The Theosophical Society,
After Death
From
A Textbook of Theosophy
By
C
Death
is the laying aside of the physical body; but it makes no more difference
to the ego than does the laying aside of an
overcoat to the physical man. Having
put off his physical body, the ego continues to
live in his astral body until
the force has become exhausted which has been
generated by such emotions and passions as he has allowed himself to feel
during earth life. When that has
happened, the second death takes place; the
astral body also falls away from
him, and he finds himself living in the mental body
and in the lower mental
world. In that condition he remains until the thought
forces generated during
his physical and astral lives have worn themselves
out; then he drops the third
vehicle in its turn and remains once more an ego
in his own world, inhabiting
his causal body.
There
is, then, no such thing as death as it is ordinarily understood. There is
only a succession of stages in a continuous life –
stages lived in the three
worlds one after another. The apportionment of time
between these three worlds
varies much as man advances. The primitive man lives
almost exclusively in the
physical world, spending only a few years in the
astral at the end of each of
his physical lives. As he develops, the astral life
becomes longer, and as
intellect (Page 64) unfolds in him, and he becomes
able to think, he begins to
spend a little time in the mental world as well. The
ordinary man of civilized
races remains longer in the mental world than in the
physical and astral;
indeed, the more a man evolves the longer becomes his
mental life and the
shorter his life in the astral world.
The
astral life is the result of all feelings which have in them the element of self.
If they have been directly selfish, they bring him into conditions of great
unpleasantness in the astral world; if, though tinged with thoughts of self,
they have been good and kindly they bring him a comparatively pleasant though
still limited astral life. Such of his thoughts and feelings as have been entirely
unselfish produce their result in his life in the mental world; therefore that
life in the mental world cannot be other than blissful. The astral life, which
the man has made for himself either miserable or comparatively joyous,
corresponds to what Christians call purgatory; the lower mental life, which is
always entirely happy, is what is called heaven.
Man
makes for himself his own purgatory and heaven, and these are not planes,
but states of consciousness. Hell does not exist;
it is only a figment of the
theological imagination; but a man who lives
foolishly may make for himself a
very unpleasant and long-enduring purgatory. Neither
purgatory nor heaven can
ever be eternal, for a finite cause cannot produce
an infinite result. The variations in individual cases are so wide that to give
actual figures is somewhat misleading.
If
we take the average man of what is called the lower middle class, the typical
specimen of which would be a small shopkeeper or shop-assistant, his average
life in the astral world would be perhaps about forty years, and the life in
the mental world about two hundred. The man of spirituality and culture, on the
other hand, may have perhaps twenty years of life in the astral world and a
thousand in the heaven life. One who is specially developed may reduce the
astral life to a few days or hours and spend fifteen hundred years in heaven.
Not
only does the length of these periods vary greatly, but the conditions in
both worlds also differ widely. The matter of which
all these bodies are built is not dead matter but living,
and that fact has to be taken into consideration. The physical body is built up
of cells, each of which is a tiny separate life animated by the Second
Outpouring, which comes forth from the Second Aspect of the Deity. These cells
are of varying kinds and fulfill various functions, and all these facts must be
taken into account if the man wishes to understand the work of his physical
body and to live a healthy life in it.
The
same thing applies to the astral and mental bodies. In the cell life which
permeates them there is as yet nothing in the way
of intelligence, but there is
a strong instinct always pressing in the
direction of what is for its development. The life animating the matter of
which such bodies are built is upon the outward arc of evolution, moving
downwards or outwards into matter, so that progress for it means to descend
into denser forms of matter, and to learn to express itself through them. Unfoldment for the man is just the opposite of this; he has
already sunk deeply into matter and is now rising out of that towards his
source.
There
is consequently a constant conflict of interests between the man within and the
life inhabiting the matter of his vehicles, inasmuch as its tendency is
downward, while his is upward.The matter of the
astral body (or rather the life animating its molecules) desires for its
evolution such undulations as it can get, of as many different kinds as
possible, and as coarse as possible. The next step in its evolution will be to ensoul physical matter and become used to its still slower oscillations;
and as a step on the way to that, it desires the grossest of the
astral vibrations. It has not the intelligence
definitely to plan for these; but its instinct helps it to discover how most
easily to procure them.
The
molecules of the astral body are constantly changing, as are those of the
physical body, but nevertheless the life in the
mass of those astral molecules has a sense, though a very vague sense, of
itself as a whole – as a kind of temporary entity. It does not know that it is
part of a man’s astral body; it is quite capable of understanding what a man
is; but it realizes in a blind way that under itpresent
conditions it receives many more waves, and much stronger ones, than it would
receive if floating at large in the atmosphere. It would then only occasionally
catch, as from a distance, the radiation of man’s passions and emotions; now it
is in the very heart of them, it can miss none, and it gets them at their
strongest.
Therefore
it feels itself in a good position, and it makes an effort to retain that
position. It finds itself in contact with something finer than itself – the
matter of the man’s mental body; and it comes to feel that if it can contrive
to involve that finer something in its own undulations, they will be greatly
intensified and
prolonged.
