction. |
|
The place
of the mental plane in evolution
— Difficulties of expression |
1 |
General Characteristics |
|
— A beautiful
description
— The bliss of the Heaven-World
— Its intense vitality
—A new method of cognition
—Surroundings
—The sea of light
—The colour-language of the angels
—The great waves
—The lower and the higher heaven-worlds
—The action of thought
—The formation of artificial elementals
—Thought-forms
—The sub-planes
—The records of the past |
8 |
Inhabitants |
I. Human |
— The embodied
— Adepts and their pupils— |
|
Those in sleep or
trance . |
30 |
The disembodied
—Their consciousness
—The qualities necessary for the heaven-life
—How a man first gains it |
35 |
The lower heavens,
with examples from each |
42 |
The reality of the
heaven-life |
68 |
The renunciation of
heaven |
72 |
The higher heavens
|
76 |
II. Non-Human |
—The elemental
essence
—What it is
— The veiling of the Spirit
—The elemental kingdoms
— How the essence evolves |
87 |
The animal kingdom
|
95 |
The Devas
—Their classes |
96 |
III. Artificial |
Artificial |
100 |
Conclusion |
|
—The still higher
planes |
101 |
INTRODUCTION
[page 1]
In the previous manual an attempt was made to describe to some
extent the astral plane — the lower part of the vast unseen world in
the midst of which we live and move unheeding. In this little book
must be undertaken the still harder task of trying to give some idea
of the stage next above that — the mental plane or the heaven-world,
often spoken of in our Theosophical literature as that of Devachan
or Sukhâvatí.
Although,
in calling this plane the heaven-world, we distinctly intend to imply
that it contains the reality which underlies all the best and most
spiritual ideas of heaven which have been propounded in various
religions,
yet it must by no means be considered from that point of view only.
It is a realm of nature. which is of exceeding importance to us — a vast and splendid world of vivid life in which we are living now
as well as in the periods intervening between physical incarnations.
It is only our lack of development, only the limitation imposed
upon
us by this robe of flesh, that prevents us from fully realizing that
all the glory of the highest heaven is about us here and now
[page 2], and that influences flowing from that world are
ever playing upon us if we will only understand and receive them.
Impossible as this may seem to the man of the world, it is the plainest
of realities to the occultist; and to those who have not yet grasped
this fundamental truth we can but repeat the advice given by the
Buddhist
teacher:— " Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your
eyes and see. The light is all about you, if you would only cast
the bandage from your eyes and look. It is so wonderful, so beautiful,
so far beyond what any man has dreamt of or prayed for, and it is
for ever and for ever." (The Soul of a People, page 163.)
It
is absolutely necessary for the student of Theosophy to realize this
great truth, that there exist in nature various planes or divisions,
each with its own matter of an appropriate degree of density, which
in each case interpenetrates the matter of the plane next below
it.
It should also be clearly understood that the use of the words "higher"
and " lower " with reference to these planes does not refer in any
way to their position (since they all occupy the same space), but
only to the degree of rarity of the matter of which they are respectively
composed, or (in other words) the extent to which their matter is
subdivided - for all matter of which we know anything is essentially
the same, and differs only in the extent of its subdivision and the
rapidity of its vibration.
It follows, therefore, that to speak of a man as passing from one
of these planes to another does not in the least signify any kind
of movement in space, but simply a change of consciousness. For every
man has within himself matter belonging to every one of these planes,
a vehicle corresponding to each, in which he can function upon it
when he learns how this may be done. So that to pass, from one plane
to another is to change the focus of the consciousness from one of
the vehicles to another, to use for the time the [page
3] astral or, the mental body instead of the physical.
For naturally each of these bodies responds only to the vibrations
of its own plane; and so while the man's consciousness is focused
in his astral body, he will perceive the astral world only, just
as
while our consciousness is using only the physical senses we perceive
nothing but this physical-world —though both these worlds (and
many others) are in existence and full activity all round us all
the while. Indeed, all these planes together constitute in reality
one
mighty living whole, though as yet our feeble powers are capable
of observing only a very small part of this at a time.
When considering this question of locality and interpenetration we
must be on our guard against possible misconceptions. It should be
understood that none of the three lower planes of the solar system
is co-extensive with it except as regards a particular condition of
the highest or atomic subdivision of each. Each physical globe has
its physical plane (including its atmosphere), its astral plane, and
its mental plane, all interpenetrating one another, and therefore
occupying the same position in space, but all quite apart from and
not communicating with the corresponding planes of any other globe.
It is only when we rise to the lofty levels of the buddhic plane that
we find a condition common to, at any rate, all the planets of our
chain.
Notwithstanding
this, there is, as stated above, a condition of the atomic matter
of each of these planes which is cosmic in its extent; so that the
seven atomic sub-planes of our system, taken apart from the rest,
may be said to constitute one cosmic plane - the lowest, sometimes
called the cosmic-prakritic. The interplanetary ether, for example,
which appears to extend through the whole of space - indeed must do
so, at least to the farthest visible star, otherwise our physical
eyes could not perceive that star - is composed of physical ultimate
atoms in their normal and uncompressed [page
4] condition. But all the lower and more complex forms
of ether exist only (so far as is at present known) in connection
with the various heavenly bodies, aggregated round them just as their
atmosphere is, though probably extending considerably further from
their surface.
Precisely
the same is true of the astral and mental planes. The astral plane
of our own earth interpenetrates it and its atmosphere, but also extends
for some distance beyond the atmosphere. It may be remembered that
this plane was called by the Greeks the sub-lunar world. The mental
plane in its turn interpenetrates the astral, but also extends further
into space than does the latter.
Only
the atomic matter of each of these planes, and even that only in an
entirely free condition, is co-extensive with the interplanetary ether,
and consequently a person can no more pass from planet to planet even
of our own chain in his astral body or his mind-body, than he can
in his physical body. In the causal body, when very highly developed,
this achievement is possible, though even then by no means with the
ease and rapidity with which it can be done upon the buddhic plane
by those who have succeeded in raising their consciousness to that
level.
A
clear comprehension of these facts will prevent the confusion that
has sometimes been made by students between the mental plane of our
earth and those other globes of our chain which exist on the mental
plane. It must be understood that the seven globes of our chain are
real globes, occupying definite and separate positions in space, notwithstanding
the fact that some of them are not up in the physical plane. Globes
A, B, F, and G are separate from us and from one another just in the
same way as are Mars and the earth; the only difference is that whereas
the latter have physical, astral and mental planes of their own, globes
B and F have nothing below the astral plane, and A [page
5] and G nothing below the mental. The astral plane dealt
with in Manual V and the mental plane which we are about to consider
are those of this earth only, and have nothing to do with these other
planets at all.
The
mental plane upon which the heaven-life takes place, is the third
of the five great planes with which humanity is at present concerned,
having below it the astral and the physical, and above it the buddhic
and the nirvânic. It is the plane upon which man, unless at
an exceedingly early stage of his progress, spends by far the greater
part of his time during the process of evolution; for, except in
the
case of the entirely undeveloped, the proportion of the physical
life to the celestial is rarely much greater than one in twenty,
and in
the case of fairly good people it would sometimes fall as low as
one in thirty. It is, in fact, the true and permanent home of the
reincarnating
ego or soul of man, each descent into incarnation being merely a
short though important episode in his career. It is therefore well
worth
our while to devote to its study such time and care as may be necessary
to acquire as thorough a comprehension of it as is possible for
us
while encased in the physical body.
Unfortunately
there are practically insuperable difficulties in the way of any
attempt to put the facts of this third plane of nature into language — and not unnaturally, for we often find words insufficient to express
our ideas and feelings even on this lowest plane. Readers of The
Astral Plane will remember what was there stated as to the impossibility
of conveying any adequate conception of the marvels of that region
to those whose experience had not as yet transcended the physical
world; one can but say that every observation there made to that effect
applies with tenfold force to the effort which is before us in this
sequel to that treatise. Not only is the matter which we must endeavour
to describe much further removed than is astral [page
6] matter from that to which we are accustomed,
but the consciousness of that plane is so immensely wider than anything
we can imagine down here, and its very conditions so entirely different,
that when called upon to translate it all into mere ordinary words
the explorer feels himself utterly at a loss, and can only trust that
the intuition of his readers will supplement the inevitable imperfections
of his description.
To
take one only out of many possible examples of our difficulties,
it would seem as though on this mental plane space and time were
non-existent,
for events which down here take place in succession and at widely-separated
places, appear there to be occurring simultaneously and at the
same
point. That at least is the effect produced on the consciousness
of the ego, though there are circumstances which favour the supposition
that absolute simultaneity is the attribute of a still higher plane,
and that the sensation of it in the heaven-world is simply the
result
of a succession so rapid that the infinitesimally minute spaces of
time are indistinguishable, just as in the well-known optical experiment
of whirling round a stick the end of which is red-hot, the eye
receives
the impression of a continuous ring of fire if the stick be whirled
more than ten times a second; not because a continuous ring really
exists, but because the average human eye is incapable of distinguishing
as separate any similar impressions which follow one another at intervals
of less than the tenth part of a second.
However
that may be, the reader will readily comprehend that in the endeavour
to describe a condition of existence so totally unlike that of physical
life as is the one which we have to consider, it will be impossible
to avoid saying many things that will be partly unintelligible and
may even seem wholly incredible to those who have not personally experienced
that higher life. That this should be so is, as I [page
7] have said, inevitable, so readers who find themselves
unable to accept the report of our investigators must simply wait
for a more satisfactory account of the heaven-world until they are
able to examine it for themselves: I can only repeat the assurance
previously given in The Astral Plane that all reasonable precautions
have been taken to ensure accuracy. In this case as in that, we may
say that " no fact, old or new, has been admitted to this treatise
unless it has been confirmed by the testimony of at least two independent
trained investigators among ourselves, and has also been passed as
correct by older students whose knowledge on these points is necessarily
much greater than ours. It is hoped, therefore, that this account,
though it cannot be considered as complete, may yet be found reliable
as far as it goes."
The
general arrangement of the previous manual will as far as possible
be followed in this one also, so that those who wish to do so will
be able to compare the two planes stage by stage. The heading " Scenery
" would, however, be inappropriate to the mental plane, as will be
seen later; we will therefore substitute for it the title which follows.
GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS [page
8]
Perhaps
the least unsatisfactory method of approaching this exceedingly difficult
subject will be to plunge in medias res and make the attempt
(foredoomed to failure though it be) to depict what a pupil or trained
student sees when first the heaven-world opens before him. I use
the
word pupil advisedly, for unless a man stand in that relation to
one of the Masters of Wisdom, there is but little likelihood of his
being
able to pass in full consciousness into that glorious land off bliss,
and return to earth with clear remembrance of that which he has seen
there. Thence no accommodating "spirit" ever comes to utter cheap
platitudes through the mouth of the professional medium; thither no
ordinary clairvoyant ever rises, though sometimes the best and purest
have entered it when in deepest trance they slipped from the control
of their mesmerizers — yet even then they have rarely brought
back more than a faint recollection of an intense but indescribable
bliss, generally deeply coloured by their personal religious convictions.
When
once the departed soul, withdrawing into himself after what we call
death, has reached that plane, neither the yearning thoughts of his
sorrowing friends nor the allurements of the spiritualistic circle
can ever draw him back into communion with the physical earth until
all the spiritual forces which he has set in motion in his recent
life have worked themselves out to the full, and he once more stands
ready to take upon himself new robes of flesh. Nor, even if he could
so return, would his account of his experiences give any true idea
of the plane, for, as will presently [page
9] be seen, it is only those who can enter it in full waking
consciousness who are able to move about freely and drink in all the
wondrous glory and beauty which the heaven-world has to show. But
all this will be more fully explained later, when we come to deal
with the inhabitants of this celestial realm.
A
beautiful description.
In
an early letter from an eminent occultist the following beautiful
passage was given as a quotation from memory. I have
never been able
to discover whence it was taken, though what seems to be another
version of it, considerably expanded, appears in Beal's Catena of Buddhist
Scriptures, page 378.
"Our
Lord buddha says: Many thousand myriads of systems of worlds beyond
this is a region of bliss called Sukh芒vatî. This region is encircled
within seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven
rows of waving trees. This holy abode of the Arhats is governed by
the Tath芒gatas and is possessed by the Bodhisattvas. It has seven
precious lakes, in the midst of which flow crystalline waters having
seven and yet one distinctive properties and qualities. This, O S芒riputra,
is the Devachan. Its divine udambara flower casts a root in the shadow
of every earth, and blossoms for all those who reach it. Those born
in this blessed region - who have crossed the golden bridge and reached
the seven golden mountains - they are truly felicitous; there is
no
more grief or sorrow in that cycle for them."
Veiled
though they be under the gorgeous imagery of the Orient, we may easily
trace in this passage some of the leading characteristics which
have
appeared most prominently in the accounts of our own modern investigators.
The "seven golden mountains" can be but the seven subdivisions of
the mental plane, separated from [page
10] one another by barriers impalpable, yet real and effective
there as "seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven
rows of waving trees" might be here: the seven kinds of crystalline
water, having each its distinctive properties and qualities, represent
the different powers and conditions of mind belonging to them respectively,
while the one quality which they all have in common is that of ensuring
to those residing upon them the utmost intensity of bliss which they
are capable of experiencing. Its flower indeed "casts a root in the
shadow of every earth," for from every world man enters the corresponding
heaven, and happiness such as no tongue may tell is the blossom which
burgeons forth for all who so live as to fit themselves to attain
it. For they have " crossed the golden bridge" over the stream which
divides this realm from the world of desire; for them the struggle
between the higher and the lower is over, and for them, therefore,
is "no more grief or sorrow in that cycle," until once more the man
puts himself forth into, incarnation, and the celestial world is
again left for a time behind.
The
Bliss of the Heaven-World.
This
intensity of bliss is the first great idea which must form a background
to all our conceptions of the heaven-life. It is not only
that we are dealing with a world in which, by its very constitution,
evil and sorrow are impossible; it is not only a world in which every
creature is happy; the facts of the case go far beyond all that.
It
is a world in which every being must, from the very fact of his presence
there, be enjoying the highest spiritual bliss of which he is capable — a world whose power of response to his aspirations is limited
only by his capacity to aspire.[page 11]
Here
for the first time we begin to grasp something of the true nature
of the great Source of Life; here for the first time we catch a far-away
glimpse of what the Logos must be, and of what He means us to be.
And when the stupendous reality of it all bursts upon our astonished
vision, we cannot but feel that, with this knowledge of the truth,
life can never again look to us as it did before. We cannot but marvel
at the hopeless inadequacy of all the worldly man's ideas of happiness;
indeed, we cannot avoid seeing that most of them are absurdly inverted
and impossible of realization, and that for the most part he has actually
turned his back upon the very goal which he is seeking. But here at
last is truth and beauty, far transcending all that every poet dreamed;
and in the light of its surpassing glory all other joy seems dim and
faint, unreal and unsatisfying.
Some
detail of all this we must endeavour to make clear later on; the point
to be emphasized for the moment is that this radiant sense, not only
of the welcome absence of all evil and discord, but of the insistent,
overwhelming presence of universal joy, is the first and most striking
sensation experienced by him who enters upon the heaven-world. And
it never leaves him so long as he remains there; whatever work he
may be doing, whatever still higher possibilities of spiritual exaltation
may arise before him as he learns more of the capabilities of this
new world in which he finds himself, the strange indescribable feeling
of inexpressible delight in mere existence in such at realm
underlies all else — this enjoyment of the abounding joy of
others is ever present with him. Nothing on earth is like it, nothing
can image it; if one could suppose the bounding life of childhood
carried up into our spiritual experience and then intensified many
thousand-fold, perhaps some faint shadow of an idea of it might be
suggested; [page 12] yet even such a simile falls miserably short of that which lies beyond
all words — the tremendous spiritual vitality of this celestial
world.
One
way in which this intense vitality manifests itself is the extreme
rapidity of vibration of all particles and atoms of this mental matter.
As a theoretical proposition we are all aware that even here on the
physical plane no particle of matter, though forming part of the densest
of solid bodies, is ever for a moment at rest; nevertheless when by
the opening of astral vision this becomes for us no longer a mere
theory of the scientists, but an actual and ever-present fact, we
realize the universality of life in a manner and to an extent that
was quite impossible before; our mental horizon widens out, and we
begin even already to have glimpses of possibilities in nature which
to those who cannot yet see must appear the wildest of dreams.
If
this be the effect of acquiring the mere astral vision, and applying
it to dense physical matter, try to imagine the result produced on
the mind of the observer when, having left this physical plane behind
and thoroughly studied the far more vivid life and infinitely more
rapid vibrations of the astral, he finds a new and transcendent sense
opening within him, which unfolds to his enraptured gaze yet another
and a higher world, whose vibrations are as much quicker than those
of our physical plane as vibrations of light are than those of sound
- a world where the omnipresent life which pulsates ceaselessly around
and within him is of a different order altogether, is as it were raised
to an enormously higher power.
A
New Method of Cognition.
The
very sense itself, by which he is enabled to cognize all this, is
not the least of the marvels of this celestial [page
13] world; no longer does he hear and see and feel by separate
and limited organs, as he does down here, nor has he even the immensely
extended capacity of sight and hearing which he possessed on the
astral
plane; instead of these he feels within him a strange new power which
is not any of them, and yet includes them all and much more —
a power which enables him the moment any person or thing comes before
him not only to see it and feel it and hear it, but to know all about
it instantly inside and out — its causes, its effects, and its
possibilities, so far at least as that plane and all below it are
concerned. He finds that for him to think is to realize; there is
never any doubt, hesitation, or delay about this direct action of
the higher sense. If he thinks of a place, he is there; if of a friend,
that friend is before him. No longer can misunderstandings arise,
no longer can he be deceived or misled by any outward appearances,
for every thought and feeling of his friend lies open as a book before
him on that plane.
