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IT was not
possible to approach a consideration of the states into which the higher
human principles pass at death, without first indicating the general
framework of the whole design worked out in the course of the evolution
of man. That much of my task, however, having now been accomplished, we
may pass on to consider the natural destinies of each human Ego, in the
interval which elapses between the close of one objective life and the
commencement of another. At the commencement of another, the Karma of
the previous objective life determines the state of life into which the
individual shall be born. This doctrine of Karma is one of the most
interesting features of Buddhist philosophy. There has been no secret
about it at any time, though for want of a proper comprehension of
elements in the philosophy which have been strictly esoteric, it may
sometimes have been misunderstood.
Karma is a
collective expression applied to that complicated group of affinities
for good and evil generated by a human being during life, and the
character of which inheres in the molecules of his fifth principle all
through the interval which elapses between his death from one objective
life and his birth into the next. As stated sometimes, the doctrine
seems to be one which exacts the notion of a superior spiritual
authority summing up the acts of a man’s life at its close, taking into
consideration his good deeds and his bad, and giving judgment about him
on the whole aspect of the case. But a comprehension of the way in which
the human principles divide up at death, will afford a clue to the
comprehension of the way in which Karma operates, and also of the great
subject we may better take up first, the immediate spiritual condition
of man after death.
At death, the three lower principles — the body, its mere physical
vitality, and its astral counterpart — are finally abandoned by that
which really is the Man himself, and the four higher principles escape
into that world immediately above our own; above our own, that is, in
the order of spirituality; not above it at all, but in it and of it, as
regards real locality, the astral plane, or Kama Loca, according to a
very familiar Sanskrit expression. Here a division takes place between
the two duads, which the four higher principles include. The
explanations already given concerning the imperfect extent to which the
upper principles of man are as yet developed, will show that this
estimation of the process, as in the nature of a mechanical separation
of the principles, is a rough way of dealing with the matter. It must be
modified in the reader’s mind by the light of what has been already
said. It may be otherwise described as a trial of the extent to which
the fifth principle has been developed. Regarded in the light of the
former idea, however, we must conceive the sixth and seventh principles,
on the one hand, drawing the fifth, the human soul, in one direction,
while the fourth draws it back earthward in the other. Now, the fifth
principle is a very complex entity, separable itself into superior and
inferior elements. In the struggle which takes place between its late
companion principles, its best, purest, most elevated, and spiritual
portions cling to the sixth, its lower instincts, impulses, and
recollections adhere to the fourth, and it is in a measure torn asunder.
The lower remnant, associating itself with the fourth, floats off in the
earth’s atmosphere, while the best elements, those, be it understood,
which really constitute the Ego of the late earthly personality, the
individuality, the consciousness thereof, follows the sixth and seventh
into a spiritual condition, the nature of which we are about to examine.
Rejecting the popular English name for this spiritual condition,
as incrusted with too many misconceptions to be convenient, let us
keep to the Oriental designation of that region or state into which the
higher principles of human creatures pass at death. This is additionally
desirable because, although the devachan of Buddhist philosophy
corresponds in some respects to the modern European idea of heaven, it
differs from heaven in others which are even more important.
Firstly, however, in Devachan, that which survives is not merely the
individual monad, which survives through all the changes of the whole
evolutionary scheme, and flits from body to body, from planet to planet,
and so forth,— that which survives in Devachan is the man’s own
self-conscious personality, under some restrictions indeed, which we
will come to directly, but still it is the same personality as regards
its higher feelings, aspirations, affections, and even tastes, as it was
on earth. Perhaps it would be better to say the essence of the late
self-conscious personality.
It may be worth the reader’s while to learn what Colonel H. S.
Olcott has to say in his “Buddhist Catechism” (14th thousand) of the
intrinsic difference between “individuality and “personality.” Since he
wrote not only under the approval of the High Priest of the Sripada and
Galle, Sumangala, but also under the direct instruction of his adept
Guru, his words will have weight for the student of Occultism. This is
what he says in his Appendix:—
“Upon
reflection, I have substituted ‘personality’ for ‘individuality’ as
written in the first edition. The successive appearances upon one
or many earths, or ‘descents into generation’ of the tanhaically-coherent
parts (Skandhas) of a certain being, are a succession of
personalities. In each birth the personality differs from that of
the previous or next succeeding birth. Karma, the deus ex
mâchina, masks (or shall we say, reflects?) itself now in the
personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on throughout the
string of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of
life along which they are strung like beads, runs unbroken.
