which thus deals out inflexible justice and compels us to forever lose
our friends and beloved relatives, once death has closed the door, is
the feeling of a few who make sentiment their rule in life. But while
sentiment and our own wishes are not the guiding laws of nature, there
is no reason even on the sentimental ground for this objection; it is
due to a partial knowledge of the doctrine which, when fully known, is
found to be as full of opportunity for the exercise of what is dear to
the heart as any other theory of life. The same law that throws us into
life to suffer or enjoy, as may be deserved, decrees that the friends
and the relatives who are like unto each other must incarnate together,
until by reason of differentiation of character they cannot under any
law of attraction remain in company. Not unless and until they become
different do they separate from each other. And who would wish to be
eternally tied to the side of uncongenial relatives or acquaintances
merely because there was an accident of birth!
For our aid also this law works well and ceaselessly. "Those whom you
help will help you in other lives," is the declaration. In ages past
perhaps we knew those who long since have passed up to greater heights.
The very moment in the long series of incarnations we come near to where
they are pursuing their pilgrimage, they at once extend assistance,
whether that be on the material or moral planes. And it makes no
difference whether one or the other is aware of who is assisting or who
is being assisted. Inflexible law guides the current and brings about
the result. Thus the members of the whole human family reciprocally act
on one another, forced into it by a law which is as kind as it is great,
which turns the contempt we bore in the past into present honor and
opportunity to help our fellows.
There is no favoritism possible in nature; no man has any privilege or
gift which he has not deserved, either as a reward or a compensation.
Looking at the present life spread before our limited vision, we may see
perhaps no cause why there should be any such reward to an unworthy man,
but Karma never errs and will surely repay. And it not only rewards, but
to it solely belong those compensations which we with revenge attempt to
mete out. It is with this in view that the holy writ of the Christians
says, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay," for so surely as one hurts
another so is the certainty of Karma striking the offender;--but let
the injured one beware that he does not desire the other punished, for
by Karma will he be punished also. So from all this web of life and
ceaselessly revolving wheel, Karma furnishes the escape and the means of
escape, and by reïncarnation we are given the time for escape.
XIX.
In the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, chapter x describes the place where,
after death, disembodied souls remain in different degrees of
perfection. Some are shown as taking wheat three cubits high, while
others are only permitted to glean it--"he gleaned the fields of
Aanroo." Thus some enjoy the perfection of spiritual bliss, while others
attain only to minor degrees in that place or state where divine justice
is meted out to the soul.
Devachan is the land of reward; the domain of spiritual effects. The
word spiritual here refers to disembodiment; it must only be used as
relative to our material existence. The Christian demonstrates this fact
by the material _entourage_ of his heaven. In the _Secret Doctrine_, H.
P. Blavatsky says: "Death itself is unable to deliver man from it
[Karma], since death is simply the door through which he passes to
another life on earth, after a little rest on its threshold--Devachan."
Devachan, then, is the threshold of life. In the Hindû system it is
etymologically the place of the gods, Indra's heaven. Indra is the
regent of heaven, who gives to those who can reach his realm
long-enduring gifts of happiness and dominion. The _Bhavagad-Gîtâ_ says:
"After enjoying felicity for innumerable years in the regions of Indra,
he is born again upon this earth."
For the purpose of this article, we assume that the entire man, minus
the body, goes into Devachan. This, however, is not so. The
_post-mortem_ division of our sevenfold constitution given by Theosophy
is exact. It exhibits the basis of life, death and reïncarnation. It
shows the composite being, man, in analogy with that other composite
being, nature. Both are a unity in diversity. Man, suspended in nature,
like her, divides and reünites. This sevenfold division will be treated
in a future article.
Devachan, being a state of prolonged subjective happiness after the
death of the body, is plainly the heaven of the Christian, but with a
difference. It is a heaven made scientifically possible. Heaven itself
must accord with the divine laws projected into nature. As sleep is a
release from the body, during which we have dreams, so death is a
complete separation and release, after which in Devachan we dream until,
on being again incarnated in a new body on earth, we come once more into
what we call waking existence. Even the human soul would weary of the
ceaseless round of rebirths, if some place or state were not provided in
which rest could be obtained; in which germinating aspirations,
restricted by earth-life, could have their full development. No energy
can be annihilated, least of all a psychic energy; these must somewhere
find an outlet. It is found in Devachan; this realization is the rest of
the soul. Its deepest desires, its highest needs are there enjoyed.