Since
astral matter is the vehicle of desire and mental matter is the vehicle of
thought, this instinct, when translated into our
language, means that if the astral body can induce us to think that we want
what it wants, it is much more likely to get it. Thus it exercises a slow
steady pressure upon the man – a kind of hunger on its side, but for him a
temptation to what is coarse and undesirable. If he be a passionate man there
is a gentle but ceaseless pressure in the direction of irritability; if he be a
sensual man, an equally steady pressure in the direction of impurity.
A
man who does not understand this usually makes one of two mistakes with regard to
it: either he supposes it to be the prompting of his own nature, and
therefore regards that nature as inherently evil;
or he thinks of the pressure as coming from outside – as temptation of an
imaginary devil. The truth lies between the two. The pressure is natural, not
to the man but to the vehicle which he is using; its desire is natural and right
for it, but harmful to the man, and therefore it is necessary that he should
resist it. If he does so resist, if he declines to yield himself to the
feelings suggested to him, the particles within him which need those vibrations
become apathetic for lack of nourishment, and eventually atrophy and fall out from
his astral body, and are replaced by other particles, whose natural wave rate
is more nearly in accordance with that which the man habitually permits within
his astral body.
This
gives the reason for what are called promptings of the lower nature during
life. If the man yields himself to them, such
promptings grow stronger and
stronger until at least he feels as though he
could not resist them, and
identifies himself with them – which is exactly
what this curious half-life in
the particles of the astral body wants him to do.
At
the death of the physical body this vague astral consciousness is alarmed. It
realizes that its existence as a separated mass
is menaced, and it takes instinctive steps to defend itself and to maintain its
position as long as possible. The matter of the astral body is far more fluidic
than that of the physical, and this consciousness seizes upon its particles and
disposes them so as to resist encroachment. It puts the grossest and densest
upon the outside as a kind of shell, and arranges the others in concentric
layers, so that the body as a whole may become as resistant to friction as its
constitution permits, and may therefore retain its shape as long as possible.
For
the man this produces various unpleasant effects. The physiology of the
astral body is quite different from that of the
physical; the latter acquires
its information from without by means of certain
organs which are specialized as
the instruments of its senses, but the astral body
has no separated senses in
our meaning of the word. That which for the astral
body (Page 69) corresponds to sight is the power of its molecules to respond to
impacts from without, which
come to them by means of similar molecules. For
example, a man has within his
astral body matter belonging to all the subdivisions
of the astral world, and it is because of that that he is capable of “seeing”
objects built of the matter of any of these subdivisions.
Supposing
an astral object to be made of the matter of the second and third
subdivisions mixed, a man living in
the astral world could perceive that object
only if on the surface of his astral body there were
particles belonging to the
second and third subdivisions of that world which were
capable of receiving and
recording the vibrations which that object set up.
A man who from the
arrangement
of his body by the vague consciousness of which we have spoken, had on the
outside of that vehicle only the denser matter of the lowest subdivision, could
no more be conscious of the object which we have mentioned than we are ourselves
conscious in the physical body of the gases which move about us in the atmosphere
or of objects built exclusively of etheric matter.
During
physical life the matter of the man’s astral body is in constant motion,
and its particles pass among one another much as do
those of boiling water.
Consequently
at any given moment it is practically certain that particles of all
varieties will be represented on the surface of
his astral body, and that therefore when he is using his astral body during
sleep he will be able to “see” by its means any astral object which approaches
him.
After
death, if he has allowed the rearrangement to be made (as from ignorance,
all ordinary persons do) his condition in this
respect will be different. Having
on the surface of his astral body only the lowest
and grossest particles, he can
receive impressions only from corresponding
particles outside; so that instead
of seeing the whole of the astral world about him,
he will see only one-seventh
of it, and that the densest and most impure. The
vibrations of this heavier
matter are the expressions only of objectionable
feelings and emotions, and of
the least refined class of astral entities.
Therefore it emerges that a man in
this condition can see only the undesirable
inhabitants of the astral world, and
can feel only its most unpleasant and vulgar
influences.
He
is surrounded by other men, whose astral bodies are probably of quite
ordinary character; but since he can see and feel
only what is lowest and
coarsest in them, they appear to him to be
monsters of vice with no redeeming
features. Even his friends seem not at all what
they used to be, because he is
now incapable of appreciating any of their better
qualities. Under these
circumstances it is little wonder
that he considers the astral world a hell; yet
the fault is in no way with the astral world, but
with himself – first, for allowing himself so much of that ruder type of
matter, and secondly, for letting that vague astral consciousness dominate him
and dispose it in that particular way.
The
man who has studied these matters declines absolutely to yield to the
pressure during life or to permit the
rearrangement after death, and consequently he retains his power of seeing the
astral world as a whole, and not merely the cruder and baser part of it.
