Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Reincarnation: A Study of the Human Soul
By J.A. Anderson
Post-Mortem States Of Consciousness
Since a recognition of the truth of the continuous evolution of the soul by means of Reincarnation precludes all such puerile and childish conceptions of Post- mortem states as the Christian's " heaven" and " hell," the Spiritualist's " Summerland," or the materialist's blank negations, it becomes necessary to examine into this phase of the Ego's existence from the view-point of the larger philosophy. As few men have evolved the ability to consciously penetrate during life to those inner planes where the Reincarnating Ego of necessity retires upon the death of its physical body, itfollows that the teachings con- cerning the Post-mortem states of consciousness are some- what ex cathedra. Nor is there anything derogatory to intellectual dignity in accepting statements of this nature from those who are in a position to know as sufficient evidence of the facts. We willingly accept the statements of astronomers, mathematicians, chemists, etc., as to facts beyond our reach physically, and often above our perception intellectually, because they are known to be experts by virtue of study along these particular lines. We are under equal obligations to accept information or facts con- cerning the spiritual aspects of our being from known stu- dents and experts in these fields. Both classes of data are equally capable of personal verification the one by the exercise of our intellectual, the other by our spiritual, faculties. And spiritual truths at first veiled by spiritual blindness may be perceived later by persistent cultivation of the spiritual faculties, for growth and power follow exercise of these as certainly as that using the ham- mer enlarges and strengthens the biceps of a blacksmith. However, information and knowledge concerning these post-mortem states are not purely, nor even largely, ex cathedra. The teaching has all the authority of a philosophic hypothesis which fully explains and synthesizes the phenomena within its proper territory. Were there no other reason for accepting it, the fact that it explains the chaotic phenomena of "spiritualism" would alone entitle it to our respectful consideration; and when to these are added large classes of cognate and quite unclassified supersensuous facts, it may be said to rest upon a strictly philosophic and scientific basis.
The Theosophic classification of these Post-mortem or ante-natal states is into Kama Loca, Devachan, and Nirvana terms borrowed from the Sanscrit because of the want of accurate English synonyms. These are simply states of consciousness, dependent upon the relation of Ego to its material vestments and environments. Our ordinary waking .consciousness is dependent upon and conditioned by the sense organs of the body, being the result, as pointed out in the chapter upon the Physiological Evidence of the Soul, of innumerable molecular shocks or changes arising chiefly without, but also within, the organism. Deprived of sense organs by death, conscious- ness depends upon the ability of the Ego to function upon interior planes of ethereal substance. The ordinary man has not evolved to the point of being able to do this, so that after complete separation from his lower and more truly "material" principles his consciousness becomes subjective a state analogous to pure dream, and undisturbed by any real, objective phenomena whatever. Before reaching this state of pure subjectivity, however, the con- sciousness has to pass through a process of gradually abandoning these lower vehicles. This condition of mixed objectivity and subjectivity is termed Kama Loca; that of pure, dreaming subjectivity, Devachan ; while Nirvana may be defined as consciousness upon planes so far interior to this one of molecular matter that he who enters it self-consciously can never return to lower worlds loses all possibility of response to molecular vibration. All are in their nature and essence subjective states of being, as, indeed, all consciousness necessarily is. The Conscious-Aspect of the Causeless Cause ever appears subjective in its relation to the Substance-Aspect, its material vehicle.
Since physical consciousness is manifested on the physical plane of matter, which latter to our senses is cer- tainly a place, in like manner Kama Loca consciousness, being limited to the lower astral plane of substance, may also be understood as connected with locality, that lo- cality being the Linga Sharira of the earth. But these associations of locality are not essential. The place where consciousness is experienced is nothing; the state itself, everything.
