_Theosophical Manuals. No. 3. _

 DEATH--AND AFTER?

 BY

 ANNIE BESANT. 

 (20TH THOUSAND)

 Theosophical Publishing Society

 London and Benares

 City Agents, Percy Lund Humphries & Co. 

 Amen Corner, London, E. C. 

 1906

 _PRICE ONE SHILLING_

PREFACE. 

_Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the third of a series of Manuals designed to meet the publicdemand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some havecomplained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that thepresent series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps amongthose who in these little books catch their first glimpse of itsteachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetratemore deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facingits abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte'sardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student, whomno initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy menand women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of thegreat truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of ourrace, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men. _

DEATH--AND AFTER?

Who does not remember the story of the Christian missionary inBritain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king, surrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel ofhis Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a birdflew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight, and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christianpriest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall thetransitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed thesoul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into thedarkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more gloriousworld. Out of the darkness, through the open window of Birth, the lifeof a man comes to the earth; it dwells for a while before our eyes;into the darkness, through the open window of Death, it vanishes outof our sight. And man has questioned ever of Religion, Whence comesit? Whither goes it? and the answers have varied with the faiths. To-day, many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin, thereare more people in Christendom who question whether man has a spiritto come anywhence or to go anywhither than, perhaps, in the world'shistory could ever before have been found at one time. And the veryChristians who claim that Death's terrors have been abolished, havesurrounded the bier and the tomb with more gloom and more dismalfuneral pomp than have the votaries of any other creed. What can bemore depressing than the darkness in which a house is kept shrouded, while the dead body is awaiting sepulture? What more repellent thanthe sweeping robes of lustreless crape, and the purposed hideousnessof the heavy cap in which the widow laments the "deliverance" of herhusband "from the burden of the flesh"? What more revolting than theartificially long faces of the undertaker's men, the drooping"weepers", the carefully-arranged white handkerchiefs, and, untillately, the pall-like funeral cloaks? During the last few years, agreat and marked improvement has been made. The plumes, cloaks, andweepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse isalmost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over withflowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men andwomen, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up inshapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see howmiserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificialdiscomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne, and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances tonatural human grief. 

In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regardingDeath has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been paintedas a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threateningfigure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shakingan hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered roundthis rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much withhis stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modernChristianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificentdiction to surround with horror the figure of Death. 

 The other shape, If shape it might be called, that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast, With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode. .. . . .. So spoke the grisly terror: and in shape So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold More dreadful and deform. .. . . .. But he, my inbred enemy, Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out _Death!_ Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded _Death_. [1]

That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followersof a Teacher said to have "brought life and immortality to light" ispassing strange. The claim, that as late in the history of the worldas a mere eighteen centuries ago the immortality of the Spirit in manwas brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the faceof the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands. The stately Egyptian Ritual with its _Book of the Dead_, in which aretraced the post-mortem journeys of the Soul, should be enough, if itstood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous a claim. Hear the cry of the Soul of the righteous:

 O ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your arms, for I become one of you. (xvii. 22. )

 Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Light, dwelling in the mighty abode, in the bosom of the absolute darkness. I come to thee, a purified Soul; my two hands are around thee. (xxi. 1. )

 I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am in possession of my arms, I am in possession of my legs, at the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at the gates of Amenti. (xxvi. 5, 6. )

Not to multiply to weariness quotations from a book that is whollycomposed of the doings and sayings of the disembodied man, let itsuffice to give the final judgment on the victorious Soul:

 The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower divine region, he shall never be rejected. .. . He shall drink from the current of the celestial river. .. . His Soul shall not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation to those near it. The worms shall not devour it. (clxiv. 14-16. )

The general belief in Re-incarnation is enough to prove that thereligions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in thesurvival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example apassage from the _Ordinances of Manu_, following on a disquisition onmetempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance fromrebirths. 

 Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self [should be translated, knowledge of the _Self_, Atmā] is said (to be) the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences, since from it immortality is obtained. [2]

The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as isshown by the following, translated from the _Avesta_, in which, thejourney of the Soul after death having been described, the ancientScripture proceeds:

 The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at (the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal Lights. 

 To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshy dwellings, from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the imperishable, as it happened to thee--to whom hail!

 Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for) he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the separation of body and soul. [3]

The Persian _Desatir_ speaks with equal definiteness. This workconsists of fifteen books, written by Persian prophets, and waswritten originally in the Avestaic language; "God" is Ahura-Mazda, orYazdan:

 God selected man from animals to confer on him the soul, which is a substance free, simple, immaterial, non-compounded and non-appetitive. And that becomes an angel by improvement. 

 By his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he connected the soul with the material body. 

 If he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good knowledge and religion he is _Hartasp_. .. . 

 As soon as he leaves this material body, I (God) take him up to the world of angels, that he may have an interview with the angels, and behold me. 

 And if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from vice, I will promote him to the rank of angels. 

 Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find a place in the rank of wise men, among the heavens and stars. And in that region of happiness he will remain for ever. [4]

In China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestorsshows how completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyondthe tomb. The _Shū King_--placed by Mr. James Legge as the mostancient of Chinese classics, containing historical documents rangingfrom B. C. 2357-627--is full of allusions to these Souls, who withother spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendantsand the welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B. C. 1401-1374, exhorts his subjects:

 My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my ancestors (who are now) the spiritual sovereigns. .. . Were I to err in my government, and remain long here, my high sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me great punishment for my crime, and say, "Why do you oppress my people?" If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down on you great punishment for your crime, and say, "Why do you not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your virtue?" When they punish you from above, you will have no way of escape. .. . Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut you off and abandon you, and not save you from death. [5]

Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in thoselong-past ages, that "the change that men call Death" seems to play avery small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the FloweryLand. 

These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, maysuffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to "lightthrough the gospel". The whole ancient world basked in the fullsunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily, voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through thegate of Death. 

It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyouslyre-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror ofDeath that has played so large a part in its social life, itsliterature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that hassurrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had theirhells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowyFear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light andtrivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their variedunpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather thanof creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from itsantithesis, and that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodilesscondition too lacking in solidity of comfort; whereas the more dreamy, mystical East, prone to meditation, and ever seeking to escape fromthe thraldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on thedisembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive tounfettered thought. 

Ere passing to the consideration of the history of man in thepost-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state theconstitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we musthave in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand theirdisintegration. Man then consists of

_The Immortal Triad_:

Atmā. Buddhi. Manas. 

_The Perishable Quaternary_:

Kāma. Prāna. Etheric Double. Dense Body. 

The dense body is the physical body, the visible, tangible outer form, composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the etherealcounterpart of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prāna isvitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physicalmolecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is thelife-breath within the organism, the portion of the universalLife-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existencethat we speak of as "a life". Kāma is the aggregate of appetites, passions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinkerin us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atmā, theSpirit, dwells, and in which alone it can manifest. 

Now the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternaryis Manas, which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, andfunctions as Higher Manas and Lower Manas. Higher Manas sends out aRay, Lower Manas, which works in and through the human brain, functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinatingintelligence. This mingles with Kāma, the passional nature, thepassions and emotions thus becoming a part of Mind, as defined inWestern Psychology. And so we have the link formed between the higherand lower natures in man, this Kāma-Manas belonging to the higher byits mānasic, and to the lower by its kāmic, elements. As this formsthe battleground during life, so does it play an important part inpost-mortem existence. We might now classify our seven principles alittle differently, having in view this mingling in Kāma-Manas ofperishable and imperishable elements:

 { Atmā. _Immortal_. { Buddhi. { Higher-Manas. 

_Conditionally Immortal_. Kāma-Manas. 

 { Prāna. _Mortal_. { Etheric Double. { Dense Body. 

Some Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this, declaring Spirit to be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul tobe conditionally immortal, _i. E. _, capable of winning immortality byuniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently mortal. The majorityof uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishesat Death, and the something--called indifferently Soul orSpirit--that survives Death. This last classification--ifclassification it may be called--is entirely inadequate, if we are toseek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of thephenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man'snature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, butis inadequate to explain many phenomena. The septenary division alonegives a reasonable theory consistent with the facts we have to dealwith, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will dowisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only thebody, and desired to understand its activities, he would have toclassify its tissues at far greater length and with far moreminuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn thedifferences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous, epithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if herebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, itwould be explained to him that only by such an analysis of thedifferent components of the body can the varied and complicatedphenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wantedfor support, another for movement, another for secretion, another forabsorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its owndistinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, andphysical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time isgained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technicalterms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying toexplain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, Ifind myself compelled--contrary to my habit in these elementarypapers--to resort to these technical names at the outset, for theEnglish language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use oflong descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient. 

For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between theadherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism hasarisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding ofeach others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently saidthat he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant bySpirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was notbody. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists ofbone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: "Oh! I meaneverything that is not bone. " A clear definition of terms, and a rigidadherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all tounderstand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitfulcomparison of experiences. 

THE FATE OF THE BODY. 

The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and ofreconstruction. First builded into the etheric form in the womb of themother, it is built up continually by the insetting of freshmaterials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it;with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it. The outgoingstream is scattered over the environment, and helps to rebuild bodiesof all kinds in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, the physical basis of all these being one and the same. 

 The idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless _lives_, just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic. .. . Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organism of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, robes, ęrobes, anęrobes, and what not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man, is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, chemical Science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal _invisible lives_ compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle--whether you call it organic or inorganic--_is a life_. [6]

These "lives" which, separate and independent, are the minute vehiclesof Prāna, aggregated together form the molecules and cells of thephysical body, and they stream in and stream out, during all the yearsof bodily life, thus forming a continual bridge between man and hisenvironment. Controlling these are the "Fiery Lives, " the Devourers, which constrain these to their work of building up the cells of thebody, so that they work harmoniously and in order, subordinated to thehigher manifestation of life in the complex organism called Man. TheseFiery Lives on our plane correspond, in this controlling andorganising function, with the One Life of the Universe, [7] and whenthey no longer exercise this function in the human body, the lowerlives run rampant, and begin to break down the hitherto definitelyorganised body. During bodily life they are marshalled as an army;marching in regular order under the command of a general, performingvarious evolutions, keeping step, moving as a single body. At "Death"they become a disorganised and tumultuous mob, rushing hither andthither, jostling each other, tumbling over each other, with no commonobject, no generally recognised authority. The body is never morealive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead inits totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism. 

 Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the Materialist, the only difference between a living and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent. When it is extinct or entirely latent, the molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an intense vital energy. .. . Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which compose it are living and struggle to separate. "[8]

Those who have read _The Seven Principles of Man_, [9] know that theetheric double is the vehicle of Prāna, the life-principle, orvitality. Through the etheric double Prāna exercises the controllingand co-ordinating force spoken of above, and "Death" takes triumphantpossession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawnand the delicate cord which unites it with the body is snapped. Theprocess of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and definitelydescribed. Thus Andrew Jackson Davis, "the Poughkeepsie Seer", describes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, andhe states that the magnetic cord did not break for some thirty-sixhours after apparent death. Others have described, in similar terms, how they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying body, graduallycondensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiringperson, and attached to that person by a glistening thread. Thesnapping of the thread means the breaking of the last magnetic linkbetween the dense body and the remaining principles of the humanconstitution; the body has dropped away from the man; he isexcarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as hisconstitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body, being left as a cast-off garment. 

Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, orunsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, oneafter the other, its outer casings, and--as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis--emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness. Now it is the fact thatthis escape from the body, and this dwelling of the conscious entityeither in the vehicle called the body of desire, the kāmic or astralbody, or in a yet more ethereal Thought Body, can be effected duringearth-life; so that man may become familiar with the excarnatedcondition, and it may lose for him all the terrors that encircle theunknown. He can know himself as a conscious entity in either of thesevehicles, and so prove to his own satisfaction that "life" does notdepend on his functioning through the physical body. Why should a manwho has thus repeatedly "shed" his lower bodies, and has found theprocess result, not in unconsciousness, but in a vastly extendedfreedom and vividness of life--why should he fear the final castingaway of his fetters, and the freeing of his Immortal Self from what herealises as the prison of the flesh?

This view of human life is an essential part of the EsotericPhilosophy. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. Thisliving flame, passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itselfcoverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the Triad, theAtmā-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends outits Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body, or kāmic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double andthe physical body. The once free immortal Intelligence thus entangled, enswathed, enchained, works heavily and laboriously through thecoatings that enwrap it. In its own nature it remains ever the freeBird of Heaven, but its wings are bound to its side by the matter intowhich it is plunged. When man recognises his own inherent nature, helearns to open his prison doors occasionally and escapes from hisencircling gaol; first he learns to identify himself with theImmortal Triad, and rises above the body and its passions into a puremental and moral life; then he learns that the conquered body cannothold him prisoner, and he unlocks its door and steps out into thesunshine of his true life. So when Death unlocks the door for him, heknows the country into which he emerges, having trodden its ways athis own will. And at last he grows to recognise that fact of supremeimportance, that "Life" has nothing to do with body and with thismaterial plane; that Life is his conscious existence, unbroken, unbreakable, and that the brief interludes in that Life, during whichhe sojourns on Earth, are but a minute fraction of his consciousexistence, and a fraction, moreover, during which he is less alive, because of the heavy coverings which weigh him down. For only duringthese interludes (save in exceptional cases) may he wholly lose hisconsciousness of continued life, being surrounded by these coveringswhich delude him and blind him to the truth of things, making thatreal which is illusion, and that stable which is transitory. Thesunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out ofit into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the periodof our incarceration; at Death we step out of the prison again intothe sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. Short are the twilightperiods, and long the periods of the sunlight; but in our blindedstate we call the twilight life, and to us it is the real existence, while we call the sunlight Death, and shiver at the thought of passinginto it. Well did Giordano Bruno, one of the greatest teachers of ourPhilosophy in the Middle Ages, state the truth as to the body and Man. Of the real Man he says:

 He will be present in the body in such wise that the best part of himself will be absent from it, and will join himself by an indissoluble sacrament to divine things, in such a way that he will not feel either love or hatred of things mortal. Considering himself as master, and that he ought not to be servant and slave to his body, which he would regard only as the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue which smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands, stocks which fix his feet, veil which hides his view. Let him not be servant, captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid, and blind, for the body which he himself abandons cannot tyrannise over him, so that thus the spirit in a certain degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter is subject to the divinity and to nature. [10]

When once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it wegain our liberty, Death loses for us all his terrors, and at his touchthe body slips from us as a garment, and we stand out from it erectand free. 

On the same lines of thought Dr. Franz Hartmann writes:

 According to certain views of the West man is a developed ape. According to the views of Indian Sages, which also coincide with those of the Philosophers of past ages and with the teachings of the Christian Mystics, man is a God, who is united during his earthly life, through his own carnal tendencies, to an animal (his animal nature). The God who dwells within him endows man with wisdom. The animal endows him with force. After death, _the God effects his own release from the man_ by departing from the animal body. As man carries within him this divine consciousness, it is his task to battle with his animal inclinations, and to raise himself above them, by the help of the divine principle, a task which the animal cannot achieve, and which therefore is not demanded of it. [11]

The "man", using the word in the sense of personality, as it is usedin the latter half of this sentence, is only conditionally immortal;the true man, the evolving God, releases himself, and so much of thepersonality goes with him as has raised itself into union with thedivine. 

The body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives--previouslyheld in constraint by Prāna, acting through its vehicle the ethericdouble--begins to decay, that is to break up, and with thedisintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass awayinto other combinations. 

On our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countlesslives that in a previous incarnation made of our then body theirpassing dwelling; but all that we are just now concerned with is thebreaking up of the body whose life-span is over, and its fate iscomplete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death meansdissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united themany into one. 

THE FATE OF THE ETHERIC DOUBLE. 

The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body ofman. It is the double that is sometimes seen during life in theneighbourhood of the body, and its absence from the body is generallymarked by the heaviness or semi-lethargy of the latter. Acting as thereservoir, or vehicle, of the life-principle during earth-life, itswithdrawal from the body is naturally marked by the lowering of allvital functions, even while the cord which unites the two is stillunbroken. As has been already said, the snapping of the cord means thedeath of the body. 

When the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel toany distance from it. Normally it remains floating over the body, thestate of consciousness being dreamy and peaceful, unless tumultuousdistress and violent emotion surround the corpse from which it hasjust issued. And here it may be well to say that during the slowprocess of dying, while the etheric double is withdrawing from thebody, taking with it the higher principles, as after it has withdrawn, extreme quiet and self-control should be observed in the chamber ofDeath. For during this time the whole life passes swiftly in reviewbefore the Ego, the individual, as those have related who have passedin drowning into this unconscious and pulseless state. A Master haswritten:

 _At the last moment the whole life is reflected in our memory, and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners, picture after picture, one event after another. .. . The man may often appear dead, yet from the last pulsation, from and between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body_, the brain thinks, _and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his whole life. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a deathbed, and find yourselves in the solemn presence of death. Especially have ye to keep quiet just after death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest ye disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the past, casting its reflection upon the veil of the future. _[12]

This is the time during which the thought-images of the endedearth-life, clustering around their maker, group and interweavethemselves into the completed image of that life, and are impressed intheir totality on the Astral Light. The dominant tendencies, thestrongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stampthemselves as the characteristics which will appear as "innatequalities" in the succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of thelife-issues, this reading of the kārmic records, is too solemn andmomentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings ofpersonal relatives and friends. 

 At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the _personal_ become one with the _individual_ and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator, looking down into the arena he is quitting. [13]

This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric doublefloats above the body to which it has belonged, now completelyseparated from it. 

Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in theneighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turnedto some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at thelast, something left undone which needed doing, or when some localdisturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Underthese conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may beseen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousnessalluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive. 

As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengagethemselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as theypreviously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefoldentity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double, with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming anethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. Thisethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disintegratetogether; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in churchyards, sometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violetmists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend ofmy own, passing through the horribly repulsive stages ofdecomposition, a ghastly vision in face of which clairvoyance wascertainly no blessing. The process goes on _pari passu_, until all butthe actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completelydisintegrated, and the particles have gone to form other combinations. 

One of the great advantages of cremation--apart from all sanitaryconditions--lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of thephysical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, broughtabout by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual decomposition, swiftdissociation takes place, and no physical remnants are left, workingpossible mischief. 

The ethereal corpse may to some extent be revivified for a shortperiod after its death. Dr. Hartmann says:

 The fresh corpse of a person who has suddenly been killed may be galvanised into a semblance of life by the application of a galvanic battery. Likewise the astral corpse of a person may be brought back into an artificial life by being infused with a part of the life principle of the medium. If that corpse is one of a very intellectual person, it may talk very intellectually; and if it was that of a fool it will talk like a fool. [14]

This mischievous procedure can only be carried out in theneighbourhood of the corpse, and for a very limited time after death, but there are cases on record of such galvanising of the etherealcorpse, performed at the grave of the departed person. Needless to saythat such a process belongs distinctly to "Black" Magic, and is whollyevil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed byburning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence anda darkness that it is the worst profanity to break. 

KĀMALOKA, AND THE FATE OF PRĀNA AND KĀMA. 

Loka is a Sanskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land, so that Kāmaloka is literally the place or the world of Kāma, Kāmabeing the name of that part of the human organism that includes allthe passions, desires, and emotions which man has in common with thelower animals. [15] In this division of the universe, the Kāmaloka, dwell all the human entities that have shaken off the dense body andits ethereal double, but have not yet disentangled themselves from thepassional and emotional nature. Kāmaloka has many other tenants, butwe are concerned only with the human beings who have lately passedthrough the gateway of Death, and it is on these that we mustconcentrate our study. 

A momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of theexistence of regions in the universe, other than the physical, peopled with intelligent beings. The existence of such regions ispostulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts andto very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience;all that is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution ofthe faculties latent in every man; a "living" man, in ordinaryparlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies behind him, andexplore these regions without going through Death's gateway. Thus weread in the _Theosophist_ that real knowledge may be acquired by theSpirit in the living man coming into conscious relations with theworld of Spirit. 

