DEVACHAN
From the
writings of Annie Besant, a pioneer of the Theosophical Movement
and
President of the Adyar based Theosophical Society from 1907 to 1933
Cardiff, Wales,
UK, CF24 – 1DL
theosophycardiff@uwclub.net
Annie Besant 1847 - 1933
Annie Besant
This is a chapter taken from
The Ancient Wisdom
by Annie Besant
The word Devachan is the theosophical name for heaven, and, literally
translated, means the shining land, or the Land of the Gods. ( Devasthan, the
place of the Gods, is the Sanskrit equivalent. It is the Svarga of the Hindus ;
the Sukhâvati of the Buddhists ; the Heaven of the Zoroastrians and Christians,
and of the less materialised among the Mohammedans). It is a specially
guarded part of the mental plane, whence all sorrow and all evil are excluded
by the action of the great spiritual Intelligences who superintend human
evolution ; and it is inhabited by human beings who have cast off their
physical and astral bodies, and who pass into it when their stay in Kâmaloka is
completed.
The devachanic life consists of two stages, of which the first is
passed in the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane, in which the Thinker
still wears the mental body and is conditioned by it, being employed in
assimilating the materials gathered by it during the earth-life from which he
has just emerged.
The second stage is spent in the "formless world," the Thinker
escaping from the mental body, and living in his own unencumbered life in the
full measure of the self-consciousness and knowledge to which he has attained.
The total length of time spent in Devachan
depends upon the amount of material for the Devachanic
life which the soul has brought with it from its life on earth. The harvest of
the fruit for consumption and assimilation in Devachan
consists of all the pure thoughts and emotions generated during earth-life, all
the intellectual and moral efforts and aspirations, all the memories of
useful work and plans for human service – everything which is capable of being
worked into mental and moral faculty, thus assisting in the evolution of the
soul.
Not one is lost, however feeble, however fleeting ; but selfish animal
passions cannot enter, there being no material in which they can be expressed.
Nor does all the evil in the past life, though it may largely preponderate over
the good, prevent the full reaping of whatever scant harvest of good there may
have been ; the scantiness of the harvest may render the devachanic
life very brief, but the most depraved, if he has had any faint longings after
the right, any stirrings of tenderness, must have a period of devachanic
life in which the seed of good may put forth its tender shoots, in which the
spark of good may be gently fanned into a tiny flame.
In the past, when men lived with their hearts largely fixed on heaven
and directed their lives with a view to enjoying its bliss, the period spent in
Devachan was very long, lasting sometimes for many thousands
of years ; at the present time, men’s minds being so much more centred on
earth, and so few of their thoughts comparatively being directed towards the
higher life, their devachanic periods are correspondingly shortened.
Similarly, the time spent in the higher and lower regions of the mental
plane ( Called technically the Arûpa and Rûpa Devachan
– existing on the arûpa and rûpa levels of the mental plane ) respectively is
proportionate to the amount of thought generated severally in the mental and
causal bodies ; All the thoughts belonging to the personal self, to the life
just closed – with all its ambitions, interests, loves, hopes, and fears – all
these have their fruition in the Devachan
where forms are found ; while those belonging to the higher mind, to the
regions of abstract, impersonal thinking, have to be worked out in the
"formless" devachanic region. The majority of people only just enter that
lofty region to pass swiftly out again ; some spend there a large portion of
their devachanic existence ; a few spend there almost the whole.
Ere entering into any details let us try to grasp some of the leading
ideas which govern the devachanic life, for it is so different from physical life
that any description of it is apt to mislead by its very strangeness. People
realise so little of their mental life, even as led in the body, that when they
are presented with a picture of mental life out of the body they lose all sense
of reality, and feel as though they had passed into a world of dream.
The first thing to grasp is that mental life is far more intense, vivid,
and nearer to reality than the life of the senses. Everything we see and touch
and hear and taste and handle down here is two removes farther from the reality
than everything we contact in Devachan.
We do not even see things as they are, but the things that we see down here
have two more veils of illusion enveloping them. Our sense of reality here is
an entire delusion ; we know nothing of things, of people, as they are ; all
that we know of them are the impressions they make on our senses, and the
conclusions, often erroneous, which our reason deduces from the aggregate of
these impressions. Get and put side by side the ideas of a man held by his
father, his closest friend, the girl who adores him, his rival in business, his
deadliest enemy, and a casual acquaintance, and see how incongruous the
pictures.
