Theosophical University Press Online Edition

After Death -- What?

By Leoline L. Wright

Published as part of a set in the 1930s and '40s by Theosophical University Press;
Revised Electronic Edition copyright © 1998 by Theosophical University Press.
Electronic version ISBN 1-55700-105-7. All rights reserved. This edition may be
downloaded for off-line viewing without charge. No part of this publication may be
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CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introductory

Chapter 2: Sleep and Death

Chapter 3: Why Do We Die?

Section 2

Chapter 4: Devachan, the Heaven-World

Chapter 5: Can We Communicate with Our "Dead"?
Chapter 6: A Glance Backward
Chapter 7: Death and the Monad

Section 3

Chapter 8: Peregrinations of the Monad

Chapter 9: Value of These Teachings
Chapter 10: Death and Rebirth
Chapter 11: Some Questions Answered

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Chapter 1

Introductory

Death is the opener, the one giving vision; death is the greatest and loveliest change that
the heart of nature has in store for us. -- G. de Purucker, Golden Precepts of Esotericism

"O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" We are all familiar with
these beautiful words of Paul, but alas, how little real consolation have they given to
bereaved hearts! For there has been no teaching or experience to bear out their promise of
divine assurance. And yet the truth has been close beside us all the time, whispering to
our hearts in the very voice of our own love for our departed: Spiritual man is eternal:
there are no dead.

Love itself is the evidence of our spiritual survival -- true love, which is unselfish and
undemanding, pure, forgiving, and indestructible. Can we ever cease to love, though we
may at least cease continually to mourn, those who have preceded us into the Land of
Light? Our love, just because it is indestructible, must spring from something in us which
is also undying, for how can a quality be greater than the source from which it springs?

It is here, in love itself, that we must look for proofs that the human spirit lives for all
time. But we must not forget that it is real love only, and not selfish emotional clinging,
that can open for us the door of true spiritual communion with our departed.

Theosophy tells us that the seeming separation from our loved ones at death is not a
reality, and that we live in illusions. Does not even physical science tell us that matter is
"mostly holes"? Yet matter and external life seem to have become for us all that we care
to understand. We live almost entirely in the material aims and interests of our
personalities -- our brain-minds or our emotional mentality. And these personalities,
being of the earth earthy and bound up with the bodily things that perish with the body,
themselves die and pass away from human ken. The great lesson we have to learn, if we
would keep in spiritual touch not only with the dead but with all those who are absent
from us in the flesh, is the fleeting nature of the personality. We must learn to understand
our personal selves for the transitory things they are. Then, discovering and living in the
spiritual reality behind them and within them, we shall find our inner immortal selves and
begin to live in and for that permanent root of our being. When we can do that, we shall
see; we shall know ourselves as being immortal today -- now -- in this moment! And we
shall then also recognize the true selves of those we love, and experience in every
moment of our lives the fact that we are together always, always in real touch with one
another even when the bodily eyes do not see the beloved face and the bodily ears hear
not the voice of the absent. It is knowledge alone of our spiritual selves and of the inner
spiritual selves of those we love that will give us the victory over death.

There is indeed truth to be had. It is within the power of each one of us to solve all our
problems and find healing for every sorrow. Death is not a mystery in the sense of
something that cannot be understood. The truths about death are within the reach of all of
us.

It is only our ignorance of the spiritual facts behind material life that surrounds death
with such grief and dread and fearfulness. If we will but have courage and determination
we may lift the veil and find, by means of our own awakened spiritual faculties, that
death is but an entrance to a higher form of being on a plane where we and our loved
ones are inseparable; and that, together always, "we advance from age to age and from
heights to greater heights forever."

Ignorance is our greatest enemy, and above all else ignorance of our own nature. Man,
know thyself! for in thee lie all the possibilities and realities of the universe. It is because
most of us know practically nothing of ourselves beyond that narrow groove of living in
which our thoughts and feelings daily repeat themselves, that we are ignorant about why
we are here and whither we are bound.

The illusory and deceptive nature of material things is being gradually brought home to
the thoughtful by the work of modern science. Physicists, for example, tell us that our
bodies in the last analysis are made up of small electric particles which science classifies
as electrons, protons, neutrons, etc., but which theosophy calls lives or life-atoms. If all
the particles in a human body could be packed together, we are told they would be no
larger than a speck of dust. And yet it is this speck -- spread out as it were by the magic
of the life forces -- which makes this relatively enormous, seemingly solid physical body.
Similarly, a table, a block of marble, or any "solid" body is really a mass of these
particles vibrating with such inconceivable rapidity that our eyes cannot see between
them, and so we sense the illusion of solidity, as when we whirl a lighted stick, it appears
to our vision like a complete circle of fire. Thus we understand how it is that what we
have always thought of as "solid reality" is actually an illusion, though real enough when
looked at from the viewpoint of experience.

We have also recently discovered that there are forms of matter which we cannot see
because their rates of vibration are not perceptible to our senses -- like infrared and the
ultraviolet light rays, one too slow and the other too swift in its oscillations for us to see
them, though their existence is proved by photography and other experimental tests.

If then we are to understand the mysteries of life and death -- to see and to know those
things of the spiritual realms which are beyond our present perceptions -- we must realize
the deceptive nature of merely material things. And we have to recognize the meaning to
us of the existence of forms of matter which are beyond our present ken. We must
understand what science is just beginning to demonstrate, but which theosophy, the
ancient wisdom-science, has taught for ages: that the real universe is built, not of matter,
but of consciousness. Man is not a body, for that is illusory. He is a center, a unit of
consciousness, imbodied in a garment of impermanent flesh.

The body and the personality or brain-mind -- that is, our everyday selves -- are not of
course to be undervalued, for they are our tools, our apparatus for experience in the world
around us where our present evolution is taking place. Indeed, a true understanding of our
personalities would enable us to develop them into a beauty and usefulness now
undreamed of. But we cannot do this, nor can they be trained to serve us properly, until
we can step aside in our thoughts and view them in their relation to the deeper, undying
self in which lies the key to all our "mysteries."

We are bewildered often by our own moods and mental conditions. We do not understand
why we are so changeable from day to day. But we know that there is within us
something permanent which can recognize these changes and observe them, something
by which we have carried forward our sense of identity from childhood to old age, and
through all the experiences which so greatly alter character. This permanence within is
the true self, which persists beneath our moods much as the sea remains unaltered for all
the waxing and waning tides and storms that undulate its surface. And this abiding reality
within is our spiritual self.

In thinking this over we see that the real person can be best understood if we regard him
not so much as a body or a mind, but as a consciousness. The word "consciousness" is
one with which we should familiarize ourselves, for consciousness is the stuff with which
evolution works. It is the basis of all life and growth and being. And a human being is
really a complex of different kinds of consciousness in which the spiritual self is the
binding element -- the invisible core, so to speak. Even the leading exponents of science
no longer look upon consciousness as something which is a byproduct of the brain, but as
the fundamental stuff of existence (see The Esoteric Tradition, pp. 409-13).

Now what do we mean by consciousness? Radically, it is the sense of I AM: I exist: I am

alive, feeling, and experiencing. But this I AM is only the root of ourselves, the
impersonal, universal basis. During life this sense of root-consciousness develops into
many forms: bodily consciousness, emotional and mental consciousness, and greatest of
all, self-consciousness: the sense of I AM I -- I am myself and no one else. Each of these
various kinds of consciousness itself grows into a complex, or bundle, of energies, which
exist in us as centers of activity.

That this is true we recognize in the fact that different individuals are pretty sure to think
or feel in certain characteristic ways. We do not expect a miser to act upon a sudden
impulse of generosity. He has built up through thought and habit certain strong centers of
feeling that dominate him, even when generosity might serve his own interests. But most
of us have not developed in so definite a way and so are hardly aware of the growth of
this inner psychological organism of loosely knitted centers of feeling, any more than we
are aware of the growth of our bodies.
Nevertheless, these centers are there. We identify ourselves daily, first with one then with
another, as our moods testify. We have built these centers ourselves throughout the years.
They are the basis of our characters and actions. All the tyrannies of temperament, the
difficulty of breaking habits or getting rid of prejudices are due to the existence of these
centers of energy which we have all unaware been building within us all our lives. So it is
to the study of consciousness that theosophy first of all directs us. The mystery of death is
one of the mysteries of consciousness.

Chapter 2

Sleep and Death

The similarity between sleep and death has impressed all thinkers. The ancient Greeks
had a saying: "Sleep and death are brothers." For death is the same phenomenon as sleep
on a larger and deeper scale. We all recognize sleep as a temporary state because we
understand it, or imagine that we do. But we think of death as the end of life when, as a
matter of fact, death should not be coupled with life in that way. We ought not to say "life
and death" but birth and death. We do not think of birth as a final thing because we know
it is followed by death. But theosophy shows us that neither is death final. Death is not
only a birth of the spiritual man into a higher sphere of existence, but death in its turn is
followed eventually by man's rebirth upon earth. So that it is life or consciousness which
is the great enduring fact; and birth and death are but rhythmic events in the endless circle
of the conscious evolution of all things.

Thus in our daily experiences we find that sleeping and waking are also the rhythmic
events through which this life rounds out our personal development. If we would but
observe ourselves more closely in the light of theosophical teachings, and would link up
death with the experiences of our ordinary consciousness, it would cease to be such a
dark and hopeless riddle. Once recognized as an understandable part of our evolution and
as being rich in interest and new discoveries for the mind and heart, the study of death
adds a new and wonderful chapter to the romance of our spiritual history.

. . . I tell you, my Brothers, that each one of you, given the right key, can solve all the
mysteries of Sleep and therefore of Death, because Sleep and Death are psycho-physical
brothers. . . . Exactly the same succession of events takes place in death that ensues when
we lay ourselves in bed at night and drop off into that wonderland of consciousness we
call Sleep; . . . Death and Sleep are brothers. What happens in sleep takes place in death -
- but perfectly so. What happens in death and after death, takes place when we sleep --
but imperfectly so. -- G. de Purucker, Questions We All Ask, Series II, No. 19

Now if we consider a little more observantly our various states of consciousness, we find
another valuable clue. But what do we mean by states of consciousness? Most of us, you
see, rarely think of ourselves as anything but bodies animated by a physical brain. We do
not go deeply enough into our own inner life to realize that the real part of us consists of
our consciousness centering itself at different times in different parts of our constitution.
This is very simple to understand if we will reflect upon the fact that even our
commonplace daily life is made up of states of consciousness as different as possible
from one another.

Some of these "states" or functions of our consciousness are emotional, such as anger,
grief, happiness, or excitement; occasionally they are purely intellectual, as in the work of
a scientist or a writer; again we may center ourselves, when we are hungry or tired or
have suffered a painful accident, entirely in the body. At night our consciousness passes
into still other and less familiar functions or aspects of ourselves.

Nearly everyone has had the experience, when walking along the street, or in reading or
conversing, of noticing something that instantly recalled a vivid dream of the preceding
night. Or, upon waking in the morning, one's mind is full of some dream experience that,
though sharp and significant at the moment, fades hopelessly as waking consciousness
returns. In the first instance the dream might never have been remembered but for the
external event which recalled it. Both instances show, however, that we have experiences
in consciousness of which we may remain ordinarily unaware, but which on their own
level are as vivid as those of the brain when awake. How many such experiences has the
inner self not had that are never recollected by the waking self! Yet they have existed,
have at the moment been as real as waking life, as real as those infrared and ultraviolet
rays which we never see. Moreover they have had their share in shaping us to what we
are. And herein lies the clue above referred to.

So if we would understand death we must study our own consciousness, we must know
ourselves. For, as already emphasized, consciousness is the fundamental fact of the
universe. Modern science, so long convinced that consciousness was a mere byproduct of
matter, is now gradually, through some of our foremost scientists, coming to the
theosophical point of view, and are beginning to talk about consciousness as the reality
behind all phenomena. Two passages are here quoted from men of different
temperaments and outlook, the first being from Max Planck, regarded as one of the
soundest and most original researchers:

. . . I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from

consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about,
everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. -- The Observer, London,
January 25, 1931

Sir James H. Jeans, another original scientific researcher, expresses the same idea in
almost identical words:

I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material
universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe. .
. . It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be
compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind. -- The Observer, London, January 4, 1931
With the basic thoughts expressed in the above quotations theosophy, the ancient
wisdom, is in complete agreement. It has been teaching them as long as mankind has
existed. But we now begin to see where this idea leads us: If consciousness is the
fundamental reality in the universe and each person is an individual center of that
consciousness, this shows him to be as real and therefore as indestructible as the universe
itself. He is a droplet of the universal life.

