Let us now consider the states of man after the death of the body and
before birth, having looked over the whole field of the evolution
of things and beings in a general way. This brings up at once the
questions: Is there any heaven or hell, and what are they? Are they
states or places? Is there a spot in space where they may be found
and to which we go or from where we come? We must also go back to the
subject of the fourth principle of the constitution of man, that called
Kama in Sanscrit and desire or passion in English. Bearing in mind what
was said about that principle, and also the teaching in respect to
the astral body and the Astral Light, it will be easier to understand
what is taught about the two states _ante_ and _post mortem_. In
chronological order we go into kama loka—or the plane of desire—first
on the demise of the body, and then the higher principles, the real
man, fall into the state of _Devachan_. After dealing with kama loka it
will be more easy to study the question of _Devachan_.
The breath leaves the body and we say the man is dead, but that is only
the beginning of death; it proceeds on other planes. When the frame is
cold and eyes closed, all the forces of the body and mind rush through
the brain, and by a series of pictures the whole life just ended is
imprinted indelibly on the inner man not only in a general outline
but down to the smallest detail of even the most minute and fleeting
impression. At this moment, though every indication leads the physician
to pronounce for death and though to all intents and purposes the
person is dead to this life, the real man is busy in the brain, and
not until his work there is ended is the person gone. When this solemn
work is over the astral body detaches itself from the physical, and,
life energy having departed, the remaining five principles are in the
plane of kama loka.
The natural separation of the principles brought about by death divides
the total man into three parts:
_First_, the visible body with all its elements left to further
disintegration on the earth plane, where all that it is composed of is
in time resolved into the different physical departments of nature.
_Second_, the _kama rupa_ made up of the astral body and the passions
and desires, which also begins at once to go to pieces on the astral
plane.
_Third_, the real man, the upper triad of _Atma-Buddhi-Manas_,
deathless but now out of earth conditions, devoid of body, begins
in _devachan_ to function solely as mind clothed in a very ethereal
vesture which it will shake off when the time comes for it to return to
earth.
_Kama loka_—or the place of desire—is the astral region penetrating and
surrounding the earth. As a place it is on and in and about the earth.
Its extent is to a measurable distance from the earth, but the ordinary
laws obtaining here do not obtain there, and entities therein are not
under the same conditions as to space and time as we are. As a state it
is metaphysical, though that metaphysic relates to the astral plane.
It is called the plane of desire because it relates to the fourth
principle, and in it the ruling force is desire devoid of and divorced
from intelligence. It is an astral sphere intermediate between earthly
and heavenly life. Beyond any doubt it is the origin of the Christian
theory of purgatory, where the soul undergoes penance for evil done
and from which it can be released by prayer and other ceremonies or
offerings. The fact underlying this superstition is that the soul may
be detained in _kama loka_ by the enormous force of some unsatisfied
desire, and cannot get rid of the astral and kamic clothing until that
desire is satisfied by some one on earth or by the soul itself. But
if the person was pure minded and of high aspirations, the separation
of the principles on that plane is soon completed, permitting the
higher triad to go into _Devachan_. Being the purely astral sphere,
it partakes of the nature of the astral matter which is essentially
earthly and devilish, and in it all the forces work undirected by soul
or conscience. It is the slag-pit, as it were, of the great furnace of
life, where nature provides for the sloughing off of elements which
have no place in _Devachan_, and for that reason it must have many
degrees, every one of which was noted by the ancients. These degrees
are known in Sanscrit as _lokas_ or places in a metaphysical sense.
Human life is very varied as to character and other potentialities, and
for each of these the appropriate place after death is provided, thus
making _kama loka_ an infinitely varied sphere. In life some of the
differences among men are modified and some inhibited by a similarity
of body and heredity, but in _kama loka_ all the hidden desires and
passions are let loose in consequence of the absence of body, and for
that reason the state is vastly more diversified than the life plane.
Not only is it necessary to provide for the natural varieties and
differences, but also for those caused by the manner of death, about
which something shall be said. And all these various divisions are
but the natural result of the life thoughts and last thoughts of the
persons who die on earth. It is beyond the scope of this work to go
into a description of all these degrees, inasmuch as volumes would be
needed to describe them, and then but few would understand.
To deal with _kama loka_ compels us to deal also with the fourth
principle in the classification of man’s constitution, and arouses
a conflict with modern ideas and education on the subject of the
desires and passions. It is generally supposed that the desires and
passions are inherent tendencies in the individual, and they have
an altogether unreal and misty appearance for the ordinary student.
