Theosophy - The Impact of Jung and Krishnamurti on some Theosphical Teachings by D.G.Gower
The
Impact of Jung and Krishnamurti
on
some Theosophical
Teachings
D.
G. Gower
Part
1: What is Psychological Memory?
According
to C.G.Jung,
...the
unconscious consists of contents that are entirely undifferentiated, representing
the precipitate of humanity’s typical forms of reaction since the earliest
beginnings - apart from historical, ethnological, or other differentiation -
in situations of general human character, e.g., such situations as those of
fear, danger, struggle against superior force, the relations of the sexes, of
children and parents, to the father-and mother-image, of reaction to hate and
love, to birth and death, to the power of the bright and dark principle, etc.
A basic capacity of the unconscious is that of acting compensatively and setting
up in contrast to consciousness ... a typical reaction derived from general
human experience and conforming to internal laws, thereby making possible an
adequate adjustment based on the totality of the psyche.
In
this question there are several significant points. Firstly, comes the listing
of the contents of the unconscious, which posits the existence of certain powerful
patterns of reaction which we inherit from our most distant ancestors, and perhaps
even from other kingdoms of Nature. Secondly, when the list is examined, we
find that the most basic reactions we have are stereotyped patterns governing
our dealings with the instincts. Lastly, the conscious and unconscious form
a self-regulating system, the object in view being an adjustment to some environmental
situation.
To
return to Jung:
At
the very bottom (of the psychic genealogical tree) lies the unfathomable, the
central force out of which at one time the individual psyche has been differentiated.
This central force goes through all further differentiations and isolations,
lives in them all, cuts through them to the individual psyche, as the only one
that goes absolutely unchanged and undivided through all layers... Every section
(Groups of People, Nation, Tribe, Family, Individual) stands for a further differentiation
of the collective psyche, until, proceeding from human to national groups, from
the tribe to the family, the height of the individual, unique psyche is reached.
We
thus live and move and have our being in reactionary patterns of which, because
they are in the collective unconscious, we are not normally aware.
Looking
at this from the Theosophical angle, we realize here is another view of the
teachings of Karma. Emphasis is laid on the various collectivities in which
we are forced to live if we incarnate on this earth, each collectivity of basic
human reactions, racial reactions, national reactions, etc., being part of our
inheritance, since the physical, emotional and mental vehicles are made of the
actual stuff of these collectives which has been used continuously from the
very beginning.
We
thus live and move and have our being in reactionary patterns of which, because
they are in the collective unconscious, we are not normally aware. What we look
upon as our physical, astral and mental bodies are really not, strictly speaking,
our own, being accretions of these reactionary patterns themselves.
Jung places
great emphasis on the importance of the dream. His opinion is that:
The easiest
and most effective way of acquainting one’s self with the mechanism and
contents of the unconscious is via the Dream, whose material consists of conscious
and unconscious, familiar and unfamiliar elements... Space and time do not hold
for them. Their language is archaic, symbolic, pre-logical - a picture language
whose meaning can only be discovered through special methods of interpretation...
Many dreams even go beyond the personal problems of the individual dreamer and
are the expression of problems that occur over and over again in human history,
and concern the whole human collective.
When
one dreams, therefore, in the big way, the whole wisdom of the human race can
be drawn upon.
This
points out the close interconnection of the conscious with the unconscious,
which is to be expected, since the individual consciousness crystallized out
of it in the first place. There are, of course, trivial dreams dealing with
wishes, fears and the day’s events, but there are also powerful, enduring
dreams which express themselves in symbols. When one dreams, therefore, in the
big way, the whole wisdom of the human race can be drawn upon.
Another
significant point is that the laws of time and space do not hold for dreams.
We feel no strangeness when we appear to be in several places at once, and forms
of people and objects change into something else. When they do, there is no
sense of there being necessarily any cause for such changes. That is to say,
the compensatory nature of a dream does not worry us while we are having it.
Normally we feel the inevitability of it, and there is no urge to control it
or alter it as it unfolds.
As
a further development of the last quotation, Jung holds:
Themes
of a mythological nature, whose symbolism illustrates universal history, and
reaction of a particularly intensive kind, allow one to surmise the involvement
of the deepest layers (of consciousness). These motives and symbols are named
Archetypes. They are representatives of instinctive - i.e., psychologically
necessary - responses to certain situations which, circumventing consciousness,
lead by virtue of their innate potentialities to behaviour corresponding to
the psychological necessity... The Archetypes do not consist of inherited ideas,
but of inherited predispositions to reaction.
Now,
although Theosophy seems on the whole to incline towards the Platonic view of
Archetypes as ideas in the Divine Mind, yet Jung’s discovery of psychological
Archetypes as inherent patterns of reaction has much to be said for it, as reaction
patterns link up more closely with the astrological viewpoint on the Zodiacal
Signs which, in turn, have been associated with the Archetypes as understood
by Occultism, and may possibly have some connection with “the ring pass
not”. Be that it may, the freedom of the conception of Archetypes as latent
possibilities of reaction certainly is more acclimatized to the atmosphere of
modern physics.
To
round off this subject, here is a final quotation:
In the language of the unconscious...
the archetypes appear in personified or symbolized picture form. Their number
is relatively limited, for it corresponds to the possibilities of typical fundamental
experiences, such as human beings have had since the beginning of time... The
motifs of the archetypal images are the same in all cultures. We find them repeated
in all mythologies, fairy tales, religious traditions and mysteries.
It
is this quotation that draws attention to the strong effect that depth psychology
has had on the findings of anthropology. Anthropology has to deal with the earliest
types of human society, and modern psychology has helped to remove, as much
as is possible under difficult circumstances, the barrier that lies between
primitive pre-logical thought and the rationalism of our western civilizations.
In doing this, we are able to see more or less clearly the motives that lie
behind the formation of a society of the simplest type, and how our complicated
twentieth century civilizations are elaborated from these few basic factors.