The
astral world has many points in common with the physical; just like the
physical, it presents different appearances to
different people, and even to the
same person at different periods of his career. It
is the home of emotion and of
lower thoughts; and emotions are much stronger in
that world than in this. When
a
person is awake we cannot see that larger part of his emotion at all; its strength
goes in setting in motion the gross physical matter of the brain. So if we see a man show affection here, what we can see is not the whole
of his affection, but only such part of it as is left after all this other work
has been done. Emotions therefore bulk far more largely in the astral life than
in the physical. They in no way exclude higher thought if they are controlled,
so in the astral world as in the physical a man may devote himself to study and
to helping his fellows, or he may waste his time and
drift about aimlessly.
The
astral world extends nearly to the mean distance of the orbit of the moon;
but though the whole of this realm is open to any
of its inhabitants who have
not permitted the redistribution of their matter,
the great majority remain much
nearer to the surface of the earth. The matter of the
different subdivisions of that world interpenetrates with perfect freedom, but
there is on the whole a general tendency for the denser matter to settle
towards the center. The conditions are much like those which obtain in a bucket of
water which contains in suspension a number of kinds of matter of different
degrees of density. Since the water is kept in perpetual motion, the different
kinds of matter are diffused through it; but in spite of that, the densest
matter is found in greatest quantity nearest to the bottom. So that though we
must not at all think of the various subdivisions of the astral world as lying
above one another as do the coats of an onion, it is nevertheless true that the
average arrangement of the matter of those subdivisions partakes somewhat of
that general character.
Astral
matter interpenetrates physical matter precisely as though it were not
there, but each subdivision of physical matter has a
strong attraction for astral matter of the corresponding subdivision. Hence it
arises that every physical body has its astral counterpart. If I have a glass
of water standing upon a table, the glass and the table, being of physical
matter in the solid state, are interpenetrated by astral matter of the lowest
subdivision. The water in the glass, being liquid, is interpenetrated by astral
matter of the sixth subdivision; whereas the air surrounding both, being physical matter
in the gaseous condition, is entirely interpenetrated by astral gaseous matter
– that is, astral matter of the fifth subdivision.
But
just as air, water, glass and table are alike interpenetrated all the time
by the finer physical matter which we have called etheric, so are all the astral
counterparts interpenetrated by the
finer astral matter of the higher
subdivisions which correspond to the
etheric. But even the astral solid is less
dense than the finest of the physical ethers.
The
man who finds himself in the astral world after death,
if he has not submitted to the rearrangement of the matter of his body, will
notice but little difference from physical life. He can float about in any
direction at will, but in actual fact he usually stays in the neighbourhood to which he is accustomed. He is still able
to perceive his house, his room, his furniture, his relations, his friends. The
living, when ignorant of the higher worlds, suppose themselves to have “lost”
those who have laid aside their physical bodies; but the dead are never for a
moment under the impression that they have lost the living.
Functioning
as they are in the astral body, the dead can no longer see the
physical bodies of those whom they have left
behind; but they do see their astral bodies, and as those are exactly the same
in outline as the physical, they are perfectly aware of the presence of their
friends. They see each one surrounded by a faint ovoid of luminous mist, and if
they happen to be observant, they may notice various other small changes in the
surroundings; but it is at least quite clear to them that they have not gone
away to some distant heaven or hell, but still remain in touch with the world
which they know, although they see it at a somewhat different angle.
The
dead man has the astral body of his living friends obviously before him, so
he cannot think of him as lost; but while the
friend is awake, the dead man will
not be able to make any impression upon him, for
the consciousness of the friend is then in the physical world, and his astral
body is being used only as a
bridge. The dead man cannot therefore communicate with
his friend, nor can he read his friend’s higher thoughts; but he will see by
the change in color in the astral body any emotion which that friend may feel,
and with a little practice and observation he may easily learn to read all
those thoughts of his friend which have in them anything of self or of desire.
When
the friend falls asleep the whole position is changed. He is then also
conscious in the astral world side by side with
the dead man, and they can
communicate in every respect as freely as they could
during physical life. The
emotions felt by the living react strongly upon
the dead who love them. If the
former give way to grief, the latter cannot but suffer
severely.
The
conditions of life after death are almost infinite in their variety, but
they can be calculated without difficulty by any one
who will take the trouble
to understand the astral world and to consider the
character of the person
concerned. That character is not in the slightest
degree changed by death; the
man’s thoughts, emotions and desires are exactly the
same as before. He is in
every way the same man, minus his physical body, and
his happiness or misery
depends upon the extent to which this loss of
the physical body affects him.
If
his longings have been such as need a physical body for their gratification,
he is likely to suffer considerably. Such a
craving manifests itself as a vibration in the astral body, and while we are
still in this world most of its strength is employed in setting in motion the
heavy physical particles. Desire is therefore a far greater force in the astral
life than in the physical, and if the man has not been in the habit of
controlling it, and if in this new life it cannot be satisfied, it may cause
him great and long-continued trouble.
Take
as an illustration the extreme case of a drunkard or a sensualist. Here we
have a lust which has been strong enough during
physical life to overpower
reason, common-sense and all the feelings of decency
and of family affection.
