Theosophical University Press Online Edition
Let us now turn to a more detailed consideration of the destiny that awaits the Reimbodying Ego after it drops its physical integument and begins its post-mortem peregrinations through the spheres, including of course the preliminary part thereof through the Astral Light, which has been sketched in the two preceding chapters.
Looking upon man in his inmost as a deathless, and during the course of the Cosmic Manvantara an ever-active, ray from the Heart or Essence of the Universe, and therefore as being as eternal as the Universe itself is, what men call death is readily seen to be the opening of the greatest Adventure of life.
In studies of the nature of death -- or equivalently of life, for they are one -- the attention of the student is too often concentrated upon bodies, informed of course by the Cosmic Life, instead of upon inner essences, or what comes to the same thing, instead of upon consciousness itself and its methods and processes of manifestation. This is natural enough and reasonable enough, because it is bodies which die; and men during their life-term are almost universally prone to identify themselves with the physical vehicle in which they live and through which they self-express themselves. It is this obvious fact which leads men to wonder whether or not after the death of the physical body they shall enter or obtain some other body, a 'spiritual body' as Paul of the Christians phrased it. But one will never grasp the significance of death, or what one's condition is after the body dies, if the mind concentrates its attention upon solely the vehicular aspects, the body-side.
Too much emphasis in the West is placed upon the various bodies in man's constitution, but these after all are merely temporary vehicles wrought and thrown around himself by the inner Man who is a Monad, a flaming ray from the Solar Divinity, which ray descends through all the Worlds and Planes and Spheres of cosmic life: spiritual, psychical, astral, until it reaches this physical globe, where this flaming ray of essential consciousness manifests itself -- although in most cases very, very feebly -- through the substance of the heart and brain of imbodied man. The explanation of death and its processes consists in showing the converse of the foregoing process, i. e., a laying aside, and in regular ascending serial order, of sheath after sheath after sheath of consciousness, and ethereal body after ethereal body in which the ray or stream of consciousness is imbodied.
Indeed, it is not too strong an assertion to say that there is no 'death,' if by death we understand the utter and absolute wiping out or annihilation of all that a sentient, self-conscious, thinking human being is. It will be impossible fully to understand death and its so-called mysteries as long as one concentrates attention on the mere and temporary bodies or sheaths in which this ray or flame of consciousness periodically and repetitively enwraps itself. It is necessary to follow the peregrinations of the consciousness per se, if a man desire to know his post-mortem destiny: in other words, to become acquainted with himself, to know his conscious self in relative fulness, so that he may follow in thought this ray or flame of consciousness inwards, ever more inwards, which also means upwards. When a man can do this he will no longer fear death, because he will see its non-existence except, as before stated, as a phase of life opening into peregrinations through inner worlds and spheres, till the Devachan is reached; and he will recognise death exactly for what it is, the gentlest, holiest helper and friend that a man has. (364) Dying means laying aside imperfection for relative perfection, restricted consciousness for an enlarged sphere of consciousness. A man who investigates death and its nature by studying his true Self which is his consciousness, must follow this stream of consciousness continually; and if he succeed in doing so he will reach the core or essence of his being, the fountain of the stream of consciousness or ray which is himself, which fountain is the divinity at the heart of himself. Here in brief is laid bare the secret key for understanding death and its real -- not imaginary -- mysteries as taught in the ancient Esoteric Schools of all races of men.
There is something within every normally thinking and feeling human being, something partaking both of intuition and inner vision as well as of instinctive feeling, which tells him that consciousness per se, quite apart from any attributes or adventitious qualities of the Ego, goes on or continues forever; but precisely because this consciousness in its pure and essential condition is not derivative from any vehicle through which it may pass, the realization comes that while pure essential consciousness, which is the essence of the Universe, itself has neither beginning nor end, nevertheless it does not express itself always in the same form, for change and decay of transmitting vehicles or bodies is Nature's universal law throughout the cosmic World-periods; and just here we find the springe, the trap, for the feet of the unwary: the pitfall, where so many millions and millions of human beings through the ages lose their way in understanding and perception and become bewildered. Forgetting and indeed not knowing or realizing that Spirit, or Consciousness, or Intelligence, or Mind, per se is the most fundamental thing in and of the Universe, and therefore is the very essential substance of man's inmost being, these millions look in their pitiful blindness for a continuance of the fragile and ever-changing vehicles of consciousness that men live in in life after life and from day to day, with the brain-mind reflexion of the pure or essential consciousness that accompanies and more or less enlightens these vehicles. The latter, because of their imperfection are continually possessed or obsessed with all their petty hopes, loves, fears, aspirations, yearnings, and so forth; and it is just this misunderstanding of realities, bringing us, precisely because of their manifold imperfections, continuous suffering and sorrow and pain, that men really desire to continue in. Paradox! We cling with fervor to the transitory and unenduring, and perplex and torment ourselves incessantly with hopes and desires that never can be fulfilled; and with blindness and equal obstinacy turn from the only ever-enduring part of our being which is our essential selfhood -- the inmost consciousness. A strange commentary on the prevailing human sense of values!
Every intuition and instinct of man's being, as well as of his unfettered intellect, tells him that consciousness per se, and apart from its bodies, runs on in unbroken continuity of flow forever; and every slightest experience that the percipient consciousness of man has, and that is understood, tells him likewise that manifested or egoic consciousness is continuously, unceasingly, undergoing change in the sense either of increase or decrease -- normally of increase; so that the man remains not the same identic Ego from year to year, nor from month to month, nor from day to day, nor even from hour to hour, nor from second to second -- for each second as it follows on the feet of the one that ran before it brings an ineluctable change in color or attribute or quality of the percipient or manifested consciousness -- the ray from the essential or fundamental deathless Consciousness previously mentioned.