 As in the case, say, of an initiated Adept, who brings back upon earth with him the clear and distinct recollection--correct to a detail--of facts gathered, and the information obtained, in the invisible sphere of _Realities_. [16]

In this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge asdefinite, as certain, as familiar, as if he should travel to Africa inordinary fashion, explore its deserts, and return to his own land thericher for the knowledge and experience gained. A seasoned Africanexplorer would care but little for the criticisms passed on his reportby persons who had never been thither; he might tell what he saw, describe the animals whose habits he had studied, sketch the countryhe had traversed, sum up its products and its characteristics. If hewas contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled critics, hewould be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave themalone. Ignorance cannot convince knowledge by repeated asseverationof its nescience. The opinion of a hundred persons on a subject onwhich they are wholly ignorant is of no more weight than the opinionof one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many consentingwitnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothingmultiplied a thousand times remains nothing. Strange, indeed, would itbe if all the Space around us be empty, mere waste void, and theinhabitants of earth the only forms in which intelligence could clotheitself. As Dr. Huxley said:

 Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. [17]

If these entities did not have organs of sense like our own, if theirsenses responded to vibrations different from those which affect ours, they and we might walk side by side, pass each other, meet each other, pass through each other, and yet be never the wiser as to each other'sexistence. Mr. Crookes gives us a glimpse of the possibility of suchunconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, and but a very slighteffort of imagination is needed to realise the conception. 

 It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to which our eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate other vibrations to which we are blind. Such beings would practically be living in a different world to our own. Imagine, for instance, what idea we should form of surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes not sensitive to the ordinary rays of light, but sensitive to the vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena. Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of medięval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption of fuel. [18]

Kāmaloka is a region peopled by intelligent and semi-intelligententities, just as our own is thus peopled; it is crowded, like ourworld, with many types and forms of living things, as diverse fromeach other as a blade of grass is different from a tiger, a tiger froma man. It interpenetrates our own world and is interpenetrated by it, but, as the states of matter in the two worlds differ, they co-existwithout the knowledge of the intelligent beings in either. Only underabnormal circumstances can consciousness of each other's presencearise among the inhabitants of the two worlds; by certain peculiartraining a living human being can come into conscious contact with andcontrol many of the sub-human denizens of Kāmaloka; human beings, whohave quitted earth and in whom the kāmic elements were strong, mayvery readily be attracted by the kāmic elements in embodied men, andby their help become conscious again of the presence of the scenesthey had left; and human beings still embodied may set up methods ofcommunication with the disembodied, and may, as said, leave their ownbodies for awhile, and become conscious in Kāmaloka by the use offaculties through which they have accustomed their consciousness toact. The point which is here to be clearly grasped is the existenceof Kāmaloka as a definite region, inhabited by a large diversity ofentities, among whom are disembodied human beings. 

From this necessary digression we return to the particular human beingwhose fate, as a type, we may be said to be tracing, and of whosedense body and etheric double we have already disposed. Let uscontemplate him in the state of very brief duration that follows theshaking off of these two casings. Says H. P. Blavatsky, after quotingfrom Plutarch a description of the man after death:

 Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a _septenary_ during life; a _quintile_ just after death, in Kāmaloka. [19]

Prāna, the portion of the life-energy appropriated by the man in hisembodied state, having lost its vehicle, the ethereal double, which, with the physical body, has slipped away from its controlling energy, must pass back into the great life-reservoir of the universe. As waterenclosed in a glass vessel and plunged into a tank mingles with thesurrounding water if the vessel be broken, so Prāna, as the bodiesdrop from it, mingles again with the Life Universal. It is only "justafter death" that man is a quintile, or fivefold in his constitution, for Prāna, as a distinctively human principle, cannot remainappropriated when its vehicle disintegrates. 

The man now is clothed, but with the Kāma Rūpa, or body of Kāma, thedesire body, a body of astral matter, often termed "fluidic, " soeasily does it, during earth-life, take any form impressed upon itfrom without or moulded from within. The living man is there, theimmortal Triad, still clad in the last of its terrestrial garments, inthe subtle, sensitive, responsive form which lent it during embodimentthe power to feel, to desire, to enjoy, to suffer, in the physicalworld. 

 When the man dies, his three lower principles leave him for ever; _i. E. _, body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the etheric body, or the double of the living man. And then his four principles--the central or middle principle (the animal soul or Kāma Rūpa, with what it has assimilated from the lower Manas) and the higher Triad--find themselves in Kāmaloka. [20]

This desire body undergoes a marked change soon after death. Thedifferent densities of the astral matter of which it is composedarrange themselves in a series of shells or envelopes, the densestbeing outside, shutting the consciousness away from all but verylimited contact and expression. The consciousness turns in on itself, if left undisturbed, and prepares itself for the next step onwards, while the desire body gradually disintegrates, shell after shell. 

Up to the point of this re-arrangement of the matter of the desirebody, the post-mortem experience of all is much the same; it is a"dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness, " as before said, and this, inthe happiest cases, passes without vivid awakening into the deeper"pre-devachanic unconsciousness" which ends with the blissful wakeningin Devachan, for the period of repose that intervenes between twoincarnations. But as, at this point, different possibilities arise, let us trace a normal uninterrupted progression in Kāmaloka, up to thethreshold of Devachan, and then we can return to consider otherclasses of circumstances. 

If a person has led a pure life, and has steadfastly striven to riseand to identify himself with the higher rather than the lower parts ofhis nature, after shaking off the dense body and the etheric double, and after Prāna has re-mingled with the ocean of Life, and he isclothed only with the Kāma Rūpa, the passional elements in him, beingbut weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not beable to assert themselves strongly in Kāmaloka. Now during earth-lifeKāma and the Lower Manas are strongly united and interwoven with eachother; in the case we are considering Kāma is weak, and the LowerManas has purified Kāma to a great extent. The mind, woven with thepassions, emotions, and desires, has purified them, and hasassimilated their pure part, absorbed it into itself, so that all thatis left of Kāma is a mere residue, easily to be gotten rid of, fromwhich the Immortal Triad can readily free itself. Slowly this ImmortalTriad, the true Man, draws in all his forces; he draws into himselfthe memories of the earth-life just ended, its loves, its hopes, itsaspirations, and prepares to pass out of Kāmaloka into the blissfulrest of Devachan, the "abode of the Gods", or as some say, "the landof bliss". Kāmaloka

 Is an astral locality, the Limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a _locality_ only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area, nor boundary, but exists _within_ subjective space, _i. E. _, is beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists, and it is there that the astral _eidolons_ of all the beings that have lived, animals included, await their _second death_. For the animals it comes with the disintegration and the entire fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the human _eidolon_ it begins when the Atmā-Buddhi-Mānasic Triad is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state. [21]

This second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from thekāmalokic sphere, so closely related to the earth sphere, into thehigher state of Devachan, of which we must speak later. The type ofman we are considering passes through this, in the peaceful dreamystate already described, and, if left undisturbed, will not regainfull consciousness until these stages are passed through, and peacegives way to bliss. 

But during the whole period that the four principles--the ImmortalTriad and Kāma--remain in Kāmaloka, whether the period be long orshort, days or centuries, they are within the reach of theearth-influences. In the case of such a person as we have beendescribing, an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow anddesires of friends left on earth, and these violently vibrating kāmicelements in the embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desirebody of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas, notyet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the SpiritualIntelligence. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vividremembrance of the earth-life so lately left, and may--if anysensitive or medium is concerned, either directly, or indirectlythrough one of these grieving friends in communication with themedium--use the medium's etheric and dense bodies to speak or write tothose left behind. This awakening is often accompanied with acutesuffering, and even if this be avoided, the natural process of theTriad freeing itself is rudely disturbed, and the completion of itsfreedom is delayed. In speaking of this possibility of communicationduring the period immediately succeeding death and before the freedMan passes on into Devachan, H. P. Blavatsky says:

 Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases--when the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for some purpose forced the higher consciousness _to remain awake_, and, therefore, it was really the _individuality_, the "Spirit", that communicated--has derived much benefit from the return of the Spirit into the _objective_ plane is another question. The Spirit is dazed after death, and falls very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic unconsciousness. "[22]

Intense desire may move the disembodied entity to spontaneously returnto the sorrowing ones left behind, but this spontaneous return is rarein the case of persons of the type we are just now considering. Ifthey are left at peace, they will generally sleep themselves quietlyinto Devachan, and so avoid any struggle or suffering in connectionwith the second death. On the final escape of the Immortal Triad thereis left behind in Kāmaloka only the desire body, the "shell" or mereempty phantom, which gradually disintegrates; but it will be better todeal with this in considering the next type, the average man or woman, without marked spirituality of an elevated kind, but also withoutmarked evil tendencies. 

When an average man or woman reaches Kāmaloka, the spiritualIntelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possessesconsiderable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwovenwith Kāma during the earth-life just ended, having lived much in theenjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions, cannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, andreturn to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence aconsiderable delay in the world of transition, in Kāmaloka, while thedesires wear out and fade away to a point at which they can no longerdetain the Soul with their clinging arms. 

As said, during the period that the Immortal Triad and Kāma remaintogether in Kāmaloka, communication between the disembodied entity andthe embodied entities on earth is possible. Such communication willgenerally be welcomed by these disembodied ones, because their desiresand emotions still cling to the earth they have left, and the mind hasnot sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein fullsatisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towardskāmic gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations ofearth-life, and can by these yearnings be drawn back to the scenes ithas regretfully quitted. Speaking of the possibility of communicationbetween the Ego of the deceased person and a medium, H. P. Blavatskysays in the _Theosophist_, [23] as from the teachings received by herfrom the Adept Brothers, that such communication may occur during twointervals:

 Interval the first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as Bar-do. We have translated this as the "gestation" period [pre-devachanic]. 

Some of the communications made through mediums are from this source, from the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere--acruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing anelement of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. Theperiod in Kāmaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is fed and itshold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Souldeferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-limeof earth. 

Persons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulatedtheir animal passions, and have full fed the desire body while theyhave starved even the lower mind--these remain for long, denizens ofKāmaloka, and are filled with yearnings for the earth-life they haveleft, and for the animal delights that they can no longer--in theabsence of the physical body--directly taste. These gather round themedium and the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their owngratification, and these are among the more dangerous of the forces sorashly confronted in their ignorance by the thoughtless and thecurious. 