Human
beings cannot live together to their mutual benefit unless the brute instincts
are somewhat tamed by a strong tradition in which each member has complete faith.
Society
is, according to this hypothesis, the means by which man has sought to canalize
his instincts which, left to themselves, are liable to be far more destructive
than useful. Religion, education, law and custom have therefore been evolved
out of his growing mind to lessen the destructive side of the basic instincts
and to enhance the constructive side. Human beings cannot live together to their
mutual benefit unless the brute instincts are somewhat tamed by a strong tradition
in which each member has complete faith. The last two wars have shown us what
happens to a society that has lost faith in its traditions.
The methods by which the
instincts have been canalized to a greater or lesser degree are many and varied,
but all have depended on the influence of imitation on the mind, for
all tradition is imitation. But this presupposes group action and group living
to the detriment of individual action and individual living. That is, the basic
instincts are tamed by codes enforced from outside the individual, who is persuaded
that his physical and psychological security depends on those codes being obeyed
without question. To bring this about there must be imitation, and so it is
inculcated from our earliest conscious state. The primitive man has his initiation
schools to which the adolescent male is sent to learn the laws and customs of
his tribe, which are indelibly imprinted on his mind by powerfully suggestive
religious ceremonies. Civilized man has his public and private schools, and
the schoolboy is there immersed in the social patterns of his nation, class
and the prevailing code of ethics.
Let us try to build up a
picture of the conditions into which a man is born today. To begin with, there
is the unconscious which sets up typical reactions “derived from general
human experience,” and thus provides the child, the adolescent and the
man with a set of automatic responses to ordinary situations as they arise.
From birth, then, this hereditary background has one point of view: the adjustment
of man to that background, resulting in a regulation of all his relationships,
mental and emotional, the sexual and parental relationships included. By the
time his primitive or civilized education is finished, identification with the
various ways and means of coping with the challenges of life is complete, and
the person is quite unaware of their automatic nature. To the basic collective
responses are gradually added the collectives of the particular family, class,
nation and race in which he lives, and these mark the stages by which he becomes
successively family-conscious, class-conscious, nation-conscious, race-conscious.
Sometimes it happens that
adjustment to the collective pattern fails, or is faulty, and the psychological
security it once afforded is lost. This may appear such a calamity that the
sufferer becomes a sick man, his whole outlook is warped and he either wholly
or partially retreats from life, or projects his demons onto others, making
life for himself and them a constant misery. It is then that the psychotherapist
is called in, his main function being to discover how the patient has got out
of alignment with the collective pattern of his environment, and then to assist
him to get back into it again.
Of course, there is individuation,
as Jung calls the process of not allowing the collective patters to be psychologically
necessary for you any more, but this is, according to him, only for the very
few. Long experience has taught him that the ego is ready and able to stand
alone without such support is extremely rare. Therefore, the typical result
of this connection with psychotherapy is the doctor-patient relationship, by
which the doctor reconstitutes the patient, if he can, to fit himself once more
into society and play his full part in it; in other worlds, he is reconditioned
and sent back to the collective again.
With regard to individuation,
there are not many published accounts of what this actually means, but from
the few that exist it appears that the individual, now freed from fear of the
collective unconscious, makes, as it were, a conscious partner of it, and allows
a new centre to be formed from which it acts.
It is at this point that
the lines of thought of Jung and J. Krishnamurti widely diverge, as Krishnamurti
does not admit a doctor-patient relationship to be formed with regard to himself
and those who approach him, as, in his point of view, what is required is a
total revolution or transformation in the inquirer’s way of thinking.
Krishnamurti does not know the meaning of compromise. Also, for reasons to be
shown later, he does not consider a conscious partnership with the unconscious
to be true liberation.
The situation with regard
to Jung’s discoveries now is that, though they are not universally accepted
in the scientific world, yet there are a fair number of highly qualified professional
men and women who have tested them out for themselves apart from Jung, and have
found them to be workable. In addition, there exists a vast unknown number of
case histories from all over the world which are drawn upon to illustrate books
and articles written by these people.
This mass of material brings
out a point that is of great value: the existence of mental projections. Neurotics
and psychotics actually live in conditioned worlds of their own, that is, in
their own mental projections. All the methods of canalizing the instincts, all
the elaborations of the various collectives in which one lives are mental projections;
so one is never ordinarily free from them from birth to death.
To Krishnamurti, all
adjustment is compromise, and if there is adjustment to a collective pattern,
to an emotional or mental environment, there can be no transformation, no complete
revolution of thought.
In the same way as Jung’s
relevant teachings were illustrated with quotations, some appropriate quotations
from the Talks of Krishnamurti will now be given.
There is the superficial
consciousness of everyday activity: the job, the family, the constant adjustment
to social environment, either happily, easily, or contradictorily, with a neurosis...
And there is also the deeper level of unconsciousness which is the vast social
inheritance of man through centuries; the will to exist, the will to alter,
the will to become.
Our conditioning is the
automatic response that rises unthinkingly when a situation evokes it.
This question is to illustrate
further differences between Jung and Krishnamurti. Firstly, there is the question
of adjustment, so important a part of the psychotherapist’s technique.
To Krishnamurti, all adjustment is compromise, and if there is adjustment to
a collective pattern, to an emotional or mental environment, there can be no
transformation, no complete revolution of thought. Secondly, all that to which
Jung has drawn our attention in his list of contents of the collective unconscious
is what Krishnamurti has called “conditioning”. Our conditioning
is the automatic response that rises unthinkingly when a situation evokes it.
That is, we respond as Europeans, for example, when there are racial riots in
London, as Christians, when it is suggested that God does not exist, as Protestants,
when the Roman Catholics become too prominent, as Theosophists, when Krishnamurti
is mentioned, as a member of our family when the skeleton in the cupboard rattles,
and so on. We do not always give way to these automatic responses, but they
are the ones that arise first before we modify them, or justify them, or condemn
them with the aid of some other type of conditioning we have superimposed more
recently on the basic responses.