Indeed, the universe itself is made up of consciousnesses, stretching in innumerable

degrees of development downward from mankind to the lower kingdoms, to the electron,
and even below; then upward, from mankind to divinity -- an endless scale of hierarchical
beings of which we are an integral part. We are parts of a living whole, so that until the
universe itself passes away, we and all creatures composing it cannot cease to exist. We
are sharers in its continuity.

This idea is emphasized again and again in theosophical literature, but particularly by G.
de Purucker, who tells us:

You don't live outside of the Universe, you are a part of it, as a part is an integral portion
of the whole. . . . What the Universe is, that you are; what you are, the Universe is. --
Questions We All Ask, Series II, No. 20
Know thyself, O son of man! For in thee lie all the mysteries of the Universe. Thou art its
child; inseparable from it shalt thou ever be; for It is thou and thou art It. This is the
pathway to all wisdom, to all knowledge, to all achievement. It is also therefore the
pathway of evolution -- of evolving, of unfolding, what is folded up or latent within you.
-- Op. cit., Series II, No. 30

In connection with the similarity between sleep and death the following interesting
suggestion has been made:

If one desire to know how he will feel when he dies, or what he will cognise at the
moment of death, let him then when he lies down in his bed to sleep, grip his
consciousness with his will and study the actual process of his "falling asleep" -- if he
can! It is easy enough to do this once the idea is grasped and practice in the exercise has
become more or less familiar. -- G. de Purucker, The Esoteric Tradition, pp. 832-3

We must re-educate ourselves if we would be able to solve life's deeper problems. It is

our present habit to identify ourselves with our personal consciousness; that is, those
mental and emotional concerns which center in self-interest or personal desire. If we
would understand and conquer the mysteries of either life or death we must study ourself
as a center of spiritual consciousness, a divine pilgrim progressing ever upward upon the
glorious pathway of self-directed evolution.

Chapter 3
Why Do We Die?

We die because we are, in our innermost, a spiritual being. Life on this earth is only part
of our evolution. Our spirit-soul is native to the invisible spiritual worlds and only
sojourns here for a while in order to round out its experience and to afford an opportunity
for growth to the innumerable less evolved entities, such as life-atoms, which make up its
earthly vehicle.

The spiritual self reincarnates here during life after life after life; but between these lives
it returns to its home in the inner worlds and pursues there the higher ranges of its
evolution.

The real reason why we die is because, deep within us, the spiritual self feels the call of
its "homeland." The time comes when it grows weary of the burden of flesh and longs for
the freedom and light of the spiritual realms. So, little by little in the case of the average
human being, the spirit loosens its hold upon its earthly tenement and prepares to depart
upon its sublime homeward way.

What we call death means far more than almost anyone realizes. Laying down its
physical body or encasement is not all that the spiritual tenant has to do in order to be free
for its journey to the inner spheres. For man is a composite being. He has not only a
physical body but his spirit-soul also uses a psychological vehicle -- his personality. This
is made up of mental and emotional states of consciousness. It is a complex tissue which
in its selfishness and materiality weighs down the spirit even more heavily than does the
physical body. This garment of personality must also be sloughed off and must in its turn
suffer dissolution. And this later process is called in the esoteric philosophy, the second
death.

Death therefore is really the breaking up of these two lower aspects of consciousness, the
physical and the psychological, into their respective elements. The body is dissolved and
disappears. All the ephemeral energy centers of the psychological nature -- those of the
passions, the earthly desires and appetites, and the purely personal mental activities --
dissolve away into the life-atoms of which they were built by the thoughts and actions of
the individual who has been using them. The real person, the spiritual self, having thus
sloughed off -- like the butterfly its chrysalis -- these enshrouding earth vehicles, can then
wing its way into the freedom and joy of its native spiritual realms.

The whole wonderful, mystical process of death is assisted by the law of periodicity
which governs the life of all things. For death and birth are themselves twin
manifestations of this universal law of periodicity. All life has two poles, the positive and
the negative. Everything swings pendulum-like between night and day, heat and cold, ebb
and flow, storm and sunshine, systole and diastole, sleeping and waking -- also between
birth and death. But as the second of each of these pairs -- the ebb, the cold, the systole,
and sleep -- are really only periods in themselves and not endings, so theosophy
maintains that death is not an ending but is the beginning of a period of life of another
kind. And being but a period, it must be followed again by birth.
So it is this law of periodicity underlying the manifestation of all active, composite
beings which assists the spiritual self to achieve freedom from its earthly tabernacle. But
this event, this so-called death -- which we can see -- is only the turn of the tide, beyond
which the undying, physically invisible self is carried outward by its spiritual ebb upon
the boundless ocean of unending existence.

Let us remember, however, that

. . . Death is never sudden; . . . nothing goes in nature by violent transitions. Everything is

gradual, and as it required a long and gradual development to produce the living human
being, so time is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass. -- H. P.
Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled 1:480
Old age is nothing to fear. It is a blessing. It is a splendor seen as through a veil, of the
life beyond, the higher life, the life in which the higher incarnating ego lives, literally.
Shadows -- coming events casting their shadows before, the shadows of the splendor to
be -- such is a fine old age! -- G. de Purucker, Golden Precepts of Esotericism, chapter 2

MAN'S SEVEN PRINCIPLES

In order to understand more clearly what happens after death and how the inner spiritual
self abandons one by one the garments or vehicles through which it gains experience
here, let us briefly examine the seven principles of our composite nature.

The following diagram, beginning with the spiritual as the first and highest principle, will
give a brief idea of them:

Atma-buddhi is the monad, the spirit-soul. The word monad means a "unit" of life or
consciousness -- an individual. A monad exists at the heart of every being -- star, planet,
animal, plant, atom, electron -- no matter what. In ourselves we can regard it more
graphically as his spiritual self, the sense of I am. Atman is a ray of pure universal spirit,
linking us with the ALL. Buddhi is pure intelligence, wisdom, and love. It acts as a
vehicle or channel to step down the light of the universal into the human constitution.
From buddhi spring all our highest qualities: compassion, discrimination, sympathy, and
conscience, as well as the visions of genuine spiritual seership or exalted genius. Atma-
buddhi is pure consciousness, which is common to all beings, though without manas (as
in the animals) it cannot function intellectually.

Manas is the "thinker" in man. It is our ego, the seat of self-consciousness, by which we
feel, "I am I and no one else." Through it we relate consciously to others and to our
environment and thus are able to carry on our own self-directed evolution. It is manas
which gathers in and remembers the experiences of individual life in all the worlds; and
these, when finally absorbed by the universal spirit, constantly enrich the unfoldment of
cosmic consciousness. These three higher principles are divine in their origin.

The lower quaternary is that composite vehicle, made up of the animal-vital qualities in
nature, which evolution on this earth in past ages prepared for the use of manas, the self-
conscious thinker. In this diagram we observe that manas is dual, for this self-conscious
thinker or ego, once it takes up its work on this earth by means of a physical body, must
associate itself on its lower side with the animal quaternary. This association it is which
makes the personality or human ego, which we call the lower manas.

But the higher side of manas is associated with the wisdom and light of buddhi; and it is
this higher side which is the reincarnating ego, the higher manas. The reincarnating ego
does not experience death; but lower manas, being the product only of the association of
manas with the mortal part of human nature, exists but during earth-life and meets its
dissolution at the second death.

THE LOWER QUATERNARY

We come now to the kama-rupa, the highest aspect of the lower quaternary and one of the
most powerful and important elements in human nature. Kama-rupa means literally
"desire-body" and is that center of animal appetites, passions, and emotions which is the
basic inciting energy in the lives of the majority. For are we not most of us more easily
swayed by our passions and appetites, or by self-interest and prejudice, than by
unselfishness and impersonal wisdom?

The kama-rupa, as just stated, has been developed by past evolution through many ages.
During human life it is that bundle or complex of energies needed by the higher triad to
come into touch with the material kingdoms of nature on this earth. To conquer and
transform this desire-complex into a center of spiritual desire instead of animal and
selfish propensities is one of the evolutionary tasks of manas, the reincarnating ego.

As the thinker within us chooses to be swayed by the lower quaternary or the spiritual
self, it makes bad or good karma which shapes its present and future lives. And the object
of reincarnation is that through experience and self-directed effort over a long series of
earth-lives, the thinker may learn through pleasure and pain the fleeting and
unsatisfactory nature of all things connected with the lower quaternary. Then, finally
discovering how to ally himself with the spiritual self, it will raise its mortal parts into
immortality.
Another important principle for us to understand is the so-called astral body or linga-
sarira. Linga means "model" or "pattern," and sarira, an impermanent form. It is
described by Dr. de Purucker in his Occult Glossary as the sixth substance-principle of
the human constitution,

the model or framework around which the physical body is built, and from which, in a
sense, the physical body flows or from which the physical body develops as growth
proceeds.

Prana we may think of as the "field" of vital energies circumscribed by our astral-
physical organism. It is an aggregation of vital life-atoms drawn from nature's reservoirs
and determined as to kind and activity by the karmic affinities and characteristics of the
person concerned. In a study of afterdeath states these principles are not as important to
understand as the higher ones, for both are dissipated almost immediately after death. The
same is true of the physical body.

AFTER-DEATH STATES

Let us see now what happens to these principles at death. First, the higher triad departs
from the lower quaternary, and the latter immediately begins to fall apart. Dissolution of
the physical body at once sets in and this releases its astral model-body or linga-sarira,
which also disintegrates. Prana or vitality passes back into the reservoirs of nature.

Upon the withdrawal of the higher triad and the break-up of the three lower principles,
the kama-rupa is, so to say, separated out as a bundle or rupa (form) of desire energies. It
is soulless of course, for the higher triad, the real self, has gone; but it will persist for a
longer or shorter time according as the passional selfish nature of the individual was
encouraged, or was controlled and refined, during the life just ended.

But where does this kama-rupa exist? And is it still alive and active? This shell of the
person that was exists now in what is called in theosophy the kama-loka, i. e., the "place"
or "world" of desire.

This kama-lokic afterdeath state is important for us to understand, for it has a very real
bearing upon human progress and happiness. The whole psychological realm extending
in consciousness between earth-life and devachan, the spiritual heaven-world, is known
in theosophy as the kama-loka. Another quotation from the Occult Glossary will explain
this kama-lokic sphere:

Kama-Loka (Sanskrit) A compound which can be translated as "desire world," . . . It is a

semi-material plane or rather world or realm, subjective and invisible to human beings as
a rule, which surrounds and also encloses our physical globe. It is the habitat or dwelling-
place of the astral forms of dead men and other dead beings -- the realm of the kama-
rupas or desire-bodies of defunct humans. "It is the Hades," as H. P. Blavatsky says, "of
the ancient Greeks, and the Amenti of the Egyptians, the land of Silent Shadows."
It is in the kama-loka that the second death takes place, . . . The highest regions of the
kama-loka blend insensibly into the lowest regions or realms of the devachan; . . .
When the physical body breaks up at death, the astral elements of the excarnate entity
remain in the kama-loka or "shadow world," with the same vital centers as in physical life
clinging within them, still vitalizing them; and here certain processes take place. The
lower human soul that is befouled with earth-thought and the lower instincts cannot
easily rise out of the kama-loka, because it is foul, it is heavy; and its tendency is
consequently downwards. It is in the kama-loka that the processes of separation of the
monad from the kama-rupic spook or phantom take place; and when this separation is
complete, which is the second death above spoken of, then the monad receives the
reincarnating ego within its bosom, wherein it enjoys its long rest of bliss and
recuperation.

The second death is a gradual process and for the average human being is entirely
unconscious. It is a perfectly normal process. Remember that by death we mean simply
the dissolution of the elements of a body. We are no more aware of this second death than
we are conscious of the daily and quite normal and healthy breakdown of the tissues of
the body, or of the gradual and more subtle changes always taking place in our
characters, for the bundle of energies called the kama-rupa or desire-body is instinctual
only. But though it is ordinarily unconscious, it yet preserves for a time the stamp, the
characteristic personal impress, of the person to whom its energies belonged -- the human
individual, in short, who brought the kama-rupa into being. And it is this fact which it is
so important for us to understand.