And if he is fortunate enough to have among his friends another whose
higher sense is opened, their intercourse is perfect beyond all earthly
conception. For them distance and separation do not exist; their feelings
are no longer hidden or at best but half expressed by clumsy words;
question and answer are unnecessary, for the thought-pictures are
read as they are formed, and the interchange of ideas is rapid as
is their flashing into existence in the mind.
All
knowledge is theirs for the searching — all, that is, which
does not transcend even this lofty plane; the past of the world is
as open to them as the present; the indelible records of the memory
of nature are ever at their disposal, and history, whether ancient
or modern, unfolds itself before their eyes at their will. No longer
are they at the mercy of the historian, who may be ill-informed,
and
must be more or less partial; they can [page14]
study for themselves any incident in which they are interested,
with the absolute certainty of seeing " the truth", the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth." If they are able to stand upon
the higher levels of the plane, the long line of their past lives
unrolls itself before them like a scroll; they see the kârmic
causes which have made them what they are; they see what karma still
lies in front to be worked out before " the long sad count is closed," and thus they realize with unerring certainty their exact place in
evolution.
If
it be asked whether they can see the future clearly as the past, the
answer must be in the negative, for that faculty belongs to a still
higher plane, and though in this mental plane prevision is to a great
extent possible to them, yet it is not perfect, because wherever in
the web of destiny the hand of the developed man comes in, his powerful
will may introduce new threads, and change the pattern of the life
to come. The course of the ordinary undeveloped man, who has practically
no will of his own worth speaking of, may often be foreseen clearly
enough, but when the ego boldly takes his future into his own hands,
exact prevision becomes impossible.
SURROUNDINGS
The
first impressions, then, of the pupil who enters this mental plane
in full consciousness will probably be those of intense bliss, indescribable
vitality, enormously increased power, and the perfect confidence which
flows from these; and when he makes use of his new sense to examine
his surroundings, what does he see ? He finds himself in the midst
of what seems to him a whole universe of ever-changing light and colour
and sound, such as it has never entered into his loftiest dreams to
imagine. Verily it is true that down here " eye hath not seen, nor
ear hath heard, neither [page 15]
hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive" the
glories of the heaven-world : and the man who has once experienced
them in full consciousness will regard the world with widely different
eyes for ever after. Yet this experience is so utterly unlike anything
we know on the physical plane that in trying to put it into words
one is troubled by a curious sense of helplessness — of absolute
incapacity, not only to do it justice, for of that one resigns
all hope from the very outset, but even to give any idea at all of
it to those who have not themselves seen it.
Let
a man imagine himself, with the feelings of intense bliss and enormously
increased power already described, floating in a sea of living
light,
surrounded by every conceivable variety of loveliness in colour and
form — the whole changing with every wave of thought that he
sends out from his mind, and being indeed, as he presently discovers,
only the expression of his thought in the matter of the plane and
in its elemental essence. For that matter is of the very same order
as that of which the mind-body is itself composed, and therefore
when
that vibration of the particles of the mind-body which we call a
thought occurs, it immediately extends itself to this surrounding
mental matter,
and sets up corresponding vibrations in it, while in the elemental
essence it images itself with absolute exactitude. Concrete thought
naturally takes .the shape of its objects, while abstract ideas
usually
represent themselves by all kinds of perfect and most beautiful,
geometrical forms; though in this connection it should be remembered
that many
thoughts which are little more than the merest abstractions to us
down here become concrete facts on this loftier plane.
It
will thus be seen that in this higher world anyone who wishes to devote
himself for a time to quiet thought, and to abstract himself from
his surroundings, may actually live in a world of his own without
possibility of interruption, and [page
16] with the
additional advantage of seeing all his ideas (and their consequences,
fully worked out) passing in a sort of panorama before his eyes. If,
however, he wishes instead to observe the plane upon which he finds
himself, it will be necessary for him very carefully to suspend his
thought for the time, so that its creations may not influence the
readily impressible matter around him, and thus alter the entire conditions
so far as he is concerned.
This
holding of the mind in suspense must not be confounded with the blankness
of mind towards the attainment of which so many of the Hatha Yoga
practices are directed: in the latter case the mind is dulled down
into absolute passivity in order that it may not by any thought
of
its own offer resistance to the entry of any external influence that
may happen to approach it — a condition closely approximating
to mediumship; while in the former the mind is as keenly alert and
positive as it can be, holding its thought in suspense for the
moment
merely to prevent the intrusion of a personal equation into the observation
which it wishes to make.
When
the visitor to the mental plane succeeds in putting himself in this
position he finds that although he is no longer himself a centre
of
radiation of all that marvellous wealth of light and colour, form
and sound, which I have so vainly endeavoured to picture, it has
not
therefore ceased to exist; on the contrary, its harmonies and its
coruscations are but grander and fuller than ever. Casting about
for
an explanation of this phenomenon, he begins to realize that all
this magnificence is not a mere idle or fortuitous display — a kind
of devachanic aurora borealis; he finds that it all has a meaning — a meaning which he himself can understand ; and presently
he grasps the fact that what he is watching with such ecstasy of delight
is simply the glorious colour-language of the Devas — the expression
of the thought or the [page
17] conversation
of beings far higher than himself in the scale of evolution. By experiment
and practice he discovers that he also can use this new and beautiful
mode of expression, and by this very discovery he enters into possession
of another great tract of his heritage in this celestial realm —the
power to hold converse with, and to learn from, its loftier non-human
inhabitants, with whom we shall deal more fully when we come to treat
of that part of our subject.
By
this time it will have become apparent why it was impossible to devote
a section of this paper to the scenery of the mental plane, as was
done in the case of the astral; for in point of fact the mental world
has no scenery except such as each individual chooses to make
for himself by his thought — unless indeed we take into account
the fact that the vast numbers of entities who are continually passing
before him are themselves objects in many cases of the most transcendent
beauty. Yet so difficult is it to express in words the conditions
of this higher life that it would be a still better statement of the
facts to say that all possible scenery exists there — that there
is nothing conceivable of loveliness in earth or sky or sea which
is not there with a fulness and intensity beyond all power of imagination;
but that out of all this splendour-of living reality each man sees
only that which he has within himself the power to see — that
to which his development during the earth-life and the astral-life
enables him to respond.
The
Great Waves
If
the visitor wishes to carry his analysis of the plane still further,
and discover what it would be when entirely undisturbed by the thought
or conversation of any of its inhabitants, he can do so by forming
round himself a huge shell through which none of these influences
can penetrate, and [page 18]
then (of course holding his own mind perfectly still as before) examining
the conditions which exist inside his shell.
If
he performs this experiment with sufficient care, he will find that
the sea of light has become — not still, for its particles continue
their intense and rapid vibrations, but — as it were homogeneous;
that those wonderful coruscations of colour and constant changes
of form are no longer taking place, but that he is now able to perceive
another and entirely different series of regular pulsations which
the other more artificial phenomena had previously obscured. These
are evidently universal, and no shell which human power can make
will
check them or turn them aside. They cause no change of colour, no
assumption of form, but flow with resistless regularity through all
the matter of the plane, outwards and in again, like the exhalations
and inhalations of some great breath beyond our ken.
There
are several sets of these, clearly distinguishable from one another
by volume, by period of vibration, and by the tone of the harmony
which they bring, and grander than them all sweeps one great wave
which seems the very heartbeat of the system — a wave which,
welling up from unknown centres on far higher planes, pours out its
life through all our world, and then draws back in its tremendous
tide to That from which it came. In one long undulating curve it comes,
and the sound of it is like the murmur of the sea ; and yet in it
and through it all the while there echoes a mighty ringing chant of
triumph — the very music of the spheres. The man who once has
heard that glorious song of nature never quite loses it again; even
here on this dreary physical plane of illusion he hears it always
as a kind of undertone, keeping ever before his mind the strength
and light and splendour of the real life above.
If
the visitor be pure in heart and mind, and has reached a certain degree
of spiritual development, it is possible for [page
19] him to identify his consciousness with the sweep of
that wondrous wave — to merge his spirit in it, as it were,
and let it bear him upward to its source. It is possible, I say; but
it is not wise — unless, indeed, his Master stands beside him
to draw him back at the right moment from its mighty embrace; for
otherwise its irresistible force will carry him away onward and upward
into still higher planes, whose far greater glories his ego is as
yet unable to sustain; he will lose consciousness, and with no certainty
as to when and where and how he will regain it. It is true that the
ultimate object of man's evolution is the attainment of unity, but
he must reach that final goal in full and perfect consciousness as
a victorious king entering triumphantly upon his heritage, not drift
into absorption in a state of blank unconsciousness but little removed
from annihilation.
The
Lower and the Higher Heaven-Worlds.
All
that we have hitherto attempted to indicate in this description may
be taken as applying to the lowest subdivision of the mental plane;
for this realm of nature, exactly like the astral, or the physical,
has its seven subdivisions. Of these the four lower are called
in
the books the r没pa or form planes, and these constitute the Lower
Heaven-World, in which the average man spends his long life of
bliss
between one incarnation and the next. The other three are spoken
of as arûpa or formless, and they constitute the Higher Heaven-World,
where functions the reincarnating ego — the true home of the
soul of man. These Sanskrit names have been given because on the r没pa
planes every thought takes to itself a certain definite form, while
on the arûpa subdivisions it expresses itself in an entirely
different manner, as will presently be explained. The distinction
between these two great divisions of the plane — [page
20] the r没pa and the arûpa —is very marked;
indeed, it even extends so far as to necessitate the use of different
vehicles of consciousness.
The
vehicle appropriate to the lower heaven-world is the mind-body, while
that of the higher heaven-world is the causal body — the vehicle
of the reincarnating ego, in which he passes from life to life throughout
the whole evolutionary period. Another enormous distinction is that
on those four lower subdivisions some degree of illusion is still
possible — not indeed for the entity who stands upon them in
full consciousness during life, but for the undeveloped person who
passes there after the change which men call death. The higher thoughts
and aspirations which he has poured forth during earth-life then cluster
round him, and make a sort of shell about him — a kind of subjective
world of his own ; and in that he lives his heaven-life, perceiving
but very faintly or not at all the real glories of the plane which
lie outside, and, indeed, usually supposing that what he sees is
all
there is to see.
Yet
we should be wrong in thinking of that thought-cloud as a limitation.
Its function is to enable the man to respond to certain vibrations — not to shut him off from the others. The truth is, that these
thoughts which surround the man are the powers by which he draws upon
the wealth of the heaven-world. This mental plane itself is a reflection
of the Divine Mind — a storehouse of infinite extent from which
the person enjoying heaven is able to draw just according to the
power of his own thoughts and aspirations generated during the physical
and astral life.
But
in the higher heaven-world this limitation no longer exists ; it is
true that even there many egos are only slightly and dreamily conscious
of their surroundings, but in so far as they see, they see truly,
for thought no longer assumes the same limited forms which it took
upon itself lower down. [page21]
The
Action of Thought
The
exact condition of mind of the human inhabitants of these various
sub-planes will naturally be much more fully dealt with under its
own appropriate heading; but a comprehension of the manner in which
thought acts in the lower and higher levels respectively, is so necessary
to an accurate understanding of these great divisions that it will
perhaps be worth while to recount in detail some of the experiments
made by our explorers in the endeavour to throw light upon this subject.
At
an early period of the investigation it became evident that on the
mental as on the astral plane there was present an elemental essence
quite distinct from the mere matter of the plane, and that it was,
if possible, even more instantaneously sensitive to the action of
thought here than it had been in that lower world. But here in the
heaven-world all was thought-substance, and therefore not only
the elemental essence, but the very matter of the plane was directly
affected by the action of the mind; and hence it became necessary
to make an attempt to discriminate between these two effects.
After
various less conclusive experiments a method was adopted which gave
a fairly clear idea of the different results produced, one investigator
remaining on the lowest subdivision to send out the thought-forms,
while others rose to the next higher level, so as to be able to observe
what took place from above, and thus avoid many possibilities of confusion.
Under these circumstances the experiment was tried of sending an affectionate
and helpful thought to an absent friend in a far-distant country.
The
result was very remarkable: a sort of vibrating shell, formed in the
matter of the plane, issued in all directions [page
22] round the operator, corresponding exactly to the circle
which spreads out in still water from the spot where a stone has been
thrown into it, except that this was a sphere of vibration extending
itself in many dimensions instead of merely over a flat surface. These
vibrations, like those on the physical plane, though very much more
gradually, lost in intensity as they passed further away from their
source, till at last at an enormous distance they seemed to be exhausted,
or at least became so faint as to be imperceptible.
Thus
every one on the mental plane is a centre of radiant thought, and
yet all the rays thrown out cross in all directions without interfering
with one another in the slightest degree, just as rays of light do
down here. This expanding sphere of vibrations was many coloured and
opalescent, but its colours also grew gradually fainter and fainter
as it spread away.
The
effect on the elemental essence of the plane was, however, entirely
different. In this the thought immediately called into existence
a
distinct form resembling the human, of one colour only, though exhibiting
many shades of that colour. This form flashed instantaneously across
the ocean to the friend to whom the good wish had been directed,
and
there took to itself elemental essence of the astral plane, and thus
became an ordinary artificial elemental of that plane, waiting,
as
explained in Manual No. V, for an opportunity to pour out upon him
its store of helpful influence. In taking on that astral form the
mental elemental lost much of its brilliancy, though its glowing
rose-colour
was still plainly visible inside the shell of lower matter which
it had assumed, showing that just as the original thought ensouled
the
elemental essence of its own plane, so that same thought, plus its
form as a mental elemental, acted as soul to the astral elemental— thus following closely the method in which the ultimate [page
23] spirit itself takes on sheath after sheath in its descent
through the various planes and sub-planes of matter.
Further
experiments along similar lines revealed the fact that the colour
of the projected elemental varied with the character of the thought.
As above stated, the thought of strong affection produced a creature
of glowing rose-colour; an intense wish of healing, projected towards
a sick friend, called into existence a most lovely silvery-white elemental;
while an earnest mental effort to steady and strengthen the mind of
a depressed and despairing person resulted in the production of a
beautiful flashing golden-yellow messenger.
In
all these cases it will be perceived that, besides the effect of radiating
colours and vibrations produced in the matter of the plane, a definite
force in the shape of an elemental was sent forth towards the person
to whom the thought was directed; and this invariably happened, with
one notable exception. One of the operators, while on the lower division
of the plane, directed a thought of intense love and devotion towards
the Adept who is his spiritual teacher, and it was at once noticed
by the observers above that the result was in some sense a reversal
of what had happened in the previous cases.
It
should be premised that a pupil of any one of the great Adepts is
always connected with his Master by a constant current of thought
and influence, which expresses itself on the mental plane as a
great
ray or stream of dazzling light of all colours — violet and
gold and blue; and it might perhaps have been expected that the pupil's
earnest, loving thought would send a special vibration along this
line. Instead of this, however, the result was a sudden intensification
of the colours of this bar of light, and a very distinct flow of
spiritual
influence, towards the pupil; so that it is evident that when
a student turns his thought to his Master, what he [page
24] really does is to vivify his connection with that Master,
and thus to open a way for an additional outpouring of strength and
help to himself from higher planes. It would seem that the Adept is,
as it were, so highly charged with the influences which sustain and
strengthen, that any thought which brings into increased activity
a channel of communication with him sends no current towards him,
as it ordinarily would, but simply gives a wider opening through which
the great ocean of his love finds vent.
On
the arûpa levels the difference in the effect of thought is
very marked, especially as regards the elemental essence. The disturbance
set up in the mere matter of the plane is similar, though greatly
intensified in this much more refined form of matter; but in the
essence
no form at all is now created, and the method of action is entirely
changed. In all the experiments on lower planes it was found that
the elemental hovered about the person thought of, and awaited a
favourable
opportunity of expending his energy either upon his mind-body, his
astral, or even his physical body; here the result is a kind of lightning-flash
of the essence from the causal body of the thinker direct to the
causal
body of the object of his thought; so that while the thought
on those lower divisions is always directed to the mere personality,
here we influence the reincarnating ego, the real man himself, and
if our message has any reference to the personality it will reach
it only from above, through the instrumentality of his causal vehicle.
Thought-Forms.
Naturally
the thoughts to be seen on this plane are not all definitely directed
at some other person; many are simply thrown off to float vaguely
about, and the diversity of form and colour shown among these is practically
infinite, [page 25] so
that the study of them is a science in itself, and a very fascinating
one. Anything like a detailed description even of the main classes
among them would occupy far more space than we have to spare; but
an idea of the principles upon which such classes might be formed
may be gained from the following extract from a most illuminative
paper on the subject written by Mrs. Besant in Lucifer (the
earlier form of The Theosophical Review) for September 1896.
She there enunciates the three great principles underlying the production
of the thought-forms which are thrown off by the action of the mind — that (a) the quality of a thought determines its colour, (b)
the nature of a thought determines its form, (c) the definiteness
of a thought determines the clearness of its outline. Giving instances
of the way in which the colour is affected, she continues:
" If the astral and mental bodies are vibrating under the influence
of devotion, the aura will be suffused with blue, more or less
intense,
beautiful and pure according to the depth, elevation, and purity
of the feeling. In a church such thought-forms may be seen rising,
for
the most part not very definitely outlined, but rolling masses of
blue clouds. Too often the colour is dulled by the intermixture
of
selfish feelings, when the blue is mixed with browns and thus loses
its pure brilliancy. But the devotional thought of an unselfish
heart
is very lovely in colour, like the deep blue of a summer sky. Through
such clouds of blue will often shine out golden stars of great
brilliancy,
starting upwards like a shower of sparks.