Another class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives onearth have been prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act ofothers, or by accident. Their fate in Kāmaloka depends on theconditions which surrounded their outgoings from earthly life, for notall suicides are guilty of _felo de se_, and the measure ofresponsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of suchhas been thus described:

 _Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh principles, and quite potent in the séance room, nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf. The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative, whereas in cases of_ accidental death _the higher and the lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not the_ direct _result of an act deliberately committed by the_ personal _Ego of that life during which he happened to be killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive justice. The Dhyān Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before it is matured and made fit and ready for it. _

These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate withthose in earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, thegood and innocent sleep happily till the life-period is over. Butwhere the victim of an accident is depraved and gross, his fate is asad one. 

 _Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about (not shells, for their connection with their two higher principles is not quite broken) until their_ death-_hour comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them vicariously. They are the Pishāchas, the Incubi and Succubę of medięval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice--Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their hellish impulses, at last--at the fixed close of their natural period of life--they are carried out of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction. 

 * * * * *

 Now the causes producing the "new being" and determining the nature of Karma are Trishnā (Tanhā)--thirst, desire for sentient existence--and Upādāna, which is the realisation or consummation of Trishnā, or that desire. And both of these the medium helps to develop_ ne plus ultra _in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several short years" within the earth's attraction--_i. E. _, the Kāmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the Kāmaloka not "a few years, " but in his case sixty or seventy years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker, " since he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell. " Happy, thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnā will attract them to mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an easy Upādāna. For, in grasping them and satisfying their thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they entice the latter into a Upādāna, which will be productive of untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its nefarious shadow, and that with every séance, especially for materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than ever--they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their hospitality. _

Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or byvoluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay inKāmaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on themotive that cut short the life. 

 _There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the penalty of Māyā. The "vices" will not escape their punishment; but it is the_ cause, _not the effect, that will be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable effect. As well call a man a "suicide" who meets his death in a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study". Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him away. In such a case no one ought to cross the_ Kālapāni, _nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint in it and drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should a man do his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable and highly beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is everything, and man is punished in a case of direct responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the natural hour of death was anticipated_ accidentally, _while in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of temporary insanity is_ not _a_ felo de se, _to the great grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kāmaloka, but falls_ asleep _like any other victim. _

The population of Kāmaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarlydangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter intoKāmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, withunsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member ofsociety, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far moredangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but inits present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against thesecond. 

Finally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, andpasses out of Kāmaloka; the Higher Manas draws back its Ray, colouredwith the life-scenes it has passed through, and carrying with it theexperiences gained through the personality it has informed. Thelabourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing hissheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life. When the Triad has quitted Kāmaloka, it passes wholly out of thesphere of earth attractions:

 _As soon as it has stepped outside the Kāmaloka--crossed the "Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains"--the Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums. _

There are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, thatwill be explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of theordinary medium and cannot be recalled into the earth-sphere. But erewe follow the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fateof the now deserted desire body, left as a mere _reliquum_ inKāmaloka. 

KĀMALOKA. THE SHELLS. 

The Shell is the desire body, emptied of the Triad, which has nowpassed onwards; it is the third of the transitory garments of Soul, cast aside and left in Kāmaloka to disintegrate. 

When the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been ofaverage purity and utility, this Shell retains but little vitalityafter the passing onwards of the Triad, and rapidly dissolves. Itsmolecules, however, retain, during this process of disintegration, theimpressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency tovibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during thatperiod. Every student of physiology is familiar with what is termedautomatic action, with the tendency of cells to repeat vibrationsoriginally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what we termhabits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were donewith thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, aseveryone knows by experience, it is difficult to break off the use ofa phrase or of a gesture that has become "habitual. "

Now the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and therespondent to all stimuli from without, and it also continuallyreceives and responds to stimuli from the lower Manas. In it are setup habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar vibrations, vibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences ofall kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may thedesire body repeat a familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triadhas left it, this automatism remains, and the Shell may thus simulatefeelings and thoughts which are empty of all true intelligence andwill. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at _séances_ come fromsuch Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives bythe magnetic attractions so long familiar and dear, and automaticallyresponding to the waves of emotion and remembrance, to the impulse ofwhich they had so often answered during the lately closed earth-life. Phrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of past events, willbe all the communications such Shells can make, but these may beliterally poured out under favourable conditions under the magneticstimuli freely applied by the embodied friends and relatives. 

In cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been stronglyattached to material objects and to intellectual pursuits directed bya self-seeking motive, the desire body may have acquired a veryconsiderable automatism of an intellectual character, and may giveforth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the markof non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality willonly give out reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new andindependent thought which would be the inevitable outcome of a strongintelligence working with originality amid new surroundings. Intellectual sterility brands the great majority of communicationsfrom the "spirit world"; reflections of earthly scenes, earthlyconditions, earthly arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seekin vain for strong, new thought, worthy of Intelligences freed fromthe prison of the flesh. The communications of a loftier kindoccasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-humanIntelligences, attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium orsitters. 

And there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells. Just because they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to theimpulses that strike on them from without, and easily become maliciousand mischievous, automatically responding to evil vibrations. Thus amedium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the Shellsthat flock around them with impulses of a low order, and any animaldesires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations inthe blindly responsive Shells. 

Again, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, thesemi-conscious forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may beused by them as a convenient vehicle for many a prank and trick. Theetheric double of the medium, and the desire bodies emptied of theirimmortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals can workmany a curious and startling result; and frequenters of _séances_ maybe confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childishfreaks with which they are familiar--pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing onaccordions, &c. --are not more rationally accounted for as the trickyvagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, while in the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities. 

Let us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into theirelements, and mingle once again in the crucible of Nature. The authorsof the _Perfect Way_ put very well the real character of the Shell. 

 The true "ghost" consists of the exterior and earthly portion of the Soul, that portion which, being weighted with cares, attachments, and memories merely mundane, is detached by the Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or less definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a sensitive, converse with the living. It is, however, but as a cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of endurance _as ghost_. The true Soul and real person, the _anima divina_, parts at death with all those lower affections which would have retained it near its earthly haunts. [24]

If we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants inKāmaloka that we should seek them. "Why seek ye the living among thedead?"

KĀMALOKA. THE ELEMENTARIES. 

The word "Elementary" has been so loosely used that it has given riseto a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H. P. Blavatsky:

 Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary habitation is the Kāmaloka. .. . Once divorced from their higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their Kāma Rūpic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kāmaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements. [25]

Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for thelower Manas to so entangle itself with Kāma as to wrench itself awayfrom its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as "the loss ofthe Soul. "[26] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self, which has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and hasthus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separateditself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a trueElementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then, clad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shortertime according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing, dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by anymeans laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodiedsouls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work muchevil on its way to its self-chosen doom. 

The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lowerManas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higherPrinciples, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas. Such Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless ormischievous. 

Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and socause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted tothe desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas bedisentangling itself from the kāmic elements, in order that it may bere-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, andtherefore on the road to destruction. 

DEVACHAN. 

Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy, there are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found moredifficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthān, theDevaland, or land of the Gods. [27] And one of the chief difficultieshas arisen from the free use of the words illusion, dream-state, andother similar terms, as denoting the devachanic consciousness--ageneral sense of unreality having thus come to pervade the wholeconception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the presentearthly life as Māyā, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once putsdown the phrases as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be lessillusory, he thinks, than this world of buying and selling, ofbeefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied to astate beyond Death--a state which to him is misty and unreal in hisown religion, and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all thesubstantial comforts dear to the family man--then he accepts the wordsin their most literal and prosaic meaning, and speaks of Devachan as adelusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well, therefore, onthe threshold of Devachan to put this question of "illusion" in itstrue light. 

In a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. Allphenomena are literally "appearances", the outer masks in which theOne Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more"material" and solid the appearance, the further is it from Reality, and therefore the more illusory it is. What can be a greater fraudthan our body, so apparently solid, stable, visible and tangible? Itis a constantly changing congeries of minute living particles, anattractive centre into which stream continually myriads of tinyinvisibles, that become visible by their aggregation at this centre, and then stream away again, becoming invisible by reason of theirminuteness as they separate off from this aggregation. In comparisonwith this ever-shifting but apparently stable body how much lessillusory is the mind, which is able to expose the pretensions of thebody and put it in its true light. The mind is constantly imposed onby the senses, and Consciousness, the most real thing in us, is apt toregard itself as the unreal. In truth, it is the thought-world that isthe nearest to reality, and things become more and more illusory asthey take on more and more of a phenomenal character. 

Again, the mind is permanent as compared with the transitory physicalworld. For the "mind" is only a clumsy name for the living Thinker inus, the true and conscious Entity, the inner Man, "that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike". The less deeplythis inner Man is plunged into matter, the less unreal is his life;and when he has shaken off the garments he donned at incarnation, hisphysical, ethereal, and passional bodies, then he is nearer to theSoul of Things than he was before, and though veils of illusion stilldim his vision they are far thinner than those which clouded it whenround him was wrapped the garment of the flesh. His freer and lessillusory life is that which is without the body, and the disembodiedis, comparatively speaking, his normal state. Out of this normal statehe plunges into physical life for brief periods in order that he maygain experiences otherwise unattainable, and bring them back to enrichhis more abiding condition. As a diver may plunge into the depths ofthe ocean to seek a pearl, so the Thinker plunges into the depths ofthe ocean of life to seek the pearl of experience; but he does notstay there long; it is not his own element; he rises up again into hisown atmosphere and shakes off from him the heavier element he leaves. And therefore it is truly said of the Soul that has escaped from earththat it has returned to its own place, for its home is the "land ofthe Gods", and here on earth it is an exile and a prisoner. This viewwas very clearly put by a Master of Wisdom in a conversation reportedby H. P. Blavatsky, and printed under the title "Life and Death. "[28]The following extracts state the case:

 _The Vedāntins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality because it is there that lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sūtrātmā. Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived one. .. . The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit, force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, their exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality itself, only imaginary. _

 Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the phantasm waking?

