The Theosophical Forum – November 1943

FULFILMENT IN DEATH — G. de Purucker

A human spirit is a deathless entity; it is a part of the very fabric of the Life Universal in its inmost parts; and this spirit of man, this inner being, this spiritual soul, is pursuing an eternal pilgrimage in space, infinite in space and eternal in time. It passes from mansion to mansion of life . . . not only in this cross-section of the physical universe which our imperfect eyes can see, but most especially in the invisible realms: in what men call the spiritual worlds. . . .

But this god within, an eternal pilgrim, learns eternally, going higher and higher and higher; and like human races on earth which, after reaching their culmination of splendor in civilizations, fall to rise again, so does the Monad, the god, the spiritual soul, pass from the spiritual worlds down into ethereal matter, learning in each, and rising again out of each in order to reach a still higher peak of destiny; then down into the ethereal material realms again: then another rise to something still more lofty and sublime — and so on forever. . . . — pp. 77-8

After death, the nobler, brighter, purer, sweeter, seeds of character, the fruitage, the consequence, of our yearnings for beauty and for harmony and for peace, carry us into the realms where harmony and beauty and peace abide. And these realms are spheres just as earth is, but far more ethereal and far more beautiful: for the veils of matter are thinner, the sheaths of material substance there are not so thick as here. The eye of the spirit sees more clearly. Death releases us from one world, and we pass through the portals of change into another world, precisely as the inverse takes place when the incarnating soul leaves the realms of finer ether to come down to our own grosser and material earth-life into the heavy body of physical matter. . . . — p. 65

Death is an absolute sleep, a perfect sleep, a perfect rest; sleep is an incomplete death, an imperfect death. . . .

In going to your bed and in lying down and in losing consciousness, have you ever feared? No. It is so natural; it is so happy an occurrence; it is so restful. Nature rests and the tired brain reposes; and the inner constitution, the "soul" if you like so to call it, is temporarily withdrawn during the sleeping period into the higher consciousness of the human being — the ray, so to speak, is absorbed back into the inner spiritual sun.

Just exactly the same thing takes place at death; but in death the worn-out garment is cast aside; the repose also is long, utterly beautiful, utterly blissful, filled with glorious and magnificent dreams, and with hopes unrealized which now are realized in the consciousness of the spiritual being. This dreaming condition is a panorama of the fulfilment of all our noblest hopes and of all our dreams of unrealized spiritual yearnings. It is a fulfilment of them all in glory and bliss and perfect completion and plenitude. — pp. 55-57

Death is birth, birth; and instead of the wrench that there actually is in the case of youth when death comes, death to our old ones comes in peace and quiet, stealing like an angel of mercy into their
being, releasing the bonds binding the soul to its vehicle of flesh; and the passage is as quiet and gentle as the coming of the twilight preceding night, and it is a blessed sleep. — p. 30

Love is the most beauteous, the holiest, thing known to human beings. It gives to man hope; it holds his heart in aspiration; it stimulates the noblest qualities of the human being, such as the sacrifice of self for others; it brings about self-forgetfulness; it brings also peace and joy that know no bounds. Love shows the Way and lights the Path; Love is the flowing forth of the permeant light, the Buddhic Splendor — the Christ-light — at the heart of the Universe: that love which, working in gods and men, teaches us to know beauty when we see it, especially inner beauty, to recognise greatness and splendor in others, from knowing the greatness and splendor in our own inmost being.

Love holds all things in place and in eternal keeping; its very nature is celestial Peace, its very characteristic is cosmic Harmony, permeating all things, boundless, deathless, infinite, eternal. — pp. 107-8

Selections from G. de Purucker's Golden Precepts of Esotericism: a reading given at the memorial service for Captain John R. Beaver, late General Manager of Theosophical Headquarters, May 23, 1943, and reprinted by special request.



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