“It is ever that particular line, never any other it is
therefore individual, an individual vital undulation which began in
Nirvana or the subjective side of Nature, as the light or heat
undulation through ether began at its dynamic source; is careering
through the objective side of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and the
creative direction of Tanha; and tends through many cyclic changes back
to Nirvana. Mr. Rhys Davids calls that which passes from personality to
personality along the individual chain., ‘character’ or ‘doing.’ Since
‘character’ is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, but the sum of one’s
mental qualities and moral propensities, would it not help to dispel
what Mr. Rhys Davids calls ‘the desperate expedient of a
mystery,’ if we regarded the life undulation as individuality, and each
of Its series of natal manifestations as a separate personality?
“The denial of ‘soul’ by Buddha (see ‘Sanyutto Nikaya,’ the Sutta
Pitaka) points to the prevalent delusive belief in an independent
transmissible personality; an entity that could move from birth to birth
unchanged, or go to a place or state where, as such perfect entity, it
could eternally enjoy or suffer. And what he shows is that the ‘I am I’
consciousness is, as regards permanency, logically impossible, since its
elementary constituents constantly change, and the ‘I’ of one birth
differs from the ‘I’ of every other birth. But everything that I have
found in Buddhism accords with the theory of a gradual evolution of the
perfect man, viz., a Buddha through numberless natal experiences. And in
the consciousness of that person who at the end of a given chain of
beings attains Buddhahood, or who succeeds in attaining the fourth stage
of Dhyana, or mystic self-development, in any one of his births anterior
to the final one, the scenes of all these serial births are perceptible.
In the ‘Jatakattahavannana,’ so well translated by Mr. Rhys Davids, an
expression continuity recurs which I think rather supports such an idea,
viz., ‘Then the blessed one made manfest an occurrence hidden by
change of birth,’ or ‘that which had been hidden by, etc.’ Early
Buddhism, then, clearly held to a permanency of records in the Akasa,
and the potential capacity of man to read the same when he has evoluted
to the stage of true, individual enlightenment.”
The purely sensual feelings and tastes of the late personality will
drop off from it in Devachan, but it does not follow that nothing is
preservable in that state, except feelings and thoughts having a direct
reference to religion or spiritual philosophy. On. the contrary, all the
superior phases, even of sensuous emotion, find their appropriate sphere
of development in. Devachan. To suggest a whole range of ideas by means
of one illustration, a soul in Devachan, if the soul of a man who was
passionately devoted to music, would be continuously enraptured by the
sensations music produces. The person whose happiness of the higher sort
on earth had been entirely centred in the exercise of the affections
will miss none in Devachan of those whom he or she loved. But, at once
it will be asked, if some of these are not themselves fit for Devachan,
how then? The answer is, that does not matter. For the person who loved
them they will be there. It is not necessary to say much more to
give a clue to the position. Devachan is a subjective state. It will
seem as real as the chairs and tables round us; and remember that, above
all things, to the profound philosophy of Occultism, are the chairs and
tables, and the whole objective scenery of the world, unreal and merely
transitory delusions of sense. As real as the realities of this world to
us, and even more so, will be the realities of Devachan to those who go
into that state.