All states of consciousness, too, may be actually experienced while the body is on the physical plane, and all have their physical correspondences in our ordinary waking consciousness. An Arhat attains to Nirvana while yet in the physical body, because he has, through the efforts of his trained will, risen beyond the limitations of this vehicle for purely sensuous consciousness. An or- dinary man experiences Devachan on earth. The daydreamer, building "castles in the air," very closely ap proximates this condition, because his mind has cast off, for a time, its material fetters, and functions on an inner and more spiritual plane. The sensual and passionate man finds himself very closely approximating the Kama Loca state when yielding to the angry impulses of his lower nature, for the reason that his consciousness is then limited to the physical correspondence of that plane. The analogous states of day-dreaming, anger, or passion, are not accurately identical with Devachan or Kama Loca, for the reason that with the former states there is always the modification of the Thinking Principle through its connection with the body, while in the latter this union is severed by death, and the impeding action of our physical senses due to physical stimuli is withdrawn. Still, we will be best able to understand the nature of the real Kama Loca and Devachan by a close study of their physical analogies, for, as we have said, they are the actual states, excepting for this modification by the physical body and lower principles. It is the one center of consciousness, modified by the vehicle which expresses its dominating condition; while in the body, if in a passion, the Animal Soul, or vehicle for the expression of this form of mental energy, is of necessity used as a mechanic is compelled to take up a different tool when he wishes to cut from that he uses for polishing only. On the other hand, this passional vehicle could not be employed for devachanic day-dreams; one can not build castles in the air while in a furious passion. It must not be understood from the above that'' the Higher Ego ever gets into a passion, or in any similar emotional state, itself. All these passional activities belong to the consciousness of the various hierarchies synthe sized in man's body. The kama-manasic reflection of the Higher Ego is the agent by means of which the latter is brought into sense relations with this plane, and this center of consciousness vibrates from one to another of these vehicles under the impelling influence of the personal will. This personal will is the reflected will of the Higher Ego tainted and colored by the desires and delights of sen- suous existence. It is thus the offspring of the personal or kama-manasic consciousness, and represents the underlying motive which directs our whole personal existence. It is created by kama-manasic or brain thought, which thought arises out of the physical stimuli of sensuous existence. Thus is seen the nature of the intimacy between body and soul, and also the importance of controlling the kama-manasic or lower brain thought, or of not permitting these sensuous stimuli to engross the entire attention of this center of consciousness. "As a man thinks, so he is." If we continuously find ourselves getting into rages, it is not, as most of us delude ourselves into fancying, the result of an unhappy combination of environing circumstances, but because we live habitually upon this level. If our desires really ran in the direction of purity and spirituality, the same set of circumstances would arouse no corre- sponding vibrations within us ; we would be non-receptive to them, as completely as we now are to the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum.
Through all the psychic storms raging in the body, the Higher Ego is only a spectator, powerless to affect the result except as its lower reflection controls or yields to the tempest of vibrations arising in these rajasic elementals. The effect of permitting the center of consciousness to wander from plane to plane, according as this or that desire demands a hearing or clamors for its attention, is more far-reaching than is generally recognized. It is the karmic agent which is largely determining the conditions of our next subjective life as well as the following incarnation.
Perhaps a resort to object teaching may help to eluci- date this. Let us suppose man to be living within a hol- low sphere or globe, modeled after the fashion of that he now lives upon. Let us further suppose this globe to have a north and south pole that is, a spiritual and material extreme. An equator would then divide its upper spirit- ual from its lower material hemisphere. Below this equator would be the physical and Kama Loca consciousness; above, the devachanic and nirvanic. At the upper pole would be the ethereal, spiritual attraction of his Higher Self; at the lower, the kamic desires of his physical body, and each constantly exerting its utmost power to draw his kama-manasic center of consciousness to its own pole.
This kama-manasic center of consciousness may be likened to a smaller globe, ever oscillating within the greater one. Now it floats, under the impulse of some altruistic, spiritual impulse, far above the dividing equator into the spiritual region. In an instant it descends to material zones, as some earthly desire or fit of passion reaches it through the physical senses. Thus it ever vibrates to the impulses arising out of sensuous experiences unless controlled by the will, crossing the dividing line between the spiritual, permanent life, and the fleeting, physical one, perhaps a thousand times a day. With some exceptionally spiritual natures, the oscillation may be within the devachanic zone of consciousness for days or weeks, without ever touching the fatal equatorial line of animal appetites or selfish interests.
On the other hand, a gross sen sualist or materialist might keep his consciousness oscil- lating entirely below the line of spirituality for months, or even a lifetime. Carrying our illustration a step further, let us suppose this larger, or environing, globe to have the power of responding to and recording each visit made by the smaller globe, representing the kama-manasic conscious- ^ness, to any of its planes or zones, either devachanic or those of Kama Loca or Nirvana. Let us suppose, also, that this record takes the form of a kind of mental or thought-deposit within the greater globe, and which, under the accretion of numberless visits, grows into a thought fund, so to speak a memory-deposit, upon which the Higher Ego can draw in order to maintain a conscious connection with, or memory of, its last life on earth, during the interval which must elapse in Devachan before it can again descend into the world of causes by reincarnating. This fanciful thought-deposit roughly represents a fact in nature; for just as our physical brain responds to and records molecular vibrations, so do spiritual thoughts arid desires set up vibrations upon higher planes, and which are recorded upon their permanent tablets.