Jung certainly exposes much
in his descriptions of the various collectives that condition us unconsciously,
but see how widely Krishnamurti’s searchlight sweeps! “The will
to exist,” which is the conditioning of the biological collective; “the
will to alter,” which is the conditioning of evolution; “the will
to become,” which is the conditioning of time. He goes into more detail
in the following passage.
One's own consciousness...
is the outcome of many influences: climate, diet, various forms of authority,
the society about one, with its taboos, its do's and don'ts, the
religion in which one has been brought up, the book one has read, the reactions
and experiences one has had.
Now, our consciousness is
something we do really look upon as ourselves, yet here are suggestions that
it is nothing of the sort. Some of these suggestions strike at roots so deep
that there are those who may regard with horror and a sense of sacrilege the
idea that they could possible be aspects of conditioning and must be brought
into the light of day to be intimately examined. Authority is questioned, the
concept of leader and led, teacher and pupil, sacred scriptures and systems
of instruction. These all supply collective backgrounds which respond for us
when the right button is pressed.
To know that organized
religion is conditioning is not so difficult , but to realize in one’s
heart that all that our society at present stands for is also conditioning comes
as a severe blow.
With regard to society and
its partner, organized religions, it is clear that, being ways evolved by the
mind to deal with an overflow of instinctual drives, they are an integral part
of conditioning. To know that organized religion is conditioning is not so difficult,
but to realize in one’s heart that all that our society at present stands
for is also conditioning comes as a severe blow.
Even more difficult is it
to understand experience as conditioning; so let us look into it more deeply
to try and find out how it acts in this way. Firstly, when one has an experience,
however elevated and spiritual it may be, it is the usual thing for the mind
to start working on it. It then decides that it was a pleasant or unpleasant
experience, an important or trivial experience, that it would like more of it,
that it must be analysed and interpreted, that it must be labelled, classified
and stored up in the memory for future reference. It is clear that all these
things applied to the experience are evaluations and judgements; but what
was the source of them? What was the basis on which these values were founded?
It will be discovered in most cases that the source is in that collective conditioning
already described. Values and judgements, acceptances and rejections are based
on that background provided by the particular interweaving of emotional and
mental environment in which one lives. In such a case, it is not oneself that
responds when values and judgments are called for, but the psychological background.
One tends, however, to take these responses as one’s own, without question
as to their source, to accumulate these conditioned experiences, and from that
accumulation to react to the challenges of life.
Society as we know is now
is based on envy, greed, ambition, revenge, on the economic competition for
success, on the desire to be something.
says Krishnamurti. This
is a revolutionary statement when first heard, as it poses the problem: If such
things as ambition, the desire to succeed and the urge to become somebody important
are honestly realized as obstacles to self-knowledge, and consequently fall
away, what in our present-day civilizations will remain?
...a high percentage
of the world’s population acts on the assumption that its own particular
brand of society is right...
If one looks carefully without
evading the issue, there can be no escaping the conclusion that it is these
very qualities that have brought the world to the verge of destruction. Unfortunately,
a high percentage of the world’s population acts on the assumption that
its own particular brand of society is right, so nothing can be done about it.
It is on this question again that Jung and Krishnamurti differ, for while Jung
demonstrates that for centuries man has been canalizing his instincts in cultures,
Krishnamurti shows how this has resulted in elaborate patterns of conditioning
founded on envy, greed, ambition and exclusiveness. What is more, generations
of artists, poets, playwrights, orators, historians and educators have ennobled
those qualities in forms so subtly disguised by the glamour of genius that they
have become integrated with the national heritage. They are part of ‘our
way of life’ for which we are expected to fight and die and commit atrocities
whenever some national set of politicians so decides.
To
quote Krishnamurti again:
It is belief which is dividing
the world, belief in nationalism, in patriotism, in the so-called superiority
of this race or that; it is belief that divides people into Protestants and
Catholics, mystics and occultists... So, a different mind is required.
It is the mind, of course,
that is the cause of the trouble, for all conditioning is the product of it;
all beliefs are mental projections.
Another difference between
Jung and Krishnamurti is apparent in the following words of the latter:
The mind, both the conscious
and the unconscious, is the result of time, of memory, it is the residue of
centuries of knowing, and the totality of this consciousness is the process
of thinking. All thinking, surely, springs from a background of various cultures,
of innumerable experiences, individual as well as collective, and this background
is obviously conditioned.
This is why it was suggested
farther back that there was doubt if the individuated man according to Jung
is really liberated, the point at issue being that if man makes a conscious
partner of his unconscious, he is making a partnership with a conditioned thing,
no matter how vast this sphere may be compared with his minute conscious self.
Lastly, I should like to
draw your attention to the great significance of an answer Krishnamurti gave
to a question concerning dreams and their value. The central theme of his reply
was very simple. It was: “Why do you dream?’ He agrees with the
psychotherapist that it is because the unconscious has no opportunity to express
anything during the day, so it projects various symbols when the conscious mind
is asleep. But this is too superficial an explanation, he adds. One should go
far deeper and ask why this method of revelation has been adopted. It must surely
be because the conscious mind during the day is not alert to its conditioning.
It does not recognize it then as such, so it occupies itself with trying to
suppress, change and do something about the unconscious motives and urges that
disturb it. If a person, however, is able to be fully aware of his conditioning
as it shows itself in his reactions to, and relationships with, people, objects
and ideas in ordinary daily life, the unconscious will have no need to pass
on hints and intimations during sleep, so dreaming will cease. No conscious
partnership with the unconscious would then be formed, though the unconscious
would be thoroughly understood in the fullest sense of that word.