But in this system of philosophy they are not merely inherent in the
individual nor are they due to the body _per se_. While the man is
living in the world the desires and passions—the principle _kama_—have
no separate life apart from the astral and inner man, being, so to
say, diffused throughout his being. But as they coalesce with the
astral body after death and thus form an entity with its own term of
life, though without soul, very important questions arise. During
mortal life the desires and passions are guided by the mind and soul;
after death they work without guidance from the former master; while
we live we are responsible for them and their effects, and when we
have left this life we are still responsible, although they go on
working and making effects on others while they last as the sort of
entity I have described, and without our direct guidance. In this is
seen the continuance of responsibility. They are a portion of the
_skandhas_—well known in eastern philosophy—which are the aggregates
that make up the man. The body includes one set of the _skandhas_, the
astral man another, the _kama_ principle is another set, and still
others pertain to other parts. In _kama_ are the really active and
important ones which control rebirths and lead to all the varieties of
life and circumstance upon each rebirth. They are being made from day
to day under the law that every thought combines instantly with one of
the elemental forces of nature, becoming to that extent an entity which
will endure in accordance with the strength of the thought as it leaves
the brain, and all of these are inseparably connected with the being
who evolved them. There is no way of escaping; all we can do is to have
thoughts of good quality, for the highest of the Masters themselves are
not exempt from this law, but they “people their current in space”
with entities powerful for good alone.
Now in _kama loka_ this mass of desire and thought exists very
definitely until the conclusion of its disintegration, and then the
remainder consists of the essence of these _skandhas_, connected, of
course, with the being that evolved and had them. They can no more be
done away with than we can blot out the universe. Hence they are said
to remain until the being comes out of _devachan_, and then at once by
the law of attraction they are drawn to the being, who from them as
germ or basis builds up a new set of _skandhas_ for the new life. _Kama
loka_ therefore is distinguished from the earth plane by reason of the
existence therein, uncontrolled and unguided, of the mass of passions
and desires; but at the same time earth-life is also a _kama loka_,
since it is largely governed by the principle _kama_, and will be so
until at a far distant time in the course of evolution the races of
men shall have developed the fifth and sixth principles, thus throwing
_kama_ into its own sphere and freeing earth-life from its influence.
The astral man in _kama loka_ is a mere shell devoid of soul and mind,
without conscience and also unable to act unless vivified by forces
outside of itself. It has that which seems like an animal or automatic
consciousness due wholly to the very recent association with the human
Ego. For under the principle laid down in another chapter, every atom
going to make up the man has a memory of its own which is capable
of lasting a length of time in proportion to the force given it. In
the case of a very material and gross or selfish person the force
lasts longer than in any other, and hence in that case the automatic
consciousness will be more definite and bewildering to one who without
knowledge dabbles with necromancy. Its purely astral portion contains
and carries the record of all that ever passed before the person when
living, for one of the qualities of the astral substance is to absorb
all scenes and pictures and the impressions of all thoughts, to keep
them, and to throw them forth by reflection when the conditions permit.
This astral shell, cast off by every man at death, would be a menace to
all men were it not in every case, except one which shall be mentioned,
devoid of all the higher principles which are the directors. But those
guiding constituents being disjoined from the shell, it wavers and
floats about from place to place without any will of its own, but
governed wholly by attractions in the astral and magnetic fields.
It is possible for the real man—called the spirit by some—to
communicate with us immediately after death for a few brief moments,
but, those passed, the soul has no more to do with earth until
reïncarnated. What can and do influence the sensitive and the medium
from out of this sphere are the shells I have described. Soulless and
conscienceless, these in no sense are the spirits of our deceased ones.
They are the clothing thrown off by the inner man, the brutal earthly
portion discarded in the flight to _devachan_, and so have always
been considered by the ancients as devils—our personal devils—because
essentially astral, earthly, and passional. It would be strange indeed
if this shell, after being for so long the vehicle of the real man on
earth, did not retain an automatic memory and consciousness. We see the
decapitated body of the frog or the cock moving and acting for a time
with a seeming intelligence, and why is it not possible for the finer
and more subtle astral form to act and move with a far greater amount
of seeming mental direction?
Existing in the sphere of _kama loka_, as, indeed, also in all parts of
the globe and the solar system, are the elementals or nature forces.
They are innumerable, and their divisions are almost infinite, as they
are, in a sense, the nerves of nature. Each class has its own work just
as has every natural element or thing. As fire burns and as water
runs down and not up under their general law, so the elementals act
under law, but being higher in the scale than gross fire or water their
action seems guided by mind. Some of them have a special relation to
mental operations and to the action of the astral organs, whether these
be joined to a body or not. When a medium forms the channel, and also
from other natural coördination, these elementals make an artificial
connection with the shell of a deceased person, aided by the nervous
fluid of the medium and others near, and then the shell is galvanized
into an artificial life. Through the medium connection is made with
the physical and psychical forces of all present. The old impressions
on the astral body give up their images to the mind of the medium, the
old passions are set on fire. Various messages and reports are then
obtained from it, but not one of them is original, not one is from the
spirit. By their strangeness, and in consequence of the ignorance of
those who dabble in it, this is mistaken for the work of spirit, but
it is all from the living when it is not the mere picking out from the
astral light of the images of what has been in the past. In certain
cases to be noted there is an intelligence at work that is wholly and
intensely bad, to which every medium is subject, and which will explain
why so many of them have succumbed to evil, as they have confessed.