There every hope blooms out in full and glorious flower. To prolong this
blissful state, Hindû books give many incantations and provide
innumerable ceremonies and sacrifices, all of them having for end and
aim a long stay in Devachan. The Christian does precisely the same. He
longs for heaven, prays that he may go there, and offers up to his God
such propitiatory rites and acts as seem best to him, the only
difference being that he does not do it half so scientifically as the
Hindû. The Hindû is also more vivid in his conception of this heaven
than the Christian is. He postulates many places or conditions adapted
to the energic and qualitative differences between souls. Kama-loka and
other states are where concrete desires, restricted by life in the body,
have full expression, while in Tribûvana the abstract and benevolent
thinkers absorb the joys of lofty thought. The orthodox heaven has no
such proviso. It also ignores the fact that a settled monotony of
celestial existence would exhaust the soul--would be stagnation, not
growth. Devachanic life is development of aspiration, passing through
the various stages of gestation, birth, cumulative growth, downward
momentum and departure to another condition, all rooted in joy. There is
nothing in the mere fact of death to mould a soul anew. It is a group of
psychic energies, and heaven must have something in common with these,
or why should it gravitate there? Souls differ as men do. In Devachan
each one receives that degree of bliss which it can assimilate; its own
development determines its reward. The Christian places all the snuffy
old saints as high as other holy souls, sinking genius to the level of
the mediocre mass, while the Hindû gives infinite variety of occupation
and existence suited to grave and gay, the soul of genius or of poetry.
No one sits in undesired seats, nor sings psalms he never liked, nor
lives in a city which might pall upon him if he were forever compelled
to walk its pearly streets. The laws of cause and effect forbid that
Devachan should be monotonous. Results are proportionate to antecedent
energies. The soul oscillates between Devachan and earth-life, finding
in each conditions suited to its continuous development, until, through
effort, it reaches a perfection in which it ceases to be the subject of
the laws of action and reäction, becoming instead their conscious
co-worker.
Devachan is a dream, but only in the sense in which objective life can
be called such. Both last until Karma is satisfied in one direction, and
begins to work in the other. The Devachanee has no idea of space or
time except such as he makes for himself. He creates his own world. He
is with all he ever loved, not in bodily companionship, but in one to
him real, close and blissful. When a man dies, the brain dies last. Life
is still busy there after death has been announced. The soul marshals up
all past events, grasps the sum total, the average tendency stands out,
the ruling hope is seen. Their final aroma forms the keynote of
Devachanic existence. The lukewarm man goes neither to heaven nor hell.
Nature spews him out of her mouth. Positive conditions, objective or
subjective, are only reached through positive impulsion. Devachanic
distribution is governed by the ruling motive of the soul. The hater
may, by reäction, become the lover, but the indifferent have no
propulsion, no growth.
XX.
It is quite evident to the unprejudiced inquirer that Christian priests
for some reason or other studiously ignore the composite nature of man,
although their great authority, St. Paul, clearly refers to it. He spoke
of body, soul, and spirit, they only preach of body and soul; he
declared we had a spiritual body, they remain misty as to the soul's
body and cling to an absurd resurrection of the material casket. It
became the duty of Theosophists to draw the attention of the modern mind
once more to the Oriental division of man's constitution, for through
that alone can an understanding of his state before and after death be
attained. The division laid down by St. Paul is threefold, the Hindû one
is of a sevenfold character. St. Paul's is meant for those who require
broad outlines, but do not care to inquire into details. Spirit, soul,
and body, however, include the whole seven divisions, the latter being a
more complete analysis; and it is suspected by many deep thinkers that
Paul knew the complete system but kept it back for good reasons of his
own.