Man is, in the last analysis, a stream or flow of consciousness pausing at intervals as it builds his constitution from the highest of him to the lowest of him, in order to form knots or foci which are the different consciousness-centers of his constitution. This stream or flow of essential consciousness, when scrutinized with meticulous care, we find we can divide into, or envision as containing, at least three inherent qualities or attributes -- or faculties, if the word be preferred: Thought, Will, Feeling. Thoughts, or collectively Thought, change always. Thanks be to the immortal gods that it is so, for it would be truly horrible and fill life with execrable monotony if the human consciousness could contain but one single thought-action without possibility of variation or change or modification! Will is likewise undergoing constant change, continuously changing its direction and its objectives, passing through variations of many kinds. Exactly the same may be said of feelings or Feeling in the aggregate. Is there a more changeable thing in the human constitution than our feelings? Do we, as grown men and women, as adults, still think as we did when we were little children, still feel now as little children, still will as little children do? Obviously not. We have undergone enlargement and expansion not only in these three attributes or faculties but in the myriad directions in which they operate; and this is so because we have grown, precisely because we have changed. Yet the stream of essential or unadulterated or fundamental consciousness in us -- so different from the manifest or ego-consciousness -- has continued to the present day of our adulthood unbroken, albeit its manifested forms, because working through the 'knots' above mentioned, have always been changing and are still doing so.
Each one of us knows for himself that he can say of himself 'I am I' -- ego sum. Plunging still more profoundly into the deeps of our own essential consciousness each one of us likewise knows that he can say of himself 'I am,' the same 'I am' that came into the conscious perception of the lower cognising ego when the child-brain first was sufficiently developed to receive cognition in the workaday consciousness. Identically the same 'I am' continues with us today in our adulthood, and will remain with us in normal cases until the day of physical dissolution; but consider the changes and modifications through which and in which this essential consciousness has lived and moved and had its being throughout our earth-life. Consider how we have grown from childhood, undergoing almost uncountable changes and modifications of these 'knots' or foci of consciousness, the while the essential 'I-am-ness' has continued unbroken and in itself has undergone no perceptible modifications or change whatsoever -- albeit the adult man cognises and feels an increase thereof, a larger flow of it, in his 'I-am-I-ness.'
It is thus clear that the lower part of our consciousness, the egoic attributes or faculties, have undergone continuous and uninterrupted changes and modifications and increases, which have made us to be what we have become. Note then that all this becoming, our present being, has been reached by change, by modification, by progressing, by growing, by evolving -- that is to say, by unfolding or unwrapping in ever larger measure the essential Consciousness of the 'I am' within us. Furthermore, note well that this 'I am' is virtually identic in all; but that the 'I am I' in one is not the same as the 'I am I' in another nor in all others. It is precisely the Ego or 'I am I' in each of us which distinguishes one from another and from all others, and which brings about the varieties of character, differences in attribute and faculty, and therefore the distinctions of individuality that make human beings, and indeed all other entities, units in the hierarchical host.
The highest focus or 'knot' of the Essential Consciousness, and therefore its first or primordial and loftiest spiritual vehicle or encasement, is the buddhic Monad, and the Essential Consciousness itself is what is called in modern Theosophical terminology the Atman or Fundamental Self, which is a Droplet in the Shining Sea of the Cosmic Consciousness which we must call the Paramatman or Supreme Self of the Cosmos to which it by origin belongs and from which it manifests in emanational flow. It is therefore this Spiritual or buddhic Monad which is this stream of essential Consciousness above mentioned, the golden thread of unbroken Individuality, on which all the inferior substance-principles of man's complex constitution are threaded, so to say, like gems or beads on a golden chain, passing through all the intermediate foci or 'knots' of the human constitution, and streaming through them as a flow of unbroken radiation. This stream is called the Sutratman, a Sanskrit word meaning 'Thread-Self.' It is the stream of consciousness-life running from the Spiritual Monad downwards through all the various substance-principles of the human entity -- or indeed of any other being or entity.
It is this Sutratman, this Thread-Self, this spiritual-intellectual consciousness-stream, or rather stream of intelligent consciousness-life, which is the fundamental selfhood in every individual human being, and which, reflected in and through the several intermediate vehicles or veils or sheaths or garments -- call them the foci or 'knots' -- of the invisible constitution of man, or of any other being in which a Monad enshrouds itself, produces the different egoic centers of self-conscious existence, which 'egoic centers' are the above mentioned veils or sheaths, etc., the foci or 'knots.'
The Sutratman, therefore, is rooted in and flows forth from the Spiritual or buddhic Monad, from its Monadic Essence or Atman, but its stream is colored by the progressively unfolding individuality of the Reincarnating or Reimbodying Ego, and this 'colored stream,' working through the appropriate vehicles of man's inner constitution, in other words through his mind and through his emotions, his aspirations, his intellect, and so forth, produces the individual-personal consciousness which man recognises in and as himself, and which is the 'I am I' referred to in preceding paragraphs.
One of the profoundest teachings of the great Greek philosopher Plato, outlined, for instance, in his Meno, his Phaedo, his Phaedrus, in his Laws and, by inference and implication at least, alluded to in others of his remarkable Socratic Dialogs, is his doctrine regarding the origin of a man's activity of consciousness when reflected and operative in its intuitive, mental, and instinctive forms during earth-life. Plato taught, following the Pythagoreans, that the characteristics, qualities, and functioning of a man's consciousness during earth-life are due to or caused by previous reimbodiments of the egoic center which man as man is, and that, therefore, all his operative consciousness, in its various degrees of development as well as of manifestation, and consequently all his innate knowledge and wisdom and organic faculty, are but reminiscences of former existences, which reminiscences each new life develops or unfolds anew, and thereby increases and improves them.
The great Greek philosopher called this body of reminiscences by the one word Anamnesis, or re-collection, re-membering, meaning the gathering together again into a coherent unity, in each new imbodiment on Earth, of all the energic and substantial conscious activities that the being in the preceding incarnation was. This in a very real sense is actual re-collection or re-memorization of the past: not indeed of details necessarily, but of the aggregate mass of the spiritual and psychological elements coming over from the past which express themselves as resultants in the present life; or, equivalently, the karmic consequences or effects which in their totality form man himself.
Thus it is evident that Plato taught the same doctrine that the Buddha taught, to wit, that a man is his own karman: all that totality of himself, on all planes and in all phases, which his past lives have made him to be or to become. Any thoughtful person who cares to analyse the characteristics and processes of his own consciousness will certainly attain some realization of the truth of Plato's statement that the faculties and powers and attributes of consciousness which a man shows forth could certainly not have been developed in any one lifetime; they are a complete body or aggregate which in their totality form a man's personalized individuality.