These illus trations, crude and imperfect as they of necessity are, enable us to catch a glimpse a shadowy conception, at any rate of the mutual inter-relation and interdependence of our life upon earth and that which awaits us after death. By them may be seen how we are daily and hourly cre- ating the conditions which, without the arbitrary inter- ference of any personal god, will determine our state in the next or subjective phase of our existence, as well as the conditions which will environ our next objective life. After death, when the physical vehicle of consciousness is destroyed, the soul, if it have not evolved the power of objective consciousness upon the inner, astral planes, is compelled to continue its existence in a subjective state. A blind man cannot see, nor a deaf one hear; they lack the physical organs. Therefore, when all of man's physical senses are annulled by death, either his consciousness is annihilated, as the materialists claim, or it uses inner senses to project the astral plane objectively, or it must become subjective that is to say, it must enter upon a dreaming state similar to that which obtains during life when the physical senses are paralyzed by sleep. Then what happens after death, returning to our globe illustration, would evidently be this: The grossly physical attraction at the lower pole being removed, the consciousness rises to that point in the globe where its mental deposits during life have been of sufficient amount to sustain it. It can no longer select its material vehicle by the self-conscious will, for this has become paralyzed by the disintegration of the lower Principles, through which it had been accustomed to function, and through its not yet having learned to function on spiritual planes and in spiritual vehicles.
If, now, the devachanic accretions preponderate, it floats to this zone, and remains until it has received its reward for, or rather exhausted the effects of, the altruistic and elevating thoughts and aspirations of its last life. If the Kama Loca deposits are in excess, there the consciousness remains until, having succeeded in separating itself from these, it rises to its devachanic stores, or, having none there, it again returns to earth and reincarnates, or slowly fades out upon this plane. But this preponderance of deposits does not mean simply an accurate physical or mental balancing of accounts a casting up of a debtor and creditor column. If this were so, few, perhaps, would reach Devachan. But, just as the material attraction was greatly in excess during life, through the physical or sensuous connection, so now the spiritual forces at the upper pole exercise a correspondingly increased influence when no longer counterbalanced by the body; so much so that Devachan is the almost universal state of the human soul after death. For the personal consciousness, the " I am I," not to be drawn into the safety of Devachan means, as we hinted above, the most terrible fate for it its utter and entire extinction.
Remember, the poles of our globe have more attributes than being merely higher and lower, or outer and inner. The great the all-important difference consists in that the one is eternal and everlasting, and the other mortal and impermanent. Therefore, we see but too plainly how that soul which has cultivated none but grossly material affinities during life will find itself over- poweringly drawn down into the abyss of matter and destruction at death. This is the true and esoteric meaning of the scriptural injunction to "lay up treasures in heaven." For the phrase, " Where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also," has a real and awful significance when read by the light of Theosophic teachings.
Herein is found the explanation and meaning of that mysterious tenet running through all religions the possibility of the eternal loss of the soul, which will be referred to later. It might be supposed that, since most souls live to a great degree upon the plane of sensuous desires, thereby laying up treasures of a highly undesirable nature, yet, as they pass almost without exception into the devachanic state after death, the effects or karma of these evil acts were thus avoided. Not so. This is just the mistake that Christianity makes when it translates its repentant murderer from the gallows to eternal bliss, by means of its unphilosophical and unjust vicarious atonement. Theosophy commits no such blunder. As the soul, having experienced the spiritual effects of the spiritual causes set up while in the body, or, having received its devachanic reward, descends to reincarnate in another body, it meets and carries forward to the new account the unbalanced debt of evil, in the shape of the skandhas of its former life. It is these which, following the reincarnating soul into its new body, largely determine the selection of that body, through the law of karma. As Madame Blavatsky explains, in relation to these skandhas, or karmic results of evil acts :* ' '
They are destroyed as the working stock in hand of the personality; they remain as karmic effects or germs, hanging in the air of the terrestrial plane, ready to come to life as so many avenging fiends, to attach themselves to the new personality of the Ego when it reincarnates." Thus we see the perfect justice and reasonableness of the Theosophic conception of these post-mortem states, as well as why we are daily and hourly influencing and determining our future states, both in and out of our future bodies. The man who finds himself in a diseased or deformed body, or a member of a depraved family, can not, in the light of karma, charge it to accident, nor injustice, nor to carelessness nor indifference on the part of some god, but must recognize it as a result of these karmic " fiends" these unexhausted causes created during his past incarnation which, having been set up there, have followed him into the only plane where they could be satisfied that of physical life. After death has separated the soul from its body, what is it that enters Kama Loca, and what that enters Devachan?