" Anger gives rise to red, of all shades from brick-red to brilliant
scarlet; brutal anger will show as flashes of lurid dull red from
dark brown clouds, while the anger of noble indignation is a vivid
scarlet, by no means unbeautiful to look at, though it gives an
unpleasant
thrill.
"Affection
sends out clouds of rosy hue, varying from [page26]
dull crimson, where the love is animal in its nature rose-red mingled
with brown when selfish, or with dull green when jealous, to the most
exquisite shades of delicate rose like the early flushes of the dawning,
as the love becomes purified from all selfish elements, and flows
out in wider, and wider circles of generous impersonal tenderness
and compassion to all who are in need.
" Intellect produces yellow thought-forms, the pure reason directed
to spiritual ends giving rise to a very delicate, beautiful yellow,
while used for-more selfish ends or mingled with ambition it yields
deeper shades of orange, clear and intense." (Lucifer, Volume
xix. page 71.)
It
must of course be borne in mind that astral as well as mental thought-forms
are described in the above quotation, some of the feelings mentioned
needing matter of the lower plane as well as of the higher before
they can find expression. Some examples are then given of the beautiful
flower-like and shell-like forms sometimes taken by our nobler thoughts;
and especial reference is made to the not infrequent case in which
the thought, taking human form, is liable to be confounded with an
apparition:
"A
thought-form may assume the shape of its projector; if a person wills
strongly to be present at a particular place, to visit a particular
person, and be seen, such a thought-form may take his own shape, and
a clairvoyant present at the desired spot would see what he would
probably mistake for his friend in the astral body. Such a thought-form
might convey a message, if that formed part of its content, setting
up in the astral body of the person reached vibrations like its own,
and these being passed on by that astral body to the brain, where
they would be translated into a thought or a sentence. Such a thought-form,
again, might convey to its projector, by the magnetic relation between
them, vibrations impressed on itself." (page 73.)
[page 27]
The
whole of the article from which these extracts are taken should be
very carefully studied by those who wish to grasp this very complex
branch of our subject, for, with the aid of the beautifully-executed
coloured illustrations which accompany it, it enables, those who cannot
yet see for themselves to approach much more nearly to a realization
of what thought-forms actually are than anything previously written.
The
Sub-Planes
If
it be asked what is the real difference between the matter of the
various sub-planes of the mental plane, it is not easy to answer
in
other than very general terms, for the unfortunate scribe bankrupts
himself of adjectives in an unsuccessful endeavour to describe
the
lowest plane, and then has nothing left to say about the others.
What, indeed, can be said, except that ever as we ascend the material
becomes
finer, the harmonies fuller, the light more living and transparent?
There are more overtones in the sound, more delicate intershades
in
the colours as we rise, more and more new colours appear — hues
entirely unknown to the physical sight; and it has been poetically
yet truly said that the light of the lower plane is darkness on the
one above it. Perhaps this idea is simpler if we start in thought
from .the top instead of the bottom, and try to realize that on that
highest sub-plane we shall find its appropriate matter ensouled and
vivified by an energy which still flows down like light from above
— from a plane which lies away beyond the mental altogether.
Then if we descend to the second subdivision we shall find that the
matter of our first sub-plane has become the energy of this — or, to put the thing more accurately, that the original energy, plus
the garment of matter of the first sub-plane with which it has endued
itself, is still the energy ensouling the matter of this [page
28 ] second sub-plane. In the same way, in the third division
we shall find that the original energy has twice veiled itself in
the matter of these first and second sub-planes through which it
has
passed; so that by the time we get to our seventh sub-division we
shall have our original energy six times enclosed or veiled, and
therefore
by so much the weaker and less active. This process is exactly analogous
to the veiling of Âtma, the primordial Spirit, in its descent
as monadic essence in order to energize the matter of the planes
of the cosmos, and as it is one which frequently takes place in nature,
it will save the student much trouble if he will try to familiarize
himself with the idea (see Mrs. Besant's Ancient
Wisdom, page 54, and footnote).
The
Records of the Past
In
speaking of the general characteristics of the plane we must not
omit to mention the ever-present background formed by the records
of the
past — the memory of nature, the only really reliable history
of the world. While what we have on this plane is not yet the absolute
record itself, but merely a reflection of something higher still,
it is at any rate clear, accurate, and continuous, differing therein
from the disconnected and spasmodic manifestation which is all that
represents it in the astral world. It is, therefore, only when a
clairvoyant
possesses the vision of this mental plane that his pictures of the
past can be relied upon; and even then, unless he has the power of
passing in full consciousness from that plane to the physical, we
have to allow for the possibility of errors in bringing back the
recollection
of what he has seen.
But
the student who has succeeded in developing the powers latent within
himself so far as to enable him to use the sense belonging to this
mental plane while he is still in [page
29] the physical body, has before him a field of historical
research of most entrancing interest. Not only can he review at his
leisure all history with which we are acquainted, correcting as he
examines it the many errors and misconceptions which have crept into
the accounts handed down to us; he can also range at will over the
whole story of the world from its very beginning, watching the slow
development of intellect in man, the descent of the Lords of the Flame,
and the growth of the mighty civilizations which they founded.
Nor
is his study confined to the progress of humanity alone; he has before
him, as in a museum, all the strange animal and vegetable forms which
occupied the stage in days when the world was young; he can
follow all the wonderful geological changes which have taken place,
and watch the course of the great cataclysms which have altered the
whole face of the earth again and again.
Many
and varied are the possibilities opened up by access to these records — so many and so varied indeed that even if this were the only
advantage of the mental plane, it would still transcend in interest
all the lower worlds. But when to this we add the remarkable increase
in the opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge given by its
new and wider faculty — the privilege of direct untrammelled
intercourse not only with the great Deva kingdom, but with the very
Masters of Wisdom themselves — the rest and relief from the
weary strain of physical life that is brought by the enjoyment of
its deep unchanging bliss, and above all, the enormously enhanced
capability of the developed student for the service of his fellow-men
— then we shall begin to have some faint conception of what
a pupil gains when he wins the right to enter at will and in perfect
consciousness upon his heritage in this bright realm of the heaven-world.
[page
30]
INHABITANTS.
In
our endeavour to describe the inhabitants of the mental plane it
will perhaps be well for us to divide them into the same three
great classes
chosen in the manual on the astral plane — the human, the non-human,
and the artificial — though the sub-divisions will naturally
be less numerous in this case than in that, since the products of
man's evil passions, which bulked so largely there, can find no place
here.
I.
HUMAN.
Exactly
as was the case when dealing with the lower world, it will be desirable
to subdivide the human inhabitants of the mental plane into two
classes — those who are still attached to a physical body, and those
who are not — the living and the dead, as they are commonly
but most erroneously called. Very little experience of these higher
planes is needed to alter fundamentally the student's conception,
of the change which takes place at death; he realizes immediately
on the opening of his consciousness even in the astral, and still
more in this mental world, that the fulness of true life is something
which can never be known down here, and that when we leave this physical
earth we are passing into that true life, not out of it. We
have not at present in the English language any convenient and at
the same time accurate words to express these conditions; perhaps
to call them respectively embodied and disembodied will be, on the
whole, the least misleading of [page
31] the various possible phrases. Let us therefore proceed
to consider those inhabitants of the mental plane who come under the
head of
The
Embodied.
Those
human beings who, while still attached to a physical body, are found
moving in full consciousness and activity upon this plane, are
invariably
either Adepts or their initiated pupils, for until a student has
been taught by his Master how to use his mental body he will be
unable
to move with freedom upon even its lower levels. To function consciously
during physical life upon the higher levels denotes still greater
advancement, for it means the unification of the man, so that down
here he is no longer a mere personality, more or less influenced
by
the individuality above, but is himself that individuality — trammelled and confined by a body, certainly, but nevertheless having
within him the power and knowledge of a highly developed ego.
Very
magnificent objects are these Adepts and initiates to the vision
which has learnt to see them — splendid globes of light and colour,
driving away all evil influence wherever they go, acting upon all
who come near them as the sunshine acts upon the flowers, and shedding
around them a feeling of restfulness and happiness of which even those
who do not see them are often conscious. It is in this celestial world
that much of their most important work is done — more especially
upon its higher levels, where the individuality can be acted upon
directly. It is from this plane that they shower the grandest spiritual
influences upon the world of thought; from it also they impel great
and beneficent movements of all kinds. Here much of the spiritual
force poured out by the glorious self-sacrifice of [page
32] the Nirmânâkayas is distributed; here
also direct teaching is given to those pupils who are sufficiently
advanced to receive it in this way, since it can be imparted far more
readily and completely here than on the astral plane. In addition
to all these activities they have a great field of work in connection
with those whom we call the dead, but this will be more fitly explained
under a later heading.
It
is a pleasure to find that a class of inhabitants which obtruded
itself painfully on our notice on the astral plane is almost entirely
absent
here. In a world whose characteristics are unselfishness and spirituality
the black magician and his pupils can obviously find no place,
since
selfishness is of the essence of all the proceedings of the darker
schools, and their study of occult forces is entirely for personal
ends. Not but that in many of them the intellect is very highly
developed,
and consequently the matter of the mind-body extremely active and
sensitive along certain lines; but in every case those lines are
connected
with personal desire of some sort, and they can therefore find expression
only through that lower part of the mind-body which has become
almost
inextricably entangled with astral matter. As a necessary consequence
of this limitation it follows that their activities are practically
confined to the astral and physical planes. A man, the trend of whose
whole life is evil and selfish, may indeed have periods of purely
abstract thought during which he may utilize the mind-body if he
has
learnt how to do so, but the moment that the personal element comes
in, and the effort to produce some evil result is made, the thought
is no longer abstract, and the man finds himself working in connection
with the familiar astral matter once more. One might almost say
that
a black magician could function on the mental plane only while he
forgot that he was a black magician.
But
even while he forgot it he could be visible on the [page
33] mental plane only to men functioning consciously on
that plane — never by any possibility to those who are enjoying
the heavenly rest in this region after death, since each of them is
so entirely secluded within the world of his own thought that nothing
outside of that can affect him, and he is consequently absolutely
safe. Thus is justified the grand old description of the heaven-world
as the place "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary
are at rest."
In
Sleep or Trance.
In
thinking of the embodied inhabitants of the mental plane, the question
naturally suggests itself whether either ordinary people during sleep,
or psychically developed persons in a trance condition, can ever penetrate
to this plane. In both cases the answer must be that the occurrence
is possible, though extremely rare. Purity of life and purpose would
be an absolute pre-requisite, and even when the plane was reached
there would be nothing that could be called real consciousness, but
simply a capacity for receiving certain impressions.
As
exemplifying the possibility of entering the mental plane during sleep,
an incident may be mentioned which occurred in connection with the
experiments made by the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society on
dream consciousness, an account of some of which was given in my little
book on Dreams. It may be remembered by those who have read
that treatise that a thought-picture of a lovely tropical landscape
was presented to the minds of various classes of sleepers, with a
view of testing the extent to which it was afterwards recollected
on awaking. One case which was not referred to in the account previously
published, as it had no special connection with the phenomena of dreams,
will serve as a useful illustration here.
[page 34]
It
was that of a person of pure mind and considerable though untrained
psychic capacity ; and the effect of the presentation of the thought-picture
to her mind was of a somewhat startling character. So intense was
the feeling of reverent joy, so lofty and so spiritual were the
thoughts
evoked by the contemplation of this glorious scene, that the consciousness
of the sleeper passed entirely into the mind-body — or, to put
the same idea into other words, rose on to the mental plane. It must
not, however, be supposed from this that she became cognizant of her
surroundings upon that plane or of its real conditions; she was simply
in the state of the ordinary person who has reached that level after
death, floating in the sea of light and colour indeed, but nevertheless
entirely absorbed in her own thought, and conscious of nothing beyond
it — resting in ecstatic contemplation of the landscape and
of all that it had suggested to her — yet contemplating it,
be it understood, with the keener insight, the more perfect appreciation,
and the enhanced vigour of thought peculiar to the mental plane,
and
enjoying all the while the intensity of bliss which has so often
been spoken of before. The sleeper remained in that condition for
several
hours, though apparently entirely unconscious of the passage of time,
and at last awoke with a sense of deep peace and inward joy for which,
since she had brought back no recollection of what had happened,
she
was quite unable to account. There is no doubt, however, that such
an experience as this, whether remembered in the physical body or
not, would act as a distinct impulse to the spiritual evolution of
the ego concerned.
Though
in the absence of a sufficient number of experiments one hesitates
to speak too positively, it seems almost, certain that such a result
as this just described would be possible only in the case of a person
having already some amount of psychic development: and the same condition
[page 35] is even more definitely necessary in order that
a mesmerized subject should touch the mental plane in trance. So
decidedly is this the case, that probably not one in a thousand among
ordinary
clairvoyants ever reaches it at all; but on the rare occasions when
it is so attained the clairvoyant, as before remarked, must be not
only of exceptional development, but of perfect purity of life and
purpose; and even when all these unusual characteristics are present
there still remains the difficulty which an untrained psychic always
finds in translating a vision accurately from the higher plane to
the lower. All these considerations, of course, only emphasize what
has been so often insisted upon before — the necessity of the
careful training of all psychics under a qualified instructor before
it is possible to attach much weight to their reports of what they
see.
The
Disembodied.
Before
considering in detail the condition of the disembodied entities on
the various subdivisions of the mental plane, we must have very
clearly
in our minds the broad distinction between the r没pa and arûpa
levels, of which mention has already been made. On the former the
man lives entirely in the world of his own thoughts, still fully
identifying
himself with his personality in the life which he has recently quitted;
on the latter he is simply the reincarnating ego or soul, who (if
he has developed sufficient consciousness on that level to know anything
clearly at all) understands, at least to some extent, the evolution
upon which he is engaged, and the work that he has to do.
It
should be remembered that every man passes through both these stages
between death and birth, though the undeveloped majority have so little
consciousness in either of [page
36] them as yet that they might more truly be said to dream
through them. Nevertheless, whether consciously or unconsciously,
every human being must touch the higher levels of the mental plane
before reincarnation can take place; and as his evolution proceeds
this touch becomes more and more definite and real to him. Not only
is he more conscious there as he progresses, but the period he passes
in that world of reality becomes longer; for the fact is that his
consciousness is slowly but steadily rising through the different
planes of the system.
Primitive
man, for example, has comparatively little consciousness on any plane
but the physical during life, and the lower astral after death;
and
indeed the same may be said of the quite undeveloped man even in
our own day. A person a little more advanced begins to have a short
period
of heaven-life (on the lower levels, of course), but still spends
by far the greater part of his time, between incarnations, on the
astral plane. As he progresses the astral life grows shorter and
the
heaven-life longer, until when he becomes an intellectual and spiritually-minded
person he passes through the astral plane with hardly any delay
at
all, and enjoys a long and happy sojourn on the more refined of the
lower mental levels. By this time, however, the consciousness in
the
true ego on its higher level is awakened to a very considerable extent,
and thus his conscious life on the mental plane divides itself
into
two parts — the later and shorter portion being spent on the
higher sub-planes in the causal body.
The
process previously described then repeats itself, the life on the
lower levels gradually shortening, while the higher life becomes
steadily
longer and fuller, till at last the time comes when the consciousness
is unified — when the higher and lower selves are indissolubly
united, and the man is no longer capable of wrapping himself up in
his own [page 37] cloud
of thought, and mistaking the little that he can see through that
for the whole of the great heaven-world around him — when he
realizes the true possibilities of his life, and so for the first
time truly begins to live. But by the time that he attains these
heights
he will already have entered upon the Path, and taken his future
progress definitely into his own hands.
The
Qualities Necessary for the Heaven-Life.
The
greater reality of the heaven-life as compared with that on earth
shines forth clearly when we consider, what conditions are requisite
for the attainment of this higher state of existence. For the very
qualities which a man must develop during life, if he is to have
any
existence in the heaven-world after death, are just those which all
the best and noblest of our race have agreed in considering as
really
and permanently desirable. In order that an aspiration or a thought-force
should result in existence on that plane, its dominant characteristic
must be unselfishness.
Affection
for family or friends takes many a man into the heaven-life, and so
also does religious devotion; yet it would be a mistake to suppose
that all affection or all devotion must therefore necessarily
find its post-mortem expression there, for of each of these
qualities there are obviously two varieties, the selfish and the
unselfish — though it might perhaps reasonably be argued that it is only
the latter kind in each case which is really worthy of the name.
There
is the love which pours itself out upon its object, seeking for nothing
in return — never even thinking of itself, but only of what
it can do for the loved one; and such a feeling as this generates
a spiritual force which cannot work [page
38] itself out
except upon the mental plane. But there is also another emotion which
is sometimes called love — an exacting, selfish kind of passion
which desires mainly to be loved — which is thinking
all the time of what it receives rather than of what it gives, and
is quite likely to degenerate into the horrible vice of jealousy
upon
(or even without) the smallest provocation. Such affection as this
has in it no seed of the mental development; the forces which it
sets
in motion will never rise above the astral plane.
The
same is true of the feeling of a certain very large class of religious
devotees, whose one thought is, not the glory of their deity, but
how they may save their own miserable souls — a position which
forcibly suggests that they, have not yet developed anything that
really deserves the name of a soul at all.
On
the other hand there is the real religious devotion, which thinks
never of self, but only of love and gratitude towards the deity or
leader, and is filled with ardent desire to do something for him or
in his name; and such a feeling often leads to a prolonged heaven-life
of a comparatively exalted type.
This
would of course be the case whoever the deity or leader might be,
and followers of Buddha, Krishna, Ormuzd, Allah, and Christ would
all equally attain their need of celestial bliss — its length
and quality depending upon the intensity and purity of the feeling,
and not in the least upon its object, though this latter consideration
would undoubtedly affect the possibility of receiving instruction
during that higher life.
