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THEOSOPHICAL MANUALS. NO. 3.

Death - And After ?

BY

Annie Besant
Anand Gholap Theosophical Institute
2009

PREFACE

This book by Dr. Annie Besant has been through several Editions. The following is
the Preface that appeared in the First Edition.

FEW words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the third of a
series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of
Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too
abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope
that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy
is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books
catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them
to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing its
abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these
Manuals are not written for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt;

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they are [v] written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek
to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier
to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race,
they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men. [vi]

CONTENTS
PAGE
Views of Death 1
The Immortal and the Perishable 9
The Fate of the Body 13
The Fate of the Etheric Double 22
Kāmaloka, Desire-land, and the Fate of Passions and Desires 27
Kāmaloka, The Shells 46
Kāmaloka, The Elementaries 50
Devachan 52
The Devachanī 67
The Return to Earth 76
Nirvana 79
Communications between Earth and other Spheres 81
Appendix – Suicides 95

DEATH — AND AFTER?

WHO does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in Britain, sitting one
evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king, surrounded by his thanes, having come
thither to preach the gospel of his Master; and as he spoke of life and death and
immortality, a bird flew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight,
and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian priest bade the
king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the transitory life of man, and claimed
for his faith that it showed the soul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way
not into the darkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious world.
Out of the darkness, through the open window of Birth, the life of a man comes to the
earth; it dwells for a while before our eyes; into the darkness, through the open
window of Death, it vanishes out of our sight. And man has questioned ever of
Religion, Whence comes it? Whither goes it? and the answers have varied with the
faiths. [Page 1] Today, many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin, there
are more people in Christendom who question whether man has a spirit to come any
whence or to go any whither than, perhaps, in the world’s history could ever before
have been found at one time. And the very Christians who claim that Death’s terrors
have been abolished, have surrounded the bier and the tomb with more gloom and

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more dismal funeral pomp than have the votaries of any other creed. What can be
more depressing than the darkness in which a house is kept shrouded, while the dead
body is awaiting sepulture? What more repellent than the sweeping robes of lusterless
crape, and the purposed hideousness of the heavy cap in which the widow laments the
“deliverance” of her husband “from the burden of the flesh”? What more revolting
than the artificially long faces of the undertaker’s men, the drooping “weepers”, the
carefully arranged white handkerchiefs, and, until lately, the pall-like funeral cloaks?
During the last few years, a great and marked improvement has been made. The
plumes, cloaks, and weepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly
hearse is almost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with flowers
instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and women, though still [2]
wearing black, do not roll themselves up in shapeless garments like sable winding-
sheets, as if trying to see how miserable they could make themselves by the imposition
of artificial discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne,
and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to natural human grief.

In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been
characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a
grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony
scarecrow shaking an hourglass – all that could alarm and repel has been gathered
round this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with his
stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern Christianity, has used all
the sinewy strength of his magnificent diction to surround with horror the figure of
Death.

The other shape,

If shape it might be called, that shape had none

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

For each seemed either; black it stood as night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

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The monster moving onward came as fast,

With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode … [3]

… So spoke the grisly terror; and in shape

So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold

More dreadful and deform …

… but he, my inbred enemy,

Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,

Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out Death!

Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed

From all her caves, and back resounded Death.* [* Book ii., from lines 666-789. The
whole passage bristles with horrors.]

That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers of a Teacher
said to have “brought life and immortality to light” is passing strange. The claim, that
as late in the history of the world as a mere eighteen centuries ago the immortality of
the Spirit in man was brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the face of
the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands. The stately Egyptian
Ritual with its Book of the Dead, in which are traced the post-mortem journeys of the
Soul, should be enough, if it stood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous
a claim. Hear the cry of the Soul of the righteous:

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

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

I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have knowledge of my

heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am in possession of my arms, [4] I am in
possession of my legs, at the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at
the gates of Amenti (xxvi. 5, 6).

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

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

The general belief in Reincarnation is enough to prove that the religions of which it
formed a central doctrine believed in the survival of the Soul after Death; but one may
quote as an example a passage from the Ordinances of Manu, following on a
disquisition on metempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from
rebirths.

Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self (should be translated, knowledge of
the Self, Ātmā) is said (to be) the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences,
since from it immortality is obtained.* [* xii. 85. Trans. of Burnell and Hopkins.]

The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is shown by the

following, translated from the Avesta, in which, the journey of the Soul after [5] death
having been described, the ancient Scripture proceeds:

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

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

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Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for) he is come on the
fearful, terrible, trembling way, the separation of body and soul.* [* From the
translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, Zoroastrian and some other Ancient
Systems, xxvii.]

The Persian Desatir speaks with equal definiteness. This work consists of fifteen
books, written by Persian prophets, and was written originally in the Avestaic
language; “God” is Ahura-Mazda, or Yazdan:

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

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

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

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

As if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from vice, I will promote him to
the rank of angels. [6]

Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find a place in the rank of
wise men, among the heavens and stars. And in that region of happiness he will
remain for ever.* [* Trans. by Mirza Mohamed Hadi, The Platonist, 306.]

In China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestors shows how
completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyond the tomb. The Shū King
– placed by Mr. James Legge as the most ancient of Chinese classics, containing
historical documents ranging from B. C. 2357-627 – is full of allusions to these Souls,
who with other spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendants and the
welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B.C. 1401-1374, exhorts his
subjects:

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My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my ancestors (who are now)
the spiritual sovereigns. … Were I to err in my government, and remain long here, my
high sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me great
punishment for my crime, and say, “Why do you oppress my people?” If you, the
myriads of the people, do not attend to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one
mind with me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down on you
great punishment for your crime, and say, “Why do you not agree with our young
grandson, but go on to forfeit your virtue?” When they punish you from above, you
will have no way of escape. … Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut you off and
abandon you, and not save you from death.* [* The Sacred Books of the East, iii.
109, 110.]

Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held today as in those long-past ages, that
“the change that men call Death” [7] seems to play a very small part in the thoughts
and lives of the people of the Flowery Land.

These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may suffice to prove the
folly of the idea that immortality came to “light through the Gospel”. The whole
ancient world basked in the full sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it
daily, voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the gate of Death.

It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously re-affirmed it,
should have growing in its midst the unique terror of Death that has played so large a
part in its social life, its literature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has
surrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their hells, and yet
their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy Fear. The Chinese, for
instance, who take Death as such a light and trivial thing, have a collection of hells
quite unique in their varied unpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race
rather than of creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its antithesis, and
that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodiless condition too lacking in solidity
of comfort; whereas the more dreamy, mystical East, prone to meditation, and ever
[8] seeking to escape from the thralldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on the
disembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to unfettered
thought.

Ere passing to the consideration of the history of man in the post-mortem state, it is
necessary, however briefly, to state the constitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric
Philosophy, for we must have in mind the constituents of his being ere we can
understand their disintegration. Man then consists of

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 Ātmā, or Spirit as Will.
The Immortal Triad: the Individual. Buddhi, or Spirit as Intuition.
Manas, or Spirit as Intellect.
Lower Manas, or Mind.
The Perishable Quaternary: the Kāma, or Desire.
Person. Prāna, as Energising Vitality.
Prāna, as Automatic Vitality.

If we consider the bodies of man, the dense body is the visible, tangible outer form,
composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the
body, composed of the physical ethers. Prāna is vitality, the integrating energy that
co-ordinates the [9] physical molecules and holds them together in a definite
organism; it is the life-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal
Life-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence that we speak
of as “a life”, and appears in two forms in the dense and etheric parts of the physical
body. Kāma is the aggregate of appetites, passions, and emotions, common to man
and brute, the emotions evolving to a higher point in man under the play of the lower
mind. Manas is the Thinker in us, the Intellect. Buddhi is the aspect of the Spirit,
which manifests above the Intellect.

Now the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternary is Intellect,
which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and functions as Intellect and Mind.
Intellect sends out a Ray, Mind, which works in and through the human brain,
functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating intelligence. This mingles
with Desire, the passional nature, the passions and emotions thus becoming a part of
Mind, as defined in Western Psychology. And so we have the link formed between
the higher and lower natures in man, this Desire-Mind belonging to the higher by its
intellectual, and to the lower by its emotional, elements. As this forms the
battleground during life, [10] so does it play an important part in post-mortem
existence. We might now classify our seven principles a little differently, having in
view this mingling in DesireMind of perishable and imperishable elements:

Will
Intuition
Immortal Intellect
Conditionally Immortal Desire-Mind

Desire
Energising Vitality

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 Mortal
Automatic Vitality

Some Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this, declaring Spirit to
be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul to be conditionally immortal, i.e.,
capable of winning immortality by uniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently
mortal. The majority of uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that
perishes at Death, and the something – called indifferently Soul or Spirit – that
survives Death. This last classification – if classification it may be called – is entirely
inadequate, if we are to seek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the
phenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man’s nature gives a
more reasonable representation of his [11] constitution, but is inadequate to explain
many phenomena. The septenary division alone gives a reasonable theory consistent
with the facts we have to deal with, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the
student will do wisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the
body, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to classify its tissues at
far greater length and with far more minuteness than I am using here. He would have
to learn the differences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous,
epithelial, connective tissues, and all their varieties; and if he rebelled, in his ignorance,
against such an elaborate division, it would be explained to him that only by such an
analysis of the different components of the body can the varied and complicated
phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted for support,
another for movement, another for secretion, another for absorption, and so on; and if
each kind does not have its own distinctive name, dire confusion and
misunderstanding must result, and physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long
run time is gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical terms,
and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to explain and to understand very
complicated [12] post-mortem phenomena, I find myself compelled – contrary to my
habit in these elementary papers – to resort to these technical names at the outset, for
the English language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of long
descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient.

For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the adherents of the
Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has arisen from confusion of terms, and
consequent misunderstanding of each other’s meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately
impatiently said that he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by
Spirit all the part of man’s nature that survived Death, and was not body. One might
as well insist on saying that man’s body consists of bone and blood, and asked to
define blood, answer: “Oh! I mean everything that is not bone”. A clear definition of
terms, and a rigid adherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to
understand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful comparison of

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experiences.

THE FATE OF THE BODY

The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction.

First builded into the [13] etheric form in the womb of the mother, it is built up
continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are
passing away from it; with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it. The
outgoing stream is scattered over the environment, and helps to rebuild bodies of all
kinds in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, the physical basis of all
these being one and the same.

The idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless lives, just in the same way as
the rocky crust of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic. …
Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organism of both man and animal
are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are
threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within
by leucomaines, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But Science never yet went so far
as to assert with the Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals,
plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings, which, except
larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and
material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards
corroborating this theory. Chemistry and physiology are the two great magicians of
the future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths.
With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant
and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man, is more and
more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be
identical, chemical Science may well say that there is no difference between the matter
which composes the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is far
more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same
infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the
daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from
[14] the sun. Each particle – whether you call it organic or inorganic – is a life.* [*
The Secret Doctrine, vol. i. p. 281. 3rd Edition.]

These “lives” which, separate and independent, are the minute vehicles of Automatic
Vitality, aggregated together form the molecules and cells of the physical body, and
they stream in and stream out, during all the years of bodily life, thus forming a

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continual bridge between man and his environment. Controlling these are the “Fiery
Lives”, Energising Vitality, which constrain these to their work of building up the cells
of the body, so that they work harmoniously and in order, subordinated to the higher
manifestation of life in the complex organism called Man. These Fiery Lives on our
plane correspond, in this controlling and organising function, with the One Life of the
Universe,* [* See The Secret Doctrine, vol, i. p. 283. 3rd Edition.] and when they no
longer exercise this function in the human body, the lower lives run rampant, and
begin to break down the hitherto definitely organised body. During bodily life they are
marshalled as an army; marching in regular order under the command of a general,
performing various evolutions, keeping step, moving as a single body. At “Death” they
become a disorganised and tumultuous mob, rushing hither and [15] thither, jostling
each other, tumbling over each other, with no common object, no generally
recognised authority. The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive
in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.

Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious

force called the life-principle. To the Materialist, the only difference between a living
and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent. When it
is extinct or entirely latent, the molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them
asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must be Death, if it is
possible to conceive such a thing as Death, where the very molecules of the dead body
manifest an intense vital energy. … Says Eliphas Levi: “Change attests movement, and
movement only reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the
molecules which compose it are living and struggle to separate.”* [* Isis Unveiled,
vol. i. p. 480.]

Those who have read The Seven Principles of Man,* [* Theosophical Manuals, No.
1.] know that the etheric double is the vehicle of Prāna, the life-principle, or vitality.
Through the etheric double Prāna exercises the controlling and co-ordinating force
spoken of above, and “Death” takes triumphant possession of the body when the
etheric double is finally withdrawn and the delicate cord which unites it with the body
is snapped. The process of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and
definitely described. Thus Andrew Jackson Davis, “the Poughkeepsie Seer”, [16]
describes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, and he states that
the magnetic cord did not break for some thirty-six hours after apparent death. Others
have described, in similar terms, how they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying
body, gradually condensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiring
person, and attached to that person by a glistening thread. The snapping of the thread
means the breaking of the last magnetic link between the dense body and the
remaining principles of the human constitution; the body has dropped away from the

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man; he is excarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as his constitution
immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body, being left as a cast-off
garment.

Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The

immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and
– as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis – emerges from one after
another, passing into a higher state of consciousness. Now it is the fact that this escape
from the body, and this dwelling of the conscious entity either in the vehicle called the
body of desire, the kamic or astral body, or in a yet more ethereal Thought Body, can
be effected during earth-life; so that man may become familiar with the [17]
excarnated condition, and it may lose for him all the terrors that encircle the unknown.
He can know himself as a conscious entity in either of these vehicles, and so prove to
his own satisfaction that “life” does not depend on his functioning through the
physical body. Why should a man who has thus repeatedly “shed” his lower bodies,
and has found the process result, not in unconsciousness, but in a vastly extended
freedom and vividness of life – why should he fear the final casting away of his
fetters, and the freeing of his Immortal Self from what he realises as the prison of the
flesh?

This view of human life is an essential part of the Esoteric Philosophy. Man is
primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. This living flame, passing out from the
Central Fire, weaves for itself coverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the
Triad, the Ātma-BuddhiManas, or Spirit, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This
sends out its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body, or
kāmic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double and the physical body.
The once free immortal Intelligence thus entangled, enswathed, enchained, works
heavily and laboriously through the coatings that enwrap it. In its own nature it
remains ever the free Bird of Heaven, [18] but its wings are bound to its side by the
matter into which it is plunged. When man recognises his own inherent nature, he
learns to open his prison doors occasionally and escapes from his encircling gaol; first
he learns to identify himself with the Immortal Triad, and rises above the body and its
passions into a pure mental and moral life; then he learns that the conquered body
cannot hold him prisoner, and he unlocks its door and steps out into the sunshine of
his true life. So when Death unlocks the door for him, he knows the country into
which he emerges, having trodden its ways at his own will. And at last he grows to
recognise that fact of supreme importance, that “Life” has nothing to do with body
and with this material plane; that Life is his conscious existence, unbroken,
unbreakable, and that the brief interludes in that Life, during which he sojourns on
Earth, are but a minute fraction of his conscious existence, and a fraction, moreover,
during which he is less alive, because of the heavy coverings which weigh him down.
For only during these interludes (save in exceptional cases) may he wholly lose his
consciousness of continued life, being surrounded by these coverings which delude
him and blind him to the truth of things, making that real which is illusion, and that

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stable which is transitory. [19] The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at
incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the
period of our incarceration; at Death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight,
and are nearer to the reality. Short are the twilight periods, and long the periods of the
sunlight; but in our blinded state we call the twilight life, and to us it is the real
existence, while we call the sunlight Death, and shiver at the thought of passing into it.
Well did Giordano Bruno, one of the greatest teachers of our Philosophy in the
Middle Ages, state the truth as to the body and Man. Of the real Man he says:

He will be present in the body in such wise that the best part of himself will be absent
from it, and will join himself by an indissoluble sacrament to divine things, in such a
way that he will not feel either love or hatred of things mortal. Considering himself as
master, and that he ought not to be servant and slave to his body, which he would
regard only as the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue which
smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands, stocks which fix his feet, veil
which hides his view. Let him not be servant, captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid,
and blind, for the body which he himself abandons cannot tyrannise over him, so that
thus the spirit in a certain degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter
is subject to the divinity and to nature.* [* The Heroic Enthusiasts, trans. by L.
Williams, part ii. pp. 22, 23.]

When once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it we gain our
liberty, Death loses for us [20] all his terrors, and at his touch the body slips from us
as a garment, and we stand out from it erect and free.

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

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

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

The body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives – previously held in constraint
by Prāna, acting through its vehicle the etheric double – begins to decay, that is to
break up, and with the disintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away
into other combinations. [21]

On our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countless lives that in
a previous incarnation made of our then body their passing dwelling; but all that we
are just now concerned with is the breaking up of the body whose life-span is over,
and its fate is complete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death means
dissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united the many into one.

THE FATE OF THE ETHERIC DOUBLE

The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body of man. It is the
double that is sometimes seen during life in the neighbourhood of the body, and its
absence from the body is generally marked by the heaviness or semi-lethargy of the
latter. Acting as the reservoir, or vehicle, of the life-principle during earth-life, its
withdrawal from the body is naturally marked by the lowering of all vital functions,
even while the cord which unites the two is still unbroken. As has been already said,
the snapping of the cord means the death of the body.

When the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel to any distance from
it. Normally it remains floating over the body, the state of consciousness [22] being
dreamy and peaceful, unless tumultuous distress and violent emotion surround the
corpse from which it has just issued. And here it may be well to say that during the
slow process of dying, while the etheric double is withdrawing from the body, taking
with it the higher principles, as after it has withdrawn, extreme quiet and self-control
should be observed in the chamber of Death. For during this time the whole life
passes swiftly in review before the Ego, the individual, as those have related who have
passed in drowning into this unconscious and pulseless state. A Master has written:

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At the last moment the whole life is reflected in our memory, and emerges from all
the forgotten nooks and corners, picture after, picture, one, event after another. …
The man may often appear dead, yet from the last pulsation, from and between the
last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves
the body, the brain thinks, and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his
whole life. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a deathbed, and find yourselves in the
solemn presence of death. Especially have ye to keep quiet just after death has laid
her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest ye disturb the quiet
ripple of [23] thought, and hinder the busy work of the past, casting its reflection
upon the veil of the future.* [* Man: Fragments of Forgotten History, by Two Chelâs
(Mohini Chatterji & Laura C. Holloway), pp. 119, 120.]

This is the time during which the thought-images of the ended earth-life, clustering
around their maker, group and interweave themselves into the completed image of
that life, and are impressed in their totality on the Astral Light. The dominant
tendencies, the strongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stamp
themselves as the characteristics which will appear as “innate qualities” in the
succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of the life-issues, this reading of the karmic
records, is too solemn and momentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings
of personal relatives and friends.

At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees the
whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short
instant the personal become one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. But this
instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work
during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or
self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator, looking down into the arena
he is quitting.* [* Key to Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky, p. 109. Third Edition.]

This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy, peaceful
semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double floats above the body to
which it has belonged, now completely separated from it. [24]

Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the neighbourhood, when
the thought of the dying has been strongly turned to someone left behind, when some
anxiety has been in the mind at the last, something left undone which needed doing,

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or when some local disturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity.
Under these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be seen or
heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness alluded to, is silent, vague
in its aspect, unresponsive.

As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengage themselves from the
etheric double, and shake this off as they previously shook off the grosser body. They
pass on, as a fivefold entity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double,
with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an ethereal corpse,
as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This ethereal corpse remains near
the dense one, and they disintegrate together; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in
churchyards, sometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violet
mists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend of my own, passing
through the horribly repulsive stages of decomposition, a ghastly [25] vision in face of
which clairvoyance was certainly no blessing. The process goes on pari passu, until
all but the actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completely disintegrated, and the
particles have gone to form other combinations.

One of the great advantages of cremation – apart from all sanitary conditions – lies in
the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the physical elements composing the dense
and ethereal corpses, brought about by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual
decomposition, swift dissociation takes place, and no physical remnants are left,
working possible mischief.

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

The fresh corpse of a person who has suddenly been killed may be galvanised into a
semblance of life by the application of a galvanic battery. Likewise the astral corpse of
a person may be brought back into an artificial life by being infused with a part of the
life principle of the medium. If that corpse is one of a very intellectual person, it may
talk very intellectually; and if it was that of a fool, it will talk like a fool.* [* Magic,
White and Black, Dr. Franz Hartmann, pp. 109, 110. Third Edition.]