Each can only give the impressions made on his own mind, and how far are
they from the reality of what the man is, seen by the eyes that pierces all
veils and behold the whole man. We know of each of our friends the impressions
they make on us, and these are strictly limited by our capacity to receive ; a
child may
have as his father a great statesman of lofty purpose and imperial aims,
but that guide of nation’s destinies is to him only his merriest play fellow,
his most enticing storyteller.
We live in the midst of illusions, but we have the feeling of reality,
and this yields us content. In Devachan
we shall also be surrounded by illusions – though, as said, two removes nearer
to reality – and there also we shall have a similar feeling of reality which will
yield us content.
The illusions of earth, though lessened, are not escaped from in the
lower heavens, though contact is more real and more immediate. For it must
never be forgotten that these heavens are part of a great evolutionary scheme,
and, until man has found the real Self, his own unreality makes him subject to
illusions.
One thing however, which produces the feeling of reality in earth-life
and of unreality when we study Devachan,
is that we look at earth-life from within, under the full sway of its
illusions, while we contemplate Devachan
from outside, free for the time from its veil of Mâyâ.
In Devachan the process is reversed, and its inhabitants feel
their own life to be the real one and look on the earth-life as full of the
most patent illusions and misconceptions. On the whole, they are nearer to the
truth than the physical critics of their heaven-world.
Next, the Thinker – being clad only in the mental body and being in the
untrammelled exercise of its powers – manifests the creative nature of these
powers in a way and to an extent that down here we can hardly realise. On earth
a painter, a sculptor, a musician, dreams, dreams of exquisite beauty, creating
their visions by the powers of the mind ; but when they seek to embody them in
the coarse materials of earth they fall far short of the mental creation. The
marble is too resistant for perfect form, the pigments to muddy for perfect
colour.
In heaven, all they think, is at once reproduced in form, for the rare
and subtle matter of the heaven-world is mind stuff, the medium in which the
mind normally works when free from passion, and it takes shape with every
mental impulse. Each man, therefore, in a very real sense, makes his own
heaven, and the beauty of his surroundings is definitely increased, according
to the wealth and energy of his mind. As the soul develops his powers, his
heaven grows more and more subtle and exquisite; all the limitations in heaven
are self-created, and heaven expands and deepens with the expansion and
deepening of the soul.
While the soul is weak and selfish, narrow and ill-developed, his heaven
shares these pettinesses; but it is always the best that is in the soul,
however poor that best may be. As the man evolves, his devachanic
lives become fuller, richer, more and more real, and advanced souls come into
ever closer and closer contact with each other, enjoying wider and deeper
intercourse.
A life on earth, thin, feeble, vapid, and narrow, mentally and morally,
produces a comparatively thin, feeble, vapid and narrow life in Devachan,
where only the mental and the moral survive. We cannot have more than we are,
and our harvest is according to our sowing. "Be not deceived; God is not
mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth, that,"- and neither more nor less, -
"shall he also reap." Our indolence and greediness would fain reap
where we have not sown, but in this universe of law, the Good Law, mercifully
just, brings to each the exact wages of his work.
The mental impressions, or mental pictures, we make of our friends will
dominate us in Devachan. Round each soul throng those he loved in life, and
every image of the loved ones that live in the heart becomes a living companion
of the soul in heaven. And they are unchanged. They will be to us there as they
were here, and no otherwise. The outer semblance of our friend as it affected
our senses, we form out of mind-stuff in Devachan
by the creative powers of the mind; what was here a mental picture is there –
as in truth it was here, although we knew it not – an objective shape in living
mind-stuff, abiding in our own mental atmosphere ; only what is dull and dreamy
here is forcibly living and vivid there.
And with regard to the true communion, that of the soul with soul? That
is closer, nearer, dearer than anything we know here, for, as we have seen,
there is no barrier on the mental plane between soul and soul; exactly in
proportion to the reality of the soul-life in us is the reality of
soul-communion there ; the mental image of our friend is our own creation ; his
form is as we knew and loved it ; and his soul breathes through that form to
ours just to the extent that his soul and ours can throb in sympathetic
vibration.