After
death the man finds himself in the astral world feeling the appetite perhaps a
hundred times more strongly, yet absolutely unable to satisfy it because he has
lost the physical body. Such a life is a very real hell – the only hell there
is; yet no one is punishing him; he is reaping the perfectly natural result of
his own action. Gradually as time passes this force of desire wears out, but
only at the cost of terrible suffering for the man, because to him every day
seems as a thousand years. He has no measure of time such as we have in the
physical world. He can measure it only by his sensations. From a distortion of
this fact has come the blasphemous idea of eternal damnation.
Many
other cases less extreme than this will readily suggest themselves, in
which a hankering which cannot be fulfilled may prove
itself a torture. A more
ordinary case is that of a man who has no
particular vices, such as drink or
sensuality, but yet has been attached entirely to
things of the physical world,
and has lived a life devoted to business or to
aimless social functions. For him
the
astral world is a place of weariness; the only things for which he craves are
no longer possible for him, for in the astral world there is no business to be
done, and, though he may have as much companionship as he wishes, society is
now for him a very different matter, because all the pretences upon which it is
usually based in this world are no longer possible.
These
cases, however, are only the few, and for most people the state after
death is much happier than life upon earth. The first
feeling of which the dead
man is usually conscious is one of the most
wonderful and delightful freedom. He has absolutely nothing to worry about, and
no duties rest upon him, except those which he chooses to impose upon himself.
For all but a very small
minority, physical life is spent in doing what
the man would much rather not do; but he has to do it in order to support
himself or his wife and family. In the astral
world
no support is necessary; food is no longer needed, shelter is not required,
since he is entirely unaffected by heat or cold; and each man by the mere
exercise of his thought clothes himself as he wishes. For the first time since
early childhood the man is entirely free to spend the whole of his time in doing
exactly just what he likes.
His
capacity for every kind of enjoyment is greatly enhanced, if only that
enjoyment does not need a physical body for
expression. If he loves the
beauties of Nature, it is now within his power to
travel with great rapidity and without fatigue over the whole world, to
contemplate all its loveliest spots, and to explore its most secret recesses.
If he delights in art, all the world’s masterpieces are at his disposal. If he
loves music, he can go where he will to hear it, and it will now mean much more
to him than it has ever meant before; for though he can no longer hear the
physical sounds, he can receive the whole effect of the music into himself in
far fuller measure than in this lower world. If he is a student of science, he
not only can visit the great scientific men of the world, and catch from them
such thoughts and ideas as may be within his comprehension, but also he can
undertake the researches of his own into the
science of this higher world, seeing much more
of what he is doing than has ever
before been possible to him. Best of all, he whose
great delight in this world has been to help his fellow men will still find
ample scope for his philanthropic efforts.
Men
are no longer hungry, cold, or suffering from disease in this astral world;
but there are vast numbers who, being ignorant,
desire knowledge – who, being
still in the grip of desire for earthly things, need
the explanation which will
turn their thought to higher levels – who have
entangled themselves in a web of
their
own imaginings, and can be set free only by one who understands these new surroundings
and can help them distinguish the facts of the world from their own ignorant
misrepresentation of them. All these can be helped by the man of
intelligence and of kindly heart.
Many men arrive in the astral world in utter
ignorance of its conditions, not realizing at
first that they are dead, and when
they do realize it fearing the fate that may be in
store for them, because of
false and wicked theological teaching. All of these
need the cheer and
comfort which can only be given to them by a man
of common sense who possesses some knowledge of the facts of nature.
There
is thus no lack of the most profitable occupation for any man whose
interests during his physical life have been
rational; nor is there any lack of
companionship. Men whose tastes and
pursuits are similar drift naturally together there just as they do here; and
many realms of Nature, which during our
physical life are concealed by the dense veil of
matter, now lie open for the
detailed study of those who care to examine them.
To
a large extent people make their own surroundings. We have already referred
to the seven subdivisions of this astral world.
Numbering these from the highest
and
least material downwards, we find that they fall naturally into three classes –
division one, two and three forming one such class, and four, five and six
another; while the seventh and lowest of all stands alone. As I have said,although they all interpenetrate, their substance has
a general tendency to arrange itself according to its specific gravity, so that
most of the matter belonging to the higher subdivisions is found at a greater
elevation above the surface of the earth than the bulk of the matter of the
lower portions.
Hence,
although any person inhabiting the astral world can move into any part of
it, his natural tendency is to float at the level
which corresponds with the
specific gravity of the heaviest matter in his
astral (Page 79) body. The man
who has not permitted the rearrangement of the
matter of his astral body after
death is entirely free of the whole astral world; but
the majority, who do permit it, are not equally free – not because there is
anything to prevent them from rising to the highest level or sinking to the
lowest, but because they are able to sense clearly only a certain part of that
world.
I
have described something of the fate of a man who is on the lowest level, shut
in by a strong shell of coarse matter. Because of
the extreme comparative
density of that matter he is conscious of less
outside of his own subdivision
than a man at any other level. The general specific
gravity of his own astral body tends to make him float below the surface of the
earth. The physical matter of the earth is absolutely non-existent to his astral
senses, and his natural attraction is to that least delicate form of astral
matter which is the counterpart of that solid earth. A man who has confined
himself to that lowest subdivision will therefore usually find himself floating
in darkness and cut off to a great extent from others of the dead, whose lives
have been such as to keep them on a higher level.