Most
human devotion, however, like most human love, is neither wholly pure
nor wholly selfish. That love must be low indeed into which no unselfish
thought or impulse has entered; and on the other hand an affection
which is [page 39] usually
and chiefly quite pure and noble may yet sometimes be clouded by a
spasm of jealous feeling or a passing thought of self. In both these
cases, as in all, the law of eternal justice discriminates unerringly;
and just as the momentary flash of nobler feeling in the less developed
heart will surely receive its need in the heaven-world, even though
there be naught else in the life to raise the soul above the astral
plane, so the baser thought which erstwhile dimmed the holy radiance
of a real love will work out its force in the astral world, interfering
not at all with the magnificent celestial life which flows infallibly
from years of deep affection here below.
How
a Man first gains the Heaven-Life.
It
will be seen, therefore, that in the earlier stages of their evolution
many of the backward egos never consciously attain the heaven-world
at all, whilst a still larger number obtain only a comparatively slight
touch of some of its lower planes. Every soul must of course withdraw
into its true self upon the higher levels before reincarnation ; but
it does not at all follow that in that condition it will experience
anything that we should call consciousness. This subject will be dealt
with more fully when we come to treat of the arûpa planes; it
seems better to begin with the lowest of the r没pa levels, and work
steadily upwards, so we may for the moment leave on one side that
portion of humanity whose conscious existence after death is practically
confined to the astral plane, and proceed to consider the case of
an entity who has just risen out of that position — who for
the first time has a slight and fleeting consciousness in the lowest
subdivision of the heaven-world.
There
are evidently various methods by which this [page
40] important step in the early development of the soul
may be brought about, but it will be sufficient for our present purpose
if we take as an illustration of one of them a somewhat pathetic
little
story from real life which came under the observation of our students
when they were investigating this question. In this case the agent
of the great evolutionary forces was a poor seamstress, living in
one of the dreariest and most squalid of our terrible London slums — a fetid court in the East End into which light and air could
scarcely struggle.
Naturally
she was not highly educated, for her life had been one long round
of the hardest work under the least favourable of conditions; but
nevertheless she was a good-hearted, benevolent creature, overflowing
with love and kindness towards all with whom she came into contact.
Her rooms were as poor, perhaps, as any in the court, but at least
they were cleaner and neater than the others. She had no money to
give when sickness brought need even more dire than usual to some
of her neighbours, yet on such an occasion she was always at hand
as often as she could snatch a few moments from her work, offering
with ready sympathy such service as was within her power.
Indeed,
she was quite a providence to the rough, ignorant factory girls about
her, and they gradually came to look upon her as a kind of angel of
help and mercy, always at hand in time, of trouble or illness. Often,
after toiling all day with scarcely a moment's intermission, she sat
up half the night, taking her turn at nursing some of the many sufferers
who are always to be found in surroundings so fatal to health and
happiness as those of a London slum; and in many cases the gratitude
and affection which her unremitting kindness aroused in them were
absolutely the only higher feelings that they had during the whole
of their rough and sordid lives, [page
41]
The conditions of existence in that court
being such as they were, there is little wonder that some of her
patients died,
and then it became clear that she had done for them much more than
she knew; she had given them not only a little kindly assistance
in
their temporal trouble, but a very important impulse on the course
of spiritual evolution. For these were undeveloped souls — entities
of a very backward class — who had never yet in any of their
births set in motion the spiritual forces which alone could give
them conscious existence on the mental plane; but now for the first
time
not only had an ideal towards which they could strive been put before
them, but also really unselfish love had been evoked in them by her
action, and the very fact of having so strong a feeling as this had
raised them and given them more individuality, and so after their
stay in the astral plane was ended they gained their first experience
of the lowest subdivision of the heaven-world. A short experience,
probably, and of by no means an advanced type, but still of far greater
importance than appears at first sight; for when once the great spiritual
energy of unselfishness has been awakened, the very working-out of
its results in the heaven-world gives it the tendency to repeat itself,
and small in amount though this first outpouring may be, it yet builds
into the soul a faint tinge of a quality which will certainly express
itself again in the next life.
So
the gentle benevolence of a poor seamstress has given to several less
developed souls their introduction to a conscious spiritual life which
incarnation after incarnation will grow steadily stronger, and react
more and more upon the earth-lives of the future. This little incident
perhaps suggests an explanation of the fact that in the various religions
so much importance is attached to the personal element in charity
— the direct association between donor and recipient.
[page 42]
Seventh
Sub-Plane; the Lowest Heaven.
This
lowest subdivision of the heaven-world, to which the action of our
poor seamstress raised the objects of her kindly care, has for its
principal characteristic that of affection for family or friends — unselfish, of course, but usually somewhat narrow. Here, however,
we must guard ourselves against the possibility of misconception.
When it is said that family affection takes a man to the seventh
celestial
sub-plane, and religious devotion to the sixth, people sometimes
very naturally imagine that a person having both these characteristics
strongly developed in him would divide his period in the heaven-world
between these two subdivisions, first spending a long period of happiness
in the midst of his family, and then passing upward to the next level,
there to exhaust the spiritual forces engendered by his devotional
aspirations.
This,
however, is not what happens, for in such a case as we have supposed
the man would awaken to consciousness in the sixth subdivision, where
he would find himself engaged, together with those whom he had loved
so much in the highest form of devotion which he was able to
realize. And when we think of it this is reasonable enough, for the
man who is capable of religious devotion as well as mere family affection
is naturally likely to be endowed with a higher and broader development
of the latter virtue than one whose mind is susceptible to influence
in one direction only. The same rule holds good all the way up; the
higher plane may always include the qualities of the lower as well
as those peculiar to itself, and when it does so its inhabitants almost
invariably have these qualities in fuller measure than the souls on
a lower plane.
When
it is said that family affection is the characteristic [page
43] of the seventh sub-plane, it must not therefore be
supposed for a moment that love is confined to this plane, but rather
that the man who will find himself here after death is one in whose
character this affection was the highest quality— the only one,
in fact, which entitled him to the heaven-life at all. But love of
a far nobler and grander type than anything to be seen on this level
may of course be found upon the higher sub-planes.
One
of the first entities encountered by the investigators upon this sub-plane
forms a very fair typical example of its inhabitants. The man during
life had been a small grocer — not a person of intellectual
development or of any particular religious feeling, but simply the
ordinary honest and respectable small tradesman. No doubt he had
gone
to church regularly every Sunday, because it was the customary and
proper thing to do; but religion had been to him a sort of dim cloud
which he did not really understand, which had no connection with
the
business of everyday life, and was never taken into account in deciding
its problems. He had therefore none of the depth of devotion which
might have lifted him to the next sub-plane; but he had for his wife
and family a warm affection in which there was a large element of
unselfishness. They were constantly in his mind, and it was for them
far more than for himself that he worked from morning to night in
his tiny little shop ; and so when, after a period of existence on
the astral plane, he had at last shaken himself free from the disintegrating
desire-body, he found himself in this lowest subdivision of the heaven-world
with all his loved ones gathered round him.
He
was no more an intellectual or highly spiritual man than he had been
on earth, for death brings .with it no sudden development of that
kind; the surroundings in which he found himself with his family were
not of a very refined [page 44]
type, for they represented only his own highest ideals of non-physical
enjoyment during life ; but nevertheless he was as intensely happy
as he was capable of being, and since he was all the time thinking
of his family rather than of himself he was undoubtedly developing
unselfish characteristics, which would be built into his soul as permanent
qualities, and so would reappear in all his future lives on earth.
Another
typical case was that of a man who had died while his only daughter
was still young; here in the heaven-world he had her
always with him
and always at her best, and he was continually occupying himself
in weaving all sorts of beautiful pictures of her
future. Yet another
was that of a young girl who was always absorbed in contemplating
the manifold perfections of her father, and planning
little surprises
and fresh pleasures for him. Another was a Greek woman who was spending
a marvellously happy time with her three children — one of them
a beautiful boy, whom she delighted in imagining as the victor in
the Olympic games.
A
striking characteristic of this sub-plane for the last few centuries
has been the very large number of Romans, Carthaginians, and Englishmen
to be found there — this being due to the fact that among men
of these nations the principal unselfish activity found its outlet
through family affection, while comparatively few Hindus and Buddhists
are here, since in their case real religious feeling usually enters
more immediately into their daily lives, and consequently takes
them
to a higher level.
There
was, of course, an almost infinite variety among the cases observed,
their different degrees of advancement being distinguishable by varying
degrees of luminosity, while differences of colour indicated respectively
the qualities which the persons in question had developed. Some were
lovers who had died in the full strength of their affection, [page
45] and so were always occupied with the one person they
loved to the entire exclusion of all others; others there were who
had been almost savages, one example being a Malay, a very undeveloped
man (at the stage which we should technically describe as that of
a low third-class pitri) who obtained a slight experience of the heaven-life
in connection with a daughter whom he had loved.
In
all these cases it was the touch of unselfish affection which gave
them their heaven; indeed, apart from that, there was nothing in
the
activity of their personal lives which could have expressed itself
on that plane. In most instances observed on this level the images
of the loved ones are very far from perfect, and consequently the
true egos or souls of the friends who are loved can express themselves
but poorly through them ; though even at the worst that expression
is much fuller and more satisfying than it ever was in physical
life.
In earth-life we see our friends so partially; we know only those
parts of them which are congenial to us, and the other sides of
their
characters are practically non-existent for us. Our communion with
them and our knowledge of them down here mean very much to us,
and
are often to us among the greatest things in life; yet in reality
this communion and this knowledge must always be exceedingly defective,
for even in the very rare cases where we can think that we know a
man thoroughly and all through, body and soul, it is still only the
part of him which is in manifestation on these lower planes
while in incarnation that we can know, and there is far more behind
in the real ego which we cannot reach at all. Indeed, if it were possible
for us, with the direct and perfect vision of the mental plane, to
see for the first time the whole of our friend when we met
him after death, the probability is that he would be quite unrecognizable
; certainly he would not be at all the dear one whom we thought we
had known before. [page 46]
It
must be understood that the keen affection which alone brings one
man into the heaven-life of another is a very powerful force upon
these higher planes — a force which reaches up to the soul of
the man who is loved, and evokes a response from it. Naturally the
vividness of that response, the amount of life and energy in it,
depends
on the development of the soul of the loved one, but there is no
case in which the response is not a perfectly real one as far as
it goes.
Of
course the soul or ego can be fully reached only upon his own
level — one of the arûpa subdivisions of this mental plane
— but at least we are very much nearer to that in any stage
of the heaven-world than we are here, and therefore under favourable
conditions we could there know enormously more of our friend than
would ever be possible here, while even under the most unfavourable
of conditions we are at any rate far closer to the reality there
than
we have ever been before.
Two
factors have to be taken into account in our consideration of this
subject — the degree of development of each of the persons concerned.
If the man in the heaven-life has strong affection and some development
in spirituality he will form a clear and fairly perfect thought-image
of his friend as he knew him — an image through which at that
level the soul of the friend could express himself to a very considerable
extent. But in order to take full advantage of that opportunity it
is necessary that that soul should himself be very fairly advanced
in evolution.
We
see, therefore, that there are two reasons for which the manifestation
may be imperfect. The image made by the dead man may be so vague and
inefficient that the friend, even though well-evolved, may be able
to make very little use of it; and on the other hand, even when a
good image is made, there may not be sufficient development [page
47] on the friend's part to enable him to take due advantage
of it.
But
in any and every case the soul of the friend is reached by the feeling
of affection, and whatever may be its stage of development it at
once
responds by pouring itself forth into the image which has been made.
The extent to which the true man can express himself through it
depends
on the two factors above mentioned — the kind of image which
is made in the first place, and how much soul there is to express
in the second; but even the feeblest image that can be made is at
any rate on the mental plane, and, therefore, far easier for the
ego
to reach than is a physical body two-whole planes lower down.
If
the friend who is loved is still alive he will of course be entirely
unaware down here on the physical plane that his true self is enjoying
this additional manifestation, but this in no way affects the fact
that that manifestation is a more real one and contains a nearer approximation
to his true self than this lower one, which is all that most of us
can as yet see.
An
interesting point is that since a man may well enter into the heaven-life
of several of his departed friends at once, he may thus be simultaneously
manifesting himself in all these various forms, as well as, perhaps,
managing a physical body down here. That conception, however, presents
no difficulty to anyone who understands the relation of the different
planes to one another; it is just as easy for him to manifest himself
in several of these celestial images at once, as it is for us to be
simultaneously conscious of the pressure of several different articles
against different parts of our body. The relation of one plane to
another is like that of one dimension to another ; no number of units
of the lower dimension can ever equal one of the higher, and in just
the same way no number of these manifestations could exhaust [page
48] the power of response in the ego above. On the contrary,
such manifestations afford him an appreciable additional opportunity
for development on the mental plane — an opportunity which is
the direct result and reward under the operation of the law of divine
justice of the actions or qualities which evoked such an outpouring
of affection.
It
is clear from all this that as the man evolves, his opportunities
in all directions become greater. Not only is he more likely as he
advances to attract the love and reverence of many, and so to have
many strong thought-images at his disposal on the mental plane; but
also his power of manifestation through each of these and his receptivity
in it rapidly increase with his progress.
This
was very well illustrated by a simple case which recently came under
the notice of our investigators. It was that of a mother who had
died
perhaps twenty years ago, leaving behind her two boys to whom she
was deeply attached. Naturally they were the most prominent figures
in her heaven, and quite naturally, too, she thought of them as
she
had left them, as boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age. The love
which she thus ceaselessly poured out upon these mental images
was
really acting as a beneficent force showered down upon the grown-up
men in this physical world, but it did not affect them both to
the
same extent— not that her love was stronger for one than the
other, but because there was a great difference, in the vitality
of the images themselves. Not a difference, be it understood, that
the
mother could see; to her both appeared equally with her and equally
all that she could possibly desire: yet to the eyes of the investigators
it was very evident that one of these images was very much more instinct
with living force than the other. On tracing this very interesting
phenomenon to its source, it was found that in one case the son had
grown [page
49] up into an
ordinary man of business — not specially evil in any way, but
by no means spiritually-minded — while the other had become
a man of high unselfish aspiration, and of considerable refinement
and culture. His life had been such as to develop a much greater
amount
of consciousness in the soul than his brother's, and consequently
this higher self was able to vitalize much more fully that image
of
his youthful days which his mother had formed in her heaven-life.
There was more soul to put in, and so the image was vivid and living.
Further
research revealed numbers of similar instances, and it was very clearly
seen that the more highly a soul is evolved in spirituality, the more
fully he can express himself in such manifestations as his friends'
love has provided for him. And by such fuller expression he is also
enabled to derive more and more benefit from the living force of that
love as it pours itself upon him through these thought-images. As
the soul grows these images become fuller expressions of him, till
when he gains the level of a Master he consciously employs them as
a means of helping and instructing his pupils.
Along
these lines only is conscious communication possible between those
still imprisoned in the physical body and those who have passed
into
this celestial realm. As has been said, a soul may be shining out
gloriously through his image in a friend's heaven-life, and yet
in
his manifestation through the physical body on this plane that soul
may be entirely unconscious of all this, and so may suppose himself
unable to communicate with his departed friend. But if that soul
has
evolved his consciousness to the point of unification, and can therefore
use his full powers while still in the physical body, he can then
realize, even during this dull earthly life, that he still stands
face to face with his friend as of yore — that death has not
removed the man he [page 50]
loved, but has only opened his eyes to the grander, wider life which
ever lies around us all.
In
appearance the friend would seem much as he did in earth-life, yet
somehow strangely glorified. In the mind-body as in the astral body
there is a reproduction of the physical form within the outer ovoid
whose shape is determined by that of the causal body, so that it has
somewhat the appearance of a form of denser mist surrounded by a lighter
mist. All through the heaven-life the personality of the last physical
life is distinctly preserved, and it is only when the consciousness
is finally withdrawn into the causal body that this feeling of personality
is merged in the individuality, and the man for the first time since
this descent into incarnation realizes himself as the true and comparatively
permanent ego.
Men
sometimes ask whether on this mental plane there is any consciousness
of time — any alternation of night and day, of sleeping and
waking. The only waking in the heaven-world is the slow dawning of
its wonderful bliss upon the mind-sense as the man enters upon
his
life on that plane, and the only sleeping is the equally gradual
sinking into happy unconsciousness when the long term of that life
at length
comes to an end. It was once described to us in the beginning as
a sort of prolongation of all the happiest hours in a man's life
magnified
a hundredfold in bliss; and though that definition leaves much to
be desired (as indeed all physical-plane definitions must), it
still
comes far nearer the truth than this idea of day and night. There
is, indeed, what seems an infinity of variety in the happiness
of
the heaven-world; but the changes of sleeping and waking form no
part of its plan.
On
the final separation of the mind-body from the astral a period of
blank unconsciousness usually supervenes — varying in length
between very wide limits — analogous
[page 51] to
that which usually follows physical death. The awakening from this
into active mental consciousness closely resembles what often occurs
in waking from a night's sleep. Just as on first awakening in the
morning one sometimes passes through a period of intensely delightful
repose during which one is conscious of the sense of enjoyment, though
the mind is as yet inactive and the body hardly under control so the
entity awakening into the heaven-world first passes through a more
or less prolonged period of intense and gradually increasing bliss
before his full activity of consciousness on that plane is reached.
When first this sense of wondrous joy dawns on him it fills the entire
field of his consciousness, but gradually as he awakens he finds himself
surrounded by a world peopled by his own ideals, and presenting the
features appropriate to the sub-plane to which he has been drawn.
Sixth
Sub-Plane; the Second Heaven.