 _This comparison was made by me to facilitate your comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions it is perfectly accurate. _

Note the words: "From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions, " forthey are the key to all the phrases used about Devachan as an"illusion. " Our gross physical matter is not there; the limitationsimposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm, where towill is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Masterwas asked: "Would it not be better to say that death is nothing but abirth for a new life, or still better, a going back to eternity?" heanswered:

 _This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of material life the words "live" and "exist" are not applicable to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of their meanings, the Vedāntins would soon arrive at the ideas which are common in our times among the American Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not nominal, Christians so amongst the Vedāntins--the life on the other side of the grave is the land where there are no_ _tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, and where the just realise their full perfection. _

The dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has alwaysbeen very strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the farEast. Their constant effort has been to free the Thinker as far aspossible from the bonds of matter even while he is embodied, to openthe cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to it forawhile. They are ever seeking "to spiritualise the material", while inthe West the continual tendency has been "to materialise thespiritual". So the Indian describes the life of the freed Soul in allthe terms that make it least material--illusion, dream, and soon--whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptiveof the material luxury and splendour of earth--marriage feast, streetsof gold, thrones and crowns of solid metal and precious stones; theWestern has followed the materialising conceptions of the Hebrew, andpictures a heaven which is merely a double of earth with earth'ssorrows extracted, until we reach the grossest of all, the modernSummerland, with its "spirit-husbands", "spirit-wives", and"spirit-infants" that go to school and college, and grow up intospirit-adults. 

In "Notes on Devachan", [29] someone who evidently writes with knowledgeremarks of the Devachanī:

 _The_ ą 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 from dotage to death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the Devachanī than she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far more_ 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 for ever the knowledge of the Esoteric Doctrine, the sole custodian of truth. _

"Dream" only in the sense that it is not of this plane of grossmatter, that it belongs not to the physical world. 

Let us try and take a general view of the life of the Eternal Pilgrim, the inner Man, the human Soul, during a cycle of incarnation. Before hecommences his new pilgrimage--for many pilgrimages lie behind him in thepast, during which he gained the powers which enable him to tread thepresent one--he is a spiritual Being, but one who has already passed outof the passive condition of pure Spirit, and who by previous experienceof matter in past ages has evolved intellect, the self-conscious mind. But this evolution by experience is far from being complete, even so faras to make him master of matter; his ignorance leaves him a prey to allthe illusions of gross matter, so soon as he comes into contact with it, and he is not fit to be a builder of a universe, being subject to thedeceptive visions caused by gross matter--as a child, looking through apiece of blue glass, imagines all the outside world to be blue. Theobject of a cycle of incarnation is to free him from these illusions, sothat when he is surrounded by and working in gross matter he may retainclear vision and not be blinded by illusion. Now the cycle ofincarnation is made up of two alternating states: a short one calledlife on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into grossmatter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, duringwhich he is encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far lessillusive than that of earth. The second state may fairly be called hisnormal one, as it is of enormous extent as compared with the breaks init that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal also, as beingless removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased inmatter, less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly andgradually, by reiterated experiences, gross matter loses its power overhim and becomes his servant instead of his tyrant. In the partialfreedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, stillpartly dominated by them--at first, indeed, almost completely dominatedby them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuationof the earth-life--but gradually freeing himself more and more as herecognises them as transitory and external, until he can move throughany region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lordof Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the DivineNature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter tobe the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:

 _The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these_ _hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous, are limited in their continuation, and even the very number of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the_ hours of his posthumous life, _when unveiled he stands face to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his terrestrial existence are far from him, _ compose _or make up, in our ideas, _ the only reality. _Such breaks, in spite of the fact that they are finite, do double service to the Sūtrātmā, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks Sūtrātmā-Buddhi could never reach it. Sūtrātmā is the actor, and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so much the less to their costumes, the term of personality. Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of births up to the very threshold of Parinirvāna, many such parts, which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee, collecting its honey from every flower, and leaving the rest to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality, the Sūtrātmā, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last all these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a Dhyān Chohan. _[30]

It is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanicstage is conditioned by the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Mancan only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has beengathering on earth. 

 _A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless, feeble Devachanic state. _[31]

Husband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist--hemust work out the effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; hecannot eat and assimilate more food than he has gathered; he cannotreap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but a moment to casta seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow intothe ripened ear; but according to the kind of the seed is the ear thatgrows from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life isthe grain reaped in the field of Aanroo. 

 _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 Devachanī 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. .. . The reward provided by Nature for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who have not focussed their affections on an individual or speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for that through the Kāma and Rūpa Lokas into the higher sphere of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its occupant. _[32]

Into Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has beenleft behind with all its attributes on earth and in Kāmaloka. But ifthe sower has sowed but little seed, the devachanic harvest will bemeagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by the paucity ofthe nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importanceof the earth-life, _the field of sowing, the place where experience isto be gathered_. It conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of theSoul; it yields the rough ore which the Soul then takes in hand, andworks upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it, forging it, tempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its nextearth-life. The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself asplendid instrument for its next earth-life; the inexperienced onewill forge a poor blade enough; but in each case the only materialavailable is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as itwere, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparativelyfree life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthlyexperiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly andcompletely as objective realities all the ideas of which it onlyconceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ whichthe Soul would work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, andit would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation thatmental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers andsuitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is thesphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising thepre-existent thought. And the soul is as an architect that works outhis plans in silence and deep meditation, and then brings them forthinto the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out of theknowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for thenext, and he returns to earth to put into objective material form theedifices he has planned. This is the description of a Logos increative activity:

 Whilst Brahmā formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning with ignorance and consisting of darkness. .. . Brahmā, beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested. .. . Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahmā again meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the quality of goodness. [33]

The objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea, then form. Hence it will be seen that the notion current among manyTheosophists that Devachan is waste time, is but one of the illusionsdue to the gross matter that blinds them, and that their impatience ofthe idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about ingross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, alleffective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of theSilence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would beless feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of theprofound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftenerout of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be lessfoolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a stateof consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhilefrom the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by onewho has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoisewithdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" inmeditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of themind-engendered act. 

Devachan is the sphere of the mind, as said, it is the land of theGods, or the Souls. In the before quoted "Notes on Devachan" we read:

 _There are two fields of causal 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. _

As the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and ason the development of these depends the growth of the true Man, andtherefore the accomplishing of "the object of creation, the liberationof Soul", we may begin to understand something of the vast importanceof the devachanic state. 

THE DEVACHANĪ. 

When the Triad has shaken off its last garment, it crosses thethreshold of Devachan, and becomes "a Devachanī". We have seen thatit is in a peaceful dreamy state before this passage out of the earthsphere, the "second death", or "pre-devachanic unconsciousness". Thiscondition is otherwise spoken of as the "gestation" period, because itprecedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life. Regarded fromthe earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that ofDevachan it is birth. Thus we find in "Notes on Devachan":

 _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 attains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha, and thus gets relieved for a Round or two. _

When the devachanic entity is born into this new sphere it has passedbeyond recall to earth. The embodied Soul may rise to it, but itcannot be drawn back to our world. On this a Master has spokendecisively:

 _From Sukhāvatī down to the "Territory of Doubt, " there is a variety of spiritual states, but . .. As soon as it has stepped outside the Kāmaloka, crossed the "Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains, " the Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums. No Ernest or Joey has ever returned from the Rūpa Loka, let alone the Arupa Loka, to hold sweet intercourse with men. _

In the "Notes on Devachan, " again, we read:

 _Certainly the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan), retains for a certain time--proportionate to its earth-life--a complete recollection "of his life on earth"; but it can never revisit the Earth from Devachan except in Re-incarnation. _

The Devachanī is generally spoken of as the Immortal Triad, Atmā-Buddhi-Manas, but it is well always to bear in mind that

 Atman is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine Essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible, and indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and yet _is_, as the Buddhists say of Nirvāna. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only it's omni-present rays or light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation. [34]

Buddhi and Manas united, with this overshadowing of Atmā, form theDevachanī; now, as we have seen in studying the Seven Principles, Manas is dual during earth-life, and the Lower Manas is redrawn intothe Higher during the kāmalokic interlude. By this reuniting of theRay and its Source, Manas re-becomes one, and carries the pure andnoble experiences of the earth-life into Devachan with it, thusmaintaining the past personality as the marked characteristic of theDevachanī, and it is in this prolongation of the "personal Ego", soto speak, that the "illusion" of the Devachanī consists. Were themānasic entity free from all illusion, it would see all Egos as itsbrother-Souls, and looking back over its past would recognise all thevaried relationships it had borne to others in many lives, as theactor would remember the many parts he had played with other actors, and would think of each brother actor as a man, and not in the partshe had played as his father, his son, his judge, his murderer, hismaster, his friend. The deeper human relationship would prevent thebrother actors from identifying each other with their parts, and sothe perfected spiritual Egos, recognising their deep unity and fullbrotherhood, would no longer be deluded by the trappings of earthlyrelationships. But the Devachanī, at least in the lower stages, isstill within the personal boundaries of his past earth-life; he isshut into the relationships of the one incarnation; his paradise ispeopled with those he "_loved best with an undying love, that holyfeeling that alone survives_, " and thus the purified personal Ego isthe salient feature, as above said, in the Devachanī. Again quotingfrom the "Notes on Devachan":

 "_Who goes to Devachan?" The personal Ego, of course; but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego--the combination of the sixth and seventh principles[35]--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 preponderance 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 re-incarnation, 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. _

Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that theties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent ineternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When amother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationshipseems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be tore-possess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth tomanhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and theclinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friendsand comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the oldrecollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in theprime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the sonprotects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would therelation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only theone tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the differentstrands of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many livesthey may hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standingas Brothers of the Lodge closely knit together, may look back overpast lives and see themselves in earth-life related in the many wayspossible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every strand oflove and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorerfor the many-stranded tie? "Finally", I say; but the word is only ofthis cycle, for what lies beyond, of wider life and less separateness, no mind of man may know. To me it seems that this very variety ofexperiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is arather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only onelittle aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; athousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, beample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect ofhis nature. But those who object to this view need not feeldistressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in theone personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they areconscious of _for as long as the desire for that presence remains_. Only let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss oneverybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems tothem at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must bestereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years thatlie before us. Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction ofall pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innatedivinity, that he "never wills in vain". Will not this suffice?