Divisions
four, and six of the astral world (to which most people are attracted)
have for their background the astral counterpart of
the physical world in which
we live, and all its familiar accessories. Life in
the sixth subdivision is simply like our ordinary life on this earth minus the
physical body and its necessities while as it ascends through the fifth and fourth
divisions it becomes less and less material and is more and more withdrawn from
our lower world and its interests.
The
first, second and third sections, though occupying the same space, yet give
the impression of being much further removed from
the physical, and
correspondingly less material. Men who
inhabit these levels lose sight of the
earth and its belongings; they are usually deeply
self-absorbed, and to a large
extent create their own surroundings, though these are
sufficiently objective to
be perceptible to other men of their level, and
also to clairvoyant vision.
This
region is the summerland of which we hear in
spiritualistic circles – the
world in which, by the exercise of their thought, the
dead call into temporary
existence their houses and schools and cities.
These surroundings, though
fanciful from our point of view, are to the dead
as real as houses, temples or
churches built of stone are to us, and many
people live very contentedly there
for a number of years in the midst of all these
thought creations.
Some
of the scenery thus produced is very beautiful; it includes lovely lakes,
magnificent mountains, pleasant gardens, decidedly
superior to anything in the
physical world; though on the other hand it also
contains much which to the
trained clairvoyant (who has learned to see
things as they are) appears ridiculous – as, for example, the endeavors of the
unlearned to make a thought form of some of the curious symbolic descriptions
contained in their various scriptures. An ignorant peasant’s thought image of a
beast full of eyes within, or of a sea of glass mingled with fire, is naturally
often grotesque, although to its maker it is perfectly satisfactory. This
astral world is full of thought-created figures and landscapes. Men of all
religions image here their deities and their respective conceptions of
paradise, and enjoy themselves greatly among these dream forms until they pass
into the mental world and come into touch with something nearer to reality.
Every
one after death – any ordinary person, that is, in whose case the
rearrangement of the matter of the
astral body has been made – has to pass
through all these subdivisions in turn. It does
not follow that every one is conscious in all of them. The ordinary decent person
has in his astral body but
little of the matter of its lowest portion – by no
means enough to construct a
heavy shell. The redistribution puts on the outside
of the body its densest matter; in the ordinary man this is usually matter of
the sixth subdivision, mixed with a little of the seventh, and so he finds
himself viewing the counterpart of the physical world.
The
ego is steadily withdrawing into himself, and as he
withdraws he leaves
behind him level after level of this astral matter. So
the length of the man’s
detention in any section of the astral world is
precisely in proportion to the
amount of its matter which is found in his astral
body, and that in turn depends
upon the life he has lived, the desires he has
indulged, and the class of matter
which by so doing he has attracted towards him and
built into himself. Finding
(Page
82) himself then in the sixth section, still hovering about the places and
persons
with which he was most closely connected while on earth, the average man as time
passes on finds the earthly surroundings gradually growing dimmer and becoming
of less and less importance to him, and he tends more and more to mould his
entourage into agreement with the more persistent of his thoughts. By the time
that he reaches the third level he finds that this characteristic has
entirely superseded the vision of the realities
of the astral world.
The
second subdivision is a shade less material than the third, for if the latter
is the summerland of the spiritualists, the former is
the material heaven of the more ignorant orthodox; while the first or highest
level appears to be the special home of those who during life have devoted
themselves to materialistic but intellectual pursuits, following them not for
the sake of benefiting their fellow men, but either from motives of selfish
ambition or simply for the sake of intellectual exercise.
All
these people are perfectly happy. Later on they will reach a stage when they
can appreciate something much higher, and when that stage comes they will find
the higher ready for them.
In
this astral life people of the same nation and of the same interests tend to
keep together, precisely as they do here. The
religious people, for example, who
imagine for themselves a material heaven, do not
at all interfere with men of
other faiths whose ideas of celestial joy are
different. There is nothing to prevent a Christian from drifting into the
heaven of the Hindu or the Mohammedan, but he is little likely to do so,
because his interests and attractions are all in the heaven of his own faith,
along with friends who have shared that faith with him. This is by no means the
true heaven described by any of the religions, but only a gross and material
misrepresentation of it; the real thing will be found when we come to consider
the mental world.
The
dead man who has not permitted the rearrangement of the matter of his astral body
is free of the entire world, and can wander all over it at will, seeing the whole
of whatever he examines, instead of only a part of it as the others do. He does
not find it inconveniently crowded, for the astral world is much larger
than the surface of the physical earth, while its
population is somewhat smaller, because the average life of humanity in the
astral world is shorter
than the average of the physical.
Not
only the dead, however, are the inhabitants of this
astral world, but always
about one third of the living as well, who have
temporarily left their physical
bodies behind them in sleep. The astral world has also
a great number of
non-human inhabitants, some of them far below the
level of man, and some
considerably above him. The nature
spirits form an enormous kingdom, some of
whose members exist in the astral world, and make a
large part of its population.