The
dominant characteristic of this subdivision may be said to be anthropomorphic
religious devotion. The distinction between such devotion and the
religious feeling which finds its expression on the second sub-plane
of the astral lies in the fact that the former is purely-unselfish
(the man who feels it being totally unconcerned as to what the result
of his devotion may be as regards himself), while the latter is always
aroused by the hope and desire of gaining some advantage through it;
so that on the second astral sub-plane such religious feeling as is
there active invariably contains an element of selfish bargaining,
while the devotion which raises a man to this sixth sub-plane of the
heaven-world is entirely free from any such taint.
On
the other hand, this phase of devotion, which consists essentially
in the perpetual adoration of a personal [page
52] deity, must
be carefully distinguished from those still higher forms which find
their expression in performing some definite work for the deity's
sake. A few examples of the cases observed on this sub-plane will
perhaps show these distinctions more clearly than any mere description
can do.
A
fairly large number of entities whose mental activities work themselves
out on this level are drawn from the oriental religions; but only
those are included who have the characteristic of pure but comparatively
unreasoning and unintelligent devotion. Worshippers of Vishnu,
both
in his avatâr of Krishna and otherwise, as well as a few followers
of Shiva, are to be found here, each wrapped up in the self-woven
cocoon of his own thoughts, alone with his own god, and oblivious
of the rest of mankind, except in so far as his affections may associate
with him in his adoration those whom he loved on earth. A Vaishnavite,
for example, was noticed wholly absorbed in the ecstatic worship
of
the very same image of Vishnu to which he had made offerings during
life.
Some
of the most characteristic examples of this plane are to be found
among women, who indeed form a very large majority of its inhabitants.
Among others there was a Hindu woman who had glorified her husband
into a divine being, and also thought of the child Krishna as playing
with her own children, but while these latter were thoroughly human
and real, the child Krishna was obviously nothing but the semblance
of a blue wooden image galvanized into life. Krishna also appeared
in her heaven under another form — that of an effeminate young
man playing on a flute; but she was not in the least confused or
troubled by this double manifestation. Another woman, who was a
worshipper
of Shiva, had confounded the god with her husband, looking upon the
latter as a manifestation of the [page
53] former, so that the one seemed to be constantly changing
into the other. Some Buddhists also are found upon this subdivision,
but apparently exclusively those less instructed ones who regard the
Buddha rather as an object of adoration than as a great teacher.
The
Christian religion also contributes many of the inhabitants of this
plane. The un-intellectual devotion which is exemplified on the one
hand by the illiterate Roman Catholic peasant, and on the other by
the earnest and sincere "soldier" of the Salvation Army, seems to
produce results very similar to those already described, for these
people also are found wrapped up in contemplation of their ideas of
Christ or his mother respectively. For instance, an Irish peasant
was seen absorbed in the deepest adoration of the Virgin Mary, whom
he imaged as standing on the moon after the fashion of Titian's "
Assumption," but holding out her hands and speaking to him. A mediaeval
monk was found in ecstatic contemplation of Christ crucified, and
the intensity of his yearning love and pity was such that as he watched
the blood dropping from the wounds of the figure of his Christ the
stigmata reproduced themselves upon his own mind-body.
Another
man seemed to have forgotten the sad story of the crucifixion, and
thought of his Christ only as glorified on his throne, with the crystal
sea before him, and all around a vast multitude of worshippers, among
whom he himself stood with his wife and family. His affection for
these relatives was very deep, yet his thoughts were more occupied
in adoration of the Christ, though his conception of his deity was
so material that he imaged him as constantly changing kaleidoscopically
backwards and forwards between the form of a man and that of the lamb
bearing the flag which we often see represented in church window.
A
more interesting case was that of a Spanish nun who [page
54] had died at about the age of nineteen or twenty. In
her heaven she carried herself back to the date of Christ's life upon
earth, and imagined herself as accompanying him through the chain
of events recounted in the gospels, and after his crucifixion taking
care of his mother the Virgin Mary. Not unnaturally, perhaps, her
pictures of the scenery and costumes of Palestine were entirely inaccurate,
for the Saviour and his disciples wore the dress of Spanish peasants,
while the hills round Jerusalem were mighty mountains clothed with
vineyards, and the olive trees were hung with grey Spanish moss. She
thought of herself as eventually martyred for her faith, and ascending
into heaven, but yet only to live over and over again this life in
which she so delighted.
A
quaint and pretty little example of the heaven-life of a child may
conclude our list of instances from this sub-plane. He had died at
the age of seven, and was occupied in re-enacting in the heaven-world
the religious stories which his Irish nurse had told him down here;
and best of all he loved to think of himself as playing with the infant
Jesus, and helping him to make those clay sparrows which the power
of the Christ-child is fabled to have brought to life and caused to
fly.
It
will be seen that the blind unreasoning devotion of which we have
been speaking does not at any time raise its votaries to any great
spiritual heights; but it must be remembered that in all cases they
are entirely happy and most fully satisfied, for what they receive
is always the highest which they are capable of appreciating. Nor
is it without a very good effect on their future career; for although
no amount of mere devotion such as this will ever develop intellect,
yet it does produce an increased capacity for a higher form of devotion,
and in most cases it leads also to purity of life. A person, therefore,
who lives such a life [page 55] and enjoys such a heaven as we have been describing, though he is
not likely to make rapid progress on the path of spiritual development,
is at least guarded from many dangers, for it is very improbable
that
in his next birth he should fall into any of the grosser sins, or
be drawn away from his devotional aspirations into a mere worldly
life of avarice, ambition, or dissipation. Nevertheless, a survey
of this sub-plane distinctly emphasizes the necessity of following
St Peter's advice, " Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge."
Since
such strange results seem to follow from crude forms of faith, one
looks with interest to see what effect is produced by the still cruder
materialism which not long ago was so painfully common in Europe.
Madame Blavatsky has stated in The
Key to Theosophy that in some cases a materialist has
no conscious life in the heaven-world, since he did not while on earth
believe in such a postmortem condition. It seems probable,
however, that our great founder was employing the word "materialist" in a much more restricted sense than that in which it is generally
used, since in the same volume she also asserts that for them no
conscious
life after death is possible at all, whereas it is a matter of common
knowledge among those whose nightly work lies upon the astral plane
that many of those whom we usually call materialists are to be met
with there, and are certainly not unconscious.
For
example, a prominent materialist intimately known to one of our members
was not long ago discovered by his friend upon the highest sub-plane
of the astral, where he had surrounded himself with his books, and
was continuing his studies almost as he might have done on earth.
On being questioned by his friend he readily admitted that the theories
which he had held while upon earth were confuted by the irresistible
logic of [page 56] facts;
but his own agnostic tendencies were still strong enough to make him
unwilling to accept what his friend told him as to the existence of
the still higher mental-plane. Yet there was certainly much in this
man's character which could find its full fruition only upon that
mental plane, and since his entire disbelief in any life after death
has not prevented his astral experiences, there seems no reason to
suppose that it can check the due working out of the higher forces
in him in the heaven-world hereafter.
Assuredly
he has lost much by his disbelief. No doubt, had he been able to
understand the beauty of the religious ideal, it would have called
forth in him
a mighty energy of devotion, the effect of which he would have been
reaping now. All that, which might have been his, is missing. But
his deep unselfish family affection, his earnest and tireless philanthropic
effort — these also were great outpourings of energy, which
must produce their result, and can produce it nowhere but upon the
mental plane. The absence of one kind of force cannot prevent the
action of the others.
Another
instance still more recently observed was that of a materialist who
on awakening upon the astral plane after death supposed himself to
be still alive, and merely experiencing an unpleasant dream. Fortunately
for him there was among the band of those able to function upon the
astral plane a son of an old friend of his, who was commissioned to
search for him and endeavour to render him some assistance. Naturally
enough, he at first supposed the young man to be merely a figure in
his dream; but upon receipt of a message from his old friend referring
to matters which had occurred before the birth of the messenger, he
was convinced of the reality of the plane upon which he found himself,
and [page 57] became
at once exceedingly eager to acquire all possible information about
it. The instruction which is being given to him under these conditions
will undoubtedly have a very great effect upon him, and will largely
modify not only the heaven-life which lies before him but also his
next incarnation upon earth.
What
is shown to us by these two and by many other examples need not after
all surprise us, for it is only what we might expect from our experience
upon the physical plane. We constantly find down here that nature
makes no allowance for our ignorance of her laws; if, under an impression
that fire does not burn, a man puts his hand into a flame, he is speedily
convinced of his mistake. In the same way a man's disbelief in a future
existence does not affect the facts of nature; and in some cases at
least he simply finds out after death that he was mistaken.
The
kind of materialism referred to by Madame Blavatsky in the remarks
above mentioned was therefore probably something much coarser and
more aggressive than ordinary agnosticism — something which
would render it exceedingly unlikely that a man who held it would
have any qualities requiring a life on the mental plane in which
to
work themselves out.
Fifth
Sub-plane; the Third Heaven.
The
chief characteristic of this subdivision may be defined as devotion
expressing itself in active work. The Christian on this plane, for
example, instead of merely adoring his Saviour, would think of himself
as going out into the world to work for him. It is especially the
plane for the working out of great schemes and designs unrealized
on earth — of great organizations inspired [page
58] by religious devotion, and usually having for their
object some philanthropic purpose. It must be borne in mind, however,
that ever as we rise higher greater complexity and variety is introduced,
so that though we may still be able to give a definite characteristic
as on the whole dominating the plane, we shall yet be more and more
liable to find variations and exceptions that do not so readily range
themselves under the general heading.
A
typical case, although somewhat above the average, was that of a man
who was found carrying out a grand scheme for the amelioration of
the condition of the lower classes. While a deeply religious man himself,
he had felt that the first step necessary in dealing with the poor
was to improve their physical condition; and the plan which he was
now working out in his heaven-life with triumphant success and loving
attention to every detail was one which had often crossed his mind
while on earth, though he had been quite unable there to take any
steps towards its realization.
His
idea had been that, if possessed of enormous wealth, he would buy
up and get into his own hands the whole of one of the smaller trades — one in which perhaps three or four large firms only were now
engaged; and he thought that by so doing he could effect very
large savings by doing away with competitive advertising and other
wasteful forms of trade rivalry, and thus be able, while supplying
goods to the public at the same price as now, to pay much better wages
to his workmen. It was part of his scheme to buy a plot of land and
erect upon it cottages for his workmen, each surrounded by its little
garden; and after a certain number of years' service, each workman
was to acquire a share in the profits of the business which would
be sufficient to provide for him in his old age. By working out this
system our philanthropist had hoped [page
59] to show to the world that there was an eminently practical
side to Christianity, and also to win the souls of his men to his
own faith out of gratitude for the material benefits they had received.
Another
not dissimilar case was that of an Indian prince whose ideal on earth
had been the divine hero-king, Râma, on whose example he had
tried to model his life and methods of government. Naturally down
here all sorts of untoward accidents had occurred, and many of his
schemes had consequently failed, but in the heaven-life everything
went well, and the greatest possible result followed every one of
his well-meant efforts — Râma of course personally advising
and directing his work, and receiving perpetual adoration from all
his devoted subjects.
A
curious and rather touching instance of personal religious work was
that of a woman who had been a nun, belonging to one not of the
contemplative
but of the working orders. She had evidently based her life upon
the text, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these
my brethren, ye have done it unto me," and now in the heaven-world
she was still carrying out to the fullest extent the injunctions of
her Lord, and was constantly occupied in healing the sick, in feeding
the hungry, and clothing and helping the poor — the peculiarity
of the case being that each of those to whom she had ministered at
once changed into the appearance of the Christ, whom she then worshipped
with fervent devotion.
An
instructive case was that of two sisters, both of whom had been intensely
religious; one of them had been a crippled invalid, and the other
had spent a long life in tending her. On earth they had often discussed
and planned what religious and philanthropic work they would carry
out if they were able, and now each is the most [page
60] prominent figure in the heaven of the other, the cripple
being well and strong, while each thinks of the other as joining her
in carrying out the unrealized wishes of her earth-life. This was
a very fine example of the calm continuity of life in the case of
people of unselfish aims; for the only difference that death had made
was to eliminate disease and suffering, and to render easy the work
which had heretofore been impossible.
On
this plane also the higher type of sincere and devoted missionary
activity finds expression. Of course the ordinary ignorant fanatic
never reaches this level, but a few of the noblest cases, such as
Livingstone, might be found here engaged in the congenial occupation
of converting multitudes of people to the particular religion which
they happened to advocate. One of the most striking of such cases
which came under notice was that of a Mohammedan, who imagined himself
as working most zealously at the conversion of the world, and its
government according to the most approved principles of the faith
of Islam.
It
appears that under certain conditions artistic capacity may also bring
its votaries to this sub-plane. But here a careful distinction must
be drawn. The artist or musician whose only object is the selfish
one of personal fame, or who habitually allows himself to be influenced
by feelings of professional jealousy, naturally generates no forces
which will bring him to the mental plane at all. On the other hand,
that grandest type of art whose disciples regard it as a mighty power
entrusted to them for the spiritual elevation of their fellows, will
express itself in even higher regions than this. But between these
two extremes those devotees of art who follow it for its own sake
or regard it as an offering to their deity, never thinking of its
effect on their fellows, may in some cases find their appropriate
heaven on this sub-plane.[page 61]
As
an example of this may be mentioned a musician of very religious
temperament who regarded all his labour of love simply as an offering
to the Christ,
and knew nothing of the magnificent arrangement of sound and colour
which his soul-inspiring compositions were producing in the matter
of the mental plane. Nor would all his enthusiasm be wasted and
fruitless,
for without his knowledge it was bringing joy and help to many, and
its results would certainly be to give him increased devotion and
increased musical capacity in his next birth: but without the still
wider aspiration to help humanity this kind of heaven-life might
repeat
itself almost indefinitely. Indeed, glancing back at the three planes
with which we have just been dealing, we may notice that they are
in all cases concerned with the working out of devotion to personalities — either to one's family and friends or to a personal deity
— rather than the wider devotion to humanity for its own sake
which finds its expression on the next sub-plane.
Fourth
Sub-Plane; The Fourth Heaven.
So
varied are the activities of this, the highest of the rûpa levels,
that it is difficult to group them under a single characteristic.
Perhaps they might best be arranged into four main divisions — unselfish pursuit of spiritual knowledge, high philosophic or scientific
thought, literary or artistic ability exercised for unselfish purposes,
and service for the sake of service. The exact definition of each
of these classes will be more readily comprehended when some examples
of each have been given.
Naturally
it is from those religions in which the necessity of obtaining spiritual
knowledge is recognized that most of the population of this sub-plane
is drawn. It will be remembered that on the sixth sub-plane we found
many [page 62] Buddhists
whose religion had chiefly taken the form of devotion to their great
leader as a person; here, on the contrary, we have these more intelligent
followers whose supreme aspiration was to sit at his feet and learn — who looked upon him in the light of a teacher rather than
as a being to be adored.
Now
in their heaven-life this highest wish is fulfilled; they find themselves
in very truth learning from the Buddha, and the image which they have
thus made of him is no empty form, but most assuredly through it shines
out the wonderful wisdom, power, and love of that mightiest of earth's
teachers. They are therefore acquiring fresh knowledge and wider views;
and the effect upon their next life cannot but be of the most marked
character. They will not perhaps remember any individual facts that
they may have learnt (though when such facts are presented to their
minds in a subsequent life they will grasp them with avidity and intuitively
recognize their truth), but the result of the teaching will be to
build into the ego a strong tendency to take broader and more philosophical
views on all such subjects.
It
will at once be seen how very definitely and unmistakably such a heaven-life
as this hastens the evolution of the ego; and once more our attention
is drawn to the enormous advantage gained by those who have accepted
the guidance of real, living and powerful teachers.
A
less developed type of this form of instruction is found in cases
in which some really great and spiritual writer has become to a
student
a living personality, and has taken on the aspect of a friend, forming
part of the student's mental life — an ideal figure in his musings.
Such an one may enter into the pupil's heaven-life and by virtue
of his own highly evolved soul may vivify the mental image of himself,
and under these happier circumstances further illuminate [page
63] the teachings in his own books, bringing out of them
the more hidden meanings.
Many
of the followers of the path of wisdom among the Hindus find their
heaven upon this plane — that is, if their teachers have been
men possessing any real knowledge. A few of the more advanced among
the Sûfis and Parsis are also here, and we still find some of
the early Gnostics whose spiritual development was such as to earn
for them a prolonged stay in this celestial region. But except for
this comparatively small number of Sûfis and Gnostics, neither
Mohammedanism nor Christianity seems to raise its followers to this
level, though some who nominally belong to these religions may be
carried on to this sub-plane by the presence in their character of
qualities which do not depend upon the teachings peculiar to their
religion.
In
this region we also find earnest and devoted students of Occultism
who are not yet so far advanced as to have earned the right and
the
power to forego their heaven-life for the good of the world. Among
these was one who in life had been personally known to some of
the
investigators — a Buddhist monk who had been an earnest student
of Theosophy, and had long cherished the hope of being one day privileged
to receive instruction directly from its Adept teachers. In his heaven-life
the Buddha was the dominant figure, while the two Masters who have
been most closely concerned with the Theosophical Society appeared
also as his lieutenants, expounding and illustrating his teaching.
All three of these images were very full of the power and wisdom
of
the great beings whom they represented, and the monk was therefore
definitely receiving real teaching upon occult subjects, the effect
of which would almost certainly be to bring him actually on to the
Path of Initiation in his next birth.
Another
instance from our ranks which was encountered [page
64] on this level illustrates the terrible effect of harbouring
unfounded and uncharitable suspicions. It was the case of a
devoted and self-sacrificing student who towards the end of her life
had unfortunately fallen into an attitude of quite unworthy and unjustifiable
distrust of the motives of her old friend and teacher Madame Blavatsky;
and it was sad to notice how this feeling had shut out to a considerable
extent the higher influence and teaching which she might have enjoyed
in her heaven-life. It was not that the influence and teaching were
in any way withheld from her, for that can never be; but that her
own mental attitude rendered her to some extent unreceptive of them.