The foregoing descriptions
of the collective unconscious and the various types of conditioning associated
with it constitute what has been called psychological memory. Psychological
memory is all the unconscious responses from the various collectives in which
we live that influence our everyday actions and reactions without our normally
being aware of it. Our attitudes, our relationships, our tone of voice, our
expressions and gestures, our scale of values, judgments and principles of identification
and detachment, our accumulation of experiences, our regarding every process
of life from the point of view of gain, achievement, security and success, our
ideals, aims and goals - all contribute to psychological memory.
But psychological memory
must not be confused with factual memory, such a we are compelled to use to
live this world and find our way about in it, or to become scientists, doctors,
lawyers, etc. It does include, on the other hand, a certain amount of biological
memory, as may well be understood from Krishnamurti’s statement.
To sum up, the suggestion
is being made that there is a case for regarding ourselves as conditioned in
many ways during our lives on earth, and that this constitutes psychological
memory of which we may at the moment be entirely unconscious. It also seems
that this phenomenon functions through the mind. If, then, we are so conditioned
here, the following problem arises: At what stage in our physical or non-physical
existence does conditioning or psychological memory, come to an end?
Part
II: Psychological Memory and the After-Death States
FOLLOWING
are six quotations from an article by H.P.Blavatsky in Lucifer, January
1889, called “On the Constitution of the Inner Man and Its Division”.
It is composed in the form of a dialogue in question and answer, and may also
be found in The Key to Theosophy by the same author. The quotations again
prove how far in advance of her time she was:
...death
is sleep...
(I)... man acts on this, or
another plane of consciousness, in strict accordance with his mental and spiritual
condition.
(ii)
If they [scientific materialists] say that self-consciousness ceases with the
body, then in their case they simply utter an unconscious prophecy. For
once that they are firmly convinced of what they assert, no conscious after-life
is possible for them.
(iii)...
both immortality and consciousness after death become for the terrestrial personality
of man simply conditioned attributes, as they depend entirely on conditions
and beliefs created by the human soul during the life of its body. [Please notice
the strangely modern note in this particular quotation.]
(iv)
For the believer it [the interval between two lives] will be a dream as vivid
as life and full of realistic bliss and visions.
(v)
The Ego receives always according to its deserts. After the dissolution of the
body, there commences for it either a period of full clear consciousness, a
state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly dreamless sleep indistinguishable from
annihilation; and these are the three states of consciousness. Our physiologists
find the cause of dreams and visions in an unconscious preparation for them
during the waking hours; why cannot the same be admitted for the post-mortem
dreams? I repeat it, death is sleep. After death begins, before the spiritual
eyes of the soul, a performance according to a programme learnt and very often
composed unconsciously by ourselves: the practical carrying out of correct
beliefs or of illusions which have been created by ourselves.
(vi) According to what one
has believed in and expected after death, such is the state one will have.
These
extracts show that H.P. Blavatsky was convinced that, if a human being believed
in an after-life at all, he found on the other side exactly what he expected,
and that this state called death was equivalent to sleep, being pervaded by
a state of consciousness closely approximating to that of dreams. Since our
Cofounder records these views publicly, there should be no sense of strangeness
in what follows, and the discoveries (or verifications) of Jung and Krishnamurti
will fall naturally into place.
...when we pass over we
have made the transition with as little trouble as the removal of an overcoat...
My
subject being connected with the impact of two different sets of teachings on
another, it becomes necessary at this stage to introduce in detail a certain
aspect of Theosophy in order that this impact may be registered and described.
To
begin with, C.W. Leadbeater is most emphatic that when we pass over we have
made the transition with as little trouble as the removal of an overcoat, and
with as little effect. This seems to be quite a sensible point of view. There
is no reason at all why, if a conscious after-life is granted, there should
be any fundamental change expected in a person who has removed his overcoat.
He himself says”
In
the vast majority of cases the loss of the physical body makes no difference
whatever in the character or intellect of the person.
According
to Theosophical teaching, then, this person has now arrived on the astro-mental
plane inwardly unchanged.
The
word “astro-mental” is used to denote what seems to be a composite
state, for if, as Theosophy teaches, a human being is an individualized entity,
it would be difficult to consider him as existing in a state of pure emotion,
feeling and desire without any thought attached. In addition, what would be
the point of the traditional purgatory if there was no mental record or reaction?
It will be assumed, therefore, that the division into astral and mental planes
is a concession to the analytical human intellect, and is really as imaginary,
though in some cases as useful, as the equator and lines of latitude and longitude.
The
person who has just passed over now exists, we assume, inwardly unchanged, in
a condition that is limited by his emotions, his feelings, his desires, his
thoughts and his earthly ideals and aspirations. But what has limited these
attributes that are still as they always were? Surely, exactly the same things
that limited them on earth; so here we are again face to face with conditioning
or psychological memory. It seems that it does indeed continue to function on
the astro-mental plane.
Remembering
that H.P.Blavatsky herself has described death as sleep, and the astro-mental
world as a world of dreams and visions, it is now helpful to bring in at this
point Jung’s theory of dreams. He considers dreams as compensations. That
which has been frustrated and unable to express itself during the day, expresses
itself when the censorship of the waking consciousness has been removed. Applied
to the dream-life after death, this would mean that all the frustrations we
have been obliged to undergo during an incarnation on earth owing to the adverse
circumstances in which we lived, will be expressed when we pass over to the
astro-mental plane. In the period between two incarnations our repressions and
failures in self-expression will rise to the surface and be fulfilled. This
is to say that, by a thoughtful provision of life, there will be, through a
process of celestial psychotherapy, a release from all the tensions of frustration,
and we shall, at the end of it, be, as it were, ironed out smooth for the next
life on earth. A reference to question (v) from the article by H.P.Blavatsky
will show how she anticipated this modern hypothesis.
Our
philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation...