But we can have no touch with those we knew on earth if the ties were
only of the physical or astral body, or if they and we were discordant in the
inner life ; therefore into our Devachan
no enemy can enter, for sympathetic accord of minds and hearts can alone draw
men together there.
Separateness of heart and mind means separation in the heavenly life,
for all that is lower than the heart and mind can find no means of expression
there. With those who are far beyond us in evolution we come into contact just
as far as we can respond to them ; great ranges of their being will stretch
beyond our ken, but all that we can touch is ours. Further, these greater ones
can and do aid us in the heavenly life, under
conditions we shall study presently, helping us to grow towards them,
and thus be able to receive more and more. There is then no separation by space
or time, but there is separation by absence of sympathy, by lack of accord
between hearts and minds.
In heaven we are with all whom we love and with all whom we admire, and
we commune with them to the limit of our capacity, or, if we are more advanced,
of theirs. We meet them in the forms we loved on earth, with perfect memory of
our earthly relationships, for heaven is the flowering of all earth’s buds, and
the marred and feeble loves of earth expand into beauty and power there. The
communion being direct, no misunderstandings of words or thoughts can arise ;
each sees the thought his friend creates, or as much of it as he can respond
to.
Devachan, the heaven-world, is a world of bliss, of joy
unspeakable. But it is much more than this, much more than a rest for the
weary. In Devachan all that was valuable in the mental and moral
experiences of the Thinker during the life just ended is worked out, meditated
over, and is gradually transmuted into definite mental and moral faculty, into
powers which he will take with him to his next rebirth. He does not work into
the mental body the actual memory of the past, for the mental body will, in due
course, disintegrate ; the memory of the past abides only in the Thinker
himself, who has lived through it and who endures. But these facts of past
experiences are worked into mental capacity, so that if a man has studied a
subject deeply the effects of that study will be the creation of a special
faculty to acquire and master that subject when it is first presented to him in
another incarnation.
He will be born with a special aptitude for that line of study, and will
pick it up with great facility. Everything thought upon earth is thus utilised
in Devachan ; every aspiration is worked up into power ; all
frustrated efforts become faculties and abilities ; struggles and defeats
reappear as materials to be wrought into instruments of victory ; sorrows and
errors shine luminous as precious metals to be worked up into wise and
well-directed volitions.
Schemes of beneficence, for which power and skill to accomplish were
lacking in the past, are in Devachan
worked out in thought, acted out, as it were, stage by stage, and the necessary
power and skill are developed as faculties of the mind to be put into use in a
future life on earth, when the clever and earnest student shall be reborn as a
genius, when the devotee shall be reborn as a saint. Life then, in Devachan,
is no mere dream, no lotus-land of purposeless idling ; it is the land in which
the mind and heart develop, unhindered by gross matter and by the trivial
cares, where weapons are forged for earth’s fierce battlefields, and where the
progress of the future is secured.
When the Thinker has consumed in the mental body all the fruits
belonging to it of his earthly life, he shakes it off and dwells unencumbered
in his own place.
All the mental faculties which express themselves on the lower levels
are drawn within the causal body – with the germs of the passional life that
were drawn into the mental body when it left the astral shell to disintegrate
in Kâmaloka – and these become latent for a time, lying within the causal body,
forces which remain concealed for lack of material in which to manifest. (The
thoughtful student may here find a fruitful suggestion on the problem of
continuing consciousness after the cycle of the universe is trodden. Let him
place Îshvara in the place of the Thinker, and let the faculties that are the
fruits of a life represent the human lives that are the fruits of a Universe.
He may then catch some glimpse of what is necessary for consciousness, during
the interval between universes).
The mental body, the last of the temporary vestures of the true man,
disintegrates, and its materials return to the general matter of the mental
plane, whence they were drawn when the Thinker last descended into incarnation.
Thus the causal body alone remains, the receptacle and treasure-house of
all that has been assimilated from the life that is over. The Thinker has
finished a round of his long pilgrimage and dwells for a while in his own
native land.
His condition as to consciousness depends entirely on the point he has
reached in evolution. In his early stages of life he will merely sleep, wrapped
in unconsciousness, when he has lost his vehicles on the lower planes. His life
will pulse gently within him, assimilating any little results from his closed
earth-existence that may be capable of entering into his substance ; but he
will have no consciousness of his surroundings. But as he develops, this period
of his life becomes more and more important, and occupies a greater proportion
of his devachanic existence.