Man is constituted, as we have seen in its proper connection, of seven Principles, or vehicles for consciousness. To briefly recapitulate, these are : The physical body; its vitality, or Prana; the astral model of the physical body, or Linga Sharira; the passional center, or animal soul, com- mon to man and the animals, called Kama; the human soul, or Manas, having a higher and a lower aspect; the spiritual soul, or Buddhi; and Atma, or pure spirit. The three latter form the upper spiritual Triad, or the true reincarnating Ego. The remaining four form that which is known as the lower, or material, Quaternary. At death the body returns to the matter, or " earth," from whence it came; the vitality, or Prana, rebecomes one with its source the Jiva, or One Life; the Astral Body, or Linga Sharira, slowly fades out, also returning to its source.
The soul abandons these three Principles at once and forever when the body dies. But the conscious- ness still clings to kama is still, though deprived of kamic organs, kama-manasic, by reason of its long association with the body. There are thus, immediately after death, five Principles, including the dual aspects of Manas; in Kama Loca, where at once a process of separation begins. The clamor of the senses is stilled; and, no new impetus being given to Kama, its vibrations cease gradually to command the Ego's attention, and the latter becomes slowly separated or freed from the influence of this vehicle. Until this separation is accomplished, Devachan is impossible. When it is, which may take from a few moments to many years, according as the relative strength of the material or the spiritual in the soul, the higher Triad, with all of the late personality worthy of immortality, enters Devachan as a Triad, leaving two more Principles, or vehicles to become skandhas in Kama Loca. Thus we see man has become from a septenary on earth, a Triad in Devachan ; to rebecome a septenary upon his next reincarnation. Irt other words, the true man puts on a new body, just as he does here a new suit of clothes, only that the union is more intimate. It is as though one could not see without glasses, nor hear without a trumpet, etc., when all of these accessories would become part of his necessary clothing. In a similar way his lower Principles, or vehicles, simply relate him to matter, clothe him with a " coat of skin," by means of which he is brought into sensuous contact with material things. The Ego, then, must remain in Kama Loca until it is freed from sensuous desire, and fitted for the quiet bliss of dreaming Devachan. The actual states of consciousness immediately after death are thus described by Madame H. P. Blavatsky:*
' The Ego receives always according to its deserts. After the dis- solution of the body, there commences for it either a period of full, clear consciousness, a state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly dreamless sleep indistinguishable from annihilation; and these are the three states of conscionsness. Our physiologists find the cause of dreams and visions in an unconscious preparation for them in our waking hours; why cannot the same be admitted for our Post- mortem dreams ? I repeat it, death is sleep. After death there be- gins before the spiritual eyes of the soul, a performance according to a programme learned and very often composed unconsciously by ourselves, the practical carrying out of correct beliefs or illusions which have been created by ourselves.
A Methodist will be a Methodist, a Mussulman, a Mussulman, of course just for a time in a perfect fool's paradise of each man's creation and making." This is the key-note to these Post-mortem states as struck by a Teacher. We find no foolish nor impossible heaven nor hell described, but states analogous to and built upon our subjective life while in the body. Death is truly a sleep, wherein the dreams are pleasant or horrible according as we lay the foundation for them while in the physical form. But all Post-mortem, or even all subjective life, must not be included with those which are analogous to sleep. The opposite poles of being have a common state for the Ego that of being awake or vividly self-conscious ; only at the material pole it is the personality or Kama-Manasic consciousness which is awake, while at the spiritual pole it is the Individuality; or Reincarnating Ego, which is in this acutely self-conscious condition.
To the conscious- ness at either extremity, that of the other seems, perhaps, like sleep as compared with its own. But the intervening Kama Locaand devachanic conditions are a true sleep, as compared to both poles ; only in Kama Loca the dreams will be "chaotic," while in Devachan they will be as bright and as beautiful as the imagination of the Ego is able to construct out of the material stored up from the altruistic efforts, the spiritual aspirations, and the highest idealizations of its past life. Passing, now, to the separate consideration of the consciousness in Devachan, it is evident that, being entirely subjective and self-created, in a manner exactly corresponding to dreaming creations while in the body, no two devachanic experiences can be the same.
The dis- tinction of individuality remains as sharply drawn as while in the body. On attaining consciousness in Devachan we will take up our old life in our dream, without the faintest suspicion that its continuity has been interrupted. But how changed! Pain, suffering, hardships and sorrow will all have disappeared, as before a magician's wand. Again, as pointed out by Madame Blavatsky :* ' ' Devachan is an absolute oblivion of all that gave pain or sorrow in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanee lives its in- termediate cycle between two incarnations, surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in the companionship of every one it loved on earth. It has reached the fulfillment of all its soul yearnings. And thus it lives throughout long centuries an existence of unalloyed happiness which is the reward for its sufferings in earthlife. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted felicity, spanned only by events of still greater felicity in degree. ' '
"It is with those whom it has lost in the material form, and far, far nearer to them now than when they were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the Devachanee as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure, divine love is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity. Spiritual, holy love, is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once more in the same family group. Again we say, that love beyond the grave, illusion though you might call it, has a magic and divine potency which reacts on the living. A mother's Ego filled with love for the imaginary chil- dren it sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth that love will always be felt by the children of the flesh. It will manifest in their dreams, and often in various events in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time." The devachanic consciousness is also most lucidly ex- plained by another MASTER* of Eastern Wisdom.