A very large number of spiritistic manifestations are due to the fact that the medium and
the sitters attract, by the magnetism of intense desire, grief, or curiosity, these shells or
masks or kama-rupas of the departed, left as their remnants in the kama-lokic sphere.
Such shells can be magnetically drawn into the thought-atmosphere of the seance room
and, vitalized and given concrete direction by the vitality of the medium and "circle," are
galvanized into a fictitious life. Then these automata can, like phonographic records, give
off phrases, recollections, and ideas closely associated with the life and personality of the
departed. Or they can reflect, like a photographic plate, the thoughts of those in the circle.
Theosophy maintains that an enormous percentage of so-called "communications from
the dead" are of this class.

That these communications are rarely anything but such automatic repetitions is evident
when we remember that no creative philosophy of this world or the next, no hints for new
paths of scientific research, or for archaeological and historical discovery, have come
from the seance room. A "Summerland" which is but a rainbow-hued repetition of earth-
life is about all that almost two centuries of modern spiritistic experiments have given us.
What tentative new lines of research have resulted from Spiritism have been the result of
living rather than departed intelligences.

This, however, is but the negative side of the matter, as a later chapter will set forth.
The following listing sums up briefly the various processes and conditions which are
brought about by the separation of our seven principles after death:

• Atman, Buddhi: Dwelling in the spiritual worlds

• Manas: Gradually absorbing the spiritual essence of the lower manas or human
ego and then passing into devachan
• Kama-rupa, lower manas: Dissolving away slowly at the second death in kama-
loka
• Prana, linga-sarira, sthula-sarira: Already disintegrated when the second death
takes place

Part 2

Contents

Chapter 4

Devachan, the Heaven World

The "roseate beauty" of the heaven world are the words of a teacher which will give us an
opening glimpse into what theosophy tells us of devachan. By devachan is meant that
state of being into which the reincarnating ego -- what is popularly called the soul -- is
gradually withdrawn at the completion of the sifting process of the second death. The
following passage defines devachan more closely:

[Tibetan, bde-ba-can, pronounced de-wa-chen] A translation of the Sanskrit sukhavati,

the "happy place" or god-land. It is the state between earth-lives into which the human
entity, the human monad, enters and there rests in bliss and repose. . . .
Devachan is the fulfilling of all the unfulfilled spiritual hopes of the past incarnation, and
an efflorescence of all the spiritual and intellectual yearnings of the past incarnation
which . . . have not had an opportunity for fulfillment. It is a period of unspeakable bliss
and peace for the human soul, until it has finished its rest time and stage of recuperation
of its own energies. -- G. de Purucker, Occult Glossary

Who has not, in looking back over his life, seen most if not all of his best dreams
unrealized? Beginning with those ideals of youth which fade so quickly in "the light of
common day," there follow our dreams of dear companionship never found, of musical,
literary, scientific, or humanitarian achievement towards which we have aspired, but
which we have either failed to reach or have had no opportunity even of trying for. And
there are the things we have longed to do for those we loved, but have been too poor or
too busy to undertake.

These desires are the best part of us. More than this, they are energies, all the more
cumulative and powerful for being denied expression while silently cherished. Being
energies they must have somewhere their fruition, and that fruition will naturally take
place in the nature which originated them. It is these energies which create for us the
conditions of the god-world, the heaven-world -- devachan. We have seen that man's
baser mental desires have helped by his own unconscious activity to build the conditions
of his state of consciousness while in kama-loka, which surrounds this planet with a
mental-emotional atmosphere. Likewise have his higher thoughts, yearnings, and
aspirations towards spiritual self-expression built up his devachan, which is the state of
consciousness where these higher energies surround him and bring to him his spiritual
fruition in joy and beauty and peace.

Having come this far we may be led to imagine that devachan resembles the heaven of
the Christian religion. But there are in reality radical differences. First, theosophy teaches
that human creative evolution can be accomplished only through rebirth upon earth. The
period of devachan does not initiate any new lines of development; it merely brings to
fruition the spiritual aspects of the experiences originated in past lives. Therefore
devachan is but a temporary state of being. Moreover, it is itself merely an extension -- a
subjective expansion -- of the karma of the past life of the ego. For the character of the
devachan, the beauty, happiness, and length of its episodes, will be the unfoldment of
only those spiritual thoughts and desires which were felt by the ego during its earth-life.

We have pointed out elsewhere the similarity between sleep and death. Sleep, theosophy
tells us -- and we repeat it for emphasis -- sleep is an imperfect death; death is a complete
and perfect sleep. So death, like sleep, must be followed by an awakening to a fresh
period of activity in earth-life. And herein lies of course the greatest difference between
devachan and the Christian heaven.

But there is another striking resemblance which death bears to sleep. In sleep we dream,
and our dreams are peopled by those we know; they are filled with experiences of many
kinds, all quite as vivid and absorbing while they last as those of waking life. In dreams
we often exercise faculties and graces that we lack in this workaday world. We perhaps
paint pictures, or play some loved instrument with skill. There are people who can play a
musical instrument in their dreams who have no knowledge of it in their waking life. Or
we may meet interesting new friends or travel into undiscovered country. These dreams,
good or bad as the case may be, result from our daily thoughts and desires working
themselves out in this way when the mind has relaxed its check-rein.

Death, being but a longer, more complete sleep, is also a time of dreams. But whereas our
dreams at night are often troubled, after death they are all consoling and beautiful. For we
have sloughed off the lower parts of us where nightmare miasmas and suffering arise.
Those lower elements have been dissipated at the second death. There is nothing left
within us to suffer, for we are living then in the light and purity of the harmonious realms
of spirit. And over us is the divine aegis of the spiritual self.

Here however we must note again that

in the heaven-world, in Devachan, you will get precisely what you have built into your
own character, which is equivalent to saying what you longed for in the way of spiritual
recuperation and peace and bliss.
In these few sentences lies the secret meaning of the heaven-world and the nature of its
functioning and of what happens to the resting ego. It is, therefore, perfectly obvious that
a man, on the one hand, whose whole nature is of materialistic bent or bias, whose
thoughts are of the earth earthy, and whose instincts impel him to things of matter, will
remain but a short time in the heaven-world for he has built little into his character which
will keep him in the heaven-world for a long period of time: whereas a man, on the other
hand, whose whole nature is of a spiritual type, who has received but little spiritual joy
and peace and rest in the busy turmoil of physical existence and whose nature therefore is
entirely unsatisfied along these lines, will pass a long time in the heaven-world; for the
entire impulses of the heart-hunger of his being cling to what the resting ego there
undergoes and receives. -- G. de Purucker, Questions We All Ask, Series 1, No. 12

The period passed in devachan lasts, as an average, for fifteen hundred years. But the rule
for the individual is one hundred years in the devachan for every year of life on earth. A
man dying at fifty will thus pass 5,000 years in devachan; at eighty, 8,000 years of
heaven-life, and so on. The low average of 1,500 years is due to the very large percentage
who, because of their materialistic natures, build within themselves no foundation for the
spiritual joys of devachan and therefore are not able to remain long apart from
reincarnation on earth.

Here it may be well to remind ourselves that there is a marked difference between the bad
and the merely materialistic person. It is only the truly evil, those who through selfishness
or sensuality have willfully harmed others, who must suffer in kama-loka. There are
many well-meaning and honest people who live only for their personal interests and
pleasures. Such do not suffer in the kama-loka, having wrought no conscious harm; but
neither can they experience the blissful conditions of self-expression and self-realization
of the heaven-world. How can they, when they have laid no foundation for it in
themselves? And further, we are glad to remember that even those who undergo the
mental sufferings of kama-loka reach the end of that condition when the energies they
have stored up run low, and then they fall into the state of unconsciousness which leads
to a rebirth upon earth. And in reincarnation, through meeting in their own surroundings
the misery they have inflicted upon others, they will come to understand what selfishness
means, and so have the chance to grow out of evil into sympathy and compassion.

Coming back to an earlier viewpoint of this subject, we may again remind ourselves that
life after death is not a state of existence cut off by an abyss from ourselves as we are
today. Afterdeath states are merely: first, the dissolution of our physical-astral, and then
our lower mental and emotional, consciousness-centers; second, when that is completed,
life itself is continued on a higher level than we know it now and in the unimpeded
activity of our spiritual natures in conditions where they can for the first time truly unfold
and fulfill themselves.
Fear of death is due to wrong education, which has given us no vision of a life beyond
death which stands in logical or normal relation to what we know or experience here on
earth. But theosophy shows us the thread of continuity which runs through the
experiences of the individual in all worlds, while demonstrating the interrelation of the
invisible worlds with the world in which we are living today.

. . . Remember that when you lie down to sleep on your bed you die a little death. This
will cast out fear from your hearts when you realize its truth. Death will thus become
familiar to you. The thought of death will become friendly; and when your time comes to
die you will die gladly and you will die with a will. I repeat that death and sleep are one.
Sleep is an imperfect, incomplete death; and death is an absolute, perfect, complete sleep;
but sleep and death are essentially one process of change. -- G. de Purucker, Questions
We All Ask, Series II, No. 19

Chapter 5

Can We Communicate with Our "Dead"?

Our old childish conceptions of heaven and hell sprang from ignorance of our true nature,
and of the nature of the universe to which we belong. "Heaven," it is well to repeat for
emphasis, is not a place but a state of being, of consciousness. And our heaven is not a
reward, as already shown, but a natural outcome of what we have made of ourselves. And
the same for "hell" or kama-loka, which similarly is not a punishment but a consequence
of our actions while on earth.

Perhaps someone, to whom the theosophical idea of the heaven-world is still unfamiliar,
may ask: "But what about those I love? Am I not going to have them actually with me
after death?" How little we understand ourselves, or know where lie our deeper needs!
Think of a husband, an old man who has lost an aged wife, his companion through long
years of joy and sorrow. How will he wish to find her in the heaven-world if she is to be
actually her very self, present there with him? Shall it be as the young and beautiful
helpmate of his youth, or as the feeble but beloved partner of his declining years? Will
that not be a difficulty for him if heaven is to be the place of literal actuality that he
demands? And the mother: will the son she has lost in childhood be a child still, or shall
he perchance have grown out of her recognition? These are logical questions springing
out of the conception of heaven as merely a place, and of our loved ones merely as the
physical personalities we remember so fondly. But a human being is not a personality. He
is a spiritual being using the personality as an instrument for acquiring experience.

. . . Man is an embryo god locked in sheaths of emotion and thought and feeling, swathed
in crippling inner veils in their turn garmented in a body of flesh; and it is to recall men to
a realization of the divine light within, the divine spirit within: it is to teach men to
transcend and outrange these encircling veils and crippling shackles, that we
Theosophists teach and preach and write, and do our best to pass on to others what we
ourselves have found to be so fine.
Man, know thyself, said the Delphic Oracle, for in knowing thyself, thou shalt know the
Universe. -- G. de Purucker, Lucifer, May, 1933, pp. 488-9

The idea that in heaven we shall find our friends actually as they were with us in this life
is a materialistic conception springing directly from those personal ideas which help to
make the veils and crippling shackles above referred to. If we will study the spiritual
nature within us, which is the only permanent part of ourselves, we shall realize that a
true heaven-world can have little in common with the personalities of ourselves and our
friends; for it is from the faults and limitations of our own and others' personalities that
spring our heaviest trials.

Devachan is above all a place of rest. It is the "sleep" of the ego in which -- paralleling
the sleep of the body -- it assimilates what it has taken in of knowledge and experience
during the earth-life just passed through.