He becomes self-conscious, and thereby conscious of his surroundings –
of the not-self – and his memory spreads before him the panorama of his life,
stretching backwards into the ages of the past. He sees the causes that worked
out their effects in the last of his life-experiences, and studies the causes
he has set going in this latest incarnation. He assimilates and works into the
texture of the causal body all that was noblest and loftiest in the closed chapter
of his life, and by his inner activity he develops and co-ordinates the
materials in his causal body. He comes into direct contact with great souls,
whether in or out of the body at the time, enjoys communion with them, learns
from their riper wisdom and longer experience.
Each succeeding devachanic life is richer and deeper ; with his expanding
capacity to receive, knowledge flows into him in fuller tides ; more and more
he learns to understand the workings of the law, the conditions of evolutionary
progress, and thus returns to earth-life each time with greater knowledge, more
effective power, his vision of the goal of life becoming ever clearer and the
way to it more plain before his feet.
To every Thinker, however unprogressed, there comes a moment of clear
vision when the time arrives for his return to the life of the lower worlds.
For a moment he sees his past and the causes working from it into the future,
and the general map of his next incarnation is also unrolled before him.
Then the clouds of lower matter surge round him and obscure his vision,
and the cycle of another incarnation begins with the awakening of the powers of
the lower mind, and their drawing round him, by their vibrations, materials
from the lower mental plane to form the new mental body for the opening chapter
of his life-history. This part of our subject, however, belongs in its detail
to the chapters on reincarnation.
We left the soul asleep, (See Chapter III., On Kâmaloka, ) having shaken
off the last remains of his astral body, ready to pass out of Kâmaloka into Devachan,
out of purgatory into heaven. The sleeper awakens to a sense of joy
unspeakable, of bliss immeasurable, of peace that passeth understanding.
Softest melodies are breathing round him, tenderest hues greet his
opening eyes, the very air seems music and colour, the whole being is suffused
with light and harmony.
Then through the golden haze dawn sweetly the faces loved on earth,
etherialised into the beauty which expresses their noblest, loveliest emotions,
unmarred by the troubles and the passions of the lower worlds. Who may tell the
bliss of that awakening, the glory of that first dawning of the heaven-world?
We will now study the conditions in detail of the seven subdivisions of Devachan,
remembering that in the four lower we are in the world of form, and a world,
moreover, in which every thought presents itself at once as a form. This world
of form belongs to the personality, and every soul is therefore surrounded by
as much of his past life as has entered into his mind and can be expressed in
pure mind-stuff.
The first, or lowest, region is the heaven of the least progressed
souls, whose highest emotion on earth was a narrow, sincere, and sometimes
selfish love for family and friends. Or it may be that they felt some loving
admiration for some one they met on earth who was purer and better than
themselves, or felt some wish to lead a higher life, or some passing aspiration
towards mental and moral expansion.
There is not much material here out of which faculty can be moulded, and
their life is but very slightly progressive ; their family affections will be
nourished and a little widened, and they will be reborn after a while with a
somewhat improved emotional nature, with more tendency to recognise and respond
to a higher ideal. Meanwhile they are enjoying all the happiness they can
receive; their cup is but a small one, but it is filled to the brim with bliss,
and they enjoy all that they are able to conceive of heaven. Its purity, its
harmony, play on their undeveloped faculties and woo them to awaken into
activity, and the inner stirrings begin which must precede any manifested
budding.
The next division of devachanic
life comprises men and women of every religious faith whose hearts during their
earthly lives had turned with loving devotion to God, under any name, under any
form. The form may have been narrow, but the heart rose up in aspiration, and
here finds the object of its loving worship.
The concept of the Divine which was formed by their mind when on earth
here meets them in the radiant glory of devachanic
matter, fairer, diviner, than their wildest dreams.
The Divine One limits Himself to meet the intellectual limits of His
worshipper, and in whatever form the worshipper has loved and worshipped Him,
in that form He reveals Himself to his longing eyes, and pours out on him the
sweetness of His answering love. The souls are steeped in religious ecstasy,
worshipping the One under the forms their piety sought on earth, losing
themselves in the raptures of devotion, in communion with the Object they
adore.