Hewrites : " Devachan is not, cannot be, monotonous; for this would be contrary to all analogies and antagonistic to the laws and effects under which results are proportionate to antecedent energies. "There are two fields of casual manifestations: the objective and the subjective. The grosser energies find their outcome in the new personality of each birth in the cycle of evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of effects in Devachan. "The dream of Devachan lasts until Karma is satisfied in that direction, until the ripple offeree reaches the edge of its cyclic basin and the being moves into the next area of causes. " That particular one moment which will be most intense and upper- most in the thoughts of the dying brain at the moment of dissolution will regulate all subsequent moments.
The moment thus selected becomes the key-note of the whole harmony, around which cluster in endless variety all the aspirations and desires which in connection with that moment had ever crossed the dreamer's brain during his lifetime, without being realized on earth, the theme modelling itself on, and taking shape from, that group of desires which was most in- tense during life. "In Devachan there is no cognizance of time, of which the Deva- chanee loses all sense.
" (To realize the bliss of Devachan or the woes of Avitchi you have to assimilate them as we do.) "The a priori ideas of space and time do not control his perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy to dotage and death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the devachanee than she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far more than real bliss and happiness there than she does here, where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him. "To call the Devachan existence a 'dream' in any other sense than that of a conventional term, is to renounce forever the knowledge of the esoteric doctrine, the sole custodian of truth. As in actual earth life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and not death, but birth, birth into another " (To realize the bliss of Devachan or the woes of Avitchi you have to assimilate them as we do.) "The a priori ideas of space and time do not control his perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy to dotage and death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the devachanee than she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far more than real bliss and happiness there than she does here, where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him.
"To call the Devachan existence a 'dream' in any other sense than that of a conventional term, is to renounce forever the knowledge of the esoteric doctrine, the sole custodian of truth. As in actual earth life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and not death, but birth, birth into another personality, and the resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan and still another physical birth as a new personality. What the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of birth must be ever and ever run through until the being reaches the end of the seventh Round, or at- tains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, than that of a Buddha, and thus gets relieved for a round or two, having learned how to burst through the vicious circle and to pass into Para-nirvana.
"A colorless, flavorless personality has a colorless, feeble deva- chanic state. " There is a change of occupation, a continual change in Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with, this difference, that to the Deva- chanee this spiritual occupation is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth life; not the indefinite prolongation of that 'single instant,'personality, and the resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan and still another physical birth as a new personality. What the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of birth must be ever and ever run through until the being reaches the end of the seventh Round, or at- tains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, than that of a Buddha, and thus gets relieved for a round or two, having learned how to burst through the vicious circle and to pass into Para-nirvana. "A colorless, flavorless personality has a colorless, feeble deva- chanic state.
" There is a change of occupation, a continual change in Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with, this difference, that to the Deva- chanee this spiritual occupation is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth life; not the indefinite prolongation of that 'single instant,' but its infinite developments, the various incidents and events based upon and outflowing from that one ' single moment' or moments.
The dreams of the objective become the realities of the subjective existence. Two sympathetic souls will each work out its own devachanic sensations, making the other a sharer in its subjective bliss, yet each is dissociated from the other as regards actual mutual intercourse; for what companionship could there be between subjective entities which are not even as material as that Ethereal body the Mayavi Rupa ? "The stay in Devachan is proportionate to the unexhausted psychic impulse originating in earth life. Those whose attractions were pre- ponderatingly material will sooner be drawn back into rebirth by the force of Tanha.
Taiiha desire for sensuous existence. J. A. A.] " The reward provided by nature for men who are benevolent in a large, systematic way, and who have not focused their affections on an individual or speciality, is that if pure they pass the quicker for that thro' the Kama and Rupa lokas into the higher sphere of Trib- uvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its occupant. "Certainly, the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan), re- tains for a certain time proportionate to its earth life, a complete recollection of his life on earth, but it can never visit the earth from Devachan except in reincarnation. "'Who goes to Devachan?' The personal Ego, of course; but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego the combination of the 6th and 7th Principles which after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a new born babe.