But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us "happiness" in afuture separated from our present by millions of years, so that we areno more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child, playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests ofits maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings ofthe Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachanī is surrounded by all he lovedon earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of theEgo, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferingswhich would be inevitable were the Devachanī present in consciousnesson the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys andsorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness, but is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in thelower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh. According to theorthodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the "spirits ofthe dead" wait for reunion until those they love also pass throughDeath's gateway, or--according to some--until after the judgment-dayis over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Deathcannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can onlyseparate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles areconcerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separatedfrom those who have passed onwards, but the Devachanī, says H. P. Blavatsky, has a complete conviction "that there is no such thing asDeath at all", having left behind it all those vehicles over whichDeath has power. Therefore, to its less blinded eyes, its beloved arestill with it; for it, the veil of matter that separates has been tornaway. 

 A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children, whom she adores, perhaps a beloved husband also. We say that her "Spirit" or Ego--that individuality which is now wholly impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the noblest feelings held by its late _personality, i. E. _, love for her children, pity for those who suffer, and so on--is now entirely separated from the "vale of tears, " that its future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the woes it left behind . .. That the _post-mortem_ spiritual consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she lives surrounded by her children and all those whom she loved; that no gap, no link will be missing to make her disembodied state the most perfect and absolute happiness. [36]

And so again:

 As to the ordinary mortal his bliss in Devachan is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanī lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in the companionship of everything it loved on earth. It has reached the fulfilment 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 earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in degree. [37]

When we take the wider sweep in thought demanded by the EsotericPhilosophy, a far more fascinating prospect of persistent love andunion between individual Egos rolls itself out before our eyes thanwas offered to us by the more limited creed of exoteric Christendom. "Mothers love their children with an immortal love, " says H. P. Blavatsky, and the reason for this immortality in love is easilygrasped when we realise that it is the same Egos that play so manyparts in the drama of life, that the experience of each part isrecorded in the memory of the Soul, and that between the Souls thereis no separation, though during incarnation they may not realise thefact in its fulness and beauty. 

 We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them now than when they were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the Devachanī, 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. [38]

Love "has its roots in eternity", and those to whom on earth we arestrongly drawn are the Egos we have loved in past earth-lives anddwelt with in Devachan; coming back to earth these enduring bonds oflove draw us together yet again, and add to the strength and beauty ofthe tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and thestrong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experienceof their well-nigh illimitable past. 

THE RETURN TO EARTH. 

At length the causes that carried the Ego into Devachan are exhausted, the experiences gathered have been wholly assimilated, and the Soulbegins to feel again the thirst for sentient material life that can begratified only on the physical plane. The greater the degree ofspirituality reached, the purer and loftier the preceding earth-life, the longer the stay in Devachan, the world of spiritual, pure, andlofty effects. [I am here ignoring the special conditions surroundingone who is forcing his own evolution, and has entered on the Paththat leads to Adeptship within a very limited number of lives. ] The"average time [in Devachan] is from ten to fifteen centuries", H. P. Blavatsky tells us, and the fifteen centuries cycle is the one mostplainly marked in history. [39] But in modern life this period has muchshortened, in consequence of the greater attraction exercised byphysical objects over the heart of man. Further, it must be rememberedthat the "average time" is not the time spent in Devachan by anyperson. If one person spends there 1000 years, and another fifty, the"average" is 525. The devachanic period is longer or shorter accordingto the type of life which preceded it; the more there was ofspiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, thelonger will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was ofactivity directed to selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be thedevachanic period. 

When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, theEgo is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increasedexperience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan alongthe lines of abstract thought; for, while in Devachan, In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal things, such as music, painting, poetry, &c. [40]

But the Ego meets, as he crosses the threshold of Devachan on his wayoutwards--dying out of Devachan to be reborn on earth--he meets in the"atmosphere of the terrestrial plane", the seeds of evil sown in hispreceding life on earth. During the devachanic rest he has been freefrom all pain, all sorrow, but the evil he did in his past has been ina state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in theautumn for the spring-time lie dormant beneath the surface of thesoil, but touched by the soft rain and penetrating warmth of sun beginto swell and the embryo expands and grows, so do the seeds of evil wehave sown lie dormant while the Soul takes its rest in Devachan, butshoot out their roots into the new personality which beginsto form itself for the incarnation of the returning man. The Ego hasto take up the burden of his past, and these germs or seeds, comingover as the harvest of the past life, are the Skandhas, to borrow aconvenient word from our Buddhist brethren. They consist of materialqualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind, mentalpowers, and while the pure aroma of these attached itself to the Egoand passed with it into Devachan, all that was gross, base and evilremained in the state of suspended animation spoken of above. Theseare taken up by the Ego as he passes outwards towards terrestriallife, and are built into the new "man of flesh" which the true man isto inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turningof the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, untilthe work is done and the building of the Perfect Man is completed. 

NIRVĀNA. 

What Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvāna is to the finished cycleof Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that gloriousstate would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round offthe "After" of Death, for no word of man, strictly limited within thenarrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to explain whatNirvāna is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe. What it is not may be roughly, baldly stated--it is not"annihilation", it is not destruction of consciousness. Mr. A. P. Sinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of many of theideas current in the West about Nirvāna. He has been speaking ofabsolute consciousness, and proceeds:

 We may use such phrases as intellectual counters, but for no ordinary mind--dominated by its physical brain and brain-born intellect--can they have a living signification. All that words can convey is that Nirvāna is a sublime state of conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after all that has gone before, to turn to the various discussions which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism as to whether Nirvāna does or does not mean annihilation. Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling with which the graduates of Esoteric Science regard such a question. Does the last penalty of the law mean the highest honour of the peerage? Is a wooden spoon the emblem of the most illustrious pre-eminence in learning? Such questions as these but faintly symbolise the extravagance of the question whether Nirvāna is held by Buddhism to be equivalent to annihilation. [41]

So we learn from the _Secret Doctrine_ that the Nirvānī returns tocosmic activity in a new cycle of manifestation, and that

 _The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvāna, re-emerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action. _[42]

COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE EARTH AND OTHER SPHERES. 

We are now in position to discriminate between the various kinds ofcommunication possible between those whom we foolishly divide into"dead" and "living, " as though the body were the man, or the man coulddie. "Communications between the embodied and the disembodied" wouldbe a more satisfactory phrase. 

First, let us put aside as unsuitable the word Spirit: Spirit does notcommunicate with Spirit in any way conceivable by us. That highestprinciple is not yet manifest in the flesh; it remains the hiddenfount of all, the eternal Energy, one of the poles of Being inmanifestation. The word is loosely used to denote lofty Intelligences, who live and move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us, but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter. And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average humanbeings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as muchas possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the wordoften occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it thendenotes the Ego. 

Taking the stages through which the living man passes after "Death", or the shaking off of the body, we can readily classify thecommunications that may be received, or the appearances that may beseen:

I. While the Soul has shaken off only the dense body, and remainsstill clothed in the etheric double. This is a brief period only, butduring it the disembodied Soul may show itself, clad in this etherealgarment. 

 For a very short period after death, while the incorporeal principles remain within the sphere of our earth's attraction, it is _possible_ for spirit, under _peculiar_ and _favourable_ conditions, to appear. [43]

It makes no communications during this brief interval, nor whiledwelling in this form. Such "ghosts" are silent, dreamy, likesleep-walkers, and indeed they are nothing more than astralsleep-walkers. Equally irresponsive, but capable of expressing asingle thought, as of sorrow, anxiety, accident, murder, &c. , areapparitions which are merely a thought of the dying, taking shape inthe astral world, and carried by the dying person's will to someparticular person, with whom the dying intensely longs to communicate. Such a thought, sometimes called a Mayāvi Rūpa, or illusory form

 _May be often thrown into objectivity, as in the case of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to some one shooting through, the dying brain, the apparition will be simply automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, any more than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is due to the desire of the latter. _

When the Soul has left the etheric double, shaking it off as itshook off the dense body, the double thus left as a mere empty corpsemay be galvanised into an "artificial life"; but fortunately themethod of such galvanisation is known to few. 

II. While the Soul is in Kāmaloka. This period is of very variableduration. The Soul is clad in an astral body, the last but one of itsperishable garments, and while thus clad it can utilise the physicalbodies of a medium, thus consciously procuring for itself aninstrument whereby it can act on the world it has left, andcommunicate with those living in the body. In this way it may giveinformation as to facts known to itself only, or to itself and anotherperson, in the earth-life just closed; and for as long as it remainswithin the terrestrial atmosphere such communication is possible. Theharm and the peril of such communication has been previouslyexplained, whether the Lower Manas be united with the Divine Triad andso on its way to Devachan, or wrenched from it and on its way todestruction. 

III. While the Soul is in Devachan, if an embodied Soul is capable ofrising to its sphere, or of coming into _rapport_ with it. To theDevachanī, as we have seen, the beloved are present in consciousnessand full communication, the Egos being in touch with each other, though one is embodied and one is disembodied, but the higherconsciousness of the embodied rarely affects the brain. As a matter offact, all that we know on the physical plane of our friend, while weboth are embodied, is the mental image caused by the impression hemakes on us. This is, to our consciousness, our friend, and lacksnothing in objectivity. A similar image is present to theconsciousness of the Devachanī, and to him lacks nothing inobjectivity. As the physical plane friend is visible to an observer onearth, so is the mental plane friend visible to an observer on thatplane. The amount of the friend that ensouls the image is dependent onhis own evolution, a highly evolved person being capable of far morecommunication with a Devachanī than one who is unevolved. Communication when the body is sleeping is easier than when it isawake, and many a vivid "dream" of one on the other side of death is areal interview with him in Kāmaloka or in Devachan. 

 Love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it, [44] has a magic and divine potency that re-acts on the living. A mother's Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children 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 in 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. As with this Devachanic "mother", so with the rest of human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish or material. [45]

Remembering that a thought becomes an active entity, capable ofworking good or evil, we easily see that as embodied Souls can send tothose they love helping and protecting forces, so the Devachanī, thinking of those dear to him, may send out such helpful andprotective thoughts, to act as veritable guardian angels round hisbeloved on earth. But this is a very different thing from the "Spirit"of the mother coming back to earth to be the almost helpless spectatorof the child's woes. 