Now if we look back over our lives we discover that those things which have tried and
disappointed us most have sprung from our human relationships. The troubles originating
merely from environment, such as early handicaps, lack of money, or opportunity of
various kinds, have in many cases proved stimulating and have often brought forth the
best that was in us. It is people who wear us down. A mother, for example, who has
passed long, heart-breaking years of struggle to reform a wayward son, and who fails at
last -- how can she rest after death if she is to be reunited to his turbulent nature? And he,
if he has been leading a half-criminal existence, with strong animal desires and
indulgences, how can he exist with her in the devachan? He has built up no heaven-world
for himself. Instead, he will pass through a period of unrest in kama-loka, falling asleep
finally to be reborn on earth. And as his mother has earned a long and blissful rest in the
devachan, while he has not, he will perhaps be reincarnated long before she is, and,
learning and developing through suffering the consequences of misdeeds in his past life,
will perhaps meet her again in a later incarnation as a better and more loving child. Thus
the true-hearted mother will receive her reward; for in devachan all her dreams for that
boy will be realized and she will experience the joy of seeing her loving sacrifices reach
their fruition in his character. And because love is the most penetrating and creative
energy in the universe, and because we do have a deep inner communion with our dead,
her joy in seeing his reformation accomplished will reach him wherever he is and be
perhaps a more powerful influence for good -- because it will work unconsciously upon
him -- than her living presence with its possibly irritating restraints. For there are some
dreams which are more potent than so-called realities.

No, nature is wise and wholly compassionate. She protects us, while we are at rest in the
heaven-world, from all outside and disturbing influences. She releases us from our
emotional demands and cravings while healing our bruised and weary hearts. And when
the interval of recuperation is over we are reborn on earth, uniting with those who belong
to us in fresh relationships, for higher opportunities and further growth.

These thoughts lead us naturally to a consideration of the subject of "communication"

with the dead. But here we are not referring to the various types of such so-called
communications obtained in the seance room. Theosophy denies that these are true
messages from the spiritual selves of our departed. It has already been explained that the
kama-loka, which intermingles in its various phases, higher and lower, with the thought-
atmosphere of our world, is thickly populated with the kama-rupas or shells of those who
have just died. These shells are also called elementaries, and again spooks.

To recapitulate: the shell is the double or replica, in appearance and apparent character, of
the personality that was. It retains, as will a glove that is thrown aside, the impress of the
one who has so long used it. And these shells, being made of life-atoms, may reproduce
not only the lineaments but the very habits and mental characteristics of the departed.
This is possible because they are instinct with automatic memories of the past lives of
those who have discarded them at death. For that is exactly what they are, automata; and
like automata they are unconscious of themselves unless galvanized so often by mediums
that they are awakened to a false and dangerous vitality. But as a rule the messages they
give off at the vitalizing urge of mediums and "sitters" are but the phantom-echo of a
voice whose owner has departed. The ego which has sloughed off these astral-
psychological garments is awaiting the second death and the hour when it can enter the
bliss of devachan. This blessed hour of release for the ego is delayed if its kama-rupic
shell is kept intact when it should be mercifully disintegrating.

There may be a yet worse effect from these psychic practices. A false and dangerous
liaison between the decaying shell and the unfortunate relatives of the departed can be
brought about by the medium and the activities during seance, resulting in unhappy
karmic consequences for all concerned. Theosophy warns that all necromantic practices
open the door into a psychic charnel-house, the exhalations of which are far more
unwholesome and dangerous to mankind than those from the abodes of the physically
dead. For the first time in centuries theosophy restores to the Western world that
philosophy and science of spiritual sanitation by which this noxious psychology may be
purged from our life.

Theosophy repudiates so-called "communication with the dead." H. P. Blavatsky in The

Key to Theosophy, when discussing the difference between theosophy and spiritualism,
wrote:

. . . They [the Spiritualists] maintain that these manifestations are all produced by the
"spirits" of departed mortals, generally their relatives, who return to earth, they say, to
communicate with those they have loved or to whom they are attached. We deny this
point blank. We assert that the spirits of the dead cannot return to earth -- save in rare and
exceptional cases, of which I may speak later; nor do they communicate with men except
by entirely subjective means. That which does appear objectively is only the phantom of
the ex-physical man. -- pp. 27-8

(For further information upon the subject of so-called "spirit-return" see also Isis
Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. I of her Complete Writings, G. de Purucker in his
Occult Glossary, W. Q. Judge in The Ocean of Theosophy, and other manuals of this
series.)
In the few cases of true intercommunion between the dead and the living to which she
refers briefly in the same section, she says:

it is not the spirits of the dead who descend on earth, but spirits of the living that ascend
to the pure Spiritual Souls. In truth there is neither ascending nor descending, but a
change of state or condition. . . . -- Op. cit., p. 30

And in speaking of genuine communion -- not "communication" -- with the departed she
tells us very significantly in the same passage:

there is hardly a human being whose Ego does not hold free intercourse, during the sleep
of his body, with those whom it loved and lost, yet, on account of the positiveness and
non-receptivity of its physical envelope and brain, no recollection, or a very dim, dream-
like remembrance, lingers in the memory of the person once awake. -- Ibid. (italics ours)

In the foregoing passages are several suggestions which are illuminating when we think
them over. The expressions "objective" and "subjective" and "a change of state or
condition," for example, contain the key to true communion with our dead. They
emphasize the fact that spiritual clairvoyance -- not astral or psychic -- belongs to our
inner or subjective nature, and has naught to do with the senses, either physical or astral.
This applies to mediums and sensitives as well as to ordinary humanity. The difference
between the two kinds of manifestations are easily discernible, the objective, or psychic,
being misleading and demoralizing, while the subjective is so often fraught with the
deepest spiritual benefit.

An incident can be given which illustrates this; it happened to a friend and is one of many
which could be cited. A mother died leaving to her young daughter the care of five
children. The grief of the young girl and her sense of responsibility were intense, and she
brooded over them to the point of illness. One night as she was falling asleep she
suddenly saw before her two great portals which, as she gazed, opened slowly, to reveal a
glorious vision of beauty and peace. In the opening stood the form of her mother, but
transfigured with light. And to the daughter came her mother's beloved voice bidding her
grieve no longer, for her grief troubled her mother's rest. Well did the wise mother-heart
realize the strength of such an appeal! It aroused at a touch the unselfish courage and
willpower of her child. When the young girl awoke, her grief had vanished and she felt
within her heart the power to carry forward joyfully the task which her mother's death
had placed in her hands.

This is but one of many such occurrences, experienced by people of all ages, creeds, and
nationalities. But they are in the great majority of cases a phenomenon of the dream state
which, remember, has its analogy to the devachan. They are purely subjective, and
frequently have as their result some moral effect upon the recipient.

There are, in contrast, those occasional times when almost immediately after death the
form of the departed appears visually to some relative who is wide awake at the time.
This is an instance of an "objective" manifestation. Such an occurrence seems generally
to indicate that the departed was tormented with some worry before death, at a time when
the body was beyond speech. Such an apparition, as in a case known to the writer, led to
the discovery of a sum of money which had been concealed by the departed and never
mentioned to his relatives. In this case his double returned automatically to the spot
where the money was hidden and the daughter who saw it divined what the difficulty was
and discovered the money. But in many cases the shell is so vague in its movements, or
those who see it are so frightened or confused, that nothing comes of it. For in this type of
appearance it is not the ego which returns but a phantom of the deceased, strongly
energized into postmortem activity by the agonized regrets of the deceased. Its discarded
kama-rupa is so instinct with the mental disturbance of its departed tenant that it is
irresistibly projected into the scene of the ego's last thoughts.

This latter type of apparition is, relatively speaking, accidental, and is far removed in
every way from the spiritual condition and influence of the ego itself, as depicted in the
first instance given. One might say, without much exaggeration, that those who are never
conscious of after-death communion -- not communication, note -- with their departed are
either ignorantly or willfully shutting themselves outside the high sphere in which their
loved ones now are existing. Grief is often very self-centered and careless of its influence
on those who are gone, and such grieving will inevitably raise a barrier between us and
our happy dead. They are in the care of the spiritual self, at rest and sheltered under the
shield of its protecting light. Only the pure vibrations of our selfless attunement to them,
and to the ideal conditions of life in which they are isolated from material things, will
penetrate the veils which are between us, and give a sure and abiding sense of their
serene existence in devachan, the heaven-world. And only so may we prove for ourselves
that we can never be really separated from our departed loved ones, nor forgotten by
them in their happy rest.

Chapter 6

A Glance Backward

In order to round out the teachings of theosophy as to afterdeath states, let us, before
passing on, consider such exceptions as accidental death, capital punishment, and suicide.
These bring new conditions for our study. It has already been suggested that the same
states of consciousness exist as well before death as afterward. But we are not definitely
aware of them as such because they are all interblended and working within us as more or
less one state of psychological activity -- composite in reality of course, but not seeming
so to the person who unites them into one tissue of existence.

After death, when the spiritual self has departed, this tissue separates into its components
-- just as the chemical elements combine to make a physical body, with a unified and
definite awareness of itself and its functions but after death splitting up, and the definite
physical consciousness vanishing. That which makes our psychological states one tissue
is the selfhood; what breaks them up is the departure of this selfhood, the spiritual self.
But what if the Self does not depart, even though the physical body dies and is dissolved
away?

When a person is born his constitution may be compared to a clock wound up to run for a
certain length of time. If an injury be wrought to the clockwork it will stop running
before that time, but not otherwise. Science recognizes that every organism has its time
limit or vitality period, so to say. We understand that each human being has within him a
reservoir of vitality upon which he draws when passing through some abnormal strain,
such as a dangerous fever or a stretch of agonizing anxiety. We say that such experiences
are a drain upon the vitality.

This reservoir of vitality is the vital-psychological part of us. Vitality and instinctual
willpower keep us alive. But these, theosophy declares, do not originate with the physical
body. They depend of course upon the body for expression in earth-life, but they do not
originate there. They are therefore not destroyed at the death of the body, for they do not
pass away until their own energy, which determines their term of durance, is exhausted.

In the case, therefore, of accidental or premature death the only thing that suffers
dissolution is the body. For the time has not yet come when in the natural course of things
the spiritual self has felt its periodic evolutionary pull to the invisible worlds. The human
attractions which tied it to life on earth are by no means exhausted. The pendulum of
earth experience has not yet passed through its appointed arc of movement.

What then has happened? A complete human entity, minus only the physical body, is left
in the kama-loka to pass through its appointed arc of existence in that sphere, instead of
normally in earth-life.

The words "accidental death" have been used. But there is in reality no such thing as
accident. It may so appear to us because we see nothing of the inner causes which led up
to it. But theosophy teaches that moral justice rules the universe. A man is not here now
on earth for the first time. He has lived many other lives on this globe, and it was his
thoughts or actions in those past human lives which made him what he is today. If he is
run down by a speeding automobile, or falls over a cliff, it is because he himself, in this
or a former life, laid the train of causes which resulted in that accident. He himself has
done things which led him to the precise spot or circumstances where that "accident"
could overtake him. So that accidental death is in reality a part of his karma, a
consequence flowing from past actions done by himself. Nevertheless, his karma has cut
him off prematurely from earth-life, and this very cutting-off by so-called "accident" is a
part of the unfavorable karma he has built up for himself by past failures.

What happens then in the case of so-called accidental death? This will depend, naturally,
upon the man himself. If his life has been saturated with the base desire elements, of
which the lower planes of kama-loka consist, to those lower elements will he gravitate.
And the very identity of his consciousness with them will keep him alive there. Just to the
extent that he has been selfish or has cultivated his animal appetites will he be keenly
alive in this lower mental sphere which is so close to physical existence. But he will be
able to feel only the cravings of the appetites themselves -- he will have no body with
which to gratify them. From what all good men would rightly regard as his hell of
selfishness on earth he will pass to a genuine hell of mental torment in kama-loka.

When we remember the criminally-minded in every land put suddenly out of life through
capital punishment, we can realize how potent a force for evil we are letting loose in the
thought-atmosphere of humanity. These disimbodied, but still living, human beings keep
alive in humanity's mental sphere thoughts of hatred and revenge as well as base desires
and appetites. Such conditions in the world's thought-atmosphere must hold back the
spiritual progress of all those who are in sympathy with them. Is it any wonder that most
types of social reforms find progress such an uphill discouragement? And it is significant
that a diminution of crime is often observed to follow where capital punishment has been
abandoned.

But of course there is also the brighter side of the picture. Fortunately, even the average
among us are very different from the case above pictured. When accidental death comes
to a person whose life is marked by integrity and helpfulness, he will have little in his
psychological nature in common with this lower kama-loka. There will be nothing,
therefore, to keep him awake, so to say, in those lower spheres. He will fall into a
prolonged slumber -- the same state which he would pass through in a shorter form at
normal death. All his life through he has lived in a measure of harmony -- even if
unconsciously -- with his spiritual self; and that self as a natural consequence can shed
over him its protection, drawing him into its own divine and waiting peace. So he
slumbers until that moment comes when his spiritual self feels the call, the urge, to depart
into its own inner realms.