The fact of his being reborn at all shows the pre- ponderance of good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma [of Evil] steps aside for the time being to follow him in his future earth reincarnation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this Devachan. ' Bad ' is a relative term for us as you were told more than once before and the Law of Retribution is the only law that never errs.
Hence all those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality go to the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded receive the effects of the causes produced by them. " Of course, it is a state, so to say, of intense selfishness, during which an Ego reaps the reward of his unselfishness on earth. He is completely engrossed in the bliss of all his personal earthly affections, preferences, and thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his meritorious actions. No pain, no grief, nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness : for it is a state of perpetual 'Maya.'
Since the conscious perception of one's Personality on Earth is but an evanescent dream, that sense will be equally that of a dream in the Devachan only a hundred-fold intensified; so much so, indeed, that the happy Ego is unable to see through the veil of evils, sorrows, and woes to which those it loved on earth may be subjected. It lives in that sweet dream with its loved whether gone before or yet remaining on earth ; it has them near itself, as happy, as blissful, and as innocent as the disembodied dreamer himself; and yet, apart from rare visions, the denizens of our gross planet feel it not. It is in this during such a condition of complete Maya that the souls or astral Egos of pure, loving sensitives, laboring under the same delusion, think their loved ones come down to them on earth, while it is their own spirits that are raised towards those in the Devachan.
"Yes, there are great varieties in the Devachan states, and all find their appropriate place. As many varieties of bliss as on Earth there are of perception and of capability to appreciate such reward. It is an ideal paradise ; in each case of the Ego's own making, and by him filled with the scenery, crowded with the incidents, and thronged with the people he would expect to find in such a sphere of compensative bliss. And it is that variety which guides the temporary per- sonal Ego into the current which will lead him to be reborn in a lower or higher condition in the next world of causes. Everything is so harmoniously arranged in nature especially in the subjective world that no mistake can be ever committed by the Tathagatos who guide the impulses.
" Devachan is a 'spiritual condition' only as contrasted with our own grossly material condition; and, as already stated, it is such de- grees of spirituality that constitute and determine the great varieties of conditions within the limits of Devachan. A mother from a sav- age tribe is not less happy than a mother from a royal palace, with her lost child in her arms ; and altho', as actual Egos, children pre- maturely dying before the perfection of their septenary entity do not find their way to Devachan, yet all the same, the mother's loving fancy finds her children there without one missing that her heart yearns for. Say it is but a dream; but, after all, what is objective life itself but a panorama of vivid unrealities ?
The pleasure realized by a red Indian in his 'happy hunting grounds' in that land of dreams is not less intense than the ecstacy felt by a connoisseur who passes aeons in the rapt delight of listening to divine symphonies by imaginary angelic choirs and orchestras. As it is no fault of the former if born a ' savage' with an instinct to kill tho' it caused the death of many an innocent animal why, if with it all he was a lov- ing father, son, husband why should he not also enjoy his share of reward ? The case would be quite different if the same cruel acts had been done by an educated and civilized person, from a mere love of sport. The savage in being reborn would simply take a low place in the scale, by reason of his imperfect moral development ; while the Karma of the other would be tainted with moral delinquency. . .
"Remember, that we ourselves create our Devachan, as also our Avitchi, while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and even moments of our intellectual sentient lives. That feeling which is strongest in us at that supreme hour, when, as in a dream, the events of a long life to their minutest details are marshalled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our vision,* that feeling will be- come the fashioner of our bliss or woe, the life-principle of our future existence. In the latter we have no substantial being, but only a present and momentary existence, whose duration has no bearing upon, no effect nor relation to its being, which, as every other effect of a transitory cause, will be as fleeting, and in its turn will vanish and cease to be. The real, full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the minor cycle not before. . . . .
" Unless a man loves well, or hates well, he need not trouble himself about Devachan ; he will be neither in Devachan nor Avitchi. ' Nature spews the lukewarm out of her mouth' means only that she annihilates their personal Egos (not the Shells, nor yet the 6th Principle) in the, Kama L/oca and the Devachan. This does not prevent them from being immediately reborn, and if their lives were not very, very bad, there is no reason why the eternal Monad should not find the page of that life intact in the Book of Life." In Kama Loca there is no entity after the separation of the three higher Principles, as described, has taken place. Ordinarily, the interval required for this separation is of brief duration, as compared with the following period in Devachan. But we can easily see that a soul which has lived entirely on the material plane, which has created strong affinities for the grossly physical pleasures of life, will find itself unable to enter the devachanic sleep until these have loosened their hold. When this separation is completed, however, this which was an entity becomes a nonentity. As the Key says:
"Then the kamarupic phantom, remaining bereft of its informing, thinking principle, the higher Manas, and the lower aspect of the latter, the animal intelligence, no longer receiving light from the higher mind, and no longer having a physical brain to work through, collapses. It falls into the state of a frog when certain portions of its brain are taken out by the vivisector. It can think no more, even on the lowest animal plane. ' ' It is in a condition similar to a permanently hypnotized man. The intelligence which animated it is withdrawn. It is a mere bundle of desires and passions, slowly disin- tegrating, or changing into " skandhas," or effects, waiting to attach themselves to the new personality which the Higher Ego enters upon reincarnating.
