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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Death--and After? + +Author: Annie Besant + +Release Date: April 27, 2006 [EBook #18266] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEATH--AND AFTER? *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + + + + +<h4><span class="u"> <i>Theosophical Manuals. No. 3.</i></span> + + + +</h4> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h1>DEATH—AND AFTER?</h1> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>ANNIE BESANT.</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h5 >(20TH THOUSAND)</h5> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3 >Theosophical Publishing Society</h3> +<h3 >London and Benares</h3> +<h3 >City Agents, Percy Lund Humphries & Co.</h3> +<h3 >Amen Corner, London, E.C.</h3> +<p> </p> +<h3 >1906</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>PRICE ONE SHILLING</i> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> +<p><i>Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. +It is the third 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 student's zeal and the neophyte's +ardour. But these Manuals are not written 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.</i></p> + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="DEATH_AND_AFTER" id="DEATH_AND_AFTER"></a>DEATH—AND AFTER?</h2> + + +<p>Who does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in +Britain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king, +surrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel of +his Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a bird +flew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight, +and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian +priest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the +transitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the +soul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into the +darkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious +world. Out of the darkness, through the open window of Birth, the life +of a man comes to the earth; it dwells for a while before our eyes; +into the darkness, through the open window of Death, it vanishes out +of our sight. And man has questioned ever of Religion, Whence comes +it? Whither goes it? and the answers have varied with the faiths. +To-day, many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin, there +are more people in Christendom who question whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> man has a spirit +to come anywhence or to go anywhither than, perhaps, in the world's +history could ever before have been found at one time. And the very +Christians who claim that Death's terrors have been abolished, have +surrounded the bier and the tomb with more gloom and more dismal +funeral pomp than have the votaries of any other creed. What can be +more depressing than the darkness in which a house is kept shrouded, +while the dead body is awaiting sepulture? What more repellent than +the sweeping robes of lustreless crape, and the purposed hideousness +of the heavy cap in which the widow laments the "deliverance" of her +husband "from the burden of the flesh"? What more revolting than the +artificially long faces of the undertaker's men, the drooping +"weepers", the carefully-arranged white handkerchiefs, and, until +lately, the pall-like funeral cloaks? During the last few years, a +great and marked improvement has been made. The plumes, cloaks, and +weepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse is +almost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with +flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and +women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in +shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how +miserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial +discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne, +and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to +natural human grief.</p> + +<p>In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding +Death has been characteristic of Christianity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> Death has been painted +as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening +figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking +an hour-glass—all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round +this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with +his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern +Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent +diction to surround with horror the figure of Death.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">The other shape,<br /> +</span> +<span class="i0">If shape it might be called, that shape had none<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For each seemed either; black it stood as night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The likeness of a kingly crown had on.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Satan was now at hand, and from his seat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The monster moving onward came as fast,<br /> +</span> +<span class="i0">With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode....<br /> +</span> +<span class="i0">... So spoke the grisly terror: and in shape<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold<br /> +</span> +<span class="i0">More dreadful and deform....<br /> +</span> +<span class="i0">... but he, my inbred enemy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out <i>Death!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From all her caves, and back resounded <i>Death</i>.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers +of a Teacher said to have "brought life and immortality to light" is +passing strange. The claim, that as late in the history of the world +as a mere <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>eighteen centuries ago the immortality of the Spirit in man +was brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the face +of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands. +The stately Egyptian Ritual with its <i>Book of the Dead</i>, in which are +traced the post-mortem journeys of the Soul, should be enough, if it +stood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous a claim. +Hear the cry of the Soul of the righteous:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>O ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your +arms, for I become one of you. (xvii. 22.)</p> + +<p>Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Light, dwelling in the mighty +abode, in the bosom of the absolute darkness. I come to thee, +a purified Soul; my two hands are around thee. (xxi. 1.)</p> + +<p>I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have +knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am +in possession of my arms, I am in possession of my legs, at +the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at +the gates of Amenti. (xxvi. 5, 6.)</p></div> + +<p>Not to multiply to weariness quotations from a book that is wholly +composed of the doings and sayings of the disembodied man, let it +suffice to give the final judgment on the victorious Soul:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower +divine region, he shall never be rejected.... He shall drink +from the current of the celestial river.... His Soul shall +not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation +to those near it. The worms shall not devour it. (clxiv. +14-16.)</p></div> + +<p>The general belief in Re-incarnation is enough to prove that the +religions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in the +survival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example a +passage from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span><i>Ordinances of Manu</i>, following on a disquisition on +metempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from +rebirths.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self [should be +translated, knowledge of the <i>Self</i>, Atmâ] is said (to be) +the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences, +since from it immortality is obtained.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p></div> + +<p>The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is +shown by the following, translated from the <i>Avesta</i>, in which, the +journey of the Soul after death having been described, the ancient +Scripture proceeds:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at +(the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the +second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the +third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of +the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal +Lights.</p> + +<p>To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art +thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshy dwellings, +from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither +to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the +imperishable, as it happened to thee—to whom hail!</p> + +<p>Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for) +he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the +separation of body and soul.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p></div> + +<p>The Persian <i>Desatir</i> speaks with equal definiteness. This work +consists of fifteen books, written by Persian prophets, and was +written originally in the Avestaic language; "God" is Ahura-Mazda, or +Yazdan:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>God selected man from animals to confer on him the soul, +which is a substance free, simple, immaterial, non-compounded +and non-appetitive. And that becomes an angel by improvement.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> +<p>By his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he +connected the soul with the material body.</p> + +<p>If he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good +knowledge and religion he is <i>Hartasp</i>....</p> + +<p>As soon as he leaves this material body, I (God) take him up +to the world of angels, that he may have an interview with +the angels, and behold me.</p> + +<p>And if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from +vice, I will promote him to the rank of angels.</p> + +<p>Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find +a place in the rank of wise men, among the heavens and stars. +And in that region of happiness he will remain for ever.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p></div> + +<p>In China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestors +shows how completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyond +the tomb. The <i>Shû King</i>—placed by Mr. James Legge as the most +ancient of Chinese classics, containing historical documents ranging +from B.C. 2357-627—is full of allusions to these Souls, who with +other spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendants +and the welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B.C. +1401-1374, exhorts his subjects:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my +ancestors (who are now) the spiritual sovereigns.... Were I +to err in my government, and remain long here, my high +sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me +great punishment for my crime, and say, "Why do you oppress +my people?" If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend +to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with +me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down +on you great punishment for your crime, and say, "Why do you +not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your +virtue?" When they punish you from above, you will have no +way of escape.... Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut +you off and abandon you, and not save you from death.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p><p>Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in those +long-past ages, that "the change that men call Death" seems to play a +very small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the Flowery +Land.</p> + +<p>These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may +suffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to "light +through the gospel". The whole ancient world basked in the full +sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily, +voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the +gate of Death.</p> + +<p>It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously +re-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror of +Death that has played so large a part in its social life, its +literature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has +surrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their +hells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy +Fear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light and +trivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their varied +unpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather than +of creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its +antithesis, and that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodiless +condition too lacking in solidity of comfort; whereas the more dreamy, +mystical East, prone to meditation, and ever seeking to escape from +the thraldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on the +disembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to +unfettered thought.</p> + +<p>Ere passing to the consideration of the history of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> man in the +post-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state the +constitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we must +have in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand their +disintegration. Man then consists of</p> + +<table class="tb1" > + <tr> + <td><i>The Immortal Triad</i>:</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Atmâ.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Buddhi.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Manas.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><i>The Perishable Quaternary</i>:</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Kâma.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Prâna.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Etheric Double.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Dense Body.</td> + </tr> +</table> + + +<p>The dense body is the physical body, the visible, tangible outer form, +composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal +counterpart of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prâna is +vitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physical +molecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is the +life-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal +Life-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence +that we speak of as "a life". Kâma is the aggregate of appetites, +passions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinker +in us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atmâ, the +Spirit, dwells, and in which alone it can manifest.</p> + +<p>Now the link between the Immortal Triad and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> Perishable Quaternary +is Manas, which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and +functions as Higher Manas and Lower Manas. Higher Manas sends out a +Ray, Lower Manas, which works in and through the human brain, +functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating +intelligence. This mingles with Kâma, the passional nature, the +passions and emotions thus becoming a part of Mind, as defined in +Western Psychology. And so we have the link formed between the higher +and lower natures in man, this Kâma-Manas belonging to the higher by +its mânasic, and to the lower by its kâmic, elements. As this forms +the battleground during life, so does it play an important part in +post-mortem existence. We might now classify our seven principles a +little differently, having in view this mingling in Kâma-Manas of +perishable and imperishable elements:</p> +<table class="tb1"> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="td1">{ Atmâ.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><i>Immortal</i>.</td> + <td class="td1">{ Buddhi.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="td1">{ Higher-Manas.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><i>Conditionally Immortal</i>.</td> + <td class="td1">Kâma-Manas.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="td1">{ Prâna.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><i>Mortal</i>.</td> + <td class="td1">{ Etheric Double.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="td1">{ Dense Body.</td> + </tr> +</table> + + +<p>Some Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this, +declaring Spirit to be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul to +be conditionally immortal, <i>i.e.</i>, capable of winning immortality by +uniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently mortal. The majority +of uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishes +at Death, and the something—called indifferently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> Soul or +Spirit—that survives Death. This last classification—if +classification it may be called—is entirely inadequate, if we are to +seek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the +phenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man's +nature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, but +is inadequate to explain many phenomena. The septenary division alone +gives a reasonable theory consistent with the facts we have to deal +with, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will do +wisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the +body, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to +classify its tissues at far greater length and with far more +minuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn the +differences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous, +epithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if he +rebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, it +would be explained to him that only by such an analysis of the +different components of the body can the varied and complicated +phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted +for support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for +absorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own +distinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and +physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is +gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical +terms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to +explain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, I +find myself compelled—contrary to my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> habit in these elementary +papers—to resort to these technical names at the outset, for the +English language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of +long descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient.</p> + +<p>For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the +adherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has +arisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding of +each others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently said +that he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by +Spirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was not +body. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists of +bone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: "Oh! I mean +everything that is not bone." A clear definition of terms, and a rigid +adherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to +understand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful +comparison of experiences.