From this it ensues that the subjective isolation of Devachan,
as it will perhaps be conceived at first, is not real isolation at all,
as the word is understood on the physical plane of existence; it is
companionship with all that the true soul craves for, whether persons,
things, or knowledge. And a patient consideration of the place in Nature
which Devachan occupies will show that this subjective isolation of each
human unit is the only condition which renders possible anything which
can be described as a felicitous spiritual existence after death for
mankind at large, and Devachan is as much a purely and absolutely
felicitous condition for all who attain it, as Avitchi is the reverse of
it. There is no inequality or injustice in the system; Devachan is by no
means the same thing for the good and the indifferent alike, but it is
not a life of responsibility, and therefore there is no logical place in
it for suffering any more than in Avitchi there is any room for
enjoyment or repentance. It is a life of effects, not of
causes; a life of being paid your earnings, not of laboring for
them. Therefore it is impossible to be during that life cognizant of
what is going on on earth. Under the operation of such cognition there
would be no true happiness possible in the state after death. A heaven
which constituted a watch-tower from which the occupants could still
survey the miseries of the earth, would really be a place of acute
mental suffering for its most sympathetic, unselfish, and meritorious
inhabitants. If we invest them in imagination with such a very limited
range of sympathy that they could be imagined as not caring about the
spectacle of suffering after the few persons to whom they were
immediately attached had died and joined them, still they would have a
very unhappy period of waiting to go through before survivors reached
the end of an often long and toilsome existence below. And even this
hypothesis would be further vitiated by making heaven most painful for
occupants who were most unselfish and sympathetic, whose reflected
distress would thus continue on behalf of the afflicted race of
mankind generally, even after their personal kindred had been rescued by
the lapse of time. The only escape from this dilemma lies in the
supposition that heaven is not yet opened for business, so to speak, and
that all people who have ever lived, from Adam downward, are still lying
in a death-like trance, waiting for the resurrection at the end of the
world. This hypothesis also has its embarrassments, but we are concerned
at present with the scientific harmony of esoteric Buddhism, not with
the theories of other creeds.
Readers, however, who may grant that a purview of earthly life from
heaven would render happiness in heaven impossible, may still
doubt whether true happiness is possible in the state, as it may be
objected, of monotonous isolation now described. The objection is merely
raised from the point of view of an imagination that cannot escape from
its present surroundings. To begin with, about monotony. No one will
complain of having experienced monotony during the minute, or moment, or
half hour, as it may have been, of the greatest happiness he may have
enjoyed in life. Most people have had some happy moments, at all events,
to look back to for the purpose of this comparison; and let us take even
one such minute or moment, too short to be open to the least suspicion
of monotony, and imagine its sensations immensely prolonged without any
external events in progress to mark the lapse of time. There is no room,
in such a condition of things, for the conception of weariness. The
unalloyed, unchangeable sensation of intense happiness goes on and on,
not forever, because the causes which have produced it are not infinite
themselves, but for very long periods of time, until the efficient
impulse has exhausted itself.
Nor must it be supposed that there is, so to speak, no change of
occupation for souls in Devachan, — that any one moment of
earthly sensation is selected for exclusive perpetuation. As a
teacher of the highest authority on this subject writes — “There are two
fields of causal manifestations, the objective and subjective. The
grosser energies — those which operate in the denser condition of matter
— manifest objectively in the next physical life, their outcome
being the new personality of each birth marshaling within the grand
cycle of the evoluting individuality. It is but the moral and spiritual
activities that find their sphere of effects in Devachan. And, thought
and fancy being limitless, how can it be argued for one moment that
there is anything like monotony in the state of Devachan? Few are the
men whose lives were so utterly destitute of feeling, love, or of a more
or less intense predilection for some one line of thought as to be made
unfit for a proportionate period of Devachanic experience beyond their
earthly life. So, for instance, while the vices, physical and sensual
attractions, say, of a great philosopher, but a bad friend and a selfish
man, may result in the birth of a new and still greater intellect, but
at the same time a most miserable man, reaping the Karmic effects of all
the causes produced by the ‘old’ being, and whose make-up was inevitable
from the preponderating proclivities of that being in the preceding
birth, the inter-medial period between the two physical births cannot