The old materialistic doctrine of our fathers and grandfathers, that man's consciousness, both in substance and in its processes, is but the psychologically recognised movement of chemical changes taking place in the body and particularly in the brain, is so utterly incapable of proof and falls so far short of the exacting explanation which unfettered and unbiased reason demands, that we can only characterize it as being as inept and foolish as it is entirely inadequate. Quite outside of the fact that every molecule of the human body is completely changed some half-dozen or more times during an averagely long life, and quite outside of the fact that this constant flowing of the molecular constitution of man's body should, according to the materialistic theory, make man's individuality change more or less completely from day to day, there is the other still more conclusive argument in rebuttal, which every normal human being knows perfectly well, that his consciousness in its essence, or in its 'I-am-ness' is the same from the first moments in childhood when the individual becomes earliest conscious of it, to the day of his death. The essential stream of identity is not merely unchanged during the myriad modifications of growth, but increases in volume as well as in intensity and subtilty of expression as the body develops into its mature age; and how the older school of materialists worked their mental gymnastics in reconciling their own irreconcilable contradictions, furnishes one of the most interesting, if amusing, episodes in modern European philosophical thought. Plato was distinctly right. Not merely is consciousness reminiscence in the Platonic sense -- that is, the coming anew into self-conscious recognition of the qualities and attributes and powers precedently working -- but the recognition of his own individuality by man grows stronger as the years pass, and as the innate faculties and powers and attributes of that individuality come more fully into unfolding manifestation. It is obvious that in any one lifetime no such individuality could possibly have been built up, with its wide fields of cognition and recognition, and the intricate and complex functioning of consciousness varying, furthermore, so widely as they do in different human beings. How supposedly unconscious, insensate, lifeless physical matter could give birth to all that man is and expresses, including self-conscious cognition of matter itself, is a truly unsolvable problem, and it is wonderful that the notion could have lasted as long as it did.
The stream of Sutratmic consciousness which man calls his permanent individuality, including as its main manifestation his distinct and clear perception of his egoic identity, is something which preceded his present birth into earth-life; and so strongly and with such compelling force has this fact appealed to the greatest minds and loftiest spiritual intellects of the world, especially in ancient times, that all of them without exception have recognised the truth of, and taught the doctrine of, the repetitive reimbodiments of the human egoic center of consciousness which is otherwise called the Reimbodying Ego.
When a baby is born into this life, it is born with a certain aggregate of tendencies and biases, spiritual and mental and psychical and astral and physical; and it goes through life with this compound character -- for this is what these various factors in their aggregate are -- urging it forward, aye, perhaps even hindering its progress. All these tendencies and biases are the karmic results or consequences of its former thoughts and emotions and actions. The new human being is in this manner the maker of his own destiny. No one else forms or shapes it for him; he forms and shapes himself to become what he will be, even as he formed and shaped himself in other lives to become what he now is. This has been explained in previous chapters; but the point to remember here is that only the lower part of this compound human constitution is able to manifest in physical action in the child, because the child has not yet evolved the lower parts of its constitution sufficiently to enable the higher parts thereof to manifest themselves in any degree of fulness. This we all know. In other words, incarnation of the higher consciousness of the human being does not take place all at one time, but is a progressive process or emanational unfoldment throughout the whole life, and takes place only to the degree to which the evolution of the lower portions of the human constitution will permit. In a life well lived, old age should be a time of spiritual and intellectual flowering, however feeble the mere body may have become.
Thus we see that the earth-life of a man is the journeying of an ever-unfolding consciousness, the Reimbodying Ego, through the physical sphere, and what is called 'death' is simply a continuance of this journey out of this sphere into another and to us invisible one. Indeed it may be said that death, physical death, is in large part brought about by the fact that the unfolding field of consciousness, even in the course of one whole earth-life, spreads beyond the capacity of the physical body to contain it, which body, feeling the strains thus put upon it, gradually deteriorates, and glides into senescence, and finally is cast off.
A short time before the dissolution of the physical body occurs, the inner constitution of the man -- that is to say his inner principles or elements -- begins to separate, and the body reactively feels this: it makes automatic response to the incipient tendency to separation of these inner principles or elements, bringing about the physical decay of old age. So that when death supervenes to the physical body it supervenes not at all as the cause, introducing thereafter the dissolution of the invisible principles, but contrariwise, the physical body dies or dissolves into its component elements because the invisible principles themselves, which are the inner forces and substances -- the inner life, collectively speaking, of the man -- have already begun to fall apart or separate, and the body, as time passes, naturally and inevitably follows suit.
The immortal part of man's constitution, which is superior to the merely Human Ego or Soul, is truly divine-spiritual, and is a denizen of divine-spiritual planes and spheres. The power and the lofty and pervading influences or efflux and influx of this higher part of the man are incomparably more compelling in causal realms than is even the Spiritual Ego or Soul, and there is a constant pull upwards an unceasing attraction upwards, to these superior planes or spheres; and especially as the passing years bring the approach of death, the reincarnating entity is strongly drawn upwards towards them. This steady and mighty spiritual-intellectual attraction acting on the higher part of the intermediate nature of the human constitution, combined with the wear and tear on the physical and astral bodies respectively of a man during any earth-life, are the two main contributing causes of physical death. It is seen from the foregoing that death, therefore, is caused from within primarily, and only secondarily from without, and that it involves on the one hand an attraction of the Reimbodying Ego upwards to spiritual spheres, and, on the other hand, the progressive decay of the astral-vital-physical vehicle.