An analysis of body discloses more than mere molecular structure, for it
shows a force or life or power that keeps it together and active
throughout its natural period. Some writers on Theosophical subjects,
dealing more or less accurately with the Eastern system, have called
this _Prâna_ or _Jîva_; others, however, call it _Prâna_ alone, which
seems more appropriate, because the human aspect of the life force is
dependent upon _Prâna_, or _breath_.
The _spirit_ of St. Paul may be taken for our purposes to be the
Sanskrit _Âtmâ_. Spirit is universal, indivisible, and common to all. In
other words, there are not many spirits, one for each man, but solely
one spirit which shines upon all men alike, finding as many
souls--roughly speaking--as there are beings in the world. In man the
spirit has a more complete instrument or assemblage of tools with which
to work. This spiritual identity is the basis of the philosophy; upon it
the whole structure rests; to individualize spirit, assigning to each
human being his own spirit, particular to him and separate from the
spirit of any other man, is to throw to the ground the whole Theosophic
philosophy, will nullify its ethics and defeat its object.
Starting then with _Âtmâ_--spirit--as including the whole, being its
basis and support, we find the Hindû offering the theory of sheaths or
covers of the soul or inner man. These sheaths are necessary the moment
evolution begins and visible objects appear, so that the aim of the soul
may be attained in conjunction with nature. In this way, through a
process which would be out of place here, a classification is arrived at
by means of which the phenomena of life and consciousness may be
explained.
The six vehicles used by the spirit and by means of which the Ego gains
experience are:
_Body_, as a gross vehicle.
_Vitality_, or _Prâna_.
_Astral Body_, or _Linga Sharîra_.
_Animal Soul_, or _Kâma Rûpa_.
_Human Soul_, or _Manas_.
_Spiritual Soul_, or _Buddhi_.
The _Linga Sharîra_ is needed as a more subtle body than the corporeal
frame, because the latter is in fact only stupid, inert matter. _Kâma
Rûpa_ is the body, or collection, of desires and passions; _Manas_ may
be properly called the mind, and _Buddhi_ is the highest intellection
beyond brain or mind. It is that which discriminates.
At the death of the body, _Prâna_ flies back to the reservoir of force;
the astral body dissipates after a longer period and often returns with
_Kâma Rûpa_ when aided by certain other forces to séance-rooms, where it
masquerades as the deceased, a continual lie and ever-present snare. The
human and the spiritual soul go into the state spoken of before as
_Devachan_ or heaven, where the stay is prolonged or short according to
the energies appropriate to that state generated during earth-life. When
these begin to exhaust themselves the Ego is gradually drawn back to
earth-life, where through human generation it takes up a new body, with
another astral body, vitality, and animal soul.
This is the "wheel of rebirth," from which no man can escape unless he
conforms to true ethics and acquires true knowledge and consciousness
while living in a body. It was to stop this ceaselessly revolving wheel
that Buddha declared his perfect law, and it is the aim of the true
Theosophist to turn his great and brilliant "Wheel of the Law" for the
healing of the nations.
XXI.
High in the esteem of the Hindû stands the serpent, both as a symbol and
a creature. Moving in a wavy line, he figures the vast revolution of the
Sun through eternal space carrying the rapidly whirling Earth in her
lesser orbit; periodically casting his skin, he presents a visible
illustration of renewal of life or reïncarnation; coiling to strike, he
shows the working of the law of Karma-Nemesis which, with a basis in our
actions, deals an unerring blow. As a symbol with tail in mouth, forming
a circle, he represents eternity, the circle of necessity, all-devouring
Time. For the older Initiates he spoke to them also of the astral light
which is at once devilish and divine.