This mischievous procedure can only be carried out in the neighbourhood of the
corpse, and for a very limited time after death, but there are cases on record of such
galvanising of the ethereal corpse, performed [26] at the grave of the departed person.
Needless to say that such a process belongs distinctly to “Black” Magic, and is wholly
evil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by burning, should be
left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and a darkness that it is the worst

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profanity to break.

KĀMALOKA, DESIRE-LAND, AND THE FATE OF PASSIONS AND

DESIRES

Loka is a Samskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land, so that
Kāmaloka is literally the place or the world of Desire, Kāma being the name of that
part of the human organism that includes all the passions, desires, and emotions which
man has in common with the lower animals.* [* See The Seven Principles of Man,
pp. 17-21.] In this division of the universe, the Kāmaloka, dwell all the human
entities that have shaken off the dense body and its ethereal double, but have not yet
disentangled themselves from the passional and emotional nature. Kāmaloka has many
other tenants, but we are concerned only with the human beings who have lately
passed through the gateway of Death, and it is on these that we must concentrate our
study. [27]

A momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of the existence of regions

in the universe, other than the physical, peopled with intelligent beings. The existence
of such regions is postulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts
and to very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience; all that
is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution of the faculties latent in every
man; a “living” man, in ordinary parlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies
behind him, and explore these regions without going through Death’s gateway. Thus
we read in the Theosophist that real knowledge may be acquired by the Spirit in the
living man coming into conscious relations with the world of Spirit.

As in the case, say, of an initiated Adept, who brings back upon earth with him the
clear and distinct recollection – correct to a detail – of facts gathered, and the
information obtained, in the invisible sphere of Realities.* [* Theosophist, March
1882, p. 158, note.]

In this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge as definite, as certain,
as familiar, as if he should travel to Africa in ordinary fashion, explore its deserts, and
return to his own land the richer for the knowledge and experience gained. A seasoned
African explorer would care but little for the criticisms passed [28] on his report by

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persons who had never been thither; he might tell what he saw, describe the animals
whose habits he had studied, sketch the country he had traversed, sum up its products
and its characteristics. If he was contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled
critics, he would be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave them alone.
Ignorance cannot convince knowledge by repeated asseveration of its nescience. The
opinion of a hundred persons on a subject on which they are wholly ignorant is of no
more weight than the opinion of one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many
consenting witnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothing multiplied
a thousand times remains nothing. Strange, indeed, would it be if all the Space around
us be empty, mere waste void, and the inhabitants of earth the only forms in which
intelligence could clothe itself. As Dr. Huxley said:

Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the
cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically
indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.* [* Essays
upon some Controverted Questions, p. 36.]

If these entities did not have organs of sense like our own, if their senses responded to
vibrations different from those which affect ours, they and we might walk [29] side by
side, pass each other, meet each other, pass through each other, and yet be never the
wiser as to each other’s existence. Mr. Crookes gives us a glimpse of the possibility of
such unconscious coexistence of intelligent beings, and but a very slight effort of
imagination is needed to realise the conception.

It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of sense which do not
respond to some or any of the rays to which our eyes are sensitive, but are able to
appreciate other vibrations to which we are blind. Such beings would practically be
living in a different world to our own. Imagine, for instance, what idea we should
form of surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes not sensitive to the ordinary
rays of light, but sensitive to the vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic
phenomena. Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals
would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look
like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active
work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the
dream of medieval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of
energy or consumption of fuel.* [* Fortnightly Review, 1892, p. 176.]

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Kāmaloka is a region peopled by intelligent and semi-intelligent entities, just as our
own is thus peopled it is crowded, like our world, with many types and forms of living
things, as diverse from each other as a blade of grass is different from a tiger, a tiger
from a man. It interpenetrates our own world and is interpenetrated by it, but, as the
states of matter in the two worlds differ, they co-exist without the knowledge of the
[30] intelligent beings in either. Only under abnormal circumstances can
consciousness of each other’s presence arise among the inhabitants of the two worlds;
by certain peculiar training a living human being can come into conscious contact with
and control many of the sub-human denizens of Kāmaloka; human beings, who have
quitted earth and in whom the kāmic elements were strong, may very readily be
attracted by the kāmic elements in embodied men, and by their help become
conscious again of the presence of the scenes they had left; and human beings still
embodied may set up methods of communication with the disembodied, and may, as
said, leave their own bodies for awhile, and become conscious in Kāmaloka by the use
of faculties through which they have accustomed their consciousness to act. The point
which is here to be clearly grasped is the existence of Kāmaloka as a definite region,
inhabited by a large diversity of entities, among whom are disembodied human beings.

From this necessary digression we return to the particular human being whose fate, as
a type, we may be said to be tracing, and of whose dense body and etheric double we
have already disposed. Let us contemplate him in the state of very brief duration that
follows the shaking off of these two casings. [31] Says H. P. Blavatsky, after quoting
from Plutarch a description of the man after death:

Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a septenary during life; a quintile just
after death, in Kāmaloka.* [* Key to Theosophy, p. 67.]

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

The man now is clothed, but with the Kāma Rūpa, or body of Kāma, the desire body,
a body of astral matter, often termed “fluidic”, so easily does it, during earth-life, take
any form impressed upon it from without or moulded from within. The living man is
there, the immortal Triad, still clad in the last of its terrestrial garments, in the subtle,

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sensitive, responsive forms [32] which lent it during embodiment the power to feel, to
desire, to enjoy, to suffer, to think, in the physical world.

When the man dies, his three lower principles leave him forever; i.e., body, life, and
the vehicle of the latter, the etheric body, or the double of the living man. And then
his four principles – the central or middle principle (the animal soul or Kāma Rūpa,
with what it has assimilated from the lower Manas) and the higher Triad – find
themselves in Kāmaloka.* [* Key to Theosophy, p. 97.]

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

Up to the point of this re-arrangement of the matter of the desire body, the
post-mortem experience of all is much the same; it is a “dreamy, peaceful
semi-consciousness”, as before said, and this, in the happiest cases, passes without
vivid awakening into the deeper “pre-devachanic unconsciousness” which ends with
the blissful wakening in Devachan, heaven, for the period of [33] repose that
intervenes between two incarnations. But as, at this point, different possibilities arise,
let us trace a normal uninterrupted progression in Kāmaloka, up to the threshold of
Devachan, and then we can return to consider other classes of circumstances.

If a person has led a pure life, and has steadfastly striven to rise and to identify himself
with the higher rather than the lower part of his nature, after shaking off the dense
body and the etheric double, and after Prāna has re-mingled with the ocean of Life,
and he is clothed only with the Kāma Rūpa, the passional elements in him, being but
weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not be able to assert
themselves strongly in Kāmaloka. Now during earth-life Kāma and the Lower Manas
are strongly united and interwoven with each other; in the case we are considering
Kāma is weak, and the Lower Manas has purified Kāma to a great extent. The mind,
woven with the passions, emotions, and desires, has purified them, and has assimilated
their pure part, absorbed it into itself, so that all that is left of Kāma is a mere residue,
easily to be gotten rid of, from which the Immortal Triad can readily free itself. Slowly
this Immortal Triad, the true Man, draws in all his forces; he draws into himself the
memories of the earth-life just ended, [34] its loves, its hopes, its aspirations, and
prepares to pass out of Kāmaloka into the blissful rest of Devachan, the “abode of the
Gods”, or, as some say, “the land of bliss”. Kāmaloka

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is an astral locality, the Limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients, and,
strictly speaking, a locality only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area, nor
boundary, but exists within subjective space, i.e., is beyond our sensuous perceptions.
Still it exists, and it is there that the astral eidolons of all the beings that have lived,
animals included, await their second death. For the animals it comes with the
disintegration and the entire fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the
human eidolon it begins when the Ātma-Buddhi-Mānasic Triad is said to “separate”
itself from its lower principles or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the
devachanic state.* [* Key to Theosophy, p. 97.]

This second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from the kāmalokic
sphere, so closely related to the earth sphere, into the higher state of Devachan, of
which we must speak later. The type of man we are considering passes through this,
in the peaceful dreamy state already described, and, if left undisturbed, will not regain
full consciousness until these stages are passed through, and peace gives way to bliss.

But during the whole period that the five principles – the Immortal Triad, Mind and
Desire – remain in Kāmaloka, whether the period be long or short, days or centuries,
they are within the reach of the [35] earth-influences. In the case of such a person as
we have been describing, an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow and
desires of friends left on earth, and these violently vibrating kamic elements in the
embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desire body of the disembodied, and so
reach and rouse the lower Mind, not yet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the
Spiritual Intellect. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vivid remembrance
of the earth-life so lately left, and may – if any sensitive or medium is concerned,
either directly, or indirectly through one of these grieving friends in communication
with the medium – use the medium’s etheric and dense bodies to speak or write to
those left behind. This awakening is often accompanied with acute suffering, and even
if this be avoided, the natural process of the Triad freeing itself is rudely disturbed,
and the completion of its freedom is delayed. In speaking of this possibility of
communication during the period immediately succeeding death and before the freed
Man passes on into Devachan, H. P. Blavatsky says:

Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases – when the intensity of the
desire in the dying person to return for some purpose forced the higher consciousness
to remain awake, and, therefore, it was really the individuality, the “Spirit”, that
communicated – has derived much benefit from the return of the Spirit into the
objective plane is another question. The Spirit is [36] dazed after death, and falls very

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soon into what we call “pre-devachanic unconsciousness”.* [* Key to Theosophy, p.
102.]

Intense desire may move the disembodied entity to spontaneously return to the
sorrowing ones left behind, but this spontaneous return is rare in the case of persons
of the type we are just now considering. If they are left at peace, they will generally
sleep themselves quietly into Devachan, and so avoid any struggle or suffering in
connection with the second death. On the final escape of the Immortal Triad there is
left behind in Kāmaloka only the desire body, the “shell” or mere empty phantom,
which gradually disintegrates; but it will be better to deal with this in considering the
next type, the average man or woman, without marked spirituality of an elevated kind,
but also without marked evil tendencies.