If it float, or is attracted into the aura of a " medium," it may be galvanized into apparent consciousness; but this is only apparent. Just as a hypnotized person will obey the will and reflect the thoughts of the hypnotizer, being at the same time utterly unconscious of that which he is doing, so may these " shells," as they are termed, reflect information or opinions from the mind of the medium, or of any person present. Still there is a Kama Loca entity, proper, which is the "lost soul," to which reference has been made. As we have seen, there may be those who have evolved no possibilities of a continued life in Devachan, with its succeeding reincarnation. Cultivating none but Kama Loca affinities during physical life, the soul finds itself irresistibly drawn downwards to this zone after death, leaving nothing to enter Devachan. Its consciousness therefore remains in Kama Loca, an actual, though evil, entity. Such a soul partakes so closely of the earth condition that it is semi- if not wholly, conscious of itself and of its state, especially when it is able to approximate still more closely the earth consciousness through the aura of a medium.
This Being realizes that he has nothing before him but the certainty of eternal extinction, and clings to his Kama Loca life with all the tenacity of a drowning man to the handful of earth he has grasped in slipping down the banks of the fatal stream. He it is who haunts " circles," and renews his fading stock of vitality from the life forces of his admiring and unconscious victims. It is he who materializes ; who preaches mock sentimental morality, while compelling his. medium to practice exactly the reverse. Being allied to evil while in the body, he remains an evil force without the body until dissolution overtakes him for the second and last time. For immortality to be assured, the attraction from the spiritual pole of our being must not be severed, which will be the case if our consciousness does not rise above the fatal equatorial line of materiality when freed from the body by death. As no soul could reincarnate if there were not in its consciousness enough physical attraction, or longing for sensuous life, to draw it again within material limits when its spiritual tendencies become exhausted in Devachan, so neither can it rise to the permanent and immortal pole of its existence if there is not in its consciousness enough of spiritual attraction to take it above the material planes of being when its body is removed by death.
There is nor can be no " forgiveness" nor "vicarious atonement" in the matter; it is a plain case of cause and effect. Such a " lost soul" has surrendered itself entirely to the play of material law, and it can but submit to the destruction and disintegration which await all that find expression below the line of permanency and stability. Remember that analogy holds on all planes; that just as our personal consciousness vibrates during one physical life above and below the line dividing the material from the spiritual, so, in its greater cycle, the true man, or Reincarnating Ego, is also vibrating between these poles each incarnation being but a single vibration. Now a personality drags it towards the material pole; now an other elevates it far in the direction of the spiritual. Andjust as the personality has in its vibrations but one end in view the union with its Higher Ego so this Higher Ego has in its reincarnating vibrations the sole object of unit- ing with its Higher Self, or with the Divine Consciousness of Atma-Buddhi. This union of the Higher Ego with its Higher Self is one aspect of Nirvana, and this is why an Adept attains Nirvana during life.
His personal consciousness has united itself to his Higher Ego/ and this Higher Ego, united to the Higher Self, enables him to thus experience temporarily Nirvanic consciousness. Of Nirvana, we of undeveloped spiritual perception can of necessity know but very little. It is only to correct popular misconception that it is referred to here at all. Able Sanscrit scholars have defined it as "annihilation of consciousness." This is because Western thought has become so infected with materialism that it recognizes only material or personal consciousness. This is annihilated; and in its annihilation we find supreme happiness, for it enables us to attain to the immortality of true spiritual consciousness. In the non-recognition of spiritual consciousness, or consciousness unlimited by the illusions of matter, lies the source of the Western misapprehension of the term " Nirvana." As the human consciousness rises more and more toward the spiritual pole of its being, it becomes, pari passu, less limited by matter, with its darkness and grossness, and finds its area of perception continuously widening, until, upon reaching Nirvana, it has become one with the Whole. It has not, by any means, lost its individuality, but its consciousness has become so marvelously widened that it embraces the whole of manifested nature.