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Fate of the Body.</span></h3> +<p>The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of +reconstruction. First builded into the etheric form in the womb of the +mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh +materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it; +with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it. The outgoing +stream is scattered over the environment, and helps to rebuild bodies +of all kinds in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, +the physical basis of all these being one and the same.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless +<i>lives</i>, just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth +was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic.... +Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead +organism of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of +a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened +with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and +from within by leucomaines, robes, ærobes, anærobes, and what +not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the +Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, +plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of +such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can +detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material +portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that +will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and +physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are +destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical +truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and +physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the +reptile and its nest, the rock, and man, is more and more +clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all +being found to be identical, chemical Science may well say +that there is no difference between the matter which composes +the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is +far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds +are the same, but the same infinitesimal <i>invisible lives</i> +compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the +daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree +which shelters him from the sun. Each particle—whether you +call it organic or inorganic—<i>is a life</i>.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p></div> + +<p>These "lives" which, separate and independent, are the minute vehicles +of Prâna, aggregated together form the molecules and cells of the +physical body, and they stream in and stream out, during all the years +of bodily life, thus forming a continual bridge between man and his +environment. Controlling these are the "Fiery Lives," the Devourers, +which constrain these to their work of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>building up the cells of the +body, so that they work harmoniously and in order, subordinated to the +higher manifestation of life in the complex organism called Man. These +Fiery Lives on our plane correspond, in this controlling and +organising function, with the One Life of the Universe,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> and when +they no longer exercise this function in the human body, the lower +lives run rampant, and begin to break down the hitherto definitely +organised body. During bodily life they are marshalled as an army; +marching in regular order under the command of a general, performing +various evolutions, keeping step, moving as a single body. At "Death" +they become a disorganised and tumultuous mob, rushing hither and +thither, jostling each other, tumbling over each other, with no common +object, no generally recognised authority. The body is never more +alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in +its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily +united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To +the Materialist, the only difference between a living and a +dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in +the other latent. When it is extinct or entirely latent, the +molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them +asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must +be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as +Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an +intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests +movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would +not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which +compose it are living and struggle to separate."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p></div> + +<p>Those who have read <i>The Seven Principles of Man</i>,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>know that the +etheric double is the vehicle of Prâna, the life-principle, or +vitality. Through the etheric double Prâna exercises the controlling +and co-ordinating force spoken of above, and "Death" takes triumphant +possession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawn +and the delicate cord which unites it with the body is snapped. The +process of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and definitely +described. Thus Andrew Jackson Davis, "the Poughkeepsie Seer", +describes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, and +he states that the magnetic cord did not break for some thirty-six +hours after apparent death. Others have described, in similar terms, +how they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying body, gradually +condensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiring +person, and attached to that person by a glistening thread. The +snapping of the thread means the breaking of the last magnetic link +between the dense body and the remaining principles of the human +constitution; the body has dropped away from the man; he is +excarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as his +constitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body, +being left as a cast-off garment.</p> + +<p>Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or +unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one +after the other, its outer casings, and—as the snake from its skin, +the butterfly from its chrysalis—emerges from one after another, +passing into a higher state of consciousness. Now it is the fact that +this escape from the body, and this dwelling of the conscious entity +either in the vehicle called the body of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> desire, the kâmic or astral +body, or in a yet more ethereal Thought Body, can be effected during +earth-life; so that man may become familiar with the excarnated +condition, and it may lose for him all the terrors that encircle the +unknown. He can know himself as a conscious entity in either of these +vehicles, and so prove to his own satisfaction that "life" does not +depend on his functioning through the physical body. Why should a man +who has thus repeatedly "shed" his lower bodies, and has found the +process result, not in unconsciousness, but in a vastly extended +freedom and vividness of life—why should he fear the final casting +away of his fetters, and the freeing of his Immortal Self from what he +realises as the prison of the flesh?</p> + +<p>This view of human life is an essential part of the Esoteric +Philosophy. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. This +living flame, passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itself +coverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the Triad, the +Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends out +its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body, +or kâmic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double and +the physical body. The once free immortal Intelligence thus entangled, +enswathed, enchained, works heavily and laboriously through the +coatings that enwrap it. In its own nature it remains ever the free +Bird of Heaven, but its wings are bound to its side by the matter into +which it is plunged. When man recognises his own inherent nature, he +learns to open his prison doors occasionally and escapes from his +encircling gaol; first he learns to identify him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>self with the +Immortal Triad, and rises above the body and its passions into a pure +mental and moral life; then he learns that the conquered body cannot +hold him prisoner, and he unlocks its door and steps out into the +sunshine of his true life. So when Death unlocks the door for him, he +knows the country into which he emerges, having trodden its ways at +his own will. And at last he grows to recognise that fact of supreme +importance, that "Life" has nothing to do with body and with this +material plane; that Life is his conscious existence, unbroken, +unbreakable, and that the brief interludes in that Life, during which +he sojourns on Earth, are but a minute fraction of his conscious +existence, and a fraction, moreover, during which he is less alive, +because of the heavy coverings which weigh him down. For only during +these interludes (save in exceptional cases) may he wholly lose his +consciousness of continued life, being surrounded by these coverings +which delude him and blind him to the truth of things, making that +real which is illusion, and that stable which is transitory. The +sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of +it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period +of our incarceration; at Death we step out of the prison again into +the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. Short are the twilight +periods, and long the periods of the sunlight; but in our blinded +state we call the twilight life, and to us it is the real existence, +while we call the sunlight Death, and shiver at the thought of passing +into it. Well did Giordano Bruno, one of the greatest teachers of our +Philosophy in the Middle Ages, state the truth as to the body and Man. +Of the real Man he says:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>He will be present in the body in such wise that the best +part of himself will be absent from it, and will join himself +by an indissoluble sacrament to divine things, in such a way +that he will not feel either love or hatred of things mortal. +Considering himself as master, and that he ought not to be +servant and slave to his body, which he would regard only as +the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue +which smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands, +stocks which fix his feet, veil which hides his view. Let him +not be servant, captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid, and +blind, for the body which he himself abandons cannot +tyrannise over him, so that thus the spirit in a certain +degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter is +subject to the divinity and to nature.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p></div> + +<p>When once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it we +gain our liberty, Death loses for us all his terrors, and at his touch +the body slips from us as a garment, and we stand out from it erect +and free.</p> + +<p>On the same lines of thought Dr. Franz Hartmann writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>According to certain views of the West man is a developed +ape. According to the views of Indian Sages, which also +coincide with those of the Philosophers of past ages and with +the teachings of the Christian Mystics, man is a God, who is +united during his earthly life, through his own carnal +tendencies, to an animal (his animal nature). The God who +dwells within him endows man with wisdom. The animal endows +him with force. After death, <i>the God effects his own release +from the man</i> by departing from the animal body. As man +carries within him this divine consciousness, it is his task +to battle with his animal inclinations, and to raise himself +above them, by the help of the divine principle, a task which +the animal cannot achieve, and which therefore is not +demanded of it.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p></div> + +<p>The "man", using the word in the sense of personality, as it is used +in the latter half of this sentence, is only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>conditionally immortal; +the true man, the evolving God, releases himself, and so much of the +personality goes with him as has raised itself into union with the +divine.</p> + +<p>The body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives—previously +held in constraint by Prâna, acting through its vehicle the etheric +double—begins to decay, that is to break up, and with the +disintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away +into other combinations.</p> + +<p>On our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countless +lives that in a previous incarnation made of our then body their +passing dwelling; but all that we are just now concerned with is the +breaking up of the body whose life-span is over, and its fate is +complete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death means +dissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united the +many into one.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Fate of the Etheric Double.</span></h3> +<p>The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body of +man. It is the double that is sometimes seen during life in the +neighbourhood of the body, and its absence from the body is generally +marked by the heaviness or semi-lethargy of the latter. Acting as the +reservoir, or vehicle, of the life-principle during earth-life, its +withdrawal from the body is naturally marked by the lowering of all +vital functions, even while the cord which unites the two is still +unbroken. As has been already said, the snapping of the cord means the +death of the body.</p> + +<p>When the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel to +any distance from it. Normally it remains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> floating over the body, the +state of consciousness being dreamy and peaceful, unless tumultuous +distress and violent emotion surround the corpse from which it has +just issued. And here it may be well to say that during the slow +process of dying, while the etheric double is withdrawing from the +body, taking with it the higher principles, as after it has withdrawn, +extreme quiet and self-control should be observed in the chamber of +Death. For during this time the whole life passes swiftly in review +before the Ego, the individual, as those have related who have passed +in drowning into this unconscious and pulseless state. A Master has +written:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>At the last moment the whole life is reflected in our +memory, and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners, +picture after picture, one event after another.... The man +may often appear dead, yet from the last pulsation, from and +between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when +the last spark of animal heat leaves the body</i>, the brain +thinks, <i>and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds +his whole life. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a +deathbed, and find yourselves in the solemn presence of +death. Especially have ye to keep quiet just after death has +laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, +lest ye disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the +busy work of the past, casting its reflection upon the veil +of the future.</i><a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p></div> + +<p>This is the time during which the thought-images of the ended +earth-life, clustering around their maker, group and interweave +themselves into the completed image of that life, and are impressed in +their totality on the Astral <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>Light. The dominant tendencies, the +strongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stamp +themselves as the characteristics which will appear as "innate +qualities" in the succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of the +life-issues, this reading of the kârmic records, is too solemn and +momentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings of +personal relatives and friends.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is +sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before +him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the +<i>personal</i> become one with the <i>individual</i> and all-knowing +Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole +chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He +sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by +flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a +spectator, looking down into the arena he is quitting.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p></div> + +<p>This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy, +peaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double +floats above the body to which it has belonged, now completely +separated from it.</p> + +<p>Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the +neighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turned +to some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at the +last, something left undone which needed doing, or when some local +disturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under +these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be +seen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness +alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive.</p> + +<p>As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>disengage +themselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as they +previously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefold +entity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double, +with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an +ethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This +ethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disintegrate +together; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in churchyards, +sometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violet +mists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend of +my own, passing through the horribly repulsive stages of +decomposition, a ghastly vision in face of which clairvoyance was +certainly no blessing. The process goes on <i>pari passu</i>, until all but +the actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completely +disintegrated, and the particles have gone to form other combinations.</p> + +<p>One of the great advantages of cremation—apart from all sanitary +conditions—lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the +physical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, brought +about by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual decomposition, swift +dissociation takes place, and no physical remnants are left, working +possible mischief.</p> + +<p>The ethereal corpse may to some extent be revivified for a short +period after its death. Dr. Hartmann says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The fresh corpse of a person who has suddenly been killed may +be galvanised into a semblance of life by the application of +a galvanic battery. Likewise the astral corpse of a person +may be brought back into an artificial life by being infused +with a part of the life principle of the medium. If that +corpse is one of a very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>intellectual person, it may talk +very intellectually; and if it was that of a fool it will +talk like a fool.