The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of Annie Besant
Annie
Besant
(1847
-1933)
.
Death and After ?
By
Annie Besant
PREFACE
This
book by Dr. Annie Besant has been through several Editions. The following
is
the Preface that appeared in the First Edition.
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 [v] 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.
[vi]
CONTENTS
Views of
Death
The
Immortal and the Perishable
The Fate of
the Body
The Fate of
the Etheric Double
Kamaloka,
Desire-land, and the Fate of Passions and Desires
Kamaloka,
The Shells
Kamaloka,
The Elementaries
Devachan
The
Devachan
The Return
to Earth
Nirvana
Communications
between Earth and other Spheres
Appendix –
Suicides
DEATH — AND AFTER?
WHO
does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in
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.
Today,
many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin,
there are
more
people in Christendom who question whether man has a spirit to come any
whence
or to go any whither 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 lusterless 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.
In
literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been
characteristic
of Christianity. 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 hourglass – 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.
The other
shape,
If shape it
might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable
in member, joint, or limb,
Or
substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each
seemed either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as
ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a
dreadful dart; what seemed his head
The
likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was
now at hand, and from his seat
The monster
moving onward came as fast,
With horrid
strides; hell trembled as he strode …
… So spoke
the grisly terror; and in shape
So
speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold
More
dreadful and deform …
… but he,
my inbred enemy,
Forth issued,
brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to
destroy: I fled, and cried out Death!
Hell
trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all
her caves, and back resounded Death.*
[* Book
ii., from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristles with horrors.]
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 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 Book of the Dead,
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:
O
ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your arms, for I become
one of you (xvii. 22).
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).
I
open heaven; I do what was commanded in
body
at the gates of Amenti (xxvi. 5, 6).
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:
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).
The
general belief in Reincarnation 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 Ordinances of Manu,
following on a disquisition on metempsychosis, and answering the question of
deliverance from rebirths.
Amid
all these holy acts, the knowledge of self (should be translated, knowledge
of
the Self, Atma) is said (to be) the highest; this indeed is the foremost of
all
sciences, since from it immortality is obtained.* [* xii. 85. Trans. of
Burnell and Hopkins.]
The
testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is
clear, as is shown by the
following,
translated from the Avesta, in which, the journey of
the Soul after
death
having been described, the ancient Scripture proceeds:
The
soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at (the
Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the second step
and arrives at (the
the
soul of the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal
Lights.
To
it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art thou, O pure
deceased,
come away from the fleshly 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!
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.* [* From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems,
xxvii.]
The
Persian Desatir 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:
God
selected man from animals to confer on him the soul, which is a substance
free,
simple, immaterial, non-compounded and nonappetitive.
And that becomes an angel by improvement.
By
his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he connected the soul with
the material body.
If
he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good knowledge and
religion
he is Hartasp. …
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.
As
if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains
from vice, I will promote
him
to the rank of angels.
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.* [* Trans. by Mirza Mohamed Hadi, The Platonist, 306.]
In
ruling
from B.C. 1401-1374, exhorts his subjects:
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.*
[* The Sacred Books of the East, iii. 109, 110.]
Indeed,
so practical is this Chinese belief, held today 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
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.
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 thralldom of the senses during earthly life,
looks
on the disembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to
unfettered thought.
Ere
passing to the consideration of the history of 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
The Immortal Triad: the Individual. Atma,
or Spirit as Will.
Buddhi, or Spirit as Intuition.
Manas, or Spirit as Intellect.
The Perishable Quaternary: the Person.Lower Manas, or Mind.
Prana, as Energising
Vitality.
Prana, as Automatic Vitality.
If
we consider the bodies of man, the dense body is the visible, tangible outer
form,
composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal
counterpart
of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prana is vitality, the
integrating
energy that co-ordinates the [9] 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”, and appears in two forms in the
dense
and etheric parts of the physical body.
appetites,
passions, and emotions, common to man and brute, the emotions
evolving
to a higher point in man under the play of the lower mind. Manas is the
Thinker
in us, the Intellect. Buddhi is the aspect of the Spirit, which
manifests
above the Intellect.
Now
the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternary is
Intellect,
which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and functions as
Intellect
and Mind. Intellect sends out a Ray, Mind, which works in and through
the
human brain, functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating
intelligence.