be, in Nature’s exquisitely well-adjusted laws, but a hiatus
of unconsciousness. There can be no such dreary blank as kindly
promised, or rather implied, by Christian Protestant theology, to the
‘departed souls,’ which, between death and ‘resurrection,’ have to hang
on in space, in mental catalepsy, awaiting the ‘Day of Judgment.’ Causes
produced by mental and spiritual energy being far greater and more
important than those that are created by physical impulses, their
effects have to be, for weal or woe, proportionately as great. Lives on
this earth, or other earths, affording no proper field for such effects,
and every laborer being entitled to his own harvest, they have to expand
in either Devachan or Avitchi.1
Bacon, for instance, whom a poet called
‘The brightest,
wisest, meanest of mankind,’
might reappear
in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary
intellectual capacities. But, however great the latter, they would find
no proper field in which that particular line of thought, pursued during
his previous lifetime by the founder of modern philosophy, could reap
all its dues. It would be but the astute lawyer, the corrupt
Attorney-General, the ungrateful friend, and the dishonest Lord
Chancellor, who might find, led on by his Karma, a congenial new soil in
the body of the money-lender, and reappear as a new Shy-lock. But
where would Bacon, the incomparable thinker, with whom philosophical
inquiry upon the most profound problems of Nature was his ‘first and
last and only love,’ where would this ‘intellectual giant of his race
once disrobed of his lower nature, go to? Have all the effects of that
magnificent intellect to vanish and disappear? Certainly not. Thus his
moral and spiritual qualities would also have to find a field in which
their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is such a field. Hence,
all the great plans of moral reform, of intellectual research into
abstract principles of Nature — all the divine, spiritual aspirations
that had so filled the brightest part of his life would, in Devachan,
come to fruition; and the abstract entity, known in the preceding birth
as Francis Bacon, and that may be known in its subsequent re-incarnation
as a despised usurer — that Bacon’s own creation, his Frankenstein, the
son of his Karma — shall in the meanwhile occupy itself in this inner
world, also of its own preparation, in enjoying the effects of the grand
beneficial spiritual causes sown in life. It would live a purely and
spiritually conscious existence — a dream of realistic vividness — until
Karma, being satisfied in that direction, and the ripple of force
reaching the edge of its sub-cyclic basin, the being should move into
its next area of causes, either in this same world or another, according
to his stage of progression. Therefore, there is ‘ a
change of occupation,’ a continual change, in Devachan. For that
dream-life is but the fruition, the harvest-time, of those psychic
seed-germs dropped from the tree of physical existence in our moments of
dream and hope — fancy-glimpses of bliss and happiness, stifled in an
ungrateful social soil, blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and
ripening under its ever-fructifying sky. If man had but one single
moment of ideal experience, not even then could it be, as erroneously
supposed, the, indefinite prolongation of that ‘single moment.’ That one
note, struck from the lyre of life, would form the key-note of the
being’s subjective state, and work out into numberless harmonic tones
and semitones of psychic phantasmagoria. There, all unrealized hopes,
aspirations, dreams, become fully realized, and the dreams of the
objective become the realities of the subjective existence. And there,
behind the curtain of Maya, its vaporous and deceptive appearances are
perceived by the Initiate, who has learned the great secret how to
penetrate thus deep into the Arcana of Being.” . .
As physical existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to
prime, and its diminishing energy thenceforward to dotage and death, so
the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. There is the
first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the gradual
exhaustion of force passing into conscious lethargy,
semi-unconsciousness, oblivion and — not death but birth! birth into
another personality and the resumption of action which daily begets new
congeries of causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan.
“It is not a reality then, it is a mere dream,” objectors will urge;
“the soul so bathed in a delusive sensation of enjoyment which has no
reality all the while is being cheated by Nature, and must encounter a
terrible shock when it wakes to its mistake.” But, in the nature of
things, it never does or can wake. The waking from Devachan is its next
birth into objective life, and the draught of Lethe has then been taken.
Nor as regards the isolation of each soul is there any consciousness of
isolation whatever; nor is there ever possibly a parting from its chosen
associates. Those associates are not in the nature of companions who may
wish to go away, of friends who may tire of the friend that loves them,
even if he or she does not tire of them. Love, the creating force, has
placed their living image before the personal soul which craves for
their presence, and that image will never fly away.