It
is distinctly taught in Theosophy that no thought that could cause unhappiness
enters into the higher levels of the astro-mental plane. On earth, our fantasies
and daydreams, conditioned by desires, ambitions, and longings to be something
important, were, more often than not, crushed continually by the harsh demands
of life; but on the astro-mental plane they can be carried out to logical and
illogical conclusions ad lib., since there is nothing to stop them except
our self-imposed boundaries of imagination.
This
concept is not without backing, as in the same article H.P.Blavatsky writes:
Our
philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation.
After death it receives only the reward for the unmerited sufferings endured
during its just past existence.
But
to be deprived by adverse circumstances of the means of satisfying our earthly
desires, ambitions and longings to be something important is exactly what a
great many people would regard as unmerited suffering; consequently the carte
blanche of the heaven-world would turn out to be the merited reward in question.
During
earth-life we know in our heart of hearts that our fantasies and daydreams would
not materialize, for very rarely indeed in incarnation do our wildest dreams
come true. Life down there, therefore, acted as a most helpful corrective to
bring us constantly back to the hard facts it paraded before us - except, of
course, in the cases of the insane, who continued to live in their mental projections
regardless of life.
Now
imagine what it is like on the astro-mental plane, where, as C.W. Leadbeater
says:
The
matter is of the same order as that of which the mind-body is itself composed,
and therefore when ... a thought occurs, it immediately ... sets up corresponding
vibrations in it, while in the elemental essence it images itself with absolute
exactitude.
Where
is the corrective here? There seems to be none. No wonder H.P.Blavatsky and
others have warned us of the insidious glamour of this state of existence; no
wonder that there is “under every flower a serpent coiled”. The
tremendous problem is how shall we ever be free of the delights of wish-fulfilment
when every desire is gratified the moment it arises.
The
conflict between “ what is” and “what ought to be” is
the cause of the tension and frustration here below. When the happiness and
bliss of the heaven-world abolish the tension, then I am existing in the “what
ought to be’ as imagined in my ideals which I formed from the conditioned
background of the collectivity in which I lived. In other words, I am living
in psychological memory; I am living in my own projections. These private mental
projections, by another thoughtful provision of life, are entirely shut off
at this level from everybody else’s heaven-world. This is a necessary
precaution for which we may be extremely grateful.
The
next stage of this article is connected with examples of the afterdeath states
as given by C.W. Leadbeater. As he often used quite long quotations from his
Manuals, The Astral Plane and The Mental Plane, as illustrations
in his larger works, they will be used as references throughout what follows.
Bearing in mind that he must have had a fair amount of material from which to
choose, it is assumed that he would naturally select cases that are typical
of the various levels. The different heaven-worlds will be dealt with in these
studies not the two extremes of purgatory and the formless mental planes.
As
a commencement, let us take the case of Charles Bradlaugh. This is more than
usual interest, as H.P. Blavatsky in the article already quoted, is very definite
that a materialist, because he has no belief in a future life, will have a period
of complete blankness between incarnations. Yet C.W. Leadbeater describes Bradlaugh
among his books, studying as he used to do on earth, but, due to his non-belief
in an after-life, he has his consciousness no higher than the middle levels
of the astro-mental plane. That disagreement here exists is shown by the long
argument appended by C.W. Leadbeater to this case, in which he endeavours to
prove that H.P. Blavatsky must have meant “materialist” in some
other sense when she banished them all to oblivion. Personally, however, I see
no need for this. Some are conditioned to such an extent by the thought of their
age, and the company they frequent that their early hopes are repressed and
rigorously kept out of mind. But in the depths of the unconscious that hope
lingers. Could Bradlaugh not have had in his weaker moments at least a desire
that the after-life might be a continuation of this in some form, and so, when
he had passed over, he is found living in that one little hope?
We
find here a case that shows the extraordinary power of conditioning on a very
fine mind. By it, he has excluded himself from the subtler regions of the astro-mental
plane and will not admit that they exist. He is continuing his activities as
usual, in the usual surroundings of his library. He is, therefore, a fine illustration
of what happens to those of us who do not penetrate to the unconscious effects
of psychological memory, and by this negligence during physical life, base our
heaven-world on the world we have left behind us. In the words of C.W. Leadbeater:
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 ... usually supposing
that what he sees is all there to see.
Mental
projections are our mental abode, usually, on the physical plane, so it seems,
according to Theosophical teachings, that when we pass over to the astro-mental
plane, there they are with us again.
The
next case is that of the “ ... man who 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.”
Here
we have a good example of archetypal conditioning in the parent-child relationship.
The parent wishes to fulfil himself through the child. What the child wants
is of little or no account. In this particular family the child was an only
daughter and a very spoilt child. As she was “always at her best”
in the image made of her in heaven, she must also have had her worst. What is
the worst in an idolized child from the parent’s point of view? It might
very well be when the child refuses to conform to its parent’s views as
to what it should do and be. The daughter is “at her best” in her
father’s heaven-world because she never disagrees with him, and fits in
perfectly contentedly with “all the beautiful pictures of her future’.
She is also continually with him, not going off on her own to play with her
friends, or growing up into independence and away from her father. The father
is therefore indulging in psychological memory, which, in his case, is an automatic
reflection of purely archetypal behaviour of which he is blissfully unconscious.
If it can be accepted that archetypes are latent possibilities of reaction according
to human experience, then their automatic patterns cannot represent life as
it really is. Consequently this man is actually further away from reality then
when he was on earth.
These
examples were taken from the first, the lowest, heaven. Now we ascend to the
second heaven, in which the conditioning of the various religious systems is
most obvious. In this region we have the case of the Hindu woman who had elevated
her husband into a god, and pictured the child Krishna playing among her own
children. But Krishna had non-human and human forms. In his non-human form he
was not like the other children with whom he was playing, but an idol of blue
wood that moved about. In his human form he was a flute player. Both forms appeared
at the same time, but this did not worry her in the least.
