Loka is a Sanskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land,
so that Kâmaloka is literally the place or the world of Kâma, Kâma
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.[15] In this division of the universe, the Kâmaloka,
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. Kâmaloka 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.
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_.[16]
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 on his report
by 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.[17]
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 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 co-existence 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 mediæval mystics, and
become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or
consumption of fuel.[18]
Kâmaloka 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 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 Kâmaloka; human beings, who
have quitted earth and in whom the kâmic elements were strong, may
very readily be attracted by the kâmic 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 Kâmaloka 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 Kâmaloka 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. 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 Kâmaloka.[19]
Prâna, 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 Prâna, 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 Prâna, as a distinctively human principle, cannot remain
appropriated when its vehicle disintegrates.
The man now is clothed, but with the Kâma Rûpa, or body of Kâma, 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, sensitive, responsive form which lent it during embodiment
the power to feel, to desire, to enjoy, to suffer, in the physical
world.
When the man dies, his three lower principles leave him for
ever; _i.e._, body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the
etheric body, or the double of the living man. And then his
four principles--the central or middle principle (the animal
soul or Kâma Rûpa, with what it has assimilated from the
lower Manas) and the higher Triad--find themselves in
Kâmaloka.[20]
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, for the period of repose that intervenes between two
incarnations. But as, at this point, different possibilities arise,
let us trace a normal uninterrupted progression in Kâmaloka, 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 parts of
his nature, after shaking off the dense body and the etheric double,
and after Prâna has re-mingled with the ocean of Life, and he is
clothed only with the Kâma Rûpa, the passional elements in him, being
but weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not be
able to assert themselves strongly in Kâmaloka. Now during earth-life
Kâma and the Lower Manas are strongly united and interwoven with each
other; in the case we are considering Kâma is weak, and the Lower
Manas has purified Kâma 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 Kâma 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, its loves, its hopes, its
aspirations, and prepares to pass out of Kâmaloka into the blissful
rest of Devachan, the "abode of the Gods", or as some say, "the land
of bliss". Kâmaloka
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 Atmâ-Buddhi-Mânasic Triad
is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles or the
reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the
Devachanic state.[21]
This second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from the
kâmalokic 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 four principles--the Immortal
Triad and Kâma--remain in Kâmaloka, whether the period be long or
short, days or centuries, they are within the reach of the
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 kâmic
elements in the embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desire
body of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas, not
yet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the Spiritual
Intelligence. 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 dazed after death, and falls
very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic
unconsciousness."[22]
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 Kâmaloka 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 Kâmaloka, the spiritual
Intelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possesses
considerable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven
with Kâma during the earth-life just ended, having lived much in the
enjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions,
cannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, and
return to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence a
considerable delay in the world of transition, in Kâmaloka, 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 and Kâma remain
together in Kâmaloka, 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
kâmic 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_,[23] 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 Bar-do. We have
translated this as the "gestation" period [pre-devachanic].
Some of the communications made through mediums are from this source,
from the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere--a
cruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing an
element of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. The
period in Kâmaloka 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
Kâmaloka, 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. Their fate in Kâmaloka depends on the
conditions which surrounded their outgoings 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 séance room,
nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural
death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf.
The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative,
whereas in cases of_ accidental death _the higher and the
lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good
and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates
irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either
slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless
profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little
reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of
things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is
irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to
some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an
act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not
the_ direct _result of an act deliberately committed by the_
personal _Ego of that life during which he happened to be
killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have
atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and
even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his
maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive
justice. The Dhyân Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance
of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it
is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before
it is matured and made fit and ready for it._
These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate 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_ death-_hour
comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which
bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the
opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them
vicariously. They are the Pishâchas, the Incubi and Succubæ
of mediæval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and
avarice--Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and
cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and
revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their
victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the
torrent of their hellish impulses, at last--at the fixed
close of their natural period of life--they are carried out
of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure
exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.
* * * * *
Now the causes producing the "new being" and determining the
nature of Karma are Trishnâ (Tanhâ)--thirst, desire for
sentient existence--and Upâdâna, which is the realisation or
consummation of Trishnâ, 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
Kâmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those
who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos
who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but
who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let
us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the
Kâmaloka not "a few years," but in his case sixty or seventy
years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker," since
he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell." Happy,
thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities
who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom
of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnâ will attract them to
mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an
easy Upâdâna. For, in grasping them and satisfying their
thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in
fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with
far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All
the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only
by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but
also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the
mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with
every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they
entice the latter into a Upâdâna, which will be productive of
untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its
nefarious shadow, and that with every séance, especially for
materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes
that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual
birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than
ever--they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their
hospitality._
Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by
voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in
Kâmaloka, 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 Mâyâ. The "vices" will not escape their
punishment; but it is the_ cause, _not the effect, that will
be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable
effect. As well call a man a "suicide" who meets his death in
a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study".
Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to
produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him
away. In such a case no one ought to cross the_ Kâlapâni,
_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 Kâmaloka, but
falls_ asleep _like any other victim._
The population of Kâmaloka 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
Kâmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred,
passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with
unsatiated 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 Kâmaloka; 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 has quitted Kâmaloka, it passes wholly out of the
sphere of earth attractions:
_As soon as it has stepped outside the Kâmaloka--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 the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fate
of the now deserted desire body, left as a mere _reliquum_ in
Kâmaloka.