On this aspect of the subject I may again avail myself of the
language of my teacher: — “Objectors of that kind will be simply
postulating an incongruity, an intercourse of entities in Devachan,
which applies only to the mutual relationship of physical existence! Two
sympathetic souls, both disembodied, will each work out its own
Devachanic sensations, making the other a sharer in its subjective
bliss. This will be as real to them, naturally, as though both were yet
on this earth. Nevertheless, each is dissociated from the other as
regards personal or corporeal association. While the latter is the only
one of its kind that is recognized by our earth experience as an
actual intercourse, for the Devachanee it would be not; only
something unreal, but could have no existence for it in any
sense, not even as a delusion a physical body or even a Mayavi-rupa
remaining to its spiritual senses as invisible as it is itself to
the physical senses of those who loved it best on earth. Thus even
though one of the ‘sharers’ were alive and utterly unconscious of that
intercourse in his waking state, still ever dealing with him would be to
the Devachanee an absolute reality. And what actual
companionship could there ever be other than the purely idealistic one
as above described, between two subjective entities which are not
even as material as that ethereal body-shadow— the Mayavi-rupa? To
object to this on the ground that one is thus ‘cheated by Nature’ and to
call it ‘a delusive sensation of enjoyment which has no reality,’ is to
show one’s self utterly unfit to comprehend the conditions of life and
being outside of our material existence. For how can the same
distinction be made in Devachan — i. e., outside of the
conditions of earth-life — between what we call a reality, and a
factitious or an artificial counterfeit of the same, in this, our world?
The same principle cannot apply to the two sets of conditions. Is it
conceivable that what we call a reality in our embodied physical state
will exist under the same conditions as an actuality for a disembodied
entity? On earth, man is dual in the sense of being a thing of matter
and a thing of spirit; hence the natural distinction made by his mind —
the analyst of his physical sensations and spiritual perceptions —
between an actuality and a fiction; though, even in this life, the two
groups of faculties are constantly equilibrating each other, each group
when dominant seeing as fiction or delusion what the other believes to
be most real. But in Devachan our Ego has ceased to be dualistic, in the
above sense, and becomes a spiritual, mental entity. That which was a
fiction, a dream in life, and which had its being but in the region of
‘fancy,’ becomes, under the new conditions of existence, the only
possible reality. Thus, for us, to postulate the possibility of
any other reality for a Devachanee is to maintain an absurdity, a
monstrous fallacy, an idea unphilosophical to the last degree. The
actual is that which is acted or performed de facto: ‘the reality
of a thing is proved by its actuality.’ And the supposititious and
artificial having no possible existence in that Devachanic state, the
logical sequence is that everything in it is actual and real. For,
again, whether overshadowing the five principles during the life of the
personality, or entirely separated from the grosser principles by the
dissolution of the body — the sixth principle, or our ‘Spiritual Soul,’
has no substance — it is ever Arupa; nor is it confined to one place
with a limited horizon of perceptions around it. Therefore, whether
in or out of its mortal body, it is ever distinct, and free
from its limitations; and if we call its Devachanic experiences ‘a
cheating of Nature,’ then we should never be allowed to call ‘reality’
any of those purely abstract feelings that belong entirely to, and are
reflected and assimilated by, our higher soul — such, for
instance, as an ideal perception of the beautiful, profound
philanthropy, love, etc., as well as every other purely spiritual
sensation that during life fills our inner being with either immense joy
or pain.”
We must
remember that by the very nature of the system described there are
infinite varieties of well-being in Devachan, suited to the infinite
varieties of merit in mankind. If “the next world” really were the
objective heaven which ordinary theology preaches, there would be
endless injustice and inaccuracy in its operation. People, to begin
with, would be either admitted or excluded, and, the differences of
favor shown to different guests within the all-favored region would not
sufficiently provide for differences of merit in this life. But the real
heaven of our earth adjusts itself to the needs and merits of each new
arrival with unfailing certainty. Not merely as regards the duration of
the blissful state, which is determined by the causes engendered during
objective life, but as regards the intensity and amplitude of the
emotions which constitute that blissful state, the heaven of each person
who attains the really existent heaven is precisely fitted to his
capacity for enjoying it. It is the creation of his own aspirations and
faculties. More than this it may be impossible for the uninitiated
comprehension to realize. But this indication of its character is enough
to show how perfectly it falls into its appointed place in the whole
scheme of evolution.