No one finds himself a stranger in the heavenly places, the Divine
veiling Himself in the familiar form. Such souls grow in purity and in devotion
under the sun of this communion, and return to earth with these qualities much
intensified. Nor is all their devachanic
life spent in this devotional ecstasy, for they have full opportunities of
maturing every other quality they may possess of heart and mind.
Passing onwards to the third region, we come to those noble and earnest
beings who were devoted servants of humanity while on earth, and largely poured
out their love to God in the form of works for man. They are reaping the reward
of their good deeds by developing larger powers of usefulness and increased wisdom
in their direction. Plans of wider beneficence unroll themselves before the
mind of the philanthropist, and like an architect, he designs the future
edifice which he will build in a coming life on earth ; he matures the schemes
which he will then work out into actions, and like a creative God plans his
universe of
benevolence, which shall be manifested in gross matter when the time is
ripe. These souls will appear as the great philanthropists of yet unborn
centuries, who will incarnate on earth with innate dower of unselfish love and
of power to achieve.
Most varied in character, perhaps, of all the heavens is the fourth, for
here the powers of the most advanced souls find their exercise, so far as they
can be expressed in the world of form. Here the kings of art and of literature
are found, exercising all their powers of form, of colour, of harmony, and
building
greater faculties with which to be reborn when they return to earth.
Noblest music, ravishing beyond description, peals forth from the mightiest
monarchs of harmony that the earth has known, as Beethoven, no longer deaf,
pours out his imperial soul in strains of unexampled beauty, making even the
heaven world more melodious as he draws down harmonies from higher spheres, and
sends them thrilling through the heavenly places. Here also we find the masters
of painting and of sculpture, learning new hues of colour, new curves of
undreamed beauty.
And here also are others who failed, though greatly aspiring, and who
are here transmuting longings into powers, and dreams into faculties, that
shall be theirs in another life. Searchers into Nature are here, and they are
learning her hidden secrets ; before their eyes are unrolling systems of worlds
with all
their hidden mechanism, woven series of workings of unimaginable
delicacy and complexity ; they shall return to earth as great
"discoverers," with unerring intuitions of the mysterious ways of
Nature.
In this heaven also are found students of the deeper knowledge, the
eager, reverent pupils who sought the Teachers of the race, who longed to find
a Teacher, and patiently worked at all that had been given out by some one of
the great spiritual Masters who have taught humanity. Here their longings find
their
fruition, and Those they sought, apparently in vain, are now their
instructors ; the eager souls drink in the heavenly wisdom, and swift their
growth and progress as they sit at their Master’s feet. As teachers and as
light-bringers shall they be born again on earth, born with the birthmark of the
teacher’s high office upon them.
Many a student on earth, all unknowing of these subtler workings, is
preparing himself a place in this fourth heaven, as he bends with a real
devotion over the pages of some teacher of genius, over the teachings of some
advanced soul. He is forming a link between himself and the teacher he loves
and reverences, and in the heaven-world that soul-tie will assert itself, and
draw together into communion the souls it links. As the sun pours down its rays
into many rooms, and each room has all it can contain of the solar beams, so in
the heaven-world do these great souls shine into hundreds of mental images of
themselves created by their pupils, fill them with life, with their own
essence, so that each student has his master to teach him and yet shuts out
none other from his aid.
Thus, for periods long in proportion to the materials gathered for
consumption upon earth, dwell men in these heaven-worlds of form, where all good
that the last personal life had garnered finds its full fruition, its full
working out into minutest detail. Then as we have seen, when everything is
exhausted, when
the last drop has been drained from the cup of joy, the last crumb eaten
of the heavenly feast, all that has been worked up into faculty, that is of
permanent value, is drawn within the causal body, and the Thinker shakes off
him and the then disintegrating body through which he has found expression on
the lower levels of the devachanic
world. Rid of this mental body, he is in his own world, to work up whatever of
his harvest can find material suitable for it in that high realm.