The
blue wooden image of Krishna, though in startling contrast to the real humanity
of her own children, brings out the prelogical nature of the woman’s mind
at this time, since she did not perceive the irrationality of it. This is another
pointer to the state of consciousness found in the heaven-world, as it can have
the irrationality of the unconscious as manifested even in the dreams of highly
professional men and women. Lastly, not the fact that this woman, as far as
she was concerned, had Krishna all to herself. This is the inevitable and logical
result of extreme religious conditioning, since its rigorous limitations must
beget an ever-increasing self-centredness.
The
case of the Spanish nun is also interesting from this point of view. She was
discovered living through the whole life of Jesus as told in the Gospels. When
this was completed, she carefully arranged her own martyrdom and ascended into
heaven. Not content with this, she then started the whole cycle all over again,
and we are left to infer that she continued it indefinitely. Here indeed is
a “performance according to a programme” as mentioned in quotation
(v) from H.P. Blavatsky’s article. Besides drawing attention to the self-glorification
disguised under her outward religious devotion, this brings to light the repetitive
action of the mind and its projections. Our attention has also been drawn to
the same process occurring in the cases of criminals and evildoers of all kinds,
who are reported in other writings of C.W. Leadbeater as going over and over
their past misdeeds on the lower astro-mental levels. The mental technique is
therefore similar in both cases, the main difference being that the former repeats
a story that is enjoyed, and the latter a story that is presumably not
enjoyed. If this analysis is true, then here is a further argument in favour
of regarding the astro-mental planes as one.
In
the third heaven mental projections become even more necessary than on the preceding
level, for here dwell the organizers and planners, the arch-conditioners, the
inventors of forms to fill up.
The
case of the man “who found carrying out a grand scheme for the amelioration
of the lower classes” is one that bears its fruit in ways with which we
are all familiar. He is cited as being “deeply religious,” and as
paying a “loving attention to every detail”. We know how fundamentally
ruthless such “loving attention to ... detail can be. The question also
arises as to why there should still be “lower classes” in this reformer’s
“grand scheme”. He seems to take them for granted.
The
case of the Indian prince, who planned his government according to the precepts
of Rama, is complicated still further by his fantasy not only providing the
complete success of everything undertaken, but also for the personal advice
and direction of Rama himself. Do we not meet in this world some who have developed
to a fine art this faculty of having the private ear of deity, and always knowing
God’s will?
Conclusion
ON
the same level is perceived by another nun, and it is difficult to see why she
has been classified as belonging to a higher sphere than her Spanish sister,
since she indulges in a self-enclosing fantasy just as much, though it may not
be so spectacular. Possibly she may have been less occupied with her salvation
than the other, but the motive of self-gratification is still undeniably present.
We see her carrying out the literal interpretation of the words, “Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
to me,” by ministering continuously to the sick, the hungry and the poor.
Each person she helps changes into the Christ whom she then “worships
fervently”.
This
may look very wonderful at first sight, until one starts to question the source
of all these sick, hungry, poor people. What are they doing in that state in
the third heaven? If the teachings of Theosophy are consulted, there could be
no suffering souls at this stage; they were provided by the nun herself within
her cocoon of conditioned projections. Like the “lower classes”
of the religious planner, they were necessary to the self-fulfilment of a strong
personality. Perhaps once she did actually experience on earth the phenomenon
she practised continually in heaven. It was so rare and beautiful a moment that
she clung to it, and always wanted more of it.
Krishnamurti
has made it extremely clear that the mind can deal only with the known...
We
have now reached the fourth heaven, the last of the regions of form, and the
cases given as examples are very mixed. It is still necessary, though, to try
to discover if psychological memory is at work here too. It being a region of
form and of mind, there is every indication that the thought cocoon prevails,
since in some of the cases C. W. Leadbeater mentions specifically that images
of the Great Ones are made. He also states that teaching comes through those
images and is of value to the recipient. Realizing that we are still in the
field of the mind here, I am inclined to doubt whether the teachings constitute
“fresh knowledge and wider views” in the fullest sense of those
words. Krishnamurti has made it extremely clear that the mind can deal only
with the known, and the cases now to be considered seem to show that self-absorption
is still paramount, thus excluding the unknown, which is reality. This suspicion
is, I think, justified at least in the case of the Buddhist monk who had studied
Theosophy. C. W. Leadbeater reports:
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.
The
monk was first and foremost a Buddhist, taking his Theosophy in a distinctly
conditioned form. He had imported into his heaven-world his own private set
of values. In that private evaluation the Buddha stands first; the two Masters
are subsidiaries. The Buddha speaks in a certain way that is known and recognized
by His devotee as the Buddhist line of thought, after which, the Masters interpret
also in the same framework of reference. This is equivalent to the monk saying?
“I welcome occult teaching such as is given in Theosophy, but I can take
it only through the orthodox channel to which I was accustomed when in incarnation.”
The very fact of needing an interpretation shows that any fresh challenge is
met through the screen of the old. This is one of the indications of psychological
memory still being at work in these regions.
Next
we have the Neoplatonist who had spent a great deal of his time mastering the
teachings of that school of thought: ... now his heaven-life was occupied in
unravelling its mysteries and in endeavouring to understand its bearing upon
human life and development.” In other words, he was continuing, as on
earth, to look at life through a man-made system.
...
no teaching from an outside source, however elevated and authoritative, is of
the least use while the recipient is still conditioned by his psychological
memories, which distort it...
The
case of the astronomer who had turned Pantheist is a very mixed one in itself.
He “... was undoubtedly gaining real knowledge from ... the Devas,”
but at the same time, “He was lost in contemplation of a vast panorama
of whirling nebulae and gradually-forming ... worlds,” and imagined the
universe to be shaped like “ ... some vast animal”. In addition
to this, “His thoughts surrounded him as elemental forms shaped as stars,
...” As the whole cosmos round him was built by himself out of known ideas
and his own conceptions, he can only have been creating his own private universe
and his own private astronomy to match it. The significant fact is that no teaching
from an outside source, however elevated and authoritative, is of the least
use while the recipient is still conditioned by his psychological memories,
which distort it by attempting to cram it into a network of past experiences.
