The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of
reconstruction. First builded into the 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, robes, ærobes, anærobes, and what
not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the
Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals,
plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of
such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can
detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material
portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that
will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and
physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are
destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical
truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and
physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the
reptile and its nest, the rock, and man, is more and more
clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all
being found to be identical, chemical Science may well say
that there is no difference between the matter which composes
the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is
far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds
are the same, but the same infinitesimal _invisible lives_
compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the
daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree
which shelters him from the sun. Each particle--whether you
call it organic or inorganic--_is a life_.[6]
These "lives" which, separate and independent, are the minute vehicles
of Prâna, 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 continual bridge between man and his
environment. Controlling these are the "Fiery Lives," the Devourers,
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,[7] 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
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."[8]
Those who have read _The Seven Principles of Man_,[9] know that the
etheric double is the vehicle of Prâna, the life-principle, or
vitality. Through the etheric double Prâna 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",
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 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 kâmic 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 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
Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends out
its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body,
or kâmic 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, 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 stable which is transitory. 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.[10]
When once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it we
gain our liberty, Death loses for us 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.[11]
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 Prâna, 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.
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.