When an average man or woman reaches Kāmaloka, the spiritual Intelligence is

clothed with a desire body, which possesses considerable vigour and vitality; the lower
Manas, closely interwoven with Kāma during the earth-life just ended, having lived
much in the enjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasure of the emotions, cannot
quickly disentangle itself from the web of its weaving, and return to its Parent Mind,
the source [37] of its own being. Hence a considerable delay in the world of
transition, in Kāmaloka, while the desires wear out and fade away to a point at which
they can no longer detain the Soul with their clinging arms.

As said, during the period that the Immortal Triad, Mind and Desire remain together
in Kāmaloka, communication between the disembodied entity and the embodied
entities on earth is possible. Such communication will generally be welcomed by
these, disembodied ones, because their desires and emotions still cling to the earth
they have left, and the mind has not sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein
full satisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towards kāmic
gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations of earth-life, and can by these
yearnings be drawn back to the scenes it has regretfully quitted. Speaking of the
possibility of communication between the Ego of the deceased person and a medium,
H. P. Blavatsky says in the Theosophist,* [* June 1882, art, “Seeming
Discrepancies”.] as from the teachings received by her from the Adept Brothers, that
such communication may occur during two intervals:

Interval the first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the
spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as Bardo.
We have translated this as the “gestation” period [pre-devachanic]. [38]

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Some of the communications made through mediums are from this source, from the
disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere – a cruel kindness, delaying
its forward evolution and introducing an element of disharmony into what should be
an orderly progression. The period in Kāmaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is
fed and its hold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Soul
deferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-lime of earth.

Persons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulated their animal
passions, and have full fed the desire body while they have starved even the lower
mind – these remain for long, denizens of Kāmaloka, and are filled with yearnings for
the earth-life they have left, and for the animal delights that they can no longer – in
the absence of the physical body – directly taste. These gather round the medium and
the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their own gratification, and these are
among the more dangerous of the forces so rashly confronted in their ignorance by
the thoughtless and the curious.

Another class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives on earth have been
prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act of others, or by accident. [39] Their
fate in Kāmaloka depends on the conditions which surrounded their out-goings from
earthly life, for not all suicides are guilty of felo de se, and the measure of
responsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of such has been thus
described:

Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh principles, and
quite potent in the seance room, nevertheless, to the day when they would have died
a natural death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf. The sixth and
seventh principles remain passive and negative, whereas in cases of accidental death
the higher and the lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good and
innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and
seventh, and thus either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a
dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection and an eye to
the eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim, whether good
or bad, is irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to some action in a
previous life or an antecedent birth, was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution,
still it was not the direct result of an act deliberately committed by the personal Ego
of that life during which he happened to be killed. Had he been allowed to live
longer he might have atoned for his antecedent [40] sins still more effectually, and
even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his maker, the personal
Ego is free from the blows of retributive justice. The Dhyan Chohans, who have no
hand in the guidance of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it is
violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before it is matured and made fit

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and ready for it.

These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate with those in

earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, the good and innocent sleep
happily till the life-period is over. But where the victim of an accident is depraved and
gross, his fate is a sad one.

Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about (not shells, for their
connection with their two higher principles is not quite broken) until their deathhour
comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar
scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them
vicariously. They are the Pishachas, the Incubi and Succubae of mediaeval times;
the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice – Elementaries of intensified craft,
wickedness, and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in
their commission They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne
along by the torrent of their hellish impulses, at last – at the [41] fixed close to their
natural period of life – they are carried out of the earth’s aura into regions where for
ages they endure exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Now the causes producing the “new being” and determining the nature of Karma
are Trishnā (Tanha) – thirst, desire for sentient existence – and Upādāna, which is
the realisation or consummation of Trishna, or that desire. And both of these the
medium helps to develop ne plus ultra in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim.
The rule is that a person who dies a natural death will remain from “a few hours to
several short years” within the earth’s attraction – i. e., the Kāmaloka. But
exceptions are the cases of suicides and those who die a violent death in general.
Hence, one of such Egos who was destined to lave, say, eighty or ninety years – but
who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of
twenty – would have to pass in the Kāmaloka not “a few years”, but in this case
sixty or seventy years, as an Elementary, or rather an “earth-walker”, since he is
not, unfortunately for him, even a “Shell”. Happy, thrice happy, in comparison, are
those disembodied entities who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the
bosom of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnā will attract them to mediums, and
woe to the latter who tempt them with such an easy Upādāna. For, in grasping them

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[42] and satisfying their thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them – is, in
fact, the cause of – a new set of Skandhas, a new body with far worse tendencies and
passions than the one they lost. All the future of this new body will be determined
thus, not only by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but also by that
of the new set of the future being. Were the mediums and spiritualists but to know, as
I said, that with every new “angel guide” they welcome with rapture, they entice the
latter into a Upādāna, which will be productive of untold evils for the new Ego that
will be reborn under its nefarious shadow, and that with every seance, especially for
materialisation, they multiply the causes for misery, causes that will make the
unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence
than ever – they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their hospitality.

Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by voluntary

sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in Kāmaloka, but the state of the
disembodied entity will depend on the motive that cut short the life.

There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these vices, who feel perfectly
sure that such a course of action will lead them eventually to premature death. Such
is the penalty of Māyā. The “vices” will not escape their punishment; but it is the
cause, not the effect, that will be punished, [43] especially an unforeseen, though
probable effect. As well call a man a “suicide” who meets his death in a storm at
sea, as one who kills himself with “over-study”. Water is liable to drown a man, and
too much brain work to produce a softening of the brain matter, which may carry
him away. In such a case no one ought to cross the Kālapāni, nor even to take a bath
for fear of getting faint in it and drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should
a man do his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable and highly
beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is everything, and man is punished in a
case of direct responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim’s case the natural hour of
death was anticipated accidentally, while in that of the suicide death is brought on
voluntarily and with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate consequences.
Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of temporary insanity is not a felo de se, to
the great grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor is he left a
prey to the temptations of the Kāmaloka, but falls asleep like any other victim.

The population of Kāmaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly dangerous element by

all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul
and send the latter into Kāmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of
hatred, [44] passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with un-satiated

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lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of society, but a murderer
suddenly expelled from the body is a far more dangerous entity; society may protect
itself against the first, but in its present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against
the second.

Finally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, and passes out of
Kāmaloka; the higher Manas draws back its Ray, coloured with the life-scenes it has
passed through, and carrying with it the experiences gained through the personality it
has informed. The labourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing his
sheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life. When the Triad
with the Ray has quitted Kāmaloka, it passes wholly out of the sphere of earth
attractions:

As soon as it has stepped outside the Kāmaloka – crossed the “Golden Bridge”
leading to the “Seven Golden Mountains” – the Ego can confabulate no more with
easy-going mediums.

There are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, that will be
explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of the ordinary medium and cannot be
recalled into the earth-sphere. But ere we follow [45] the further course of the Triad,
we must consider the fate of the now deserted desire body, left as a mere reliquum in
Kāmaloka.

KĀMALOKA. THE SHELLS.

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

When the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been of average purity
and utility, this Shell retains but little vitality after the passing onwards of the Triad,
and rapidly dissolves. Its molecules, however, retain, during this process of
disintegration, the impressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency to
vibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during that period. Every student
of physiology is familiar with what is termed automatic action, with the tendency of

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cells to repeat vibrations originally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what
we term habits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were done with
thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, as everyone knows by
experience, it is difficult to break off the use of a phrase or of a gesture that has
become “habitual”. [46]

Now the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and the respondent to all
stimuli from without, and it also continually receives and responds to stimuli from the
lower Manas. In it are set up habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar
vibrations, vibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences of all
kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may the desire body repeat a
familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triad has left it, this automatism remains,
and the Shell may thus simulate feelings and thoughts which are empty of all true
intelligence and will. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at séances come from
such Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives by the magnetic
attractions so long familiar and dear, and automatically responding to the waves of
emotion and remembrance, to the impulse of which they had so often answered
during the lately closed earth-life. Phrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of
past events, will be all the communications such Shells can make, but these may be
literally poured out under favourable conditions under the magnetic stimuli freely
applied by the embodied friends and relatives.

In cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been strongly attached to
material objects and to [47] intellectual pursuits directed by a self-seeking motive, the
desire body nay have acquired a very considerable automatism of an intellectual
character, and may give forth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the
mark of non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality will only give out
reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new and independent thought which
would be the inevitable outcome of a strong intelligence working with originality amid
new surroundings. Intellectual sterility brands the great majority of communications
from the “spirit world”; reflections of earthly scenes, earthly conditions, earthly
arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seek in vain for strong, new thought,
worthy of Intelligences freed from the prison of the flesh. The communications of a
loftier kind occasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-human Intelligences,
attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium or sitters.

And there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells. Just because
they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to the impulses that strike on them
from without, and easily become malicious and mischievous, automatically responding
to evil vibrations. Thus a medium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the
Shells that flock around them [48] with impulses of a low order, and any animal
desires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations in the blindly
responsive Shells.

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Again, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, the semi-conscious
forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may be used by them as a convenient
vehicle for many a prank and trick. The etheric double of the medium, and the desire
bodies emptied of their immortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals
can work many a curious and startling result; and frequenters of seances may be
confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish freaks with which
they are familiar – pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling
up of furniture, playing on accordions, etc. – are not more rationally accounted for as
the tricky vagaries of subhuman forces, than as the actions of “spirits” who, while in
the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities.

Let us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into their elements, and mingle
once again in the crucible of Nature. The authors of The Perfect Way put very well the
real character of the Shell:

The true “ghost” consists of the exterior and earthly portion of the Soul, that portion
which, being weighted with cares, [49] attachments, and memories merely mundane,
is detached by the Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or less
definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a sensitive, converse with the
living. It is, however, but as a cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of
endurance as ghost. The true Soul and real person, the anima divina, parts at death
with all those lower affections which would have retained it near its earthly haunts.*
[* Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland, Pp. 73, 74. Ed. 1887.]

If we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants in Kāmaloka that
we should seek them. “Why seek ye the living among the dead?”

KĀMALOKA. THE ELEMENTARIES.

