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, 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 the one most
plainly marked in history.[39] 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 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, &c.[40]
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 past has been in
a state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in the
autumn for the spring-time 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
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.