This
vast kingdom exists in the physical world also, for many of its orders wear etheric bodies, and are only just beyond the range of
ordinary physical sight. Indeed, circumstances not infrequently occur under which
they can be seen, and in many lonely mountain districts these appearances are
traditional among the peasants, by whom they are commonly spoken of as fairies,
good people, pixies or brownies.
They
are protéan, but usually prefer to wear a miniature
human form. Since they
are not yet individualized, they may be thought of
almost as etheric and astral
animals; yet many of them are intellectually
quite equal to average humanity.
They
have their nations and types just as we have, and they are often grouped
into four great classes, and called the spirits of
earth, water, fire and air.
Only
the members of the last of these four divisions normally reside in the
astral world, but their numbers as so prodigious that
they are everywhere
present in it.
Another
great kingdom has its representatives here – the kingdom of the angels
(called in
evolution than man, and only the lowest fringe of
their hosts touches the astral
world – a fringe whose constituent members are
perhaps at about the level of
development of what we should call a distinctly good
man.
We
are neither the only nor even the principal inhabitants of our solar system;
there are other lines of evolution running parallel
with our own which do not
pass through humanity at all, though they must all
pass through a level
corresponding to that of humanity. On
one of these other lines of evolution are
the nature spirits above described, and at a higher
level of that line comes
this great kingdom of the angels.(Page 85 ) At our
present level of evolution
they come into obvious contact with us only very
rarely, but as we develop we
shall be likely to see more of them - especially as
the cyclic progress of the
world is now bringing it more and more under the
influence of the Seventh Ray.
This
Seventh Ray has ceremonial for one of its characteristics, and it is
through ceremonial such as that of the Church or
of Free-masonry that we come
most easily into touch with the angelic kingdom.
When
all the man’s lower emotions have worn themselves out – all emotions, I
mean, which have in them any thought of self – his
life in the astral world is over, and the ego passes on into the mental world.
This is not in any sense a movement in space; it is simply that the steady
process of withdrawal has now
passed beyond even the finest kind of astral matter;
so that the man’s
consciousness is focused in the
mental world. His astral body has not entirely
disintegrated, though it is in
process of doing so, and he leaves behind him an
astral corpse, just as at a previous stage of the
withdrawal he left behind him
a physical corpse. There is a certain difference
between the two which should be
noticed, because of the consequences which ensue
from it.
When
the man leaves his physical body his separation from it should be complete, and
generally is so; but this is not the case with the much finer matter of the astral
body. In the course of his physical life the ordinary man usually
entangles himself so much in astral matter (which,
from another point of view,
means that he identifies himself so closely with his
lower desires) that the
indrawing force of the ego cannot
entirely separate him from it again.
Consequently,
when he finally breaks away from the astral body and transfers his activities
to the mental, he loses a little of himself, he leaves some of
himself
behind imprisoned in the matter of the astral body.This
gives a certain remnant of vitality to the astral corpse, so that it still
moves freely in the astral world, and may easily be mistaken by the ignorant
for the man himself – the more so as such fragmentary consciousness as still
remains to it is part of the man, and therefore it naturally regards itself and
speaks of itself as the man. It retains his memories but is only a partial and
unsatisfactory representation of him. Sometimes in spiritualistic séances one
comes into contact with an entity of this description, and wonders how it is
that one’s friend has deteriorated so much since his death. To this fragmentary
entity we give the name “shade”.
At
a later stage even this fragment of consciousness dies out of the astral body,
but does not return to the ego to whom it originally
belonged. Even then the astral corpse still remains, but when it is quite
without any trace of its former life we call it a “shell”. Of itself a shell cannot communicate at a séance, or take any
action of any sort; but such shells are frequently seized upon by sportive
nature spirits and used as temporary habitations. A shell so occupied can
communicate at a séance and masquerade as its original owner, since some of his
characteristics and certain portions of
his memory can be evoked by the nature spirit from his astral corpse.
When
a man falls asleep, he withdraws in his astral body, leaving the whole of
the physical vehicle behind him. When he dies, he
draws out with him the etheric
part of the physical body, and consequently has
usually at least a moment of
unconsciousness while he is freeing
himself from it. The etheric double is not a vehicle,
and cannot be used as such; so when the man is surrounded by it, he is for the
moment able to function neither in the physical world nor the astral. Some men
succeed in shaking themselves free of this etheric
envelope in a few minutes; other rest within it for hours, days or even weeks.
Nor
is it certain that, when the man is free from this, he will at once become
conscious of the astral world. For
there is in him a good deal of the lowest kind of astral matter, so that a
shell of this may be made around him. But he may be quite unable to use
that matter. If he had lived a reasonably decent life he is little in the habit
of employing it or responding to its vibrations, and he cannot
instantly acquire this habit. For that reason, he
may remain unconscious until that matter gradually wears away, and some matter
which he is in the habit of using comes on the surface. Such an occlusion,
however, is scarcely ever complete, for even in the most carefully made shell
some particles of the finer matter occasionally find their way to the surface
and give him fleeting glimpses of his surroundings.