The foregoing is perhaps a somewhat uncommon manner of considering the cause of physical death, but it would seem to be, upon reflexion, provable by examination of almost every entitative being or animate thing that human consciousness cognises. Wherever we look we see all the phenomena of life, including death: beings and indeed entities in all stages of growth or senescence or dying; and one of the most usual manners by which human experience describes the causes of death is to speak of dissolution as occurring because of the 'failure' of inner vital powers. Everything that we know, in other words, begins to die from within outwards; so that one may truly say that if it were possible for the interior constitution of an entity to continue in unimpaired vital activity, the outer or physical shell or body would probably undergo no dissolution at all so long as the unimpaired inner faculties continued in operation; for it is these inner faculties and powers which infill the physical cadaver, or corpus rather, with all their energy of coherence, and enable it to continue in existence as a 'living being.' A tree, for instance, does not die because of outward or exterior influences impinging upon it, although these do indeed contribute when inner decay once begins, but a tree begins to decay within, and if the decay be not checked in some manner, it will spread until the entire entity dies. Similarly a sun, so far as modern knowledge goes, does not become, according to the older and one may say in passing entirely erroneous view of astronomers, a cold dead body, because of exterior or outward forces, but because of the fact that its own interior forces or energies have expended themselves; indeed, according to ultra-modern scientific thinking and deductions, a sun finally 'dies' because of the fact that it has radiated away into surrounding space all the greater part, if not the totality, of the electronic and titanic energies lying within its core or inner parts.
Precisely according to the same rule is it the case with man. His physical body dies mainly because of the beginning of the separation of his inner constitution, this dating from the moment when the peak of life has been reached and the gentle and gradual descent towards old age begins. This separation of his constitution comprises the slow but increasingly powerful attractions of the higher or spiritual-intellectual triad within him upwards to more spiritual Worlds and Planes, while the lower portions of his constitution, including their common carrier, the physical body, slowly but regularly and inevitably, feeling the progressively greater loss of the inspiriting and vitalizing fires, slowly weaken, their vital functions becoming less instant and receptive to the gradually retiring will and intelligence, until finally so many of the inner vital links have been snapped between the higher and the lower, that the lower triad, of which the grossest principle is the physical body, can function no more, and the man expires. Death, therefore, takes place both causatively and instrumentally from within and works outwards.
A careful study will show that this is evident in all the phenomena of physical decay coincident with old age. Here it is not a question of the cases of infants dying, nor of men dying by violence, accident, by malignant and rapidly fatal disease, or by suicide -- which is a form of violence. All these are cases falling outside of the norm or regular rule, and therefore they require another somewhat different study of postmortem conditions. The great majority of men, the normal man, the man who lives a life of average length, one who lives according to the norm, is here held in view. Therefore in the vast majority of cases death is always preceded, although varying in each individual case, by a certain time spent in the withdrawal of the Monadic Individuality or rather of the Reimbodying Ego, from an incarnation; and this withdrawal of course takes place coincidently with a necessary decay, or rather separation or falling apart, of the seven-principled being which man in physical incarnation is. This separative action or decay precedes physical dissolution by a varying number of months or even years, depending upon the individual cases, and is a preparation of and by the Reimbodying Ego for its forthcoming existence in the invisible realms, i. e., in the devachanic conditions and states; and as the septenary entity or its constitution thus slowly falls apart, or, otherwise speaking, as its union decays, it may truly be said to be approaching existence in what is for it the next succeeding sphere of effects -- the Devachan. What men call old age, senility, or physical decay, are the physical resultants of this preparatory withdrawal of the Reimbodying Ego from self-conscious participation in the affairs of earth-life; and may be with a great deal of truth compared to the antenatal period preceding the birth of a child, during which antenatal period the Reimbodying Ego for some time, it may be months or even years, has been undergoing quasi-conscious preparation for its 'death' in the Devachan and its descent through the intermediate lower realms into the state appropriate for its physical imbodiment on this earth-plane.
There finally comes the hour -- a most beautiful and ineffably peaceful hour for a man or woman who has lived the earth-life decently -- when the separating constitution of the man reaches the point where the Reimbodying Ego obeys so strongly the attraction 'upwards' or 'inwards' to the peace and bliss unspeakable of the Devachan, that the silver chord of life connecting it with the lower triad is snapped. There then immediately ensues the cessation of the activity of the pulsating heart: there is the last beat, and this is followed by immediate, instantaneous unconsciousness; for Nature is very merciful in these things, being in her own operations guided by quasi-infinite Wisdom. Instantly, as quickly as a flash of lightning, indeed far more quickly, the higher part of the Ego is then indrawn back and up into the Spiritual Monad, its own heart of hearts, its Essential Self; and there, resting in the bosom of the Monad until the next incarnation on this earth ensues, it remains in the Devachan or Heaven-world, wrapped in ineffable dreams of successful fulfilment of all its hitherto aborted and thwarted and unfulfilled aspirations and hopes, and glowing with imagination and love of the noblest and purest kind. We may call these experiences 'dreams,' and so they are indeed when we use strictly accurate language, because they are 'dreams,' which are as much dreaming to the Reimbodying Ego, as are the ordinary day-dreams of the man imbodied in flesh dreaming to him; but these devachanic dreams are more real to the Spiritual Ego experiencing them than the most 'real thing' that this imperfect physical body with its imperfect senses can report to us; because the Reimbodying Ego in the Devachan is living in the realms of pure intellectual thought and consciousness, where nothing, relatively speaking, dims the cognition, or more accurately the dreaming cognition, of the realization of the fulfilling of the noblest ideals, hopes, aspirations, imagination, and pure love, that accrue to this entity in this state of ineffable bliss and happiness and peace. (365)
But death is not yet complete even when the last breath has been exhaled, and the last pulsation of the heart has taken place, and the body to all appearances is perfectly dead, because the brain is the last organ of the physical body to die, and for some time after the heart has ceased beating, the brain still remains active, and memory, although unconsciously so to the lower Human Ego, for this short length of time passes in review in regular serial order, and without interruption or solution of continuity, every single event of the life just ended, from the greatest event thereof to the most transitory and minute. In fact the brain sees the entirety of all its past life, from the moment when self-consciousness first began to cognise exterior things in babyhood, to the last moment of self-conscious perception when the heart ceased beating, and sees it all as a continuous flowing panorama of pictures or visions, from which nothing whatsoever is or can be omitted, including therefore every virtuous thought or act, as well as every evil or ignoble deed: all passes in review; and the Reimbodying Ego, at this its last and parting and comprehensive vision of the earth-life just ended, sees, comprehends, knows and realizes, the utter and perfect justice of all that it has suffered, and by the automatic action of its own functioning self, so to speak, receives an indelible impression thereof which remains with it throughout the devachanic interlude and aids in guiding it to the proper environment when it returns to earth for its next physical rebirth.