She was of course quite unconscious of this, and seemed to herself
to be enjoying the fullest and most perfect communion with the Masters,
yet it was obvious to the investigators that but for this unfortunate
self-limitation she would have reaped far greater advantage from
her
stay on this level. A wealth of love and strength and knowledge almost
infinite lay there at her hand, but her own ingratitude had sadly
crippled her power to accept it.
It
will be understood that since there are other Masters of wisdom besides
those connected with our own movement, and other schools of occultism
working along the same general lines as that to which we belong, students
attached to some of these are also frequently met with upon this sub-plane.
Passing
now to the next class, that of high philosophic and scientific thought,
we find here many of those nobler and more unselfish thinkers who
seek insight and knowledge only for the purpose of enlightening and
helping their fellows. We are not including as students of philosophy
those men, either in the East or the West, who waste their time in
mere verbal argument and hair-splitting — for that is a form
of discussion which has its roots in selfishness and [page
65] conceit, and can therefore never help towards a real
understanding of the facts of the universe: for naturally such foolish
superficiality as this produces no results that can work themselves
out on the mental plane.
As
an instance of a true student noticed on this sub-plane we may mention
one of the later followers of the neo-platonic system, whose name
has fortunately been preserved to us in the surviving records of that
period. He had striven all through his earth-life really to master
the teachings of that school, and now his heaven-life was occupied
in unravelling its mysteries and in. endeavouring to understand its
bearing upon human life and development.
Another
case was that of an astronomer, who seemed to have begun life as orthodox,
but had gradually under the influence of his studies widened out into
Pantheism; in his heaven-life he was still pursuing these studies
with a mind full of reverence, and was undoubtedly gaining real knowledge
from those great orders of the Devas, through whom on this plane the
majestic cyclic movement of the mighty stellar influences seems to
express itself in ever-changing coruscations of all-penetrating living
light He was lost in contemplation of a vast panorama of whirling
nebulae and gradually-forming systems and worlds, and he appeared
to be groping after some dim idea as to the shape of the universe,
which he imagined as some vast animal. His thoughts surrounded him
as elemental forms shaped as stars, and one especial source of joy
to him consisted in listening to the stately rhythm of the music that
pealed out in mighty chorales from the moving orbs.
The third type of activity on this plane is that highest kind
of artistic and literary effort which is chiefly inspired by a desire
to elevate and spiritualize the race. Here we find all our greatest
musicians; on this sub-plane Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner and
others
are still flooding the [page 66] heaven-world with harmony far more
glorious even than the grandest which they were able to produce
when
on earth. It seems as if a great stream of divine music poured into
them from higher regions, and was, as it were, specialized by them
and made their own, to be then sent forth through all the plane
in
a great tide of melody which adds to the bliss of all around. Those
who are functioning in full consciousness on the mental plane will
clearly hear and thoroughly appreciate this magnificent outpouring,
but even the disembodied entities of this level, each of whom is
wrapped
up in his own thought-cloud, are also deeply affected by the elevating
and ennobling influence of its resonant melody.
The
painter and the sculptor also, if they have followed their respective
arts always with a grand, unselfish aim, are here constantly making
and sending forth all kinds of lovely forms for the delight and encouragement
of their fellow-men — the forms being simply artificial elementals
created by their thought. And not only may these beautiful conceptions
give deepest pleasure to those living entirely on the mental plane;
they may also in many cases be grasped by the minds of artists still
in the flesh — may act as inspirations to them, and so be reproduced
down here for the elevating and ennobling of that portion of humanity
which is struggling amid the turmoil of physical
life.
One touching and beautiful figure seen upon this plane was that of
a boy who had been a chorister, and had died at the age of fourteen.
His whole soul was full of music and of boyish devotion to his art,
deeply coloured with the thought that by it he was expressing the
religious longings of the multitude who crowded a vast cathedral,
and yet was at the same time pouring out to them celestial encouragement
and inspiration. He had known little enough save for this one great
gift of song, but he had used that gift [page 67] worthily, trying
to be the voice of the people to heaven and of heaven to the people,
and ever longing to know more music and render it more worthily for
the Church's sake. And so in this celestial life his wish was bearing
fruit, and over him was bending the quaint angular figure of a medieval
St. Cecilia, formed by his loving thought from the picture of her
in a stained glass window. But though the outer garb was thus a scarcely-artistic
representation
of a doubtful ecclesiastical legend, the reality which lay behind
it was living and glorious; for the childish thought-form
was vivified by one of the mighty archangels of the celestial hierarchy
of song, and through it he taught the chorister a grander strain
of
music than ever earth has known.
Here
also was one of earth's failures — for the tragedy of the earth-life
leaves strange marks sometimes even in the heavenly places. In the world
where all thoughts of loved ones smile upon man as friends, he was thinking
and writing in solitude. On earth he had striven to write a great book,
and for the sake of it had refused to use his literary power in making
mere sustenance from paltry hack-work; but none would look at his book,
and he walked the streets despairing, till sorrow and starvation closed
his eyes to earth. He had been lonely all his life — in his youth
friendless and shut out from family ties, and in his manhood able to
work only in his own way, pushing aside hands that would have led him
to a wider view of life's possibilities than the earthly paradise which
he longed to make for all.
Now,
as he thought and wrote, though there were none whom he had loved
as personal or ideal helpers who could make part of this his mental
life, he saw stretching before him the Utopia of which he had dreamed,
for which he had tried to live, and the vast thronging impersonal
multitudes whom he had longed to serve; and the joy of their joy [page
68] surged back on him and made his solitude a heaven.
When he is born again on earth he will surely return with power to
achieve as well as to plan, and this celestial vision will be partially
bodied forth in happier terrene lives.
Many
were found on this plane who during their earth-stay had devoted
themselves to helping men because they felt the tie of brotherhood — who
rendered service for the sake of service rather than because
they desired to please any particular deity. They were engaged in
working
out with full knowledge and calm wisdom vast schemes of beneficence,
magnificent plans of world improvement, and at the same time they
were maturing powers with which to carry them out hereafter on the
lower plane of physical life.
The
Reality of the Heaven-Life.
Critics
who have very imperfectly apprehended the Theosophical teaching on
the subject of the hereafter, have sometimes urged that the life
of
the ordinary person in the lower heaven-world is nothing but a dream
and an illusion — that when he imagines himself happy amidst
his family and friends, or carrying out his plans with such fulness
of joy and success, he is really only the victim of a cruel delusion:
and this is sometimes unfavourably contrasted with what is called
the "solid objectivity" of the heaven promised by orthodoxy. The reply
to such an objection is twofold: first, that when we are studying
the problems of the future life we are not concerned to know which
of two hypotheses put before us would be the pleasanter (that being,
after all, a matter of opinion), but rather which of them is the
true
one; and secondly, that when we enquire more fully into the facts
of the case we shall see that those who maintain the illusion theory
are looking at the matter from [page
69] quite a wrong point of view, and have utterly
misunderstood the facts.
As
to the first point, the actual state of affairs is quite easily discoverable
by those who have developed the power to pass consciously on to the
mental plane during life; and when so investigated it is found to
agree perfectly with the account given to us by the Masters of Wisdom
through our great founder and teacher Madame Blavatsky. This at once
disposes of the " solid objectivity " theory mentioned above, and
transfers the onus of proof to the shoulders of our orthodox friends.
As to the second point, if the contention be that on the lower levels
of the heaven-world truth in its fulness is not yet known to man,
and that consequently illusion still exists there, we must frankly
admit that that is so. But that is not what is usually meant by those
who bring forward this objection; they are generally oppressed by
a feeling that the heaven-life will be more illusory and useless than
the physical — an idea than which nothing could be more entirely
opposed to the fact.
Is
it contended that on that plane we make our own surroundings, and
for that reason see only a very small part of the plane ? Surely
down
here also the world of which a person is sensible is never the whole
of the outer world, but only so much of it as his senses, his
intellect, his education, enable him to take in. It is obvious that
during earth-life the average person's conception of everything around
him is really quite a wrong one — empty, imperfect, inaccurate
in a dozen ways ; for what does he know of the great forces —
etheric, astral, mental — which lie behind everything he sees,
and in fact form by far the most important part of it? What does
he know, as a rule, even of the more recondite physical facts which
surround
him and meet him at every step that he takes ? The truth is that
here, as in his heaven-life, he lives in a world which is very largely
of
his own [page 70] creation.
He does not realize it, either there or here, but that is only because
of his own ignorance — because he knows no better.
Is
it said that in the heaven-world a man takes his thoughts for real
things? He is quite right; they are real things, and on this,
the thought-plane, nothing but thought can be real. There we
recognize that great fact — here we do not; on which plane,
then, is the delusion greater ? Those thoughts of his are indeed realities,
and are capable of producing the most striking results upon living
men — results which can never be otherwise than beneficial,
because upon that high plane there can be none but loving thought.
Thus it will be seen that the theory that the heaven-life is an illusion
is merely the result of a misconception, and shows imperfect acquaintance
with its conditions and possibilities; the truth is that the higher
we rise - the nearer we draw to the one reality.
It
will perhaps assist the beginner to comprehend how real and how entirely
natural is the higher portion of a man's life if he regards
it simply as the result of the earlier portion spent upon the two
lower planes. We all know well that our highest ideals are never realized,
that our highest aspirations never bear full fruit down here. So that
it would seem as though in this way some efforts were fruitless, some
force was lost. But we know that cannot be, for the law of the conservation
of energy holds good on the higher planes just as on the lower. Much
of that higher spiritual energy which man pours forth cannot react
upon him while in earth-life, for until his higher principles are
freed from the incubus of the flesh, they are unable to respond to
these far finer and more subtle vibrations. But in the heaven-life
for the first time all this hindrance is removed, and the accumulated
energy immediately pours itself forth in the inevitable reaction which
the law of [page
71] eternal justice demands. As Browning has grandly phrased
it—
There
shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before ;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs: in the heaven a perfect round.
All
we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not in its semblance, but itself: no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The
high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once ; we shall hear it by-and-by.
Another
point worth bearing in mind is that this system upon which nature
has arranged the life after death is the only imaginable one which
could fulfil its object of making every one happy to the fullest
extent
of his capacity for happiness. If the joy of heaven were of one particular
type only, as it is according to the orthodox theory, there must
always
be some who would weary of it, some who would be incapable of participating
in it, either from want of taste in that particular direction,
or
from lack of the necessary education — to say nothing of that
other obvious fact, that if this condition of affairs were eternal,
the grossest injustice [page 72]
must be perpetrated by giving practically the same reward to all who
enter, no matter what their respective deserts might be.
Again,
what other arrangement with regard to relatives and friends could
possibly be equally satisfactory ? If the departed were able to follow
the fluctuating fortunes of their friends on earth, happiness would
be impossible for them ; if, without knowing what was happening to
them, they had to wait until the death of those friends before meeting
them, there would be a painful period of suspense, often extending
over many years, while the friend would in many cases arrive so much
changed as to be no longer sympathetic.
On
the system so wisely provided for us by nature every one of these
difficulties is avoided; a man decides for himself
both the length
and the character of his heaven-life by the causes which he himself
generates during his earth-life; therefore he cannot
but have exactly
the amount which he has deserved, and exactly that quality of joy
which is best suited to his idiosyncrasies. Those
whom he loves most
he has ever with him, and always at their noblest and best; while
no shadow of discord or change can ever come between
them, since he
receives from them all the time exactly what he wishes. In point
of fact, the arrangement really made is infinitely
superior to anything
which the imagination of man has been able to offer us in its place;
as indeed we might have expected, for all those speculations were
man's idea of what is best; but the truth is God's idea.
The
Renunciation of Heaven.
It
has long been understood among students of occultism that among the
possibilities of more rapid progress which come to a man as he
advances
is that of "renouncing the reward of Devachan" as it has been called [page 73] — that
is, of giving up the life of bliss in the heaven-world between two
incarnations in order to return more rapidly to carry on work on
the
physical plane. The phrase quoted is not a very good one, for we
shall be much more likely to arrive at a correct understanding of
the heaven-life
if we look upon it as the necessary result of the earth-life,
rather than as its reward. In the course of his physical existence
a man sets in motion by his higher thoughts and aspirations what may
be described as a certain amount of spiritual force, which will react
upon him when he reaches the mental plane. If there be but little
of this force, it will be comparatively soon exhausted, and the heaven-life.
will be a short one; if, on the contrary, a great deal has been generated,
a corresponding space of time will be needed for its full working,
and the heaven will be very greatly prolonged.
As
a man develops in spirituality, therefore, his lives in the heaven-world
will become longer, but it must not be supposed that his progress
is thereby delayed or his opportunities of usefulness lessened.
For
all but very highly advanced persons the heaven-life is absolutely
necessary, as it is only under its conditions that their aspirations
can be developed into faculty, their experiences into wisdom; and
the progress which is thus made by the soul is far greater than
would
be possible if by some miracle he was enabled to remain in physical
incarnation for the entire period. If it were otherwise, obviously
the whole law of nature would stultify itself, for the nearer it
came
to the attainment of its great object, the more determined and formidable
would be its efforts to defeat itself — hardly a reasonable
view to take of a law which we know to be an expression of the most
exalted wisdom!
The
possibility of the renunciation of this heaven-life is by no means
within the reach of every one. The Great Law
[page 74] permits no man to renounce blindly that of which
he is ignorant, nor to depart from the ordinary course of evolution
unless and until it is certain that such departure will be for his
ultimate benefit.
The
general rule is that no one is in a position to renounce the bliss
of heaven until he has experienced it during earth-life — until
he is sufficiently developed to be able to raise his consciousness
to that plane, and bring back with him a clear and full memory
of
that glory which so far transcends terrestrial conception.
A
little thought will make obvious the reason and the justice of this.
It might be said that since it is the progress of the soul which
is
really in question, it would be sufficient for him to understand
on his own plane the desirability of making the sacrifice of celestial
bliss, and then to compel his lower self to act in accordance with
his decision. Yet that would hardly be strict justice, for the
enjoyment
of heavenly bliss on the rûpa levels, though it belongs to the
ego, belongs to him only as manifested through his personality; it
is the life of that personality, with all its familiar personal surroundings,
that is carried on in the lower heaven-world. And so before the renunciation
of all this can take place, that personality must realize clearly
what it is that is being given up; the lower mind must be in accord
with the higher on this subject.
Now
such realization obviously involves the possession during earth-life
of a consciousness on the mental plane equivalent to that which
the
person in question would have after death. But it must be remembered
that the evolution of consciousness takes place from below upward,
as it were, and that the comparatively undeveloped majority of
mankind
are effectively conscious as yet only in the physical body. Their
astral bodies are for the most part still shapeless and unorganized — bridges of communication indeed [page
75] between the ego and its physical vesture, and even
vehicles for the reception of sensation, but in no sense as yet instruments
in the hand of the real man or adequate expressions of his future
powers on that plane.
In
the more advanced races of mankind we find the astral body much more
developed, and the consciousness in it in many cases fairly complete
potentially, though even then in most cases the man is entirely
self-centred — conscious of his own thoughts mainly, and but little of his
actual surroundings. To advance still further, some few of those
who have taken up the study of occultism have been regularly awakened
on that plane, and have therefore entered upon the full use of
their
astral faculties, and are deriving in many ways great benefit therefrom.
It
does not, however, necessarily follow that such men should at first,
or even for some considerable time, remember upon the physical plane
the activities and experiences of their astral life. As a general
rule they would do so partially and intermittently, but there are
cases in which for various reasons practically nothing worth calling
a memory of that higher existence finds its way through into the physical
brain.
Any
kind of definite consciousness on the mental plane would, of course,
indicate still further advancement, and in the case of a man who was
developing quite normally and regularly we should expect to find such
consciousness dawning only as the connection between the astral and
the physical became fairly well established. But in this one-sided
and artificial condition which we call modern civilization, people
do not always develop quite regularly and normally, and so there are
cases to be found in which a considerable amount of consciousness
on the mental plane has been acquired and duly linked on to the astral
life, and yet no knowledge of all this higher existence ever gets
through into the physical brain at all.[page
76]
Such
cases are very rare, but they certainly do exist, and in them we
see at once the possibility of an exception to our rule. A personality
of this type might be sufficiently developed to taste the indescribable
bliss of heaven and so acquire the right to renounce it, while
he
was able to bring the memory of it no farther down than into his
astral life. But since by the hypothesis that astral life would
be one of
full and perfect consciousness for the personality, such recollection
would be amply sufficient to fulfil the requirements of justice,
even
though no shadow of all this ever came through into the physical
waking consciousness. The great point to bear in mind is that since
it is
the personality that must resign, it is also the personality that
must experience, and it must bring back the recollection to some
plane
on which it functions normally and in full consciousness; but that
plane need not be the physical if these conditions are fulfilled
upon
the astral. Such a case would be unlikely to occur except among those
who were already at least probationary pupils of one of the Masters
of Wisdom.
The
man who wishes to perform this great feat must therefore work with
the most intense earnestness to make himself a worthy instrument
in
the hands of those who help the world — must throw himself with
the most devoted fervour into labour for the spiritual good of others,
not arrogantly assuming that he is already fit for so great an honour,
but rather humbly hoping that perhaps after a life or two of strenuous
effort his Master may tell him that the time has come when to him
also this may be a possibility.
THE
HIGHER HEAVEN-WORLD
We
now turn from the four lower or rûpa levels of the mental plane,
on which man functions in his temporary personality, to the consideration
of the three higher or arûpa [page
77] levels, his true and relatively permanent home. Here,
so far as he sees at all, he sees clearly, for he has risen above
the illusions of personality and the refracting medium of the lower
self, and though his consciousness may be dim, dreamily unobservant
and scarcely awake, yet his vision is at least true, however limited.