Probably in the whole field of Theosophic study there is nothing so
interesting as the astral light. Among the Hindûs it is known as Akâsa,
which can also be translated as æther. Through a knowledge of its
properties they say that all the wonderful phenomena of the Oriental
Yogis are accomplished. It is also claimed that clairvoyance,
clairaudience, mediumship, and seership as known to the Western world
are possible only through its means. It is the register of our deeds and
thoughts, the great picture gallery of the earth, where the seer can
always gaze upon any event that has ever happened, as well as those to
come. Swimming in it as in a sea are beings of various orders and also
the astral remains of deceased men and women. The Rosicrucians and other
European mystics called these beings Sylphs, Salamanders, Gnomes,
Undines, Elementals; the Hindû calls them Gandharbhas or celestial
musicians, Yakshas, Rakshâsas and many more. The "spooks" of the
dead--mistaken by Spiritualists for the individuals who are no
more--float in this Akâsic substance, and for centuries have been known
to the mystical Hindû as Bhûta, another name for devil, or Pisâcha, a
most horrible devil; neither of them any more than the cast-off
soul-body nearest earth, devoid of conscience and only powerful for
evil.
But the term "astral light," while not new, is purely of Occidental
origin. Porphyry spoke of it when referring to the celestial or
soul-body, which he says is immortal, luminous, and "star-like;"
Paracelsus called it the "sidereal light;" later it grew to be known as
astral. It was said to be the same as the _anima mundi_ or soul of the
world. Modern scientific investigators approach it when they speak of
"luminiferous ether" and "radiant matter." The great astronomer, Camille
Flammarion, who was a member of the Theosophical Society during his
life, speaks of the astral light in his novel _Uranie_ and says: "The
light emanating from all these suns that people immensity, the light
reflected through space by all these worlds lighted by these suns,
_photographs_ throughout the boundless heaven the centuries, the days,
the moments as they pass.... From this it results that the histories of
all the worlds are travelling through space without dispersing
altogether, and that all the events of the past are present and live
evermore in the bosom of the infinite."
Like all unfamiliar or occult things the astral light is difficult to
define, and especially so from the very fact that it is called "light."
It is not the light as we know it, and neither is it darkness. Perhaps
it was said to be a light because when clairvoyants saw by means of it,
the distant objects seemed to be illuminated. But as equally well
distant sounds can be heard in it, heavy bodies levitated by it, odors
carried thousands of miles through it, thoughts read in it, and all the
various phenomena by mediums brought about under its action, there has
been a use of the term "light" which while unavoidable is none the less
erroneous.
A definition to be accurate must include all the functions and powers
of this light, but as those are not fully known even to the mystic, and
wholly _terra incognita_ for the scientist, we must be content with a
partial analysis. It is a substance easily imagined as imponderable
ether which, emanating from the stars, envelopes the earth and permeates
every atom of the globe and each molecule upon it. Obeying the laws of
attraction and repulsion, it vibrates to and fro, making itself now
positive and now negative. This gives it a circular motion which is
symbolized by the serpent. It is the great final agent, or prime mover,
cosmically speaking, which not only makes the plant grow but also keeps
up the diastole and systole of the human heart.
Very like the action of the sensitive photographic plate is this light.
It takes, as Flammarion says, the pictures of every moment and holds
them in its grasp. For this reason the Egyptians knew it as the
Recorder; it is the Recording Angel of the Christian, and in one aspect
it is Yâma, the judge of the dead in the Hindû pantheon, for it is by
the pictures we impress therein that we are judged by Karma.
As an enormous screen or reflector the astral light hangs over the earth
and becomes a powerful universal hypnotizer of human beings. The
pictures of all acts good and bad done by our ancestors as by ourselves,
being ever present to our inner selves, we constantly are impressed by
them by way of suggestion and go then and do likewise. Upon this the
great French priest-mystic, Éliphas Lévi, says: "We are often astonished
when in society at being assailed by evil thoughts and suggestions that
we would not have imagined possible, and we are not aware that we owe
them solely to the presence of some morbid neighbor; this fact is of
great importance, since it relates to the manifestation of
conscience--one of the most terrible and incontestable secrets of the
magic art.... So diseased souls have a bad breath, and vitiate the
moral atmosphere; that is to say, they mingle impure reflections with
the astral light which penetrates them, and thus establish deleterious
currents."