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p></div> + +<p>This mischievous procedure can only be carried out in the +neighbourhood of the corpse, and for a very limited time after death, +but there are cases on record of such galvanising of the ethereal +corpse, performed at the grave of the departed person. Needless to say +that such a process belongs distinctly to "Black" Magic, and is wholly +evil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by +burning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and +a darkness that it is the worst profanity to break.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Kâmaloka, and the Fate of Prâna and Kâma.</span></h3> +<p>Loka is a Sanskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land, +so that Kâmaloka is literally the place or the world of Kâma, Kâma +being the name of that part of the human organism that includes all +the passions, desires, and emotions which man has in common with the +lower animals.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> In this division of the universe, the Kâmaloka, +dwell all the human entities that have shaken off the dense body and +its ethereal double, but have not yet disentangled themselves from the +passional and emotional nature. Kâmaloka has many other tenants, but +we are concerned only with the human beings who have lately passed +through the gateway of Death, and it is on these that we must +concentrate our study.</p> + +<p>A momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of the +existence of regions in the universe, other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>than the physical, +peopled with intelligent beings. The existence of such regions is +postulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts and +to very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience; +all that is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution of +the faculties latent in every man; a "living" man, in ordinary +parlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies behind him, and +explore these regions without going through Death's gateway. Thus we +read in the <i>Theosophist</i> that real knowledge may be acquired by the +Spirit in the living man coming into conscious relations with the +world of Spirit.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>As in the case, say, of an initiated Adept, who brings back +upon earth with him the clear and distinct +recollection—correct to a detail—of facts gathered, and the +information obtained, in the invisible sphere of +<i>Realities</i>.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p></div> + +<p>In this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge as +definite, as certain, as familiar, as if he should travel to Africa in +ordinary fashion, explore its deserts, and return to his own land the +richer for the knowledge and experience gained. A seasoned African +explorer would care but little for the criticisms passed on his report +by persons who had never been thither; he might tell what he saw, +describe the animals whose habits he had studied, sketch the country +he had traversed, sum up its products and its characteristics. If he +was contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled critics, he +would be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave them +alone. Ignorance cannot convince knowledge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>by repeated asseveration +of its nescience. The opinion of a hundred persons on a subject on +which they are wholly ignorant is of no more weight than the opinion +of one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many consenting +witnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothing +multiplied a thousand times remains nothing. Strange, indeed, would it +be if all the Space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the +inhabitants of earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe +itself. As Dr. Huxley said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, +it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending +scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable +from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p></div> + +<p>If these entities did not have organs of sense like our own, if their +senses responded to vibrations different from those which affect ours, +they and we might walk side by side, pass each other, meet each other, +pass through each other, and yet be never the wiser as to each other's +existence. Mr. Crookes gives us a glimpse of the possibility of such +unconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, and but a very slight +effort of imagination is needed to realise the conception.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs +of sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to +which our eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate +other vibrations to which we are blind. Such beings would +practically be living in a different world to our own. +Imagine, for instance, what idea we should form of +surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes not sensitive +to the ordinary rays of light, but sensitive to the +vibrations concerned in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>electric and magnetic phenomena. +Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. +Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph +wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole +drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active +work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent +magnet would realise the dream of mediæval mystics, and +become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or +consumption of fuel.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p></div> + +<p>Kâmaloka is a region peopled by intelligent and semi-intelligent +entities, just as our own is thus peopled; it is crowded, like our +world, with many types and forms of living things, as diverse from +each other as a blade of grass is different from a tiger, a tiger from +a man. It interpenetrates our own world and is interpenetrated by it, +but, as the states of matter in the two worlds differ, they co-exist +without the knowledge of the intelligent beings in either. Only under +abnormal circumstances can consciousness of each other's presence +arise among the inhabitants of the two worlds; by certain peculiar +training a living human being can come into conscious contact with and +control many of the sub-human denizens of Kâmaloka; human beings, who +have quitted earth and in whom the kâmic elements were strong, may +very readily be attracted by the kâmic elements in embodied men, and +by their help become conscious again of the presence of the scenes +they had left; and human beings still embodied may set up methods of +communication with the disembodied, and may, as said, leave their own +bodies for awhile, and become conscious in Kâmaloka by the use of +faculties through which they have accustomed their consciousness to +act. The point which is here to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>clearly grasped is the existence +of Kâmaloka as a definite region, inhabited by a large diversity of +entities, among whom are disembodied human beings.</p> + +<p>From this necessary digression we return to the particular human being +whose fate, as a type, we may be said to be tracing, and of whose +dense body and etheric double we have already disposed. Let us +contemplate him in the state of very brief duration that follows the +shaking off of these two casings. Says H.P. Blavatsky, after quoting +from Plutarch a description of the man after death:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a <i>septenary</i> +during life; a <i>quintile</i> just after death, in Kâmaloka.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p></div> + +<p>Prâna, the portion of the life-energy appropriated by the man in his +embodied state, having lost its vehicle, the ethereal double, which, +with the physical body, has slipped away from its controlling energy, +must pass back into the great life-reservoir of the universe. As water +enclosed in a glass vessel and plunged into a tank mingles with the +surrounding water if the vessel be broken, so Prâna, as the bodies +drop from it, mingles again with the Life Universal. It is only "just +after death" that man is a quintile, or fivefold in his constitution, +for Prâna, as a distinctively human principle, cannot remain +appropriated when its vehicle disintegrates.</p> + +<p>The man now is clothed, but with the Kâma Rûpa, or body of Kâma, the +desire body, a body of astral matter, often termed "fluidic," so +easily does it, during earth-life, take any form impressed upon it +from without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>or moulded from within. The living man is there, the +immortal Triad, still clad in the last of its terrestrial garments, in +the subtle, sensitive, responsive form which lent it during embodiment +the power to feel, to desire, to enjoy, to suffer, in the physical +world.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>When the man dies, his three lower principles leave him for +ever; <i>i.e.</i>, body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the +etheric body, or the double of the living man. And then his +four principles—the central or middle principle (the animal +soul or Kâma Rûpa, with what it has assimilated from the +lower Manas) and the higher Triad—find themselves in +Kâmaloka.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p></div> + +<p>This desire body undergoes a marked change soon after death. The +different densities of the astral matter of which it is composed +arrange themselves in a series of shells or envelopes, the densest +being outside, shutting the consciousness away from all but very +limited contact and expression. The consciousness turns in on itself, +if left undisturbed, and prepares itself for the next step onwards, +while the desire body gradually disintegrates, shell after shell.</p> + +<p>Up to the point of this re-arrangement of the matter of the desire +body, the post-mortem experience of all is much the same; it is a +"dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness," as before said, and this, in +the happiest cases, passes without vivid awakening into the deeper +"pre-devachanic unconsciousness" which ends with the blissful wakening +in Devachan, for the period of repose that intervenes between two +incarnations. But as, at this point, different possibilities arise, +let us trace a normal uninterrupted progression in Kâmaloka, up to the +threshold of Devachan, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>and then we can return to consider other +classes of circumstances.</p> + +<p>If a person has led a pure life, and has steadfastly striven to rise +and to identify himself with the higher rather than the lower parts of +his nature, after shaking off the dense body and the etheric double, +and after Prâna has re-mingled with the ocean of Life, and he is +clothed only with the Kâma Rûpa, the passional elements in him, being +but weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not be +able to assert themselves strongly in Kâmaloka. Now during earth-life +Kâma and the Lower Manas are strongly united and interwoven with each +other; in the case we are considering Kâma is weak, and the Lower +Manas has purified Kâma to a great extent. The mind, woven with the +passions, emotions, and desires, has purified them, and has +assimilated their pure part, absorbed it into itself, so that all that +is left of Kâma is a mere residue, easily to be gotten rid of, from +which the Immortal Triad can readily free itself. Slowly this Immortal +Triad, the true Man, draws in all his forces; he draws into himself +the memories of the earth-life just ended, its loves, its hopes, its +aspirations, and prepares to pass out of Kâmaloka into the blissful +rest of Devachan, the "abode of the Gods", or as some say, "the land +of bliss". Kâmaloka</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Is an astral locality, the Limbus of scholastic theology, the +Hades of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a <i>locality</i> +only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area, nor +boundary, but exists <i>within</i> subjective space, <i>i.e.</i>, is +beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists, and it is +there that the astral <i>eidolons</i> of all the beings that have +lived, animals included, await their <i>second death</i>. For the +animals it comes with the disintegration and the entire +fading out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>of their astral particles to the last. For the +human <i>eidolon</i> it begins when the Atmâ-Buddhi-Mânasic Triad +is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles or the +reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the +Devachanic state.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p></div> + +<p>This second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from the +kâmalokic sphere, so closely related to the earth sphere, into the +higher state of Devachan, of which we must speak later. The type of +man we are considering passes through this, in the peaceful dreamy +state already described, and, if left undisturbed, will not regain +full consciousness until these stages are passed through, and peace +gives way to bliss.</p> + +<p>But during the whole period that the four principles—the Immortal +Triad and Kâma—remain in Kâmaloka, whether the period be long or +short, days or centuries, they are within the reach of the +earth-influences. In the case of such a person as we have been +describing, an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow and +desires of friends left on earth, and these violently vibrating kâmic +elements in the embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desire +body of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas, not +yet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the Spiritual +Intelligence. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vivid +remembrance of the earth-life so lately left, and may—if any +sensitive or medium is concerned, either directly, or indirectly +through one of these grieving friends in communication with the +medium—use the medium's etheric and dense bodies to speak or write to +those left behind. This awakening is often accompanied with acute +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>suffering, and even if this be avoided, the natural process of the +Triad freeing itself is rudely disturbed, and the completion of its +freedom is delayed. In speaking of this possibility of communication +during the period immediately succeeding death and before the freed +Man passes on into Devachan, H.P. Blavatsky says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases—when +the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for +some purpose forced the higher consciousness <i>to remain +awake</i>, and, therefore, it was really the <i>individuality</i>, +the "Spirit", that communicated—has derived much benefit +from the return of the Spirit into the <i>objective</i> plane is +another question. The Spirit is dazed after death, and falls +very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic +unconsciousness."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p></div> + +<p>Intense desire may move the disembodied entity to spontaneously return +to the sorrowing ones left behind, but this spontaneous return is rare +in the case of persons of the type we are just now considering. If +they are left at peace, they will generally sleep themselves quietly +into Devachan, and so avoid any struggle or suffering in connection +with the second death. On the final escape of the Immortal Triad there +is left behind in Kâmaloka only the desire body, the "shell" or mere +empty phantom, which gradually disintegrates; but it will be better to +deal with this in considering the next type, the average man or woman, +without marked spirituality of an elevated kind, but also without +marked evil tendencies.</p> + +<p>When an average man or woman reaches Kâmaloka, the spiritual +Intelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possesses +considerable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven +with Kâma during the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>earth-life just ended, having lived much in the +enjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions, +cannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, and +return to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence a +considerable delay in the world of transition, in Kâmaloka, while the +desires wear out and fade away to a point at which they can no longer +detain the Soul with their clinging arms.</p> + +<p>As said, during the period that the Immortal Triad and Kâma remain +together in Kâmaloka, communication between the disembodied entity and +the embodied entities on earth is possible. Such communication will +generally be welcomed by these disembodied ones, because their desires +and emotions still cling to the earth they have left, and the mind has +not sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein full +satisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towards +kâmic gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations of +earth-life, and can by these yearnings be drawn back to the scenes it +has regretfully quitted. Speaking of the possibility of communication +between the Ego of the deceased person and a medium, H.P. Blavatsky +says in the <i>Theosophist</i>,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> as from the teachings received by her +from the Adept Brothers, that such communication may occur during two +intervals:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Interval the first is that period between the physical death +and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is +known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as Bar-do. We have +translated this as the "gestation" period [pre-devachanic].</p></div> + +<p>Some of the communications made through mediums <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>are from this source, +from the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere—a +cruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing an +element of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. The +period in Kâmaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is fed and its +hold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Soul +deferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-lime +of earth.</p> + +<p>Persons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulated +their animal passions, and have full fed the desire body while they +have starved even the lower mind—these remain for long, denizens of +Kâmaloka, and are filled with yearnings for the earth-life they have +left, and for the animal delights that they can no longer—in the +absence of the physical body—directly taste. These gather round the +medium and the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their own +gratification, and these are among the more dangerous of the forces so +rashly confronted in their ignorance by the thoughtless and the +curious.