A rough classification of these shells that visit mediums would be as
follows:
(1) Those of the recently deceased whose place of burial is not far
away. This class will be quite coherent in accordance with the life and
thought of the former owner. An unmaterial, good, and spiritualized
person leaves a shell that will soon disintegrate. A gross, mean,
selfish, material person’s shell will be heavy, consistent, and long
lived: and so on with all varieties.
(2) Those of persons who had died far away from the place where the
medium is. Lapse of time permits such to escape from the vicinity of
their old bodies, and at the same time brings on a greater degree of
disintegration which corresponds on the astral plane to putrefaction on
the physical. These are vague, shadowy, incoherent; respond but briefly
to the psychic stimulus, and are whirled off by any magnetic current.
They are galvanized for a moment by the astral currents of the medium
and of those persons present who were related to the deceased.
(3) Purely shadowy remains which can hardly be given a place. There
is no English to describe them, though they are facts in this sphere.
They might be said to be the mere mould or impress left in the astral
substance by the once coherent shell long since disintegrated. They
are therefore so near being fictitious as to almost deserve the
designation. As such shadowy photographs they are enlarged, decorated,
and given an imaginary life by the thoughts, desires, hopes, and
imaginings of medium and sitters at the _séance_.
(4) Definite, coherent entities, human souls bereft of the spiritual
tie, now tending down to the worst state of all, _avitchi_, where
annihilation of the personality is the end. They are known as black
magicians. Having centred the consciousness in the principle of _kama_,
preserved intellect, divorced themselves from spirit, they are the
only damned beings we know. In life they had human bodies and reached
their awful state by persistent lives of evil for its own sake; some
of such already doomed to become what I have described, are among us
on earth to-day. These are not ordinary shells, for they have centred
all their force in _kama_, thrown out every spark of good thought or
aspiration, and have a complete mastery of the astral sphere. I put
them in the classification of shells because they are such in the
sense that they are doomed to disintegration consciously as the others
are to the same end mechanically only. They may and do last for many
centuries, gratifying their lusts through any sensitive they can lay
hold of where bad thought gives them an opening. They preside at nearly
all _séances_, assuming high names and taking the direction so as to
keep the control and continue the delusion of the medium, thus enabling
themselves to have a convenient channel for their own evil purposes.
Indeed, with the shells of suicides, of those poor wretches who die at
the hand of the law, of drunkards and gluttons, these black magicians
living in the astral world hold the field of physical mediumship and
are liable to invade the sphere of any medium no matter how good.
The door once open, it is open to all. This class of shell has lost
higher _manas_, but in the struggle not only after death but as well
in life the lower portion of _manas_ which should have been raised up
to godlike excellence was torn away from its lord and now gives this
entity intelligence which is devoid of spirit but has power to suffer
as it will when its final day shall come.
In the state of _Kama Loka_ suicides and those who are suddenly shot
out of life by accident or murder, legal or illegal, pass a term
almost equal to the length life would have been but for the sudden
termination. These are not really dead. To bring on a normal death, a
factor not recognized by medical science must be present. That is, the
principles of the being as described in other chapters have their own
term of cohesion, at the natural end of which they separate from each
other under their own laws. This involves the great subject of the
cohesive forces of the human subject, requiring a book in itself. I
must be content therefore with the assertion that this law of cohesion
obtains among the human principles. Before that natural end the
principles are unable to separate. Obviously the normal destruction
of the cohesive force cannot be brought about by mechanical processes
except in respect to the physical body. Hence a suicide, or person
killed by accident or murdered by man or by order of human law, has
not come to the natural termination of the cohesion among the other
constituents, and is hurled into the _kama loka_ state only partly
dead. There the remaining principles have to wait until the actual
natural life term is reached, whether it be one month or sixty years.
But the degrees of _kama loka_ provide for the many varieties of the
last-mentioned shells. Some pass the period in great suffering, others
in a dreamy sort of sleep, each according to the moral responsibility.
But executed criminals are in general thrown out of life full of hate
and revenge, smarting under a penalty they do not admit the justice of.
They are ever rehearsing in _kama loka_ their crime, their trial, their
execution, and their revenge. And whenever they can gain touch with a
sensitive living person, medium or not, they attempt to inject thoughts
of murder and other crime into the brain of such unfortunate. And that
they succeed in such attempts the deeper students of Theosophy full
well know.
We have now approached _devachan_. After a certain time in _kama loka_
the being falls into a state of unconsciousness which precedes the
change into the next state. It is like the birth into life, preluded
by a term of darkness and heavy sleep. It then wakes to the joys of
_devachan_.