The conditions of consciousness are so far away from all with which
we are familiar down here that all terms known to psychology are useless
and misleading. This has been called the realm of the noumenal in
contrast with the phenomenal, of the formless in contrast with the
formed; but it is still a world of manifestation, however real when
opposed to the unrealities of lower states, and it still has forms,
however rare in their materials and subtle in their essence.
After
the period of what we usually call the heaven-life is over, there
is still another phase of existence for the soul before it is re-born
on earth, and though in the case of most people this stage is a comparatively
short one, we must not ignore it if we wish to have a complete
conception of man's superphysical life.
We
are perpetually misunderstanding the life of man because we are in
the habit of taking a partial view of it, and entirely disregarding
its real nature and object. We generally look at it, in fact, from
the point of view of the physical body, and not in the least from
that of the soul; and we therefore get the whole thing utterly out
of proportion. Each movement of the ego towards these lower planes
and back is in reality a vast circular sweep; we take a little fragment
of the lower arc of this circle and regard it as a straight line,
attaching quite undue importance to its beginning and ending, while
the real turning-point of the circle naturally entirely escapes us.
Think
of the matter for a moment as it must seem to the true man on his
own plane, as soon as he begins to be at all [page
78] clearly conscious there. In obedience to the desire
for manifestation which he finds within him, which is impressed upon
him by that law of evolution which is the will of the Logos, he copies
the action of that Logos by pouring himself forth into lower planes.
In
the course of this process he clothes himself with matter of the
various planes into which he passes — mental, astral, and physical in
turn, all the while steadily pressing outward. Through the earlier
part of that little fragment of existence on the physical plane
which
we call his life, the outward force is still strong, but at about
the middle of it, in ordinary cases, that force becomes exhausted,
and the great inward sweep begins.
Not
that there is any sudden or violent change, for this is not an angle,
but still part of the curve of the same circle — exactly corresponding
to the moment of aphelion in a planet's course round its orbit. Yet
it is the real turning-point of that little cycle of evolution,
though
with us it is usually not marked in any way. In the old Indian scheme
of life it was marked as the end of the grihastha or
householder period of the man's earthly existence.
From
this point there should be nothing but a steady drawing inward of
the whole force of the man, and his attention ought to be more
and
more withdrawn from mere earthly things, and concentrated on those
of higher planes — from which we at once see how exceedingly
ill-adapted to real progress are the modern conditions of European
life.
The
point at which the man drops his physical body is not a specially
important one in this arc of evolution — by no means so important
as the next change, which we might call his death on the astral plane
and his birth in the heaven-world, although really it is simply
the
transfer of the consciousness from astral matter to mental matter
in the course [page 79] of
the same steady withdrawal of which we have already spoken.
The
final result of the life is known only when in that process of withdrawal
the consciousness is once more centred in the ego in his home in the
higher heaven-world; then it is seen what new qualities he has acquired
in the course of that particular little cycle of his evolution. At
that time also a glimpse of the life as a whole is obtained; the soul
has for a moment a flash of clearer consciousness, in which he sees
the results of the life just completed, and something of what will
follow from it in his next birth.
This
glimpse can hardly be said to involve a knowledge of the nature of
the next incarnation, except in the vaguest and most general sense;
no doubt the main object of the coming life would be seen, but the
vision would be chiefly valuable to the soul as a lesson in the karmic
result of his action in the past. It offers him an opportunity, of
which he takes more or less advantage according to the stage of development
to which he has already attained.
At
first he makes little of it, since he is but very dimly conscious
and very poorly fitted to apprehend facts and their varied inter-relations;
but gradually his power to appreciate what he sees increases, and
later the ability comes to remember such flashes at the end of previous
lives, and to compare them, and so to estimate the progress which
he is making along the road which he has to traverse.
Third
Sub-Plane; the Fifth Heaven.
This,
the lowest of the arûpa sub-planes, is also by far the most
populous of all the regions with which we are acquainted, for here
are present almost all the sixty thousand millions of souls who are
said to be engaged in the present human evolution — all, in
fact, except the comparatively small [page
80] number
who are capable of functioning on the second and first sub-planes.
Each soul is represented by an ovoid form — at first a mere
film, colourless and almost invisible, of most tenuous consistency;
but, as the ego develops, this body begins to show a shimmering iridescence
like a soap-bubble, colours playing over its surface like the changing
hues made by sunlight on the spray of a waterfall.
Composed
of matter inconceivably fine, delicate and ethereal, intensely alive
and pulsating with living fire, it becomes as its evolution proceeds
a radiant globe of flashing colours, its high vibrations sending
ripples
of changing hues over its surface — hues of which earth knows
nothing — brilliant, soft and luminous beyond the power of language
to describe. Take the colours of an Egyptian sunset and add to them
the wonderful softness of an English sky at eventide — raise
these as high above themselves in light and translucency and splendour
as they are above the colours given by the cakes of a child's paint-box
— and even then none who have not seen can image the beauty
of these radiant orbs which flash into the field of clairvoyant vision
as it is lifted to the level of this supernal world.
All
these causal bodies are filled with living fire drawn from a higher
plane, with which the globe appears to be connected by a quivering
thread of intense light, vividly recalling to the mind the words
of
the stanzas of Dzyan, " the Spark hangs from the Flame by the finest
thread of Fohat"; and as the soul grows and is able to receive
more and more from the inexhaustible ocean of the Divine Spirit which
pours down through the thread as a channel, the latter expands and
gives wider passage to the flood, till on the next sub-plane it might
be imaged as a water-spout connecting earth and sky, and higher still
as itself a great globe through which rushes the living spring, until
the causal body seems to melt into the in-pouring light. Once more
the [page 81] Stanza
says it for us: " The thread between the Watcher and his shadow becomes
more strong and radiant with every change. The morning sunlight has
changed into noon-day glory. This is thy present wheel, said the
Flame
to the Spark. Thou art myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed
myself in thee, and thou art my vahan to the day, ' Be-with-us,'
when
thou shall re-become myself and others, thyself and me."
The
souls who are connected with a physical body are distinguishable
from those enjoying the disembodied state by a difference in the
types
of vibrations set up on the surface of the globes, and it is therefore
easy on this plane to see at a glance whether an individual is
or
is not in incarnation at the time. The immense majority, whether
in or out of the body, are but dreamily semi-conscious, though
few are
now in the condition of mere colourless films; those who are fully
awake are marked and brilliant exceptions, standing out amid the
less
radiant crowds like stars of the first magnitude, and between these
and the least-developed are ranged every variety of size and beauty
of colour — each thus representing the exact stage of evolution
at which he has arrived.
The
majority are not yet sufficiently definite, even in such consciousness
as they possess, to understand the purpose or the laws of the evolution
in which they are engaged; they seek incarnation in obedience to the
impulse of the Cosmic Will, and also to Tanhâ, the blind
thirst for manifested life — a desire to find some region in
which they can feel and be conscious of living. For in their earlier
stages these undeveloped souls cannot feel the intensely rapid and
piercing vibrations of the highly-refined matter of their own plane;
the strong and coarse but comparatively slow movements of the heavier
matter of the physical plane are the only ones-that can evoke any
response from them. So it is only upon [page
82] the physical plane that they feel themselves to be
alive at all, and this explains their strong craving for re-birth
into earth-life. Thus for a time their desire agrees exactly with
the law of their evolution. They can develop only by means of these
impacts from without, to which they are gradually roused to respond,
and in this early stage they can receive them only in earth-life.
By slow degrees their power of response increases, and is awakened
first to the higher and finer of the physical vibrations, and still
more slowly to those of the astral plane. Then their astral bodies,
which until now have been merely bridges to convey sensations to the
soul, gradually become definite vehicles which they can use, and their
consciousness begins to be centred rather in their emotions than in
mere physical sensations.
At
a later stage, but always by the same process of learning to respond
to impacts from without, the souls learn to centre their consciousness
in the mental body — to live in and according to the mental
images which they have formed for themselves, and so to govern their
emotions by the mind. Yet further on the long, long road the centre
shifts to the causal body, and the souls realize their true
life. When that time comes they will be found upon a higher sub-plane
than this, and the lower earthly existence will be no longer necessary
for them; but for the present we are thinking of the less evolved
majority, who still put forth as groping, waving tentacles into the
ocean of existence the personalities which are themselves on the lower
planes of life, though they are as yet in no sense aware that these
personalities are the means whereby they are to be nourished and to
grow. They see nothing of their past or their future, not being yet
conscious on their own plane. Still, as they are slowly drawing in
experience and assimilating it, there grows up a sense that certain
things are good to do and others bad, and this expresses itself imperfectly
in the connected personality [page
83] as the beginning of a conscience, a feeling of right
and wrong: and gradually, as they develop, this sense more and more
clearly and clearly formulates itself in the lower nature, and becomes
a less inefficient guide of conduct.
By
means of the opportunities given by the flash of fuller consciousness
to which we have previously referred, the most advanced souls of this
sub-plane develop to a point at which they are engaged in studying
their past, tracing out the causes set going in it, and learning much
from the retrospection, so that the impulses sent downwards become
clearer and more definite, and translate themselves in the lower consciousness
as firm convictions and imperative intuitions.
It
is perhaps scarcely necessary to repeat that the thought-images of
the rûpa levels are not carried into the higher heaven-world;
all illusion now is past, and each soul knows his real kindred, sees
them and is seen in his own royal nature, as the true immortal
man
that passes on from life to life, with all the ties intact that are
knit to his real being.
Second
Sub-Plane; the Sixth Heaven.
From
the densely-thronged region which we have been considering we pass
into a more thinly-populated world, as out of a great city into a
peaceful country-side; for at the present stage of human evolution
only a small minority of individuals have risen to this loftier level
where even the least advanced is definitely self-conscious, and also
conscious of his surroundings. Able at least to some extent to review
the past through which he has come, the soul on this level is aware
of the purpose and method of evolution ; he knows that he is engaged
in a work of self-development, and recognizes the stages of physical
and post-mortem life through which he passes in his lower vehicles.
The personality with [page 84]]
which he is connected is seen by him as part of himself, and
he endeavours to guide it, using his knowledge of the past as a store
of experience from which he formulates principles of conduct, clear
and immutable, convictions of right and wrong. These he sends down
into his lower mind, superintending and directing its activities.
While he continually fails in the earlier part of his life on this
sub-plane to make the lower mind understand logically the foundations
of the principles he impresses on it, he yet very definitely succeeds
in making the impression, and such abstract ideas as truth, justice
and honour become unchallenged and ruling conceptions in the lower
mental life.
There
are rules of conduct enforced by social, national, and religious sanctions,
by which a man guides himself in daily life, which may yet be swept
away by some rush of temptation, some overmastering surge of passion
and desire; but there are some things an evolved man cannot do — things which are against his very nature; he cannot lie, or
betray, or do a dishonourable action. Into the inmost fibres of his
being certain principles are wrought, and to act against them is
an
impossibility, no matter what may be the strain of circumstance or
the torrent .of temptation; for these things are of the life of the
soul. While, however, he thus succeeds in guiding his lower vehicle,
his knowledge of it and its doings is often far from precise and
clear.
He sees the lower planes but dimly, understanding their principles
rather than their details, and part of his evolution on this plane
consists of coming more and more consciously into direct touch with
the personality which so imperfectly represents him below.
It
will be understood from this that only such souls as are deliberately
aiming at spiritual growth live on this plane, and they have in consequence
become largely receptive of influences from the planes above them.
The channel of [page 85] communication
grows and enlarges, and a fuller flood pours through. The thought
under this influence takes on a singularly clear and piercing quality,
even in the less developed, and the effect of this in the lower mind
shows itself as a tendency to philosophic and abstract thinking. In
the more highly evolved the vision is far-reaching : it ranges with
clear insight over the past, recognizing the causes set up, their
working out, and what remains still unexhausted of their effects.
The
souls living on this plane have wide opportunities for growth when
freed from the physical body, for here they may receive instructions
from more advanced entities, coming into direct touch with their teachers.
No longer by thought-pictures, but by a flashing luminousness impossible
to describe, the very essence of the idea flies like a star from one
soul to the other, its correlations expressing themselves as light
waves pouring out from the central star, and needing no separate enunciation.
A thought is like a light placed in a room ; it shows all things round
it, but requires no words to describe them.
First
Sub-Plane : The Seventh Heaven
This,
the most glorious level of the mental world, has but few denizens
as yet from our humanity, for on its heights dwell none but the Masters
of Wisdom and Compassion, and their initiated pupils. Of the beauty
of form and colour. and sound here no words can speak, for mortal
language has no terms in which those radiant splendours may find expression.
Enough that they are, and that some of our race are wearing
them, the earnest of what others shall be, the fruition of which the
seed was sown on lowlier planes. These have accomplished the mental
evolution, so that in them the higher shines out ever through the
[page 86] lower; from
their eyes the illusion-veil of personality has been lifted, and they
know and realize that they are not the lower nature, but only use
it as a vehicle of experience. It may still have power in the less
evolved of them to shackle and to hamper, but they can never fall
into the blunder of confusing the vehicle with the self behind it.
From this they are saved by carrying their consciousness through unbroken,
not only from day to day but from life to life, so that past lives
are not so much looked back upon as always present in the consciousness,
the man feeling them as one life rather than as many.
At
this height the soul is conscious of the lower heaven-world as well
as of his own, and if he has any manifestations there as a thought-form
in the heaven-life of his friends, he can make the fullest use of
them. On the third sub-plane, and even in the lower part of the second,
his consciousness of the sub-planes below him was still dim, and his
action in the thought-form largely instinctive and automatic. But
as soon as he got well into the second sub-plane his vision rapidly
became clearer, and he recognized the thought-forms with pleasure
as vehicles through which he was able to express more of himself in
certain ways than he could through his personality.
Now
that he is functioning in the causal body amidst the magnificent light
and splendour of the highest heaven, his consciousness is instantaneously
and perfectly active at any point in the lower divisions to which
he wills to direct it, and he, therefore, can intentionally project
additional energy into such a thought-form when he wishes to use it
for the purpose of teaching.
From
this highest level of the mental world come down most of the influences
poured out by the Masters of Wisdom as they work for the evolution
of the human race, acting directly on the souls of men, shedding on
them the inspiring [page 87]
energies which stimulate spiritual growth, which enlighten the intellect
and purify the emotions. Hence genius receives its illumination; here
all upward efforts find their guidance. As the sun-rays fall everywhere
from one centre, and each body that receives them uses them after
its nature, so from the Elder Brothers of the race fall on all souls
the light and life which it is their function to dispense; and each
uses as much as it can assimilate, and thereby grows and evolves.
Thus, as everywhere else, the highest glory of the heavenly world
is found in the glory of service, and they who have accomplished the
mental evolution are the fountains from which flows strength for those
who still are climbing.
II.
NON-HUMAN.
When
we attempt to describe the non-human inhabitants of the mental plane,
we at once find ourselves face to face with difficulties of the
most
insuperable character. For in touching the seventh heaven we come
into contact for the first time with a plane which is cosmic in
its
extent — on which, therefore, may be met many an entity which
mere human language has no words to portray. For the purposes of
our present paper it will probably be best to put aside altogether
.those
vast hosts of beings whose range is cosmic, and confine our remarks
strictly to the inhabitants peculiar to the mental plane of our own
chain of worlds. It may be remembered that in the manual on The
Astral Plane the same course was adopted, no attempt being made
to describe visitors from other planets and systems; and although
such visitors as were there only occasional would here be very much
more frequent, it seems best in this case also to adhere to the same
rule. A few [page
88] words, therefore,
upon the elemental essence of the plane and the sections of the great
Deva kingdom which are especially connected with it will be as much
as it will be useful to give here; and the extreme difficulty of presenting
even these comparatively simple ideas will conclusively show how impossible
it would be to deal with others which could not but be far more complicated.
The
Elemental Essence
It
may be remembered that in one of the earlier letters received from
an Adept teacher the remark was made that to comprehend the condition
of the first and second of the elemental kingdoms was impossible
except
to an initiate — an observation which shows how partial must
be the success which can attend any effort to describe them down
here upon the physical plane. It will be well first of all that we
should
endeavour to form as clear an idea in our minds as possible of what
elemental essence really is, since this is a point upon which much
confusion often seems to exist, even amongst those who have made
considerable
study of Theosophical literature.
What
it is
Elemental
essence, then, is merely a name applied during certain early stages
of its evolution to the monadic essence, which in its turn may
be
defined as the outpouring of the Divine Life from the Second Logos
into matter. We are all familiar with the fact that before this
outpouring
arrives at the stage of individualization at which it forms the causal
body of a man, it has passed through and ensouled in turn six lower
phases of evolution —the animal, vegetable, mineral and three
elemental [page 89] kingdoms.
When energizing through those respective stages it has sometimes
been called the animal, vegetable or mineral monad — though this
term is distinctly misleading, since long before it arrives at any
of these kingdoms it has become not one but many monads.
The name was, however, adopted to convey the idea that, though differentiation
in the monadic essence had already long ago set in, it had not yet
been carried to the extent of individualization. Now when this monadic
essence is energizing through the three great elemental kingdoms
which.
precede the mineral, it is called by the name of "elemental essence."
The
Veiling of the Spirit.
Before,
however, the nature of the monadic essence and the manner in which
it manifests itself on the various planes can be understood, the method
in which spirit enfolds itself in its descent into matter must be
realized. We are not now dealing with the original formation of the
matter of the planes, but simply with the descent of a new wave of
evolution into matter already existing.
Before
the period of which we are speaking, this wave of life has spent countless
ages evolving, in a manner of which we can have very little comprehension,
through the successive encasements of atoms, molecules and cells;
but we will leave all that earlier part of its stupendous history
out of account for the moment, and consider only its descent into
the matter of planes somewhat more within the grasp of human intellect,
though still far above the merely physical level.