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

Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having, at some time

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prior to death, separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance
for immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been thought best to apply
the term to the spooks or phantoms of disembodied persons, in general to those whose
temporary habitation is the Kāmaloka. … Once divorced from their higher Triads and
their bodies, these souls remain in their Kāma Rūpic envelopes, and are irresistibly
drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the
Kāmaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like
a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.* [* Theosophical
Glossary, Elementaries. 1892. Posthumous publication edited by G. R. S. Mead.]
[50]

Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the lower Manas to so
entangle itself with Kāma as to wrench itself away from its source, and this is spoken
of in Occultism as “the loss of the Soul”.* [* See The Seven Principles of Man, pp.
44-46.] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self, which has separated itself
from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has thus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul,
having thus separated itself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a
true Elementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then, clad in its
desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter time according to the vigour of
its vitality, a wholly evil thing, dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading
vitality by any means laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied souls.
Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much evil on its way to its
self-chosen doom.

The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower Manas in its
garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher Principles, but not yet
absorbed into its Parent, the higher Manas. Such Elementaries may be in any stage of
progress, harmless or mischievous. [51]

Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so cause increased
confusion. The word should at least be restricted to the desire body plus lower Manas,
whether the lower Manas be disentangling itself from the kamic elements, in order
that it may be re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and
therefore on the road to destruction.

DEVACHAN

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Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy, there are few,
perhaps, which the Western mind has found more difficulty in grasping than that of
Devachan, or Devasthān, the Devaland, or land of the Gods.* [* The name
Sukhāvatī, borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism, is sometimes used instead of that of
Devachan. Sukhavati, according to Schlagintweit, is “the abode of the blessed, into
which ascend those who have accumulated much merit by the practice of virtues” and
“involves the deliverance from metempsychosis” (Buddhism in Tibet, p. 99).
According to the Prasanga school, the higher Path leads to Nirvāna, the lower to
Sukhāvatī. But Eitel calls Sukhāvatī the “Nirvana of the common people, where the
saints revel in physical bliss for aeons, until they reenter the circle of transmigration”
(‘Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary’). Eitel, however, under “Amitābha” states that the
“popular mind” regards the “paradise of the West” as “the haven of final redemption
from the eddies of transmigration”. When used by one of the Teachers of the Esoteric
Philosophy it covers the higher Devachanic states, but from all of these the Soul
comes back to earth.] And one of the chief difficulties [52] has arisen from the free
use of the words illusion, dream-state, and other similar terms, as denoting the
devachanic consciousness – a general sense of unreality having thus come to pervade
the whole conception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the present
earthly life as Maya, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once puts down the phrases
as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be less illusory, he thinks, than this world of
buying and selling, of beefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied
to a state beyond Death – a state which to him is misty and unreal in his own religion,
and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all the substantial comforts dear to the
family man – then he accepts the words in their most literal and prosaic meaning, and
speaks of Devachan as a delusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well,
therefore, on the threshold of Devachan to put this question of “illusion” in its true
light.

In a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are
literally “appearances”, the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in
our changing universe. The more “material” and solid the appearance, the further it is
from Reality, and therefore the more illusory it is. What can be a greater fraud than
our body, so apparently solid, stable, [53] visible and tangible? It is a constantly
changing congeries of minute living particles, an attractive centre into which stream
continually myriads of tiny invisibles, that becomes visible by their aggregation at this
centre, and then stream away again, becoming invisible by reason of their minuteness
as they separate off from this aggregation. In comparison with this ever-shifting but
apparently stable body how much less illusory is the mind, which is able to expose the
pretensions of the body and put it in its true light. The mind is constantly imposed on
by the senses, and Consciousness, the most real thing in us, is apt to regard itself as
the unreal. In truth, it is the thought-world that is the nearest to reality, and things
become more and more illusory as they take on more and more of a phenomenal
character.

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Again, the mind is permanent as compared with the transitory physical world. For the
“mind” is only a clumsy name for the living Thinker in us, the true and conscious
Entity, the inner Man, “that was, that is, and will be, for whom the our shall never
strike”. The less deeply this inner Man is plunged into matter, the less unreal is his life;
and when he has shaken off the garments he donned at incarnation, his physical,
ethereal, and passional bodies, then he is nearer to the Soul of Things than he was
before, and though veils of [54] illusion still dim his vision they are far thinner than
those which clouded it when round him was wrapped the garment of the flesh. His
freer and less illusory life is that which is without the body, and the disembodied is,
comparatively speaking, his normal state. Out of this normal state he plunges into
physical life for brief periods in order that he may gain experiences otherwise
unattainable, and bring them back to enrich his more abiding condition. As a diver
may plunge into the depths of the ocean to seek a pearl, so the Thinker plunges into
the depths of the ocean of life to seek the pearl of experience; but he does not stay
there long; it is not his own element; he rises up again into his own atmosphere and
shakes off from him the heavier element he leaves. And therefore it is truly said of the
Soul that has escaped from earth that it has returned to its own place, for its home is
the “land of the Gods”, and here on earth it is an exile and a prisoner. This view was
very clearly put by a Master of Wisdom in a conversation reported by H. P.
Blavatsky, and printed under the title “Life and Death”.* [* See Lucifer, Oct. 1892,
vol. xi. No. 62.] The following extracts state the case:

The Vedantins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and
the spiritual, point only to the [55] latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the
terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion
of our senses. Our life in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality because
it is there that lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sūtrātmā. Whereas
in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a perfectly different personality, a
temporary and short-lived one …. The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit,
force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the shape acquired by this
triple unity during its incarnations, their exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere
illusion of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous life the only
reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality itself, only imaginary.

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

This comparison was made by me to facilitate your comprehension. From the

standpoint of your terrestrial notions it is perfectly accurate.

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Note the words: “From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions”, for they are the key
to all the phrases used about Devachan as an “illusion”. Our gross physical matter is
not there; the limitations imposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm,
where to will is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Master was
asked: “Would it not [56] be better to say that death is nothing but a birth for a new
life, or still better, a going back to eternity?” he answered:

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

The dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has always been very
strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the far East. Their constant effort
has been to free the Thinker as far as possible from the bonds of matter even while he
is embodied, to open the cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to
it for awhile, They are ever seeking “to spiritualise the material”, while in the West the
continual tendency has been [57] “to materialise the spiritual”. So the Indian describes
the life of the freed Soul in all the terms that make it least material – illusion, dream,
and so on – whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptive of the
material luxury and splendour of earth – marriage feast, streets of gold, thrones and
crowns of solid metal and precious stones; the Western has followed the materialising
conceptions of the Hebrew, and pictures a heaven which is merely a double of earth
with earth’s sorrows extracted, until we reach the grossest of all, the modern
Summerland, with its “spirit-husbands”, “spiritwives”, and “spirit-infants” that go to
school and college, and grow up into spirit-adults.

In “Notes on Devachan”,* [* The Path, May 1890.] someone who evidently writes
with knowledge remarks of the Devachanī:

The a priori ideas of space and time do not control his perceptions; far he absolutely
creates and annihilates them at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative

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intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy from dotage to death; so
the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the
Devachanī than she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far more
real bliss and happiness there than she does here, [58] where all the conditions of
evil and chance are against him. To call the Devachan existence a “dream” in any
other sense than that of a conventional term, is to renounce for ever the knowledge
of the Esoteric Doctrine, the sole custodian of truth.

“Dream” only in the sense that it is not of this plane of gross matter, that it belongs
not to the physical world.

Let us try and take a general view of the life of the Eternal Pilgrim, the inner Man, the
human Soul, during a cycle of incarnation. Before he commences his new pilgrimage
– for many pilgrimages lie behind him in the past, during which he gained the powers
which enable him to tread the present one – he is a spiritual Being, but one who has
already passed out of the passive condition of pure Spirit, and who by previous
experience of matter in past ages has evolved intellect, the self-conscious mind. But
this evolution by experience is far from being complete, even so far as to make him
master of matter; his ignorance leaves him a prey to all the illusions of gross matter, so
soon as he comes into contact with it, and he is not fit to be a builder of a universe,
being subject to the deceptive visions caused by gross matter – as a child, looking
through a piece of blue glass, imagines all the outside world to be blue. [59] The
object of a cycle of incarnation is to free him from these illusions, so that when he is
surrounded by and working in gross matter he may retain clear vision and not be
blinded by illusion. Now the cycle of incarnation is made up of two alternating states:
a short one called life on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into gross
matter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, during which he is
encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far less illusive than that of earth. The
second state may fairly be called his normal one, as it is of enormous extent as
compared with the breaks in it that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal
also, as being less removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased in matter,
less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly and gradually, by reiterated
experiences, gross matter loses its power over him and becomes his servant instead of
his tyrant. In the partial freedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth,
still partly dominated by them – at first, indeed, almost completely dominated by them
so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation of the earth-life – but
gradually freeing himself more and more as he recognises them as transitory and
external, until he can move through any [60] region of our universe with unbroken
self-consciousness, a true Lord of Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the
triumph of the Divine Nature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of
matter to be the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:

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The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a pendulum between the hours of
life and death, but if these hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous,
are limited in their continuation, and even the very number of such breaks in eternity
between sleep and waking, between illusion and reality, have their beginning as well
as their end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the hours of his
posthumous life, when unveiled he stands face to face with truth, and the short-lived
mirages of his terrestrial existence are far from him, compose or make up, in our
ideas, the only reality. Such breaks, in spite of the fact that they are finite, do double
service to the Sūtrātmā, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows without
vacillation, though very slowly the road leading to its last transformation, when,
reaching its aim at last, it becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the
reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks Sūtrātmā-Buddhi could never
reach it. Sūtrātmā is the actor, and its numerous and different incarnations are the
actor’s parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so much the less to
their costumes, the term of personality. [61] Like an actor the soul is bound to play;
during the cycle of births up to the very threshold of Parinirvana, many such parts,
which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee, collecting its honey from every
flower, and leaving the rest to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual
individuality, the Sūtrātmā, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities and
consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which it has to clothe itself,
forced by Karma, unites at last all these qualities in one, having then become a
perfect being, a Dhyān Chohan.* [* The Path, May 1890.]

It is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanic stage is conditioned by

the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Man can only assimilate in Devachan the
kinds of experience he has been gathering on earth.

A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless, feeble devachanic state.* [*

“Notes on Devachan”, as cited.]

Husband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist – he must work out the
effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; he cannot eat and assimilate more food
than he has gathered; he cannot reap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but
a moment to cast a seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow
into the ripened ear; but [62] according to the kind of the seed is the ear that grows
from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life is the grain reaped in the

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field of Aanroo.