If this glorious enlargement of perception and consciousness, until nature has no further secrets hidden from our enlightened senses, can be called annihilation, then is our human consciousness annihilated; not otherwise. There is an infinity of difference between the annihilation of our puerile personal consciousness, and CONSCIOUS rest in Omniscience. All these states Nirvana, Kama Loca, and Devachan have no hard and fast lines which separate them from each other. On the contrary, each is subdivided into an infinity of minor planes, the upper of which pass by inappreciable gradations into the next succeeding ones.
Therefore Devachan in nowise resembles the Christian's heaven in its dreary sameness, nor does Kama Loca plunge all into the one pit of flaming brimstone. In like manner, Nirvana, while interchaining its lower planes with the upper of Devachan, passes from thence through such an innumerable succession of higher zones that we find a variety of definitions of it given, and all correct from the point of view taken. Thus, in the Secret Doctrine and other writings of Madame Blavatsky, we find Nirvana spoken of as a synonym for the laya state, or " that of the dissociation of all substances merged after a life cycle into their original condition of latency." Again, it is stated that as Devachan is a state of rest between two lives, in like manner Nirvana is a state of rest intervening between two world chains. As this would imply the dissociation of matter, it would agree with the preceding definition, while as each world chain includes almost an infinity of conscious progress, so the Nirvana preceding and follow- ing any one of them would differ widely in its degree of consciousness, while still answering to the definition.
In another reference it is stated that Buddhists teach that only " two things are objectively eternal Nirvana and Akasa," which again throws a side light, so to speak > upon this state. Farther on, we are told that a Nirvanee can not return during the manvantara to which he belongs, which, as his consciousness has become dissociated from matter as we know it, again agrees with the first definition. Again, in the "Voice of the Silence," we are told that Nirvana its lower planes, no doubt, being meant is a plane of exalted spiritual selfishness, if struggled for and obtained while the great mass of one's fellow- men are" still suffering in the bonds of matter. Thus it is taught in India that Buddha and several of his Arhats re- fused to enter Nirvana, after having won the right to it; but out of their great compassion for mankind remain as Nirmanakayas in order to help its upward progress. Returning to the question of annihilation in Nirvana, Madame Blavatsky, in the Secret Doctrine, says:
" To see in Nirvana annihilation amounts to saying of a man plunged in sound, dreamless sleep one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is in its original state of Absolute Consciousness during these hours that he, too, is annilated. The latter simile answers to only one side of the question the most material; since reabsorption is by no means such a dreamless sleep, but, on the contrary, absolute existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state to describe which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. Nor is the individuality, nor even the essence of the personality, if any be left behind, lost be- cause reabsorbed. For however limitless from a human standpoint the p^ranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in eternity. Once reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plan, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind cannot in its present stage of development transcend, scarcely reach, this plane of thought. It totters here on the brink of incomprehensible absoluteness and eternity.
" In conclusion, it will become apparent from this portion of our study that we create the conditions which control our Post-mortem states while we are yet within the physical body; that life in and out of the body pursues its eternal course in obedience to the absolute law of cause and effect, to which it forms no exception ; and that therefore man can not enter upon a wiser course of study than that which relates to his own nature, origin and destiny. The object of our most strenuous exertions ought to be to transfer our consciousness from the impermanent to the permanent; from the mortal, to the immortal. So long as our personal consciousness is limited to sensuous planes, so long must the subjective cycles of our existence be passed in an unconscious, sleep-like condition, with the possibility of perishing at any time by being drawn permanently within the attraction of matter. Or it might be caught by some cataclysmic, physical change in one of these unconscious subjective states, and eons of ages elapse before another opportunity be afforded for such an undeveloped Ego to again take up the evolution of its consciousness. Suppose our world went into Pralaya before certain souls had attained to true, or spiritual self- consciousness.
During this Pralaya there would be an universal Nirvana for the whole of humanity, owing to the dissociation of matter a period of world rest, analogous to the night's rest between days, or the devachanic between lives. But such undeveloped souls would have to enter Nirvana as they now do Devachan, unconscious, ex- cept for this false, sleep-like consciousness, which must soon exhaust its material, even if it can utilize it here at all; and then what? There is no more an earth fitted for them to continue their efforts awaiting the termination of the devachanic sleep, and they must remain unconscious during the whole sweep of Nirvanic duration. Hear the same Teacher:*
' ' But there is a great difference between conscious and unconscious being. The condition of Paranirvana without Paramartha, the self- analyzing consciousness, is no bliss, but simply extinction (for seven eternities). Thus an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated through, but will not appreciate the warmth, while man will. It is only with a mind clear and undarkened by personality, and the assimilation of the merit of manifold existence devoted to being in its collectivity (the whole living and sentient universe), that one gets rid of personal existence, merging into and becoming one with the Absolute, and continuing in full possession of Paramartha.