A vast number of souls touch the lowest level of the formless world as
it were but for a moment, taking brief refuge there, since all lower vehicles
have fallen away. But so embryonic are they that they have as yet no active
powers that there can function independently, and they become unconscious as the
mental body slips away into disintegration. Then, for a moment, they are
aroused to consciousness, and a flash of memory illumines their past and they
see its pregnant causes ; and a flash of foreknowledge illumines their future,
and they see such effects as will work out in the coming life. This is all that
very many are as yet able to experience of the formless world. For, here again,
as ever, the harvest is according to the sowing, and how should they who have
sowed nothing for that lofty region expect to reap any harvest therein?
But many souls have during their earth-life, by deep thinking and noble
living, sown much seed, the harvest of which belongs to this fifth devachanic
region, the lowest of the three heavens of the formless world. Great is now
their reward for having so risen above the bondage of the flesh and of passion,
and they begin to experience the real life of man, the lofty existence of the
soul
itself, unfettered by vestures belonging to the lower worlds. They learn
truths by direct vision, and see the fundamental causes of which all concrete
objects are the results; they study the underlying unities, whose presence is
marked in the lower worlds by the variety of irrelevant details.
Thus they gain a deep knowledge of law, and learn to recognise its
changeless workings below results apparently the most incongruous, thus
building into the body that endures firm unshakable convictions, that will
reveal themselves in earth-life as deep intuitive certainties of the soul,
above and beyond all reasoning. Here also the man studies his own past, and
carefully disentangles the causes he has set going ; he marks their
interaction, the resultants accruing from them, and sees something of their
working out in the lives yet in the future.
In the sixth heaven are more advanced souls, who during earth-life had
felt but little attraction for its passing shows, and who had devoted all their
energies to the higher intellectual and moral life. For them there is no veil
upon the past, their memory is perfect and unbroken, and they plan the infusion
into
their next life of energies that will neutralise many of the forces that
are working for hindrance, and strengthen many of those that are working for
good.
This clear memory enables them to form definite and strong
determinations as to actions which are to be done and actions which are to be
avoided, and these volitions they will be able to impress on their lower
vehicles in their next birth, making certain classes of evils impossible,
contrary to what is felt to
be the deepest nature, and certain kinds of good inevitable, the
irresistible demands of a voice that will not be denied.
These souls are born into the world with high and noble qualities which
render a base life impossible, and stamp the babe from its cradle as one of the
pioneers of humanity. The man who has attained to this sixth heaven sees
unrolled before him the vast treasures of the Divine Mind in creative activity
and can study the archetypes of all forms that are being gradually evolved in
the lower worlds.
There he may bathe himself in the fathomless ocean of the Divine Wisdom,
and unravel the problems connected with the working out of those archetypes,
the partial good that seems as evil to the limited vision of men encased in
flesh.
In this wider outlook, phenomena assume their due relative proportions,
and he sees the justification of the divine ways, no longer to him "past
finding out" so far as they are concerned with the evolution of the lower
worlds.
The questions over which on earth he pondered, and whose answers ever
eluded his eager intellect, are here solved by an insight that pierces through
phenomenal veils and sees the connecting links which make the chain complete.
Here also the
soul is in the immediate presence of, and in full communion with, the
greater souls that have evolved in our humanity, and, escaped from the bonds
which make "the past" of earth, he enjoys "the
ever-present" of an endless and unbroken life.
Those we speak of here as "the mighty dead" are there the
glorious living, and the soul enjoys the high rapture of their presence, and
grows more like them as their strong harmony attunes his vibrant nature to
their key.
Yet higher, lovelier, gleams the seventh heaven, where Masters and
Initiates have their intellectual home. No soul can dwell there ere yet is has
passed while on earth through the narrow gateway of Initiation, the strait gate
that "leadeth unto life" unending. ( See Chapter XI, on "Man’s
Ascent." The Initiate
has stepped out of the ordinary line of evolution, and is treading a
shorter and steeper road to human perfection).
That world is the source of the strongest intellectual and moral
impulses that flow down to earth ; thence are poured forth the invigorating
streams of the loftiest energy. The intellectual life of the world has there
its root; thence genius receives its purest inspirations. To the souls that
dwell there it matters little whether, at the time, they be or be not connected
with the lower
vehicles ; they ever enjoy their lofty self-consciousness and their
communion with those around them ; whether, when "embodied" they
suffuse their lower vehicles with as much of this consciousness as they can
contain is a matter for their own choice – they can give or withhold as they
will.