“Devachan,” to resume my direct quotations, “is, of course, a
state, not a locality, as much as Avitchi, its antithesis (which
please not to confound with hell. Esoteric Buddhist philosophy has three
principal lokas so-called — namely, 1, Kama loka; 2,
Rupa loka; and 3, Arupa loka; or in their literal translation
and meaning — 1, world of desires or passions, of unsatisfied earthly
cravings — the abode of ‘Shells and Victims, of Elementaries and
Suicides; 2, the world of Forms — i. e., of shadows more
spiritual, having form and objectivity, but no substance; and 3, the
formless world, or rather the world of no form, the incorporeal,
since its denizens can have neither body, shape, nor color for us
mortals, and in the sense that we give to these terms. These are the
three spheres of ascending spirituality in which the several groups of
subjective and semi-subjective entities find their attractions. All but
the suicides and the victims of premature violent deaths go, according
to their attractions and powers, either into the Devachanic or the
Avitchi state, which two states form the numberless subdivisions
of Rupa and Arupa lokas — that is to say, that such states not only vary
in degree, or in their presentation to the subject entity as regards
form, color, etc., but that there is an infinite scale of such states,
in their progressive spirituality and intensity of feeling; from the
lowest in the Rupa, up to the highest and the most exalted in the
Arupa-loka. The student must bear in mind that personality is the
synonym for limitation; and that the more selfish, the more contracted
the person’s ideas, the closer will he cling to the lower spheres of
being, the longer loiter on the plane of selfish social intercourse.”
Devachan being a condition of mere subjective enjoyment, the
duration and intensity of which is determined by the merit and
spirituality of the earth-life last past, there is no opportunity, while
the soul inhabits it, for the punctual requital of evil deeds. But
Nature does not content herself with either forgiving sins in a free and
easy way, or damning sinners out-right, like a lazy master too indolent,
rather than too good-natured, to govern his household justly. The Karma
of evil, be it great or small, is as certainly operative at the
appointed time as the Karma of good. But the place of its operation is
not Devachan, but either a new re-birth or Avitchi — a state to be
reached only in exceptional cases and by exceptional natures. In other
words, while the commonplace sinner will reap the fruits of his evil
deeds in a following re-incarnation, the exceptional criminal, the
aristocrat of sin, has Avitchi in prospect — that is to say, the
condition of subjective spiritual misery which is the reverse side of
Devachan.
“Avitchi
is a state of the most ideal spiritual wickedness, something akin
to the state of Lucifer, so superbly described by Milton. Not many,
though, are there who can reach it, as the thoughtful reader will
perceive. And if it is urged that since there is Devachan for nearly
all, for the good, the bad, and the indifferent, the ends of harmony and
equilibrium are frustrated and the law of retribution and of impartial,
implacable justice, hardly met and satisfied by such a comparative
scarcity if not absence of its antithesis, then the answer will show
that it is not so. ‘Evil is the dark son of Earth (matter)
and Good— the- fair daughter of Heaven (or Spirit) says the
Chinese philosopher; hence the place of punishment for most of our sins
is the earth — its birthplace and playground. There is more apparent and
relative than actual evil even on earth, and it is not given to the hoi
polloi to reach the fatal
grandeur and of a Satan every day.
Generally, re-birth. Into objective existence is the event for which
the karma of evil patiently waits, and then it irresistibly
asserts itself; not that the Karma of good exhausts itself in Devachan,
leaving the unhappy monad to develop a new consciousness with no
material beyond the evil deeds of its last personality. The re-birth
will be qualified by the merit as well as the demerit of the previous
life, but the Devachan existence is a rosy sleep — a peaceful night with
dreams more vivid than day, and imperishable for many centuries.
It will be seen that the Devachan state is only one of the
conditions of existence which go to make up the whole spiritual or
relatively spiritual complement of our earth life. Observers of
spiritualistic phenomena would never have been perplexed as they have
been if there were no other but the Devachan state to be dealt with. For
once in Devachan there is very little opportunity for communication
between a spirit, then wholly absorbed in its own sensations and
practically oblivious of the earth left behind, and its former friends
still living. Whether gone before or yet remaining on earth, those
friends, if the bond of affection has been sufficiently strong, will be
with the happy spirit still to all intents and purposes for him, and as
happy, blissful, innocent, as the disembodied dreamer himself. It is
possible, however, for yet living persons to have visions of
Devachan, though such visions are rare, and only one-sided, the entities
in Devachan, sighted by the earthly clairvoyant, being quite unconscious
themselves of undergoing such observation. The spirit of the clairvoyant
ascends into the condition of Devachan in such rare visions, and thus
becomes subject to the vivid delusions of that existence. It is under
the impression that the spirits, with which it is in Devachanic
bonds of sympathy, have come down to visit earth and itself, while the
converse operation has really taken place. The clairvoyant’s spirit has
been raised towards those in Devachan. Thus many of the subjective
spiritual communications — most of them when the sensitives are
pure-minded — are real, though it is most difficult for the uninitiated
medium to fix in his mind the true and correct pictures of what he sees
and hears. In the same way some of the phenomena called
psychography (though more rarely) are also real. The spirit of the
sensitive getting odylized, so to say, by the aura of the spirit in the
Devachan becomes for a few minutes that departed personality, and
writes in the handwriting the latter, in his language and in his
thoughts as they were during his lifetime. The two spirits become
blended in one, and the preponderanes of one over the other during such
phenomena determines the preponderance of personality in the
characteristics exhibited. Thus, it may incidentally be observed, what
is called rapport, is, in plain fact, an identity of molecular
vibration between the astral part of the incarnate medium and the astral
part of the disincarnate personality.