This mingles with Desire, 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
Desire-Mind
belonging to the higher by its intellectual, and to the lower by its
emotional,
elements. As this forms the battleground during life, [10] 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 DesireMind of
perishable
and imperishable elements:
Immortal Will
Intuition
Intellect
Conditionally
Immortal Desire-Mind
Mortal Desire
Energising
Vitality
Automatic Vitality
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.e., 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
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 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.
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 other’s 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.
THE FATE OF THE BODY
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.
The
idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless lives, 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, aerobes,
anaerobes, 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 invisible lives 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 [14] the sun. Each particle – whether
you
call it organic or inorganic – is a life.* [* The Secret Doctrine, vol. i.
p.
281. 3rd Edition.]
These
“lives” which, separate and independent, are the minute vehicles of
Automatic
Vitality, 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”, Energising Vitality,
which constrain
these
to their work of 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
See
The Secret Doctrine, vol, i.
p. 283. 3rd Edition.] 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.
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.”* [*
Those
who have read The Seven Principles of Man,* [* Theosophical Manuals, No. 1.]
know that the etheric double is the vehicle of Prana, the life-principle, or
vitality.
Through the etheric double Prana 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”, [16] 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.
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 desire, the kamic
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 [17] 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?
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 Atma-BuddhiManas, or Spirit,
the reflection of the
Immortal
Self. This sends out its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the
desire body, or kamic 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 himself 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
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.* [* The Heroic Enthusiasts, trans. by L. Williams,
part
ii. pp. 22, 23.]
When
once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it we gain our
liberty,
Death loses for us [20] all his terrors, and at his touch the body
slips
from us as a garment, and we stand out from it erect and free.
On
the same lines of thought Dr. Franz Hartmann writes:
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, the God effects his own release from
the man 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.* [* Cremation,
Theosophical Siftings, vol, iii.]
The
“man”, using the word in the sense of personality, as it is used in the
latter
half of this sentence, is only 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.
The
body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives – previously held in
constraint
by Prana, 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.
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.
THE FATE OF THE ETHERIC
DOUBLE
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.
When
the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel to any
distance
from it. Normally it remains 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:
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, the brain thinks, 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.*
[*
Man: Fragments of Forgotten History, by Two Chelâs (Mohini Chatterji & Laura C.
Holloway), pp. 119, 120.]
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
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 karmic records, is too solemn and momentous a
thing
to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings of personal relatives and
friends.
At
the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees the
whole
of his past life marshalled before him, in its
minutest details. For one
short
instant the personal become one with the individual and all-knowing Ego.
But
this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have
been
at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is,
unadorned
by flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a
spectator,
looking down into the arena he is quitting.* [* Key to Theosophy, H.
P.
Blavatsky, p. 109. Third Edition.]
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.
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 someone 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.
As
the days go on, the five higher principles gradually 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 pari
passu, until all but the actual bony skeleton of the
dense body is completely
disintegrated,
and the particles have gone to form other combinations.
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.
The
ethereal corpse may to some extent be revivified for a short period after
its
death. Dr. Hartmann says:
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 intellectual person, it may talk very intellectually; and if it was
that
of a fool, it will talk like a fool.* [* Magic, White and Black, Dr. Franz
Hartmann,
pp. 109, 110. Third Edition.]
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
[26] 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.
KAMALOKA, DESIRE-LAND,
AND THE FATE OF PASSIONS AND DESIRES
Loka
is a Samskrit word that may be translated as place,
world, land, so that
Kamaloka
is literally the place or the world of Desire,
that
part of the human organism that includes all the passions, desires, and
emotions
which man has in common with the lower animals.* [* See The Seven
Principles
of Man, pp. 17-21.] In this division of
the universe, the Kamaloka,
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. Kamaloka 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.
A
momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of the existence of
regions
in the universe, other 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 Theosophist that
real knowledge may be acquired by the Spirit in the living man coming into
conscious relations with the world of Spirit.
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 Realities.* [*
Theosophist,
March 1882, p. 158, note.]
In
this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge as definite, as
certain,
as familiar, as if he should travel to
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 [28] 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 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:
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.*
[*
Essays upon some Controverted Questions, p. 36.]
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 [29] 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 coexistence of intelligent beings, and but a very slight
effort of imagination is needed to
realise the conception.
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 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
medieval
mystics,
and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or