The Soul embodied may sometimes escape from its prison of flesh, andcome into relations with the Devachanī. H. P. Blavatsky writes:

 Whenever years after the death of a person his spirit is claimed to have "wandered back to earth" to give advice to those it loved, it is always in a subjective vision, in dream or in trance, and in that case it is the Soul of the living seer that is drawn to the _disembodied_ spirit, and not the latter which wanders back to our spheres. [46]

Where the sensitive, or medium, is of a pure and lofty nature, thisrising of the freed Ego to the Devachanī is practicable, and naturallygives the impression to the sensitive that the departed Ego has comeback to him. The Devachanī is wrapped in its happy "illusion", and

 _The Souls, or astral Egos, of pure loving sensitives, labouring 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. _[47]

This attraction can be exercised by the departed Soul from Kāmaloka orfrom Devachan:

 A "spirit" or the spiritual Ego, cannot _descend_ to the medium, but it can _attract_ the spirit of the latter to itself, and it can do this only during the two intervals--before and after its "gestation period". Interval the first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat Esoteric Doctrine as "Bar-do". We have translated this as the "gestation period", and it lasts from a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the Adepts. Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of the old [personal] Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of its reward in its new regenerated Egoship. It occurs after the gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is reborn--like the fabled Phoenix from its ashes--from the old one. The locality which the former inhabits is called by the northern Buddhist Occultists "Devachan. "[48]

So also may the incorporeal principles of pure sensitives be placed_en rapport_ with disembodied Souls, although information thusobtained is not reliable, partly in consequence of the difficulty oftransferring to the physical brain the impressions received, andpartly from the difficulty of observing accurately, when the seer isuntrained. [49]

 A pure medium's Ego can be drawn to and made, for an instant, to unite in a magnetic(?) relation with a real disembodied spirit, whereas the soul of an impure medium can only confabulate with the _Astral Soul_, or Shell, of the deceased. The former possibility explains those extremely rare cases of direct writing in recognised autographs, and of messages from the higher class of disembodied intelligences. 

But the confusion in messages thus obtained is considerable, not onlyfrom the causes above-named, but also because

 Even the best and purest sensitive can at most only be placed at any time _en rapport_ with a particular spiritual entity, and can only know, see, and feel what that particular entity knows, sees, and feels. 

Hence much possibility of error if generalisations are indulged in, since each Devachanī lives in his own paradise, and there is no"peeping down to earth, "

 Nor is there any _conscious_ communication with the flying Souls that come as it were to learn where the Spirits are, what they are doing, and what they think, feel, and see. 

 What then is being _en rapport_? It is simply an identity of molecular vibration between the astral part of the incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the dis-incarnated personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets "odylised", so to speak, by the aura of the spirit, whether this be hybernating in the earthly region or dreaming in the Devachan; identity of molecular vibration is established, and for a brief space the sensitive becomes the departed personality, and writes in its handwriting, uses its language, and thinks its thoughts. At such times sensitives may believe that those with whom they are for the moment _en rapport_ descend to earth and communicate with them, whereas, in reality, it is merely their own spirits which, being correctly attuned to those others, are for the time blended with them. [50]

In a special case under examination, H. P. Blavatsky said that thecommunication might have come from an Elementary, but that it was

 Far more likely that the medium's spirit really became _en rapport_ with some spiritual entity in Devachan, the thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments of which formed the substance, while the medium's own personality and pre-existing ideas more or less governed the forms of the communication. [51]

While these communications are not reliable in the facts and opinionsstated, We would remark that it may _possibly_ be that there really is a distinct spiritual entity impressing our correspondent's mind. In other words, there may, for all we know, be some spirit, with whom his spiritual nature becomes habitually, for the time, thoroughly harmonised, and whose thoughts, language, &c. , become his for the time, the result being that this spirit seems to communicate with him. .. . It is possible (though by no means probable) that he habitually passes into a state of _rapport_ with a genuine spirit, and, for the time, is assimilated therewith, thinking (to a great extent if not entirely) the thoughts that spirit would think, writing in its handwriting, &c. But even so, Mr. Terry must not fancy that that spirit is consciously communicating with him, or knows in any way anything of him, or any other person or thing on earth. It is simply that, the _rapport_ established, he, Mr. Terry, becomes for the nonce assimilated with that other personality, and thinks, speaks, and writes as it would have done on earth. .. . The molecules of his astral nature may from time to time vibrate in perfect unison with those of some spirit of such a person, now in Devachan, and the result may be that he appears to be in communication with that spirit, and to be advised, &c. , by him, and clairvoyants may see in the Astral Light a picture of the earth-life form of that spirit. 

IV. Communications other than those from disembodied Souls, passingthrough normal _post mortem_ states. 

(a) _From Shells. _ These, while but the cast-off garment of theliberated Soul, retain for some time the impress of their lateinhabitant, and reproduce automatically his habits of thought andexpression, just as a physical body will automatically repeat habitualgestures. Reflex action is as possible to the desire body as to thephysical, but all reflex action is marked by its character ofrepetition, and absence of all power to initiate movement. It answersto a stimulus with an appearance of purposive action, but it initiatesnothing. When people "sit for development", or when at a _séance_ theyanxiously hope and wait for messages from departed friends, theysupply just the stimulus needed, and obtain the signs of recognitionfor which they expectantly watch. 

(b) _From Elementaries. _ These, possessing the lower capacities of themind, _i. E. _, all the intellectual faculties that found theirexpression through the physical brain during life, may producecommunications of a highly intellectual character. These, however, arerare, as may be seen from a survey of the messages published asreceived from "departed Spirits". 

(c) _From Elementals. _ These semi-conscious centres of force play agreat part at _séances_, and are mostly the agents who are active inproducing physical phenomena. They throw about or carry objects, makenoises, ring bells, etc. , etc. Sometimes they play pranks with Shells, animating them and representing them to be the spirits of greatpersonalities who have lived on earth, but who have sadly degeneratedin the "spirit-world", judging by their effusions. Sometimes, inmaterialising _séances_, they busy themselves in throwing picturesfrom the Astral Light on the fluidic forms produced, so causing themto assume likenesses of various persons. There are also Elementals ofa high type who occasionally communicate with very gifted mediums, "Shining Ones" from other spheres. 

(d) _From Nirmānakāyas. _ For these communications, as for the twoclasses next mentioned, the medium must be of a very pure and loftynature. The Nirmānakāya is a perfected man, who has cast aside hisphysical body but retains his other lower principles, and remains inthe earth-sphere for the sake of helping forward the evolution ofmankind. Nirmānakāyas

 Have, out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth, renounced the Nirvānic state. Such an Adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him, believing it a selfish act to rest in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvāna and determines to remain invisible _in spirit_ on this earth. They have no material body, as they have left it behind; but otherwise they remain with all their principles even _in astral life_ in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few elect ones, only surely not with _ordinary_ mediums. [52]

(e) _From Adepts now living on earth. _ These often communicate withTheir disciples, without using the ordinary methods of communication, and when any tie exists, perchance from some past incarnation, betweenan Adept and a medium, constituting that medium a disciple, a messagefrom the Adept might readily be mistaken for a message from a"Spirit". The receipt of such messages by precipitated writing orspoken words is within the knowledge of some. 

(f) _From the medium's Higher Ego. _ Where a pure and earnest man orwoman is striving after the light, this upward striving is met by adownward reaching of the higher nature, and light from the higherstreams downward, illuminating the lower consciousness. Then the lowermind is, for the time, united with its parent, and transmits as muchof its knowledge as it is able to retain. 

From this brief sketch it will be seen how varied may be the sourcesfrom which communications apparently from "the other side of Death"may be received. As said by H. P. Blavatsky:

 The variety of the causes of phenomena is great, and one need be an Adept, and actually look into and examine what transpires, in order to be able to explain in each case what really underlies it. [53]

To complete the statement it may be added that what the average Soulcan do when it has passed through the gateway of Death, it can do onthis side, and communications may be as readily obtained by writing, in trance, and by the other means of receiving messages, from embodiedas from disembodied Souls. If each developed within himself thepowers of his own Soul, instead of drifting about aimlessly, orignorantly plunging into dangerous experiments, knowledge might besafely accumulated and the evolution of the Soul might be accelerated. This one thing is sure: Man is to-day a living Soul, over whom Deathhas no power, and the key of the prison-house of the body is in hisown hands, so that he may learn its use if he will. It is because histrue Self, while blinded by the body, has lost touch with otherSelves, that Death has been a gulf instead of a gateway betweenembodied and disembodied Souls. 

 * * * * *

APPENDIX. 

 The following passage on the fate of suicides is taken from the _Theosophist_, September, 1882. 

We do not pretend--we are not permitted--to deal exhaustively with thequestion at present, but we may refer to one of the most importantclasses of entities, who can participate in objective phenomena, otherthan Elementaries and Elementals. 

This class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are_Spirits_, and not _Shells_, because there is not in their cases, atany rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourthand fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and seventh on theother. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line ofconnection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorelythreatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holdsin its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthlysins and passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for thetime, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it ispractically not far removed from a Shell. 

This class of Spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but, as arule, its members have to pay dearly for exercising the privilege, while it is scarcely possible for them to do otherwise than lower anddebase the moral nature of those with and through whom they have muchcommunication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a question of degree;of much or little injury resulting from such communication; the casesin which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely exceptionalto require consideration. 

Understand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting againstthe trials of life--trials, the results of its own former actions, trials, heaven's merciful medicine for the mentally and spirituallydiseased--determines, instead of manfully taking arms against a sea oftroubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. Itdestroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentallyas before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricateweb of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten. That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lowerhalf of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting fromthe upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as itissues; but that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, untilthe whole store in that upper receptacle is exhausted. 

So you may destroy the body, but not the appointed period of sentientexistence, foredoomed (because simply the effect of a plexus ofcauses) to intervene before the dissolution of the personality; thismust run on for its appointed period. 