There
are some men who cling so desperately to their physical vehicles that they
will not relax their hold upon the etheric double, but strive with all their might to retain
it. They may be successful in doing so for a considerable time, but only at the
cost of great discomfort to themselves. They are shut out from both worlds, to
find themselves surrounded by a dense grey mist, through which they see very dimly
the things of the physical world, but with all the colour gone from them. It is a terrible struggle to them to
maintain their position in this miserable condition, and yet they will not
relax their hold upon the etheric double, feeling
that that is at least some sort of link with the only world that they know.
Thus they drift about in a condition of loneliness and misery until from sheer
fatigue their hold fails them, and they slip into the comparative happiness of
astral life.
Sometimes
in their desperation they grasp blindly at other bodies, and try to
enter into them, and occasionally they are successful
in such an attempt. They may seize upon a baby body, ousting the feeble
personality for whom it was intended, or sometimes they grasp even the body of
an animal. All this trouble arises entirely from ignorance, and it can never
happen to anyone who understands the laws of life and death.
When
the astral life is over, the man dies to that world in turn, and awakens in
the mental world. With him it is not at all what it
is to the trained clairvoyant, who ranges through it and lives amidst the
surroundings which he finds there, precisely as he would in the physical or
astral worlds. The ordinary man has all through his life been encompassing
himself with a mass of thought-forms. Some which are transitory, to which he
pays little attention, have fallen away from his long ago, but those which
represent the main interests of his life are always with him, and grow ever
stronger and stronger. If some of these have been selfish, their force pours
down into astral matter, and he has exhausted them during his life in the
astral world. But those which are entirely unselfish belong purely to his
mental body, and so when he finds himself in the mental world it is through
these special thoughts that he is able to appreciate it.
His
mental body is by no means fully developed; only those parts of it are
really in action to their fullest extent which he has
used in this altruistic manner. When he awakens again after the second death
his first sense is one of
indescribable bliss and vitality – a
feeling of such utter joy in living that he needs for the time nothing but just
to live. Such bliss is of the essence of life in all the higher worlds of the
system. Even astral life has possibilities of happiness far greater than
anything that we can know in the dense body; but the heaven life in the mental
world is out of all proportions more blissful than the astral. In each higher
world the same experience is repeated. Merely to live in any one them seems the
uttermost conceivable bliss; and yet, when the next one is reached, it is seen
that it far surpasses the last.
Just
as the bliss increases, so does the wisdom and the breadth of view. A man
fusses about in the physical world and thinks himself
so busy and so wise; but
when
he touches even the astral, he realizes at once that he has been all the time
only a caterpillar crawling about and seeing nothing but his own leaf, whereas
now he has spread his wings like the butterfly and flown away into the sunshine
of a wider world. Yet, impossible as it may seem, the same experience is
repeated when he passes into the (Page 90) mental world, for this life is in turn
so much fuller and wider and more intense than the astral that once more no
comparison is possible. And yet beyond all these
there is still another life, that of the intuitional world, unto which even
this is but as moonlight unto sunlight.
The
man’s position in the mental world differs widely from that in the astral.
There
he was using a body to which he was thoroughly accustomed, a body which he had
been in the habit of employing every night during sleep. Here he finds himself
living in a vehicle which he has never used before – a vehicle
furthermore which is very far from being fully
developed – a vehicle which shuts
him out to a great extent from the world about him,
instead of enabling him to
see it. The lower part of his nature burnt itself
away during his purgatorial life, and now there remains to
him only his higher and more refined thoughts, the noble and unselfish
aspirations which he poured out during earth life. These
cluster round him, and make a sort of shell
about him, through the medium of
which he is able to respond to certain types of
vibrations in this refined matter.
These
thoughts which surround him are the powers by which he draws upon the
wealth
of the heaven-world, and he finds it to be a storehouse of infinite extent,
upon which he is able to draw just according to the power of those thoughts and
aspirations; for in this world is existing the infinite fullness of the Divine
Mind, open in all its limitless affluence to every soul, just in proportion as
that soul has qualified itself to receive. A man who has already completed his
human evolution, who has fully realized and unfolded the divinity whose germ is
within him, finds the whole of this glory within his reach; but since none of
us has yet done that, since we are only gradually rising toward that splendid
consummation, it follows that none of us as yet can grasp that entirety.
But
each draws from it and cognizes so much of it as he has by previous effort
prepared himself to take. Different individuals
bring different capacities; they
tell us in the East that each man brings his own
cup, and some of the cups are
large and some are small, but small or large every
cup is filled to its utmost
capacity; the sea of bliss holds far more than
enough for all.
A
man can look out upon this glory and beauty only through the windows which he himself
has made. Every one of these thought-forms is such a window, through which
response may come to him from the forces without. If during his earth life he
has chiefly regarded physical things, then he has made for himself but few windows
through which this higher glory can shine in upon him. Yet every man who is
above the lowest savage must have had some touch of pure unselfish feeling, even
if it were but once in all his life, and that will be
a window for him now.