It might here be added that just as the panorama of the whole past life glides past it in review at the death-time, so the precisely identic picture, or series of panoramic views of the same past life which has been indelibly stamped into the fabric of being, again passes in review before its 'mind's eye' just before the Reimbodying Ego takes birth anew. The reader or student of course understands that these wonderful processes are in no sense an effort of the will of the Reimbodying Ego, but are, so to say, automatic procedures of the functioning of its own substance, from which, on an immensely smaller and more imperfect scale, a man during his earth-life has his frequent periods of 'memory' or recollection or remembrance of what has been lived through in previous years or days.
This panoramic picture of the past, great or small, according to the individual human cases, is purely automatic, as said above, and the important point to remember here is that the soul-consciousness of the Reimbodying Ego, watching this wonderful life-review incident by incident, is for the time being entirely unconscious and oblivious of everything else except this panoramic vision. Temporarily it thus lives in the past; and memory dislodges from the akasic record, so to speak, event after event, aye, even to the smallest detail; and thus it sees all its past life as an all-inclusive vision of picture rapidly succeeding picture.
There are very definite ethical and psychological reasons which by Nature's laws inhere in this process; for this rapidly moving panorama comprises the entire reconstruction, mentally speaking, of both the good and the evil done in the past life, and, as said above, imprints it all indelibly on the fabric of the spiritual memory of the man who is passing.
Finally the end comes; it has come; and then the mortal and material portions of the panorama sink into oblivion; whilst the Reimbodying Ego retains with it consciously and carries away with it the best and most spiritual and most loftily intellectual parts of these memories of the Panoramic Vision into the Devachan or Heaven-world. (366)
At death a man lays aside the physical body as he will lay aside a threadbare coat which has served its use. Similarly does he cast off the 'model-body,' which gave the physical body during earth-life its form and shape and characteristics, for the model-body corresponds to the physical body molecule for molecule, cell for cell. The 'model-body' remains with the physical body, or in extremely close proximity to it, and thus is dropped when the physical body is dropped. The model-body may be likewise compared to an undergarment, as it were, in which the Reimbodying Ego clothes itself. Both the physical body or Sthula-sarira and the model-body or Linga-sarira are destined for molecular and even atomic decomposition when no longer vitalized by the organic psycho-electric currents that flow from the 'overshadowing' and irradiating Reimbodying Ego. Likewise the life-atoms of the Prana or 'electrical field' permeating and having their seat in both the physical and model-body, in very large part fly back instantly, at the moment of physical dissolution, to the natural pranic reservoirs of the planet -- or, what comes to the same thing, so far as the first stages of this process are concerned, they are diffused and dissipated into the surrounding atmosphere. (367)
During earth-life man is and also uses a 'human soul,' which is the child or product of heaven and of earth, so to say, to wit: of the monadic spiritual splendor and force on the one hand, and of the substantial forces and qualities of matter on the other hand, combined. During life this 'human soul' functions as the vehicle of the superior parent, the Monadic Ego, as a 'stepping-down' agency, to use a modern electrical term, of the otherwise too great and subtil forces of the Monadic Essence. This 'human soul' is a 'transformer'; it transforms, as it were, monadic spiritual energy into what we may call the soul-energy of the man during his life; and this soul-energy it is which is the 'human being' whom we all know. Now when the body dies, and the lower portions of the human constitution are abandoned, later to fall apart, while the Monadic Ray or Reimbodying Ego rejoins its sublime source, the Monad, is there no intermediate part which remains of the man who was? There is indeed, but we cannot longer call it a man, because 'man' means the human being as we knew him during earth-life; nor can we truly call this intermediate part a soul any longer.
During earth-life, this 'soul' is not by any means a fully evolved god, nor even a more or less self-conscious 'spirit,' but is in fact an entity intermediate between a god on the one superior extreme and a life-atom at the lower or inferior extreme. Being a composite entity, partaking as before said of both 'heaven' and 'earth,' (368) it obviously is not immortal because no composition can endure for aye. 'Immortality' for so imperfect and relatively unevolved an entity as the human soul is during physical earth-life would be about the worst hell that could possibly be imagined as befalling any unfortunate being. This becomes clear enough to any thinking mind when it is realized that perpetual continuity of an imperfect and therefore erring and in consequence suffering entity, is not only impossible in itself, but, if it were possible to make the impossible possible, it would indeed be a hell to continue forever in imperfections and restrictions and the consequent servitudes attendant thereupon. Mother Nature takes far better care of things than this entirely erroneous idea suggests, because all of Nature's processes are, fundamentally, wholly and unexceptionally harmonious and for the ultimate best.
Thus then, in answer to the question of the penultimate paragraph, what indeed remains is a composite center of transitory consciousness -- an intermediate center of consciousness composed on the lower side of all the man's ingrained and habitual passions and whims and selfishnesses and hates and lower loves, and of other similar things; and on the higher side composed of the spiritual radiance of the part which has already gone and which even yet, post-mortem, sheds of its radiance upon this intermediate center, thus more or less electrifying it by the spiritual energy of the Monadic Ray that is already speeding home to its own high realm; and it is this faint spiritual electrification which causes a temporary coherence of the life-atoms of the intermediate composite even as such coherence existed -- but then far more strongly than now -- during the life-time of the man before death.
Now, this intermediate nature is obviously not a complete man. Imagine a man from whom all the best that is in him has gone, has fled away, and nothing but the lower passional and emotional and higher ordinary human parts remain. It is clear enough that such a being is fit neither for 'heaven' (if there were such a place), nor for 'hell' (if there were such a place). This intermediate and highly composite entity, which is more ethereal than the model-body above spoken of, remains in the Kama-loka, and in a state of stupor, as it were; it is not exactly self-conscious; it is rather more like a human being in a dreamy trance. Moreover, there is no suffering, nor is there pain -- at least not for the man who has lived a normal and decent life on Earth. This surviving 'shell' -- for such in truth it is -- of the human ego or soul remains in this state of quasi-unconscious stupefaction for a greater or less length of time until the process of disintegration or dissolution of its component life-atoms is completed.