There is also a useful function of this light. As it preserves the
pictures of all past events and things, and as there is nothing new
under the sun, the appliances, the ideas, the philosophy, the arts and
sciences of long buried civilizations are continually being projected in
pictures out of the astral into the brains of living men. This gives a
meaning not only to the oft-recurring "coïncidence" of two or more
inventors or scientists hitting upon the same ideas or inventions at
about the same time and independently of each other, but also to other
events and curious happenings.
Some self-styled scientists have spoken learnedly of telepathy, and
other phenomena, but give no sufficient reason in nature for
thought-transference or apparitions or clairvoyance or the hundred and
one varieties of occurrences of an occult character noticed from day to
day among all conditions of men. It is well to admit that thought may be
transferred without speech directly from one brain to another, but how
can the transference be effected without a medium? That medium is the
astral light. The moment the thought takes shape in the brain it is
pictured in this light, and from there is taken out again by any other
brain sensitive enough to receive it intact.
Knowing the strange properties of the astral plane and the actual fate
of the sheaths of the soul spoken of in another article, the
Theosophical Adepts of all times gave no credit to pretended returning
of the dead. Éliphas Lévi learned this well and said: "The astral light
combining with ethereal fluids forms the astral phantom of which
Paracelsus speaks. This astral body being freed at death, attracts to
itself and preserves for a long time, by the sympathy of likeness, the
reflection of the past life; if a powerfully sympathetic will draws it
into the proper current it manifests itself in the form of an
apparition." But with a sensitive, abnormally constituted person
present--a medium, in other words, and all of that class are nervously
unbalanced--the strong will is not needed, for the astral light and the
living medium's astral body recall these soulless phantoms, and out of
the same reservoir take their speech, their tones, their idiosyncrasies
of character, which the deluded devotees of this debasing practice are
cheated into imagining as the returned self of dead friend or relative.
Yet all I have referred to here are only instances of a few of the
various properties of the astral light. So far as concerns our world it
may be said that astral light is everywhere, interpenetrating all
things; to have a photographic power by which it grasps pictures of
thoughts, deeds, events, tones, sounds, colors, and all things;
reflective in the sense that it reflects itself into the minds of men;
repellant from its positive side and attractive from the negative;
capable of assuming extreme density when drawn in around the body by
powerful will or by abnormal bodily states, so that no physical force
can penetrate it. This phase of its action explains some facts
officially recorded during the witchcraft excitement in Salem. It was
there found that although stones and other flying objects came toward
the possessed one they always fell as it were from the force of gravity
_just at the person's feet_. The Hindû Yogi gives evidence of a use of
this condensation of the astral light when he allows arrows and other
projectiles to be thrown at him, all of them falling at his feet no
matter how great their momentum, and the records of genuine
Spiritualistic phenomena in the United States furnish similar
experiences.
The astral light is a powerful factor, unrecognized by science, in the
phenomenon of hypnotism. Its action will explain many of the problems
raised by Binet, Charcot and others, and especially that class in which
two or more distinct personalities seem to be assumed by the subject,
who can remember in each only those things and peculiarities of
expression which belong to that particular stratum of their experience.
These strange things are due to the currents in the astral light. In
each current will be found a definite series of reflections, and they
are taken up by the inner man, who reports them through speech and
action on this plane as if they were his own. By the use of these
currents too, but unconsciously, the clairvoyants and clairaudients seem
to read in the hidden pages of life.
This light can therefore be impressed with evil or good pictures, and
these are reflected into the subconscious mind of every human being. If
you fill the astral light with bad pictures, just such as the present
century is adept at creating, it will be our devil and destroyer, but if
by the example of even a few good men and women a new and purer sort of
events are limned upon this eternal canvas, it will become our Divine
Uplifter.
_There is no Religion Higher than Truth_
THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
_Established for the benefit of the people of the earth and all
creatures_
OBJECTS
This BROTHERHOOD is a part of a great and universal movement which has
been active in all ages.
This Organization declares that Brotherhood is a fact in Nature. Its
principal purpose is to teach Brotherhood, demonstrate that it is a fact
in Nature and make it a living power in the life of humanity.
Its subsidiary purpose is to study ancient and modern religions,
science, philosophy and art; to investigate the laws of Nature and the
divine powers in man.