This case, as well as that of the Neoplatonist and the Buddhist monk, illustrates
how a heaven-life of complete self-absorption is but a working out of old responses
to new challenges under circumstances that render it more difficult than ever
to discriminate between the true and the false. Great musicians are here, still
continuing to do exactly what they did in their last incarnation. If they do
this between all their periods of manifestation, then it would account for the
lopsided and consequently un-integrated nature of certain types of genius.
The
last example given in the regions of form is that of the lonely introvert who
all his life had pushed away people who could have helped him. The key to the
situation lies in the telling phrase, “ ... in his manhood (he was) able
to work only in his own way, ...” This surely betokens a fierce and subtle
form of pride. If the case is examined carefully, it will be noted that on earth
he actually accomplished nothing, never having known life as it is, but only
as it might be in the mirage of his Utopian fantasies. His earthly paradise
could never have satisfied the multitudes he strove to serve, since it could
work only in his particular way. Having broken off all human relationships in
life, he never had the opportunity to see himself as he really was. Since he
was a failure in the world of everyday life, he created a world in which he
would be a success, and is one of the best examples we have of a man living
happily in his own mental projections. To him humanity as he lived amongst it
was even then nothing but “ ... vast thronging impersonal multitudes ...”
so when he passed on, his psychological memory evoked them anew in his private
heaven-world. Notice that his pride was such that solitude was preferable and
part of his heavenly bliss. If friends or relatives had been present, they would
have symbolized interference with “his own way”.
Let
us now turn to the accounts of the general environments of the astro-mental
plane to see if they correspond in any way with the lines of thought to which
your attention has been drawn. In the same way that the astral and mental planes
have not been separated, these scenic backgrounds will be taken as a developing
whole, that is, from the aspect of the individual consciousness.
What
we see and call the world or universe is a vast quantity of interactions.
As
a starting-point, there is a quotation from Professor Ernest Wood’s Secret
Doctrine Digest that may be of assistance. It occurs in his chapter on the
distinction drawn by H.P. Blavatsky between duration and time.
What
we see and call the world or universe is a vast quantity of interactions. Where
action is very slow so that the change is not immediately visible we popularly
call it an object; where the change is rapid we call it a force ... all things
are flowing, like rivers. The flow is the reality, and the object is only a
whirlpool in the stream.
An
object appears more or less static and unchanging, then, in proportion as it
resists the will or desire of man to alter it. It would seem therefore, that
there is greater or lesser retentiveness in the different kinds of matter. On
earth the retentiveness appears to be, in general, very strong. One cannot as
a rule change an object merely by looking at it and wanting it to be different.
Referring
again to the description of astro-mental scenery according to C. W . Leadbeater,
this quality seems to persist on the lower levels, as it is a counterpart of
the scenery on earth. Since earthly objects cannot be changed by will, the astro-mental
counterparts cannot be changed either. This, then, would be one of the reasons
for the difficulty an ordinary person would have in realizing that any change
had taken place in his condition, that is, that he was “dead”. At
this stage, again according to Theosophical teachings, there is reason to posit
that objects still exist in their own right. The complete self-absorption and
private creations of the higher levels have not yet made themselves apparent.
Consequently, the conditioning here is more collective, and on this account
we hear of people tending, as usual, to congregate in national, religious and
linguistic groups. Psychological memory keeps them acting, feeling, thinking,
judging, evaluating as they have always done, since it is reasonable that the
dropping of the physical body would make no difference in these matters.
On
the next levels of this region there is a change. The more obvious types of
psychological memory become more subtle as personal desires and aspirations
begin to assert themselves. Matter is now completely at the service of mind.
This would suggest that there is some point where reflection of earthly scenes
fades out as far as the personal consciousness is concerned. It is not suggested
that there need be any change of area in space connected with it; it could be
that a cloud of mental projections imposes itself as a screen thus hiding what
C. W. Leadbeater calls the “reality of these planes”. Group objects
existing in their own right now disappear, and self-absorption takes their place.
The limitations of ambition hitherto disguises as aspiration increase until
a private world, utterly subservient to the compensatory urges of the personality,
is fully fabricated. Separation of the sharpest and most final kind is now achieved,
so that psychological memory is the only thing that matters.
Here
is a most interesting situation, especially with regard to those who have unthinkingly
labelled C. W. Leadbeater’s investigations as “fairy tales”.
A consideration of all that has been said above will show that in the matter
of the power of thought-projections and their imprisoning nature, he and Jung
and Krishnamurti are fundamentally one. This would surely show that afterdeath
states as clairvoyantly reported are worthy of further research, even if mistakes
in accuracy and evaluation appear.
In
respect to these planes Krishnamurti is most uncompromising. In one Talk
he uses the phrase, “Inventing the astral plane,” though the context
implies that it is the mind that invents it, which is the very point which,
with the aid of Jung, I have been trying to make all along. The mind invents
dreams in the same way and for the same purpose, and we know well that dreams
exist and are extremely real for us at the time, even if they are imaginings
in the sense of image-making. I have therefore taken Krishnamurti’s attitude
as indirect support as to the possibility of such a state of affairs
as described by C. W. Leadbeater existing on the other side of death.
New
problems still arise. The chief of these is: In the light of Jung’s theory
of mental projections, and of Krishnamurti’s theory of psychological memory,
what, above the lower levels of the astro-mental plane, exists in its own right?
Or, put in another way, what constitutes the reality of these regions? Neither
of the two pioneers mentioned are of any further assistance to the research
worker, as both are, in their respective ways, quite indifferent to the subject.