</p> + +<p>Another class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives on +earth have been prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act of +others, or by accident. Their fate in Kâmaloka depends on the +conditions which surrounded their outgoings from earthly life, for not +all suicides are guilty of <i>felo de se</i>, and the measure of +responsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of such +has been thus described:</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth +and seventh principles, and quite potent in the séance room,nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural +death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf. +The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative, +whereas in cases of</i> accidental death <i>the higher and the +lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good +and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates +irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either +slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless +profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little +reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of +things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is +irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to +some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an +act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not +the</i> direct <i>result of an act deliberately committed by the</i> +personal <i>Ego of that life during which he happened to be +killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have +atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and +even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his +maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive +justice. The Dhyân Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance +of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it +is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before +it is matured and made fit and ready for it.</i></p> +</div> + +<p>These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate with +those in earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, the +good and innocent sleep happily till the life-period is over. But +where the victim of an accident is depraved and gross, his fate is a +sad one.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about +(not shells, for their connection with their two higher +principles is not quite broken) until their</i> death-<i>hour +comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which +bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the +opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them +vicariously. They are the Pishâchas, the Incubi and Succubæ +of mediæval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and +avarice—Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and +cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and +revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their +victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the +torrent of their hellish impulses, at last—at the fixed +close of their natural period of life—they are carried out +of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure +exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.</i></p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Now the causes producing the "new being" and determining the +nature of Karma are Trishnâ (Tanhâ)—thirst, desire for +sentient existence—and Upâdâna, which is the realisation or +consummation of Trishnâ, or that desire. And both of these +the medium helps to develop</i> ne plus ultra <i>in an Elementary, +be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who +dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several +short years" within the earth's attraction—</i>i.e.<i>, the +Kâmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those +who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos +who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years—but +who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let +us suppose at the age of twenty—would have to pass in the +Kâmaloka not "a few years," but in his case sixty or seventy +years, as an Elementary, or rather an </i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span><i>"earth-walker," since +he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell." Happy, +thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities +who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom +of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnâ will attract them to +mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an +easy Upâdâna. For, in grasping them and satisfying their +thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them—is, in +fact, the cause of—a new set of Skandhas, a new body with +far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All +the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only +by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but +also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the +mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with +every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they +entice the latter into a Upâdâna, which will be productive of +untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its +nefarious shadow, and that with every séance, especially for +materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes +that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual +birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than +ever—they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their +hospitality.</i></p></div> + +<p>Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by +voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in +Kâmaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the +motive that cut short the life.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these +vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action +will lead them eventually to premature death. Such</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> <i>is the +penalty of Mâyâ. The "vices" will not escape their +punishment; but it is the</i> cause, <i>not the effect, that will +be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable +effect. As well call a man a "suicide" who meets his death in +a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study". +Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to +produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him +away. In such a case no one ought to cross the</i> Kâlapâni, +<i>nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint in it and +drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should a man do +his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable +and highly beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is +everything, and man is punished in a case of direct +responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the +natural hour of death was anticipated</i> accidentally, <i>while +in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and +with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate +consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of +temporary insanity is</i> not <i>a</i> felo de se, <i>to the great +grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor +is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kâmaloka, but +falls</i> asleep <i>like any other victim.</i></p></div> + +<p>The population of Kâmaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly +dangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, +which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into +Kâmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, +passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with +unsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of +society, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> more +dangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but in +its present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against the +second.</p> + +<p>Finally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, and +passes out of Kâmaloka; the Higher Manas draws back its Ray, coloured +with the life-scenes it has passed through, and carrying with it the +experiences gained through the personality it has informed. The +labourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing his +sheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life. +When the Triad has quitted Kâmaloka, it passes wholly out of the +sphere of earth attractions:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>As soon as it has stepped outside the Kâmaloka—crossed the +"Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains"—the +Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums.</i></p></div> + +<p>There are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, that +will be explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of the +ordinary medium and cannot be recalled into the earth-sphere. But ere +we follow the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fate +of the now deserted desire body, left as a mere <i>reliquum</i> in +Kâmaloka.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Kâmaloka. The Shells.</span></h3> +<p>The Shell is the desire body, emptied of the Triad, which has now +passed onwards; it is the third of the transitory garments of Soul, +cast aside and left in Kâmaloka to disintegrate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> + +<p>When the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been of +average purity and utility, this Shell retains but little vitality +after the passing onwards of the Triad, and rapidly dissolves. Its +molecules, however, retain, during this process of disintegration, the +impressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency to +vibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during that +period. Every student of physiology is familiar with what is termed +automatic action, with the tendency of cells to repeat vibrations +originally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what we term +habits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were done +with thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, as +everyone knows by experience, it is difficult to break off the use of +a phrase or of a gesture that has become "habitual."</p> + +<p>Now the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and the +respondent to all stimuli from without, and it also continually +receives and responds to stimuli from the lower Manas. In it are set +up habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar vibrations, +vibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences of +all kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may the +desire body repeat a familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triad +has left it, this automatism remains, and the Shell may thus simulate +feelings and thoughts which are empty of all true intelligence and +will. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at <i>séances</i> come from +such Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives by +the magnetic attractions so long familiar and dear, and automatically +responding to the waves of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> emotion and remembrance, to the impulse of +which they had so often answered during the lately closed earth-life. +Phrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of past events, will +be all the communications such Shells can make, but these may be +literally poured out under favourable conditions under the magnetic +stimuli freely applied by the embodied friends and relatives.</p> + +<p>In cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been strongly +attached to material objects and to intellectual pursuits directed by +a self-seeking motive, the desire body may have acquired a very +considerable automatism of an intellectual character, and may give +forth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the mark +of non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality will +only give out reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new and +independent thought which would be the inevitable outcome of a strong +intelligence working with originality amid new surroundings. +Intellectual sterility brands the great majority of communications +from the "spirit world"; reflections of earthly scenes, earthly +conditions, earthly arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seek +in vain for strong, new thought, worthy of Intelligences freed from +the prison of the flesh. The communications of a loftier kind +occasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-human +Intelligences, attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium or +sitters.</p> + +<p>And there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells. +Just because they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to the +impulses that strike on them from without, and easily become malicious +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> mischievous, automatically responding to evil vibrations. Thus a +medium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the Shells +that flock around them with impulses of a low order, and any animal +desires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations in +the blindly responsive Shells.</p> + +<p>Again, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, the +semi-conscious forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may be +used by them as a convenient vehicle for many a prank and trick. The +etheric double of the medium, and the desire bodies emptied of their +immortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals can work +many a curious and startling result; and frequenters of <i>séances</i> may +be confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish +freaks with which they are familiar—pullings of hair, pinchings, +slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on +accordions, &c.—are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky +vagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, +while in the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities.</p> + +<p>Let us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into their +elements, and mingle once again in the crucible of Nature. The authors +of the <i>Perfect Way</i> put very well the real character of the Shell.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The true "ghost" consists of the exterior and earthly portion +of the Soul, that portion which, being weighted with cares, +attachments, and memories merely mundane, is detached by the +Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or +less definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a +sensitive, converse with the living. It is, however, but as a +cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of endurance +<i>as ghost</i>. The true Soul and real person, the <i>anima +divina</i>, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>parts at death with all those lower affections +which would have retained it near its earthly haunts.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p></div> + +<p>If we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants in +Kâmaloka that we should seek them. "Why seek ye the living among the +dead?"</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Kâmaloka. The Elementaries</span>.</h3> +<p>The word "Elementary" has been so loosely used that it has given rise +to a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H.P. Blavatsky:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Properly, the disembodied <i>souls</i> of the depraved; these +souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from +themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for +immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been +thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of +disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary +habitation is the Kâmaloka.... Once divorced from their +higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their +Kâma Rûpic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth +amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in +the Kâmaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably +in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by +atom, in the surrounding elements.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p></div> + +<p>Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the +lower Manas to so entangle itself with Kâma as to wrench itself away +from its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as "the loss of +the Soul."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self, +which has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>thus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separated +itself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a true +Elementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then, +clad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter +time according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing, +dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by any +means laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied +souls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much +evil on its way to its self-chosen doom.</p> + +<p>The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower +Manas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher +Principles, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas. +Such Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless or +mischievous.</p> + +<p>Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so +cause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted to +the desire body <i>plus</i> lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be +disentangling itself from the kâmic elements, in order that it may be +re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and +therefore on the road to destruction.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Devachan</span>.</h3> +<p>Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy, +there are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found more +difficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthân, the +Devaland, or land of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> the Gods.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> And one of the chief difficulties +has arisen from the free use of the words illusion, dream-state, and +other similar terms, as denoting the devachanic consciousness—a +general sense of unreality having thus come to pervade the whole +conception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the present +earthly life as Mâyâ, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once puts +down the phrases as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be less +illusory, he thinks, than this world of buying and selling, of +beefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied to a +state beyond Death—a state which to him is misty and unreal in his +own religion, and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all the +substantial comforts dear to the family man—then he accepts the words +in their most literal and prosaic meaning, and speaks of Devachan as a +delusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well, therefore, on +the threshold of Devachan to put this question of "illusion" in its +true light.</p> + +<p>In a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All +phenomena are literally "appearances", the outer masks in which the +One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more +"material" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>and solid the appearance, the further is it from Reality, +and therefore the more illusory it is. What can be a greater fraud +than our body, so apparently solid, stable, visible and tangible? It +is a constantly changing congeries of minute living particles, an +attractive centre into which stream continually myriads of tiny +invisibles, that become visible by their aggregation at this centre, +and then stream away again, becoming invisible by reason of their +minuteness as they separate off from this aggregation. In comparison +with this ever-shifting but apparently stable body how much less +illusory is the mind, which is able to expose the pretensions of the +body and put it in its true light. The mind is constantly imposed on +by the senses, and Consciousness, the most real thing in us, is apt to +regard itself as the unreal. In truth, it is the thought-world that is +the nearest to reality, and things become more and more illusory as +they take on more and more of a phenomenal character.