As time passes the mild radiance of the departed Reimbodying Ego which had at first more or less electrified it so that it retained a state of quasi-consciousness, slowly fades out, the said radiance being withdrawn upwards to rejoin the Reimbodying Ego from which it had originally come; and as this fading radiance leaves the 'shell' disintegration or dissolution of the atoms of the latter proceeds in ever-increasing degree. (369)
Now the separation of the Radiance of the Reimbodying Ego from its lower astral parts -- these lower astral parts becoming the shell above spoken of -- follows strictly the same natural laws that were operative when the physical body and the model-body were cast off and each began to disintegrate or dissolve into its component elements. This separation of the Radiance of the Reincarnating Ego from the kama-rupa is what the Ancients called the 'second death.' Plutarch in his highly esoteric essay 'On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon,' speaks in rather veiled but yet to the Theosophist plainly understandable language of this 'second death.' These lower portions of the intermediate nature remain in the etheric or astral spheres as the 'shell' or 'spook.'
The process of separation takes place on the psycho-mental plane of consciousness to which the human ego is native: in other words, on the plane which is the home of the human soul. The process of separation is automatic, although indeed the consciousness of the Reimbodying Ego nevertheless takes its part in aiding the separation because of its steady aspiration upwards, aided by the equally intense attraction of the spiritual spheres upon it. Thus what was once kama-rupa, being now deprived of the higher parts of the human constitution which inhere in the Reimbodying Ego, remains in the Astral Light as the 'shell.' It is this 'shell' which legend and story in the various ancient world-religions or philosophies speak of as the 'Shade,' which it is customary in the Occident to call the 'ghost' -- though a far more accurate term is 'spook.' This 'spook' is in form the exact simulacrum or image or copy of the man as he was in earth-life -- at least for a certain period after the Radiance of the Reimbodying Ego has abandoned it or cast it off. But at this point of separation, disintegration of the 'shell' instantly begins, and the appearance of the 'shell' or 'spook' after a few months, and much more so after a year or two, is excessively unpleasant to contemplate, for it is in very fact an astral corpse and is as unbeautiful and disgusting to look upon as would be the corpse of the physical body after the expiration of the same length of time.
It might be added here that one of the strongest arguments in favor of cremation of the physical cadaver or corpse of the human being lies in the fact that it aids the dissolution of the model-body, which thus is no longer attracted magnetically to the decaying corpse, and its dissolution is correspondingly hastened. Furthermore, the 'shade' or 'shell' likewise undergoes more speedy dissolution when there is no decaying physical corpse with which it can exchange life-atoms.
Meanwhile, during and from the beginning of the decay of the astral shell, the higher part, the Radiation previously spoken of, is ascending through the superior spheres or rather planes -- which in this case are 'planes' of consciousness even more strongly than they are planes in space -- in order to rejoin the spiritual Monad and Reimbodying Ego which in its turn is the Radiance of the Monad. This radiance is attracted thither because of the characteristics of the life inherent in it, this life, as is obvious, being spiritual. The eternal Spiritual draws us ever onwards and upwards.
FOOTNOTES:
364.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love -- but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come
unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the
dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
-- WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass,
'Memories of President Lincoln'
365. We must always remember in discussing the nature and characteristics of the devachanic experiences, that the Devachan is not an objective World or Sphere or Plane, but is wholly and entirely a series of states or conditions of the consciousness itself, which weaves around itself these mayavi or illusory -- however exquisitely beautiful and restful they may be -- 'pictures' or 'visions' which are the apparent reflexions of its own internal activities. Consequently, the Devachan is in each and every individual case an individual Devachan for the one who experiences it, although it should be obvious enough that just because human beings so often closely resemble each other in their respective functioning consciousness, therefore their respective Devachans are likewise closely similar.
Thus a man whose entire lifetime has been passed, or at least very largely passed, in unfulfilled yearnings or hopes or aspirations of a philosophical type, or of a scientific character, or of a religious color, or of a musical nature, etc., etc., will have a Devachan which will be exactly and precisely correspondential to the dominating flow of his consciousness during earth-life, and hence he will be involved in solving to his utmost interior satisfaction the most complex philosophical problems that vexed him when on Earth, or will achieve amazing scientific successes in his imagination in penetrating into Nature's most secret recesses, or will dream that he understands and has union with the most difficult religious thoughts or problems, or will be enwrapped in the most exquisite musical harmonies, etc., etc.
Just as a man while imbodied will not uncommonly dream at night of what he has most powerfully imagined or thought of during his waking hours, good or bad as the instances may be, so will the disimbodied Reincarnating Ego in the Devachan follow in his consciousness those trains of thought and feeling which were most dominant and had the least chance of fulfilment in his life lived on Earth, but in this case, in the Devachan, it being the so-called Heaven-world, all his dreams of bliss and happiness and peace are of the loftiest and most ecstatically beautiful kind possible to the innate energies of his dreaming consciousness. (return to text)
366. On p. 187 of The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett occurs the following:
"That remembrance will return slowly and gradually toward the end of the gestation (to the entity or Ego), still more slowly but far more imperfectly and incompletely to the shell, and fully to the Ego at the moment of its entrance into the Devachan."
The "remembrance" here referred to by the Master K. H. is the panoramic vision, or reviewing of the events of the past life, described in the paragraphs of the text above. This occurs in every normal human being at least twice after death, and in some cases three times, and has reference to the experience of different parts of the excarnate constitution. The "gestation" mentioned in the extract from The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett was a word used in those early days of the Theosophical Society in order to signify the preliminary preparation of the Reimbodying Ego entering into its devachanic condition or state of consciousness; just as the gestation of a child precedes its birth on Earth into physical life, so there is a gestation of the devachanic entity before it enters into the devachanic state.