And more and more their volitions are guided by the will of the Great
Ones, whose will is one with the will of the LOGOS, the will which seeks ever
the good of the worlds. For here are being eliminated the last vestiges of
separateness – ( Ahamkâra, the " I " making principle, necessary in
order that self consciousness may be evolved, but transcended when its work is
over) – in all who have not yet reached final emancipation – all, that is, who
are not yet Masters – and, as these perish, the will becomes more and more
harmonised with the will that guides the worlds.
Such is an outline of the "seven heavens" into one or other of
which men pass in due time after the "change that men call death."
For death is only a change that gives the soul a partial liberation, releasing
him from the heaviest of his chains. It is but a birth into a wider life, a
return after a brief exile on earth to the soul’s true home, a passing from a prison
into the freedom of the upper air. Death is the greatest of earth’s illusions ;
there is no death, but only changes in life’s conditions. Life is
continuous, unbroken, unbreakable ; "unborn, eternal,
constant," it perishes not with the perishing of the bodies
that clothe it. We might as well think that the sky is falling when a
pot is broken, as imagine that the soul perishes when the body falls to pieces.
( A simile used in the Bhagavad Purâna).
The physical, astral and mental planes are "the three worlds"
though which lies the pilgrimage of the soul, again and again repeated. In
these three worlds revolves the wheel of human life, and souls are bound to
that wheel throughout their evolution, and are carried by it to each of these
worlds in turn. We are
now in a position to trace a complete life-period of the soul, the
aggregate of these periods making up its life, and we can also distinguish
clearly the difference between personality and individuality.
A soul when its stay in the formless world of Devachan
is over, begins a new life-period by putting forth the energies which function
in the form-world of the mental plane, these energies being the resultant of
the preceding life-periods. These passing outwards, gather round themselves,
from the matter of the four lower mental levels, such materials as are suitable
for their
expression, and thus the new mental body for the coming birth is formed.
The vibration of these mental energies arouses the energies which belong to the
desire-nature, and these begin to vibrate ; as they awake and throb, they
attract to themselves suitable materials for their expression from the matter
of
the astral world, and these form the new astral body for the approaching
incarnation.
Thus the Thinker becomes clothed with his mental and astral vestures,
exactly expressing the faculties evolved during the past stage of his life. He
is drawn, by forces which will be explained later, (See Chapter VII , on
"Reincarnation") to the family which is to provide him with a
suitable physical encasement, and
becomes connected with this encasement through his astral body.
During prenatal life the mental body becomes involved with the lower
vehicles, and this connection becomes closer and closer through the early years
of childhood, until at the seventh year they are as completely in touch with
the Thinker himself as the stage of evolution permits. He then begins to
slightly control his vehicles, if sufficiently advanced, and what we call
conscience is
his monitory voice. In any case, he gathers experience through these
vehicles, and during the continuance of earth-life, stores the gathered
experience in its own proper vehicle, in the body connected with the plane to
which the experience belongs.
When the earth-life is over the physical body drops away, and with it
his power of contacting the physical world, and his energies are therefore
confined to the astral and mental planes. In due course, the astral body
decays, and the outgoings of his life are confined to the mental plane, the
astral faculties
being gathered up and laid by within himself as latent energies.
Once again, in due course, its assimilative work completed, the mental
body disintegrates, its energies in turn becoming latent in the Thinker, and he
withdraws his life entirely into the formless devachanic
world, his own native habitat. Thence, all experiences of his life period in
the three worlds being
transmuted into faculties and powers for future use, are contained
within himself, he anew commences his pilgrimage and treads the cycle of
another life-period with increased power and knowledge.
The personality consists of the transitory vehicles through which the
Thinker energises in the physical, astral, and lower mental worlds, and of all
the activities connected with these. These are bound together by the links of
memory caused by impressions made on the three lower bodies ; and, by the
self-identification of the Thinker with his three vehicles, the personal "
I " is set up. In the lower stages of evolution this " I " is in
the physical and
passional vehicles, in which the greatest activity is shown, later it is
in the mental vehicle, which then assumes predominance.