</p> + +<p>Again, the mind is permanent as compared with the transitory physical +world. For the "mind" is only a clumsy name for the living Thinker in +us, the true and conscious Entity, the inner Man, "that was, that is, +and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike". The less deeply +this inner Man is plunged into matter, the less unreal is his life; +and when he has shaken off the garments he donned at incarnation, his +physical, ethereal, and passional bodies, then he is nearer to the +Soul of Things than he was before, and though veils of illusion still +dim his vision they are far thinner than those which clouded it when +round him was wrapped the garment of the flesh. His freer and less +illusory life is that which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> without the body, and the disembodied +is, comparatively speaking, his normal state. Out of this normal state +he plunges into physical life for brief periods in order that he may +gain experiences otherwise unattainable, and bring them back to enrich +his more abiding condition. As a diver may plunge into the depths of +the ocean to seek a pearl, so the Thinker plunges into the depths of +the ocean of life to seek the pearl of experience; but he does not +stay there long; it is not his own element; he rises up again into his +own atmosphere and shakes off from him the heavier element he leaves. +And therefore it is truly said of the Soul that has escaped from earth +that it has returned to its own place, for its home is the "land of +the Gods", and here on earth it is an exile and a prisoner. This view +was very clearly put by a Master of Wisdom in a conversation reported +by H.P. Blavatsky, and printed under the title "Life and Death."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> +The following extracts state the case:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The Vedântins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious +existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to +the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial +life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing +but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual +spheres must be thought an actuality because it is there that +lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sûtrâtmâ. +Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a +perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived +one.... The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit, +force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the +shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, +their</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> <i>exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion +of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous +life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the +personality itself, only imaginary.</i></p> + +<p>Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the +phantasm waking?</p> + +<p><i>This comparison was made by me to facilitate your +comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial +notions it is perfectly accurate.</i></p></div> + +<p>Note the words: "From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions," for +they are the key to all the phrases used about Devachan as an +"illusion." Our gross physical matter is not there; the limitations +imposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm, where to +will is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Master +was asked: "Would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a +birth for a new life, or still better, a going back to eternity?" he +answered:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against +such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of +material life the words "live" and "exist" are not applicable +to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they +employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of +their meanings, the Vedântins would soon arrive at the ideas +which are common in our times among the American +Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among +themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not +nominal, Christians so amongst the Vedântins—the life on the +other side of the grave is the land where there are no</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +<i>tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving +in marriage, and where the just realise their full +perfection.</i></p></div> + +<p>The dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has always +been very strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the far +East. Their constant effort has been to free the Thinker as far as +possible from the bonds of matter even while he is embodied, to open +the cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to it for +awhile. They are ever seeking "to spiritualise the material", while in +the West the continual tendency has been "to materialise the +spiritual". So the Indian describes the life of the freed Soul in all +the terms that make it least material—illusion, dream, and so +on—whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptive +of the material luxury and splendour of earth—marriage feast, streets +of gold, thrones and crowns of solid metal and precious stones; the +Western has followed the materialising conceptions of the Hebrew, and +pictures a heaven which is merely a double of earth with earth's +sorrows extracted, until we reach the grossest of all, the modern +Summerland, with its "spirit-husbands", "spirit-wives", and +"spirit-infants" that go to school and college, and grow up into +spirit-adults.</p> + +<p>In "Notes on Devachan",<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> someone who evidently writes with knowledge +remarks of the Devachanî:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The</i> à priori <i>ideas of space and time do not control his +perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them +at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +<i>intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy +from dotage to death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived +correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the Devachanî than +she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far +more</i> real <i>bliss and happiness</i> there <i>than she does</i> here, +<i>where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him. +To call the Devachan existence a "dream" in any other sense +than that of a conventional term, is to renounce for ever the +knowledge of the Esoteric Doctrine, the sole custodian of +truth.</i></p></div> + +<p>"Dream" only in the sense that it is not of this plane of gross +matter, that it belongs not to the physical world.</p> + +<p>Let us try and take a general view of the life of the Eternal Pilgrim, +the inner Man, the human Soul, during a cycle of incarnation. Before he +commences his new pilgrimage—for many pilgrimages lie behind him in the +past, during which he gained the powers which enable him to tread the +present one—he is a spiritual Being, but one who has already passed out +of the passive condition of pure Spirit, and who by previous experience +of matter in past ages has evolved intellect, the self-conscious mind. +But this evolution by experience is far from being complete, even so far +as to make him master of matter; his ignorance leaves him a prey to all +the illusions of gross matter, so soon as he comes into contact with it, +and he is not fit to be a builder of a universe, being subject to the +deceptive visions caused by gross matter—as a child, looking through a +piece of blue glass, imagines all the outside world to be blue. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +object of a cycle of incarnation is to free him from these illusions, so +that when he is surrounded by and working in gross matter he may retain +clear vision and not be blinded by illusion. Now the cycle of +incarnation is made up of two alternating states: a short one called +life on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into gross +matter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, during +which he is encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far less +illusive than that of earth. The second state may fairly be called his +normal one, as it is of enormous extent as compared with the breaks in +it that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal also, as being +less removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased in +matter, less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly and +gradually, by reiterated experiences, gross matter loses its power over +him and becomes his servant instead of his tyrant. In the partial +freedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, still +partly dominated by them—at first, indeed, almost completely dominated +by them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation +of the earth-life—but gradually freeing himself more and more as he +recognises them as transitory and external, until he can move through +any region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lord +of Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the Divine +Nature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter to +be the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a +pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +<i>hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous, +are limited in their continuation, and even the very number +of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between +illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their +end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the</i> +hours of his posthumous life, <i>when unveiled he stands face +to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his +terrestrial existence are far from him,</i> compose <i>or make up, +in our ideas,</i> the only reality. <i>Such breaks, in spite of +the fact that they are finite, do double service to the +Sûtrâtmâ, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows +without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to +its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it +becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the +reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks +Sûtrâtmâ-Buddhi could never reach it. Sûtrâtmâ is the actor, +and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's +parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so +much the less to their costumes, the term of personality. +Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of +births up to the very threshold of Parinirvâna, many such +parts, which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee, +collecting its honey from every flower, and leaving the rest +to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality, +the Sûtrâtmâ, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities +and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which +it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last all +these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a +Dhyân Chohan.</i><a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p></div> + +<p>It is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanic +stage is conditioned by the earth-stage that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>precedes it, and the Man +can only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has been +gathering on earth.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless, +feeble Devachanic state.</i><a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p></div> + +<p>Husband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist—he +must work out the effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; he +cannot eat and assimilate more food than he has gathered; he cannot +reap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but a moment to cast +a seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow into +the ripened ear; but according to the kind of the seed is the ear that +grows from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life is +the grain reaped in the field of Aanroo.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>There is a change of occupation, a continual change in +Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life +of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole +life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with this +difference, that to the Devachanî this spiritual occupation +is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in +Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth-life; +not the indefinite prolongation of that "single instant," but +its infinite developments, the various incidents and events +based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or +moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of +the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature +for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who +have not focussed their affections on an individual or +speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> <i>quicker for +that through the Kâma and Rûpa Lokas into the higher sphere +of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of +abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles +fill the thought of its occupant.</i><a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p></div> + +<p>Into Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has been +left behind with all its attributes on earth and in Kâmaloka. But if +the sower has sowed but little seed, the devachanic harvest will be +meagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by the paucity of +the nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importance +of the earth-life, <i>the field of sowing, the place where experience is +to be gathered</i>. It conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of the +Soul; it yields the rough ore which the Soul then takes in hand, and +works upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it, forging it, +tempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its next +earth-life. The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself a +splendid instrument for its next earth-life; the inexperienced one +will forge a poor blade enough; but in each case the only material +available is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as it +were, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparatively +free life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthly +experiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly and +completely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only +conceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which +the Soul would work out into a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>splendid realisation in Devachan, and +it would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation that +mental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers and +suitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is the +sphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising the +pre-existent thought. And the soul is as an architect that works out +his plans in silence and deep meditation, and then brings them forth +into the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out of the +knowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for the +next, and he returns to earth to put into objective material form the +edifices he has planned. This is the description of a Logos in +creative activity:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Whilst Brahmâ formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was +meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning +with ignorance and consisting of darkness.... Brahmâ, +beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst +he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested.... +Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahmâ again +meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the +quality of goodness.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p></div> + +<p>The objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea, +then form. Hence it will be seen that the notion current among many +Theosophists that Devachan is waste time, is but one of the illusions +due to the gross matter that blinds them, and that their impatience of +the idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about in +gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all +effective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the +Silence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be +less feeble <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the +profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener +out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less +foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state +of consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile +from the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by one +who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise +withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, +action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" in +meditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of the +mind-engendered act.</p> + +<p>Devachan is the sphere of the mind, as said, it is the land of the +Gods, or the Souls. In the before quoted "Notes on Devachan" we read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>There are two fields of causal manifestations: the objective +and the subjective. The grosser energies find their outcome +in the new personality of each birth in the cycle of +evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities +find their sphere of effects in Devachan.</i></p></div> + +<p>As the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and as +on the development of these depends the growth of the true Man, and +therefore the accomplishing of "the object of creation, the liberation +of Soul", we may begin to understand something of the vast importance +of the devachanic state.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Devachanî.</span></h3> +<p>When the Triad has shaken off its last garment, it crosses the +threshold of Devachan, and becomes "a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> Devachanî". We have seen that +it is in a peaceful dreamy state before this passage out of the earth +sphere, the "second death", or "pre-devachanic unconsciousness". This +condition is otherwise spoken of as the "gestation" period, because it +precedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life. Regarded from +the earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that of +Devachan it is birth. Thus we find in "Notes on Devachan":</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan +the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, +the gradual exhaustion of force passing into +semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and—not +death but birth, birth into another personality, and the +resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of +causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan, +and still another physical birth as a new personality. What +the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in +each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of +birth must be ever and ever run through until the being +reaches the end of the seventh Round, or attains in the +interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha, and +thus gets relieved for a Round or two.