The "shell" in the extract above quoted refers to the kama-rupic entity or 'spook' which is cast off at the 'second death,' which second death takes place shortly preceding the entrance of the Ego into the devachanic state, and therefore at the end of the gestation-period alluded to. The meaning is that after death the 'fourfold' entity -- fourfold because it has cast off the lower triad -- is in a more or less unconscious, or semi-conscious, or dreamlike state; and the panoramic vision or remembrance returns slowly to the Ego at the end of the gestation-period preceding the Devachan; but in completion when the gestation-period is ended and when the entity stands as it were on the devachanic threshold. The remembrance returns very imperfectly and incompletely, however, to the kama-rupic shell and more or less at the time the kama-rupic shell is first dropped by the rising Reimbodying Ego; and this remembrance is and must be incomplete and imperfect, because the shell, being a mere garment, although to a certain extent vitalized and therefore quasi-conscious like the physical body, obviously can retain no complete or full recollection of all the past life, because it is incapable of retaining the spiritual and lofty intellectual vistas of the life just lived. These last inhere in the Reimbodying Ego. The "remembrance" is of necessity, therefore, 'imperfect' and 'incomplete.'
On page 198 of The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett occurs the following:
"Deva Chan is a state, not a locality. Rupa Loka, Arupa-Loka, and Kama-Loka are the three spheres of ascending spirituality in which the several groups of subjective entities find their attractions."
The three spheres of "ascending spirituality" are, in their proper order, Kama-loka, Rupa-loka, and Arupa-loka, and are a brief way of expressing the three generalized conditions or states both of matter and of consciousness between the lowest astral and the highest devachanic spheres. Kama-loka is the lowest; the next higher is the Rupa-loka; and the highest of these three is the Arupa-loka. Kama-loka is the ordinary astral world, that portion of the Astral Light which is the world of shells, of cast-off kama-rupic entities or 'spooks'; and is itself divided into different steps or stages of ethereality, ascending from the lowest Kama-loka or that which is nearest to earth-condition. The Kama-loka then merges into the Rupa-loka, a Sanskrit phrase which means 'Form-world'; and the Rupa-loka is in this connexion the lower part or half, so to speak, of the devachanic sphere of being. The Rupa-loka in its turn is divided into ascending grades of ethereality, so that the highest of the Rupa-loka merges insensibly into the lowest of the Arupa-loka or 'Formless Sphere.' It is through these three 'spheres of ethereality' that the average excarnate entity passes in its post-mortem adventure, beginning at the moment of death -- but after the panoramic vision -- in the lowest part of the Kama-loka, and ending with the highest part of the Devachan. Although the Kama-loka, the Rupa-loka, and the Arupa-loka may be considered as actual localities or spheres because they are respective portions of the Astral Light, which is in another sense the Linga-sarira of the Earth, they are merely so because all the entities inhabiting them must have place or position in space. The Devachan per se is a series of states of consciousness just as the Avichi is.
On page 188 of The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett one reads:
". . . from the last step of devachan, the Ego will often find itself in Avitcha's faintest state, which, towards the end of the 'spiritual selection' of events may become a bona fide 'Avitcha.'"
"Avitcha" is of course a miswriting by the chela-amanuensis for Avichi. The "spiritual selection" of events is but a phrase, although extremely correct and highly graphic, which rather neatly describes the selecting by the devachanic entity, as it enters into the devachanic state, of all the spiritual and lofty intellectual vistas, events, together with all the spiritual emotions and aspirations, of the life last lived on Earth. If these vistas and events, etc., are few to re-collect or select, the devachanic state is not high and is undoubtedly a rupa-lokic Devachan. Similarly, if these vistas and events are extremely few, then the Devachan is so low or faint that it is practically the same as verging towards the highest part of Avichi; because the highest part of Kama-loka blends insensibly into the very lowest conditions or states of the Devachan, while the Kama-loka's lowest part blends insensibly into the highest conditions of the Avichi. In other words, there is no solution of continuity as between any two of these three; for both Devachan and Avichi are states: they can blend insensibly into each other. (return to text)
367. As stated before, it must not be thought that the physical human cadaver or corpse becomes a corpse -- or in other words that the body dies -- because of defect or deprivation of 'life,' for, as a matter of fact, the corpse is as full of life as it was before the moment that men call death. The difference between the two states is the following: during life the entire constitution of the human being is suffused with or permeated by the organic vital fluid originating in the substance of the Reimbodying Ego, which thus acts as a cohering factor for the entire constitution -- an organic 'electrical field' as it were in which all the life-atoms of all the planes of the human being's constitution, the physical body included, inhere and work both collectively and individually, and whose organic impulses and urges they obey because this organic vitality is individualized and dominant over all minor vital expressions. These minor vital expressions are the individual vitalities of each life-atom.
Thus it is that the dead physical body or corpse begins to decay or to dissolve because it is no longer under the cohering and unifying influence of the organic vital electrical field above mentioned; yet it is just as full as ever of the individual vitalities of the life-atoms, and because these life-atoms are no longer held in the cohering and dominating control or grip of the organic electrical field, they instantly begin, each one for itself, to work 'on its own,' so to speak, setting up as among themselves not only collective and individual attractions, but likewise collective and individual repulsions. It is the repulsions, mutually exercised among these life-atoms, which finally prevail, and very quickly too; and it is therefore this enormously large number of life-atoms repelling each other which brings about the breaking up and final complete dissolution of the corpse itself.
It may be added that one reason for the aging of the physical body even during the life-period is the intensity of the unceasing activities of the life-atoms which compose and build the body, and these activities, at times and as age progresses, become so strong that even the dominating and gripping influence of the organic electrical field above spoken of cannot always hold them in check. The consequence of this state of affairs is that the body-structure weakens with the atomic forces thus waxing within it, and is finally destroyed by them; and it is likewise these internal vital activities of the life-atoms held in insufficient check by the organic vitality which bring about many if perhaps not all of the various forms of disease of a lasting character. Cases of malignant disease are due to the same general cause but on account of specific and unusual circumstances are localized in some portion of the body where the power or control of the organic vitality becomes greatly weakened.