Then the psychological sifting process, the "second death," sets in. That part of the
psychological nature at rest in the higher regions of the kama-loka is absorbed by the
reincarnating ego and the lower breaks up and dissolves into its component elements.

The two instances above are given as typical cases. Different aspects of the general
condition have been thus described by Dr. de Purucker:

Kama-loka is for every man or woman on Earth. But there are as many different kinds of
kama-lokic existences as there are existences on earth; and the average man or woman
passes through the Kama-loka scarcely realizing it. A very bad, a very evil, man or
woman, on the contrary, has a keen realization of where he is in the Kama-loka; and there
are cases where the suffering is simply awful. But it is a mental suffering. . . . In the case
of very good men or women, they pass through the Kama-loka and they don't know that
they have done it. There is no break of the unconsciousness that merciful Nature brings to
us at the moment of death: there is no break in that unconsciousness until the Devachan
[the Heaven-world] with its roseate beauty is entered. . . .
The excarnate entity, the person who dies, remains in the Kama-loka just as long as his
karmic deserts call for his being there, and not one instant longer. -- The Theosophical
Forum, February 1933, p. 176
And in the case of accidental death:

. . . when the time is reached which would have been the normal life of the physical body,
then there is an awakening in the Kama-loka and a following out of the simple processes
of kama-lokic freeing that occur to all men. . . . Kama-loka is not so terrible, except for
those who are genuinely wicked; and there are places on our physical earth which are
terrible for men who are wicked and who are caught. -- Op. cit., p. 174

Suicide is the most unfortunate of all forms of violent death. This is because it means

the deliberate taking of one's own life in order to escape the consequences of what one
has earned; and if any man thinks that he can cheat Nature in that way, he greatly errs. He
but adds to the heavy burden he has to carry in the future. . . . He has deliberately forced
Nature's hand, so to say; he has deliberately exercised his own will-power and
consciousness for an unholy deed in an unnatural way, and done an act which Nature,
through its unerring laws, has not itself brought about; and when you break a law of
Nature, what happens? -- G. de Purucker, Questions We All Ask, Series I, No. 6

The answer is briefly given:

The fate of the suicide is a sad one, indeed a terrible one, and it is good and right that the
truth concerning suicide be told. The suicide wilfully cuts short the life that Nature, as we
Theosophists say, intended to be longer, and he has thus placed himself in a postmortem
condition in which he must live and suffer greatly until the term of his lifetime, had he
lived on earth, is closed. The fate of the suicide is an awful one. -- Op. cit., Series II, No.
19

The whole point is indicated here in the statement that the suicide willfully cuts short the
life that karma intended to be longer. In other forms of violent death, the accident or
crime or execution, as the case may be, was karmic. In suffering such a misfortune the
human being is paying his "karmic price." Suffering the consequences of his own actions
in the past, he thus wipes the karmic slate clean of that particular debt.

But the suicide, by his act of selfishly shirking the consequences of his failures in this life
and -- as frequently happens -- leaving the burden to be borne by others, has set in motion
for himself a fresh cause of misery. In his next life he will have to meet again the same
conditions which led to his suicide in this, only in a form intensified by the very energy
of his refusal to meet them now. Every act of ours is made up of energy and with every
intensification of energy the consequences deepen. So the last state of that person will
indeed be worse than the first.

The postmortem state of the person who takes his own life is the terrible one of living
over and over again the horror of his act and the mental torture which led up to it.
Suicides, like executed criminals, must in most cases become powerful vortices of
diseased thought-energy adding their force to the existing handicaps to the spiritual
progress of the world.
It is good to remember, however, that these cases of misfortune which we have been
discussing are but an infinitesimal proportion of the great mass of human beings. By far
the greatest number of accidental deaths are of people who have been living kindly and
normal lives, and their postmortem conditions cannot for that reason be anything but
peaceful. And reincarnation, by giving everyone "another chance" in life after life, leads
each person to achieve at last his own redemption.

We may appropriately close this chapter with these further words from Dr. de Purucker:

Every time when you are in intense suffering, mental suffering I mean, if it is something
especially which involves the elements of remorse, of intense contrition, that is kama-
loka; and you are then in kama-loka even while alive in the physical body. See the lesson
to be drawn from this. You see why H. P. Blavatsky was so anxious that the teaching
regarding the kama-loka and the Devachan should be broadcast among men as a warning,
if only as a warning. Live a decent life, a cleanly, manly, or womanly life, and you need
not bother your head about Kama-loka; you need not think twice about it; you won't
know anything about it; you will just pass through it like a meteor, but so to speak
upwards. -- G. de Purucker, The Theosophical Forum, February 1933, p. 177

Chapter 7

Death and the Monad

The death of those we love and the prospect of our own passing is so intimate to each one
of us that we easily overlook the wider and really more important experiences which
death brings to spiritual man. But theosophy, being an explanation of the facts of
existence, directs our attention to this wider view; for what we call death, and the states
of living which follow it, are of the utmost importance to the evolution of the individual
and of humanity.

Theosophy maintains that the problems of life can never be solved until our researchers
realize that the secret of all life lies in the invisible rather than in the physical universe.
Scientists themselves are beginning to suspect this, one of them, Professor J. Y. Simpson,
the Edinburgh Professor of Natural Sciences, having made this significant statement:

With physico-chemical instruments and methods it is difficult to see how you can get
anything but physico-chemical results, and when applied to the investigation of life, such
practice constitutes no proof accordingly that there is nothing in the characteristics of life
beyond what admits of physico-chemical expression. Further, the assumption that mind,
which devises all the experimentation, can itself be the product of analogous physico-
chemical happenings, seems altogether too heavy for the premises to bear. -- The
Listener, March 8, 1933

Let us supplement this negatively important point of view by the positive side as
expressed by Dr. de Purucker:
To know the exterior Universe, you must have brought into functional activity within
yourself the knower. . . . To understand the Universe you must have the understanding
heart, the faculty of understanding. Do you get the idea? Consequently, while the
scientists, for instance, are doing marvelous work, . . . nevertheless where they fail is just
on the point that they themselves are not seers, not genuine understanders of what they
themselves discover. You must cultivate your inner self. -- The Theosophical Forum,
April, 1933, p. 230

The secret of evolution is to be sought therefore in the inner nature of man and in the
invisible worlds of which our visible universe is but the physical evidence as the human
body is the visible evidence of its invisible but causal self, its monad.

Let us remember here what we mean by the monad, as already explained in Chapter 3: a
monad is a unit of consciousness, an indestructible unit of individuality. There is a monad
at the heart of every being from an atom to a sun. In an atom the monad is far less
evolved than is the monad of a human being, which has begun to be fully self-conscious.
The monad at the heart of a sun has evolved to the state of godhood. In ourselves we can
regard the monad as our spiritual self.

All evolution is produced by monads. The monads which now comprise the human
kingdom began their evolution in past ages by each one shaping for itself a vehicle in
each of the lower planes and kingdoms -- first the mineral and the vegetable; then it
evolves a beast nature with a physical body; and at last unfolds the potencies from within
itself which we call the egoic consciousness or the self-conscious ego. The kingdoms of
nature beneath the human are made up of monads which have not yet evolved self-
consciousness. So that, speaking roughly, we are at present a monad or spiritual self
(atma-buddhi) expressing itself through a self-conscious, reincarnating ego (manas, dual -
- higher and lower); and these again act through a lower triad (kama, a model-body, and a
physical body, with prana their breath of life).

The entire purpose of this evolutionary journey through all the kingdoms is twofold: first,
to enable the monad to gain the fruits of self-consciousness on lower planes than its own
spiritual one; then to aid the evolution of the life-atoms -- each with its own ensouling
monad -- which form its various vehicles on the different planes of evolution, physical,
emotional, intellectual, spiritual. And we must understand something of this process of
evolution, its purpose and objectives, if we would understand the sublimest of all the
mysteries of death.

Man has at the core of him the god within, which is not himself but is his root and
spiritual parent, the monad from which he draws unconsciously his spiritual vitality. This
divine being within is our inspirer, protector, and guiding star, the voice of compassion
and of conscience within our human hearts. Its holy light awakens within us all our ideals
and true aspirations. Without its surrounding, all-penetrating presence we poor human
egos would soon perish like fragile moths scorched in the hot flame of material delusion.
The monad, then, is a part of ourselves or, rather, we are a part of it, and yet it is not
ourselves. We cannot exist apart from it because it is our link or channel of communion
with the universal cosmic life.

Now the monad is itself an individual on its own (to us) invisible plane of existence. At
times, when we have perhaps gone momentarily beyond the limitations of our daily
selves -- through some action of unselfish love, an effort of intense self-discipline, or a
strong aspiration toward the divine within ourselves -- in such a moment a vibration of
freedom, insight, pure happiness or peace may take possession of us. For a time we
breathe the ether of a purer world, and all things seem possible to us. This is the light of
the god within, the monad. Upon the closed door of its realm of spiritual illumination that
thought or action acted as a pressure and the door swung briefly open to release a ray of
glory into the uplifted heart.

Thus the god within us has its own spiritual world. There it too lives, and experiences,
and grows, the while it over-illumines the reincarnating ego in its journey through the
shadows of earth-life. Its own realm lies in that causal divine world of which this physical
sphere is the outer garment or vehicle.

Little use in one's asking, "Where is this inner, invisible world?" One might as well say to
the invisible self of a friend, "Where are you?" -- meaning the mental-spiritual person
who is the real friend of one's heart. For the spiritual inner world exists on a different
plane, in a different state of matter, vibrates to another scale of existence than this one
that we see around us.

We must remember our composite nature: body, ego, spirit-self. Each of these three, as
we have seen, must be again divided for accurate study, making seven principles or
elements in all. So also the planetary world through which we evolve is sevenfold, there
being seven globes to a planetary chain of evolution, of which our earth is the physical
and the lowest globe, being the only one we can see, and corresponding by analogy with
man's physical body. (For a fuller explanation of our Earth-chain of globes the inquirer
should read The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, 1:136 et seq., and The Ocean of
Theosophy by W. Q. Judge.)

Every planet in space is likewise sevenfold -- is accompanied by six other, but to us

invisible planets. So that, if we had the proper organ of inner sight, we could look at night
deep within the starry universe above us to envision a countless host of more ethereal
worlds, within and ever within the outer spaces. It is these inner, more ethereal worlds
which are the causal ones, the roots of the physical universe, in the same way that our
spiritual self is the root of our visible being.

H. P. Blavatsky tells us about these worlds:

the occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our Earth, as the
theologians and the poets do; for their location is nowhere in the space known to, and
conceived by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world --
interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and
firmaments visible to us; there are still greater numbers beyond those visible to the
telescopes, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence.
Although as invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar system, they are
yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their respective
inhabitants as ours is to us . . . each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions,
having no direct relation to our sphere. . . .
Nevertheless, such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as our own is, they are
scattered throughout apparent Space in immense number; some far more material than
our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as
"Breaths." That our physical eye does not see them, is no reason to disbelieve in them;
physicists can see neither their ether, atoms, nor "modes of motion," or Forces. Yet they
accept and teach them. . . .
But, if we can conceive of a world composed (for our senses) of matter still more
attenuated than the tail of a comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in
proportion to their globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard-crusted earth, no
wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. -- The
Secret Doctrine 1:605-7

In the higher and innermost reaches of these invisible worlds dwells the monad, the
human spiritual self. Yet that fact, as can be seen from the above quotation, does not
make it absent from us. No more are the real egos of our friends absent from us although
we can see only their physical bodies. We must learn, as already said, to think of living
beings more in terms of consciousness than we now do. The human spiritual self is a
being of pure consciousness imbodied in its buddhic vehicle or garment; the ego is an
intellectual center of consciousness imbodied in a personal-animal vehicle; the lower
triad is likewise compounded of elementary consciousness imbodied in astral-physical
shape. And all these are blended into one by their common origin in the monad at the
heart of them all.