</i></p></div> + +<p>When the devachanic entity is born into this new sphere it has passed +beyond recall to earth. The embodied Soul may rise to it, but it +cannot be drawn back to our world. On this a Master has spoken +decisively:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>From Sukhâvatî down to the "Territory of Doubt," there is a +variety of spiritual states, but ... as soon as it has +stepped outside the Kâmaloka, crossed the "Golden</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> <i>Bridge" +leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains," the Ego can +confabulate no more with easy-going mediums. No Ernest or +Joey has ever returned from the Rûpa Loka, let alone the +Arupa Loka, to hold sweet intercourse with men.</i></p></div> + +<p>In the "Notes on Devachan," again, we read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Certainly the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan), +retains for a certain time—proportionate to its +earth-life—a complete recollection "of his life on earth"; +but it can never revisit the Earth from Devachan except in +Re-incarnation.</i></p></div> + +<p>The Devachanî is generally spoken of as the Immortal Triad, +Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, but it is well always to bear in mind that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Atman is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine +Essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, +invisible, and indivisible, that which does not <i>exist</i> and +yet <i>is</i>, as the Buddhists say of Nirvâna. It only +overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and +pervades the whole body being only it's omni-present rays or +light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct +emanation.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p></div> + +<p>Buddhi and Manas united, with this overshadowing of Atmâ, form the +Devachanî; now, as we have seen in studying the Seven Principles, +Manas is dual during earth-life, and the Lower Manas is redrawn into +the Higher during the kâmalokic interlude. By this reuniting of the +Ray and its Source, Manas re-becomes one, and carries the pure and +noble experiences of the earth-life into Devachan with it, thus +maintaining the past personality as the marked characteristic of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>Devachanî, and it is in this prolongation of the "personal Ego", so +to speak, that the "illusion" of the Devachanî consists. Were the +mânasic entity free from all illusion, it would see all Egos as its +brother-Souls, and looking back over its past would recognise all the +varied relationships it had borne to others in many lives, as the +actor would remember the many parts he had played with other actors, +and would think of each brother actor as a man, and not in the parts +he had played as his father, his son, his judge, his murderer, his +master, his friend. The deeper human relationship would prevent the +brother actors from identifying each other with their parts, and so +the perfected spiritual Egos, recognising their deep unity and full +brotherhood, would no longer be deluded by the trappings of earthly +relationships. But the Devachanî, at least in the lower stages, is +still within the personal boundaries of his past earth-life; he is +shut into the relationships of the one incarnation; his paradise is +peopled with those he "<i>loved best with an undying love, that holy +feeling that alone survives</i>," and thus the purified personal Ego is +the salient feature, as above said, in the Devachanî. Again quoting +from the "Notes on Devachan":</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Who goes to Devachan?" The personal Ego, of course; but +beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego—the combination of the +sixth and seventh principles<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>—which after the period of +unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of +necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> <i>fact +of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good +over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma [of +Evil] steps aside for the time being to follow him in his +future earth re-incarnation, he brings along with him but the +Karma of his good deeds, words and thoughts into this +Devachan. "Bad" is a relative term for us—as you were told +more than once before—and the Law of Retribution is the only +law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped +down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality go to +the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary +and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded; +receive the effects of the causes produced by them.</i></p></div> + +<p>Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the +ties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent in +eternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When a +mother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationship +seems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to +re-possess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to +manhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and the +clinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friends +and comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the old +recollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the +prime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son +protects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would the +relation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only the +one tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the different +strands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many lives +they may hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standing +as Brothers of the Lodge closely knit together, may look back over +past lives and see themselves in earth-life related in the many ways +possible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every strand of +love and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorer +for the many-stranded tie? "Finally", I say; but the word is only of +this cycle, for what lies beyond, of wider life and less separateness, +no mind of man may know. To me it seems that this very variety of +experiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is a +rather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only one +little aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a +thousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, be +ample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect of +his nature. But those who object to this view need not feel +distressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the +one personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they are +conscious of <i>for as long as the desire for that presence remains</i>. +Only let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss on +everybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to +them at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be +stereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years that +lie before us. Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of +all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate +divinity, that he "never wills in vain". Will not this suffice?</p> + +<p>But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> "happiness" in a +future separated from our present by millions of years, so that we are +no more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child, +playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests of +its maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of +the Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachanî is surrounded by all he loved +on earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of the +Ego, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferings +which would be inevitable were the Devachanî present in consciousness +on the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and +sorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness, +but is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the +lower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh. According to the +orthodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the "spirits of +the dead" wait for reunion until those they love also pass through +Death's gateway, or—according to some—until after the judgment-day +is over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death +cannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can only +separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are +concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated +from those who have passed onwards, but the Devachanî, says H.P. +Blavatsky, has a complete conviction "that there is no such thing as +Death at all", having left behind it all those vehicles over which +Death has power. Therefore, to its less blinded eyes, its beloved are +still with it; for it, the veil of matter that separates has been torn +away.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children, +whom <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>she adores, perhaps a beloved husband also. We say that +her "Spirit" or Ego—that individuality which is now wholly +impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the +noblest feelings held by its late <i>personality, i.e.</i>, love +for her children, pity for those who suffer, and so on—is +now entirely separated from the "vale of tears," that its +future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the +woes it left behind ... that the <i>post-mortem</i> spiritual +consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she +lives surrounded by her children and all those whom she +loved; that no gap, no link will be missing to make her +disembodied state the most perfect and absolute +happiness.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p></div> + +<p>And so again:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>As to the ordinary mortal his bliss in Devachan is complete. +It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow +in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that +such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanî +lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations +surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in +the companionship of everything it loved on earth. It has +reached the fulfilment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it +lives throughout long centuries an existence of <i>unalloyed</i> +happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in +earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted +felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in +degree.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p></div> + +<p>When we take the wider sweep in thought demanded by the Esoteric +Philosophy, a far more fascinating prospect of persistent love and +union between individual Egos rolls itself out before our eyes than +was offered to us by the more limited creed of exoteric Christendom. +"Mothers love their children with an immortal love," says H.P. +Blavatsky, and the reason for this immortality in love is easily +grasped when we realise that it is the same Egos that play so many +parts in the drama of life, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>that the experience of each part is +recorded in the memory of the Soul, and that between the Souls there +is no separation, though during incarnation they may not realise the +fact in its fulness and beauty.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and +far, far nearer to them now than when they were alive. And it +is not only in the fancy of the Devachanî, as some may +imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not merely +the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity. +Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or +later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual +affection to incarnate once more in the same family +group.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p></div> + +<p>Love "has its roots in eternity", and those to whom on earth we are +strongly drawn are the Egos we have loved in past earth-lives and +dwelt with in Devachan; coming back to earth these enduring bonds of +love draw us together yet again, and add to the strength and beauty of +the tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and the +strong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experience +of their well-nigh illimitable past.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Return To Earth.</span></h3> +<p>At length the causes that carried the Ego into Devachan are exhausted, +the experiences gathered have been wholly assimilated, and the Soul +begins to feel again the thirst for sentient material life that can be +gratified only on the physical plane. The greater the degree of +spirituality reached, the purer and loftier the preceding earth-life, +the longer the stay in Devachan, the world of spiritual, pure, and +lofty effects. [I am here ignoring the special conditions surrounding +one who is forcing his own evolution, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>and has entered on the Path +that leads to Adeptship within a very limited number of lives.] The +"average time [in Devachan] is from ten to fifteen centuries", H.P. +Blavatsky tells us, and the fifteen centuries cycle is the one most +plainly marked in history.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> But in modern life this period has much +shortened, in consequence of the greater attraction exercised by +physical objects over the heart of man. Further, it must be remembered +that the "average time" is not the time spent in Devachan by any +person. If one person spends there 1000 years, and another fifty, the +"average" is 525. The devachanic period is longer or shorter according +to the type of life which preceded it; the more there was of +spiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, the +longer will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was of +activity directed to selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be the +devachanic period.</p> + +<p>When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the +Ego is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increased +experience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan along +the lines of abstract thought; for, while in Devachan,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can +develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after +during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal +things, such as music, painting, poetry, &c.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p></div> + +<p>But the Ego meets, as he crosses the threshold of Devachan on his way +outwards—dying out of Devachan to be reborn on earth—he meets in the +"atmosphere of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>the terrestrial plane", the seeds of evil sown in his +preceding life on earth. During the devachanic rest he has been free +from all pain, all sorrow, but the evil he did in his past has been in +a state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in the +autumn for the spring-time lie dormant beneath the surface of the +soil, but touched by the soft rain and penetrating warmth of sun begin +to swell and the embryo expands and grows, so do the seeds of evil we +have sown lie dormant while the Soul takes its rest in Devachan, but +shoot out their roots into the new personality which begins +to form itself for the incarnation of the returning man. The Ego has +to take up the burden of his past, and these germs or seeds, coming +over as the harvest of the past life, are the Skandhas, to borrow a +convenient word from our Buddhist brethren. They consist of material +qualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind, mental +powers, and while the pure aroma of these attached itself to the Ego +and passed with it into Devachan, all that was gross, base and evil +remained in the state of suspended animation spoken of above. These +are taken up by the Ego as he passes outwards towards terrestrial +life, and are built into the new "man of flesh" which the true man is +to inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turning +of the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, until +the work is done and the building of the Perfect Man is completed.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Nirvâna.</span></h3> +<p>What Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvâna is to the finished cycle +of Re-incarnation, but any effective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> discussion of that glorious +state would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round off +the "After" of Death, for no word of man, strictly limited within the +narrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to explain what +Nirvâna is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe. +What it is not may be roughly, baldly stated—it is not +"annihilation", it is not destruction of consciousness. Mr. A.P. +Sinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of many of the +ideas current in the West about Nirvâna. He has been speaking of +absolute consciousness, and proceeds:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We may use such phrases as intellectual counters, but for no +ordinary mind—dominated by its physical brain and brain-born +intellect—can they have a living signification. All that +words can convey is that Nirvâna is a sublime state of +conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after +all that has gone before, to turn to the various discussions +which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism +as to whether Nirvâna does or does not mean annihilation. +Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling with +which the graduates of Esoteric Science regard such a +question. Does the last penalty of the law mean the highest +honour of the peerage? Is a wooden spoon the emblem of the +most illustrious pre-eminence in learning? Such questions as +these but faintly symbolise the extravagance of the question +whether Nirvâna is held by Buddhism to be equivalent to +annihilation.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p></div> + +<p>So we learn from the <i>Secret Doctrine</i> that the Nirvânî returns to +cosmic activity in a new cycle of manifestation, and that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves +only in Nirvâna, re-emerges from it in its integrity</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> <i>on the +day when the Great Law calls all things back into +action.</i><a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p></div> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Communications between the Earth and other Spheres.</span></h3> +<p>We are now in position to discriminate between the various kinds of +communication possible between those whom we foolishly divide into +"dead" and "living," as though the body were the man, or the man could +die. "Communications between the embodied and the disembodied" would +be a more satisfactory phrase.</p> + +<p>First, let us put aside as unsuitable the word Spirit: Spirit does not +communicate with Spirit in any way conceivable by us. That highest +principle is not yet manifest in the flesh; it remains the hidden +fount of all, the eternal Energy, one of the poles of Being in +manifestation. The word is loosely used to denote lofty Intelligences, +who live and move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us, +but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter. +And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average human +beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much +as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word +often occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then +denotes the Ego.</p> + +<p>Taking the stages through which the living man passes after "Death", +or the shaking off of the body, we can readily classify the +communications that may be received, or the appearances that may be +seen:</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> +<p>I. While the Soul has shaken off only the dense body, and remains +still clothed in the etheric double. This is a brief period only, but +during it the disembodied Soul may show itself, clad in this ethereal +garment.