The
ordinary man is not capable of any great activity in this mental world; his
condition is chiefly receptive, and his vision of
anything outside his own shell
of thought is of the most limited character. He is
surrounded by living forces,
mighty angelic inhabitants of this glorious world, and
many of their orders are very sensitive to certain aspirations of man and readily
respond to them. But a man can take advantage of these only in so far as he has
already prepared himself to profit by them, for his thoughts and aspirations
are only along certain lines, and he cannot suddenly form new lines. There are
many directions which the higher thought may take – some of them personal and
some impersonal.
Among
the latter are art, music and philosophy; and a man whose interest lay along
any one of these lines finds both measureless enjoyment and unlimited
instruction waiting for him – that is, the amount of enjoyment and instruction
is limited only by his power of perception.
We
find a large number of people whose only higher thoughts are those connected with
affection and devotion. If a man loves another deeply or if he feels strong devotion
to a personal deity, he makes a strong mental image of that friend or the
deity, and the object of his feeling is often present in his mind.
Inevitably
he takes that mental image into the heaven world with him, because it
is to that level of matter that it naturally belongs.Take first the feeling of affection. The love which
forms and retains such an image is very powerful force – a force which is
strong enough to reach and to act upon the ego of his friend in the higher part
of the mental world. It is that ego that is the real man whom he loves – not
the physical body which is so partial a representation of him. The ego of the
friend, feeling this vibration, at once and eagerly responds to it, and pours himself into the thought form which has been made for him;
so that the man’s friend is truly present with him more vividly than ever
before. To this result it makes no difference whatever whether the friend is
what we call living or dead; the appeal is made not to the fragment of the
friend which is sometimes imprisoned in a physical body, but to the man himself
on his own true level; and he always responds. A man who has a hundred friends
can simultaneously and fully respond to the affection of every one of them, for
no number of representations on a lower level can exhaust the infinity of the
ego.
Thus
every man in his heaven life has around him all the friends for whose
company he wishes, and they are for him always
at their best, because he himself makes for them in the thought-form through
which they manifest to him. In our limited physical world we are so accustomed to thinking of our friend as only the limited
manifestation which we know in the physical world, that it is at
first difficult for us to realize the grandeur of the
conception; when we can
realize it, we shall see how much nearer we are
in truth to our friends in the
heaven
life than we ever were on earth. The same is true in the case of devotion. The
man in the heaven world is two great stages nearer to the object of his
devotion than he was during physical life, and so his experiences are of a far
more transcendent character.
In
this mental world, as in the astral, there are seven subdivisions. The first,
second and third are the habitat of the ego in his
causal body, so the mental
body contains matter of the remaining four only, and
it is in those sections that his heaven life is passed. Man does not, however,
pass from one to the other of these, as in the case in the astral world, for
there is nothing in this life corresponding to the rearrangement. Rather is the
man drawn to the level which best corresponds to the degree of his development,
and on that level he spends the whole of his life in the mental body. Each man
makes his own conditions, so that the number of varieties is infinite.
Speaking
broadly, we may say that the dominant characteristic observed in the
lowest portion is unselfish family affection.
Unselfish it must be, or it would
find no place here; all selfish tinges, if there
were any, worked out their results in the astral world. The dominant
characteristic of the sixth level may be said to be anthropomorphical
religious devotion; whilst that of the fifth section is devotion expressing
itself in active work of some sort. All these – the fifth, sixth and seventh
subdivisions – are concerned with the working out of devotion to personalities
(either to one’s family and friends or to a personal deity) rather than the
wider devotion to humanity for its own sake, which finds its expression in the
next section. The activities of this fourth stage are varied. They can best be
arranged in four main divisions: unselfish pursuit of spiritual knowledge; high
philosophy or scientific thought; literary or artistic ability exercised for
unselfish purposes; and service for the sake of service.
Even
to this glorious heaven life there comes an end, and then the mental body in its turn drops away as the others have done, and the
man’s life in his causal body begins. Here the man needs no windows, for this
is his true home and all his walls have fallen away. The majority of men have
as yet but very little consciousness at such a height as this; they rest
dreamily unobservant and scarcely awake, but such vision as they have is true,
however limited it may be by their lack of development. Still, every time they
return, these limitations will be smaller, and they themselves will be greater;
so that this truest life will be wider and fuller for them.
As
this improvement continues, this casual life grows longer and longer,
assuming an ever larger proportion as compared to
the existence at lower levels.
And
as he grows, the man becomes capable not only of receiving but also of
giving. Then indeed is his triumph approaching, for he
is learning the lesson of
the Christ, learning the crowning glory of
sacrifice, the supreme delight of
pouring out all his life for the helping of his
fellow-men, the devotion of the
self to the all, of celestial strength to human
service, of all those splendid
heavenly forces to the aid of the struggling sons
of earth. That is part of the
life that lies before us; these are some of the
steps which even we who are
still so near the bottom of the golden ladder may see
rising above us, so that
we may report them to those who have not seen as yet, in order that they too may open their eyes to the unimaginable splendor which surrounds them