As already indicated, and as the common sense of the matter would
show, there are great varieties of states in Devachan, and each
personality drops into its befitting place there. Thence, consequently,
he emerges in his befitting place in the world of causes, this earth or
another, as the case may be, when his time for re-birth comes. Coupled
with survival of the affinities, comprehensively described as Karma, the
affinities both for good and evil engendered by the previous life, this
process will be seen to accomplish nothing less than an explanation of
the problem which has always been regarded as so incomprehensible — the
inequalities of life. The conditions on which we enter life are the
consequences of the use we have made of our last set of conditions. They
do not impede the development of fresh Karma, whatever they may be, for
this will be generated by the use we make of them in turn. Nor is
it to be supposed that every event of a current life which bestows joy
or sorrow is old Karma bearing fruit. Many may be the immediate
consequences of acts in the life to which they belong — ready-money
transactions with Nature, so to speak, of which it may be hardly
necessary to make any entry in her books. But the great inequality of
life, as regards the start in it which different human beings make, is a
manifest consequence of old Karma, the infinite varieties of which
always keep up a constant supply of recruits for all the manifold
varieties of human condition.
It must not be supposed that the real Ego slips instantaneously at
death from the earth- life and its entanglements into the Devachanic
condition. When the division or purification of the fifth principle has
been accomplished in Kama loca by the contending attractions of the
fourth and sixth principles, the real Ego passes into a period of
unconscious gestation. I have spoken already of the way in which the
Devachanic life is itself a process of growth, maturity, and decline;
but the analogies, of earth are even more closely preserved. There is a
spiritual ante-natal state at the entrance to spiritual life, there is a
similar and equally unconscious physical state at the entrance to
objective life.. And this period, in different cases, may be of very
different duration — from a few moments to immense periods of years.
When a man dies, his soul or fifth principle becomes unconscious and
loses all remembrance of things internal as well as external. Whether
his stay in Kama loca has to last but a few moments, hours, days, weeks,
months or years; whether he dies a natural or a violent death; whether
this occurs in youth or age, and whether the Ego has been good, bad, or
indifferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame
leaves the wick when it is blown out. When life has retired from the
last particle of the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become
extinct forever, and his spiritual powers of cognition and volition
become for the time being as extinct as the others. His Mayavi-rupa may
be thrown into objectivity as in the case of apparitions after death,
but unless it is projected by a conscious or intense desire to see or
appear to some one shooting through the dying brain, the apparition will
be simply automatic. The revival of consciousness in Kama loca is
obviously, from what has been already said, a phenomenon that depends on
the characteristic of the principles passing, unconsciously at the
moment, out of the dying body. It may become tolerably complete under
circumstances by no means to be desired, or it may be obliterated by a
rapid passage into the gestation state leading to Devachan. This
gestation state may be of very long duration in proportion to the Ego’s
spiritual stamina, and Devachan accounts for the remainder of the period
between death and the next physical rebirth. The whole period is, of
course, of varying length in the case of different persons, but re-birth
in less than fifteen hundred years is spoken of as almost impossible,
while the stay in Devachan which rewards a very rich Karma is sometimes
said to extend to enormous periods.
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Notes:
1 The
lowest states of Devachan interchain with those of Avitchi
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