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>For a very short period after death, while the incorporeal +principles remain within the sphere of our earth's +attraction, it is <i>possible</i> for spirit, under <i>peculiar</i> and +<i>favourable</i> conditions, to appear.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p></div> + +<p>It makes no communications during this brief interval, nor while +dwelling in this form. Such "ghosts" are silent, dreamy, like +sleep-walkers, and indeed they are nothing more than astral +sleep-walkers. Equally irresponsive, but capable of expressing a +single thought, as of sorrow, anxiety, accident, murder, &c., are +apparitions which are merely a thought of the dying, taking shape in +the astral world, and carried by the dying person's will to some +particular person, with whom the dying intensely longs to communicate. +Such a thought, sometimes called a Mayâvi Rûpa, or illusory form</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>May be often thrown into objectivity, as in the case of +apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the +knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or owing to the +intensity of the desire to see or appear to some one shooting +through, the dying brain, the apparition will be simply +automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic +attraction, or to any act of volition, any more than the +reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is +due to the desire of the latter.</i></p></div> + +<p>When the Soul has left the etheric double, shaking it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> off as it +shook off the dense body, the double thus left as a mere empty corpse +may be galvanised into an "artificial life"; but fortunately the +method of such galvanisation is known to few.</p> + +<p>II. While the Soul is in Kâmaloka. This period is of very variable +duration. The Soul is clad in an astral body, the last but one of its +perishable garments, and while thus clad it can utilise the physical +bodies of a medium, thus consciously procuring for itself an +instrument whereby it can act on the world it has left, and +communicate with those living in the body. In this way it may give +information as to facts known to itself only, or to itself and another +person, in the earth-life just closed; and for as long as it remains +within the terrestrial atmosphere such communication is possible. The +harm and the peril of such communication has been previously +explained, whether the Lower Manas be united with the Divine Triad and +so on its way to Devachan, or wrenched from it and on its way to +destruction.</p> + +<p>III. While the Soul is in Devachan, if an embodied Soul is capable of +rising to its sphere, or of coming into <i>rapport</i> with it. To the +Devachanî, as we have seen, the beloved are present in consciousness +and full communication, the Egos being in touch with each other, +though one is embodied and one is disembodied, but the higher +consciousness of the embodied rarely affects the brain. As a matter of +fact, all that we know on the physical plane of our friend, while we +both are embodied, is the mental image caused by the impression he +makes on us. This is, to our consciousness, our friend, and lacks +nothing in objectivity. A similar image is present to the +conscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>ness of the Devachanî, and to him lacks nothing in +objectivity. As the physical plane friend is visible to an observer on +earth, so is the mental plane friend visible to an observer on that +plane. The amount of the friend that ensouls the image is dependent on +his own evolution, a highly evolved person being capable of far more +communication with a Devachanî than one who is unevolved. +Communication when the body is sleeping is easier than when it is +awake, and many a vivid "dream" of one on the other side of death is a +real interview with him in Kâmaloka or in Devachan.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> +has a magic and divine potency that re-acts on the living. A +mother's Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children it +sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it +as when on earth—that love will always be felt by the +children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams and often +in various events—in providential protections and escapes, +for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or +time. As with this Devachanic "mother", so with the rest of +human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish +or material.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p></div> + +<p>Remembering that a thought becomes an active entity, capable of +working good or evil, we easily see that as embodied Souls can send to +those they love helping and protecting forces, so the Devachanî, +thinking of those dear to him, may send out such helpful and +protective thoughts, to act as veritable guardian angels round his +beloved on earth. But this is a very different thing from the "Spirit" +of the mother coming back to earth to be the almost helpless spectator +of the child's woes.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p><p>The Soul embodied may sometimes escape from its prison of flesh, and +come into relations with the Devachanî. H.P. Blavatsky writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Whenever years after the death of a person his spirit is +claimed to have "wandered back to earth" to give advice to +those it loved, it is always in a subjective vision, in dream +or in trance, and in that case it is the Soul of the living +seer that is drawn to the <i>disembodied</i> spirit, and not the +latter which wanders back to our spheres.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p></div> + +<p>Where the sensitive, or medium, is of a pure and lofty nature, this +rising of the freed Ego to the Devachanî is practicable, and naturally +gives the impression to the sensitive that the departed Ego has come +back to him. The Devachanî is wrapped in its happy "illusion", and</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The Souls, or astral Egos, of pure loving sensitives, +labouring under the same delusion, think their loved ones +come down to them on earth, while it is their own spirits +that are raised towards those in the Devachan.</i><a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p></div> + +<p>This attraction can be exercised by the departed Soul from Kâmaloka or +from Devachan:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A "spirit" or the spiritual Ego, cannot <i>descend</i> to the +medium, but it can <i>attract</i> the spirit of the latter to +itself, and it can do this only during the two +intervals—before and after its "gestation period". Interval +the first is that period between the physical death and the +merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known +in the Arhat Esoteric Doctrine as "Bar-do". We have +translated this as the "gestation period", and it lasts from +a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the +Adepts. Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of +the old [personal] Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of +its reward in its new regenerated Egoship. It occurs after +the gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is +reborn—like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> the fabled Phœnix from its ashes—from the +old one. The locality which the former inhabits is called by +the northern Buddhist Occultists "Devachan."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p></div> + +<p>So also may the incorporeal principles of pure sensitives be placed +<i>en rapport</i> with disembodied Souls, although information thus +obtained is not reliable, partly in consequence of the difficulty of +transferring to the physical brain the impressions received, and +partly from the difficulty of observing accurately, when the seer is +untrained.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A pure medium's Ego can be drawn to and made, for an instant, +to unite in a magnetic(?) relation with a real disembodied +spirit, whereas the soul of an impure medium can only +confabulate with the <i>Astral Soul</i>, or Shell, of the +deceased. The former possibility explains those extremely +rare cases of direct writing in recognised autographs, and of +messages from the higher class of disembodied intelligences. +</p></div> + +<p>But the confusion in messages thus obtained is considerable, not only +from the causes above-named, but also because</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Even the best and purest sensitive can at most only be placed +at any time <i>en rapport</i> with a particular spiritual entity, +and can only know, see, and feel what that particular entity +knows, sees, and feels. +</p></div> + +<p>Hence much possibility of error if generalisations are indulged in, +since each Devachanî lives in his own paradise, and there is no +"peeping down to earth,"</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Nor is there any <i>conscious</i> communication with the flying +Souls that come as it were to learn where the Spirits are, +what they are doing, and what they think, feel, and see.</p> + +<p>What then is being <i>en rapport</i>? It is simply an identity of +molecular <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> vibration between the astral part of the +incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the +dis-incarnated personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets +"odylised", so to speak, by the aura of the spirit, whether +this be hybernating in the earthly region or dreaming in the +Devachan; identity of molecular vibration is established, and +for a brief space the sensitive becomes the departed +personality, and writes in its handwriting, uses its +language, and thinks its thoughts. At such times sensitives +may believe that those with whom they are for the moment <i>en +rapport</i> descend to earth and communicate with them, whereas, +in reality, it is merely their own spirits which, being +correctly attuned to those others, are for the time blended +with them.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p></div> + +<p>In a special case under examination, H.P. Blavatsky said that the +communication might have come from an Elementary, but that it was</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Far more likely that the medium's spirit really became <i>en +rapport</i> with some spiritual entity in Devachan, the +thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments of which formed the +substance, while the medium's own personality and +pre-existing ideas more or less governed the forms of the +communication.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> +</p></div> + +<p>While these communications are not reliable in the facts and opinions +stated,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We would remark that it may <i>possibly</i> be that there really +is a distinct spiritual entity impressing our correspondent's +mind. In other words, there may, for all we know, be some +spirit, with whom his spiritual nature becomes habitually, +for the time, thoroughly harmonised, and whose thoughts, +language, &c., become his for the time, the result being that +this spirit seems to communicate with him.... It is possible +(though by no means probable) that he habitually passes into +a state of <i>rapport</i> with a genuine spirit, and, for the +time, is assimilated therewith, thinking (to a great extent +if not entirely) the thoughts that spirit would think, +writing in its handwriting, &c. But even so, Mr. Terry must +not fancy that that spirit is consciously communicating with +him, or knows in any way <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> anything of him, or any other +person or thing on earth. It is simply that, the <i>rapport</i> +established, he, Mr. Terry, becomes for the nonce assimilated +with that other personality, and thinks, speaks, and writes +as it would have done on earth.... The molecules of his +astral nature may from time to time vibrate in perfect unison +with those of some spirit of such a person, now in Devachan, +and the result may be that he appears to be in communication +with that spirit, and to be advised, &c., by him, and +clairvoyants may see in the Astral Light a picture of the +earth-life form of that spirit.</p></div> + +<p>IV. Communications other than those from disembodied Souls, passing +through normal <i>post mortem</i> states.</p> + +<p>(a) <i>From Shells.</i> These, while but the cast-off garment of the +liberated Soul, retain for some time the impress of their late +inhabitant, and reproduce automatically his habits of thought and +expression, just as a physical body will automatically repeat habitual +gestures. Reflex action is as possible to the desire body as to the +physical, but all reflex action is marked by its character of +repetition, and absence of all power to initiate movement. It answers +to a stimulus with an appearance of purposive action, but it initiates +nothing. When people "sit for development", or when at a <i>séance</i> they +anxiously hope and wait for messages from departed friends, they +supply just the stimulus needed, and obtain the signs of recognition +for which they expectantly watch.</p> + +<p>(b) <i>From Elementaries.</i> These, possessing the lower capacities of the +mind, <i>i.e.</i>, all the intellectual faculties that found their +expression through the physical brain during life, may produce +communications of a highly intellectual character. These, however, are +rare, as may be seen from a survey of the messages published as +received from "departed Spirits".</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p> +<p>(c) <i>From Elementals.</i> These semi-conscious centres of force play a +great part at <i>séances</i>, and are mostly the agents who are active in +producing physical phenomena. They throw about or carry objects, make +noises, ring bells, etc., etc. Sometimes they play pranks with Shells, +animating them and representing them to be the spirits of great +personalities who have lived on earth, but who have sadly degenerated +in the "spirit-world", judging by their effusions. Sometimes, in +materialising <i>séances</i>, they busy themselves in throwing pictures +from the Astral Light on the fluidic forms produced, so causing them +to assume likenesses of various persons. There are also Elementals of +a high type who occasionally communicate with very gifted mediums, +"Shining Ones" from other spheres.</p> + +<p>(d) <i>From Nirmânakâyas.</i> For these communications, as for the two +classes next mentioned, the medium must be of a very pure and lofty +nature. The Nirmânakâya is a perfected man, who has cast aside his +physical body but retains his other lower principles, and remains in +the earth-sphere for the sake of helping forward the evolution of +mankind. Nirmânakâyas</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Have, out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth, +renounced the Nirvânic state. Such an Adept, or Saint, or +whatever you may call him, believing it a selfish act to rest +in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery +produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvâna and determines to +remain invisible <i>in spirit</i> on this earth. They have no +material body, as they have left it behind; but otherwise +they remain with all their principles even <i>in astral life</i> +in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few +elect ones, only surely not with <i>ordinary</i> mediums.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> +<p>(e) <i>From Adepts now living on earth.</i> These often communicate with +Their disciples, without using the ordinary methods of communication, +and when any tie exists, perchance from some past incarnation, between +an Adept and a medium, constituting that medium a disciple, a message +from the Adept might readily be mistaken for a message from a +"Spirit". The receipt of such messages by precipitated writing or +spoken words is within the knowledge of some.</p> + +<p>(f) <i>From the medium's Higher Ego.</i> Where a pure and earnest man or +woman is striving after the light, this upward striving is met by a +downward reaching of the higher nature, and light from the higher +streams downward, illuminating the lower consciousness. Then the lower +mind is, for the time, united with its parent, and transmits as much +of its knowledge as it is able to retain.</p> + +<p>From this brief sketch it will be seen how varied may be the sources +from which communications apparently from "the other side of Death" +may be received. As said by H.P. Blavatsky:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The variety of the causes of phenomena is great, and one need +be an Adept, and actually look into and examine what +transpires, in order to be able to explain in each case what +really underlies it.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p></div> + +<p>To complete the statement it may be added that what the average Soul +can do when it has passed through the gateway of Death, it can do on +this side, and communications may be as readily obtained by writing, +in trance, and by the other means of receiving messages, from embodied +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +as from disembodied Souls. If each developed within himself the +powers of his own Soul, instead of drifting about aimlessly, or +ignorantly plunging into dangerous experiments, knowledge might be +safely accumulated and the evolution of the Soul might be accelerated. +This one thing is sure: Man is to-day a living Soul, over whom Death +has no power, and the key of the prison-house of the body is in his +own hands, so that he may learn its use if he will. It is because his +true Self, while blinded by the body, has lost touch with other +Selves, that Death has been a gulf instead of a gateway between +embodied and disembodied Souls.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The following passage on the fate of suicides is taken from the +<i>Theosophist</i>, September, 1882.</p></div> + +<p>We do not pretend—we are not permitted—to deal exhaustively with the +question at present, but we may refer to one of the most important +classes of entities, who can participate in objective phenomena, other +than Elementaries and Elementals.</p> + +<p>This class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are +<i>Spirits</i>, and not <i>Shells</i>, because there is not in their cases, at +any rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourth +and fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and seventh on the +other. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line of +connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely +threatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds +in its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthly +sins and passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for the +time, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it is +practically not far removed from a Shell.</p> + +<p>This class of Spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but, as a +rule, its members have to pay dearly for exercising the privilege, +while it is scarcely possible for them to do otherwise than lower and +debase the moral nature of those with and through whom they have much +communication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a question of degree; +of much or little injury result<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>ing from such communication; the cases +in which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely exceptional +to require consideration.