Thus it is that the body dies, as said above, not from a defect of life, but from a superabundance of it. During the growth-time of childhood and youth and early manhood, the entering or imbodying organic vitality flows in such flood of power that its unifying and cohering and building influences prevail over all opposition; but when the efflorescence of faculty and power has been reached, then begins, however feebly at first, the individual or distributive vital activities of the life-atoms as units, bringing about the phenomena or consequences attendant upon advancing age. Thus it is in fact life which finally kills the body, although it is perfectly true on the other hand, as stated in the text above, that death begins from within and proceeds outwards, and is, as stated, due to the gradual and progressive separation of the higher portions of the human constitution from the lower.
Yet there is one point in this rather complex picture of things which should be definitely included and it is the following: Old age need never be a period of decrement of the higher faculties, i. e., the spiritual and intellectual powers of the human being, because however much the process of separation is taking place, as it certainly is in every human being after middle age is passed, nevertheless precisely because the heavy flood of incoming vitality which manifests itself in youth is no longer so active as then, this gives the opportunity and the opening for the expression in the man's life of the best that is in him -- the spiritual and intellectual attributes above mentioned. The reason why so many people in advancing age seem to lose, and in many cases actually do lose, the mental powers of the flower of their life, is because of a weakened body usually brought about by the mistakes of youth and early adulthood, mistakes often arising in ignorance, which Nature however never overlooks; or in more rare cases because of vices which have never been subordinated and killed out. In the future, when the human race shall have advanced somewhat farther than now it is, old age will be universally considered to be the most beautiful period of earth-life because the fullest in intellectual and psychical and spiritual power, and it will remain so until within a few short hours before actual physical death occurs. (return to text)
368. As a great Greek philosopher said in substance:
"Everyone of us is a spiritual World, and we are joined to this material sphere by the material elements in us, and to the Divine Spirit (Nous) by our highest -- our spiritual part. By all our noetic (spiritual) part we abide permanently in the Highest, while we are chained to the lower parts by the lower ranges of the spiritual in us."
-- PLOTINUS: Enneads, 'Our Guardian Spirit,' III, iv, 3
369. In addition to the observations contained in the text above, the following reflexions and points of the teaching may have a distinct interest of their own, and are in consequence subjoined in the present footnote.
The excarnate entity, the person who has died, remains in the Kama-loka just as long as his karmic deserts call for his being there, and not one instant longer. Very spiritual men pass through the Kama-loka quickly. In certain cases they pass so quickly through the Kama-loka that they are scarcely cognisant or aware of it. But men who have lived lives on Earth grossly material and enwrapped in the appetites of the flesh -- or, speaking with more accuracy, plunged in the passions and mental appetites of the intermediate 'soul' -- and who have regularly indulged these propensities, and whose desires after death in consequence are of the earth earthly, naturally feel these strong attractions to material existence, and the Kama-loka, at least in its lower ranges, is a very material state of being. The sojourn of these last in the Kama-loka may not be thirty or forty or fifty years only, or less, but may be a hundred years or more in duration.
There is also the case of men who die on the battlefield doing what they thought was their duty. When the normal term of life of the physical body, had it lived to its end, is reached in the Kama-loka -- i. e., when the time is reached which would have been the normal life of the physical body had it not died prematurely, then there is a quasi-return to consciousness in the Kama-loka, although this consciousness is both diffuse and indistinct, and the normal processes that occur to excarnate entities in the Kama-loka then begin to take place.
Kama-loka is not a terrible place, nor in any sense of the word one of suffering and pain for normal beings, although the cases of those who have been genuinely wicked and debased on Earth are again different from the norm, for their awakening in the Kama-loka is in certain instances fairly complete. Indeed, earth-life itself for the averagely good and decent man almost always contains far more suffering and pain, and in far larger degree, than anything that is experienced by the quasi-dreaming, scarcely semi-conscious entity in the Kama-loka. In the case of extremely evil men who have indulged their vicious propensities without restraint when in earth-life, the situation is naturally very different, as will be at once realized when it is remembered that the entire kama-lokic state or condition is immensely similar to the case of a man who dreams when he is asleep. The good man rarely has evil dreams, the thoroughly corrupt man scarcely ever has beautiful dreams, and the average man has dreams corresponding to his average character. Just so is it in the Kama-loka.
The author once knew a man who had crawled into a large tube -- heaven knows why he did it. He said afterwards that he had always had a fear of being in prison, and he thought he would conquer this fear by deliberately making himself face what he dreaded; and trying to do so he saw this tube and crawled into it. For some reason he was caught there. He could neither crawl back nor crawl forwards. This unfortunate claustrophobiac described afterwards the mental tortures that he endured inside that tube, stating that the psychic torture was simply beyond his words to describe -- a most vivid and most horrible nightmarish feeling. Now this man was by no means a bad man. Indeed, he was above the average in the virtues that arouse respect; but the experience he had will convey some idea of the post-mortem condition or state of the consciousness that awaits thoroughly bad and unregenerate men when they die, for their destiny is the lower or lowest ranges of the Kama-loka or higher ranges of Avichi. But even in these cases there is an end in due course of time, and an ensuing Devachan of low degree at the best, or an immediate reincarnation on Earth in the worst cases.
Kama-loka then is no place of punishment, no place of torture -- except in its very lowest range, as above stated, where it merges into or blends with the Avichi. It is, in fact, a condition of the consciousness happening to the excarnate human entity in the Astral Light and bringing about the karmic consequences of this entity's meeting with 'himself' in his own consciousness -- where he must meet the lower parts of himself. It is likewise in the Kama-loka that the higher or spiritual part of the excarnate entity must shake off or discard the lower part of himself before the former is freed and ready for its devachanic bliss and rest.
There are men and women who are actually in Kama-loka as a state of consciousness even while still alive in the physical body. Also there are people in the devachanic state of consciousness while living in the physical body, and these latter cases are far more numerous than is commonly realized. They dream their life away instead of living and acting and playing a man's part in the world -- dreaming a relatively useless life away, although it may be involved or plunged in beautiful day-dreams, whether it be in music, in philosophy, in poetry, in science, in religion -- enwrapped in the one consciousness-state, incognisant or nearly so of the world's heavy burthen of misery and pain, incognisant likewise of the lessons that must be learned and of the deeds that must be done on Earth, if we are to play our parts as men on the stage of life, which is what we are here for. The reference above is, of course, to life-dreaming. (return to text)