So we see that these different centers form, during earth-life, one being. If it seems a
strange thought that the god within us is evolving on its own plane continuously, we can
better understand by recalling that the mind and the body are also developing
simultaneously on two different planes, one of which is invisible to our outer senses.
Each principle or element in us over-illumines and helps the one immediately beneath it.
As the lower advances in evolution it gives a greater liberty of action to the
consciousness-centers above it, as a man who has subdued his bodily appetites is free of
them; one who has not is in some degree their slave. And this is true in a far greater
degree of the vices of the mind and emotions. Free ourselves of them and the whole
nature advances to a larger and deeper kind of activity. And conversely, no one can think
a thought or commit an action that does not influence for good or ill the countless lower
lives of his own organism that his consciousness interpenetrates. The effect of our vices
upon our physical health is one instance of this. And to complete the thought, our daily
thoughts and actions help or retard the spiritual evolution of our higher principles, whose
wider ranges of consciousness interpenetrate and inspire our ordinary human selves. Thus
there is an evolutionary interaction throughout all planes of being.
Death is the great friend which releases our spiritual self from its encasement in the
heavy gross matter of physical earth, while it opens for the weary human soul the
beautiful portal into spiritual self-fulfillment and peace.

Chapter 8

Peregrinations of the Monad

The teachings of the esoteric wisdom about to be briefly sketched are a beautiful answer
to what has been an intuitive dream of poets and thinkers of every age. How often, when
looking up into the deep infinitudes of the midnight sky, has the spirit of man not longed
to pierce the secrets of those shining worlds that circle in their far-distant majesty above
us! And many have had the true vision that it actually is the destiny of the human spirit to
visit after death other worlds and planets which beckon in serene beauty from the
pathways of space. The poet-astronomer Camille Flammarion, at one time a student of
theosophy, was one among the modern thinkers to express this belief, which is so logical
and romantic an answer to the heart-questings of humanity.

The journeys of the human spiritual self to the worlds of outer and inner space are called
in theosophy the peregrinations of the monad. In the foregoing pages we have set the
stage for the great adventure which follows death upon this earthly sphere. We have seen
how the four lower principles or elements of the individual dissolve away at the first and
second deaths; how the higher nature of the personality is absorbed by manas, the self-
conscious, reincarnating ego; and then how manas itself is withdrawn into the bosom of
the monad, its "Father in Heaven," for a long period of blissful rest.

The monad (atman with its spiritual vehicle or garment, buddhi) is now free to pursue its
peregrinations or pilgrimage through the inner worlds. For we must not imagine that the
monad, which is a divine being of cosmic consciousness and potencies, rests during the
periods between our earth-lives and while it is holding the sleeping ego within it. The
monad has no need of what we call rest. It is ever active, ever occupied during the
periods of solar manifestation in its work as evolutionary emanator and inspirer of those
hosts of less evolved entities with which its vast range of karmic affinities brings it into
contact. And this aid and inspiration it accomplishes by clothing itself with, building for
itself, vehicles made up of these lower entities on all the planes, inner and outer and
"higher" and "lower," which it must pass through in its peregrinations. Among these
lower entities which act directly and indirectly as vehicles for the urges and activities of
the monad are the six other and less evolved principles of the human being, as well as all
the forms throughout the lower kingdoms which the monad has animated, as explained in
the last chapter.

It may make the following teachings clearer if we briefly repeat that everything in the
universe is sevenfold in its manifested evolutionary nature or constitution; that is, in the
universe of form, life manifests through seven different degrees of consciousness and
substance, of which our seven principles are illustrations. The other six principles or
elements through which the cosmic and also the individual monad manifest are invisible
because their substance is too ethereal for perception by our physical senses, which are
not attuned to the finer rates of vibration of those ethereal matters. And this earth of ours
is therefore but one of a system of seven globes or planets of which ours is the outermost
and most material and the only one apparent to our physical senses. These six sister
globes of our earth are on inner and higher levels of being.

We must pause here just a moment to remind the reader not to regard these sister-globes
of ours as being the other six principles of the earth, for they are not. Each one is itself,
like the earth, a complete septenary entity. But together with the earth they form a series
of seven evolutionary stages or planes of development through which we all must
eventually pass to round out our own complete septenary evolution and become thus
complete aspects of the whole. (For a fuller description of these seven globes of our
planetary chain, see The Secret Doctrine, 1:170 et seq; for a study of the seven principles
of the earth, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy by G. de Purucker.)

To these invisible globes of our earth-chain the monad or spiritual self, now that physical
death and the second death are completed, wings its way. There on each globe, pursuing
the same process as already described, it evolves forth bodies or vehicles or forms
appropriate to evolution on those higher planes of consciousness. These peregrinations
through the invisible globes of our planetary chain are a phase of the "inner rounds."
Then, the cycle of the monadic peregrinations on these higher globes of our planetary
chain being at last completed, the monad enters on its cycle of journeyings through the
"outer rounds" -- that is, it makes the circuit of what the ancients called the seven sacred
planets of our solar system.

But what and which are these sacred planets, and why are they called sacred? Obviously,
being rooted as it is in an organized universe governed in its every part and aspect by
changeless law, the monad does not wander aimlessly about on its peregrinations through
the spheres. It follows instead those definite paths which are called in the esoteric
philosophy the circulations of the cosmos. The peregrinations of the monad are also
strictly defined by its own innate karmic affinities or attractions, and these affinities limit
its cosmic journeyings to the seven sacred planets.

These planets are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and the Moon -- the
latter bodies being used as symbols or substitutes for two planets, very little information
about which has been given in the literature of the ancient wisdom.

Now why are these particular seven planets called sacred and what is their karmic
relation with mankind? The explanation is given in Fundamentals of the Esoteric
Philosophy by Dr. de Purucker as follows:

these seven planets are sacred for us, inhabitants of this globe, because they are the
transmitters to us from the sun of the seven primal forces of the kosmos. Our seven
principles and our seven elements spring originally from this sevenfold life-flow.
Moreover, these seven sacred planets, or rather their rectors -- indwelling spiritual beings
of which these planets are the physical vehicles -- each one oversees the building or
formation of one of the seven globes of the earth's planetary chain plus the swabhava or
innate karmic characteristics of that globe itself. For further information on this and other
aspects of this teaching the reader is referred to G. de Purucker's The Esoteric Tradition,
chapter 29, "Circulations of the Cosmos." In The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky refers
to these tenets, one such passage being here quoted:

The planetary origin of the Monad (Soul) and of its faculties was taught by the Gnostics.
On its way to the Earth, as on its way back [to its native divine home] from the Earth,
each soul born in, and from, the "Boundless Light," had to pass through the seven
planetary regions both ways. -- 1:577

Thus it is through these seven sacred planets and their respective planetary chains that the
monad continues its afterdeath peregrinations once its imbodiments on the invisible
globes of our earth's planetary chain are completed. A description here follows, in
passages taken from The Esoteric Tradition, which will answer many questions and
describe much that has been merely outlined so far:

during its [the Monad's] activity after the postmortem existence for the man is
commenced, it passes from sphere to sphere, going the rounds anew on its ceaseless
peregrinations during the Manvantara. It passes through the spheres not merely because it
is native to all of them and is therefore drawn to them by its own magnetic attractions and
impulses, but likewise because it itself wills to do so; for free will is a godlike thing and
is an inherent and inseparable attribute of itself. -- p. 857

The reader's attention is called to the words "going the rounds anew," which refers of
course to the fact that these inner and outer rounds are followed by the monad after each
of the incarnations on earth of the human being. And also note the free will exercised by
the monad as showing that it, a divine being, takes upon itself voluntarily the immense
task of imbodying itself in all classes of the lower lives of its own cosmos in order to lift
them up, to urge and inspire their self-evolution into godhood like its own. To continue:

Now, during the peregrinations of the Monad through the 'Seven Sacred Planets' of the
ancients, the said Monad must of necessity follow those pathways or channels or lines of
least resistance which the Esoteric Philosophy has called the 'Circulations of the Cosmos,'
or by some similar phrase. These Circulations of the Cosmos are very real and actual
lines of communication between point and point, or locality and locality, or celestial body
and celestial body, as all these exist in the structural framework, both visible and
invisible, of the universe. These Circulations are not merely poetic metaphors, or figures
of speech; they are as real in the inner economic working of the visible and invisible
Worlds of the Universe, as are the nerves and the arterial and venous blood-vessels in the
human physical body, and just as these latter provide the channels or canals or pathways
of the transmission of intellectual and psychical and nervous impulses and directions, as
well as of the vital fluid called the blood, so in identical analogous fashion, the
Circulations of the Cosmos provide the channels or canals or pathways followed by the
ascending and descending Rivers of Lives, which Rivers are composite of the never-
ending stream of migrating and peregrinating entities of all classes back and forth, hither
and yon, 'up' and 'down' throughout the Universal Structure. -- p. 859
The Monad on reaching the next planet in order after it has left this sevenfold Earth-
chain, thereupon produces or forms a Ray or Radiance from itself during its passage in
and through such planetary chain, a psycho-mental apparatus or 'soul' of temporary
existence, which takes in consequence temporary imbodiment in a correspondingly fit
vehicle or body there, the such body being of a spiritual, an ethereal, an astral, or a
physical type. -- p. 867
Thus the Monad, our Spiritual Self, our Essential Self, . . . gathers at each one of the
seven sacred planets a new harvest of soul-experiences only to be gained in each such
planet, each such 'harvest' being the aggregated experiences in imbodiment acquired by
the Spiritual Monad which belong in essential characteristics of substance and energy to
each such respective planet. -- pp. 870-1

Is not this a magnificent picture -- sweeping us from our moorings in the stagnant
backwaters of lingering medieval theology or of modern materialism, out upon the ocean
of spiritual adventure! It well illustrates the meaning of a phrase often used in theosophy,
the expansion of consciousness. No: we are neither worms of the dust nor merely
developed simians. We are destined neither to a static heaven or hell nor to merciless
extinction. Instead, there are for us illimitable fields of cosmic activity and adventure
sublime beyond our present imagining.

It is true that the purer side of our present consciousness will be dreaming blissfully in
devachan while the god within, the spiritual self or monad -- carrying us "in its bosom" --
is pursuing its divine adventure through the pathways of the solar system. It is rather as a
goal of inspired effort that this picture of our grand destiny is painted for us by the adepts
and sages of the archaic wisdom. They have drawn aside the dark curtain of our
ignorance to reveal the unfathomable vistas of life that fill the inner reaches of space.
They assure us of our happy place, our fruitful and unending share in the immensely
varied and fascinating drama of the universe.

We now see something of the meaning of the evolutionary process touched upon in the
last chapter. In this process, the reimbodying ego at the close of its great cycle of
evolution becomes at last itself a monad. It will have evolved from the core of its own
being the monadship now latent, or only just beginning to unfold there. Then in a future
manvantara it too as a monad will follow, between its imbodiments, the circulations of
the cosmos; while what is now our animal nature shall have evolved and advanced to
humanhood.

Chapter 9

Value of These Teachings

One of the best things about theosophy is that its idealism is constructive and practical. It
might seem at first thought that it is difficult to relate this sublime scheme to our hurried,
overcommercialized present. Yet there is not one of the teachings of theosophy, not even
the most seemingly abstruse, which has not an intimate, almost a utilitarian value to the
daily thought and conduct of men and women like ourselves. For merely one example,
could there be anything more practical in its effects than the certainty that we survive
after death? Its ethical influence would obviously be tremendous, especially when taken
in connection with reincarnation and karma.

Why, in the main, do we dread death for ourselves? Is it not that we fear to "let go," to
give up our familiar daily consciousness? We do not dread sleep, for we remember
yesterday and we know that after an interval of loss of consciousness tomorrow will
certainly restore it again. But in regard to death we are like little children who struggle
every night to hold themselves awake dreading the moment when they must sink into the
unconsciousness of sleep. It is only when we are older and more experienced that we
learn what a friend and consoler is life's daily interval of blessed Lethe.

The same difference in development between child and adult in regard to sleep marks the
difference in growth between incompletely developed men like ourselves and the
spiritual adept or mahatma in regard to death. For to overcome death, that is to carry the
consciousness without break from life to life, is one of the great results of true occult
training. And by true occult training is meant the scientific application of theosophical
teachings to self-development, under the guidance of a spiritual teacher.