Be
it understood, then, that when spirit resting on any -plane (it matters
not which), on its path downward into matter, is driven by the resistless
force of its own [page 90] evolution
to pass onward to the plane next below, it must, in order to manifest
itself there, enfold itself in at least the atomic matter of that
lower plane — draw round itself as a body a veil of that matter,
to which it will act as soul or energizing force. Similarly, when
it continues its descent to a third plane, it must draw round itself
some of its matter, and we shall have then an entity whose
body or outer covering consists of the atomic matter of that third
plane.
But
the force energizing in this entity — its soul, so to speak
— will not be spirit in the condition in which it was upon the
higher plane on which we first found it; it will be that spirit plus
the veil of the atomic matter of the second plane through which
it has passed. When a still further descent is made to a fourth plane,
the entity becomes still more complex, for it will then have a body
of the matter of that fourth plane, ensouled by spirit already twice
veiled, in the atomic matter of the second and third planes. It will
be seen that since this process repeats itself for each plane of the
solar system, by the time the original force reaches our physical
level it is so thoroughly veiled that it is small wonder that men
often fail to recognize it as spirit at all.
For
example, let us suppose the ordinary untrained clairvoyant trying
to investigate the mineral monad — to examine the life-force
behind the mineral kingdom. The sight of such an one would be practically
certain to be limited to the astral plane, and would quite probably
be exceedingly imperfect even there; so to him that force would
appear
simply astral. But a trained student, examining it with higher power,
would see that what the clairvoyant had taken for astral force
was
merely astral atomic matter set in motion by a force coming thither
from the atomic part of the mental plane. The more advanced student
would be able [page 91] to see that that
atomic mental matter in its turn was only a vehicle in which something
from the highest buddhic sub-plane was working, while the Adept would
perceive that the buddhic matter was but the vehicle of the nirvanic,
and that the force which entered into and worked through all these
successive veils came in reality from outside this cosmic-prakritic
plane altogether, and was in truth simply one of the manifestations
of the Divine Force.
The
Elemental Kingdoms.
The
elemental essence which we find on the mental plane constitutes the
first and second of the great elemental kingdoms. A wave of the
Divine
Life, having finished in some previous eon its downward evolution
through the buddhic plane, pours down into the seventh heaven,
and
ensouls great masses of the atomic mental matter, thus becoming the
elemental essence of the first great kingdom. In this, its simplest
condition, it does not combine the atoms into molecules in order
to
form a body for itself, but simply applies by its attraction an immense
compressing force to them. We may imagine the force, on first reaching
this plane on its downward swoop, to be entirely unaccustomed to
its
vibrations, and unable at first to respond to them. During the eon
which it spends on this level, its evolution will consist in accustoming
itself to vibrate at all rates which are possible there, so that
at
any moment it can ensoul and use any combination of the matter of
that plane. During this long period of evolution it will have taken
upon itself all possible combinations of the matter of the three arûpa
levels, but at the end of the time it returns to the atomic level
— not, of course, as it was before, but bearing latent within
it all the powers which it has gained.
In
the succeeding eon it pours itself down into the fourth [page
92] sub-plane of the mental — that is to say,
the highest of the r没pa levels — and draws to itself as a body
some of the matter of that subdivision. It is then the elemental
essence of the second kingdom in its simplest condition; but as before,
in
the course of its evolution it takes on garbs many and various, composed
of all possible combinations of the matter of the lower sub-planes.
It
might naturally be supposed that these elemental kingdoms which exist
and function upon the mental plane must certainly, being so much higher,
be further advanced in evolution than the third kingdom, which belongs
exclusively to the astral plane. This, however, is not so; for
it must be remembered that in speaking of this phase of evolution
the word "higher" means not, as usual, more advanced, but less advanced,
since here we are dealing with the monadic essence on the downward
sweep of its arc, and progress for the elemental essence therefore
means descent into matter instead of, as with us, ascent towards
higher
planes. Unless the student bears this fact constantly and clearly
in mind, he will again and again find himself beset by perplexing
anomalies, and his view of this side of evolution will be lacking
in grasp and comprehensiveness.
The
general characteristics of elemental essence were indicated at considerable
length in the manual on The Astral Plane, and all that is there
said as to the number of subdivisions in the kingdoms and their marvellous
impressibility by human thought is equally true of these celestial
varieties. A few words should perhaps be said to explain how the seven
horizontal subdivisions of each kingdom arrange themselves in connection
with the various parts of the mental plane. In the case of the first
kingdom, its highest subdivision corresponds with the first sub-plane,
while the second and third sub-planes are each divided into three
parts, each of which is the habitat of one of the [page
93] elemental subdivisions. The second kingdom distributes
itself over the lower heaven-world, its highest subdivision corresponding
to the fourth sub-plane, while the fifth, sixth and seventh sub-planes
are each divided into two to accommodate the remainder.
How
the Essence Evolves
So
much was written in the earlier part of this manual as to the effect
of thought upon the mental elemental essence that it will be unnecessary
to return to that branch of the subject now; but it must be borne
in mind that it is, if possible, even more instantaneously sensitive
to thought-action here than it is on the astral plane, the wonderful
delicacy with which it responds to the faintest action of the mind
being constantly and prominently brought before our investigators.
We shall grasp this capability the more fully if we realize that
it
is in- such response that its very life consists — that its
progress is greatly helped by the use made of it in the process of
thought by the more advanced entities whose evolution it shares.
If
it could be imagined as entirely free for a moment from the action
of thought, it would appear as a formless conglomeration of dancing
infinitesimal atoms — instinct indeed with a marvellous intensity
of life, yet probably making but little progress on the downward path
of its involution into matter. But when thought seizes upon it and
stirs it into activity, throwing it on the r没pa levels into all kinds
of lovely forms, and on the arûpa levels into flashing streams,
it receives a distinct additional impulse which, often repeated,
helps it forward on its way. For whenever a thought is directed from
those
higher levels to the affairs of earth, it naturally sweeps downward
and takes upon itself, the matter of the lower planes. In doing so
it brings into contact with [page
94] that matter the elemental essence of which its first
veil was formed, and so by degrees habituates that essence to answering
to lower vibrations; and this greatly assists its downward evolution
into matter.
Very
noticeably also is it affected by music — by the splendid floods
of glorious sound of which we have previously spoken as poured forth
upon these lofty planes by the great masters of melody who are carrying
on there in far fuller measure the work which down here on this dull
earth they had only commenced.
Another
point which should be remembered is the vast difference between the
grandeur and power of thought on this plane and the comparative
feebleness
of the efforts that we dignify with that name down here. Our ordinary
thought begins in the mind-body on the lower mental levels and
clothes
itself as it descends with the appropriate astral elemental essence;
but when a man has advanced so far as to have his consciousness
active
in the true self in the higher heaven-world, his thought commences
there and clothes itself first in the elemental essence of the
lower
levels of the mental plane, and is consequently infinitely finer,
more penetrating, and in every way more effective. If the thought
be directed exclusively to higher objects, its vibrations may be
of
too fine a character to find expression on the astral plane at all;
but when they do affect this lower matter they will do so with
much
more far-reaching effect than those which are generated so much nearer
to i ts own level.
Following
this idea a stage further we see the thought of the initiate taking
its rise upon the buddhic plane, above the mental world altogether,
and clothing itself with the elemental essence of the highest heavens
for garment, while the thought of the Adept pours down from Nirvâna
itself, wielding the tremendous, the wholly incalculable powers of
regions beyond the ken of mere ordinary humanity. Thus [page
95] ever as our conceptions rise higher we see before us
wider and wider fields of usefulness for our enormously increased
capacities, and we realize how true is the saying that the work of
one day on levels such as these may well surpass in efficiency the
toil of a thousand years on the physical plane,
THE
ANIMAL KINGDOM.
The
animal kingdom is represented on the mental plane by two main divisions.
In the lower heaven-world we find the group-souls to which the vast
majority of animals are attached, and on the third sub-plane the causal
bodies of the comparatively few members of the kingdom who are yet
individualized. These latter, however, are not, strictly speaking,
animals any longer; they are practically the only examples now to
be seen of the quite primitive causal body, undeveloped in size and
as yet coloured only very faintly by the. first vibrations of newly-born
qualities.
After
his deaths on the physical and astral planes, the individualized animal
has usually a very prolonged, though often somewhat dreamy life in
the lower heaven-world. His condition during that time is analogous
to that of the human being on the same level, though with far less
mental activity. He is surrounded by his own thought-forms, even though
he may be but dreamily conscious of them, and these are sure to include
the forms of his earth-friends in their very best and most sympathetic
moods. And since the love which is strong enough and unselfish enough
to form such an image must also be strong enough to reach the soul
of the loved one, and draw a response from him, even the pets upon
whom our kindness is lavished may do their little trifle in return
towards helping on our evolution.
When
the individualized animal retires into his causal body to await the
turn of the wheel of evolution which shall [page
96] give him the opportunity of a primitive human incarnation,
he seems to lose almost all consciousness of outer things, and to
spend the time in a sort of delightful trance of the deepest peace
and contentment. Even then interior development of some sort is surely
taking place, though its nature is difficult for us to comprehend.
But at least it is certain that for every entity which comes into
connection with it, whether he be only just entering upon human evolution
or preparing to pass beyond it, the heaven-world means the highest
bliss of which that entity is at its level capable.
THE
DEVAS, OR ANGELS.
But
little can be expressed in human language about these wonderful and
exalted beings, and most of what we know of them has already been
written in The Astral Plane. For the information of those who
have not that manual at hand I will repeat here somewhat of the general
explanation there given with reference to these entities.
The
highest system of evolution specially connected with this earth, so
far as we know, is that of the beings whom Hindus call the Devas,
and who have elsewhere been spoken of as angels, sons of God, etc.
They may, in fact, be regarded as a kingdom lying next above humanity,
in the same way as humanity in turn lies next above the animal kingdom,
but with this important difference, that while for an animal there
is no possibility of evolution through any kingdom but the human,
man, when he attains the level of the Asekha, of full Adept, finds
various paths of advancement opening before him, of which this great
Deva evolution is only one (see Invisible Helpers, page 124).
In
Oriental literature this word "Deva" is frequently used vaguely to
mean almost any kind of non-human entity, so that it would often
include the .highest of the [page 97] spiritual
powers on the one hand, and nature-spirits and artificial elementals
on the other. Here, however, its use will be restricted to the magnificent
evolution which we are now considering.
Though
connected with this earth, these angels are by no means confined to
it, for the whole of our present chain of seven worlds is as one world
to them, their evolution being through a grand system of seven chains.
Their hosts have hitherto been recruited chiefly from other humanities
in the solar system, some lower and some higher than ours, since but
a very small portion of our own has as yet reached the level at which
for us it is possible to join them; but it seems certain that some
of their very numerous classes have not passed in their upward progress
through any humanity at all comparable with ours.
It
is not possible for us at present to understand very much about them,
but it is clear that what may be described as the aim of their evolution
is considerably higher than ours; that is to say, while the object
of our human evolution is to raise the successful portion of humanity
to the position of the Asekha Adept by the end of the seventh round,
the object of the Deva evolution is to raise their foremost rank to
a very much higher level in the corresponding period. For them, as
for us, a steeper but shorter path to still more sublime heights lies
open to earnest endeavour; but what those heights may be in their
case we can only conjecture.
Their
Divisions.
Their
three lower great divisions, beginning from the bottom, are generally
called Kâma-devas, Rûpa-devas, and Ar没pa-devas, which
may be translated as angels of the astral [page
98] world, the lower heaven-world, and the higher heaven-world
respectively. Just as our ordinary body here — the lowest body
possible for us — is the physical, so the ordinary body of a
K芒ma-deva is the astral; so that he stands in somewhat the same position
as humanity will do when it reaches planet F, and he, living ordinarily
in an astral body, would go out of it to higher spheres in a mental
body just as we might in an astral body, while to enter the causal
body would be to him (when sufficiently developed) no greater effort
than to use the mental body might be to us. In the same way the Rûpa-deva's
ordinary body would be the mental, since his habitat is the four r没pa
levels of the mental plane; while the Arûpa-deva belongs to
the three higher levels of that plane, and owns no denser body than
the causal. Above the Arûpa-devas there are four other great
classes of this kingdom, inhabiting respectively the four higher
planes of our solar system ; and again, above and beyond the Deva
kingdom
altogether stand the great hosts of the planetary spirits ; but
the consideration of such glorified beings would be out of place here.
Each
of the two great divisions of this kingdom which have been mentioned
as inhabiting the mental plane contains within itself many different
classes; but their life is in every way so far removed from our
own
that it is useless to endeavour to give anything but the most general
idea of it. I do not know that I can better indicate the impression
produced upon the minds of our investigators on the subject than
by
reproducing the very words used by one of them at the time of the
enquiry : " I get the effect of an intensely exalted consciousness
- a consciousness glorious beyond all words; yet so very strange;
so different - so entirely different from anything I have ever
felt
before, so unlike any possible kind of human experience, that it
is absolutely hopeless to try to put it into words." [page
99]
Equally
hopeless is it on this physical plane to try to give any idea of the
appearance of these mighty beings, for it changes with every line
of thought which they follow. Some reference was made earlier in this
paper to the magnificence and wonderful power of expression of their
colour-language, and it will also have been realized from some passing
remarks made in describing the human inhabitants that under certain
conditions it is possible for men functioning upon this plane to learn
much from them. It may be remembered how one of them had animated
the angel figure in the heaven-life of a chorister, and was teaching
him music grander far than any ever heard by earthly ears, and how
in another case those connected with the wielding of certain planetary
influences were helping forward the evolution of a certain astronomer.
Their
relation to the nature-spirits (for an account of whom see Manual
V) might be described as somewhat resembling, though, on a higher
scale, that of men to the animal kingdom; for just as the animal can
attain individualization only by association with man, so it appears
that a permanent reincarnating individuality can normally be acquired
by a nature-spirit only by an attachment of somewhat similar character
to members of some of the orders of Devas.
Of
course nothing that has been, or indeed can be, said of this great
angelic evolution does more than brush the fringe of a very mighty
subject, the fuller elaboration of which it must be left to each reader
to make for himself when he develops the consciousness of these higher
planes; yet what has been written, slight and unsatisfactory as it
is and must be, may help to give some faint idea of the hosts of helpers
with which man's advance in evolution will bring him into touch, and
to show how every aspiration which his increased capacities make possible
for him as he ascends is [page 100]
more than satisfied by the beneficent arrangements which nature has
made for him.
III.
ARTIFICIAL.
Very
few words need be said upon this branch of our subject. The mental
plane is even more fully peopled than the astral by the artificial
elementals called into temporary existence by the thoughts of its
inhabitants; and when it is remembered how much grander and more
powerful
thought is upon this plane, and that its forces are being wielded
not only by the human inhabitants, embodied and disembodied, but
by
the Devas and by visitors from higher planes, it will at once be
seen that the importance and influence of such artificial entities
can
hardly be exaggerated. It is not necessary here to go over again
the ground traversed in the previous manual as to the effect of
men's
thoughts and the necessity of guarding them carefully; and enough
was said in describing the difference between the action of thought
on the r没pa and arûpa levels to show how the artificial elemental
of the mental plane is called into existence, and to give some idea
of the infinite variety of temporary entities which are so produced,
and the immense importance of the work that is constantly done
by
their means. Great use is made of them by Adepts and their initiated
pupils, and it is needless to say that the artificial elemental
formed
by such powerful minds as these is a being of infinitely longer existence
and proportionately greater power than any of those described in
dealing
with the astral plane [page 101]
.
CONCLUSION
In
glancing over what has been written, the prominent idea is not unnaturally
a humiliating sense of the utter inadequacy of all the attempts
at
description — of the hopelessness of any effort to put into
human words the ineffable glories of the heaven-world. Still, lamentably
imperfect as such an essay as this must be, it is yet better than
nothing, and it may serve to put into the mind of the reader some
faint conception of what awaits him on the other side of the grave;
and though when he reaches this bright realm of bliss he will certainly
find infinitely more than he has been led to expect, he will not,
it is hoped, have to unlearn any of the information that he has here
acquired.
Man,
as at present constituted, has within him principles belonging to
two planes even higher than the mental, for his Buddhi
represents
him upon what from that very fact we call the buddhic plane, and
his Atmâ (the divine spark within him) upon that third plane of
the solar system which has usually been spoken of as the nirvanic.
In the average man these highest principles are as
yet almost entirely
undeveloped, and in any case the planes to which they belong are
still more beyond the reach of all description than
is the mental. It must
suffice to say that on the buddhic plane all limitations begin to
fall away, and the consciousness of man expands until
he realizes,
no longer in theory only, but by absolute experience, that the consciousness
of his fellows is included within his own, and he
feels and knows
and experiences with an absolute perfection of sympathy all that
is in them, because it is in reality a part [page
102] of himself; while on the nirvânic plane he moves
a step further, and realizes that his consciousness and theirs are
one in a yet higher sense, because they are all in reality facets
of the infinitely greater consciousness of the logos, in Whom they
all live and move and have their being; so that when "the dewdrop
slips into the-shining sea" the effect produced is rather as though
the process had been reversed and the ocean poured into the drop,
which now for the first time realizes that it is the ocean — not a part of it, but the whole. Paradoxical, utterly incomprehensible,
apparently impossible; yet absolutely true.
But
this much at least we may grasp — that the blessed state of
Nirvâna is not, as some have ignorantly supposed, a condition
of blank nothingness, but of far more intense and beneficent activity;
and that ever as we rise higher in the scale of nature our possibilities
become greater, our work for others ever grander and more far-reaching,
and that infinite wisdom and infinite power means only infinite capacity
for service, because they are directed by infinite love.
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