There is a change of occupation, a continual change in Devachan, just as much and

far more than there is in the life of any man or woman who happens to follow in his
or her whole life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with this difference, that to
the Devachanī this spiritual occupation is always pleasant and fills his life with
rapture. Life in Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth-life; not the
indefinite prolongation of that “single instance”, but its infinite developments, the
various incidents and events based upon and outflowing from that one “single
moment” or moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of the
subjective existence . . . The reward provided by Nature for men who are benevolent
in a large systematic way, and who have not focussed their affections on an
individual or speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for that through the
Kāma and Rūpa Lokas into the higher sphere of Tribhuvana, since it is one where
the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the
thought of its occupant.* [* “Notes on Devachan”, as before. There are a variety of
stages in Devachan; the Rūpa Loka is an inferior stage, where the Soul is still
surrounded by forms. It has escaped from these personalities in the Tribhuvana.]
[63]

Into Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has been left behind with
all its attributes on earth and in Kāmaloka. But if the sower has sowed but little seed,
the devachanic harvest will be meagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by
the paucity of the nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importance
of the earth-life, the field of sowing, the place where experience is to be gathered. It
conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of the Soul; it yields the rough ore which the
Soul then takes in hand, and works upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it,
forging it, tempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its next earth-life.
The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself a splendid instrument for its
next earth-life; the inexperienced one will forge a poor blade enough; but in each case
the only material available is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as it
were, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparatively free life, and gradually
gains the power to estimate the earthly experiences at their real value; it works out
thoroughly and completely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only
conceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which the Soul would
work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, and [64] it would bring back with it
to earth for its next incarnation that mental image, to be materialised on earth when
opportunity offers and suitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is the
sphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising the pre-existent thought.
And the soul is as an architect that works out his plans in silence and deep meditation,

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and then brings them forth into the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out
of the knowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans far the next, and he
returns to earth to put into objective material form the edifices he has planned. This is
the description of a Logos in creative activity:

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

The objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea, then form.
Hence it will be seen that the notion current among many Theosophists that Devachan
is waste time, is but one of the illusions due to the gross matter that blinds them, and
that their impatience of the idea of Devachan arises from the [65] delusion that
fussing about in gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all effective
action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the Silence comes ever the
creative Word. Action on this plane would be less feeble and inefficient if it were the
mere blossom of the profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed
oftener out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less foolish
action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state of consciousness, the
consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile from the net of gross matter, and may
be entered at any time by one who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses
as the tortoise withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more,
action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time “wasted” in meditation is more than
saved by the directness and strength of the mind-engendered act.

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

There are two fields of causal manifestations: the objective and the subjective. The
grosser energies find their outcome in the new personality of each birth in the cycle
of evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of
effects in Devachan. [66]

As the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and as on the development

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of these depends the growth of the true Man, and therefore the accomplishing of “the
object of creation, the liberation of Soul”, we may begin to understand something of
the vast importance of the devachanic state.

THE DEVACHANĪ

When the Triad has shaken off its desire garment, it crosses the threshold of
Devachan, and becomes “a Devachanī”. We have seen that it is in a peaceful dreamy
state before this passage out of the earth-sphere, the “second death”, or
“pre-devachanic unconsciousness”. This condition is otherwise spoken of as the
“gestation” period, because it precedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life.
Regarded from the earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that of
Devachan it is birth. Thus we find in “Notes on Devachan”:

As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan the first flutter of psychic
life, the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into
semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and – not death but birth, birth into
another personality, and the resumption of action which daily begets new congeries
of causes that must be worked out [67] in another term of Devachan, and still
another physical birth as a new personality. What the lives in Devachan and upon
earth shall be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary
round of birth must be ever and ever run through until the being reaches the end of
the seventh Round, or attains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a
Buddha, and thus gets relieved for a Round or two.

When the devachanic entity is born into this new sphere it has passed beyond recall to
earth. The embodied Soul may rise to it, but it cannot be drawn back to our world.
On this a Master has spoken decisively:

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

In the “Notes on Devachan”, again, we read:

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Certainly the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan), retains for a certain
time – proportionate to its earth-life – a complete recollection “of his life on earth”;
but it can never revisit the Earth from Devachan except in Re-incarnation.[68]

The Devachanī is generally spoken of as the Immortal Triad, Ātma-Buddhi-Manas,

but it is well always to bear in mind that

Ātman is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine Essence which has no
body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible, and indivisible, that which does not
exist and yet is, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that
which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only its omnipresent rays or
light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation.* [* Key to
Theosophy, p. 69. Third Edition.]

Buddhi and Manas united, with this overshadowing of Ātma, form the Devachanī;
now, as we have seen in studying the Seven Principles, Manas is dual during
earth-life, and the lower Manas is purified from all passional elements during the
kāmalokic interlude. By this purification of the Ray it carries only the pure and noble
experiences of the earth-life into Devachan with it, thus maintaining the past
personality as the marked characteristic of the Devachanī, and it is in this prolongation
of the “personal Ego”, so to speak, that the “illusion” of the Devachanī consists. Were
the manasic entity free from all illusion, it would see all Egos as its brother-Souls, and
looking back over its past would recognise all the varied relationships it had borne to
others in many lives, as the actor would remember the many parts he had played with
other [69] actors, and would think of each brother actor as a man, and not in the parts
he had played as his father, his son, his judge, his murderer, his master, his friend.
The deeper human relationship would prevent the brother actors from identifying each
other with their parts, and so the perfected spiritual Egos, recognising their deep unity
and full brotherhood, would no longer be deluded by the trappings of earthly
relationships. But the Devachanī, at least in the lower stages, is still within the personal
boundaries of his past earth-life; he is shut into the relationships of the one
incarnation; his paradise is peopled with those he “loved best with an undying love,
that holy feeling that alone survives”, and thus the purified personal Ego is the salient
feature, as above said, in the Devachanī. Again quoting from the “Notes on
Devachan”:

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“Who goes to Devachan?” The personal Ego, of course; but beatified, purified,
holy. Every Ego – the combination of the sixth and seventh principles * [* Sixth and
seventh in the older nomenclature, fifth and sixth in the later - i.e., Manas and
Buddhi.] – which after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the
Devachan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The fact of his
being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good over evil in his old personality.
And while the Karma [of Evil] steps [70] aside for the time being to follow him in his
future earth re-incarnation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good
deeds, words and thoughts into this Devachan. “Bad” is a relative term for us – as
you were told more than once before – and the Law of Retribution is the only law
that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped down into the mire of
unredeemable sin and bestiality go to the Devachan. They will have to pay for their
sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded; receive the
effects of the causes produced by them.

Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the ties they form on
earth in one life are not to be permanent in eternity. But let us look at the question
calmly for a moment. When a mother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one
relationship seems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to
repossess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to manhood the tie
changes, and the protective love of the mother and the clinging obedience of the child
merge into a different love of friends and comrades, richer than ordinary friendship
from the old recollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the prime
of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son protects while the mother
depends on him for guidance. [71] Would the relation have been more perfect had it
ceased in infancy with only the one tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the
different strands of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many lives they may
hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standing as Brothers of the Lodge
closely knit together, may look back over past lives and see themselves in earth-life
related in the many ways possible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every
strand of love and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorer for the
manystranded tie? “Finally”, I say; but the word is only of this cycle, for what lies
beyond, of wider life and less separateness, no mind of man may know. To me it
seems that this very variety of experiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that
it is a rather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only one little aspect
of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a thousand or so years of one
person in one character would, to me, be ample, and I should prefer to know him or
her in some new aspect of his nature. But those who object to this view need not feel
distressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the one personal aspect
held by him or her in the one incarnation they are conscious of for as long as the

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desire [72] for that presence remains. Only let them not desire to impose their own
form of bliss on everybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to
them at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be stereotyped to all
eternity, through all the millions of years that lie before us. Nature gives to each in
Devachan the satisfaction of all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of
his innate divinity, that he “never wills in vain”. Will not this suffice?

But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us “happiness” in a future separated

from our present by millions of years, so that we are no more fitted now to formulate
its conditions than is a child, playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and
interests of its maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of the
Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachanī is surrounded by all he loved on earth, with pure
affection, and the union being on the plane of the Ego, not on the physical plane, it is
free from all the sufferings which would be inevitable were the Devachanī present in
consciousness on the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and
sorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness, but is not
agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the lower consciousness, held
in the bonds [73] of the flesh. According to the orthodox Christian view, Death is a
separation, and the “spirits of the dead” wait for reunion until those they love also pass
through Death’s gateway, or – according to some – until after the judgment-day is
over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death cannot touch the
higher consciousness of man, and that it can only separate those who love each other
so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by
matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but the Devachanī, says
H. P. Blavatsky, has a complete conviction “that there is no such thing as Death at
all”, having left behind it all those vehicles “over which Death has power”. Therefore,
to its less blinded eyes, its beloved are still with it; for it, the veil of matter that
separates has been torn away.

A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children, whom she adores, perhaps a
beloved husband also. We say that her “Spirit” or Ego – that individuality which is
now wholly impregnated, for the entire devachanic period, with the noblest feelings
held by its late personality, i.e., love for her children, pity for those who suffer, and
so on – is now entirely separated from the “vale of tears”, that its future bliss consists
in that blessed ignorance of all the woes it left behind … that the post-mortem
spiritual consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she lives surrounded by
her children and all those whom she loved; that no gap, no link will be missing to
make her disembodied state the most perfect and absolute happiness.* [* Key to
Theosophy, p. 99. Third Edition.] [74]

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And so again:

As to the ordinary mortal his bliss in Devachan is complete. It is an absolute oblivion

of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact
that such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanī lives its intermediate
cycle between two incarnations surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and
in the companionship of everything it loved on earth. It has reached the fulfilment of
all its soul-yearnings. And thus it lives throughout long centuries an existence of
unalloyed happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in earth-life. In short, it
bathes in a sea of uninterrupted felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity
in degree.* [* Key to Theosophy, p. 100.]

When we take the wider sweep in thought demanded by the Esoteric Philosophy, a far
more fascinating prospect of persistent love and union between individual Egos rolls
itself out before our eyes than was offered to us by the more limited creed of exoteric
Christendom. “Mothers love their children with an immortal love”, says H. P.
Blavatsky, and the reason for this immortality in love is easily grasped when we realise
that it is the same Egos that play so many parts in the drama of life, that the
experience of each part is recorded in the memory of the Soul, and that between the
Souls there is no separation, though during incarnation they may not realise the fact in
its fulness and beauty.