This is so in other cases, _e. G. _, those of the victims of accident orviolence; they, too, have to complete their life-term, and of these, too, we may speak on another occasion--but here it is sufficient tonotice that, whether good or bad, their mental attitude at the time ofdeath alters wholly their subsequent position. They, too, have to waiton within the "Region of Desires" until their wave of life runs on toand reaches its appointed shore, but they wait on, wrapped in dreamssoothing and blissful, or the reverse, according to their mental andmoral state at, and prior to the fatal hour, but nearly exempt fromfurther material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable (exceptjust at the moment of real death) of communicating _scio motu_ withmankind, though not wholly beyond the possible reach of the higherforms of the "Accursed Science, " Necromancy. The question is aprofoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within thebrief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediatelyafter death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the manwho deliberately _lays down_ (not merely _risks_) his life fromaltruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) ofhim who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in thehope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature orProvidence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, itwould at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in bothcases. But, machine though it be, we must remember that it is amachine _sui generis_--

 Out of himself he span The eternal web of right and wrong; And ever feels the subtlest thrill, The slenderest thread along. 

A machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment thehighest human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, _in petto_. 

And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and attimes marvellously potent material, forces, and we may then begin tocomprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruisticgrounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein

 All that he wishes and all that he loves, Come smiling round his sunny way, only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in theRegion of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who, seeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaksthe golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct withall the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life, without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only suchpartial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicariousgratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate completerupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimateannihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering. 

Let it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class--the sanedeliberate suicide. If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he sufferspatiently his punishment, striving against carnal appetites stillalive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each inproportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life. If, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be temptedhere or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires, thenwhen his fated death-hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite, and, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be that allmay be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation periodand its subsequent developments. 

 * * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Book ii. , from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristleswith horrors. ]

[Footnote 2: xii. 85. Trans. , of Burnell and Hopkins. ]

[Footnote 3: From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, _Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems_, xxvii. ]

[Footnote 4: Trans. , by Mirza Mohamed Hadi. _The Platonist_, 306. ]

[Footnote 5: _The Sacred Books of the East_, iii, 109, 110. ]

[Footnote 6: _Secret Doctrine_, vol. I. P. 281. ]

[Footnote 7: See _ibid. _, p. 283. ]

[Footnote 8: _Isis Unveiled_, vol. I. P. 480. ]

[Footnote 9: Theosophical Manuals, No. 1. ]

[Footnote 10: _The Heroic Enthusiasts_, Trans. , by L. Williams. Part ii. Pp. 22, 23. ]

[Footnote 11: _Cremation_, Theosophical Siftings, vol. Iii. ]

[Footnote 12: _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, pp. 119, 120. ]

[Footnote 13: _Key to Theosophy_, H. P. Blavatsky, p. 109. ThirdEdition. ]

[Footnote 14: _Magic, White and Black_, Dr. Franz Hartmann, pp. 109, 110. Third Edition. ]

[Footnote 15: See _The Seven Principles of Man_, pp. 17-21. ]

[Footnote 16: _Theosophist_, March, 1882, p. 158, note. ]

[Footnote 17: _Essays upon some Controverted Questions_, p. 36. ]

[Footnote 18: _Fortnightly Review_, 1892, p. 176. ]

[Footnote 19: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 67. ]

[Footnote 20: _Ibid. _, p. 97. ]

[Footnote 21: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 97]

[Footnote 22: _Ibid. _, p. 102. ]

[Footnote 23: June, 1882, art. "Seeming Discrepancies. "]

[Footnote 24: Pp. 73, 74. Ed. 1887. ]

[Footnote 25: _Theosophical Glossary_, Elementaries. ]

[Footnote 26: See _The Seven Principles of Man_, p. P. 44-46. ]

[Footnote 27: The name Sukhāvatī, borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism, issometimes used instead of that of Devachan. Sukhāvatī, according toSchlagintweit, is "the abode of the blessed, into which ascend thosewho have accumulated much merit by the practice of virtues", and"involves the deliverance from metempsychosis" (_Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 99). According to the Prasanga school, the higher Path leads toNirvāna, the lower to Sukhāvatī. But Eitel calls Sukhāvatī "theNirvāna of the common people, where the saints revel in physical blissfor ęons, until they reėnter the circle of transmigration"(_Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary_). Eitel, however, under "Amitābha"states that the "popular mind" regards the "paradise of the West" as"the haven of final redemption from the eddies of transmigration". When used by one of the Teachers of the Esoteric Philosophy it coversthe higher Devachanic states, but from all of these the Soul comesback to earth. ]

[Footnote 28: See _Lucifer_, Oct, 1892, Vol. XI. No. 62. ]

[Footnote 29: _The Path_, May, 1890. ]

[Footnote 30: _Ibid. _]

[Footnote 31: "Notes on Devachan, " as cited. ]

[Footnote 32: "Notes on Devachan, " as before. There are a variety ofstages in Devachan; the Rūpa Loka is an inferior stage, where the Soulis still surrounded by forms. It has escaped from these personalitiesin the Tribhuvana. ]

[Footnote 33: _Vishnu Purāna_, Bk. I. Ch. V. ]

[Footnote 34: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 69. Third Edition. ]

[Footnote 35: Sixth and seventh in the older nomenclature, fifth andsixth in the later--_i. E. _, Manas and Buddhi. ]

[Footnote 36: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 99. Third Edition. ]

[Footnote 37: _Ibid. _, p. 100. ]

[Footnote 38: _Ibid. _, p. 101. ]

[Footnote 39: See Manual No. 2 _Re-incarnation_, pp. 60, 61. ThirdEdition. ]

[Footnote 40: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 105. Third Edition. ]

[Footnote 41: _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 197. EighthEdition. ]

[Footnote 42: Quoted in the _Secret Doctrine_, vol. Ii. P. 83. Thestudent will do well to read, for a fair presentation of the subject, G. R. S. Mead's "Note on Nirvāna" in _Lucifer_, for March, April, andMay, 1893. (Re-printed in _Theosophical Siftings_). ]

[Footnote 43: _Theosophist_, Sept. , 1882, p. 310. ]

[Footnote 44: See on "illusion" what was said under the heading"Devachan". ]

[Footnote 45: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 102. Third Edition. ]

[Footnote 46: _Theosophist_, Sept. 1881. ]

[Footnote 47: "Notes on Devachan", _Path_, June, 1890, p. 80. ]

[Footnote 48: _Theosophist_, June, 1882, p. 226. ]

[Footnote 49: Summarised from article in _Theosophist_, Sept. , 1882. ]

[Footnote 50: _Ibid. _, p. 309. ]

[Footnote 51: _Ibid. _, p. 310. ]

[Footnote 52: _Key to Theosophy, _ p. 151. ]

[Footnote 53: _Theosophist_, Sept. , 1882, p. 310. ]

 * * * * *

INDEX. 

Accident, Death by, 37. 

Appendix, 81. 

Astral Body, 19, Fate of, 31. 

Astral Shell or Soul, 75. 

_Avesta_, quoted, 9. 

Blavatsky, H. P. , quoted, 16, 17, 24, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 45, 49, 60, 65, 66, 67, 73, 74, 78. 

_Book of the Dead_, quoted, 8. 

Bruno, Giordano, quoted, 21. 

_Buddhism in Tibet_, quoted, 47, (note). 

Communications between Earth and other Spheres, 70. " between Earth and Soul in Etheric Body, 71. " between Earth, and soul in Devachan, 72, " between Earth and soul in Kāmaloka, 72. " from Adepts now living, 79. " from Elementals, 78. " from Elementaries, 77. " from Medium's Higher Ego, 79. " from Nirmānakāyas, 78. " from Shells, 43, 77. 

_Controverted Questions, Essays upon some_, quoted, 28. 

_Cremation_, quoted, 21. 

Cycle of Incarnation, 52 et seq. 

Death, a Gateway, 79. " Chinese Ideas of, 11. " Christian Ideas of, 6. " Egyptian Ideas of, 8. " Theosophic Ideas of, 18. 

_Desatir_, quoted, 9. 

Devachan, 33, 46. Et seq. 

Devachan, Passing into, of the average-living, 33. 

Devachan, The Soul in, 72. 

Devachanī, The, 58 et seq. 

Earth, The return to, 66. 

Egos, Many lives of, 63 et seq. 

Elementals, 44, 78. 

Elementaries, 45, 77. 

_Esoteric Buddhism_, quoted, 69. 

Etheric Double, 12, 22 et seq. , 24, 25, 71 et seq. 

Fiery Lives, 17. 

_Fortnightly Review_, quoted, 29. 

_Heroic Enthusiasts, The_, quoted, 21. 

Immortal Triad, The, 12, 13, 31, 33, 58, 60. 

_Isis Unveiled_, quoted, 17. 

Kāmaloka, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 41. 

Kāmaloka, The Soul in, 72. 

Kāma Rūpa, 30. 

_Key to Theosophy_, quoted, 24, 30, 31, 33, 60, 65, 67, 73, 78. 

_Lucifer_, quoted, 49, 70. 

_Magic, White and Black_, quoted, 26. 

_Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, quoted, 23. 

Man: How Made, 12 et seq. 

Māyā, 47. 

Medium, Communications from Higher Egos of, 79. 

Nirvāna, 69. 

_Ordinances of Manu_, quoted, 9. 

_Paradise Lost_, quoted, 7. 

_Path_, quoted, 51, 54, 55, 56, 59 et seq. 

_Perfect Way_, quoted, 44. 

Perishable Quaternary, 12. 

Pishāchas, 38. 

Prāna, 26, 30. 

Premature Death, 36, 39. 

Re-incarnation, 8, 67. 

_Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary_, quoted, 47 (Footnote: 27). 

_Seven principles of Man_, quoted, 26, 45. 

Shell, Astral Soul, or, 75. 

Shells, The, 41. 

_Shū King_, quoted, 10. 

Soul, Growth of, in Devachan, 56, " Powers of the, 80. 

 " Relations of, with Devachanī, 74 et seq. 

 " The Disembodied, 71 et seq. 

Spiritualism and Esoteric Philosophy, 15. 

Suicides, 36, et seq. , 81. 

_Theosophical Glossary_, quoted, 45. 

_Theosophical Siftings_, quoted, 21. 

_Theosophist, The_, quoted, 27, 35, 71, 74, 75 et seq. 

_Theosophist. The_, summarised, 75, 79, 81. 

Unconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, 28 et seq. 

_Vishnu Purāna_, quoted, 57. 

 * * * * *