</p> + +<p>Understand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting against +the trials of life—trials, the results of its own former actions, +trials, heaven's merciful medicine for the mentally and spiritually +diseased—determines, instead of manfully taking arms against a sea of +troubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It +destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally +as before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate +web of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten. +That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower +half of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting from +the upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it +issues; but that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, until +the whole store in that upper receptacle is exhausted.</p> + +<p>So you may destroy the body, but not the appointed period of sentient +existence, foredoomed (because simply the effect of a plexus of +causes) to intervene before the dissolution of the personality; this +must run on for its appointed period.</p> + +<p>This is so in other cases, <i>e.g.</i>, those of the victims of accident or +violence; they, too, have to complete their life-term, and of these, +too, we may speak on another occasion—but here it is sufficient to +notice that, whether good or bad, their mental attitude at the time of +death alters wholly their subsequent position. They, too, have to wait +on within the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> "Region of Desires" until their wave of life runs on to +and reaches its appointed shore, but they wait on, wrapped in dreams +soothing and blissful, or the reverse, according to their mental and +moral state at, and prior to the fatal hour, but nearly exempt from +further material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable (except +just at the moment of real death) of communicating <i>scio motu</i> with +mankind, though not wholly beyond the possible reach of the higher +forms of the "Accursed Science," Necromancy. The question is a +profoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within the +brief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately +after death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the man +who deliberately <i>lays down</i> (not merely <i>risks</i>) his life from +altruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of +him who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in the +hope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature or +Providence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, it +would at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in both +cases. But, machine though it be, we must remember that it is a +machine <i>sui generis</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Out of himself he span<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The eternal web of right and wrong;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ever feels the subtlest thrill,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The slenderest thread along.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the +highest human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, <i>in petto</i>.</p> + +<p>And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at +times marvellously potent material, forces,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> and we may then begin to +comprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic +grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All that he wishes and all that he loves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come smiling round his sunny way,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the +Region of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who, +seeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks +the golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct with +all the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life, +without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such +partial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious +gratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate complete +rupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate +annihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering.</p> + +<p>Let it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class—the sane +deliberate suicide. If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers +patiently his punishment, striving against carnal appetites still +alive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each in +proportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life. +If, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be tempted +here or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires, then +when his fated death-hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite, +and, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be that all +may be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation period +and its subsequent developments.</p> +<p> </p> +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Book ii., from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristles +with horrors.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> + <p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> xii. 85. Trans., of Burnell and Hopkins.</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, +<i>Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems</i>, xxvii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> + <p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Trans., by Mirza Mohamed Hadi. <i>The Platonist</i>, 306.</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>The Sacred Books of the East</i>, iii, 109, 110.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Secret Doctrine</i>, vol. i. p. 281.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See <i>ibid.</i>, p. 283.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, vol. i. p. 480.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Theosophical Manuals, No. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> + <p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>The Heroic Enthusiasts</i>, Trans., by L. Williams. part ii. +pp. 22, 23.</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Cremation</i>, Theosophical Siftings, vol. iii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Man: Fragments of Forgotten History</i>, pp. 119, 120.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, H.P. Blavatsky, p. 109. Third +Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Magic, White and Black</i>, Dr. Franz Hartmann, pp. 109, +110. Third Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> See <i>The Seven Principles of Man</i>, pp. 17-21.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Theosophist</i>, March, 1882, p. 158, note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Essays upon some Controverted Questions</i>, p. 36.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, 1892, p. 176.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, p. 67.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 97.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, p. 97</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 102.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> June, 1882, art. "Seeming Discrepancies."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Pp. 73, 74. Ed. 1887.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Theosophical Glossary</i>, Elementaries.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> See <i>The Seven Principles of Man</i>, p.p. 44-46.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The name Sukhâvatî, borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism, is +sometimes used instead of that of Devachan. Sukhâvatî, according to +Schlagintweit, is "the abode of the blessed, into which ascend those +who have accumulated much merit by the practice of virtues", and +"involves the deliverance from metempsychosis" (<i>Buddhism in Tibet</i>, +p. 99). According to the Prasanga school, the higher Path leads to +Nirvâna, the lower to Sukhâvatî. But Eitel calls Sukhâvatî "the +Nirvâna of the common people, where the saints revel in physical bliss +for æons, until they reënter the circle of transmigration" +(<i>Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary</i>). Eitel, however, under "Amitâbha" +states that the "popular mind" regards the "paradise of the West" as +"the haven of final redemption from the eddies of transmigration". +When used by one of the Teachers of the Esoteric Philosophy it covers +the higher Devachanic states, but from all of these the Soul comes +back to earth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> See <i>Lucifer</i>, Oct, 1892, Vol. XI. No. 62.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>The Path</i>, May, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> "Notes on Devachan," as cited.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> "Notes on Devachan," as before. There are a variety of +stages in Devachan; the Rûpa Loka is an inferior stage, where the Soul +is still surrounded by forms. It has escaped from these personalities +in the Tribhuvana.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Vishnu Purâna</i>, Bk. I. ch. v.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, p. 69. Third Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Sixth and seventh in the older nomenclature, fifth and +sixth in the later—<i>i.e.</i>, Manas and Buddhi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, p. 99. Third Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 100.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 101.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> See Manual No. 2 <i>Re-incarnation</i>, pp. 60, 61. Third +Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, p. 105. Third Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Esoteric Buddhism</i>, p. 197. Eighth +Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Quoted in the <i>Secret Doctrine</i>, vol ii. p. 83. The +student will do well to read, for a fair presentation of the subject, +G.R.S. Mead's "Note on Nirvâna" in <i>Lucifer</i>, for March, April, and +May, 1893. (Re-printed in <i>Theosophical Siftings</i>).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>Theosophist</i>, Sept., 1882, p. 310.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> See on "illusion" what was said under the heading +"Devachan".</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy</i>, p. 102. Third Edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Theosophist</i>, Sept. 1881.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> "Notes on Devachan", <i>Path</i>, June, 1890, p. 80.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Theosophist</i>, June, 1882, p. 226.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Summarised from article in <i>Theosophist</i>, Sept., 1882.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 309.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 310.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Key to Theosophy,</i> p. 151.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <i>Theosophist</i>, Sept., 1882, p. 310.</p></div> +</div> + + +<p> </p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2> + + +<div class="index"> +<ul class="IX"><li>Accident, Death by, <a href="#Page_37">37</a> .</li> +<li>Appendix, <a href="#Page_81">81</a> .</li> +<li>Astral Body, <a href="#Page_19">19</a> ,</li> +<li> Fate of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a> .</li> +<li>Astral Shell or Soul, <a href="#Page_75">75</a> .</li> +<li><i>Avesta</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_9">9</a> .</li> + +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Blavatsky, H.P., quoted, <a href="#Page_16">16</a> , <a href="#Page_17">17</a> , <a href="#Page_24">24</a> , <a href="#Page_30">30</a> , <a href="#Page_31">31</a> , <a href="#Page_33">33</a> , <a href="#Page_34">34</a> , <a href="#Page_35">35</a> , <a href="#Page_45">45</a> , <a href="#Page_49">49</a> , <a href="#Page_60">60</a> , <a href="#Page_65">65</a> , <a href="#Page_66">66</a> , <a href="#Page_67">67</a> , <a href="#Page_73">73</a> , <a href="#Page_74">74</a> , <a href="#Page_78">78</a> .</li> +<li><i>Book of the Dead</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_8">8</a> .</li> +<li>Bruno, Giordano, quoted, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> .</li> +<li><i>Buddhism in Tibet</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_47">47</a> , (note).</li> + +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> + + + + +<li>Communications between Earth and other Spheres, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> . +<ul class="IX"> +<li> " between Earth and Soul in Etheric Body, <a href="#Page_71">71</a> .</li> +<li> " between Earth, and soul in Devachan, <a href="#Page_72">72</a> ,</li> +<li> " between Earth and soul in Kâmaloka, <a href="#Page_72">72</a> .</li> +<li> " from Adepts now living, <a href="#Page_79">79</a> .</li> +<li> " from Elementals, <a href="#Page_78">78</a> .</li> +<li> " from Elementaries, <a href="#Page_77">77</a> .</li> +<li> " from Medium's Higher Ego, <a href="#Page_79">79</a> .</li> +<li> " from Nirmânakâyas, <a href="#Page_78">78</a> .</li> +<li> " from Shells, <a href="#Page_43">43</a> , <a href="#Page_77">77</a> .</li></ul></li> +<li><i>Controverted Questions, Essays upon some</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_28">28</a> .</li> +<li><i>Cremation</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> .</li> +<li>Cycle of Incarnation, <a href="#Page_52">52</a> et seq.</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Death, a Gateway, <a href="#Page_79">79</a> .</li> + +<li> " Chinese Ideas of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a> .</li> +<li> " Christian Ideas of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a> .</li> +<li> " Egyptian Ideas of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a> .</li> +<li> " Theosophic Ideas of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a> .</li> +<li><i>Desatir</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_9">9</a> .</li> +<li>Devachan, <a href="#Page_33">33</a> , <a href="#Page_46">46</a> . et seq.</li> +<li>Devachan, Passing into, of the average-living, <a href="#Page_33">33</a> .</li> +<li>Devachan, The Soul in, <a href="#Page_72">72</a> .</li> +<li>Devachanî, The, <a href="#Page_58">58</a> et seq.</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Earth, The return to, <a href="#Page_66">66</a> .</li> +<li>Egos, Many lives of, <a href="#Page_63">63</a> et seq.</li> +<li>Elementals, <a href="#Page_44">44</a> , <a href="#Page_78">78</a> .</li> +<li>Elementaries, <a href="#Page_45">45</a> , <a href="#Page_77">77</a> .</li> +<li><i>Esoteric Buddhism</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_69">69</a> .</li> +<li>Etheric Double, <a href="#Page_12">12</a> , <a href="#Page_22">22</a> et seq., <a href="#Page_24">24</a> , <a href="#Page_25">25</a> , <a href="#Page_71">71</a> et seq.</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Fiery Lives, <a href="#Page_17">17</a> .</li> +<li><i>Fortnightly Review</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_29">29</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Heroic Enthusiasts, The</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Immortal Triad, The, <a href="#Page_12">12</a> , <a href="#Page_13">13</a> , <a href="#Page_31">31</a> , <a href="#Page_33">33</a> , <a href="#Page_58">58</a> , <a href="#Page_60">60</a> .</li> +<li><i>Isis Unveiled</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_17">17</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Kâmaloka, <a href="#Page_26">26</a> , <a href="#Page_27">27</a> , <a href="#Page_29">29</a> , <a href="#Page_32">32</a> , <a href="#Page_34">34</a> , <a href="#Page_41">41</a> .</li> +<li>Kâmaloka, The Soul in, <a href="#Page_72">72</a> .</li> +<li>Kâma Rûpa, <a href="#Page_30">30</a> .</li> +<li><i>Key to Theosophy</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_24">24</a> , <a href="#Page_30">30</a> , <a href="#Page_31">31</a> , <a href="#Page_33">33</a> , <a href="#Page_60">60</a> , <a href="#Page_65">65</a> , <a href="#Page_67">67</a> , <a href="#Page_73">73</a> , <a href="#Page_78">78</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Lucifer</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_49">49</a> , <a href="#Page_70">70</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Magic, White and Black</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_26">26</a> .</li> +<li><i>Man: Fragments of Forgotten History</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_23">23</a> .</li> +<li>Man: How Made, <a href="#Page_12">12</a> et seq.</li> +<li>Mâyâ, <a href="#Page_47">47</a> .</li> +<li>Medium, Communications from Higher Egos of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Nirvâna, <a href="#Page_69">69</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Ordinances of Manu</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_9">9</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Paradise Lost</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_7">7</a> .</li> +<li><i>Path</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_51">51</a> , <a href="#Page_54">54</a> , <a href="#Page_55">55</a> , <a href="#Page_56">56</a> , <a href="#Page_59">59</a> et seq.</li> +<li><i>Perfect Way</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_44">44</a> .</li> +<li>Perishable Quaternary, <a href="#Page_12">12</a> .</li> +<li>Pishâchas, <a href="#Page_38">38</a> .</li> +<li>Prâna, <a href="#Page_26">26</a> , <a href="#Page_30">30</a> .</li> +<li>Premature Death, <a href="#Page_36">36</a> , <a href="#Page_39">39</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Re-incarnation, <a href="#Page_8">8</a> , <a href="#Page_67">67</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_47">47</a> <a href="#Footnote_27_27">(Foot note 27</a>).</li> +<li><i>Seven principles of Man</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_26">26</a> , <a href="#Page_45">45</a> .</li> +<li>Shell, Astral Soul, or, <a href="#Page_75">75</a> .</li> +<li>Shells, The, <a href="#Page_41">41</a> .</li> +<li><i>Shû King</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_10">10</a> .</li> +<li>Soul, Growth of, in Devachan, <a href="#Page_56">56</a> ,</li> + +<li> " Powers of the, <a href="#Page_80">80</a> .</li> +<li> " Relations of, with Devachanî, <a href="#Page_74">74</a> et seq.</li> +<li> " The Disembodied, <a href="#Page_71">71</a> et seq.</li> +<li>Spiritualism and Esoteric Philosophy, <a href="#Page_15">15</a> .</li> +<li>Suicides, <a href="#Page_36">36</a> , et seq., <a href="#Page_81">81</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Theosophical Glossary</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_45">45</a> .</li> +<li><i>Theosophical Siftings</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> .</li> +<li><i>Theosophist, The</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> , <a href="#Page_35">35</a> , <a href="#Page_71">71</a> , <a href="#Page_74">74</a> , <a href="#Page_75">75</a> et seq.</li> +<li><i>Theosophist. The</i>, summarised, <a href="#Page_75">75</a> , <a href="#Page_79">79</a> , <a href="#Page_81">81</a> .</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Unconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, <a href="#Page_28">28</a> et seq.</li> +</ul> +<ul class="IX"> +<li><i>Vishnu Purâna</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_57">57</a> .</li></ul></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Death--and After?, by Annie Besant + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEATH--AND AFTER? *** + +***** This file should be named 18266-h.htm or 18266-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/2/6/18266/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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