We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them
now than when they were alive. And it is [75] not only in the fancy of the Devachanī,
as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not merely the blossom of
a human heart, but has its roots in eternity. Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma
brings sooner or later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual affection to
incarnate once more in the same family group.* [* Key to Theosophy, p. 101. 1969
Ed., p. 95.]

Love “has its roots in eternity”, and those to whom on earth we are strongly drawn are
the Egos we have loved in past earth-lives and dwelt with in Devachan; coming back
to earth, these enduring bonds of love draw us together yet again, and add to the
strength and beauty of the tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and
the strong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experience of their
well-nigh illimitable past.

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THE RETURN TO EARTH

At length the causes that carried the Ego into Devachan are exhausted, the
experiences gathered have been wholly assimilated, and the Soul begins to feel again
the thirst for sentient material life that can be gratified only on the physical plane. The
greater the degree of spirituality reached, the purer and loftier the preceding earth-life,
the longer the stay in Devachan, [76] the world of spiritual, pure, and lofty effects. [I
am here ignoring the special conditions surrounding one who is forcing his own
evolution, and has entered on the Path that leads to Adeptship within a very limited
number of lives.] The “average time [in Devachan] is from ten to fifteen centuries”,
H. P. Blavatsky tells us, and the fifteen centuries cycle is one of those most plainly
marked in history.* [*See Manual No. 2, Reincarnation, pp. 60, 61. Third Edition.]
But in modern life this period has much shortened, in consequence of the greater
attraction exercised by physical objects over the heart of man. Further, it must be
remembered that the “average time” is not the time spent in Devachan by any person.
If one person spends there 1000 years, and another fifty, the “average” is 525. The
devachanic period is longer or shorter according to the type of life which preceded it;
the more there was of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, the
longer will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was of activity directed to
selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be the devachanic period.

When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the Ego is ready to
return, and he brings back with him his now increased experience, and any [77]
further gains he may have made in Devachan along the lines of abstract thought; for,
while in Devachan,

In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can develop further any
faculty which we loved and strove after during life, provided it is concerned with
abstract and ideal things, such as music, painting, poetry, etc.* [* Key to Theosophy,
p. 105. Third Edition. 1969 Ed., pp. 100-1.]

But the Ego meets, as he crosses the threshold of Devachan on his way outwards –
dying out of Devachan to be reborn on earth – he meets in the “atmosphere of the
terrestrial plane”, the seeds of evil sown in his preceding life on earth. During the
devachanic rest he has been free from all pain, all sorrow, but the evil he did in his

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past has been in a state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in the
autumn for the springtime lie dormant beneath the surface of the soil, but touched by
the soft rain and penetrating warmth of sun begin to swell and the embryo expands
and grows, so do the seeds of evil we have sown lie dormant while the Soul takes its
rest in Devachan, but shoot out their roots into the new personality which begins to
form itself for the incarnation of the returning man. The Ego has to take up the
burden of his past, and these germs or seeds, coming over as the harvest of the past
life, are the Skandhas, to borrow a [78] convenient word from our Buddhist brethren.
They consist of material qualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind,
mental powers, and while the pure aroma of these attached itself to the Ego and
passed with it into Devachan, all that was gross, base and evil remained in the state of
suspended animation spoken of above. These are taken up by the Ego as he passes
outwards towards terrestrial life, and are built into the new “man of flesh” which the
true man is to inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turning of
the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, until the work is done and
the building of the Perfect Man is completed.

NIRVANA

What Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvana is to the finished cycle of

Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that glorious state would here be out of
place. It is mentioned only to round off the “After” of Death, for no word of man,
strictly limited within the narrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to
explain what Nirvana is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe. What it
is not may be roughly, badly stated – it is not “annihilation”, it is not [79] destruction
of consciousness. Mr. A. P. Sinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of
many of the ideas current in the West about Nirvāna. He has been speaking of
absolute consciousness, and proceeds:

We may use such phrases as intellectual counters, but for no ordinary mind –
dominated by its physical brain and brain-born intellect – can they have a living
signification. All that words can convey is that Nirvāna is a sublime state of conscious
rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after all that has gone before, to turn to the
various discussions which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism as
to whether Nirvāna does or does not mean annihilation. Worldly similes fall short of
indicating the feeling with which the graduates of Esoteric Science regard such a

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question. Does the last penalty of the law mean the highest honour of the peerage? Is
a wooden spoon the emblem of the most illustrious pre-eminence in learning? Such
questions as these but faintly symbolise the extravagance of the question whether
Nirvāna is held by Buddhism to be equivalent to annihilation.* [* Esoteric Buddhism,
p. 197. Eighth Edition.]

So we learn from The Secret Doctrine that the Nirvānī returns to cosmic activity in a
new cycle of manifestation, and that

The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvāna,

reemerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back
into action.* [* Quoted in The Secret Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 83. The student will do well
to read, for a fair presentation of the subject, G. R. S. Mead’s “Note on Nirvāna” in
‘Lucifer’, for March, April, and May 1893. (Reprinted in Theosophical Siftings.)]
[80]

COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE EARTH AND OTHER SPHERES

We are now in position to discriminate between the various kinds of communication

possible between those whom we foolishly divide into “dead” and “living”, as though
the body were the man, or the man could die. “Communications between the
embodied and the disembodied” would be a more satisfactory phrase.

First, let us put aside as unsuitable the word Spirit: Spirit does not communicate with
Spirit in any way conceivable by us. That highest principle is not yet manifest in the
flesh; it remains the hidden fount of all, the eternal Energy, one of the poles of Being
in manifestation. The word is loosely used to denote lofty Intelligences, who live and
move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us, but pure Spirit is at present as
inconceivable by us as pure matter. And as in dealing with possible “communications”
we have average human beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit
as much as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word often
occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then denotes the Ego. [81]

Taking the stages through which the living man passes after “Death”, or the shaking
off of the body, we can readily classify the communications that may be received, or

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the appearances that may be seen:

I. While the Soul has shaken off only the dense body, and remains still clothed in the
etheric double. This is a brief period only, but during it the disembodied Soul may
show itself, clad in this ethereal garment.

For a very short period after death, while the incorporeal principles remain within the
sphere of our earth’s attraction, it is possible for spirit, under peculiar and favourable
conditions, to appear.* [* Theosophist, Sept. 1882, p. 310.]

It makes no communications during this brief interval, nor while dwelling in this form.
Such “ghosts” are silent, dreamy, like sleep-walkers, and indeed they are nothing more
than astral sleep-walkers. Equally irresponsive, but capable of expressing a single
thought, as of sorrow, anxiety, accident, murder, etc., are apparitions which are
merely a thought of the dying, taking shape in the astral world, and carried by the
dying person’s will to some particular person, with whom the dying intensely longs to
communicate. Such a thought, sometimes called a Māyāvi Rūpa, or illusory form,
[82]

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

When the Soul has left the etheric double, shaking it off as it shook off the dense
body, the double thus left as a mere empty corpse may be galvanised into an “artificial
life”; but fortunately the method of such galvanisation is known to few.

II. While the Soul is in Kāmaloka. This period is of very variable duration. The Soul
is clad in an astral body, the last but one of its perishable garments, and while thus
clad it can utilise the physical bodies of a medium, thus consciously procuring for
itself an instrument whereby it can act on the world it has left, and communicate with
those living in the body. In this way it may give information as to facts known to itself
only, or to itself and another person, in the earth-life just closed; and for as long as it
remains within the terrestrial atmosphere such communication is possible. [83] The

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harm and the peril of such communication has been previously explained, whether the
lower Manas be united with the Divine Triad and so on its way to Devachan, or
wrenched from it and on its way to destruction.

III. While the Soul is in Devachan, if an embodied Soul is capable of rising to its
sphere, or of coming into rapport with it. To the Devachanī, as we have seen, the
beloved are present in consciousness and full communication, the Egos being in touch
with each other, though one is embodied and one is disembodied, but the higher
consciousness of the embodied rarely affects the brain. As a matter of fact, all that we
know on the physical plane of our friend, while we both are embodied, is the mental
image caused by the impression he makes on us. This is, to our consciousness, our
friend, and lacks nothing in objectivity. A similar image is present to the consciousness
of the Devachanī, and to him lacks nothing in objectivity. As the physical plane friend
is visible to an observer on earth, so is the mental plane friend visible to an observer
on that plane. The amount of the friend that ensouls the image is dependent on his
own evolution, a highly evolved person being capable of far more communication
with a Devachanī than one who is unevolved. [84] Communication when the body is
sleeping is easier than when it is awake, and many a vivid “dream” of one on the other
side of death is a real interview with him in Kāmaloka or in Devachan.

Love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it,* [* See on “illusion” what
was said under the heading “Devachan”.] has a magic and divine potency that reacts
on the living. A mother’s Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children it sees near
itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth – that love will always be
felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams and often in various events
– in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong shield and is not limited
by space or time. As with this devachanic “mother”, so with the rest of human
relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish or material.* [*Key to
Theosophy, p. 102. Third Edition.]

Remembering that a thought becomes an active entity, capable of working good or

evil, we easily see that as embodied Souls can send to those they love helping and
protecting forces, so the Devachanī, thinking of those dear to him, may send out such
helpful and protective thoughts, to act as veritable guardian angels round his beloved
on earth. But this is a very different thing from the “Spirit” of the mother coming back
to earth to be the almost helpless spectator of the child’s woes. [85]

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

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Whenever years after the death of a person his spirit is claimed to have “wandered
back to earth” to give advice to those it loved, it is always in a subjective vision, in
dream or in trance, and in that case it is the Soul of the living seer that is drawn to the
disembodied spirit, and not the latter which wanders back to our spheres.* [*
Theosophist, Sept. 1881.]

Where the sensitive, or medium, is of a pure and lofty nature, this rising of the freed
Ego to the Devachanī is practicable, and naturally gives the impression to the sensitive
that the departed Ego has come back to him. The Devachanī is wrapped in its happy
“illusion”, and

the Souls or astral Egos, of pure loving sensitives, labouring under the same
delusion, think their loved ones come down to there on earth, while it is their own
spirits that are raised towards those in the Devachan.* [* “Notes on Devachan”,
Path, June 1890, p. 80.]