We die, in the sense of losing grasp upon ourselves, because we live now almost wholly
in that part of our natures which is bound to die, the personal and physical consciousness.
Even the highest god of the inner spiritual worlds must, could he take upon himself
human flesh, sooner or later witness its dissolution. The physical nature of Jesus, who
was a high avatara -- or the manifestation of a god -- had to pass through the gates of
physical dissolution. "But," you say, "he rose again from the dead." Indeed yes -- as every
one of us must learn to "rise" -- "greater things than these shall ye do," he promised us.

The "resurrection" is an initiation-teaching from the ancient Mystery schools. These

schools existed in antiquity as a vital part of all those old civilizations. Their purpose was
to teach mankind the origin, constitution, laws, and destiny of the universe and of our
relations and experiences within it. In the days of Jesus these Mystery schools had
deteriorated, as all things must with time. The truths, however, which that mystery-
knowledge had been teaching for ages, were so interwoven into the mental and moral
fabric of the Mediterranean civilizations that the Christian Church was obliged to adopt a
great deal of the mystery-language and ceremony to attract the people and make its new
dogmas intelligible. But in partially adopting these, it misunderstood them and debased
them to material levels; and the glorious "resurrection" of the spiritual man triumphant
over his own selfish and animal nature was debased into the present illogical doctrine.
The true resurrection has a deep place in the teachings of occultism, or applied
theosophy:
Its meaning is this, that within each one of you is a divine being, a living god, prevented
from manifesting its transcendent powers only by the cramping bonds of our personal
selfhood -- our prejudices, our whims, our small petty hates and loves; and that when a
man can conquer these lower things -- conquer them in the sense of making them
servants of the god within, fit instruments and tools for self-expression -- then you will
see man walking the earth as a human god, because manifesting the transcendent powers
of the god within him, of the immanent Christ, of the inner Buddha, as the Buddhists put
it. -- G. de Purucker, Questions We All Ask, Series I, No. 44

True resurrection means initiation -- that final glorious consummation of the long course
of self-directed evolution under the guidance of a spiritual teacher which theosophy
offers to all who will live the life and imbody its teachings. The subject of initiation is
copiously dealt with in theosophical literature, so we shall quote but one passage in
regard to it:

there is a pathway steep and thorny though it be for the average man, yet it leads to the
very Heart of the Universe. The man traveling this path passes through the portals of
growth quickly, relatively speaking; and I can show you how to put your feet upon this
pathway, so that instead of spending ages and ages and ages and ages in slowly evolving,
in slowly expanding, in slowly bringing forth the powers and faculties within you, you
can grip yourself, guide your own evolution, and thus much more quickly grow.
This is 'self-directed evolution,' . . . This is initiation. -- Op. cit., Series II, No. 4

There is actually of course a kind of resurrection of the body in the meaning herewith
described:

when you realize that the very atoms of your body do not come to you by chance, that
they are the same atoms which you used in your last incarnation on earth, then you
quickly see that there is a resurrection of the physical man in that sense of the word: i. e.,
that when you return to earth in the next reincarnation, the atoms in which you live in this
present body, will automatically fly to that new body, will be psycho-magnetically drawn
to you, for they are your physical, astral, and ethereal children. -- Op. cit., Series I, No. 44

Both these teachings however, belonged to the Mystery schools and were, as seen, badly
distorted by early Christian pietists who adapted them to the uses of the new religion,
Christianity.

Theosophy but re-states the ancient mystery-teachings, which Krishna, Lao-Tse,

Gautama, and Jesus all taught in their varied ways -- varied because each was given to a
different age and people. Theosophy now voices again the immemorial, mystic call from
the heart of the universe to the heart of man, bidding him to arise and go to the Father,
within whose temple of the spirit he may find that strength and wisdom that will lift him
above the illusions of the selfish personality and give him victory over death. For said the
great avatara: "In my Father's house are many mansions," and "I go to prepare a place for
you."
These great ideas and promises relate themselves to our daily experience because they
express the goal of all humanity. We suffer and toil and die because we do not understand
ourselves or the elements of which we are made. We do not know why we are here. We
understand so little about life that our own selfish interests seem the most important part
of it. We have wrong ideas about almost everything. Those things which are the call of
the spiritual nature within, such as pain, self-sacrifice, sorrow, and discipline, we avoid
when we can, too often accepting in their stead the narcotics of self-indulgence or
indifference. And this leads only to more pain, more sorrow and disease, and to all the
deeper aspects of personal mortality.

We recall again Katherine Tingley's declaration that the object of life is the "raising of the
mortal into immortality." But immortality is not bestowed upon us any more than
character or environment. It must be earned and built up by effort before it can be ours.
The human self must achieve immortality and its own right to the divine adventure by
transforming its lower composite nature into the unity and homogeneity of spirit. Things
made up of varied elements, whether material or psychological, must fall apart when the
energy that brought them together is exhausted. But the god within is a pure ray of
universal oneness and cannot decay or cease to be. When we can transmute through
selfless and universal thought and action our own human nature into the homogeneity of
the divine then we will know ourself immortal because we will have become so through
self-directed efforts. We will be Masters of Life.

The great promise of theosophy for the individual may fitly bring this chapter to a close:

the old initiations have not died off from the face of the earth. They take place even
today, and in the archaic way, under the supervision and the guidance of men, great Sages
and Seers, . . .
The personal man, my Brothers, must be 'crucified,' i. e., 'slain' -- metaphorically
speaking -- in order that the Christ within you may resurrect or arise. . . .
The Pathway of Beauty, the Pathway of Peace and Strength, the Pathway of the Great
Quiet, is within you -- not within the material body, but within the inmost focus of your
consciousness. This is the Pathway that the great Sages and Seers of all the ages have
taught. Follow that Pathway; it will lead you to the heart of the Sun, the Master and
Guide of our Solar System; and later if you follow it, it will conduct you to a destiny still
more sublime. Yet that sublime destiny is only the beginning, only the beginning of
something grander; for evolution, growth, expansion of consciousness, go on forever. --
Op. cit., Series II, No. 32

Chapter 10

Death and Rebirth

It is hardly possible to think of survival after death without also thinking of preexistence
and rebirth, for anything supposed to be without an end must also be regarded as having
no beginning. In a logical system of thought we have to account for and describe not only
what happens after death but also what happens before birth.

And just here it will be interesting to note the immediate causes of the reincarnation of
the human ego. Reimbodiment is of course a "law," that is, a universal habit of nature.
Everything in the universe reimbodies -- an electron, an atom, a mineral, a plant -- that is,
the monads evolving through these forms must reimbody; likewise for an animal, a man,
a planet, a sun, a solar system, a universe -- nothing can escape its essential destiny of the
evolution or unfolding of its inner nature and powers through reimbodiment and
progressively advancing organization and environments. And the human ego naturally
shares in this universal habit of self-evolution.

But it is the immediate reasons which bring about reincarnation on earth, with the
methods and procedures which are followed in the process, that concern us particularly
now. We left the monad, the spiritual self, peregrinating through the seven sacred planets
carrying the reincarnating ego "asleep in its bosom." But as always in nature, that which
rests or is asleep must awaken and enter afresh upon self-conscious activity for the
purpose of carrying forward its own evolution.

So at last the reincarnating ego begins slowly to reach the end of its period of devachanic
spiritual assimilation. Memories of its former earth-lives, vague but compelling, stir it
from its blissful sleep. And so harmonious and flexible and self-adjusting are all the
processes of nature that the monad has completed its peregrinations through the inner and
outer rounds by the time the reincarnating ego is reaching the end of its dream-rest in the
monadic essence.

Consequently, as is obvious enough, an Ego having a short Devachan, or an Ego,

contrariwise, having a long Devachan, has no difficulty in either case, because the
Spiritual Monad is more or less strongly influenced by the spiritual condition or quality
of the Reimbodying Ego which it holds in its bosom, and thus it is that the pilgrimage of
the Spiritual Monad is to a certain and often large extent controlled as regards the time
passed in the interplanetary pilgrimage. -- The Esoteric Tradition, p. 885

The reincarnating ego is therefore gradually carried "downward" or "outward" through

the invisible interplanetary spheres until it begins again to approach the threshold of
earth-life. Here it sends out from itself a manasic radiance or ray, and the presence of this
ray acts dynamically upon all those centers of energy which were cast off when it last
passed through the portal of death here on earth. The life-atoms composing these energy-
centers or principles or elements begin to crystallize around the manasic ray as a nucleus.
These principles or elements are four in number, as already enumerated, and constitute
the lower quaternary or lower self which the ego used as its vehicle on earth in the last
life. They are: kama, passional desire; prana, the life-principle or vitality; the astral or
model body, the linga-sarira; and the physical sheath or sthula-sarira. And when once
these begin to reform around the manasic ray, the personality, kama-manas, comes again
into earth existence.
The final process is thus described for us:

The Ray or Radiation from the Reimbodying Ego finally reaches the critical point or
stage in its 'descent' where it is drawn to or attracted by the specific and definite human
germ-cell whose growth, if not interrupted, will eventuate in a physical body. The
psycho-magnetic attractions and inner impulses of the Reimbodying Ego . . . have
karmically led it to that one cell which is most appropriate out of the number of other
possible cells, the father and the mother in due course joining to give what we may
perhaps figuratively call the magic link of united 'life,' . . .
From this instant the living protoplasm begins to grow from within outwards, and little by
little to manifest forth what is stored within itself. -- Op. cit., p. 888

The ego is usually drawn to that family and that type of social environment in which it
laid down its burdens, problems, and relationships at the last death of its physical body.

The study of death and afterdeath states of consciousness and experience is of the deepest
importance to every one and for the following reasons, among others:

(1) Because it will teach us how to bridge the gap, which is apparent only, between
ourselves and those we love closely who have passed onward into the invisible worlds;
and this removes the sting of death.

(2) Because it dissolves away the fear of death from our hearts and inspires us with a
great hope and purpose in so shaping today that death's tomorrow may be a glorious one.

(3) Because we cannot understand death without learning the secrets of our own natures,
a study and a mastery of which will reconstruct all living for us both here and hereafter.

There is about theosophy a completeness, a rounding out of many processes of nature,

which science at present beholds only as half-truths. Such are gravitation and evolution,
as H. P. Blavatsky explains in The Secret Doctrine. Science regards human life, for
example, as a straight line, a fragment, whereas it is an infinitesimal section of a mighty
circle turning upward upon itself through alternating degrees of light and shade -- a
tremendous spiral ascent. Upward, ever slowly upward it trends, carrying the individual
from the murky shadows of one life here into the gleaming curve of the between-lives
period; then, into another shadowy patch of earth-existence and so on, still gradually
climbing until the goal is reached.

As for the goal or "ending" of this evolutionary process of which life on this earth is one
segment with "death" and beyond as another -- this goal too is but a partial ending. It is a
mere stopping place, a period for rest and spiritual assimilation of a higher sort, as is
clearly indicated in the following passages:

It was precisely the ancient religions and philosophies which in their inner meaning
taught that the Universe is based on law and order, builded around imperishable centers
which vary never, and which, each one, pursues an evolutionary course towards the
Divine Polar-Star of the Universe; and which further taught that the imperfect things that
we see in Nature around us, like us human beings ourselves, are imperfect because they
are as yet not fully evolved.
And hearken, they taught more. They taught that there never is an ultimate, a final
stopping-place, beyond which the evolutionary stream of life cannot go. But they said, no
matter how great and how highly evolved such and another stream of life may be with all
its component entities, there is veil upon veil behind and beyond the frontiers of the
Universe, stretching into other Universes. Endings of evolution, as I have said, exist not
at all. -- Questions We All Ask, Series I, No. 31
The spirit or monad is constantly growing; it is evolving, on its way to become the super-
spiritual, finally to become the Divine, then the Super-divine. Is that the end of its
evolutionary possibilities? No, it advances ever, constantly and endlessly evolving,
growing. But words fail us here to describe this sublime conception. We cannot describe
it in faltering human language. Our imagination falls palsied in any such attempt, and we
can merely point to the evolutionary path vanishing in both directions into infinity and
into eternity, as beginningless as it is unending. -- Op. cit., Series I, No. 13

We have now taken a somewhat detailed view of what death really implies and of the
place which it holds in human evolution. As to the process itself, it may be useful very
briefly to review the stages through which the human consciousness passes when death
brings release to the spiritual self. These are:

1. Death itself, or the sloughing off and disintegration of the physical body, caused by the
severance of the link between the spiritual self and its lower principles. The astral model-
body or linga-sarira also now disintegrates -- a process which is greatly hastened by
cremation of the physical body.