Jung,
in answer to a question about the after-life, said:
I
have not been there consciously yet. When I die, I shall say “Now let
us see!” For the time being I am in this form, and I say “Now what
is here? Let us do everything we can here.” If, when we die, we find there
is a new life, I shall say “Now let us live once more.”
Krishnamurti's
attitude is contained in the implications of his basic question, “Why
do you dream?” Dreams come through repressions and frustrations, through
thoughts, feelings and acts which, for one reason or another, have remained
incomplete. When the clamp or the blockage is removed, they rise into consciousness
and complete themselves in a dream or a heaven-life. It follows that if there
is no real cause for dreaming, there is no real cause for a heaven-life on the
astro-mental plane. The phase, “real cause,” is used since it is
a common phenomenon that people who say, “I never dream,” are suffering
from some form of blockage in the psychic system, and should they contact modern
depth psychology, the dreaming starts in a normal way. The point at issue is
that it is the accumulation of uncompleted and therefore frustrated actions
that cause dreaming.
Is
the solution, then, never to curb your instincts? The answer to this is a most
emphatic “No”. Jung and Krishnamurti have both found in their own
way that the contents of the psyche have a positive and a negative side. To
renounce the positive in order to fly to the negative does not alter the fact
that in either case, and in whichever direction you fly, you have not changed
the state of being conditioned. In the former case you repress the negative,
and in the latter case you repress the positive. The psyche being a self-regulating
organism, in either case there is a level of the astro-mental plane appropriate
to the situation waiting to receive you after you pass over.
...the
life of the mind is the life of whatever heaven-world one chooses to make for
oneself.
If
one can accept the possibility of there being a conscious after-life on the
lines suggested by C. W. Leadbeater, the sensible thing to do is to uncondition
oneself while one may. That can be done only while one is on earth with the
hard facts of life acting as a countercheck to the runaway mind, which means
understanding the mental processes without evaluating them by justification
or condemnation. Accepting and rejecting according to a preconceived pattern
of thought is the life of the mind, and the life of the mind is the life of
whatever heaven-world one chooses for oneself.
The
private heaven-worlds C. W. Leadbeater gave us as examples have provided some
significant information which may be summarized as follows:
1.
Every heaven-life is in terms of the known. Immortality is always conceived
as a continuity of mortality.
2.
Thus the contents of the heaven-worlds, of form at least, consist of those imported
by psychological memory from the physical plane. Dropping the physical body
has not changed the judgments and evaluations one inherited from the collectives
in which one lived. One is earth-minded to the end.
3.
The processes of the heaven world are a progressive shutting away from reality
by a series of glamorous mental projections provided by the self in incarnation.
So long as they prevail, there is no opportunity of seeing oneself as one really
is, because there is no longer any true relationship with others.
Death
is indeed a great mystery, and if there is no understanding of it, then one
whole aspect of God remains un-experienced...
It
is clear, then, that if we refused to face reality down here, and evaded critical
situations by allowing our collectives to respond automatically to the challenges
of life by means of endless adaptations, then the same attitude is likely to
be preserved there. If, for our life-span, we allowed the cunning mind to infuse
us with thoughts of perpetual continuity through property, family, social position
and so on, then the conditioning factors of time and space will follow us into
the after-life, and we shall not die. This may appear to be a strange
conclusion after all that has been taught about the other side of death, with
its delights and peace and bliss, but if reconsidered from the angle of psychological
memory presented in this article, then the triumphant cry of “There is
no death!” has possibilities of a great tragedy. Should not death be an
ending to the old, rather than a continuation of the old in another form? Should
not death be a total transformation, and opening up to the unknown? If death
is a passage from a state of conditioned collectivity to a state of subjective
self-induced illusion, how shall we know God, Truth, Reality? Death is indeed
a great mystery, and if there is no understanding of it, then one whole aspect
of God remains un-experienced - that is, if God can ever be experienced in the
usual meaning of that word. Says Krishnamurti”
Any
mind whose thought springs from this desire for self-perpetuation, the desire
to attain, to succeed, whether in this world or the next is bound to be caught
in illusion ... Whereas, if the mind ... is capable of dying psychologically
to the desire to be secure, so that is is free from the past, the past which
is the accumulation of its own desires and experiences, the past which is the
perpetuation of “me,” the self, the ego, then you will see that
there are no paths to truth at all ... When the mind can die psychologically
to all the things it has gathered for its own security, it is only then that
reality comes into being.
The
crux of the whole matter is, according to this line of thought, to die to psychological
memory, to conditioning of every sort, while we are still in a position to do
so, in this way understanding death while we are still in life. After we have
passed over, it may very well be too late, for the glamour of unrestricted self-fulfilment
may flow over us, and one more opportunity of contacting reality will have been
lost.
Here
we are faced with the same problem that confronted us when we were considering
the freeing of ourselves from society with all its aims and goals, rewards and
punishments. When all these things that have seemed to constitute our security,
our vital interests, even our life itself, have fallen away what remains? By
considering with conditioned minds what we shall do with ourselves when we have
shed the physical body, exactly the same problem has arisen: if there is no
compensation, no reward, no perpetual summerland of unalloyed pleasure, no more
occult knowledge, no more accumulation of experience - in fact, no more of that
kind of astro-mental plane - what remains? And the answer to that nobody can
give you, for it is reality, says Krishnamurti, that then comes into being -
reality that can never reveal itself in terms of the known, for God, Truth,
Reality, like death itself, is the unknown.
This,
I think, is why he has stressed the necessity of solving this problem now, while
we are still on earth - the problem of “what remains?” If we solve
it down here, we have solved it for ever, for in that realization and understanding
of “what is,” we make the tremendous discovery that life and death
are the same. Not the same in the superficial sense that just continue some
variation of our earth-life in a heaven-world of our own creation, but in the
deepest sense that life and death are fundamentally the understanding of “what
is” as both are in terms of the unknown
As
published in "The Theosophist" magazine of June, July and August 1960 |