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

A “spirit”, or the spiritual Ego, cannot descend to the medium, but it can attract the
spirit of the latter to itself, and it can do this only during the two intervals – before and
after its “gestation period”. Interval the first is that period between the physical death
and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat
Esoteric Doctrine as “Bar-do”. We have [86] translated this as the “gestation period”,
and it lasts from a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the Adepts.
Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of the old [personal] Ego entitle the
being to reap the fruit of its reward in its new regenerated Ego-ship. It occurs after the
gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is reborn-like the fabled Phoenix
from its ashes – from the old one. The locality which the former inhabits is called by
the northern Buddhist Occultists “Devachan”.* [*Theosophist, June 1882, p. 226.]

So also may the incorporeal principles of pure sensitives be placed en rapport with
disembodied Souls, although information thus obtained is not reliable, partly in

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consequence of the difficulty of transferring to the physical brain the impressions
received, and partly from the difficulty of observing accurately, when the seer is
untrained.* [* Summarized from article in Theosophist, Sept. 1882.]

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

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

even the best and purest sensitive can at most only be placed at any time en rapport
with a particular spiritual entity, and can only know, see, and feel what that particular
entity knows, sees, and feels. [87]

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

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

What then is being en rapport? It is simply an identity of molecular vibration between

the astral part of the incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the dis-incarnated
personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets “odylised”, so to speak, by the aura of the
spirit, whether this be hybernating in the earthly region or dreaming in the Devachan;
identity of molecular vibration is established, and for a brief space the sensitive
becomes the departed personality, and writes in its handwriting, uses its language, and
thinks its thoughts. At such times sensitives may believe that those with whom they
are for the moment en rapport descend to earth and communicate with them,
whereas, in reality, it is merely their own spirits which, being correctly attuned to
those others, are for the time blended with them.* [*’Theosophist’, Sept. 1882, p.
309.]

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

far more likely that the medium’s spirit really became en rapport with some spiritual
entity in Devachan, the thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments of which formed the
substance, while the medium’s own personality and pre-existing ideas more or less
governed the forms of the communication.* [* Ibid., p. 310.]

While these communications are not reliable in the facts and opinions stated,

we would remark that it may possibly be that there really is a distinct spiritual entity
impressing our correspondent’s mind. In [88] other words, there may, for all we
know, be some spirit, with whom his spiritual nature becomes habitually, for the time,
thoroughly harmonised, and whose thoughts, language, etc., become his for the time,
the result being that this spirit seems to communicate with him. … It is possible
(though by no means probable) that he habitually passes into a state of rapport with a
genuine spirit, and, for the time, is assimilated therewith, thinking (to a great extent if
not entirely) the thoughts that spirit would think, writing in its handwriting, etc. But
even so, Mr. Terry must not fancy that that spirit is consciously communicating with
him, or knows in any way anything of him, or any other person or thing on earth. It is
simply that, the rapport established, he, Mr. Terry, becomes for the nonce assimilated
with that other personality, and thinks, speaks, and writes as it would have done on
earth. … The molecules of his astral nature may from time to time vibrate in perfect
unison with those of some spirit of such a person, now in Devachan, and the result
may be that he appears to be in communication with that spirit, and to be advised,
etc., by him, and clairvoyants may see in the Astral Light a picture of the earth-life
form of that spirit.

IV. Communications other than those from disembodied Souls, passing through
normal post-mortem states.

(a) From Shells. These, while but the cast-off garment of the liberated Soul, retain
for some time the impress of their late inhabitant, and reproduce automatically his
habits of thought and expression, just as a physical body will automatically repeat
habitual gestures. Reflex action is as possible to the desire body as to the physical, but

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all reflex action is marked by its character of repetition, and absence of all power to
initiate movement. It answers to a stimulus with [89] an appearance of purposive
action, but it initiates nothing. When people “sit for development”, or when at a
seance they anxiously hope and wait for messages from departed friends, they supply
just the stimulus needed, and obtain the signs of recognition for which they
expectantly watch.

(b) From Elementaries. These, possessing the lower capacities of the mind, i.e., all
the intellectual faculties that found their expression through the physical brain during
life, may produce communications of a highly intellectual character. These, however,
are rare, as may be seen from a survey of the messages published as received from
“departed Spirits”.

(c) From Elementals, or Nature Spirits. These play a great part at seances, and are
mostly the agents who are active in producing physical phenomena. They throw about
or carry objects, make noises, ring bells, etc., etc. Sometimes they play pranks with
Shells, animating them and representing them to be the spirits of great personalities
who have lived on earth, but who have sadly degenerated in the “spirit-world”,
judging by their effusions. Sometimes, in materialising seances, they busy themselves
in throwing pictures from the Astral Light on the fluidic forms produced, so causing
them to assume likenesses of various persons. There [90] are also Elementals of a
high type who occasionally communicate with very gifted mediums, “Shining Ones”
from other spheres.

(d) From Nirmānakāyas. For these communications, as for the two classes next
mentioned, the medium must be of a very pure and lofty nature. The Nirmānakāya is
a perfected man, who has cast aside his physical body but retains his other lower
principles, and remains in the earth-sphere for the sake of helping forward the
evolution of mankind. Nirmānakāyas

have, out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth, renounced the Nirvanic
state. Such an Adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him, believing it a selfish act
to rest in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery produced by
ignorance, renounces Nirvana and determines to remain invisible in spirit on this
earth. They have no material body, as they have left it behind: but otherwise they
remain with all their principles even in astral life in our sphere. And such can and do
communicate with a few elect ones, only surely not with ordinary mediums.* [* Key
to Theosophy, p. 151.]

(e) From Adepts now living on earth. These often communicate with Their disciples,

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without using the ordinary methods of communication, and when any tie exists,
perchance from some past incarnation, between an Adept and a medium, constituting
that medium a disciple, a message from the Adept might readily be mistaken for a
message from a “Spirit”. [91] The receipt of such messages by precipitated writing or
spoken words is within the knowledge of some.

(f) From the medium’s Higher Ego. Where a pure and earnest man or woman is
striving after the light, this upward striving is met by a downward reaching of the
higher nature, and light from the higher streams downward, illuminating the lower
consciousness. Then the lower mind is, for the time, united with its parent, and
transmits as much of its knowledge as it is able to retain.

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

The variety of the causes of phenomena is great, and one need be an Adept, and
actually look into and examine what transpires, in order to be able to explain in each
case what really underlies it.* [* Theosophist, Sept. 1882, p. 310.]

To complete the statement it may be added that what the average Soul can do when it
has passed through the gateway of Death, it can do on this side, and communications
may be as readily obtained by writing, in trance, and by the other means of receiving
messages, from embodied as from disembodied Souls. [92] If each developed within
himself the powers of his own Soul, instead of drifting about aimlessly, or ignorantly
plunging into dangerous experiments, knowledge might be safely accumulated and the
evolution of the Soul might be accelerated. This one thing is sure: Man is today a
living Soul, over whom Death has no power, and the key of the prison-house of the
body is in his own hands, so that he may learn its use if he will. It is because his true
Self, while blinded by the body, has lost touch with other Selves, that Death has been
a gulf instead of a gateway between embodied and disembodied Souls. [93]

[94 - blank]

APPENDIX

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

We do not pretend – we are not permitted – to deal exhaustively with the question at
present, but we may refer to one of the most important classes of entities, who can
participate in objective phenomena, other than Elementaries and Elementals.

This class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are Spirits, and not
Shells, because there is not in their cases, at any rate until later, a total and permanent
divorce between the fourth and fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and
seventh on the other. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line of
connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely threatened
personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds in its hands the clue by which,
traversing the labyrinth of earthly sins and passions, it may regain the sacred
penetralia. [95] But for the time, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it
is practically not far removed from a Shell.

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

Understand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting against the trials of
life-trials, the results of its own former actions; trials, heaven’s merciful medicine for
the mentally and spiritually diseased – determines, instead of manfully taking arms
against a sea of troubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It
destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally as before. It had an
appointed life-term determined by an intricate web of prior causes, which its own
willful sudden act cannot shorten. That term must run out its appointed sands. You
may smash the lower half of the hand [96] hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand
shooting from the upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it issues; but
that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, until the whole store in that upper
receptacle is exhausted.

So you may destroy the body, but not the appointed period of sentient existence,
foredoomed (because simply the effect of a plexus of causes) to intervene before the
dissolution of the personality; this must run on for its appointed period.

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This is so in other cases, e.g., those of the victims of accident or violence; they, too,
have to complete their life-term, and of these, too, we may speak on another occasion
– but here it is sufficient to notice that, whether good or bad, their mental attitude at
the time of death alters wholly their subsequent position. They, too, have to wait on
within the “Region of Desires” until their wave of life runs on to and reaches its
appointed shore, but they wait on, wrapped in dreams soothing and blissful, or the
reverse, according to their mental and moral state at, and prior to the fatal hour, but
nearly exempt from further material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable
(except just at the moment of real death) of communicating scio motu with mankind,
though not wholly beyond the possible reach of [97] the higher forms of the
“Accursed Science”, Necromancy. The question is a profoundly abstruse one; it
would be impossible to explain, within the brief space still remaining to us, how the
conditions immediately after death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the
man who deliberately lays down (not merely risks) his life from altruistic motives in
the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of him who deliberately sacrifices his life
from selfish motives, in the hope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before
him. Nature or Providence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, it
would at first sight seem as if the result must be identical in both cases. But, machine
though it be, we must remember that it is a machine sui generis —

Out of himself he span

The eternal web of right and wrong;

And ever feels the subtlest thrill,

The slenderest thread along.

A machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the highest
human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, in petto.

And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at times
marvelously potent material, forces, an we may then begin to comprehend why the
[98] hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs
way into a sweet dream, wherein

All that he wishes and all that he loves

Come smiling round his sunny way,

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only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the Region of
Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who, seeking to elude fate,
selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks the golden bowl, finds himself terribly
alive and awake, instinct with all the evil cravings and desires that embittered his
world-life, without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such partial
alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious gratification, and this only at the
cost of the ultimate complete rupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and
consequent ultimate annihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering.

Let it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class – the sane deliberate suicide.
If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers patiently his punishment, striving against
carnal appetites still alive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each in
proportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life – if, we say, he
bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be tempted here or there into unlawful
[99] gratifications of unholy desires – then when his fated death-hour strikes, his four
higher principles reunite, and, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be
that all may be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation period and its
subsequent developments.

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