2. The review by the reincarnating ego of the events of the just ended life. This is a most
important and solemn part of the act of dissolution, when the ego views every thought
and act of its life, seeing clearly the justice and meaning of the life's events. At such a
time, immediately following death, there should be perfect, reverent quiet around the
departed so that no breath of disturbance from the outer plane may interrupt this
necessary and sacred event.

3. The falling asleep of the human personality or consciousness while the next two
processes take place.

4. The dissolution of the kama-rupa, unless it should be kept alive by mediumistic

interference.

5. The second death, during which the spiritual essence of the personality is absorbed by
the ego.

The two latter processes are unconscious ones for normal humanity.
6. The passing of the reincarnating ego into its devachanic rest in the bosom of the
spiritual self or monad.

7. Peregrinations or cosmic journeyings of the monad or spiritual self upon its "divine
adventure," carrying the reincarnating ego "in its bosom."

8. Re-awakening of the reincarnating ego to the pull of earth-life and its descent towards
reincarnation in a new personality.

Chapter 11

Some Questions Answered

In connection with our study of this profound and wonderful subject many questions are
likely to arise. It is often asked, for example, if, since theosophy teaches that there is a
heaven-world, does it not also teach something about a hell? And how about purgatory,
which many people believe in: what has theosophy to say about that?

If by "hell" is meant a place of eternal punishment, then theosophy emphatically denies

both the ideas implied in this expression. In the ancient wisdom there is no place for the
illogical and childish idea of punishment. We meet only the consequences of our own
past thoughts and actions in this or former lives -- that is, our karma. No one imposes or
forces these resulting conditions upon us: they follow our own actions as naturally as heat
follows combustion, or as the furrow follows the plow. Also, to repeat, no state or
condition of existence can be everlasting.

Our theological ideas of heaven and hell are more of those man-made misconstructions
already mentioned -- those distorted remnants of the ancient mystery-teachings which
still prevailed in the popular mind at the beginning of the Christian era. All these
misconceptions were fastened upon human thought at a time when humanity was passing
into an age of spiritual inertia, culminating in the so-called Dark Ages. And the
theological doctrines of hell as found in all religions in some form have, to condense the
words of Dr. de Purucker (see The Esoteric Tradition, pp. 543-551), become almost
without exception highly embroidered misconceptions of the original doctrine taught by
the founders of such religions. All these misconceptions came to be accepted literally
instead of symbolically and figuratively, and have brought about almost untold suffering
and misery to human hearts. Thus the words "heaven" and "hell," in their true mystical
sense as a part of the ancient mystery-teachings, are seen to refer -- the heavens to

those spiritual realms of experience through which all Monads whatsoever shall and
indeed must at some time in their age-long peregrinations pass, and in which they dwell
for periods proportionate with the karmic merit attained or won; and the so-called 'hells'
are those spheres or realms of purgation, to which all Monads whatsoever during certain
periods of their age-long peregrinations must pass, therein washing the matter-laden, and
therefore heavily-laden, souls; so that once cleansed they may rise again along the
ascending arc of Cosmic Experience.

Indeed this earth itself is regarded by those beings who have long ago transcended its
matter-weighted vehicles and temptations as a hell of a particularly trying variety. Thus
theosophy, while explaining the origin of these theological misconceptions, frees the
human mind once and for all of their degrading and cruel influence.

There is of course in nature's vast realms a condition or state of being which is the
opposite or nether pole to those stages of spiritual attainment and rest which extend all
the way from devachan to the different degrees of nirvana at the close of the greater
periods of evolution. This other state of being is called "avichi" and is also of many
degrees according to the material propensities of the entities who are drawn into it by
their own evil actions. Those who are given over to hatred, revenge, lusts, or vices of any
kind, gravitate inevitably to some form of avichi, to which state the lower stages of the
kama-loka belong. Here dwell the psychic remains of such men and women, for human
life gives as incomplete a scope on the one hand for the deepest degrees of evil as for the
attainment of the purest spiritual happiness on the other. Yet if people accumulate within
themselves desires and energies of either the basest or finest, these must find their outlet
and expression somewhere. The "hells" or lower reaches of the kama-loka are the direct
karmic consequences of the indulgence by men and women in degrading human
attributes. But even so the results are merciful, for these "hells" confront the entities
attracted to them with the terrible consequences of unbridled self-indulgence in evil, and
so impress them that the road to avichi may later be avoided. And happily they are but
temporary and the number of such unfortunate men and women is relatively small.

Theological doctrines about purgatory are another example of the distortion by ignorant
men of the mystery-teachings of the ancient wisdom to serve the ends of exoteric
religion. How they arose can easily be seen from the foregoing, though the ancient
wisdom tells us that in the actual state of kama-loka -- excepting in the rare instances
already cited of suicides and the very evil -- while there is purgatory of a sort in the sense
of the dissolving away of the material and selfish elements of the deceased, this
purification is an unconscious process and involves little or no suffering whatever for
normal human beings. All these bugbears of theology and superstition theosophy
explains, and in explaining casts aside.

Another point that inquirers often bring up is in regard to the possibility of shortening the
period between earth-lives. There is a perhaps surprisingly large class of men and women
who cannot endure the idea of thousands of years of bliss while the human world is
toiling painfully along without their efforts to help and alleviate. In this light the state of
devachan seems essentially selfish. To such inquirers the following will be of interest:

Question: In The Mahatma Letters [to A. P. Sinnett] I read that Devachan is a state of
intense selfishness. . . . I believe that real love will shorten the time we are in Devachan;
and I hope I am right; . . .
Answer by Dr. de Purucker: Dear Brother: . . . I absolutely agree with you. Now, when
we analyse the devachanic state closely, we must come to recognise that, however
beautiful it may be, however much of a rest and recuperation it is -- for it certainly is all
that -- it nevertheless is a selfish state. Say what we will, it is necessary at the present
time, on account of its being rest and recuperation and peace and a rebuilding and an
assimilation of the experiences of the life just closed; but granting all that, it is a selfish
existence; because, for the hundreds of years that we are in the Devachan, we are sunken
in roseate dreams, and the world may be going to hell, and we don't care. Now, that is not
the spirit of the Buddhas of Compassion. Love, impersonal love, which loves all things
both great and small, will free us even from the Devachan; and it is just this spirit of
impersonal love, love for all things, a yearning to help all, and to aid -- it is this spirit
which is the very core of the Buddhas of Compassion and of our own Order. It is this
spirit which will shorten our Devachan and advance us rapidly on the pathway of
chelaship. It is the spirit which infills our Elder Brothers, the Masters of Wisdom and
Compassion and Peace. They have no Devachan. They have advanced beyond it -- at
least the higher ones among them have. -- The Theosophical Forum, February 1933, p.
178

An intense impersonal desire to live for humanity, if persisted in during life --

particularly if it is not mere sentimentality but takes the shape of daily self-sacrifice in
thought and conduct -- is an energy of the most powerful kind. It is powerful above all
other energies because it partakes of the moving harmony and love which flow forth from
the heart of the universe to pervade and animate all that is. It will find its appropriate
expression by drawing the excarnate entity back to that field where alone this spiritual
desire-energy may work itself out -- reincarnation upon earth in any environment where
such humanitarian activity is possible.

The foregoing leads to a question often brought up as to the relative importance of the
two states, earth-life and devachan. To suggest the answer in a homely form we might
ask: Which is more important, eating or digestion? For earth-life gives the accumulation
of experience and devachan brings about its assimilation. To average humanity both are
necessary and each complements the other.

Yet, even so, as the astute reader will have deduced from answers to questions already
given, the mahatma, the adept, the Master of Life, has "advanced beyond" devachan. He
passes from life to life and body to body without break of consciousness. But we must
not overlook the fact that in doing this he has also passed beyond the need, for himself, of
any further experience of earth-life. He reincarnates as a man of flesh that he may devote
himself to the spiritual welfare of all things. To overcome the power of death and its
conditions, one must first overcome the thirst for life. For these two, life on earth and life
in the inner worlds beyond death are at present the human method of evolution. And only
by transcending the need of both can we become mahatmas -- self-consciously immortal.

But death, even for the average person, will change its conditions eventually, for of
course we are constantly evolving. Under the influence not only of our own inner urge,
but with the help of an environment which we, in common with our family, nation, and
race, is daily creating, we will develop, unwrap, unroll from the core of our own being
new powers and capacities. And as we evolves these new faculties, so will we at the same
time be bringing about the conditions whereby to express them. This is a part of the grand
outlook which theosophy offers for the future of humanity.

As Dr. de Purucker tells us:

In the future, when the human race shall have advanced somewhat farther than now it is,
old age will be universally considered to be the most beautiful period of earth-life
because the fullest in intellectual and psychical and spiritual power, and it will remain so
until within a few short hours before actual physical death occurs. [Italics ours.] -- The
Esoteric Tradition, p. 813

Another matter which should be touched upon before closing this study is the new light
which theosophy throws upon our present unscientific conceptions of immortality. This
point of view was recently expressed in the following way:

men do not know what real immortality means; they think it means unchanging
continuance of the human soul as it now is -- and what a hell that would be! Fancy being
for ever, and for ever, and for ever what one is now!
The teaching of Occultism is just the contrary of this. Its teaching tells of an endless
growth, endless improvement, endless development, endless evolution, therefore an
endless changing of consciousness, going ever higher and higher out of the human sphere
into the semi-divine, and out of the semidivine worlds into the divine, and thereafter into
the super-divine, and so on ad infinitum. There is no such thing as immortality as
commonly understood. The only immortal thing is the Universe itself; but even this is by
no means immortal as it now is, because it itself is constantly changing, and its essence is
its life, which is of the very essence of change which means growth, which means
evolution. -- G. de Purucker, Occultism and Psychic Phenomena

The point to be marked in the above passage lies in the words, "as it now is." Nothing
continues to exist forever as it now is. It is this fact, so illogically and unscientifically
ignored by theologians and so completely supported by nature, that lies at the root of
modern scientific prejudice against the idea of immortality. The individual persists, but
his very persistence is by means of change. We are our karma -- we grow into what we
make ourselves to become. And it is what we make of ourselves that persists, and in this
progress or retrogression lies our future. Could there be imagined a greater or more
compelling challenge to common sense as well as to the best and the strongest and the
purest in human nature? Even the beautiful phrase "to raise the mortal into immortality"
has only a relative validity. For the monad itself into which we ourselves aspire to
transmute our consciousness, and which is immortal as compared with the human ego,
that monad is growing and evolving on its own plane to greater and greater heights
forever.

To return to the idea with which this brief inquiry was opened:
You will never fully understand death nor its mysteries as long as you concentrate your
attention on the bodies in which this flame of consciousness enwraps itself. Follow the
consciousness within you, become acquainted with yourself, know yourself better, follow
this flame of consciousness inwards, ever more inwards, which also means upwards; and
then you will no longer fear death, but will recognise it as the sweetest, holiest friend that
man has; for it means laying aside imperfection for perfection, restricted consciousness
for an enlarged sphere of consciousness. Follow that stream of consciousness continually;
and finally you will reach inwards to the core of your being, the divinity at the heart of
yourself. There is the secret for understanding the real mystery of death as it is taught in
the ancient esoteric schools of all races of men. -- G. de Purucker, Lucifer, April 1934,
pp. 441-2

A fitting conclusion to this very brief exposition of the theosophical teachings about
death and after may be found in these final words:

Remember that you are a child of infinitude, each one of you, inseparable from the
boundless Universe in which we all live and move and have our being; remember that
you are well taken care of by almighty Nature's laws, which brought you here, which will
take you out from this life, and which will infallibly guide you on your way. Trust
yourself then to death in happy confidence; die with a strong and happy will; die with
gladness when your time comes; be not afraid. Mock at the phantom of 'death' -- mock at
the old hideous specter which the fearful imagination of ignorance wove in the hearts and
minds of men. Mock at that specter, that evil thing of the imagination! Cast it out!
Remember that you are well taken care of. -- Questions We All Ask, Series II, No. 19