The personality with its transient feeling, desires, passions, thus
forms a quasi-independent entity, though drawing all its energies from the
Thinker it enwraps, and as its qualifications, belonging to the lower worlds,
are often in direct antagonism to the permanent interests of the "Dweller
in the body," conflict is set up in which victory inclines sometimes to
the temporary pleasure, sometimes to the permanent gain. The life of the
personality begins when the Thinker forms his new mental body, and it endures
until that mental body disintegrates at the close of its life in the form-world
of Devachan.
The individuality consists of the Thinker himself, the immortal tree
that puts out all these personalities as leaves, to last through the spring,
summer and autumn of human life. All that the leaves take in and assimilate
enriches the sap that courses through their veins, and in the autumn this is withdrawn
into the parent trunk, and the dry leaf falls and perishes. The Thinker alone
lives
forever ; he is the man for whom "the hour never strikes," the
eternal youth who as the Bhagavad Gitâ has it, puts on and casts off bodies as
a man puts on new garments and throws off the old.
Each personality is a new part for the immortal Actor, and he treads the
stage of life over and over again, only in the life-drama each character he
assumes is the child of the preceding ones and the father of those to come, so
that the life-drama is a continuous history, the history of the Actor who plays
the
successive parts.
To the three worlds that we have studied is confined the life of the
Thinker, while he is treading the earlier stages of human evolution. A time will
come in the evolution of humanity when its feet will enter loftier realms, and
reincarnation will be of the past. But while the wheel of rebirth and death is
turning, a man is bound thereon by desires that pertain to the three worlds,
his
life is led in these three regions.
To the realms that lie beyond we now may turn, albeit but little can be
said of them that can be either useful or intelligible. Such little as may be
said, however, is necessary for the outlining of the Ancient Wisdom.
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Theosophy and the Number Seven
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The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
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What is Theosophy ? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
Cosmogenesis Anthropogenesis Root Races
Ascended Masters After Death States
The Seven Principles of Man Karma
Reincarnation Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
The Start of the Theosophical
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The Three Objectives of the
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The Theosophical Order of
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Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
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THE PHYSICAL PLANE THE ASTRAL PLANE
KÂMALOKA
THE MENTAL PLANE DEVACHAN
THE BUDDHIC AND NIRVANIC PLANES
THE THREE KINDS OF KARMA COLLECTIVE KARMA
THE LAW OF SACRIFICE MAN'S
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An Outline of Theosophy
Charles Webster Leadbeater
Theosophy - What it is How is it Known?
The Method of Observation General Principles
Advantage Gained from this
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The Deity The Divine Scheme The Constitution of Man
The True Man Reincarnation The Wider Outlook
Death Man’s Past and Future Cause and Effect
Reincarnation
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How We Remember our Past Lives
Life after Death & Reincarnation
The
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Classic Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy
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What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death
Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
The Occult World
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Preface to the American Edition Introduction
Occultism and its Adepts The Theosophical Society
First Occult Experiences Teachings of Occult Philosophy
Later Occult Phenomena Appendix
The Seven Principles of Man
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A Student of
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Katherine Tingley (1847 -1929)Was the founder &
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Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man?
Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation
Karma The Seven in Man and Nature
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky 1831 – 1891
The
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Index of
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Is the Desire to Live Selfish?
Ancient Magic in Modern Science
Precepts Compiled by H P Blavatsky
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Theosophy and the Number Seven
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A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
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The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3
A compilation of H P Blavatsky’s
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Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries
The Early Teachings of The
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A Collection of Fugitive Fragments
Fundamentals of the Esoteric
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Mystical,
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Edited by George
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From Talks on the Path of Occultism - Vol. II
In the Twilight”
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compiled from
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Letters and
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Karma Fundamental Principles Laws: Natural and Man-Made
The Law of Laws
The Eternal Now
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The Laws of Nature A Lesson of The Law Karma Does Not Crush
Apply This Law
Man in The Three Worlds Understand The Truth
Man and His Surroundings The Three Fates
The Pair of Triplets
Thought, The Builder Practical Meditation Will and Desire
The Mastery of Desire Two Other Points The Third Thread
Perfect Justice
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The Light for a Good Man Knowledge of Law The Opposing Schools
The More Modern View Self-Examination Out of the Past
Old Friendships
We Grow By Giving Collective Karma Family Karma
National Karma India’s Karma National
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Esoteric Teachers The Constitution of Man The Planetary Chain
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